Raven, disguised as Twilight Sparkle, stood at the designated meeting point. Spike stood beside her, nodding quietly. “Hunch your shoulders just a touch more,” he whispered. “Twilight would be anxious with what’s happened. She hunches when she does that.”
“Really?” Raven asked, in Twilight’s voice.
“Really,” he replied. “It’s almost impossible to see, but she does.”
“Good to know,” Raven replied, as she stared out into the darkness, trying to hunch her shoulders imperceptibly forward. “You know,” she whispered. “I never thought the Royal Regalia would get so hot.”
Spike looked up at her and could see the sweat starting to gather beneath the borrowed crown. He beat one of his wings toward her in an attempt to fan her.
“Thanks,” she whispered.
Spike nodded before his eyes snapped toward something in the distance. “I think I see someone coming,” he said.
Raven tried to follow Spike’s gaze but saw nothing but trees and shadows. “I don’t see them,” she whispered.
“One o’clock,” he said, “moving this way very slowly, it looks like he’s trying to hide.”
“Well, good to know you’re going to unnerve them first.”
“Talk to him,” Spike whispered.
“What?”
“Order him over here,” Spike said. “You’ll want to establish authority, you know, like a Princess?”
“Oh, uh…You...You can stop hiding!” she called out, hoping that her tone sounded stern enough for an order. “We know you’re there.”
There was silence for a moment longer.
“He’s cutting across,” Spike whispered. “Now at twelve o’clock, now eleven. I don’t see anypony else.”
Raven tried to keep up with Spike’s instructions as he told her what the thief was doing, and she hoped that she wasn’t overshooting the pony in the darkness. “I do not let ponies waste my time, thief. Get out here, or I will drag you out,” Raven said.
“A little strong,” Spike whispered.
“She’d be strong with criminals, though, right?” Raven whispered back.
“Fair, I guess.”
The threat seemed to work, though, because the thief began to creep forward, entering the torchlight’s radius and standing in front of the pair. “I’ll be honest,” the unicorn said, smugly, “I wasn’t expecting the Princess herself to show up.”
Raven wondered if he was one of Moon’s ponies. If the report was accurate, Moon almost exclusively hired unicorns because he needed some magic spell or another to complete the jobs he commissioned. “The letter was addressed to me, so I’m here to answer it. In fact, I think it says a lot about your criminal alliance that this Gleaming pony hasn’t shown up.”
The thief smiled. “She’s a little more concerned with her safety, I’m sure you’ve guessed. Which, I should mention, if I’m not back at the hideout by a certain time, then they’ll kill the hostage.”
Raven narrowed her eyes. “So he’s still back at your hideout?”
The thief smiled. “Once we get the money, we’ll let him go. You should be able to find him along the Whitetail River, and he should be picked up by your guards within an hour or two.”
Raven snorted through her nostrils, an action she hoped appeared regal and disdainful. “Then take your money and get out,” she growled. She lifted the bags toward the thief, dropping them at his hooves, and the pony smiled.
“With pleasure, Your Majesty,” he said, casting a quick spell on the bag.
Then he frowned.
He cast the same spell on the other two bags, and his frown deepened. “Princess,” he said, beginning to back away from the bags, “are you aware that your bags aren’t full?”
Raven cursed, but Spike was already moving.
He shot into the air before unleashing a torrent of flame behind the pony that cut off his escape. The thief began to move, but Spike was already diving for him, barreling into the pony, and locking his foreleg around his arm, so it began to bend backward. With another quick, almost practiced motion, Spike swung his tail out behind him and swept the thief’s hind legs out from under him.
The thief hit the ground. “Ow! Ow! Ow!” he cried once he had breath back in his lungs. “Let me go!”
“No, that’s the point of a joint lock,” Spike said.
“If you don’t let me go, the hostage dies!” the thief cried.
Raven shook her head. “Yes, it’d be such a shame if you don’t get back to the cave next to the warehouse. I’d have no way of stopping you.”
The thief’s eyes went wide.
Several guard ponies began to make their way through the underbrush to secure the thief.
“All you did,” Raven said, “besides kicking a hornet’s nest, is let us know we have a time limit, and we’re already far ahead of schedule.”
---$---
Twilight stood beside Azure and a taskforce of fifty guard ponies, a good five hundred feet west from the cave mouth. “Remember,” she whispered, “don’t move in until I can grab Night and get out. Once that happens, they won’t have any leverage to keep us out.”
Azure nodded. “As you will, Your Highness.”
Twilight then sighed as her guards lowered themselves to the ground, and the squad mage used an illusion to disguise them as a rock. She would have to be relying almost entirely on Transform Body spells, and while that was powerful, it was also perilous.
She could re-create her regular strategy for sneaking into the cave by shrinking her actual body, but she knew it would probably cause her to overheat by nature of the square-cube law. There was a chance that she could Destroy her Image now and try to sneak through, but it might take too long to rebuild her Image if she needed to.
She could Transform her Image like usual now, but as soon as she moved into the radius of the Thronestone’s radius, her image would revert to normal, just like it did when she was caught by the Triad ponies and tied up. Sure, her disguise lasted, by that was only because Changeling magic was somehow immune to the stone’s effects.
