//------------------------------// // Leap of Faith // Story: Feeling Pinkie Keen - Extended Cut // by AdmiralSakai //------------------------------// (♫) “Twilight?” “Urrrhg.” Dimly aware of the sunlight burning against her closed eyelids, the unicorn fished blindly with her telekinesis for the drapes she’d installed over the loft window. “Twilight, I really wish I didn’t have to wake you up…” Spike’s voice rasped through her brain like sandpaper. “Ah. Uhmm. Fine. Fine.” She rolled over and opened her eyes to see the dragon standing beside her bed, nervously twisting his claws together. “Whatimeizzit?” “It’s four in the afternoon. I was going to just let you sleep all the way through the night, but… we’ve got… kind of a problem, out at the Bog.” Twilight dragged herself out from under her blanket and landed unsteadily on her feet, floating the bottle of painkillers off of her nightstand more by reflex than anything else. “Okay. Okay. Crisis. Right. Just… let me… umm… shower, first. And maybe get another coffee.” As they walked down the road to Froggy Bottom Bog, the first thing Twilight noticed was the crowd. It was large by Ponyville standards, perhaps a hundred townsponies gathered in a rough U-shape around something Twilight couldn’t see, and strangely quiet. Then as she and Spike drew closer, cresting a small hill, the mysterious focus became visible. Princess Luna stood, dressed in her full regalia, before a line of five ghostly Lunar soldiers in various types of poor condition- Twilight even recognized the distinctive patchy coat and halberd of the dourine-crippled sentry among them. All of them were clearly aware of Luna, and tracked her movements, but made no aggressive actions either towards her or to the crowd around her. As Twilight watched incredulously, Luna knelt before the closest ghost and spoke out loud. “Private Polestar. Thou hast served the Lunar cause well and faithfully. With the blessing of the Moon I now release thee from thine oath. Go freely now, and seek thine fortune where thou wilst.” The Princess lowered her head until her horn was nearly inside of the ghost’s skull, heedless of the frost that was already beginning to form on its surface, then repeated the same almost-contact with the leading feathers of one wing and with her right forehoof. Amazingly, the ghost’s appearance began to change, its curved horn flexing back to a more ordinary shape, slit pupils expanding into round ones, and gray coat taking on a bright red-orange color; even as it became less and less substantial and finally faded away completely. There wasn’t even a trace of ectoplasm left. As Luna moved on down the line, Twilight scanned the crowd in more detail, and to her chagrin spotted the golden reflections of Royal Guard armor in more than a few places. One of those sets of armor belonged to an ocher pegasus with medic’s markings- Major Forward March. Twilight slipped along the outer edge of the crowd, Spike loping along behind her, until she was within speaking range of the medic. “Forward, what in Tartarus is- I mean, I said we could stop testing Luna, I don’t know why you’d have her doing… whatever this is. She could get seriously hurt out there!” Forward stepped back away from the rest of the crowd. “Actually, this was Luna’s idea. We’ve got Guards watching the crowd and watching the ghosts in case anything dangerous does happen, but I don’t think it will.” She closed her eyes and shook her head. “You realize Luna’s not anypony’s prisoner, right? She can go where she wants, when she wants, as long as she’s not breaking any laws, just like you or me. And I don’t see any reason for her not to come out here, specifically. In fact, I figure the change of scenery’d probably do her some good.” For the second time in as many days, Twilight wanted to reply but had no idea what to say. Eventually, she backed off and left Major Forward to her own devices- whatever those devices might have been. She scanned the crowd again, this time paying more attention to specific ponies she recognized from around the village, and found alongside them a suspicious number of unfamiliar faces- how many of whom were honest tourists and how many might’ve been mentally drafting sensationalist headlines or waiting for the right moment to pull out a camera, it was impossible to say. More alarmingly, although she was able to locate Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and several of the lower-ranking members of Marigold’s company in and among the crowd; Applejack, Fluttershy, and the Captain herself were nowhere to be found. She slipped her way through to the front, where Pinkie Pie was located. “Pinkie, what’s going on?” “What does it look like is going on? Luna’s talking the ghosts into dying for us so we don’t have to deal with them anymore.” Twilight shook her head, feeling another headache start to build. “Fine. Okay. They aren’t… really my problem anymore. But where’s Applejack? Where’s Fluttershy? Where are the rest of the Guards?” “They went off to follow those tracks.” “The tracks that Luna kept saying were important?” With each word, the pain behind Twilight’s eyeballs kicked up slightly in intensity. “No, the tracks that nopony ever noticed or cared about before now, but that I still figured you would know about.” The unicorn squeezed her eyes shut, and took another long drink from her bottle of analgesic potion. “Did they at least say when they’d be back?” The baker cocked her head like a particularly fuzzy bird. “About… an hour ago?” Twilight’s mind quickly filled with visions of cragadiles, and ghosts, and reporters where reporters had absolutely no business being, and whatever had made that big scrape in the mud on Island E-2. “Pinkie, Spike, can you come with me back to the Station?” she asked, “I think this is a job for a full-on search party. And the Lapwing.” “Yeah, that’s totally them,” Palisade told Twilight through the audio spell in her helmet. “Still got nothin’ on instruments, but I can see ‘em clear as day, ten o’clock, about…. a hundred-and-fifty meters away.” The Lapwing banked hard to port, giving Twilight a good clear view through the open bay door of Applejack, Fluttershy, and four Royal Guards. From this height they looked more like action figures than real, live ponies, although the illusion disappeared a moment later when they looked up and started to wave. Twilight couldn’t pick them out on the chromospectrograph in front of her, but it was possible the equipment had simply drifted out of attunement over the last few weeks. They had, of course, set off immediately, and bypassed some of the usual technical checks. “Is there any place nearby you can land us?” Spike asked. “I don’t think that’d be a good idea,” answered Palisade, “This whole place looks waaay too muddy. But I can go down and hover, and drop everypony off.” Twilight stood up from the crate she’d been sitting on and tried to negotiate the shifting deck. “Make it s- gaah!” A sharp jolt of pain informed her that she’d twisted her left hind leg between two other crates. She took another swig from her bottle of painkiller, and settled for “Yeah. Okay. Please do that.” “Twilight, it’s only been half an hour!” Spike admonished. “Yeah, well, my leg still hurts!” “It