Just Like Magic of Old

by computerneek


Chapter 21

By her luck, it does.  All she had to do was to slump down on the floor, completely ignoring the debris, when the mare told her to stay…  and the mare turned her back on her, walking out onto the balcony.
She waits hardly two seconds, before she takes to the air- thank Equus she’d devoted so much time to her wind tunnel- and flies quickly to one of the new windows.  A quick peek out shows the mare, standing on the balcony, and horn glowing.  She can feel the energy flowing from her…  and estimates where she can go without getting caught.
Unfortunately, almost everything on this side of the structure- looks like some kind of castle or palace- is out, as she’d either draw attention with the noise of her wings…  or take too long to get away, with the direct result that she’d be almost certain to be caught.
There’s one exception, and one exception only, that she can see.  Not far away, there’s another balcony, with another wings-and-horn mare, horn glowing in time with the first, though this one is white, with a much brighter colored, also strangely waving, mane.
A second balcony, with doors hanging wide open.
She takes a deep breath, and launches herself for it, flapping her wings in the open only once and coasting the rest of the way in, against the very rapid sunset.  Another reason she can’t just hide somewhere- her bright colors will make her easy to find in the darkness.
In this room, she finds another bedroom, and winces internally, glancing at the door…  sealed tight.  Probably with a similar magic thingy as the first mare had.
So, thankful for the soft carpet in here muting the sound of her hooves, she darts under the bed, and hides as far under it as possible.  She’ll wait here until tomorrow, then make her escape either through the main door or through the balcony door…  while causing as little damage as possible.  According to the photos and recordings Lunar Wing had been able to scavenge these last couple weeks, this white pony is the other diarch of the nation, and she’d rather not involve her in the disaster if at all possible.
She takes a deep breath, recalling the planning meeting she’d had with everypony before they headed out.  When it was just the thestrals, they hadn’t had a ‘regrouping location’; instead, Wing had tracked them with the drone, allowing rescue teams to be sent wherever.  This time, nopony is left aboard ship to keep it tracking them- so they’d planned for what would happen if anypony got separated…  and lost.  They’d pointed out the mountain town, and a rather sizable settlement just down the mountain from it, almost directly south.
If anypony is lost, they’ll make their way to that settlement as quickly as possible, to await rescue…  or to board a train to the town the ship is just off of.  The mountain is pretty visible, really no matter where on the continent one is, so the nearest settlement clearly visible from the foothills of the mountain had been selected.  Unfortunately, though, they hadn’t been able to ascertain the name of the local village yet, so that’s as far as she can go without recognizing a spot on a map- which she finds very unlikely- or meeting some of her crew.
She scowls to herself.  Even if she’s successful now, and makes it to that town, what will keep the dark diarch from just dragging her right back?
She doesn’t know.  Maybe she’ll give up.  The only things she hasn’t tried yet would be Volume Eleven, though she doesn’t particularly want to terrorize the town…  and directly attacking the darker diarch.  She doesn’t want to do that unless she absolutely has to- as much as the mare’s attacking her is technically an act of war, she’s willing to ignore it…  and doesn’t want to commit an act of war against a nation that may or may not be willing to ignore it.  She’d probably be able to pass it off as self-defense, but outside of an Equineothame court, which will swallow anything she says hook, line, and sinker, she’s not certain.
Finally, the sky darkens unnaturally fast- which makes sense to her; according to Astral Eye, the planet’s rotation is obviously actively controlled, rather than natural.  Compounding that with how Lunar Wing told her how these two seemed to be known for making the sun and moon raise and lower, and she- like the rest of her crew- rather suspect these two are the reason the planetary system behaves as oddly as it does.
She watches the gold-covered white hooves pace their way in from the balcony, listening to the sounds of a clearly exhausted pony.  Gold horseshoes, and other pieces of fairly simple regalia, get discarded onto the floor, before the bed shakes from a pony landing on it.
She waits.  Anytime now, the other diarch will finish searching her room for her, and start making a lot of noise- probably all around the place, including in here.
It takes almost fifteen minutes before she hears anything.  An explosion of noise comes from outside, as if someone had switched on a speaker system.
The mare on the bed, having already fallen asleep, snorts, but doesn’t seem to wake.
She waits.  The noise outside moves around, changes form…  repeatedly.  But it doesn’t come inside.
She allows herself to doze off a few times, albeit rather frequently awoken by fresh bursts of noise outside, and at least three times by shifting and grumbling on the bed above her.  It would seem the white diarch doesn’t like the yelling either, but also isn’t being awoken completely.