Finally, she could try a disguise herself, but without knowing who was in there and what ponies they were looking for, she couldn’t guarantee that a mask would actually help her or not.
Taking one last breath, she made her decision. Sure, her Transform Image spell might not last long as soon as she got in there, but it would, at the very least, offer her some cover. She shrunk the sight of her body and rushed ahead, running toward the cave mouth.
The cave mouth was narrow, and Twilight had to duck to get inside before the cave floor dropped down by two feet. The sudden drop caught her by surprise, and she nearly called out as she fell to the floor, but her hooves did clatter noisily to the floor.
She held her breath, hoping that no one heard her, but she could already hear a posted guard grunt.
A large pegasus, built like Big Mac, stepped forward and glanced about carefully. Twilight knew she was out in the open, and the guard’s eyes were more used to the dark than hers at the moment. He’d find her quickly if she didn’t have something to hide behind, so Twilight quickly tried to move her way over to the side of the entrance as carefully as she could, but the moment she moved, her illusion dropped, and the pegasus’ eyes locked on her.
He opened his mouth, maybe to scream, perhaps not, but Twilight wasn’t going to risk it.
Using the Transform Body spell in the amulet, Twilight built her muscles to nearly ridiculous levels and slammed a super-powered hoof into the guard’s chin. The guard actually lifted off the ground from the blow before he dropped to the floor unconscious.
Now she had a time limit. Twilight knew that most blows that left someone unconscious only lasted a few seconds at a time unless severe damage had been done. She only had that long until the guard woke up and raised the alarm.
She needed to do something.
She silently cursed before she made a split-second decision. She rushed even deeper into the cave, squeezing through the natural, tight passageways and trying to jump over the deep natural trenches that lined the cave’s entrance.
Twilight slipped into the shadows of the cave and carefully glanced around. The tunnel forked suddenly, with one path leading down and to the left, the other staying level and moving to the right. Neither gave any indication as to which way was the right way to the main chambers. She had to figure it out, though, especially since the guard behind her was about to wake up any second now.
The Princess closed her eyes to try and focus before taking in a deep breath through her nose. She immediately regretted that she did when the smell of ammonia and refuse hit her sense of smell in the gut. It quickly became apparent that the latrines were somewhere nearby, and with a few quick sniffs, she quickly discovered that the right-hand path was the source.
She was about to turn her focus to the left when she heard the sound of hoof steps.
The guard was up? Already?
“No, no, it’s not him,” she thought to herself. “The hooves are moving too slow to be raising the alarm. Focus, Twilight!”
The hoof steps moved closer, and around the corner of the right-hand fork came a young, blue-coated unicorn. He sighed as he turned the corner and began to turn around.
Twilight blinked as she saw him. He was incredibly young, almost too young for being a pony in a criminal hideout.
She began to put it together and decided that this must be Moon Light. That was the only pony she could think of that had to be that young and—
Moon started, and Twilight suddenly realized he was staring at her.
She moved, empowered by the spell of the amulet, and shoved him against the wall. “If you scream,” she began only to be cut off by Moon, who nodded vigorously.
“Not a word, not a word!” he said, smiling. “You’re here for Night, right? You have to be unless you’re here for me?”
Twilight narrowed her eyes. “I am not here for you.”
He seemed crestfallen for only a moment. “Then you’re here for Night?”
She nodded.
“I can help you!” he said.
“And why should I trust that?” she asked.
“Because if you save him, then he can save my father.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow.
“Gleaming, you know she’s running this whole thing, well Gleaming kidnapped my father. That’s how she...how she bullied me into working for her because I’m normally just an innocent pony—”
“Trust me, Moon Light,” Twilight began. “I know exactly how innocent you are.”
Moon grinned sheepishly.
“Well, are you going to help me save him or not?” Twilight asked. “Do it fast enough, and I may forget I saw you here.”
Moon nodded. “Of course! What do you need?”
“Two things,” Twilight said. “Where is he? And I need you to make sure that the guard at the front doesn’t raise the alarm.”
“Of course! Night’s being held in a lead-lined room. Head down the left passage here, and stick to the right. Once you get to the main chamber, you’ll have to cross to the back-left passage and travel down that way until you find the lead door. That’s your way in. You’ll know it’s the right one because it has a verticle shaft up to the outside. It’s been the emergency exit for the pegasus guards.”
Twilight nodded, her eyes still narrowed. She wasn’t so sure that he was telling the truth. She didn’t have any real reason to believe him, but at the same time, she didn’t have a reason not to. If Moon’s father was actually being detained somehow, then his ticket out of jail was also at risk.
“Well,” she said. “Better take care of that guard.”
“Yes, Your Highness, may your reign be just, and your wisdom unmatched!” Moon said before he ran off, back up toward the entrance of the cave.
Twilight stared after him for a second, just to make sure that Moon wouldn’t double back to get her while she wasn’t looking, before turning to face the downward passage. Stick to the right, take the back-left path from the main chamber. That was all she had to do.
Getting there unseen would be the hard part. That much was obvious.