shouldn’t,” the dragon continued, more gently, “the cast’s off, and the doctor said the tissue damage is all gone…” Twilight scampered back to her seat after that as the Lapwing pulled into a tight, descending spiral. When it stopped, they were hovering about a foot above the surface of the water- which was clear enough for reasonably solid ground to be visible a few centimeters below that. Spike and Pinkie Pie both leaped off of the deck and began to wade their way towards their wayward companions without so much as a how-do-you-do. Twilight stepped down with a good bit more caution, surprised that she was able to negotiate the drop successfully, readjusted her helmet, and followed along a few meters behind. “Fluttershy! You’re okay!” Spike called out as soon as he was within easy speaking distance of the pegasus. “Of course!” “What else would we be?” Applejack asked. “I’m so glad everything’s all right!” Pinkie Pie cut in. Behind them, the Lapwing’s engines buzzed and the craft climbed back up to a somewhat more reasonable altitude. Catching sight of Twilight, Captain Marigold pulled off a quick -and rather muddy- salute. “I… wasn’t expecting an Academy visit all the way out here,” she said, “I hope you weren’t also expecting us to’ve found anything yet, because we haven’t. Sun’s going down, so we were just about to head back anyway.” “No no no,” the unicorn shook her head, “I was just… a little concerned.” Applejack’s ears pivoted forward. “About what?” “Mostly that you didn’t tell us where you were going,” Spike explained, “and somepony out here is going around grabbing photos of things they really shouldn’t be.” “Well, you did tell me,” Pinkie Pie cut in, “But I’m not very important, so it doesn’t really count.” “It’s…well, nopony here is doing anything like that,” Fluttershy explained. “Of course not,” continued Twilight, “But I was worried you might run into the ponies who are responsible, and then things might get nasty, and it’d be one more headache for everypony to deal with.” “I am… entirely convinced thou wilt find naught but what thou seekest on this journey,” Princess Luna interjected, over Twilight’s helmet. Even out here she won’t leave me alone! Twilight thought to herself, but all she said was, “Well, Your Grace, I’m just making sure.” “And I’m pretty sure my girls can handle anything this swamp has to throw at us,” Captain Marigold added. “Funny you should, uhh, mention that,” Palisade spoke over their helmets a moment later, “Because I just saw something really big moving through the deeper water towards your position.” Almost by reflex, Twilight and the others slipped behind Marigold and her three Guards, who drew their weapons and fell into position flank-to-flank. In the treeline some ways in front of them, something very large and very heavy creaked. “Lapwing, can you see what it is?” Twilight asked. She was fairly certain she could see the tops of the trees in front of her shift and rustle. She was very certain she could hear several of them snap. “Uhhh, negative, ma’am. It’s not showing up on instruments, it’s just a big blob down in the deep water shifting plants around. Might just be a swell or something, I don’t know…” Twilight could see it up close now. She was fairly certain they all could. Entire trees shifted as it moved- whatever it was, it had to be bigger than the entire submerged hillock they were standing on. “Ah got a bad feelin’ ‘bout this…” Applejack muttered. “Oooh, wow, you think?” Pinkie pie asked. “We… I… I do not understand…” Twilight heard Luna muttering, “This was… not what the tracks foretold…” “Sorry,” she whispered back, packing as much bitter sarcasm as she could manage into her voice, “I know it’s not nice to gloat, but…” Directly in front of them, the entire pool of deeper water seemed to explode upward all at once. Twilight reeled backward, catching only the vaguest impression of flabby, scaly, dull-orange hide through the clouds of sunlit spray. An ear-splitting, oddly harmonious roar shook the mud beneath her hooves, and she struggled to maintain her footing. Little by little, the cloud sank back downward. Above it bobbed a flat, triangular head with sickly luminescent green eyes and a mouth filled with triangular, razor-sharp, shark-like teeth- and another, and another, and another, all of them panting hot breath that reeked of stagnant water and putrefying flesh. Each was supported atop a thick, serpentine neck easily twenty meters in length, and all of those in turn fused together into a single, titanic blob of a body that disappeared below the waterline. “So that’s what made those tracks…” Fluttershy whispered. Captain Marigold was already hauling herself up onto two legs in a perfectly executed pivot. “Run! Get to higher ground!” (♫) They ran, Guards and civilians alike, Twilight’s position at the rear of the group suddenly transmuted into the lead. They had made their way to the very edge of the bog without realizing it, and perhaps a hundred meters up ahead the seemingly endless water lapped at the shores of a collection of sharp, gray, rocky hills. She pointed herself towards them and did not look back. “Hey, Ah -hff- thought the Royal Guard never backed down -hff!- from a fight!” Applejack called, somewhere behind her. “Yeah, well, look at it, it’s ruttin’ huge!” Corporal Subtle Spark countered. Twilight risked slowing down ever so slightly and looking back over her shoulder. The hydra had, if anything, closed some of the distance to them. How can something so big move so fast? She concentrated, snapped the incantation to the most powerful direct-force spell she knew, and unloaded five bolts of sizzling magenta energy over Applejack and Pinkie Pie’s heads, directly into the creature’s towering bulk. Four hit their target and blasted smoking, sizzling, bloody craters in its hide. It howled in fury and pain but kept right on coming, the wounds already beginning to seal themselves closed. “I… don’t think I can talk this one down…” said Fluttershy. “Yeah, and blades ‘n bolts aren’t gonna do much more than piss it off!” added Marigold. “Take care…” Luna cut in over her helmet, infuriatingly calm. Twilight didn’t have the breath to reply. All of her energy was focused on keeping her hooves beating against the slippery marsh bottom, shoving herself through the ankle-high water. Little by little, the others were all pulling ahead of her. “Y’know, this is usually the part where we call in our air support!” shouted Sergeant Chamomile. “Yeah, to do what?!” snapped Leafspring, over Twilight’s helmet “In case you didn’t notice, somepony took all our guns outta the gunboat!” “Don’t worry, we gotcha!” shouted Palisade. With a roar of propellers the Lapwing shot overhead, then pulled up remarkably quickly over the hill and began to descend. “Everypony, up here, double time!” When Twilight’s hooves met dry rock, the others were already climbing into the troop bay- Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Chamomile, Marigold, Spark, Parhelion, and… “Wait!” she called out, “Where’s Spike?!” “Here, I’m over here, I’m stuck in a Sun-damned tree!” she heard the dragon call out, from a dense thicket perhaps ten meters to her right, followed by a small bloom of lime-green fire. “Hang on, I’m coming!” Twilight