//------------------------------//
// The Introduction - IV 
// Story: MLP ~ The Song of Seven 
// by ScarletSet 
//------------------------------//




“And construction is still underway?” the elder pony asked as she checked a pocketwatch. "No meaningful delays?" Two stallion construction workers nodded to her.
“No ma'am. Plenty of ponies and their children volunteered this year, the grand stage will be completed in a matter of hours. Store owners are setting up their stalls so there will be plenty to eat once the festivities commence tomorrow.”
“At this rate, we may very well be ready a whole day in advance, for once,” the elder said as she stuck her watch away into her robes. “And Tall Tail is still on track to lead the opening act?”
“Not last I checked,” the other pony said. “If I understand properly, he’s passing on the role to his pupil this year.”
The elder knit her brow. “Ah yes, that loud apprentice of his, just when I was about to ask what could go wrong." 
"Who, the little white filly with the wings?" the first asked.
"No, the other one! It was... what was her name again?”
“Echo Shade!!” The three ponies ducked and watched the sky just as Slashbuckler flew past them.
“...What's he going to do with that stick?”
“Why do you still question Slashbuckler?”


Slash flitted above the bustling square of busy ponies. They were busy getting their carts and stalls ready for the festival. The roofs were covered in colorful streamers, and he could name each of the ponies in charge of the decorating, but he still couldn’t find the pony he wanted. He flew further into town.
The Lorekeeper’s cabin came into view. It sat right at the northern edge of town.	“Echo Shade?” Slash called into the Lorekeeper’s house. He didn’t get a response. He poked his head through the door and looked around. He couldn’t hear hoofsteps or any sign of life inside the small house. Even the Lorekeeper and his little ones were out, it seemed.
He flew all the way back into town square. “Echoooo?!”
“Slash!” someone shouted. Thistlewind got his attention and pointed her hoof at the small, classical-looking building a few houses down from town hall. “Library, maybe?”
“Oh, er, right!” Slash was airborne once more and dashed away. “Thank you!”


	
	
Echo scrunched her nose as she turned another page in the dusty book.
“In 2056 Stone Slate was sworn into town council…” She read aloud flatly as she skimmed to another page. “2122 saw the first successful harvest of plums… how interesting!” She turned over a few more pages. “The council henceforth declared war—Hold up?!” She stuck her nose into the book to read every character on the page. Her ears drooped. “...Declared war on the mountchasers. Yeah okay.” She slammed the book shut and lifted it back into the case from whence it came with her magic. “I’m pretty sure there’s not a town in all of Cabalos who aren’t at war with the nasty things…”
She had just opened a new book when the door flew open. In came an excited pegasus.
“Echo!”
“Slashbuckler, you hush!!” Ink Quill the librarian frowned at him. “And mind the door.”
“Oh, sorry!” Slash shouted back as quietly as he could before he slammed the door shut without a second thought. The librarian huffed and trotted back to her desk. “Echo!” He said again.
Echo shushed him. “Slash, I’m busy. Can it wait a moment?”
“Aaaugh.” Slash marched over to Echo and slumped down next to her and her small stack of books. Echo nodded and kept reading, quietly this time. 
“With the arrival of Wispy Willows to Harmony, the adolescent foal went down in history as the oldest newcomer ever welcome to Harmony… what really?” Echo Shade asked herself. “I thought the ‘kids coming to Harmony’ thing was just a coincidence. Have no adults ever arrived here?”
Maybe there was some missing information, but alas the book said nothing more on the matter, and if the library itself was anything to go by, she wouldn’t be able to find another book on the matter any time soon.
Echo tried to concentrate on reading another book, if only for a few moments. It was like chiseling at a brick wall, reading these old texts. Besides that last bit, she couldn’t find anything interesting enough that could possibly enhance the Lorekeeper’s story. It was starting to feel hopeless.
Slash was practically vibrating in his seat. He began tapping his hooves against the wood floor, which made it even harder to focus. Oh, just how could she go on with this racket? At this rate, she’d never be able to finish perusing these positively prosaic platitudes and would have no choice but to entertain Slash. Oh the equinity.
As reluctantly as she could manage, Echo closed her book and gave her best friend her full attention.