Morning seems to take forever to come, but come it does.  The white diarch grumbles irritably when an alarm clock goes off somewhere, before ambling out of bed to start getting ready.
Flight takes a deep breath.  It’s now the day after she escaped- hopefully, the dark diarch will either have given up…  or stopped combing the area for her.  Today, she’ll try to get outside, figure out where the mare took her- and, hopefully, locate and set out towards that gathering town- or the mountain.  Maybe, if she’s lucky, even find something to eat on her way out.
The white diarch has an…  interesting morning routine.  She starts by ambling over to her dresser, and brushing her mane, tail, and coat.  Then, she does some strange magical exercises in the air; one seems to be based around some kind of tug-of-war with herself, while the other is clearly combat oriented, with shields and bolts of magic.
Then she dons the armor from the stand in the corner, and practices a few martial combat techniques, before repeating her magical exercises- and adding a few with the physical weapons on the armor.
Then she removes the armor, returning it to its stand, and dons the regalia she’d discarded the night before, and repeats the magical exercises again.
Then, she draws some kind of treadmill out of a cabinet, and runs on it for fifteen minutes, before putting it away and heading outside to raise the sun.  Finally, after raising the Sun, she simply crosses her room, leaving the balcony doors wide open, and heads out through the main entrance, which she does not leave open.
Flight takes a deep breath, and waits five minutes or so before moving to the balcony door, and peering out of it.  The coast seems clear.
She points her ears carefully…  She can hear the noise of the dark diarch somewhere on the other side of the structure.
She’s safe to go.
She slips outside, and launches herself upwards, against the side of the structure, searching for a nook to hide in.  It seems like some kind of castle, so she quickly finds one- and hides under the stairs on what appears to be a two-level balcony off a library.
From this vantage point, she scans the terrain beyond the structure.  It would seem the dark diarch took her to a mountain settlement- possibly, even, the same mountain they’d used as a reference for finding that gathering town.
Should make that part easy.
She scans the terrain beyond the mountain; rather helps that this structure is right up by the edge, too.  She spots no less than three towns, though- and without seeing the mountain itself, she’s not sure which one is the gathering town.
And of course, the dark diarch’s noise is coming- she’d probably be caught if she tried flying out to get such a reference.
She settles down to wait.  Maybe tonight.  She knows about what the angle should be between her ship and the gathering town, from the perspective of the mountain- and the recon drone is in geosynchronous orbit almost directly above her ship.  Once the mountain faces away from the Sun again, she should be able to spot it in the sky, and use it as a reference to identify the gathering town.


Night seems to take forever to fall.  She rather suspects it’s at least in part because she was so nearly spotted, by golden-armored guards close to a hundred times and the dark diarch herself almost a dozen times.  The one guard that she had been in plain view of had turned his head to glare at the open sky, complaining to himself about a ‘Princess Luna’ going crazy, at the perfect time to have missed her completely.
She waits what must have been ten minutes after nightfall, before creeping slowly forwards to scan the skies, searching for the gleam of the recon drone.
It takes her a long time to find it.  It’s not quite the brightest star- but it is the only one that isn’t moving…  and so, the one that’s not moving with the rest.
She follows an imaginary line down from it to the horizon, then draws an imaginary line between that and herself.  She then pivots that line, on herself, by an approximate angle, and follows it out again.
She finds it.  A town she hadn’t spotted earlier, since it’s not visible from the back of her hiding spot.  A town on the edge of a forest, with multiple train lines coming together at it.  A town with a single fluffy white structure floating just overtop of it.  A town with a lake next to it, and an apple orchard thrice the size of the entire rest of the town off one side.
She takes a deep breath, memorizes the direction, and withdraws back into her hiding spot.  The dark diarch is still storming about the structure.  More of it sounds like it’s in the distance, but she keeps coming back erratically.  She hunkers down for the night, and allows herself to doze off.  Hopefully, by morning, the dark diarch stops searching- or passes out from the effort.  As near as she can tell, the dark diarch has been at it continuously for twenty-four hours now- and, presumably, was awake for at least twelve hours before that.
It’s another rough night.


