Two knocks on the door of queen Novo’s suite, and waits patiently under the watchful gazes of two hippogriff guards. The queen opens shortly, and gives Two a rather surprised look.
“Your Majesty, may I have a word?” Two summons her more diplomatic side. If her mother could do it, she can too, “It’s about the attack my king saved you from.”
“Come in,” Novo ushers Two inside her room with the strange, bottomless pool. However, despite her warm greeting she also has one of the guards stand by the door from the inside now. Two doesn’t comment on it, “How can I help you?”
“Gem was attacked about an hour ago,” says Two flatly, making Novo lean backwards in surprise, “I’m really tired of Celestia doing nothing, and all things point to the magical wards of this castle being something that is allowing the attacks to happen instead of stopping them. Now that more attacks happened, I just wanted to check your place for something I might have missed the first time when the Royal Guards rushed in to lock us up.”
“Oh, no problem,” Novo waves her foreleg, “Although I doubt you’ll find anything. The cleaning staff took their job seriously.”
“We’ll see,” Two bows, “Thank you for the opportunity anyway, your Majesty. Now, it would help if both you and your guard left me alone here, but if that isn’t an option, I just need you to not move, please.”
Ten minutes later, Two is on the way to Cadance’s and Shining Armor’s guest room, where her encounter ends in a similar fashion. In light of her growing suspicion, she visits the dungeons, and eventually ends up knocking on the door of princess Luna’s suite.
What opens the door is a visage of a alicorn with bags under her bloodshot eyes and dishevelled mane.
“What?” hisses Luna.
“May I come in?” asks Two, summoning her polite side again.
“As it looks that I will not have a chance to get a good day’s sleep, sure...” the grumbling alicorn disappears into the darkness of her suite, Two following in tow. Inside, Luna immediately heads towards a shiny, griffon-made coffee maker on her bedside table, “So?” she just says.
“I need to visit Celestia’s suite. I think I’ve got something that might help track down Star Trail, and maybe the lich.”
“Doubtful,” Luna smacks the coffee maker which starts rumbling, “They’re both teleporting from way away. I checked the drain on the magic wards every time they appeared.”
“Have you checked in the last hour? Because Star Trail just tried to kill Gem, and if it wasn’t for Anvil, he would have done so.”
“What?”
Two recaps what happened to Gem.
“-and I think Anvil knows more than she lets on. She said something about a nose, which made me think. I checked all scenes of the attacks again, and even now there is a faint, necrotic smell coupled with lab chemicals. I need to check Celestia’s suite just to be sure, it’s the last place where I haven’t been, but I think it’ll be there too.”
“And I suppose you’ll want to check the whole castle for come place they might be using to teleport to and regroup, or somewhere from where they might be twisting the castle protections for their use, am I right?”
“Exactly,” Two nods.
“Alright,” Luna points to the mirror, and leads Two through, “Speaking of which, why can’t you use those little guys you’ve got sitting around?” she points at one invisible Eleven curled up on a pillow atop Celestia’s dresser.
“Eleven wouldn’t smell it, and I don’t think anyone but the boss would notice,” Two replies with her nose pressed against the carpet, “It’s got something to do with me being a physical mix of warrior and infiltrator, which is highly unusual for us, since hives work the best if everyone has a clear role. On the other hole, we already have Eleven who is holes know what, so I suppose I’m the more normal one. Ah hah!” Two grins, “It’s not just Star Trail, even the lich leaves the same trail of chemicals. So, Star Trail is the decaying flesh and sharp scent, and the lich is only the chemicals. I think I can differentiate the two for sure now.”
“Hmmm...” Luna returns into her suite through the mirror. The Eleven ‘keeping an eye on her’ mumbles something in his sleep, and hugs the now empty pillow. When Two rejoins her, the princess’s horn starts glowing, “You’ll need this to get around the castle properly,” a white ball of light leaves Luna’s horn, and seeps into Two’s carapace, “It’s an indifference spell. It won’t trigger most alarms, and it will make sure anything you do remains ignored by ponies, unless you directly interact with them or do something obvious. That, coupled with your invisibility, should help you get anywhere. Do you need something to get around locks?”
Two shakes her head. Pony locks are nothing compared to dwarf contraptions, and she can pick most of those these days. She makes a mental note to thank Six for imparting on her the practical parts of his engineering course.
“If I have time, I can get through anything that’s not pure magic.”