“Okay fine, what’s wrong, Slash?” Echo asked. Slash reached his down beside the table to retrieve his branch. Echo cleared the books off the table and gave Slash space to put it down.
They both examined it closely for a moment.
“I found this during my morning patrol,” Slash said.
“It’s a nice stick,” Echo said flatly.
“No, it isn’t. I know a good stick when I see one,” Slash said, perfectly serious. “It’s broken, crushed even. And the smell…”
Echo gave her friend a quizzical look. The pegasus shoved the branch towards her with his hoof.
“Smell it.”
Echo smiled sweetly and pushed it back. “I’d rather not.”
“It’s smoke and sulfur!” Slash said. “And there’s hundreds more like it outside the valley! Smashed boulders and trees that all smell the same way. I make no exaggeration when I say this is definite proof of a dragon in the woods.”
“A dragon, huh?” Echo said as she prodded the branch. “Or maybe some outsider folk were having a party in the mountains?”
“This far out? Please. There were no hoof prints at all, I checked,” Slash said. “Trust me on this one.”
Echo studied the piece for a moment and reluctantly gave a sniff. “Now that you mention it, it definitely doesn’t smell like anything else you’ve dragged home. Hmm…” 
“I think that the Council should know about this as soon as possible, just to be safe, y’know?”
“I’m not so sure, Slash. Do you really think the Elders are gonna take a stick you found in the woods seriously?”
“Oh, of course not,” Slash said with a shrug. “They’d never listen to me; I’ll just have you ask the Lorekeeper to talk to them.”
Echo rolled her eyes again. “Right, you wanna cry direwolf the day before the festival, and your plan is to have me be the one to do it, because my opinion matters so much to them. I don’t think so.” She pushed the branch off the table and into his hooves as she opened her book again. 
The pegasus looked up at her pleadingly. “Aw come on! You’re his apprentice! You’re the only one I can ask.”
“Even if I told Tall Tail about this I don’t think he’d listen to me. He hasn’t been taking any of my suggestions since we started getting ready for his act.”
“Just tell him it’s an emergency!”
“Oh yeah, because that’s worked before. Have you ever asked a favor from him when he’s like this? All he cares about is getting the festival in order right now.”
“Well he’d probably hate it if a giant monster ruined his plans, wouldn’t he?”
“Very true,” Echo nodded. “But he’d be even angrier if I made him look like a chump in front of the other Elders. Think about it, there hasn’t been a dragon anywhere near the valley in a hundred… wait a second,” she paged backwards through her book and found her page. “Two hundred years, there we go. These books are useful for something.” When she looked back at her friend, he looked upset and disappointed. “Sorry Slash, if you really want an audience with the Elders, you’re going to have to ask them yourself this time.”
“Well… fine then!” Slash stood up. “And once I get their permission, I’ll get a posse together for dragonwatch! I’ve been looking forward to the festival all year, and there’s no way I’m letting a scaly worm from Down Under ruin it!”
“But you’d totally go and give it a buck to the face if the opportunity presented itself, wouldn’t you?”
“Hay yeah! I mean, of all the ways to interrupt a festival, fighting off a dragon has to be the raddest.”
“Raddest. Indeed,” Echo said to herself. She shook her head and continued reading. “Well, I have to commend you for being so focused for once.”
“Never underestimate the Future Protector of Harmony.” Slash said with a smile. “I’m like a knife on a cutting board! Straight and to the point!”
“I could tell. Seeing as you’re not…” For some reason Echo began to tread carefully with her words. She motioned in Slash’s direction. “Y’know.”
“Know what?”
She waved at his back. “I mean, if you’re serious about trading blows with a dragon, it kind of looks like you’re missing something.”
“Oh, well if you’re talking about my shield—“ Slash looked at his back with a smile, which turned into a dropped jaw. “MY SHIELD!” Slash leapt into the air and started flitting about again. “I must’ve dropped it on my run into town!”
Echo nodded in agreement.
“Horse apples! Auuugh….” Slash hovered towards the door. He turned and pointed at Echo. “Don’t think this is over! You’ll hear from me again! Right after I find my shield, that is—”
“Slash?” The pegasus stopped in his tracks. “Look, I’ll tell my master that you’re worried, and I’ll tell him what you saw, but I can’t make any promises, alright?”
“Wait, you mean it?!”