Though, the ceiling was getting higher…
Twilight smiled.
---$---
Twilight crawled into the main chamber, clinging to the ceiling with a set of dragon-like claws that she gave herself with the power of the amulet. She had passed several Thronestones set into the wall, but now that she was in the main chamber, she could feel her magic return to her. The main room wasn’t protected, which became even more apparent when Twilight saw several unicorns magically lifting drinks to their mouths as they sat at the long banquet tables in the decently-lit room.
From the still-shadowed ceiling, Twilight could see most of the chamber, which seemed to have been transformed into a more-traditional great hall. Four long tables ran the length of the room, with natural columns and stalagmites separating them. Widely-spaced wooden boards made for a crude floor, but the room’s most striking feature had to be the throne.
A natural stone shelf, backed with more natural columns and stalagmites, sat at the back of the room, and sitting on it was none other than Gleaming Coin. The pegasus was smaller than Twilight thought she would be but wore a smug grin that betrayed her for exactly what she was. More importantly, Gleaming wore a very visible amulet of a rough-cut stone shard. The charm was very obviously Thronestone and had to be her protection against whatever magic came against her.
Twilight sighed at the sight of it before she took another quick look around for the passage that Moon Light described.
There.
It sat just behind the throne, to the left, as Moon said, but it would bring her dangerously close to the throne. The chances that Gleaming would look up to see a random mare clinging to the ceiling would only increase with every move unless she had something to distract the mare.
Looking around one more time, Twilight found a passageway on the right side of the room. A few ponies were milling about down there, and she quickly determined that was her best bet. Still able to reach her magic, Twilight reached out and cast an audible illusion down the passage.
The clatter of something falling to the ground and a scream of a now-pinned pony echoed across the chamber, and all eyes fell directly onto it.
That was all the distraction Twilight needed. She climbed for the passage, still clinging to the ceiling before she dropped and let her wings soften her landing.
Not wasting a second, she dived down into the passageway, and sure enough, found the near-vertical shaft that brought in a slight draft to the cave.
Twilight gave it a passing glance before she forced her eyes forward. She was looking for something more important, she was looking for—
A large, lead-lined door sat ahead of her, just through a tight part of the tunnel, before it opened up. Twilight nearly smiled when she saw it. She was almost there.
A scream echoed from behind the door.
Twilight’s eyes widened, and before she knew it, she moved. She burst through the door and saw the green pony in the plague doctor’s mask staring up at her, clearly shocked by her intrusion.
Twilight moved without really thinking, and slammed a still-overstrength clawed-fist into the pony’s jaw, and felt something crack beneath her blow. She winced as she realized that she might have been too hard, but it was too late to do anything about it now.
“Well,” Night said, sounding exhausted. “It’s good to see you, Princess.”
“Are you alright?” Twilight asked before immediately regretting such an obvious question.
“Oh, sure. It’s was only a little torture,” Night replied. “Seriously, though, I have two broken legs, and I haven’t had sleep in three days.”
Twilight nodded. “Okay, hang on. This is going to hurt for a second.”
She held up one of Night’s broken legs and cast a create body spell. She filled the break of the bones with muscle before she cast the Transform spell needed to turn it to bone. “How’s that?” she asked.
“Honestly, not so bad,” Night said. “You’re a much better doctor.”
Twilight smiled. “Thank you,” she said before she did the same with the other.
Night shifted uncomfortably but managed regardless.
“There, and then a Wakefulness spell to help with the exhaustion,” Twilight said, as she cast a Control Mind spell to compress the exhaustion in his mind. He was still just as tired, but it wouldn’t affect his thinking.
Night blinked, as though everything suddenly became clearer. “Wow. That’s better than espresso.”
“It’s not super healthy either,” Twilight said as she leveled a Destroy Matter spell on the manacles that held him down. “So let’s not mess with it and get out of here.”
“What about Gleaming?” Night asked.
“I have some guards here. They’ll arrest her before things get too crazy, now come on.”
Twilight pulled Night up onto his hooves, and he took a moment to glance at her as he tried to work on his aching hindlegs. “Since when do you have claws?” he asked.
“This amulet has a lot of uses,” Twilight said, with a smile, before she slipped right up next to Night. “Now let’s get out of here.”
And then, with a pop of teleportation magic, they both disappeared.
---$---
Gleaming frowned.
Something wasn’t right here. The scream that echoed from one of the passages didn’t seem to have a real source. It was an obvious distraction, but from who, Gleaming couldn’t decide.
It honestly worried her that she couldn’t figure out who was trying to distract her.
She began to reach behind her for another of the artifacts that her team had managed to steal. Her hoof gently felt the edges of the one she wanted to keep for herself, the Traveler’s Waystone.
Kneecaps burst into the room. “We’re under attack!” he cried. “The Princess and the guard are—!”
A fully armored guard slammed into Kneecaps from the back, tackling him to the ground. Another four guards appeared, all appearing from the passage to the left.
“It’s the guard! Run!” a pony cried, unhelpfully, but Gleaming already made her decision. She grabbed her Thronestone amulet and tossed it aside before activating the Waystone, and Gleaming disappeared.