“Then I suppose I’ll try to catch few more hours of sleep,” Luna sits down on the bed again, which makes Eleven’s ears perk up, “Oh, and one last thing,” a devious smile graces her blueberry lips, “The spell will last roughtly for eight hours, and paladin headquarters is just outside the castle grounds. I doubt they’re in on the attacks, but there still is a lot of anti-changeling sentiment among them, and since most of them are over a century old, I can’t rightfully blame them.”
Two chuckles, and turns invisible. Luna watches the door of her suite open and close. The Nightguards outside don’t react to Two manipulating the door in any way, a good sign that the spell is working perfectly even against her best.
***
“Hey, you changeling version of a walkie-talkie, get up!” Two links up with Eleven.
“What’s up, Two?” all Elevens currently piled up in Two’s guest room raise their heads at once, which would creep out any casual observer. The ones guarding Anvil, Cryo, Gem, Luna, and Celestia don’t react, just as expected.
“Meet me outside the castle in two minutes,” orders Two, “Everyone who isn’t busy. We’re going on a little trip, and I want you to watch my back.”
“Sure thing!”
A galloping herd of six Elevens startles the guards standing by the castle gate as they rush past, and head off through the castle grounds towards the gate to the city where Two is already waiting.
With Luna’s guidance, Two finds the paladin headquarters - a white, cathedral-like building with two statues of Celestia by the gate and a symbol of the sun above it. There are no guard around, but Two can feel the magic coursing through the whole building.
“Eleven, let’s do some scouting. Luna’s spell will work on me, but you won’t get in. I need you to observe the building from all sides, and stay connected to me in case the spell fails and the sun zealots get mad. If that happens, call Gem, Luna, and Celestia to get me out.”
“Am I looking out for anything in particular?” asks Eleven.
“Not really, just keep an eye on the general situation.”
Elevens scatter, climbing ledges of surrounding buildings, and looking for vantage points around the headquarters. Two opts against flying Eleven on some harder to reach places in case he’d need to get down on his own. In reality, she needed just one Eleven for communication, but this was a safety measure in case Star Trail recovered quickly, and attacked again. By now, Two is pretty sure that being outside the castle is safer than being inside. This way, she has her living communication device, Eleven is out of harm’s way and being helpful at the same time, and all key ponies have a pair of eyes on them.
What she has to do now is wait for the night.
***
With the blizzard over in less than an hour, One flew up again to confirm that the purple glimmer in the vast distance indeed was the magical dome protecting the Crystal Empire from the elements. Now, the shivering, four-strong group is on their way south, and One is getting more certain with each passing minute that she and Bubbles might be the only ones able to make the trek. No supplies for the presumed three-day trip aside, the lack of clothes is the biggest hurdle for Contradiction and Astray. The unicorn is using her telekinesis as a cow-catcher to plow her way through the snow while Astray is rubbing his shoulders with his hands crossed on his chest for some faint semblance of heat. Bubbles is helping as much as she can by riding on Connie’s back, tightly hugging her like the little heater she is, but it’s by far not enough, since she has to keep switching between the two. The hope is that the closer they get to the Crystal Empire, the warmer it will be, but any change of temperature is still at least a day and a half of walking away.
With a sigh, One turns her head as she hears Astray’s fresh coughing fit. This won’t work. At this rate, she’ll just bring two corpses who died of pneumonia with her.
“Hey, guys,” she stops, “You’ll never make it to the Crystal Empire like this. We need to go back for few hours.”
“What?!” Connie shoots her a tired but angry glare. Astray tries to say something, but as soon as he takes another breath of the freezing air, he starts coughing again.
One nods towards Astray.
“Whatever species he is, he’s not from around here-”
“Actually, I was found in the Crystal Empire and spent most of my life in an orphanage there,” Astray manages to form a coherent sentence.
“And that’s helping you how in this situation?” One rolls her eyes, “Spoiler alert - it isn’t. So shut up and listen. There’s a tunnel we use to travel between our hive and the Crystal Empire with several emergency exits along the way. I didn’t think we would need it, but… I was wrong.”
Telling them this, and even worse - letting them in is a direct threat to Brauheim and a violation of the secrecy rules, but having to explain two Silver Sun corpses to that crazy griffon would be worse. Probably.
“You’re telling us that now...” Connie sighs.
“Look, part of our peaceful existence stems from no one knowing where exactly our hive is,” lies One, “I wouldn’t be offering you this if I thought there was a more certain way of getting you to the Crystal Empire, but if I bring that guy’s coughed-out lungs, and your bony ass frozen inside a block of ice with me, everyone is going to have questions the boss will have to answer. I don’t like causing trouble for my king.”
