Minor Inconveniences
“This can’t be good,” Sergeant Fierce Breeze grumbled as a new gust of arctic wind battered both her and her fellow squad-mate during their scout mission of the surrounding area.
As more and more members of the squad regained their strength, the pink-coated sergeant hadn’t wasted any time putting them to good use. Pegasi were soon sent off to scout the movements of these bucking ice-wraiths and hopefully warn nearby settlements of the coming danger before it was too late.
Luckily, this part of the frontier was scarcely populated at best, containing only three proper settlements in its entirety. The village they had already started evacuating was one of them. The second was straight southwards in a direct path to the Earth Villa. She had already sent a flyer that way with a missive written by Old Oak explaining the situation. If it got there in time they would probably manage to leave in good order. The problem was the third one.
The small village of Firestone was a settlement created around several large coal deposits that lay to the east of their current position, the same direction a new source of unnaturally cold wind was now coming from.
“Stay alert, do not drop your guard and follow me!” Fierce Breeze commanded as she deviated her flight path eastwards, her fellow pegasus following close behind as he kept giving the massive wall of dark clouds in the northern horizon uneasy looks.
She had initially sent another flight pair to deliver the missive explaining the situation to Firestone which told them in no uncertain terms that if they wanted to live they had to move out immediately!
But that had been under the assumption that the storm and the wraiths within it would’ve been moving southwards at the same pace they had apparently been keeping all this time. This was apparently not the case, as the rather large arm of the accursed snow storm doggedly following them, rushing forth in that direction with terrifying speed, could easily attest.
Praying to the great winds that she was wrong she rushed onwards, hoping that her subordinates had reached the village already and convinced the stubborn earth ponies who lived there to leave posthaste.
But even as her wings beat harder and harder to give the speed she desperately needed, a very bad feeling kept growing deep within her gut. Somehow, she knew they weren’t going to be that lucky.
“Well, this is undoubtedly the fanciest cell I’ve ever been shoved into,” Link calmly stated as he sat at the very fancy cloud chair behind Colonel Winter Gale’s desk while rummaging through said stallion’s scrolls and papers resting atop the desk.
“Stop that!” Wonder Bolt hissed in consternation, eyes darting from the green-coated pegasus now inspecting one of the desk drawers, completely unperturbed by the corporal’s words, and towards the door of the office, hoping the colonel wouldn’t chose this exact moment to return. “You can’t just go through the things of an officer of the Armada like that! And this is not a prison cell!”
Link raised his head for a moment to give Bolt a small indulgent smile, before promptly returning to his self imposed task of rummaging through the things of one of the highest ranked pegasi in the Armada without permission.
“So, if I were to go and attempt to open that door I wouldn’t find it locked?” Link asked serenely as he closed the drawer, got up from the chair and started towards the large bookcase at the wall near the door.
“Well… I’m sure there is a reason why the colonel did that,” Bolt said with far less certainty than he would’ve liked, ears pressed against the back of his head as he pondered the fact that the colonel left them locked inside his personal office was indeed quite odd. But then part of what Link said penetrated his mind. “Wait a minute. You’ve been thrown into prison cells before?”
“It happens from time to time,” Link simply replied, dismissively shrugging his wings as if it was no big deal while he observed the magnificently sculpted mahogany bookcase near the door, a true luxury in Pegasopolis where most of the furniture tended to be made out of clouds, especially considering its rather large size. “Question: how do the non-cloud objects not fall through the cloud flooring?” the pegasus serenely asked as he turned his head once again towards Bolt.
“Cloud structures are normally made of extremely dense clouds packed on top of each other. A good cloud-mason can then imbue the finished structure with enough weather magic to allow it to hold solid objects,” the azure-coated pegasus explained with a tiny sigh at the sudden change of topic.
