Numnahvut is no different from other northern towns: no farms, lots of tundra. It’s a hub for ponies delivering supplies and cargo within the region, billing itself as The Town of the World’s Greatest Wagons. Fitting. A dotted and haphazard line of wagons and carts courses through the village.
The ongoing blizzard obscures the town in breakneck white and gray. Against this, the Power Ponies march against the biting cold and its gusty wind.
They soon arrive in the town proper. The heavier-clothed citizens take a few moments to gawk at their new visitors before returning to their business. The inclement weather doesn’t bother them much: not many establishments are closed, and there’s a couple talking to each other over cups of coffee while their scarves flap in the wind.
“Apologies for the surprise snowstorm!” That’s a tour guide touching down to greet them minutes after they take shelter in a diner, doors and windows glass-reinforced to resist the harsh elements. The guider herself is decked in heavy jackets and a pair of thick goggles. “Name’s Avalanche Slab, and I swear we didn’t plan this at all. Things started going cuckoo hours ago and it hasn’t let up since, but don’t you worry! Our best weather ponies are on it!”
“When exactly did this all go cuckoo?” asks Matter-Horn, her crew and the guide present at their table.
“Around, uh, three-and-a-half this morning. That’s what the clock said when the winds woke me up.” She examines each of her visitors in turn. “Sucks for you to visit right now, honestly.”
“That’s okay,” says Spike with a wave of his claw. “At least we’re here. Nothing’s stopping us from coming here again some other time.”
The native guide blinks in wonder. “Not even the horrible weather?”
“Speaking of,” Zapp interrupts, “we could try pinpointing the source of your mysterious weather problem.”
Avalanche notes the little sideways bulges on two of her tourists: signs of wings, signs of pegasi. “It’s a privilege to have random tourists fix our problems, but— not that I’m declining the help—but why?”
“Because we’re looking for answers,“ and Fili-Second slams a notepad and a pencil onto the table. “Was there any transfer of property in Numnahvut within the past week? Anyone moving away, moving in, maybe even sideways?”
“Uh, what does this have to do with the weather?”
“A lot if we’re lucky, ma’am.”
The howling outside world turns grayer. The snowstorm rages on. “Okay, there was a fisherpony I know called Snow Bright. Wasn’t much for friends. He was down on his luck, living in a tiny cabin by the bay. Now, he’s not here anymore. Left last month, but he wrote to me yesterday saying he only just got his place in Manehattan—many forms to fill out, I believe. While he was waiting for his new house to get through, though, our new guy came in almost immediately.”
“Unicorn?” Fili-second suggests.
“Exactly.” Avalanche gulps and takes a quick sip of hot coffee. “Are you saying we have a fugitive in town?”
“Possibly. Got any more word on him? What did he do here?”
The guide turns the question over. “We didn’t know him that well. I tried giving him a welcome tour, but he said he already knew the place. Turns out he used to visit Snow Bright once in a while over the past few months until Snow sold his shed and left. After that, the newbie and his friends deconstructed the shed. They didn’t stop ‘till late last night. When I went to see what the shed looked like now that the construction noises stopped, it wasn’t there. It’s gone. No trace of it at all. Nada.”
Rager blinks, puzzled. “Gone? Just like that?”
“Yeah. Criminal or not, that’s got to be a stupid move. You buy a tiny cabin and then tear it down so it looked no one lived there. Couldn’t just be for the cheap price ‘cause he’d simply live there if that’s the case.”
“So he sleeps under the stars?”
The guide shakes her head. “No. Haven’t seen him nor his friends since yesterday.”
An unlucky pegasus slams into the window, sticking his tongue out before he slides to the ground in the blizzard outside.
Avalanche’s head shakes again, this time at the wintry disarray outside. “Well, I hope I was helpful. Can’t believe we might have snowstorm-toting criminals on our hooves. I thought it was just teenage punks playing with lightning.”