Connie measures her, looks from her to the distant dot of the Crystal Empire and back, and then sighs. One is right, even if they might make it, it could cost a limb or cause some other kind of lasting damage. Besides, no matter how it hurts Connie’s pride to admit, if One wanted them dead, all she had to do was run off earlier.
“Fine, lead the way...”
***
The sneezing and coughing is in stereo now despite Bubbles’ best efforts to keep both Astray and Contradiction warm. They’re pushing through short, leafless shrubbery holding snow, which isn’t helping anything. The good part is that according to One’s familiarity with the area, they should be near one of the tunnel entrances. Now where could it-
With a loud roar, snow explodes in multiple places around the four travellers fighting the frost.
Astray raises his arm against the snow flying in his face, and all he catches is a tall and broad silhouette charging at him. He unsheathes his sword just in time to deflect a stab from a spear on pure instinct. The blow makes him stumble backwards with sheer force, though. From behind him, he hears a loud clank he can’t identify, nor has he the time to look around.
Connie reacts a little better, mostly due to complete lack of concern for the identity of the attackers, and while her telekinetic push is unfocused, it still tosses the nearest silhouette into the distance. Not trusting her frozen limbs to react properly, she simply flicks her horn against someone behind her who ends up tumbling backwards and cursing in some grunting language she can’t understand.
Bubbles is torn between the friend or foe question until she has to avoid a spear thrown her way, upon which she pounces at the attacking shadow’s head, claws at the ready.
The bursts of snow don’t impair One’s changeling eyes at all, though, and she reacts instantly. The attackers are minotaurs, and they are too far away from Rift for this to be some misunderstanding, not to mention that Rift minotaurs hunt simple animals, not ponies.
No, these fuc- bastards are wild headhunters. It seems that the Dark Prophet the minotaurs worship so hard left some of them alive.
This realization and calculation happens before the first minotaur is even on his legs, and the one closest to One never even gets there as she rips his head off with a single bite, and is instantly growing her classic curved blades on the back of her forelegs while jumping at the second enemy.
Three minotaurs are already dead when the one attacking Astray makes the critical mistake of backing away from the satyr’s slash, thus giving him time to aim his pistol and pull the trigger. Unfortunately, nothing happens.
Bubbles lands on the minotaur’s face, and immediately drops into the snow along with the top half of the mino severed in passing by One.
Similar thing happens when Connie, having telekinetically knocked her attackers away with enough force to definitely break ribs and bones, notices Astray’s pistol fail, and focuses her telekinesis into a thin edge which straight up slices the minotaur in two.
Seven minotaurs, five of who died within the first four seconds of the battle. One smirks to herself as she’s rushing through the snow towards the closer one of the two Contradiction ‘pushed’. A quick look at his caved-in chest makes One wince, as she recalls what it was like being on the receiving end ot Connie’s telekinesis. Not that she’s feels any semblance of sympathy towards the headhunter, of course.
With a quick flick of her hoof, she slits his throat, and does the same to the final one who doesn’t even try to run, only raises his arms to punch her with zero chance of succeeding.
One returns to the others with a scowl.
“These guys weren’t lying in wait just for the hole of it,” she transforms her hoof into claws, and pulls at a shrub seemingly in random. A thick sheet of metal covered in short grass, snow, and dirt lifts up, revealing a ladder down, “Get inside.”
“You’re not coming?” asks Connie while Astray and Bubbles are climbing down.
“There are only four exits between our hive and the Crystal Empire. The fact that they waited for us or someone to come in or out of the hole means this headhunter clan knows about the entrance, and might try to hunt my hive. I need to figure out where they are, and make them leave,” explains One, “They can’t be far, just give me an hour at most. It’s warmer down there, or at least there’s no wind.”
Connie nods, and resumes climbing down. Above her, the trap door closes, leaving her in complete darkness. Thankfully, the ladder is really well done, so that climbing with hooves isn’t a big deal even though those seem made for someone small even in comparison to a changeling drone. Eventually, faint, green shimmer greets her, and she finds Astray sitting on the floor of a tunnel the walls of which emit the glow melding the complete darkness. It must be enough for changelings to see perfectly here, but she can barely make out anything more than a pony length away. Bubbles is sitting in Astray’s lap in an effort to warm him up.
“Get those clothes off,” she nods at Astray.
“Won’t sir Cromach be jealous?” Astray smirks, rubbing his frozen everything. Bubbles chuckles.