When morning finally comes, Flight awakens with the sun again.  Even as she does so, she knows she’ll be fighting sleep deprivation for the latter half of the day, possibly even sooner- but with how much more active the guards are during the day, she can’t afford to be caught snoozing.  She does not want to be forced to go Volume Eleven on that poor diarch.
She watches, and she waits.
It’s been a couple of hours, judging by the angle of the shadows the staircase is casting, when something happens.
The dark diarch’s noise suddenly cuts off, at the structure.  It’s continued to come and go randomly.
She tenses.  Had she been found?  She looks around.  No, nopony.  Not even the Guards are in sight.  Had the diarch fallen asleep?
Very suddenly, her questions are answered as a veritable explosion of noise comes from below.
YOU KEPT THE CITY UP ALL NIGHT LAST NIGHT, AND THE CASTLE THE NIGHT BEFORE!
It sounds like the other diarch has had enough, and is going Volume Eleven for her.  She scowls briefly- it’s not nearly as loud as her Volume Eleven.  Perhaps the diarch didn’t think she’d need to yell quite so loudly, and knows how to control it?
In any case, her opportunity has come.  Everypony in the entire castle will be distracted by the noise.
She bolts out of her hiding spot, leaps over the railing, and drives her wings as hard as she can, aiming for the open sky.  As she goes, the Volume Eleven behind her seems to slow down, redshifting deeper and deeper…  until it leaves her range of hearing.  Then it returns, starting way deep, and blueshifting back again- but this time speaking backwards- and continuing to blueshift into higher pitch until it cuts off with the suddenness of an axe, at the beginning she’d heard before she’d left.
She grins.  This’ll be quite the story to tell the thestrals- not many ponies can go supersonic without a ship or other aircraft.  She estimates she hit at least mach three point five before passing the beginning of the Volume Eleven.  She glances back towards the castle, hoping no guards are following her.
…  None are, but it won’t be much of a challenge.  At right about the point she went supersonic, there’s a massive, expanding ring of blue and white energy, to match her mane and tail- and she’s leaving a matching contrail behind her as well.
She switches to a glide, allowing the air to slow her down…  and the moment her tail stops leaving that contrail, she dives at least half a mile, before resuming her glide towards that town.


It takes her a few hours to reach the gathering town; by the time she arrives, it’s already late afternoon, getting into the evening.  Thankfully, she could glide almost the entire distance, even after her half-mile dive, so it had taken minimal effort.
She skirts overtop a couple of rooftops, before picking an alleyway to drop down in, and landing rather clumsily.  Assuming Wing was right and she’s a middle-school-age filly on this planet, her first order of business will be to find an orphanage that’s willing to provide her with food and shelter and not ask too many questions.  She can stay there until her crew arrives…  though, depending on how long that takes, she might have to find a way to not get adopted.
She pauses briefly, tilting her head.  What if she told them she’d gotten separated from her family a few days ago, while they were traveling- and didn’t know where they went?  She scowls.  No, that kind of report would almost certainly draw the attention of the dark Diarch, forcing her to Volume Eleven on the mare…  and, possibly, use her magic directly.  She’s been avoiding using it on anypony, unsure if it would be safe or not.
She takes a deep breath, glancing both ways down the alley, checking for any ponies.
She crawls carefully to one end, peering out.  Left, right…  and left again.
“All clear,” the startlingly pink pony peering around the corner with her from right next to her states quietly.
“Gah!”  She recoils away from the mare, straight into the brick wall on her right.  No horn, no wings- earth pony.  So how’d she appear out of nowhere?  Why is she wearing a camouflage hat?

The mare lowers the binoculars she’d been holding up to her eyes.  “You hiding from somepo-!”  She then lets out a titanic gasp, leaping into the air and keeping her head in exactly the same spot, before vanishing in a blur of pink.