skidded to a halt half a body-length from the bay doors and wheeled herself around, dashing back towards the trees with whatever desperate energy was left in her scrawny frame. “Whatever yer gonna do, make it quick! That thing’s darn near on top of us!” Applejack shouted. Twilight skidded to a halt just at the border of the grove where she’d seen Spike’s signal, and hurriedly scanned for any trace of purple scales. She caught just a glimpse of a spade-tipped tail as the trees around her began to shake, grabbed a hold of it in her telekinesis, and yanked. Spike yelped and shot towards her in a cloud of leaf litter and severed vines, but she was already turned back around and heading the other way. “Sorta’ wishin’ we had the rest of the company to back us up,” Private Parhelion muttered through her helmet. Twilight pulled up short. The hydra now stood directly between her and the Lapwing, supporting itself on dry land atop four thick, stumpy, elephantine legs. “Really wishin’ we had the rest of the company!” Shouted Parhelion. “Think… what would Rainbow Dash do…” Twilight muttered, as multiple sets of sickly green eyes tilted downward to focus on her. “Spike?” “Yeah?” “Hang on.” “I don’t really have much of a choice…” the dragon shouted, but Twilight was already moving, charging right towards the creature in front of her. One serpentine head dove down and snapped at nothing but gravel, then another followed it, jaws almost closing around the tip of Twilight’s horn- and that’s when both she and the dragon in her telekinesis winked out of existence in a flash of magenta. When they reappeared behind the beast, just to one side of its surprisingly long, saurian tail, they kept right on going. Unable to turn nearly as quickly the hydra stumbled and slid, flipping half-over on the gravel beach, and then armored hooves were wrapping around Twilight’s shoulders and back, hauling her into the Lapwing’s troop bay while Spike floated along near her head. “That’s everypony!” Captain Marigold slammed a hoof twice into the door to the pilot’s compartment, “Take off, take off!” They began to rise, engines humming, but the hydra looked to be nearly on top of them already. The only thing visible through the port-side hatch was a wall of scaly flesh, and the air reeked of swamp life and decay. There was an almighty crash of metal as something large and heavy slammed into them from port, just aft of the troop bay, and to Twilight’s horror she thought she could see, just for a moment, a double row of triangular teeth sticking sideways through the hull. Their craft bounced and shuddered, engines screeching in a decidedly unhealthy fashion as something else hit them further back. Palisade and Leafspring kept up a constant stream of profanity, some of which Twilight didn’t even recognize, as the entire compartment shook and rattled and squealed. Little by little, the floor Twilight was lying on began to tilt to port, passing thirty degrees, then forty-five and pushing up against sixty. Before long there was simply no purchase for her scrambling hooves, and the fabric straps on the roof of the compartment already much too far away to do her any good. Twilight felt herself fall back out of the open bay door, alongside the others and quite a lot of unsecured instrumentation. Hitting the gravel beach didn’t hurt nearly as intensely as she’d expected so much as it simply made everything go all blurry and muffled for a few seconds, and when she regained her senses she realized Pinkie Pie was half-shoving-half-rolling her further up the beach. Behind and above her, the Lapwing bounced and jostled, struggling in the vice-like grip of two of the hydra’s heads. Another head made a grasp for the prone Private Parhelion, who barely rolled out of the way in time to avoid being bitten in half. The last jerked backwards from Marigold’s position, roaring in fury, a bloody line sliced across its snout. “Up! Up! We gotta move up!” the Captain shouted. Twilight was already on her hooves and backpedaling, heading for the top of the hill, but neither she nor any of the others were willing to turn away completely from the struggling Lapwing. “Get outta here, we can -gah- take care of ourselves!” Palisade called, “Awww, sweet Harmony that reeks!” “C’mon, you big dumb lizard-squid,” shouted Sergeant Leafspring as the ground party began scaling the hill, “You want your dinner? I got’cher dinner right here!” The Lapwing’s port engine nacelle began to whine at an ever-higher pitch, propeller spinning faster and faster just past the hydra’s second set of jaws. Then it burst in a cloud of flame, shrapnel, and magical arcing, sending the Lapwing lurching in one direction and the hydra reeling in the other, minus most of the scales on two of its heads and more than a few teeth. “Yeah, you like that?!” The Lapwing drifted off, smoking and listing but still gaining altitude. The hydra stumbled again, bellowed… and charged straight for the ground party. (♫) Twilight struggled to haul herself up the rocky hillside, practically choking on the creature’s noxious breath. It seemed to be deliberately exhaling towards them, and Twilight fancied that she could see the result as a wavy, faintly greenish miasma that coiled up in her lungs and stung at her eyes. The others ahead of her were clearly flagging; they stumbled and slipped and gasped for air. “If I can’t see, then it can’t see,” Twilight muttered, then snapped out another incantation. “Everypony? Duck!” This time, she fired only a single bolt, at an angle much higher than any of the hydra’s heads. All eight of its sickly green eyes tracked the glowing orb’s ascent- and Twilight made sure to look away and cover her eyes with her foreleg, right before it burst into a disc of deafening noise and brilliant, searing magenta light. Once again the creature roared, and stumbled backward, and once again Twilight made good use of that time to run. The gray stone beneath her hooves grew steeper and more treacherous, and quickly her efforts to put as much distance as possible between herself and the hydra led to her path bending sideways back over the swamp. She caught up to the others at a deep furrow in the hillside -more of a cliffside now, really- spanned by a few precarious rocky shelves. Applejack waved a hoof across to what appeared to be a relatively level path jutting out from the cliffs on the other side. “Ah don’t think that overgrown varmint’s gonna be able to get across here!” “I don’t know if we can get across it!” Pinkie Pie added. “I’m the lightest! I’ll go first!” Spike called out, already winding his way across the protruding shelves. “It’s stable, or… umm, I think it’s stable…” Twilight looked back over her shoulder, just in time to see the first of the hydra’s heads snake around the curve of the hill, hissing and spitting. “Well it’s not like we have much choice!” “It can climb, too?” Subtle Spark demanded, “This just isn’t ruttin’ fair!” He snapped off a rapid crossbow shot that sent one head jerking back for cover with blood trickling from its right eye. Then he followed after Spike, leaping from one outcropping to the next with surprising dexterity. “Go on, civilians first!” shouted Marigold around the sword in her mouth, as she stepped back