Starlight Glimmer stared out the window, watching lush fields and tall trees roll by as the train rumbled down the track. Around her, the train was alive with the sounds of excited chattering and laughter. For the first time, Twilight Sparkle decreed that she and the others, Starlight and Spike included, were in desperate need of a vacation. They'd been run ragged with strange relics, friendships problems and villains attacking every other day and a well-earned rest was the natural catharsis. But where to go? When it came to selecting an area for some time off, it was all about location, location, location.
Canterlot, being the capital of Equestria, was out, as it was a natural hub for trouble. There wasn't enough to see or do in Appleloosa or Dodge Junction and Manehattan was cliché, no doubt being chalk full of tourists with the same idea. The weather wasn't right for Fillydelphia and everypony was quick to nix Pinkie Pie's suggestion of visiting her family's rock farm. Instead, they chose to let fate decide and dropped a bit on the Friendship Map, visiting whatever location it landed on. Bouncing across the table, it spun around and clattered onto Neighagra Falls.
Although primarily known for its signature waterfalls and airship rides, Neighagra Falls was also host to a myriad of other fun activities, such as rock climbing, barrel riding down the falls, bungee jumping and kayaking. But it was exploring the falls' nearby system of caves that really sparked Twilight's interest and Starlight had to admit that sounded pretty amazing. Despite traveling Equestria for several years, Starlight had never actually been to Neighagra Falls before but heard stories about it, the might and majesty of the waterfalls and the sheer sense of awe just standing at their peak. It'd been a long time since she went somewhere for fun and according to Twilight, this was also an excellent bonding experience for Starlight and the others. This thought made the unicorn's stomach churn a little but since everypony else was willing to give it a try, she could too.
Starlight turned from the window to find Spike engulfed in one of his comic books. She'd never seen the appeal but as long as the drake enjoyed it, she had no issue with it. Maybe it could even be a good conversation piece?
"So, uh, Spike? What are you reading there?"
Spike looked up and grinned, closing the comic and holding it up so that Starlight could see the cover. A mare in a full-face mask, cape and wide-brimmed hat reared on her hindlegs as she faced a number of ninja-garbed ponies armed with crossbows, nunchaku and swords. The title, "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" graced the top of the comic followed by the signature of somepony called, "Splash Page."
"It's the seventy-eighth issue of 'The Mysterious Mare Do Well,' during which the title character faces off against the Hoof Clan, a gang of ninjas," Spike exposited, his voice tinged with excitement. "Now we're finally going to learn who the Hoof Clan's Grandmaster really is and how he knows Mare Do Well's secret identity, which was revealed in issue sixty-six."
"I see," Starlight said faking interest. "Wasn't Mare Do Well something that Twilight, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Rarity came up with to teach Rainbow Dash a lesson?"
Twilight spoke up. "Initially, but when Sensational Comics caught wind of the story, they offered to buy the rights to the Mare Do Well name and costume and turn it into an original comic book."
"Yeah, an' they even gave us creative credit fer tha idea," Applejack beamed.
"After that, I received offers to design superheroes!" Rarity chirped. "Everypony from PE Comics to Icon wanted my input for superhero and villain costume ideas!"
"And best of all," Spike nearly shouted. "They got the Splash Page as the main writer for the Mare Do Well series!"
Starlight looked at the ecstatic dragon. "This 'Splash Page' must be a big deal, huh?"
Spike gasped, "Splash Page is only one of the greatest comic book writers of all time, creating classic superheroes like the Power Ponies, Spider-Colt and Doctor Abracadabra."
"Sounds...amazing." Starlight forced a grin.
"Oh you bet! The other day, I was re-reading 'Power Ponies: Tomorrow’s War Today,' which focuses on a dystopian future ruled by killer robots and Mistress Mare-velous has to go back in time to stop it from happening!"
For the next hour, it continued like this, with Spike ceaselessly gibbering on about the comic book genre and Starlight feigning interest. She learned terms like "Bitonite," "Trougham City" and "Excelsior," though she mostly tuned it out. It was great to see Spike so animated about a subject but if it'd been something on kites or antiques, Starlight wouldn't have felt her neck getting sore from nodding so much. When the Neighagra Falls Train Station came into view, she silently praised Faust for delivering her from boredom. Spike also took a break from his diatribe to check out the landscape.