Spike perks up, almost standing up on his chair. “Don’t you worry, ma’am! We’ll do our best to find out what happened. If anything, at least you’ll have some peace of mind over the shed.”
Avalanche releases a long breath which looks like smoke in the severe cold. “But you have two pegasi! What about helping our weather team stop this thing?”
“Yeah, but this is very serious, with the criminals and all,” says Zapp. “But given what he’s done, I’m not surprised if he could cause this bad baby of a storm. We take him down and you tell us if anything changes on the surface—“
“So I’m coming with you? Do I have to bring in the local guards?”
“Just point us to the cabin. We’ll handle the rest.”
She half-stands up from her seat. “In this weather? That’s crazy talk!”
Spike dusts off his shoulders. “Don’t sweat it. We can handle this. We made it this far with the bad weather. What’s a few more minutes of walking?”
Avalanche rolls her eyes. “Hmm. I suppose you’re right.”
What remains of the cabin lies far from the town center, and the Power Ponies travel there nearly blind. The wind, ever against them, sets the stage for the uphill journey. At its tail end, the altitude flattens to a plain of snow, snow, and more snow, visibility at an all-time low.
“Here!” yells Avalanche and she stops.
Everyone else stops with her. Before them lies an unassuming patch of plain snow looking like every other patch of snow in the blizzard-struck field.
Matter-Horn looks down at the white nothing below her. Squints to make out any detail within the snowstorm. “I say it’s a start.”
“What do you mean it’s a start? They’ve literally moved everything away! The snowstorm must’ve removed any hoofprints too!”
“We’re here, though, and you said the shed was fully deconstructed late last night. There has to be something buried in the snow: artifacts, papers, construction tools. Perhaps some incriminating evidence.”
In the cold gray violence lashing around them, the guide still sees nothing. “If you say so. Now… now I’d like to stay here, but I’ve got to help my coltfriend back in town, so thanks for coming. See you soon, hopefully not as dead bodies.”
They exchange farewells, and the tour guide departs alone against the horrible weather.
Rager keeps her eyes on her as she vanishes into the raging gray around them. “At least she’ll be mighty safe and warm when she gets back.”
Zapp cracks her forelegs. “Less talking, more searching! Let’s see what this place has to offer!”
For several minutes, she and the rest of the Power Ponies (and Spike) explore the site. They dig down with their hooves and spells, heaving up mounds of dirt and snow, but dirty hooves and tired horns reveal nothing even with the pegasi shielding everyone from the storm as good as they can.
“Did she say anything about a basement?” asks Mare-velous. When nobody replies, “Won’t hurt to try. Find some knickknacks underground and we get ourselves a lead. For all we know, the shed hoopla could be a smoke screen for their real base of operations somewhere else.”
Earth ponies and Spike dig with the strength and speed of shovels despite only having bare hooves and claws. Pegasi operate with a pair of wings as mini-shovels during dips in the storm. Unicorns levitate globs of dirt out of the way, and Radiance soon conjures up several attack-construct shovels to ease up everyone’s workload.
A sizable hole manifests in the ground. Fili-Second stands topside, there to keep watch of potential ponies passing by and to whip up plausible explanations for their presence if spotted.
Then hooves and shovels crack.
Hard rock.
“That’s the last of it.” Zapp wipes the sweat off of her brow, feeling a drop freezing on her forehead. “Thought we’d get something, but it’s just rocks and filthy common gems.”
Spike chews on a dug-up sapphire. “I think it’s worth it just for the snacks! Nice to find them this high up.”
Zapp bangs her head on the rock, feeling little pain. “Yeah, hooray for you and your mineral pick-me-ups.”
Mare-velous turns to Spike, sitting at the slope of the underground dirt hill like everyone else. “He’s got a point. Big hard rocks like that aren’t supposed to appear this high up.”