He knew from personal experience and what little time he had spent with Link that he would not return to the previous topic until he wanted to, so Bolt may as well sate his curiosity so that that could happen sooner rather than later no matter how much he wanted to inquire more about what the green pegasus had just said about being thrown into prison cells from time to time.
“Huh, interesting,” was the, sometimes impossible, pegasus’ reply as he turned his head towards the ground and started to poke it with his left front hoof. Each poke was accompanied by a small flare of his weather magic.
Wonder Bolt opened his mouth to question what the pony thought he was doing now, only to freeze as the sound of the door unlocking made him stop, turn around and promptly stand at parade rest for the return of the colonel.
The very next moment only years of dealing with the utter stupidity and general annoyances that were his peers allowed him to keep his face impassive as Wind Shriek entered the room in the company of a dozen armed pegasi. All the while Bolt felt as if a leaden weight had fallen into his stomach.
The grey-coated stallion walked in with an infuriatingly smug smile on his muzzle as the rest of the pegasi started fanning out to surround Bolt and Link. The green pony let out a tiny, barely audible sigh.
“You should’ve known better than to question those above your station, half-breed,” Wind Shriek sneered as the squad drew their weapons as one. “By the powers invested in me by Colonel Winter Gale you and your collaborator are under arrest!”
“Big words coming from an honorless craven who abandoned his squad and duty!” Wonder Bolt snarled even as his muscles tensed and his eyes darted around the room as he tried to make sense of the current situation. “Do you truly think you will get away with this after what you have done, that the Armada will allow this farce to stand!?”
“Silence!” Wind Shriek shouted, his eyes narrowed in anger as he took a step towards the azure-coated pegasus. “You know nothing, half-breed! And besides, who do you think will be believed? A disgusting half-breed and a pathetic rogue, or a lieutenant of the Armada and his brother, one of the four colonels themselves!”
“What?!” Bolt hissed as his worst assumptions, that Colonel Winter Gale had indeed betrayed them, were confirmed. And even worse, that he was directly related to this sorry excuse of a pegasus!
“Oh, so you do have some intelligence in that little head of yours and you can see what situation you found yourself into,” Wind Shriek gloated as he sneered towards Bolt and started to move towards the tense pegasus. “Not that that will serve you for anything, not after my brother is done with you! Now arrest them!”
Wonder Bolt tensed, desperately trying to seek a way out of this mess as the twelve soldiers started towards them. They couldn’t fail here! Far too much was riding upon them completing the mission for them to fail here!
“Enough,” Link said as his wings flapped once. The simple statement, calm, collected and devoid of any emotion resounded through the room as if a thunderbolt despite having been barely more than a murmur. Meanwhile a sudden gust of wind started to push the door behind the advancing pegasi closed.
What little experience he had with the green pony and his own instincts warned him of what was about to happen, and so, Bolt allowed his tense muscles to spring him forward in a sudden explosion of motion towards Wind Shriek the moment the door slammed closed. At the same time Link rushed forth in a green blur with the terrifying speed the corporal had since learned to expect from the pegasus.
The look of shock that had just appeared upon the grey-coated sad excuse for a pegasus moments before Bolt barreled upon his face hooves first, and the accompanying squeak Wind Shriek made as he made contact was something Wonder Bolt was sure he would savor for quite some time.
Not wasting a single moment, he used Wind Shriek’s now unconscious form as a platform to launch himself towards the nearest soldier as swiftly as he could, his strong wings beating with the effort, for he knew that shock and speed were their only chances of taking down the squad before they could get over the surprise of seeing two pegasi willing to tackle six to one odds in a headlong charge and proceed to overrun the two of them.
Bolt shoulder tackled his opponent as he started to react and swing his sword towards the azure-coated pony, closing the range in order to try and deny him the use of the blade. Bolt grabbed his sword hoof, turned around and spun, throwing the soldier over him and slamming on the ground where he promptly proceeded to knock him unconscious with a firm stomp to his helmeted head.