"Oooooh! Ahhhhh!" Pinkie gasped. "Another ooooooh! Another ahhhhh!"
The train passed through a natural-occurring stone archway, zipping past a series of cliffs and interconnecting waterfalls that stretched for miles. Down, deep below the waterfalls, the very last waterfall ended in a crescent-shaped isle surrounded by a forest of oak trees. The waterfalls lead to a massive river in a nearby canyon and atop the canyon, a tall steal arch bridge stood, more than a thousand feet in length and two-hundred feet in height. This was the Cloudbeam Bridge, another popular tourist destination in the area and the only way other than airship to pass the canyon. Twilight snapped pictures as they overtook the bridge, giggling to herself like a little schoolfilly.
The Neighagra Falls Train Station was a gray stone building that was shaped like a U in the front and featured a large clocktower guarded by limestone gargoyles. It was surrounded on all sides by rectangular columns, each one fifty feet high and constructed out of granite. No sooner had the train pulled into the station when the group clambered towards the door and burst free from the cabin like fizz out of a shaken soda can. Pinkie Pie rushed back and forth around the building, taking pictures of the columns to show to her sister Maud. Starlight, meanwhile, stretched in the sun, moaning as she felt its rays on her fur and felt incredibly lucky to be out and about on such a beautiful day.
"Okay everypony, gather around!" Twilight called, an opened map and clipboard held in her magic. "We have a lot of places to hit so I've devised a carefully-crafted schedule to ensure that we all-..."
"Boring!" Rainbow Dash interrupted, bringing a snicker out of Spike and Pinkie. "Let's get to the cool stuff! The barrel riding thing is calling my name!"
"Oh, but I really wanted to go on the nature trail," Fluttershy softly murmured. "But we can do that, if you want."
"Bungee jumping! Did you know that they have bungee jumping?!" Pinkie squealed. "Bungee jumping, bungee jumping, BUNGEE JUMPING! Sorry, it's really fun to say. Bungee jumping!"
"That's awright, Pinkie. That does sound mighty fun," Applejack agreed.
"Now hold on," Twilight interjected, holding up her clipboard. "If we stick to the schedule, we'll be able to do everything that everyone wants to do in the allotted time. Now, the first item on the docket is cave exploring! Doesn't that sound neat?"
Starlight wasn't keen on going in a barrel down a hundred-foot drop nor was walking a nature trail particularly engaging to her. "If you want to do the cave exploring, I'm game."
"Me too," Spike agreed. "It's supposed to have these special gems that glow in the dark and made everything look neon."
"Oh, that sounds beautiful!" Rarity cooed. "I'd love to see those!"
Twilight frowned and teleported her clipboard away. "Fine. Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash will do the barrel ride, Pinkie Pie and Applejack will bungee jump while me, Starlight, Rarity and Spike explore the caves. We'll all meet up here later. Okay?"
Pinkie was already speeding away, dragging Applejack through the air while screaming, "Bungee jumping!"
"Well, there goes Pinkie and Applejack," Spike deadpanned.
"We'll see you later. Rainbow and I will-whoa!"
"Come on, Flutters!" Rainbow Dash was flapping off the ground and pulling Fluttershy off her hooves.
"Bye!"
~*~
"And this part of the cave system, despite only being discovered in the last century, is actually over ten thousand years old," Frostwork, their tour guide explained. She was a light gray mare with black spots and a short grayish white, her cutie mark being a lantern. Their hardhat lamps illuminated the dark caverns, the light reflecting off of the shimmering flowstones. "What you're witnessing now are called speleothems, which are mineral deposits that, due to climate and chemical composition, create the shapes you see before you. Isn't that neat?!"
Water dripped from tooth-like stalactites, creating little plopping echoes through the caves. Naturally-formed columns stretched from the floors to the ceilings and the gentle trickling of water could be heard through the crisp air. Twilight, being, well, Twilight, was hard at work both writing everything down that Frostwork was saying while taking pictures. Tripods and flash photography was prohibited but the camera she brought was deemed "A-Okay" by Frostbite, who was excited to have somepony as enthused about this as she was.
"When do we get to the special glow-in-the-dark gems?"