“Not if he doesn’t know,” Connie winks at him. The jovial moment passes immediately as she orders, “Bubbles, get up there again and track One. I doubt she has any reason to leave us down here for something to eat, but I want an eye on her.”
Bubbles knows better than to argue with Connie. Her paranoi- wariness saved them many times before, and tracking a changeling in the snow can’t be too difficult. As she climbs up, Astray strip, sits on the pile of his clothes, and Connie hugs him from the back to insulate his hairless back from the tunnel wall.
***
It’s night in Canterlot when Eleven feels eyes on him. He doesn’t know why or how, but he is certain someone is watching him. He can faintly sense Two still snooping around the paladin HQ, and there haven’t been any problems yet. However, he’s nothing if not observant. After all, he has many times more eyes than anyone else.
Several minutes of shuffling his bodies around his chosen vantage points later, he catches a shadow moving around the top of the four watchtowers of the headquarters to get a better view of his one body hiding by the chimney on the roof. Eleven wonders why he hasn’t noticed it earlier, but it might just be a testament to the sneakiness of whoever is watching him.
He turns his free bodies invisible while keeping the rooftop one stationary not to strain his concentration too much. He’s already having trouble synchronizing himself with bodies so far apart, but he can clearly feel himself getting better at self-control with each passing hour.
The invisible bodies sneak up on the original sneaker, and measure the stallion. Good news, it’s not the big baddie Star Trail or the lich waiting to strike. It’s a dark purple batpony with yellow eyes and grey mane wearing nothing but horseshoes. As the first Eleven silently climbs over the railing atop the watchtower, he notes that what from outside looked like a wall is see-through from the inside. The batpony and anyone on watch must have much better view of the situation than Eleven suspected.
What the batpony doesn’t expect is that while he’s watching Eleven through the ‘wall’, four other Elevens are gathering behind him. The rooftop Eleven shifts, and hides behind the chimney, out of the batpony’s view. Clicking his teeth in annoynace, the batpony stands up, and peeks over the railing. When he still can’t see Eleven, he spreads his wings, and-
“Who are you, sneaky guy?!” two Elevens jump on his forelegs, one on his back, and one remains in front of the batpony, all turning visible at once.
He tries to shake Elevens off at first, which doesn’t prove too smart.
“Eleven, I presume?” he freezes when he feels too many tiny teeth clamp around his legs and the back of his neck.
“No, that’s me,” pouts Eleven, “Who are you?”
Despite his situation, the corner of the batpony’s mouth curls up. He salutes with his foreleg as well as the still attached Eleven.
“Starshine. I’m a member of the Intelligence Service tasked with keeping an eye on you.”
“Why?”
“Considering the recent attacks, the princesses need some additional protection for their guests when they’re outside the castle.”
Eleven measures him.
“And you’re not lying, are you?” he asks. He doesn’t exactly have a better way of questioning the guy.
“Two, Two Two Two!” he calls out via her link, “I caught a guy spying on me! He says he’s an intelligent servant!”
“Intelligence service?” Two taps directly into Eleven’s mind instead of having him describe the situation, “Hmm, we can’t really confirm or deny what he said, so just let him do his thing and don’t get hurt.”
“Alrighty!” replies Eleven, “How are things on your end?”
“Lousy,” Two’s disappointment is palpable, “Paladins don’t like us, that’s given, but most don’t like any creatures other than ponies. However, I haven’t found anything, and I’m almost done here. I need to make them a bit more likely to talk, and I have a plan, but it might take an hour or two more.”
“Oh?”
“I put my venom into their drinks for tonight’s common dinner. That’s already over, so I’ll start the questioning once they split up into their rooms. Is anything going on inside the castle?”
“Nope, all clear. Princess Luna has woken up, princess Celestia is going to sleep, miss Gem is asleep with Bright Star in her room, and that big minotaur lady is in the bath and she told me I could come too, but I told her I was taught it wasn’t polite and that I would stay outside. Oh, and miss Cryo is in the workshop with prince Rutherford again. Although there’s a yak guard outside this time. With earplugs.”
“Heh, at least someone’s going to have a worthwhile night.”
***
Despite the loud whistling of wind, tracking One isn’t difficult by any measure. Lightweight Bubbles doesn’t sink into the snow, and leaves a much smaller set of hoofsteps parallel to the changeling’s.
“Weird, it doesn’t look as if she was trying to sneak up on anyone...” Bubbles whispers to herself.