He spun around, nose flaring and adrenaline coursing through his veins as he drew his wing-blades and prepared himself for the fight ahead. He knew that the worst was still to come, as the remainder of the squad had to be getting over their shock by now and be able to proceed to try and subjugate them with their superior numbers.
Only to stop and stare, as he realized that the only other still standing pony in the room was his green companion.
“Well, that was annoying,” Link simply stated, as if this whole mess had been nothing but an unpleasant chore that had to be done before moving on to more important things, and not them taking down thirteen enemy soldiers in a span of moments.
“Oh, buck… Oh, buck it all…” Bolt let it out in a breath as the enormity of the situation hit him, cold sweat running down his neck and blood thundering upon his ears. He realized that he had outright attacked a group of soldiers of the Armada who were following the orders of a colonel who wished to silence them and stop their mission.
Oh, this was bad! No, bad was far too mild a word, this was a disaster! Plain and simple! How could things have turned so bad so quickly?!
“It happens,” was Link’s very unhelpful comment, showing the panting and slightly panicking stallion that he had apparently said that last question out loud.
All the while, his still completely unruffled looking companion had moved towards the large bookcase next to the door and proceeded to push it to the side, dropping it right in front of the door and blocking it.
“What are you doing?!” Bolt hissed in alarm at the loud sound of its crash to the floor, as he jumped toward both Link and the large wooden bookcase now blocking the way.
“Buying time,” was Link’s calm reply as he started to move back towards Winter Gale’s desk. “With any luck no one heard this little scuffle and it will take some time before anyone else thinks to see what is taking this lot so long, and a few moments more for them to get through the door and the bookcase. That should give us a small head-start in finding Colonel Shake Spear before they start to hunt us down.”
“But that’s the only way out!” Bolt hissed as he gestured all around the large room filled with unconscious pegasi, the large room with no windows and only a single door that was now blocked with them inside it! Link on his part merely made a sound that could, maybe, be interpreted as a sign that he was listening, choosing instead to closely inspect the cloud wall behind the desk.
“What do you think you are doing?” the azure-coated pegasus asked in incredulous exasperation as Link started to unhurriedly poke the wall with a hoof. Now was really not the time for him to indulge on his eccentricities!
“These are made of clouds, yes?” Link serenely asked, completely ignoring Bolt’s question as he kept poking at the extremely dense cloud structure as if they had all the time in the world.
“Well, yes, but what does that have to do with anything?” was the corporal’s terse reply, now even more exasperated than before. Only to have his question be ignored once again.
“And pegasi can manipulate clouds, no?” Link asked once more, his voice the same calm tone as he stopped poking and instead rested his left hoof directly upon the wall.
Wonder Bolt felt his eyes widen as he realized what the green-coated pegasus meant with his words, a flicker of hope briefly entering him as he thought that maybe there was still a chance to complete the mission! Only for it to die immediately afterwards, as he realized the cruel truth.
“That won’t work, you would have to completely overpower the magic coursing through the structure keeping it solid to make the clouds of the wall malleable again,” Bolt started to say as his ears and wings dropped in dismay. “And considering that it takes a full team of cloud-masons to erect such structures, and that since this is a Colonel’s personal room, only the very best would have worked on it, the amount of magic needed to do so would be simply-”
Only for his words to be ignored completely by his companion, who simply kept staring at the wall for a moment, concentrated, and then pushed.
“…Ludicrous…” Bolt trailed off as Link kept pushing as a hole started to first appear and then started to grow and grow around the area he was pushing at, all the while letting out so much weather magic that Wonder Bolt could almost taste it, so thick it was in the air.
“Well, that is that,” Link stated with a pleased nod as he inspected the large hole he had just created in the wall that seemed to lead into an empty room, apparently not paying much notice to how utterly insane what he had just done was. “This should allow us to leave unnoticed.
“Now to meet up with Colonel Shake Spear and deliver the missive,” Link continued in that same infuriatingly calm and collected tone of voice as he proceeded through the hole. “Preferably before something else happens.”