down the trail alongside Parhelion and Chamomile. “We’ll hold it off!” “You don’t have to tell me twice!” Pinkie Pie dashed across the near-vertical side of the mountain, no more than two hooves ever making contact with the cliff face at a time. Applejack followed after her by the same route Spark had taken- and then wound up leaping the rest of the way all at once when one of the outcroppings halfway across gave way under her slightly heavier frame. Twilight watched, horrified, as her trajectory bent inexorably downward; the farmer slammed chest-first into the rock and yelped in pain, her fall only arrested when Subtle Spark grabbed hold of her forehooves and hauled her back onto firm ground. An orange triangular head swung around the hillside. Parhelion and Marigold both lashed out with their blades, carving deep furrows in its scaly hide, but then stumbled backwards as it struck towards them like an oversized snake. “Okay!” barked Sergeant Chamomile, “Looks like we’re gonna have to fly the rest of the way!” He immediately threaded his hooves through the straps atop Parhelion’s armor and lifted her off the ground, heading for the far side of the cliff. “Oh dear, I don’t know if I can carry another pony…” Fluttershy stammered. “It doesn’t matter, just go!” shouted Marigold around the blade in her mouth. “But what about Twilight?” the pegasus asked. “I’m fine, I’ll be right behind you!” Twilight spotted the motion of another head just as it dived towards Marigold, mouth wide open. She concentrated and fired a single beam of force that drilled directly into the hydra’s upper palate- it lurched back again and roared, but Twilight had been expecting that spell to easily penetrate all the way into its skull. Something wasn’t right. She spared just a moment to watch Chamomile more or less throw Parhelion onto the far side of the cliff, before diving back again to grab hold of Marigold. Behind them, the entire body of the hydra lurched into view, clinging to the diagonal side of the mountain and bracing itself against the slightly flatter path below. It moved slowly and deliberately like a spider, and Twilight wondered if that was because it realized they had no place left to run. “Okay! That’s everypony!” Twilight shouted, then channeled her dwindling magical reserves into one final teleportation spell. She disappeared in a flash of magenta- -found herself floating in a cold, airless, interstitial darkness shot through with millions of tiny streaking stars- -and rematerialized perhaps a few centimeters further along the path. “Wait, no, that doesn’t make any sense!” she snapped, “the only time something’s interfered with a teleport like that was…” Was when Nightmare Moon wanted to keep me somewhere… “Twilight Sparkle…” Luna whispered in her helmet. “Luna, I’m busy!” Twilight screamed aloud, weeks of bottled-up frustration and more than a little suspicion powering her voice. “We are all busy trying not to die! So unless you want to teleport over here and kill this thing yourself, kindly rut off!” “Hold on, just hold on!” shouted Chamomile, tossing Marigold onto the far ledge and wheeling back around. He dived for Twilight- and the hydra slammed itself hard into the side of the cliff, shaking loose more rocky debris directly over their position. Chamomile snapped out his wings, braking hard as he was pelted with rocks and gravel, and then cried out when a particularly heavy piece of debris landed squarely on his back. He wheeled around in an unsteady glide and landed back on the far ledge, skidding along on his barrel for a good half-a-meter, cursing the whole time. “Putting those four brains to use, I see!” said Pinkie Pie. “Pinkie, not now!” Applejack yelled. “Actually,” Fluttershy muttered as she helped Chamomile scramble to his hooves, “It’s brain is in that hump on its back…” “Twilight Sparkle,” Luna whispered again, “Thou must jump the chasm.” “Have you completely lost your mind?” Twilight snapped, “It’s way too far!” Applejack had barely made that jump, and even if her rear leg wasn’t currently about to buckle underneath her, Twilight Sparkle was no Applejack. She felt Parhelion and Subtle Spark try to lift her telekinetically, but the familiar slippery-tingly sensation seemed distant and muted. She rose perhaps a centimeter off the ground and then dropped back again, leaving the other unicorns to back away, confused. Every few heartbeats, she also felt another of the hydra’s slow, deliberate steps, each one sending more and more debris rattling down the slope. “Twilight Sparkle,” Luna continued, a sense of genuine pleading entering her voice for the very first time. “Even if thou hast never believed me before, thou must believe me now! Over that gap… I see only thine landing safely. Everywhere else… only death awaits thee.” Twilight hauled herself over to the very edge of the crevice, and looked down to find only sharp rocks and murky water. Even if by some miracle she managed to survive the impact with her mobility intact, she doubted she could outswim the hydra in the open swamp. It could simply decide to let itself slide downhill after her. “Twilight,” Luna was practically begging now, “Thou must!” One of the creature’s heads lashed forward, and at full extension its jaws snapped shut just a meter from Twilight’s face. The stench was overpowering, and she backed up as close to the ledge as she dared. “I… Luna, I can’t!” “Twilight…” Seemingly frustrated, the hydra lurched forward again- and the cliffside began to crack and shift beneath its stupendous weight. Twilight watched in mute horror as a fissure running radially past the section she was clinging to widened, the entire end of the trail beginning to cleave away. She wouldn’t have to jump to her death anymore- even if she stayed right where she was, the lateral motion of the rock would smash her against the far side with enough force to grind her bones into slurry. “Twilight! I beseech thee! Please, jump now!” Twilight took one last breath, whispered a quick prayer to whatever forces might be listening, and jumped. There was a long moment of almost photographic clarity as water and jagged rocks drifted past beneath her, her body hurled far forward by the momentum of the tilting cliffside in a manner not unlike the lever of a sideways catapult. The unforgiving stone on the far side rushed towards her, her friends standing above it, horrified… and then she landed, in the dark, on something hard and level. (♫) She felt herself bounce and skid- against horizontal stone. She smelled rocky dust, and felt blood already welling from great patches along her flank and shoulder. She struggled to her hooves over the course of perhaps thirty seconds, listening to the sounds of the rockslide continuing behind her. She could also hear the others calling out above her, and hauled herself up to the entrance of the… cave? she had landed inside. “I’m okay, everypony, I’m okay!” It hurt to yell, but she did so anyway. At the bottom of the now substantially-realigned cliff face, she watched the hydra burst upwards out of a pile of debris with an ear-splitting roar, charge up the mountainside- and then slide back down again in a cloud of dust and stone fragments as the loose rock shifted. It kicked up another enormous plume of spray as it hit the water beneath, bellowed once, and then lay still. “Is it dead?” Asked Pinkie Pie up above. With an almost surreal deliberateness, the hydra flexed, shifted, and rolled its massive bulk back over upright. It pawed at the cliff face a few times, failing to acquire any purchase, and then roared once again. “All right, guess not!” To Twilight’s untrained eye, it didn’t look like the hydra had much of a chance of climbing up to within neck’s reach of her cave, nor did she think any of its heads would be able to fit through the opening, but… “Girls?” she called out, “I’m gonna go a little deeper into this cave, just to be safe.” “Uhhh, all right?” Marigold called back, “we already can’t see you, so… I guess it’s up to you, sir. We’ll just… sit tight up here, I guess?” Twilight was already inching her way deeper into the cavern. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the darkness, and as more and more of the interior became visible she gasped out loud. There was a worked stone pillar sitting in the center of the cavern, of exactly the same shape as the Lunar guideposts they’d found throughout the Bog. This one, however, was easily three times that size, and covered not in pictorial carvings but in a dense array of runes that glowed a faint teal blue in the darkness. Some were familiar to Twilight, and some very much were not. The floor for a good six or seven meters around it in every direction was smooth and flat, artificially so, and underneath the accumulated dust she began to be able to discern fine inscriptions that from some angles resembled an astrological chart and from others took on the qualities of a topographical map. A similar pattern spanned the whole of the domed ceiling up above -although not the same; Twilight couldn’t put her hoof on exactly why in the dim light, but the one below seemed less natural and more… schematic. Her contemplation was interrupted by Applejack’s voice from up above. “Twi, if’n you do wanna come up, we can run a rope down for ya…” “Umm, thanks,” she shouted back, “but I really am fine down here. In fact, you might want to come down to me! Especially Spike and the Guards: there’s a Lunar… structure down here that I could use some help trying to figure out…” “That’s great and all, really,” Applejack replied, “But where in tarnation are you? It sounds like yer right under us, but Ah can’t see a Gaia-damned thing!” “Just a moment, I’ll send up a flare,” said Twilight. She limped back to the ledge that served as the cave entrance, concentrated, and cast another light spell, this one tuned to be less explosive and more stable. “What in Tartarus?” Captain Marigold called out. “All right, so, Ah def’nitely saw that,” Applejack continued a moment later, “but it didn’t come from anywhere, it just shot right outta’ the rock face, plain as day.” “What? No… look, there’s a good two meters’ worth of ledge out in front of me, can’t you see it?” Twilight stepped further out of the mouth of the cavern, no longer concerned about the continued presence of the hydra lurking below. Halfway out she witnessed a brief, all-encompassing shimmer not dissimilar to heat haze, and her entire field of vision was briefly tinted pale blue. She looked back behind her, and was treated to the somewhat surreal image of her head and neck protruding from what appeared to be just another section of jagged, rocky mountain. “Illusions!” shouted Pinkie Pie. “I am so sick to death of illusions!” “Luna, are you seeing this?” Twilight demanded, “Luna?” She reached a hoof through the immaterial mountain and pulled off her helmet. Most of the right side was scraped and dented, but the audio rune on the left cheekguard appeared perfectly intact. “Dammit, the one time I actually want to talk to her, and she isn’t around!” “Actually, none of us can talk to her,” Spike shouted from up above. “Can’t get to the Lapwing, either,” Chamomile added. “Wait a minute, do you hear that?” Fluttershy asked, and everypony fell silent. Little by little, the sound of off-kilter rotors began to become audible, and not long afterwards the little airship slid into view. It was listing slightly and trailing intermittent puffs of nasty-looking black smoke, but at least it was still airborne. Below them, the hydra stood and watched, all four heads waving back and forth. “Hullo down there!” Palisade shouted, simultaneously through Twilight’s helmet and the craft’s onboard amplification spell. “Everypony alright? Wave if you can hear me!” The voice from her helmet sounded tinny and very far away, and lagged behind the amplified one by a good half a second. Twilight knew the range on this kind of communication system was limited, but it wasn’t this limited- they’d only been able to hear Palisade at all when he was practically right above them. “Pipe down, we can hear ya,” Applejack replied, also audible normally and through Twilight’s helmet at the same time, “What’re you gonna do?” “I dunno,” Leafspring grumbled, “We can hear you now, but we lost contact with Ponyville a little ways back. It’s like… our effective clairaudient range is shrinking the closer we get to that mountain, or something- never seen anything like that before.” “Maybe the spell’s damaged?” suggested Marigold. “I dunno, maybe. It wouldn’t be the only thing. I wouldn’t even wanna get close enough to the mountain to pick you up, with the state we’re in.” “Actually… don’t worry about it,” the Captain continued, “I think… I think we’re dug in pretty good up here. If you need to go back to Ponyville and reequip… we can probably stick it out the whole night.” “How long do you think it’ll take to load your weapons back on?” Twilight asked, retreating back behind the illusionary shield. “If we work the whole night…” Leafspring mused, “Well, actually, it’ll probably take the whole night. We’ve gotta fix that port engine and some leaks in the envelope, too, you probably can’t see from down there but I can tell we’re starting to lose altitude a little at a time.” “You think y’all can get yerselves outta the Bog in one piece?” Applejack asked. “Yeah, probably,” Leafspring replied, “worst case scenario, we ditch somewhere near your farm and roust up some of the locals to help drag us back to the Station.” “That might be best, actually. We can hold up here until morning,” said Marigold. “Captain, are you sure about this?” asked Chamomile. Twilight watched the hydra give one final roar and slip off into the darkening treeline. Then she spotted Marigold looking over the ledge at where she herself had just been standing. “Doctor?” “I… I guess we’re… going camping tonight?” she finally said. “You’re the boss,” said Palisade as Lapwing drifted out of sight, “If you run into any trouble, just send up another one of those flares. I’m pretty sure we’ll be able to see that from town.” Little by little, the trail of smoke and the sound of rotors also faded away, leaving only the calling of insects and birds and the lapping of waves against the cliffside. “Hey, there ain’t no way further up the mountain from here, but Ah reckon there used to be a bit of a path headin’ right to that cave of yours. We can probably come down to you a lot easier than you can come up to us.” “Yeah,” Twilight nodded, even