“Like I said, no promises—“ 
Echo could barely finish her sentence before the stocky pegasus had her caught in a warm, viceful hug. “You’re the best, Echo!”
And with that he darted out of the door and left it open again.
Echo shook her head. “Dragons, honestly. ...It would be a real shame if he were right for once though. I should probably let Master know once I’m done reading...” She cast a glance at the giant pile of books still waiting for their dense pages of history and lore to be acknowledged. “Who am I kidding?” She put back what books she could and exited the library, quietly.



The climb up the mountain had finally begun. No more trees and hills. There were certainly trees here and there, and the ground was level for parts at a time, but the trip became almost completely vertical. This of course was harder for Polaris than it was Lightning Bug. Her wings covered distances that took the unicorn five minutes in mere seconds. But Lightning was polite enough to stop and wait for him to catch up. She'd busy herself by humming a song, tapping her hoof to the beat, and she'd try not to think too hard about where Meadow Skip might have ended up.
"Oh, come on Private!" Polaris gasped as he pulled himself up. "If you stop every five minutes for a break..." he dragged his legs over and nearly stumbled. "We'll never get to the top in time! Phew..."
Lightning smiled and rolled her eyes. "My wings are tired, that's all. I might have flown harder in this one day since... well, since I got stuck here."
"Well don't get too comfortable. The higher we go, the more likely your wings will come into play. Say, you haven't happened to catch a glimpse of the upcoming landscape, have you?"
“Huh?! Oh, um…” She looked around one more time. “Nuh-uh,” she said. “The next ridge is pretty steep, I can’t see anything past it. I thought I saw an easier climb over that way,” she pointed with her hoof. “But it looked like it would take longer. What do you think we should do?”
“Any signs of life? Monsters?”
“Not that I could see,” Lightning said.
"Then we should probably continue as we are. No sense taking the easy way out now."
“Really?” Lightning asked. “I thought we were taking the safer one."
“I wouldn’t call any part of these badlands safe, Private,” Polaris said. “But if I were an apex predator, the safer path is where I’d want to prowl, do you follow? Besides, time is of the essence and we’d best get moving.” And he departed. “Are you coming, Private? Private!”
“Hm?” It was much fainter this time, but Lightning thought she heard it. The music drifted in the air again, and it was much fainter this time.
“Can’t you stay focused for ten seconds? Come, we’re going up.”
“Um…” Lighting said as she stared down her path. 
“We’re not going that way, I already said so. Who’s the mountain expert here, me or you? If I wanted help with machines, CQC or dragons I'd ask you. Come along now.” It apparently wasn’t up for debate as Polaris was already on his way, so Lightning reluctantly followed after. She couldn’t quite put it into words. She thought she heard music a moment ago, and the path they were taking was dead silent. Why did it feel so suffocating?
Lightning decided to keep quiet. She did this even when she spotted strange marks in the rocks on their way up the hill. The moment she laid eyes on them, a soft burning smell scratched the back of her throat. She had to be imagining it, she decided.



“Ugh!” Polaris plopped down onto level ground. “Finally. I thought the climb would never end, and with our luck, nobody would have blamed me! I cannot wait to finish up and head home to my desk and chair…”
Lightning dragged herself up behind him. She found her own patch of earth and dropped down as well. “Why… phew,” she wiped the sweat from her brow with her wing. “Why would you take this mission if you hate the outdoors so much?” she asked.
“I don’t hate the outdoors,” Polaris shook out his bag and produced his papers. “It’s the blasted Badlands I hate! Such a dreary, colorless blight upon our otherwise beautiful home…” He lifted up his pen and got to writing.
Lightning checked her radio once before she rolled over unto her back and squinted at the dim sunlight. She stretched and sighed. She must have been overreacting earlier, nothing had gone wrong since they went up the hill. It must have just been nerves. 
...Unless they were just due for something really really bad to happen. She hoped she was wrong.
The wind howled like Lightning had never heard before while she was still on the ground. It wasn’t in her ears or tossing her mane like if she were airborne, but something below was causing a lot of noise. There was the stormwall, of course, but it looked so far away now. It just billowed silently in the distance, blocking any view to the outside world.