As to be expected, Rarity went all out with her attire, ensuring that she was over-prepared but looking fabulous. She wore a sky blue hard hat with a dark blue headlamp, a royal purple down vest over sky blue fleece overalls and thick purple boots. She trudged boringly behind everypony else, clearly itching to take a gander at the luminous gemstones that Spike promised.
Frostwork grinned, "Oh you mean torchrite? It's very interesting. It's a type of luminescent mineral, that is to say, a substance that emits light via means other than heat or friction. In this instance, torchrite is a type of gem that is primarily found in caves and chasms, really anywhere that's dark-..."
"Forgive me, but I'm not particularly interested in caveology."
"Speleology."
"I am!" Twilight cheered, her quill scribbling madly. "This is great stuff!"
Frostwork continued lecturing them on certain unusual subterranean features, such as gems and fungi, much to Rarity's dismay and Twilight's elation. Meanwhile, Starlight was inspecting some unusual mushrooms growing on a cluster of stalagmites when her headlamp caught something previously unnoticed glittering on the wall. She stopped to get a closer look at it, finding what appeared to be thousands of very faintly-glowing red gemstones, all of them embedded into the stone to spell out something in Old Equestrian. It'd been a while since Starlight had brushed up on her Old Equestrian so she withdrew a quill and paper from out of her saddlebags and scrolled through her memory. Slowly but surely, the lessons came back to her as she decoded the message.
"Starlight, what are you doing?" Spike wondered. "We need to regroup with the others."
"I'm trying to discover what this message means," Starlight grunted. "Funny thing is, I could've sworn it wasn't there a minute ago and our tour guide didn't mention it."
"Uh, Starlight, are you sure you should be messing with that?" Spike shivered. "I mean, nothing good's ever come out of deciphering a randomly-appearing, mysterious ancient message on a stone wall."
Starlight snorted, "Spike, relax. It's probably just some old cave artwork. I doubt that its anything other than that." She looked over her notes. "Okay, it says, 'To the past, we, the travelers must go. O river of time, carry us onward to our goal. Take us beyond the world we know. Open gateway, you are now in my control.'"
They both looked around. The gentle pitter-patter of water-drops aside, the cavern was as silent as the grave.
"Huh, I expected...something to happen," Spike commented and then shrugged. "Oh well. Come on, let's rejoin the others."
"Yeah, I think you're right. I guess I was just being..." Starlight paused, finding a ball of bright light appearing behind Spike. They both turned, finding it lightly bobbing up and down in the air like a pinata. It widened, morphing into a six-foot vortex of swirling black and white spirals, reminding Starlight of the pattern used in hypnotism.
"Hey Spike? Are you seeing what I'm seeing?"
"You mean the floating black and white spiral?"
"That's the one."
There was an ominous boom and the two suddenly found themselves yanked towards the vortex, engulfing them in a blinding burst of light. They entered a seemingly endless tunnel of spirals and flashing rings, their bodies stretching like rubber bands as they fluctuated in a cyclic pattern of white and black. Further and further into the tunnel they plummeted, falling left, right up and down. Starlight reached out for her draconic companion.
"Spiiiiiiike!" She yelled in a reverberating tone.
"Staaaaarliiiiiight!" Spike screamed in kind.
After falling for what seemed to be hours, their eyes were attacked by another explosion of luminosity. Tumbling, Starlight rolled onto what felt to be grass before collapsing into an undignified heap on a dirt road, kicking up a good amount of dust. She went to stand up only for Spike to barrel into her, knocking her off her hooves.
"Ow."
"Sorry," Spike moaned and threw himself off of her. He helped her up and dusted her off.
"Thanks."
Starlight peered around her. "I think we might still be Equestria but I don't remember there being any farmlands."
Spike furrowed his brow. "Yeah or thatch-roofed cottages. Where are we-...?"
Both he and Starlight stared bewilderingly. Past fields of farms and cottages, they found Canterlot, except that it was surrounded by a gigantic stone wall, encapsulating the city in a ring of lime and granite.
"B-but this doesn't make any sense! Canterlot hasn't had a stone perimeter since...since..."
"Years before Princess Celestia's reign," Spike finished.
"Spike, I don't think we're in our time period anymore."