They stand half a dozen pony lengths from ground level. It’s enough for a good foundation but still too shallow for anything close to bedrock. “Could just be different ground,” counters Zapp. “Lock Ham’s Razor, you know. ‘The right answer is the simplest one.’”
“If we went by Lock Ham’s Razor every single time,” Fili-Second chimes in, “we might have thought this was just a fever dream.”
“So you’re saying that they might’ve been manually placed up here?” asks Matter-Horn. “That’s a huge feat of Earth pony magic if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
“No harm done in powering through it, Maskie. I bet if they didn’t buy this shed, this place would’ve been condemned anyway.”
So they start tearing rocks apart. Punches and kicks and bucks grind the stone to powder. Deeper and deeper they go: the pegasi forcing bullets of wind into the stones’ weak points, Radiance supplying the attack-construct axes, and Matter-Horn firing magic lasers at the bouldered obstacles like a rapid-fire cannon.
The grand white sky disappears from view a few minutes in, surviving as a little light behind the digging ponies. Magic from unicorn horns illuminate the underground path as they resort to magic-made axes and shovels. Meanwhile, Spike enjoys the gemstone snacks along the way, munching on their sweet and savory flavors.
They hit something hollow.
Spike knocks on it. Big rocks this far down, cobbled-up together. Other rocks ring solid, but this one rock at this one spot—
They break it open.
The rock crumbles into a corridor, much to their bewilderment. Though the walls are jagged with irregular rock formations, the floor is flat, extending into a shadowed path.
Zapp rubs her hooves in delight. “Alright, now we’re officially entering evil territory.”
“Another secret passageway,” remarks Matter-Horn, poking her head down the corridor and lighting up the path with her magic. “A way in, but they didn’t build this one in a day. She said they’ve been visiting the shed for months. You don’t take time for smooth floors like this if you’re short on time.”
“Or it could’ve been just a few days and we’re going to have the final showdown in a cramped apartment,” suggests Rager with a giggle. “An anti-climax. Hope there’s enough flying space for me and Zapp.”
Right away, Matter-Horn and Radiance combine their magics, emitting a scanning field across the entire path.
“Nothing,” Radiance reports. “That was disappointing. You’d think they’d put more security here. Alarms, tripwires, cameras: the whole nine yards”
“I guess they were betting that no one would find it,” says Matter-Horn. “That would be their security measure, given that discovering the corridor alone was no cakewalk. Woe betide any lone mare trying to figure this one out.”
Now, few steps into the corridor, hooffalls echoing across artificial walls embedded in cavernous nature. Companions follow right behind her in the narrow, tight, cramped path. Lights her horn to send a flare of magic down the rest of the way.
“One final security entrance at the end.”
Everyone looks that way. Sure enough, a sealed hatch rests at the other side of the earthen hall. A faint shiny outline indicates a magic shield encasing the only way in.
Zapp crosses her forelegs in flight. “Are we going to spend hours decoding this thing?”
Matter-Horn intensifies the glow of her horn. “I’ve lock-picked magic shields in record time before and I can do it again, and if they’re just borrowing magic from a foreign source thanks to the bloodenstones, they probably created this out of brute force, not true skill. Just because they have power doesn’t mean they understand how to use it.”
And she takes one more step forward.
A twitch of the ear. Mare-velous shouts, “Wait, no, don’t—!”
The world rumbles. Look up: the ground closing in from the top, snow and dirt collapsing.
“It’s caving in!”
Race through the stairs, stumble down, have Spike and the rest slide to the end, grapple with the hatch’s magic locks. Fili-Second swivels around snow and rocks to hurl them back outside, buying them time. Pegasi hold back the breakdown with opposing winds through their wings. Mare-velous bucks the hatch, sturdy hind legs weakening the magic shield’s.
The rumbling tremors into an earthquake.
Shield shatters. Mare-velous turns the gears and handles, yanks it open. “Inside now!”
Rush through the hatch. Spike feels the falling cold sinking in, snaking in to freeze his spirit and still his breath.