Lightning spied something below, somewhere to her left of the hill they had just scaled. A long, deep dark chasm ran down that side of the mountain and to the hills below, and she could hear the air moaning around it even this high up.  It must be incredibly deep if it could make the wind sing the way it was doing. They were almost directly above it. Lightning idly shoved a stone off her perch and watched it bounce down the mountain. It made it's way to the chasm, and she heard it tap the sides as it plummeted beneath. She heard no sound of it striking the bottom. Maybe it didn't have a bottom.
"There must not be many mountains in Meteoras. Don't you know it's bad practice to throw rocks from this high up?"
“What is that thing?” Lightning asked as she pointed.
“The gorge?” Polaris didn’t look up from his papers. “Most likely some sort of chasm formed from tectonic plates, or it’s one of the so-called scars of the land from the legends.”
“Scars?”
“Yes, either the land was carved when the dragons still ruled the world, or it happened during their fight with the Alicorns.” The unicorn shrugged. “But that’s all just legend, so who can say for sure.”
Lightning idly kicked a rock with her hoof.
Polaris set down his papers and began studying the stretch of land they had just scaled. He muttered to himself as he scribbled away. Lightning rolled unto her side to watch him. She then got up on her hooves and looked over his shoulder.
“Is that a map?” she asked.
Polaris recoiled and brushed her with his shoulder. This produced yet another spark and nearly sent Polaris’ quill flying away. He steadied himself and gave her a look.
“Sorry,” she squeaked.
“A rather personal question for mere companions, don’t you think?” Polaris returned to poring over his papers.
“Do you mind?”
The unicorn huffed and rolled up his work. “I do, but seeing how many times we almost died, there’s no point in me being a stickler about it.” He stashed his papers away. “If you must know, I am indeed making a map.”
“Yes! I knew it, wooh!” And the pegasus happily cheered and flapped her wings. “Polaris was making a map! Polaris was making a map!” Her happy voice ringed and bounced around the mountain.
“Yes-yes, you’re very clever,” Polaris grumbled.
“What’s the map for?” Lightning asked. “The mountains, the hills? The tallest peak?”
“The entire Badlands.”
Lightning’s wings dropped in shock. “The whole doggone thing?!” she cried.
"Indeed. That's why it's imperative that I reach the tallest peak, so I can map out as much as possible." 
“Still, that’s got to be impossible for one pony!”
“Well, that’s what they all said,” Polaris smiled and held his chin up. “But that was before they heard of me! My cartography skills are renowned the entire kingdom over ...mostly because there are so few left… but that only meant when they needed a map of Cabalos’ most dangerous region, they knew exactly who to call.”
“And they dropped you off behind the stormwall into the middle of nowhere without any help?” Lightning was still aghast. “What if you got eaten by monsters, or swept away by a storm, or got lost?”
“First of all, I can handle myself in a fight, as you’ve seen.”
“Um…” Lightning looked away.
“Second of all, I could not get lost.”
“Don’t you mean never?”
“No, I cannot get lost. It is a fact,” Polaris pointed as his horn. “My horn is attuned to the gravitational poles of the world. My latitude and longitude are always known to me. I cannot get lost.” Polaris frowned. “Which just goes to show how cursed these lands are if a unicorn’s divining can fail him out here. It will be such a relief to get home and be able to feel five feet in front of me again.” Polaris saw something down below and squinted. He took a quick peek at his papers, and then wiped off his glasses. “No accounting for spot-checks, I suppose,” he said. “Oh dear.”
"What's wrong?"
Polaris showed his paper to Lightning. "Look at this."
“I’m… er… seeing lots of trees and rocks. There's the grove where we met Meadow! Is that dotted line us? Are we at the end of that line?”
“Augh! I’m showing you classified documentation! You could at least try to act like you know what you’re talking about.” Lightning pursed her lips and sat down as Polaris sifted through his other notes. “I missed a spot,” he said. “I must have been distracted, by the galloway most likely, and I was remiss to fill in a square! This will not do!”
“What if we went back for it? Or can you do it later, once we reach the top?” Lightning asked.
“It may be out of view by then! See how the elevation changes here?” Polaris pointed at something on the map that Lightning honestly couldn’t understand.
“Oh, no!” Lightning tried to check where he was looking at specifically. “What are you going to do?”
“Loathe as I am to say it, I may just climb back down,” he said. “Even if it does cost us more time in the end… Hm.”