Wonder Bolt simply stood there staring at where the impossible pony had disappeared through the wall for a moment, before he firmly shook his head and hit both his cheeks with his hooves. He could freak out about Link’s absurdity later, for now he had a mission to fulfill and nothing and no one would stop him!
And with that thought Wonder Bolt promptly rushed through the hole, a look of fierce determination in his eyes.
“So we shall reach this Earth Villa in two days time?” Zelda asked Old Oak as the caravan settled down for the midday meal. Both ponies took the opportunity to check the group and confirm that no one had foolishly re-opened nearly healed wounds or somehow re-injured themselves. Zelda knew from past experience such actions were sadly far more common than she could wish.
“Indeed, if we keep this pace we shall reach our capital in such a time frame,” the elder said with a relieved sigh while smiling and nodding in greeting to a group of ponies they were passing by. “Then we can inform Chancellor Puddinghead of the whole situation, and see what can be done.”
Nodding her understanding, Zelda wondered how Link and Wonder Bolt were faring in their own mission. With any luck by the time the caravan reached the earth ponies’ capital they would have managed to warn the pegasi already, which would then mean that two out of the three tribes would at least know what was coming towards them and start preparing for it. Though, considering Link’s usual tendency to attract trouble, the white unicorn couldn’t help but think that it wouldn’t be that easy.
“Elder, so that’s where you are!” Sure Shot said firmly as the mare in question appeared from the side of a wagon and saw the old pony. The mare started to trot towards them, until she noticed Zelda right next to old Oak, which promptly caused her to blush for a moment before face-hoofing and start mumbling something about Beautiful Blossom and stupid ideas.
Giving the mare, who was now vigorously shaking her head, a slightly bemused look, Zelda decided that she didn’t want to know. And so, with a short farewell towards Old Oak and a small nod to the sea green mare, the white-coated unicorn proceeded onwards while leaving them behind so that they could talk without her presence distracting the ranger. While odd and slightly flattering, Sure Shot’s sudden bout of mild infatuation towards her was hardly something to linger about, especially considering there were far more important things occupying her attention.
“No, no, no! You have to keep the shape of the energy firm in your mind and then release it all at once in a sudden burst! Like this!” the voice of one of the problems currently occupying her mind resounded through the air as she approached the end of the caravan.
Stopping for a moment to take in the sight of Ganondorf coaching Forest Blossom on how best to release a mana burst to increase the striking power and range of her blows, Zelda couldn’t help but wonder how odd it was to see the Wielder of Power willingly taking up the mantle of a mentor and teacher, and far more importantly, actually making a decent job of instructing a student.
“Better!” Ganondorf sincerely praised as he blocked Forest’s next blow, the strike carrying a very respectable amount of magic for a novice in the art. The words from her crush caused the orange-coated mare to blush far, far more strongly than Sure Shot had mere moments ago. “Now, again!”
A tiny smile formed on her muzzle as she took in the scene, not for the first time Zelda couldn’t help but marvel at how a difference in cultural upbringing could cause the normally so alert and perceptive Dark Lord to so easily miss the signs that were painfully obvious to all the others in the caravan that showed that Forest was more than a little interested in him. Gerudos, their idea of romance and courtship had always been odd, at even the best of times.
As she calmly waited for Ganondorf to finish his current set of instructions to his apprentice, Zelda’s mind focused once again at what had been nagging at her for some time now. That something was seriously bothering the Dark Lord.
“Why, hello there Princess! Come to join us?” Ganondorf teased with a fanged grin as he noticed her waiting, and with a roll of her eyes she approached.
“I’m afraid I shall have to decline,” she smoothly said as she gave Forest’s panting form a polite greeting. Now far closer to the large earth pony she could easily see that he was both annoyed at something and all but fidgeting in place. Most wouldn’t notice it, the brown-coated earth pony’s control over his body being far too good for the clearer tells to surface, but Zelda knew Ganondorf far too well not to see that he was both irritated at something and filled with nervous energy.