though she knew nopony could see her, “Spike, you’ll love this.” The dragon was, indeed, the first to slither down to her a few minutes later. He paused on the ledge right in front of the illusory cliff face, then tentatively slipped a claw through it, followed by his head and then his entire body. She watched his slitted eyes widen in the dim light, and heard him whistle in appreciation. “Twilight, do you think this might be… it? Do you think this might be Luna’s redoubt?” The unicorn shook her head, once again surveying the bare rock walls of the circular chamber. “I doubt it. There doesn’t really seem to be anything that a pony would need to, well, live in here, much less manage a rebellion. I think it’s just another clue.” She wondered how Luna’s own officers were supposed to have found this cavern, back in the day. Even if they’d been able to solve the relationship between the guide pillars and the symbol-stones to determine the approximate location-which Twilight seriously doubted was actually possible with only First Century techniques- the illusion of the cliff face seemed to be permanent. Had Luna expected her generals to dive at every section of the mountain in the hopes that one would prove to be immaterial? In the modern day, had Luna even known the cavern was there when she’d asked Twilight to jump across the cliff? “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Spike continued, “Even if everything in here that wasn’t stone’s already rotted to powder, there should still be… some kind of traces, right?” Twilight made a noncommittal little mm-hmm noise, and turned back to the pillar in the center of the room. The runes covering it seemed to be glowing much brighter now, more than she’d expected just from the continued darkening of the cavern as the sun set. Most of the symbols that she could recognize had been in common use during the First Century, pertaining mostly to illusion and concealment spells. However, they were never far away from others for which she had no reference whatsoever, and there were entire blocks of inscription that contained no understandable spellcraft at all. Whatever it was, it was quite sophisticated, well beyond anything anypony should have been able to achieve in the year 97 CE. It was thus doubly impossible for Luna to have created such a thing- and then excavated an entire cavern to put it in- all by herself. “What I don’t get is how there could be an active illusion operating out here at all after so long,” she finally said aloud, “much less one that could frustrate instruments an entire millennium ahead of itself.” “That’s what’s happening, though, isn’t it?” asked Spike, “And in retrospect it explains a lot about why we’ve been having so much trouble detecting things out here. I wonder if all the pillars are actually magical like this one is…” Twilight was about to reply when the sound of fresh movement at the cavern entrance cut her off. Applejack and Marigold had made their way down the path and stepped inside, followed moments later by Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. Sergeant Chamomile appeared next, fluttering into view briefly with Private Parhelion secured on his back, then returned perhaps a minute later carrying Subtle Spark. He winced and staggered as soon as he let the unicorn archer go, landing in a heap with his wings stuck straight out. Fluttershy slipped over and began carefully unbuckling his armor, sliding off the dented saddle-plate to expose an extensive patch of bruised and swollen flesh right between his wingjoints. She wasted no time in opening a small leather healer’s kit and wrapping the area with gauze. The Sergeant kept quiet for the most part, but every time the bandages cinched a little tighter around his particularly swollen right wing Twilight saw him suck in his breath and bite down on his lower lip. She unbuckled her own saddlebags, and fished out the bottle of poppy tears the medics at Fillydelphia Harbor had given her. It was still about a quarter full and had miraculously survived the impact with the cave floor- in much better condition, in fact, than the mare it was intended to treat. She floated it towards Chamomile. “Here. I… think you might actually need this more than I do.” The Guard pegasus twitched a wing towards it, growled in pain, then grabbed it out of the air with his teeth and drained it in a single gulp. “Awww, shit, cherry,” he muttered, then looked back at Twilight. “But… seriously. Thanks.” Twilight floated a few rolls of bandages over to herself as discreetly as she could, and wrapped them loosely around her shoulder and flank- less because she thought they would do her much good, than because she didn’t want to bleed on anything of historical value. Spike moved up next to her, "That gash on your shoulder looks really nasty, are you sure you’re alright?" "I'll be fine, but it's going to hurt like Tartarus tomorrow morning" At the other end of the cavern, Pinkie Pie and Marigold were busy conducting a rudimentary inventory of various equipment on a slightly less dusty patch of floor. “We got rope, we got lanterns, we got four canteens…” Marigold called out, “shit, did everypony remember to pack rations?” “We also don’t have any wood,” the baker added, “so I hope you were feeling like cold oats.” “Shucks, and Ah didn’t even think to bring mah fiddle,” continued Applejack. “I don’t think it’d burn very long, anyway…” said Corporal Spark. “To play, you idiot!” Pinkie Pie shouted back. “Oh.” “And is… is Sundog the only one who actually brought a bedroll?” asked Chamomile as he ever-so-slowly folded his wings back at his sides. “I remember you asking me about that when we set out, too,” Private Parhelion chuckled. “Now who’s being silly?” Twilight left them alone for a moment and returned her attention to the inscriptions surrounding the pillar. They too seemed to glow a cool blue, ever-so-faintly beneath the dust, and Twilight felt a brief surge of vertigo as she realized she recognized them. On the floor beneath her, an ordinary star chart had been superimposed over a schematic representation of the whole of the Lunar encampment, while on the ceiling above that same chart shared space with a detailed topographical map of the entire Hardfrog Valley. “Ah’ll pay you fifty bits for that bedroll,” Applejack called out from behind her. “Do you take credit?” asked Pinkie Pie, “Because when we get back to town I can pay you seventy-five.” “I’ll gladly pay you two hundred of Twilight’s bits for it,” Spike cut in from the far side of the map-circle. “Yeah, well, you all can rut off ‘cause it’s mine,” laughed Parhelion, waving an accusatory hoof at nopony in particular. She unfolded the roll of military-green cloth near the opening of the cave and lay down atop it, forehooves crossed demurely in front of her. “But of course, if either of the gentlecolts present are interested, I wouldn’t particularly mind sharing…” “There’s, like, ten other ponies in here,” Pinkie Pie scolded, half-seriously, “Gross!” “Sorry,” Subtle Spark chuckled, “I’m married.” Chamomile sat bolt-upright, wincing slightly. “Wait, you are?” “And what am I,” Spike demanded, “chopped liver?” Then he raised his claws in a vague sort of warding-off gesture. “Actually, you know