She hears a poof from the left as if something fell into the deep snow, but can’t see anything. With a shrug, she resumes following One’s trail, and eventually she notices her standing above a fallen minotaur, and biting his neck. Bubbles lowers herself into the snow to avoid being spotted, and shuffles closer as sneakily as she can. She already has enough of a disadvantage in this white and off-green terrain with her rusty color scheme, but at least the high wind is masking the noise.
One asks something Bubbles can’t hear, the minotaur replies, upon which a flash of green envelops One’s hoof just as she brings it down, and walks away. It takes a short while for Bubbles to wait until One is mostly out of sight, and then she approaches the minotaur. Judging from her experience with Anvil, the minotaur is young. Correction - was young. His head has been mostly severed from his body with a clean cut. Bubbles whimpers, the young, dead hunter immediately reminding her of Astray currently trying not to freeze to death.
This time, she notices some shuffling and rustling of the shrubs quickly fading away. Probably just some animal she spooked.
Short time later, Bubbles catches up with One again who is in a pretty much the same position, only with a different minotaur. This time, though, the minotaur gets up and walks away as if One wasn’t there at all. Bubbles tilts her head in confusion. What has One been doing?
Another ten or so minutes later, she follows One who suddenly jumps into the shrubs to the left, and Bubbles hears quiet struggle. Another minotaur stands up, exchanges few words with One, and then-
Once again, Bubbles hears a synchronized loud roar from everywhere around, immediately followed by dozens of sources of rustling and poofing from the snow. Even someone as gullible as Bubbles realizes instantly that all the previous noises she heard must have been minotaurs following her.
One looks from side to side, and spots Bubbles rushing towards her along with what has to be a full tribe of northern minotaur headhunters.
Greeeeat, she followed me, and they followed her. Oh well. I tried to be all peaceful and diplomatic about it, but I’m not one to refuse a final solution if it offers itself.
Arming her legs, all four this time, One charges the loop of minotaurs quickly tightening up around both Bubbles and herself.
Bubbles is quick, but not used to fighting in belly-deep, at least for her, snow, and a minotaur quickly stabs her in the mouth with a spear. To his horror, Bubbles just snaps her jaws shut, biting the spear head off and spitting it out. However, a large, stone warhammer of another minotaur hits her straight in the back of her head, sending her into the snow. Now, for a demonic creature like Bubbles, damage from non-magical weapons is more a theory than a threat. Unfortunately, rules of physics apply to everything else around her, and the light demonette gets punted like a golf ball crossed with tumbleweed.
Attacking One is a completely different cup of tea. Having had a quick refill of lust from the bitten and interrogated minotaurs, she has enough energy to go wild. Imagine fighting a creature with perfect reflexes, a creature for whom the entire fight is moving at one fiftieth of speed, giving her enough time to think of the perfect action to take, fast enough to react on that decision, and a creature who at melee range can hear anything, feel the air being cleaved by a weapon, and even smell sweat as well as natural odors.
That is what fighting One in melee is like. Numbers don’t count, since several dozen minotaurs simply aren’t enough to tire her out. They don’t have enough raw strength to threaten her, as she can simply shrug off most of their blows if she considers it worth for the opportunity to instantly kill her target. And finally, they simply can’t outskill her. This is a wild tribe of hunters, not some excellent fighters who honed their combat skills to perfection.
One by one, the minotaurs drop.
Bubbles looks up, and blocks the warhammer going down again with her forelegs. The strike shakes her whole body, once again without any visible damage, but it certainly hurts a bit. The minotaur growls, raising his weapon again. Hitting Bubbles is like hitting a rubber ball…
...a rubber ball with supremely sharp and tought teeth who finally comes to the conclusion that any kind of peaceful solution is out of the realm of possibility.
As the minotaur swings down again, Bubbles curls up to dodge, and as the hammer buries itself into the ground, she simply bites half of the weapon handle off. She doesn’t have One’s level of reflexes, but in comparison to the minotaurs she’s crazy quick as well. As long as she doesn’t get surrounded, she knows she’ll be okay.
At this point, though, there isn’t anyone to surround her anymore.
As all sounds other than the whistling of wind and some groaning are gone, Bubbles turns her head from side to side so fast her big ears flop. The only thing to see is One covered from head to hooves in blood and surrounded by piles of corpses. None of the minotaurs ran, or maybe they didn’t even get the chance.
The latter proves to be right as One casually aproaches one of the minotaurs previously busy with Bubbles, and severs his spine at the neck.
“Hey, you don’t have to kill the defense-” Bubbles freezes when One shoots her an annoyed glare.