“Always so prim and proper, aren’t you little princess?” Ganondorf needled her as he let out a boisterous laugh. “You really should let your mane down from time to time and live a little!”
Rolling her eyes and ignoring the jab, she thought how best to broach the subject. After all, Zelda knew perfectly well that her relationship with the Wielder of Power had always been, in a word… complicated.
Ganondorf had been her enemy far more times than she cared to remember. And yet, despite it all, there was actually very little true animosity between then. Both knew that their confrontations had stopped being personal a long time ago.
Oh, sure, there was plenty of annoyance, a good deal of frustration, and not an inconsiderable amount of anger between them. How could it be any different considering their past and how many times the King of Thieves had laid waste to everything the Wielder of Wisdom had sought to protect? And yet there was also a healthy deal of respect, plenty of understanding, and against all odds a smattering of trust born of their long interaction with each other.
And as such, despite him being an irritating, blood-crazed, nincompoop that did not mean she did not worry about him, at least a little.
“Okay, what is with that look?” Ganondorf grumbled in question as Zelda kept her silence.
Ganondorf was a conqueror, a warrior who held very little respect for the innocent masses who, in his words, refused to shake free of their own helplessness and willful ignorance in order to even attempt to stop being weak. But for all his faults and all his trickery, the Wielder of Power had never been one to fool himself with self delusions or lies, he was what he was and fully accepted that in its entirety, both the good and the bad. He always said what was in his mind and held nothing back, and that honesty had always been one of his few truly redeeming qualities in Zelda’s eyes.
And as such, seeing the person she knew would gleefully charge head-on against any obstacle or problem that dared block his path no matter the odds growing more and more fretful with each passing day with no apparent reason was more than slightly worrying.
“Ganondorf, is everything alright?’ she asked as she looked the large stallion straight in the eyes after deciding to discard any complicated plans and musings and simply take the direct approach.
“What?” the Wielder of Power replied, more than a little bewildered as he gave Zelda a very confused look. “But of course, why would you even ask that?”
“You have been more… fretful as of late, is all. Filled with nervous energy and unable to sit still for long,” she carefully continued, immediately noticing how Ganondorf’s already superb control over his body immediately grew even stronger, as the barely perceptible tells she had noticed before disappeared in an instant. “As such I thought about inquiring if there is something bothering you.”
A moment of tense silence descended upon the group as the Wielder of Wisdom and the Wielder of Power kept staring at each other’s eyes, while Forest’s head kept moving from one of them to the other. Another moment passed in a silent contest of wills, before finally the Dark Lord opened his mouth to answer.
“We got trouble!” Fierce Breeze’s shout cut through the growing tension as if a hot knife through butter, as both Triforce Wielders spun in place, discussion immediately set aside, and rushed towards were the pink-coated sergeant and three other pegasi were coming rushing towards them with panic, anger and worry clear in their features.
A howling gale shrieked through the streets of the small village of Firestone, ice and snow battering everything in sight as the ever growing blizzard that had suddenly fallen upon the settlement raged with ever increasing fury, while ghostly equine beings shrieked in hate and hunger as they galloped amidst the freezing winds.
“Keep those fires going and stand back,” a silver-coated unicorn stallion with a bright blue mane shouted as he waved what looked like a red wand with a round crimson gem at its end, unleashing a jet of flame to ward off the ice-wraiths surrounding the villagers who had taken shelter inside a large stone building surrounded by roaring coal stoked fires.
“Bombard these beasts the moment they approach!” Limelight shouted in his best commanding voice, as two earth ponies used large metal shovels to throw a barrage of burning coals at the charging creatures, forcing them to back away with angry shrieks. “And above all else do not go beyond the fire-line!”