what, no. Forget I said anything. If you want another warm-blooded mammal crowded up against you as you slowly roast to death in that bedroll, you go right on ahead.” “Alright, that’s enough, all of you,” snapped Captain Marigold. “Lock it down and see if we can figure out a watch schedule.” Leaving the ponies to bicker in peace again, Twilight motioned to Spike to follow her back over to the map circle. She pulled out her much-abused pad of graph paper and began transcribing the inscriptions as best she could. Three of the largest “fixed” stars- Whinnius, Cantropus, and Bitel- directly overlapped the positions of the sigil-carvings on the upper map and the positions of the guide-pillars on the lower; they were marked with the corresponding symbols- moon, scepter, and banner. The space occupied by the actual Moon was dead-center in both maps; on the lower the pillar covered it, replacing what looked more or less like their current location, and up above it was occupied by the smaller depiction of the Lunar camp within the wider valley. Twilight let her notes drift to the floor in her fading telekinesis. “Well that explains… everything, and also nothing at all.” Spike knelt and snatched up the falling notebook, leafing through it and then scratching under one of the fins that ran across his scaly cheek. “Yeah, I know, right? Now that we’ve finally gotten here, we learn the secret of exactly how we were supposed to get… here.” He tossed the pad off to one side and squeezed the sides of his muzzle with both claws. “I’m starting to really hate Nightmare Moon, Twilight. I really am!” “D’you think we can maybe just make a hike for home, now that the hydra’s gone?” Asked Subtle Spark. “Ah don’t think that’s a good idea,” chided Applejack, “Y’all might not see it but that thing’s still out there; the nearest settlement’s miles away through mud, ‘n shallow water, and water that looks shallow ‘till ya put’cher hoof into it ‘n realize it ain’t; and it’s already gettin’ mighty dark. We’d be sittin’ ducks.” “Yeah, let’s try to keep things a little bit more ‘Camper Wagon’ and a little bit less ‘Deliverance’, okay?” Pinkie Pie chided. Across the cave, Parhelion cackled. “Sooooeeeey, pigpigpig!” The baker shot her a venomous glare. “Not on your life.” There was a little bit of laughter after that. Twilight took one last look at the double maps. One additional symbol existed only on the lower, on the edge of the raised platform where the pillar sat- a slit-pupiled eye. What that meant, she had absolutely no idea. She sighed and walked back over to the others at the mouth of the cave. She telekinetically reshuffled the contents of her saddlebags -pretty much entirely loose paper- slipped them off, and lay down atop them. It wasn’t comfortable, exactly, but it beat bare rock. All around her, the Guardsponies began ripping open cans of field rations- oats, biscuits, and something ominously labeled “Vegetable Medley”. Marigold tossed a tin of the latter over to Twilight. She grabbed a glob of it in her telekinesis, tentatively guided it into her mouth, and discovered that it did not, in fact, taste all that bad. (♫) “Anypony bring a deck of cards?” Pinkie Pie asked once they were finished. “Yeah,” Parhelion nodded, “But I can’t hardly see ‘em. Sparky, do you think you can grab a few of those lanterns?” “Actually…” Twilight cut in, “Don’t bother getting up.” She muttered a few quick incantations, and another globe of light shot from her horn out to the roof of the cave- this one a warm white that suffused the entire area and didn’t fade away. “Oh, wow, that’s cool…” Parhelion muttered. “How long’s it going to last for?” asked Marigold. Twilight scratched out a few calculations in the dust in front of her. “Without any more input from me, assuming there’s nothing special about the mana seep through the cave walls… about eight hours? And it’s just light, it won’t generate smoke like a fire, or make the part of the cavern where we are any hotter.” “But the core’s pretty hot,” Spike added, “And the color attracts insects, so they’ll all fly up into it and get incinerated.” “That’s pretty neat,” Chamomile opened another tin of biscuits and slid them over to where Fluttershy was sitting next to him. “They teach that kinda’ shit at the Academy?” “Actually…” Twilight swallowed another bite of Vegetable Medley, “I came up with this myself, based on another spell that wasn’t nearly so versatile. It’s actually the same spell I used to signal you, and to blind the hydra, given a few different parameters.” “Hey, that was pretty badass,” interjected Parhelion, “Especially the part were it blew up at the end.” “Yeah, but there was a lot of trial and error involved in getting it to work. One time an orb even went off right in my face and I ended up totally blind for about a day. Spike had to call an ambulance and everything, and we were both terrified it was going to be permanent. I only published the finished version about a year ago, just before I started studying, well, this whole prophecy-about-Nightmare-Moon business.” The sun had well and truly set now, and Twilight found herself looking out over a sea of shifting reeds and water that sparkled blackly in the light of the rising moon. Every so often, something darker still would dart across her vision, giving the vaguest impression of sleek, curved wings spread out wide, and call chee-chee-chee-chee. It all would’ve been quite striking, had she been observing it from a couch in a climate-controlled hotel and not a pile of canvas and paper in a sweltering, humid cave. It was about then that she realized the temperature and humidity had, in fact, become almost tolerable again. She looked around to find Fluttershy and Chamomile standing to either side of her at the cave entrance, wings outstretched and slowly beating. The amount of cool air they were able to summon was impressive, and every so often one or the other would pause, tilt a wing downward, and let a stream of clear water dribble off into an open canteen. “You… don’t have to keep doing that,” she said, “I’m sure we’ve got more than enough water.” “Oh, it’s not any trouble,” Fluttershy replied, “After you set everypony up with that light and everything…” “Yeah, that was really, really cool,” Subtle Spark added. “And that part where you got the hydra to flip over, what was that, a decoy spell or something?” “Oh, no, no, no. Just basic teleportation.” “’Just basic teleportation’, she says!” Chamomile laughed, “Is that really what you Academy types do all the time when you aren’t out here giving orders? Just sit around and dream up really kick-ass magical shit?” “That’s a bit of an oversimplification, but… I guess?” Twilight continued, tentatively. “It’s not an either-or thing, though. What I’m doing out here is also extremely important to the Academy’s wider mission.” The pegasi ceased their efforts with the cavern nearly at room temperature, and sat down again off to one side. They kept looking at Twilight, though, and with a quick look around the unicorn realized the same could be said of Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and the other Guards. She reached over and floated her empty tin of Vegetable Medley into the center of the group. “So, did you know the