“We probably don’t want to risk getting turned around again,” Lightning said.
“Indeed,” Polaris said. “But I cannot simply leave my work unfinished.”  
“So what are you going to do?”
Polars’ eyes lit up, which made Lightning frightened for some reason. “Why, it’s obvious! Why didn’t I think of this sooner?” Polaris put his documents away, marched up to Lightning and held out his hoof.
“...Huh?”
“You will carry me.”
Lightning’s eyes popped and her wings drooped. “Huh?!”
“Why, it’s only the natural solution isn’t it? I need a bird eye’s view, and you’ve got wings.”
Lightning’s face flushed. “Yeah but…”
“You said you’d help me earlier, didn’t you?”


Regardless of her choice in the matter, Lightning found herself several stories in the air, clutching the unicorn with her legs as she vigorously flapped her wings. Gravity, her old friend, was being as helpful as ever. It felt like she was carrying a sack of scrap metal. Weren’t unicorns meant to be light and frail or something, she thought? Her shoulders were wearing out and her forelegs felt like they were going to get pulled out of their sockets. The thought of dropping her cargo and flying away free into the sky tempted her again and again.
Polaris thoughtfully struck at his sheet over and over again with his quill. “A little further, if you’d please,” he said. Lightning squeezed her eyes shut and hefted him forward. 
“Yes, thank you.” Polaris' ears perked up when Lightning made a strange gasping noise. "Aren't soldiers trained for carrying weights?"
“I... never trained for... passengers...!" Lightning cried. How… much… longer?” she wheezed.
“Half a moment. Ah, if I knew it was just a blank patch of ground I wouldn’t have bothered. Perhaps that’s why I ignored it in the first place...”
“Wait, it’s empty?!” Lightning said. “Then why are we up here?!”
“For consistency of course! Now hold still while I scratch this down...”
“Oh,” she started to cry a little.
“Buck up soldier, I’m almost done! Just think about something else for ten more seconds, that’s all I ask.”
“Puppies… kittens… rainbows…” Lightning murmured to herself. “Puppies… kittens… rainbows!”
It was certainly more than ten seconds later when Lightning nearly choked on the air. Her throat started to burn. She thought it was the fatigue, but it simply would not go away, and a familiar feeling of dread boiled in her stomach. 
The sound of music filled her ears. It was coming from a direction below. Before she knew what she was doing, Lightning was descending.
“Wuh -- Private, I’m not finished! Hey, are you listening to me? Oh…!” Polaris scratched away furiously at his page to finish in time before their vantage point disappeared.
Polaris was gently placed on the ground while Lightning flitted away to look at something. “You’re very lucky I was basically finished. What did you do that for? ...Private?" Lightning had dashed away down the side of a cliff. Polaris groaned and followed after her.
Lightning recognized the trail. It was the trail earlier that she wanted to climb, but Polaris voted against. She came around a bend and stopped in her tracks.
A large rock jutted from the ground. It was covered in markings. Somebody she didn't recognize was examining it. They were wearing a robe, and she couldn't even make out the color of their coat or mane. It was like squinting through a keyhole in a dream, she could never seem to read the figure's shape. She spent an instant endlessly poring over the mystery character and being at a total loss how impossible it was to actually see what was right in front of her.
"Hello?" she whispered. She knew the figure moved to look at her, but she couldn't see their face, or their eyes.
"Private!" Polaris finally caught up. "What did I say last time about running off?"
"Sorry, I was just..." When Lightning looked back, the figure was gone. Completely absent. She cautiously approached the stone. "Didn't you see them?"
"See who?" Polaris asked. "Private!" She examined the rock from every angle. “Now I know you’re just ignoring me." He walked closer and stepped beside her and the rock. "...Say, what did you say your family name was?”
“Hm?” Lightning abruptly looked away.
“Your family name, what clan are you from?” Polaris asked. Lightning didn’t notice him produce a note from his bag.
“Oh, Clan Mistral. Why?”
“There!” Polaris finished jotting something down and put the note away. “Now I know who to send the lawsuit to when your flightiness inevitably breaks one of my bones! You never were trained to stick together, were you?” 
Lightning pointed. “Look,” she said. “See those cracks?”