Both his voice and body language screamed defiance and self assurance, invigorating the earth pony villagers and filling them with determination and hope as they redoubled their efforts to keep the many fires going and bombarding the attacking specters with burning coal to keep them at bay. His every action and word served to keep their spirits up, as he projected for them all the very image of a noble hero straight out of a legend. Keeping them from giving up and holding them together was exactly what they needed from him in what was increasingly looking like a truly desperate situation.
Not for the first time since this whole mess began, Limelight sent a heartfelt thank you to the many, many acting lessons his parents had given him as he grew up in their little troubadour troupe moving from settlement to settlement, since those were basically all that was keeping things together at this point and preventing the denizens of this quaint little village from outright panicking, abandoning their posts at the fires, and condemning them all to a frozen death.
At least for the moment that is, since he sincerely had no idea how they were going to get out of this freakish mess.
He waved the fire wand he had found but days ago as he focused his magic and unleashed a jet of flame he would have never been able to do on his own, as the sudden brightness of the flames illuminated his cutie mark of a shining star superimposed over a laughing theater mask, the troubadour was now forced to play the part of a hero. He felt like both cursing and praising the magical artifact for what was also not the first time since this mess began.
Internally cursing his own stupid naiveté, even as he unleashed another jet of flame while making sure none of his inner musings showed on his muzzle and the earth ponies brought more coal to stoke the fires, Limelight felt like the utter fool he was for not having noticed the bucking obvious!
He knew hundreds of plays by heart, he had memorized thousands of stories, songs and ballads, so how by the stars above had he not noticed the signs when a bucking magical wand even a noble from upper Unicornia would pay their weight in gems for had fallen from the sky right in front of him in a ball of light?!
“They are coming from the back!” one of the villagers on watch duty shouted, prompting Limelight to immediately gallop in that direction while doing his level best to not allow his exhaustion, panic and fear to show.
Getting the personal attention of fate was never a good thing! Basically all the heroic stories, ballads and epics he knew about agreed about that! The magical artifact or legendary sword the plucky budding hero found by accident or chance always had either a price in the end or inevitably led them to live lives full of peril and danger! So why had he decided to grab the wand like a bucking idiot instead of walking away?! How had he thought that could possibly be a good idea?!
“Begone, foul beasts!” he shouted, a small part of him disproportionally proud of how strong and unwavering his voice was despite it all, as a new jet of flames actually managed to kill two of the attacking creatures, much to his shocked hidden surprise and the cheers of the villagers.
Oh, sure, the wand had undoubtedly saved his life thrice over in the last half an hour alone, minimum. And he was more than appropriately grateful for that. But that didn’t change his illogical feelings that it was all its bucking fault in the first place!
After all, without it and its surprising ability to summon fire with incredible ease, he wouldn’t have thought about rushing to Firestone ahead of schedule in order to implement a new act while using it to portray himself as a great mage in order to draw a good crowd in the first place. And as such he wouldn’t have been in the settlement when the specters arrived shortly after he had started his performance, and wouldn’t have ended up stuck pretending to be a hero in order to try and stay alive!
“Keep the flames going, and do not falter!” he shouted in a firm voice, despite internally all but crying in panic, knowing far too well that if the line of ponies keeping the fires going broke that they would all be dead in short order.
That was the main reason he was still keeping the show up. Why despite wanting to curl up in a corner and cry he was acting the part of the hero and inspiring the masses. Because without that the ponies would break down in more than justifiable panic, and that would mean very bad things to his continued health. And so he immersed himself in the role of a dashing hero, all the while bemoaning what even was his life for things to have devolved into this!
He was a troubadour, a minstrel, a bard! His job was entertaining the masses for fun and profit! Not facing off against rogue spirits and leading the shambling defenses of a frontier settlement! All the while he wracked his mind for a way, any way, to get out of this mess! And he was failing!