But warmth abounds.
Slam!
Spike pants for air. Hatch is closed. Loud crash rings against the hatch. A dent, then nothing.
Inhale. Both unicorns, exhausted. Rips and tears in every pony’s disguises. With another flash from the masked mare’s horn, the disguises disappear, replaced with their superheroing get-ups. Signature goggles adorn her eyes: a welcome sight.
Long corridors. Abandoned passageways. Lights flicker ahead. Wires emit sparks strong enough to electrocute and stun. Hooves rap the metal floor, echoing across the steel path.
“This looks nothing like a normal pony’s basement,” observes Matter-Horn.
A monumental metal vault lay at the end, utilitarian in style. Wouldn’t be out of place in a warehouse. Or an emergency shelter, what with its size and its sharp red paint.
The drake gulps at the door’s looming bulk. “I… I-I guess this is the place.”
“It has to be.” Matter-Horn goes to the door, feeling it out with her hoof. “Made on the fly over months or even years. Maybe older still, abandoned by an unrelated third party and then repurposed for darker designs. The magic signal, the blizzard over the town, the shed’s purchase—all the evidence points here.”
“But how would anyone come down here in the first place?” Spike asks.
“Bloodenstone-powered teleportation. I suppose, with a strong enough magic source, you can get anywhere. Better yet, it takes less effort to teleport back to that source. Easier to pull someone toward you than to push them away.”
She leaves out unspoken doubts: they could be wrong. This could just be a derelict underground science laboratory and the crooks had gone somewhere else. However, the anomalous reading from Numnahvut—
The truth lies nowhere but onward.
The blast door opens with no resistance, lifted up by the group’s Earth ponies. The hatch, coupled with its concealment and obscure location, seemed enough to prevent anyone from even knowing of its existence, let alone what it hid.
For the moment, everything could still pass for an abandoned research facility. Too much spending might have played a part in its desertion, considering the deep tunnels and the carts on tracks within. In the empty caverns, the carts lack rust: must be new. Down the tracks the party travels, inspecting natural rock formations on the walls, enamored by the occasional stalagmite. And something shinier comes through, attached to one of the stony icicles:
“Surveillance cameras!”
And Fili-Second jumps straight to the camera, hanging on to the stalagmite. She puts her hoof and ear on it. “It’s broken. Deactivated too.” She takes the lens out of the camera and the camera falls to the ground, busted into pieces. A gulp of shame echoes across the tunnel. “Uh, on the bright side, they won’t see us coming!”
“But what happened to the camera exactly?” asks Rager.
Her question multiplies and takes on new forms with each encounter of broken electronics. Electricity panels, light bulbs, more security cameras: malfunctioning or dead. An overturned cart thrown off its tracks changes the question some more—no rust and little dust: recently used but with a forsaken air.
Yet another door stands between them and answers. No magic shield, but the faintest of magic residue can be detected. The unicorns form a hypothesis: there used to be a magic shield until it fizzled off on its own or by external factors.
The door gives way to completely artificial corridors. Farewell to rocks, hello to steel. Enough steel to shield them against a glutton of over-ground bombs.
Past more halls and corridors, here lies a proper room. Haphazardly-placed chairs live with noticeboards: schedules, shipments, cooking shifts, suspected ponies who could be hot on their heels.
Radiance floats a list in her pink magic. It zips over to a nearby table where everyone gathers to read. Recognition colors their faces: names and cutie marks lined up neatly with a smattering of profile photos. Most of them unicorns, but a hoofful of pegasi and Earth ponies signed up for the project too. Lumen Airs is here, furnished with a photo of the stallion smiling awkwardly for the camera though a line strikes through his name along with several others.
All the names, crossed out or not, bear one thing in common: Clockwisely’s Enchantment Division.
“This is definitely their hideout,” Mare-velous says after analyzing the evidence. “And yet nopony’s home.”