“...Yes. They probably formed during some rapid change in the temperature, a hot season perhaps.”
“They’re fresh,” she said. “See the colors? This just happened.”
“Then perhaps it was direwolves. They do love to scratch things up. Predators love to renovate so to speak.”
“I’m really not sure…” Lightning looked down the trail and took off again. Polaris rolled his eyes and followed after her. He found her at the edge of a clearing in the trees, many of which had been snapped in half. The pegasus stood there gawking and kept looking in different directions. Everywhere she looked, the stones were black and burnt.
“Polaris, this couldn’t have been a direwolf,” Lightning said. “We’re too high up, and they can’t cut stone with their claws. This had to be something bigger.”
“Alright fine, so it wasn’t a direwolf,” Polaris relented. “Another torus perhaps? It could have been a bugbear for all we know, we don’t have any clue as to what lives out here.”
“We do have clues!” Lightning said. “See the burn-marks on the rocks? See all of these broken trees? And can’t you smell that?”
Polaris sniffled and wiped his nose. “Now that you mention it the air is rather unpleasant… But what does it all mean?”
Lightning walked up to Polaris and looked the most serious and worried he’d ever seen her. “A dragon,” she said. “There’s a dragon out here!”
Polaris laughed softly, but once he saw how distraught Lightning really was he stopped. “Come now, Private. What would a dragon be doing out here? They hate this place nearly as much as we do,” Polaris said.
Lightning swallowed. "What if... hypothetically... A group of dragons possibly chased a group of soldiers over the border, and then we all got blown away by a possible thunderstorm, and possibly one pegasus and one dragon ended up behind the stormwall, and they've spent the last three days possibly trying to fly their way out... possibly?"
Polaris blinked a few times. "Dragons? You fought dragons?" Lightning slowly nodded. "I figured you were a little too green for that." A thought crossed his mind and his expression grew grim. “...Then again, a dragon on the loose out here would make sense. The wildlife wasn’t behaving anything like my intel suggested, lacking though it may be…”
“What?”
Polaris held his chin as he paced back and forth. If Lightning didn’t know any better, which very well might have been the case, Polaris didn’t look at all frightened by the possibility. In fact, he looked intrigued.
“A real dragon,” Polaris said. “All the way out here? Oh what a story that would make… Of course!” He suddenly shouted at Lightning, who backed up with a squeak. Birds flew from their branches.
“Of course what?” she asked carefully.
“What if everything, the restless wildlife, the tremors and the strange weather, etcetera… was all the work of one dragon? An invasive predator disrupting the natural order of things... It may very well be connected to the Cosmic Phenomenon the Minister spoke of!”
Lightning was completely lost. “What tremors?” she asked. As if in answer, the ground rumbled slightly the moment the words left her mouth. 
“The tremors I’ve been feeling this whole time, actually. I've been experiencing some constant ground-shakery ever since I got here, actually. Never took it to be footsteps.” Lightning’s throat suddenly became very dry. “Well wait, that won’t do,” Polaris said to himself. “I’ll have to be realistic here. The average dragon is maybe twice the size of a pony, and they rank low on the bad news tier list. A normal dragon couldn’t have caused all this.” He was completely remiss to the quaking ground that only grew stronger and louder with each wave. The dry shrubbery behind him began to shift. Something was rustling its way through the trees.
“Tr-trees! T-T-Tremors!” Lightning pointed her hoof and cried.
“Why, if anything,” Polaris didn’t seem to hear her at all. “If a dragon were responsible for all of the above, it would have to be…” The sun was blocked out and the two were covered by a dark, long shadow. “Incredibly…” Polaris turned around and looked up. “Unusually… tall… Um…”
Red glowing eyes bore down on them. Its stiff wings flapped once. Silver teeth clacked together as the behemoth dragon hungrily licked its mouth with a long, slithering tongue. Its gleaming orange scales were cracked and fractured, and stony green growths jutted out from its body like sores. A particularly large green crystal sat in the center of its forehead wedged between two of its cracked scales. It looked tired and angry. It slathered its teeth with its tongue and a string of drool touched the dusty ground right next to the unicorn.
Polaris cleared his throat and swallowed. “Well then!” He forced a smile and looked back at Lightning. “…Private? What’s the plan? You’re the dragon expert after all, aren’t you?” He could barely finish his sentence before he was grabbed by the shoulders and yanked away, just in time as the dragon’s snout slammed into the earth where he once stood.