By the celestial spheres and all the stars! His life was not a play, for buck’s sake! He was no hero! And it was not like there would be a sudden twist in the story that would miraculously bring them all the help they desperately needed in the very last moment possible just to spike the drama of it al-
His train of thought was completely derailed as a large explosion of flame, far, far larger than anything he could make even with the aid of his new wand, consumed a vast swath of the skies, destroying dozens of the spectral creatures.
A moment later a downpour of lightning bolts rained down upon them from above even as a regal looking white-coated unicorn suddenly appeared from out of nowhere in a flash of blue magic before unleashing a devastating barrage of magical fire against the beasts, trapping them between the fire and the lightning, while what looked like several rays of light joined a new massive stream of flames in taking down the specters not currently being bombarded, and a group of pegasi descended with battle cries on their lips and weapons drawn.
Staring in silent disbelief at what looked like a scene straight out of one of the many epic tales he knew about from the Age of Legends, as the evil beasts threatening the innocent masses were swiftly routed in a truly impressive display of might and magic as help arrived at the precise moment of the heroes’ greatest need, Limelight could find but a single thought resonating inside his mind.
He really should’ve listened to his parents and stayed with the rest of the troupe instead of deciding to try and go solo this year.
“How can you be this calm with everything that’s happening?!” Wonder Bolt hissed under his breath as he snuck down a deserted corridor and cautiously peeked from behind a cloud pillar to confirm that the next passage was clear. All this, while the green pony right next to him kept walking without any apparent worry or concern as to what was currently happening!
“Things are actually proceeding better than I expected,” was Link’s immediate reply before he jumped upwards while dragging Wonder Bolt along in order to hide amidst the top of the columns so that an approaching patrol that Bolt had been far too busy gaping at him to notice could pass them by.
“We were forced to take down an entire squad of pegasi back at Colonel Winter Gale’s office! Not to mention how one of the four colonels attempted to have us unjustly arrested in order to prevent us from warning everypony of the coming threat due to how that shows his younger brother’s incompetence!” he hissed after a few moments to make sure the patrol had truly passed them by. “Despite the fact that said threat could easily cause the doom of pony-kind if left unchecked!”
Link on his part simply nodded his agreement as he landed and proceeded to walk down the corridor, clearly not seeing what the problem was.
“Precisely,” the green pony continued in the same calm and unhurried tone of voice before giving Wonder Bolt a strange look. “As I said, truth be told, things are actually going better than I expected.”
Bolt gaped for a moment, before rushing after the pegasus as they slowly made their way towards the western quadrant of Pegasopolis and Colonel Shake Spear’s barracks. After another moment he found his voice and asked, incredulity clear in his tone. “And how exactly could this have gone any worse?”
“There aren’t any rampaging monsters for starters, nor any natural disasters directly blocking our path,” the green-coated pegasus succinctly explained, as if those were things you actually could expect to happen and had to plan to deal with during a delivery mission. “Besides, each of the four colonels only controls roughly one fourth of the Armada’s armed forces, correct? And since he will not want to risk letting the others learn about his brother’s actions he won’t alert them right away, so we don’t even have to worry about the entirety of its military trying to oppose us in a worst case scenario.”
Bolt simply blinked for a moment as he processed the other pegasus’ words. While he couldn’t say that Link’s explanation was wrong per se, he couldn’t help but feel that it wasn’t exactly right either. But before he could comment about it, the sound of clarions sounding an alert coming from the area of the northern barracks they had just vacated moments ago cut him short.
“Guess they noticed we escaped, not bad,” Link nonchalantly said as he briefly turned his head to look back where they came, nodding once in apparent approval. “A better reaction time than most.”
Bolt gave his companion a look. A look that was completely ignored as Link turned a corner and proceeded towards their goal as if nothing noteworthy was currently happening.
Letting out a tired sigh, and wondering not for the first time since meeting the strange pegasus what exactly went on inside the green pony’s head, Wonder Bolt followed, inwardly wondering what else could possibly go wrong.