“Or hiding deeper in the facility,” proposes Fili-Second. “It’s a false sense of security right here in these empty halls. Couldn’t beat us out in enemy territory, so they wait for us here where they control everything.”
“Who’d break their own stuff just to set up an ambush?” says Zapp, combing her mane in front of a shiny wall. “It’s a waste of resources. This looks more like a scorched-earth move. Either they’re trying to escape or—”
Her ears perk up.
All ears perk up. Swivel to the door.
Then a knock.
Matter-horn shushes the others. With the silent language of hoof gestures, she directs Radiance to the door. Attack-construct carpets stream before her hooves to muffle her hoofsteps.
The unicorn puts an ear to the door’s surface. One, she mouths to her teammates. Pony. Prone. Out.
“What are we waiting for?” Fili-Second whispers, her fidgeting legs impatient.
Mare-velous, without the fidgeting: “Yeah, let’s get this over with. If it’s just one pony, we can straight-up interrogate him, see what’s truly going on down here.”
Matter-horn nods and the ponies get into combat positions. She turns to Spike hanging out at the back. “Um, are you… do you want to fight?”
Spike almost jumps for joy, but with a potential enemy nearby, he thinks better of it. “As much as I can!”
“Are you sure?” Rager asks, scanning him up and down. “No offense, but with how small you are, and you being a baby dragon and all—“
“Didn’t you see me back in the HQ? I was on fire out there!”
“Yes, I know,” and she eases Spike with a nod. “I just wanted to be sure you’re okay with this. We’re in their turf now. We don’t know what spells or other surprises they have up in their sleeves here. I certainly don’t want to be responsible for your death here if it comes to that.”
He shrugs and brushes more dust off his shoulders. “I’ve been through worse. It’s not that much different from adventuring with my friends. And saving the Crystal Empire, but enough about myself, heh-heh. Heh.”
“We’ve taken your word for it,” says Matter-Horn. To the others, quieter now with a hoof on his scaly head, “If you’re still getting used to Spike in combat, remember that he’ll be our Hum Drum for this mission.” On the side, the Hum Drum-wannabe cannot stifle a gleeful giggle.
So they face the door. Horns glow, wings flap, and everyone readies their weapons.
“Power Ponies, go!”
They charge at the door, break it down, smash the whole thing open.
To find a pony lying on the floor, cloak half-burned to a crisp. Scars and burns mark his face and body, a roasted smell rising from him. In spite of his pain, the unicorn locks eyes with the Power Ponies.
That face. A name therein that grinds Matter-Horn’s teeth: the head honcho of this conspiracy. The one who spat on her, the one who dismissed them as mere stepping stones.
But she only has surprise. “Wh-what happened to you, Whorlick?”
He coughs, staring with an evil grin and a missing tooth. “It… it has succeeded. The grand plan is complete. No, it has exceeded completion! We… we may not live, but they will… no, she will—“
The list comes to her magic grip. Pages flip, fall apart. The pupils in her mad eyes, tinier than needles. “Who is she?!”
His laugh cuts through the room, cuts through her focus. Blood drips from his muzzle, blood from his ears. The ponies gag at the horror, but his eyes bear no terror. A happy dead stallion walking.
“You don’t get it, mortal, do you? She was above your world when she appeared. And to think that defeating you and taking over the comics of our old company to reap all the power we need was the best plan we had… no, this defies even that, for she is above us! And haven’t you thought that she could go higher?” Lifts his head toward the ceiling. Blood falls into his throat. “That’s… because you never thought to ascend further She’ll pierce the veil of this world, rise with your power and the power of so many more. May she save us, remember us, deliver us to reign with her—“
Hooves slam on the floor. An inch closer, might’ve broken his skull. “Who is it?! Who is she?!”
A smile. Moments before death, a word uttered in glory and blood.
“V-Verumarendi!”
His head drops to the floor.
Blind eyes stare above his ecstatic lifeless grin.