Royal Academy also developed these preserved rations? It used to be that anything that had moisture in it was at risk of spoiling, so… maybe two hundred years ago we would’ve had the biscuits for dinner, and some dried-out oats, and not a lot else. That was all alchemy, not anything I’ve ever ended up working in, but… it’s still kind of an interesting story.” Applejack waved one forehoof in a quick ‘go on’ gesture. “There’s a type of worm in Saddle Arabia and what’s now Southern Equestria called a Dwarf Tatzlwyrm, and ever since there’s been ponies down there they’ve known that carcasses the worm kills with its venom don’t spoil. Nopony ever thought there was anything else to it for, oh, maybe eight hundred years, but then an alchemist named Lee Pasture decided to figure out why, and brought some specimens back to the Royal Academy to study. He not only figured out how the process worked, but also found a way to replicate it safely. Now the Pasture Treatment’s used all across Equestria to manufacture canned goods. Expeditions like this one… this hunt I’ve been leading you all on, to try to find out more about Princess Luna’s… ‘inexplicable’ abilities? That’s just how all the useful spells and enchantments and whatnot start.” Now ponies were nodding and looking to each other. Twilight kept going. She felt eight years old again, curled up on the sofa in the living room one drizzly gray Hearth’s Warming with a thick, leather-bound tome in front of her, fragments of wrapping paper still clinging to the cover. “The very first section of the Academy’s charter comes from the forward of a book called The Foundation. In it, Starswirl the Bearded wrote that ponykind has existed for nearly twenty-five-thousand years, but only the last four thousand have been of any significance. What did we do for those other twenty-thousand years? We huddled in caves and around small fires, fearful of the things we didn’t understand. We struggled to bring up the sun and send down the rain, and we lived in terror of enormous birds with the heads of horses and rocks that came to life. We called them ‘gods’ and ‘demons’, begged them to spare us, and prayed for our salvation. Little by little, though, we learned what made the world that way, put names to it, and figured out how to trick gods and demons into becoming millstones and blades and… and stay-fresh field rations. In time, their numbers dwindled and ours rose. The world began to make more sense, and there were fewer things to fear. The unexplained can never truly go away, as if the universe demands the absurd and impossible. Whether that’s something as… as great and terrible as Nightmare Moon, or as simple as a mare who sees signs and omens where we just see a pile of rocks, we must meet our demons head-on, pull them out into the light, and bring them to heel. Ponykind must never go back to living in fear. That’s my job.” The ponies around her all nodded. “That’s all… really great,” Pinkie Pie said, much more quietly than usual, “But… riddle me this, Doctor Twilight Sparkle: How long did it take other ponies to start reading Starswirl’s books? Like The Foundation and the Principia Magica?” Twilight let her eyes drift closed. “It took decades, centuries, really, after he disappeared. There were… there were debates and violent arguments; sometimes ponies took to the streets in mobs; important scholars who supported his theories lost their positions… some got arrested or even executed! Even after the end of the Lunar Rebellions, Princess Celestia didn’t formally add Starswirl’s work to university standards until the year 262…” “And that’s… how many years after he disappeared?” the baker prompted. “Umm, let me see here, that’d be two hundred and forty-one.” “And… how many years have you been talking to Luna about her seer powers?” “About two weeks, so one twenty-sixth or a little under four percent of a year.” “And to get Luna to give up her secrets in that time, that’d make you… how many times better an investigator and orator and all-around amaaaaazing pony than Starswirl the Bearded was?” “Well we can multiply two-hundred-and-sixty-two by twenty-six to produce a factor of six thousand, eight hundred and… oh.” Pinkie Pie nodded. “Didn’t Starswirl the Bearded also say that science doesn’t always work overnight? Didn’t somepony else have to finally finish his big model of celestial mechanics thingamajig… four hundred years after he was gone?” “Actually,” Twilight corrected, “It was closer to five hundred.” Then she slumped down with her muzzle between her forehooves and exhaled a big long breath. “I’ve been thinking incredibly highly of myself this entire time, haven’t I?” Pinkie Pie nodded again. “You’ve been being really… Twilight Sparkly, yeah.” Twilight also nodded, as much as her supine position currently allowed. “I guess… I think I felt… threatened, almost. Not just for control of this project, or by those ministers in Canterlot, but that didn’t help. I thought that… if I couldn’t explain Luna, then… the whole effort, the whole system I’ve based my life on… that it’d all start to unravel. And when ponies like that idiot Society started to show up, it looked like it was unraveling. I might’ve been proud of doing my job, but… I wasn’t doing it properly. Starswirl the Bearded lived in a world filled with things he couldn’t explain, and… he never let that stop him. He just wrote down all the problems he couldn’t solve, put them aside for the scholars who’d come after him, and moved on to other things. I… I don’t know how I forgot that before, and… I don’t think I ever want to again.” With great strain on her protesting muscles, she hauled herself back up into a proper sitting position. “Thanks, Pinkie, for… talking to me.” Then she paused. “Wait, why do you know all that about Starswirl?” “Hey, don’t worry about it.” The baker shrugged. “I sit behind a counter most of the day. Listening to ponies spill their guts about weird esoteric nonsense I wouldn’t possibly care about otherwise is just part of the job.” “So, umm, uh… that’s nice and all, but… where do we go from here?” asked Spike. “Well, right now we sit here and we wait for our air support to come back,” Marigold replied, then looked to Twilight. “After that?” “After that… we'll bring in some more ponies and some more equipment and see what we can figure out about this room. Given, well, everything, it’s very possible there’s something obvious about it that I’m just completely missing right now.” “And if -well, let’s be realistic here, more like when- that doesn’t work?” Spike asked again. “Then… I suppose we’ll have Princess Luna take a look at it, and see what she can tell us. This time, all I ask is that she writes down exactly why she thinks what she thinks, and also everything that just comes to her and she doesn’t necessarily know why. We’ll work from there.” Around the circle there was some bickering that Twilight didn’t quite catch, but by and large ponies were nodding again. “That sounds… that sounds like a plan,” Applejack finally said. “Good. Now, if nopony has… umm, any other questions, I’m going to go ahead and start going over my notes, see if I can get things a little better organized.” Twilight was asleep again before she’d made it past the second page.