“I wouldn’t have had to kill anyone if you didn’t alert the whole tribe on you and let them set up an ambush!” One walks over to a fairly young minotaur attempting to push himself up from his knees. That, clearly, is impossible due to the severed tendons on tha back of his left leg.
Bubbles jumps towards him, smiles, and raises her forelegs.
“Hey, hey, hey,” she lowers her normally high-pitched, happy voice to a calming purr, “It’s okay, we won’t hurt you. Why did you do this?”
One hacks his head off with a single blow, blood spraying all over Bubbles’ face.
“Y- You- you just- killed him!” the demonette mumbles in shock.
“I know these clans. They refused to join Rift, and hunt down AND EAT even other minotaurs doing their business outside,” One replies in a matter-of-fact tone.
“He was just young, like Astray. We could have explained-” Bubbles’ eyes tear up.
“They don’t speak ponish,” says One.
“YOU ARE A MURDERING MONSTER!” Bubbles lunges at One’s neck, mouth open.
She doesn’t expect One to shapeshift her hoof into a set of claws, grab her by her muzzle mid-air, squeeze her jaw shut, and throw her against the ground so hard Bubbles bounces off. There’s no real damage done, though, and Bubbles is on all fours in an instant again.
“I beat the sh- snot out of a real demon, and your monstrous unicorn friend isn’t here to save you. Don’t force me to create more enemies for my king,” One growls back.
At this point, Bubbles just sees red.
“Stooooop...” groans One, clearly annoyed even further. This time Bubbles surprises her by dodging her kick, and biting her fetlock off at the same time, “Alright, no more miss nice One.”
As Bubbles gets under One, the changeling simply flies upwards, and crosses her forelegs on her chest, the separated fetlock regrowing within seconds.
Bubbles howls, looks upwards, and jumps like a rocket straight at One.
You’re almost as fast as I am, but you can’t dodge in mid-air, you feral idiot.
With a quick buzz of her wings, One dodges out of the way so that the top of Bubbles’ trajectory is straight in front of her, then she rams her claws straight through Bubbles’ chest. The demonette coughs out blood, looking in disbelief and horror at the foreleg embedded inside her chest.
“Yes, adding silver or other specialized metals to my chitin is perfectly within my power. I’m not as good as Gem, but it’s more than enough for the likes of you,” One bares her fangs, “Now calm down and focus on the mission before I switch holes and make you into a sock puppet!”
With a flick of her foreleg, she throws Bubbles on the ground, fairly sure the demonette will survive it. She lands at her side shortly after, and starts walking back to the Crystal Empire tunnel access. In few moments, she hears a dragging noise from behind which gradually turns to wheezing and shuffling.
One sighs.
Just how am I going to explain this to the other two…?
***
Back in Canterlot and in the present, Elevens wave as one to the Intelligence Service agent high on the roof, and meet up with Two leaving the paladin HQ.
“Anything?” he asks, despite being fairly certain that if she discovered something helpful she would have shared it via a hive link already.
“I think the paladins are clean, no way around it,” Two sighs as she leads the way through darkness of late night Canterlot, “They did say that they had nothing to do with the setting up of the magical wards, they only use them as a beacon, power source, and some other long words I need to ask Seven about later. In essence, they just kept repeating ‘The wizards did it, the wizards did it’.”
“I see,” Elevens beam at her, “So what now?”
“The wizards did it, Eleven.”
“We go visit the wizards? Are we allowed to?” he asks.
“Allowed or not, Luna’s spell is still working, so I don’t see any harm in having a look around. We’ll do it the same way like with the paladins.”
After nearly an hour of searching, they approach a complex of several white buildings and tall towers, some of which hang suspended in the air, only accessible through gravity-defying staircases. Elevens scatter around, looking for vantage points, and Two, after taking a deep breath and fiddling with the lock for a minute, walks straight through the front door. Not being suspicious is her best protection, if there is anything as ‘not suspicious’ about breaking inside this place around three o’clock at night.
As she enters the lobby, the door slams shut behind her, and two large unicorn statues made of white marble by the sides of the door step down from their pedestals, horns glowing red aimed at Two. In a flash of light, a real unicorn wearing a gold-trimmed, dark blue robe, and glasses joins them
Okay, so maybe getting into the place filled with Equestria’s top magicians might require more than just some basic spell, even when cast by Luna.
“Uhh, I can explain?” Two sits down and raises her forelegs as a warning bolt of lightning crackles and earths itself into the floor next to her, “Nevermind, I surrender unconditionally.”