“Run!!” Lightning screamed as she pulled him away. The two ran back up the trail as fast as they could. Lightning stole a glance behind her. The dragon snorted a couple of times and then set its eyes right on her. “Brothers bless it, it recognizes me!” she said. “Oh this is bad… bad-bad-bad!”
“We’re not going to fight it?” Polaris asked.
“I’ve never fought something that big!” Lightning cried. “...Never won a fight that is.”
“Well if we’re going to run, let’s run up the mountain!” Polaris said. “We may be able to lose it in the rocks.”
They had just reached where Lightning had first seen the clawed stones. The dragon growled and leapt into the air. Its massive shadow sailed over the two ponies. With a sound like a thousand crashing trees, the dragon landed right in front of them and blocked off their path.
The two ponies skid on their hooves and scrambled in vain to turn around in time. The dragon brought its fist down on the ground and sent dust and rocks flying at them. “Okay, new plan,” Lightning said. “Run the other way!” The two barely turned around in time before the dragon slammed its snout into the dirt and rock behind them.
“I still don’t see…” Polaris panted as he ran. “Why the two of us can’t put up some kind of defense?”
“What?!”
“There’s two of us and just one of it,” Polaris said. “And it’s just a dragon after all. Remember how low they rank on the list?”
“That’s not an ordinary dragon,” Lightning cried. “I don’t think four other ponies would be enough to stop that thing.”
“We stopped the torus, and that’s a much deadlier beast.”
“Oh, so now we stopped the torus?!”
The wind howled in Lightning’s ears. At first she thought nothing of it, but then she remembered the gorge from earlier. She looked ahead and to her horror, she realized the dragon was corralling them towards the very  chasm she spied all that time ago.
Lightning dove for Polaris and pinned him to the ground. The dragon flew past them and nearly barreled right over the edge. It dug its claws into the ground and turned itself around. “It seems like every dangerous creature around here can turn on a bit,” Polaris grumbled. 
The dragon swiped its claws at the two. They ducked and turned away. The dragon swiped again, and this time it caught Polaris’ bag. He gasped as he was nearly pulled unto his back by the force. His bag opened up, and amidst the billowing wind flying up from the gorge his papers were sucked from his bag and carried away.
Polaris let out an absolutely despondent cry as he shouted after the days of work that flew away from him. “No!” And then for the first time Lightning saw Polaris truly angry. His horn and his eyes both flashed as he turned a murderous gaze to the dragon. “Some fool’s ‘boutta get stabbed!” He pawed the earth and prepared to charge.
The dragon’s wide maw dropped open as a jet of flame shot out. Polaris dropped low to the ground and just avoided getting his horn singed. Polaris got right back up and prepared to charge again. Lighting jumped up, gripped Polaris with her legs, and yanked him away into the treetops. The Dragon’s teeth snapped at empty air.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Polaris cried indignantly. The giant trees sped by around them as they flew away. “Put me down this instant! I’m not going anywhere until that thing gets a piece of my mind--'' The Dragon’s fire breath nearly singed Polaris’ hooves. He gripped Lightning’s hooves with his own and squeezed, all thoughts of revenge forgotten. “Ah! Higher, higher!”	
“I’m trying! The branches are too thick, I might drop you!”  Lightning caught a gleam from the corner of her eye. The Dragon brought down its massive claws. Lightning swung out of the way just in time.  Lightning let out another scream, and in her panic she dropped her passenger.
“Private!” the unicorn called as he plummeted. “I’ll charge your family for the funeral~!”
Lightning dove for the unicorn and caught him just before he hit the ground. She pulled him up and his hooves just barely grazed the ground. 
Polaris once again felt a jolt. “Gah! What is your deal Private?! Are you perpetually charged with static electricity or something?!” Lightning didn’t answer. 
Polaris watched the ground race beneath him, and to his side he heard hooves beating the ground. He looked over and saw none other than Meadow Skip racing alongside them. He was smiling.
"How."
"Man, I love a good gallopin'!" Meadow Skip called over the wind and the tremors. "You might even say I love a good gallopin' away! Gettit? 'cause I'm a galloway! Say, what are we gallopin' away from?" And then he met with a tree. It was quite a musical impact, what with the sound his lute made when he struck the bark. Polaris looked behind him and watched as his coat and mane disappeared behind them.
"Wait, was that Meadow Skip just now?!" Lightning called.
Polaris looked up at her. "...No?"
They sped and wove around trees, but the dragon never relented. It snapped its jaws at them and tried to catch them with its clawed fingers. Lightning found herself crying again. She had never flown so fast in her life, and certainly not with a passenger. The adrenaline made it easier to forget about her companion’s weight, the sounds of the dragon scraping along the ground, flattening trees and crushing rocks made her heart pound harder and harder in her chest. It was almost hard to breath. She outran mountchasers, direwolves and the torus, but this was different. There was no way she could ever escape from something this huge. It felt like her fate was sealed the moment this thing attacked her squadron. It would follow her to the ends of the earth and there was nothing she could do about it.
“Captain?” she cried out internally. “Brothers? Mom? Somebody, help us please!”
She turned a corner and something blue and shiny twinkled in the woods beneath them. Lightning looked below. She spotted somebody hiding in the trees. Meadow Skip? They wore a dark hood that covered their bright blue coat. They waved their hoof at her, and so she stopped.
“Private, what are you doing?!” Polaris said. “It’s still following us! It’ll see us any minute!”
 Lightning scanned the ground. They had disappeared. Some birds rose from the trees behind them and fled. “Didn’t you see that?” she asked.
“What, the swarms of birds evacuating the forest? Giving us a hint, perhaps?!”
”There’s somebody down there! Look, down in the trees.” 
“Are you serious right now??” A familiar growl rattled the trees behind them. “That’s our cue to beat it! Fly canary, FLY!!”
Lightning saw something blue dart through the trees. The figure ran back towards the mountain peak they had just flown past. They beckoned Lightning forward, and for some reason she didn’t even hesitate to follow. Polaris wasn’t able to get his reply in before she swung around and flew away.
Polaris tightened his grip. “We are going the way we came. We are going back the way we came! Private, turn back!” 
The dragon’s horned head burst through a tree and howled at them. Lightning wasn’t paying attention. She dove below and sped after the figure. The dragon roared after them.
 She could never lock her eyes on them, but she could always catch fleeting glimpses of the figure racing through the woods, almost always a glimpse of their tail as they turned a bend or dove behind a rock. Sometimes they would stop and look up at her to make sure she was still following. When the figure made a sharp turn, Lightning did the same. 
Lightning followed the stranger’s path past the trees and into a sort of narrow canyon. When she stopped to look around, the figure was gone. It was as though they vanished in the span of her merely blinking.  The grass was surprisingly green compared to what she had seen before. She brought them close to the ground and gently let Polaris down. She dropped to the ground much less gracefully. Her wings were tired and sore, and she was positive she wouldn't be able to carry Polaris and fly again, at least not for very long. Polaris seemed to come to the same conclusion as he offered her one sympathetic glance before he examined their surroundings. 
“Great. Outstanding work, Miss Pegasus. A dead end.” Polaris straightened his glasses and dusted himself off with his tail again.
“No it’s not, look.” 
Polaris squinted and spied at the very end of the canyon, wedged between the corners of two great rocks, was a tiny hole that maybe could fit one pony.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” he said.
“But this is where they were leading us! ...I think.”
“And what is waiting for us in that hole, a cave or tunnel for us to get lost in? Or perhaps the perfect cubby hole for that dragon to scoop us out from? We may as well turn to face the dragon head-on.”
“I don’t think they would have led me here if it wasn’t important!”
“Oh, of course! Rather than take advice from me, your companion, you’ll trust the mysterious stranger who only exists in the corner of your eye?”
“Polaris!” Lightning said sharply. She startled both Polaris and herself. “I didn’t mean to yell, but listen please! I know what I saw. I know I’m not that smart and I’m not good at a lot of things, but I’ve always had an eye for details. I’m a scout, it may be the one thing I’m good at!”
“Good for seeing phantoms and figments of your own imagination, more likely!”
The dragon’s roar rattled through the canyon. The earth shook with each step. The two began to backpedal further into the canyon. “If that thing catches us in here, we’re done for. We’re trapped like mice!” Polaris looked up and down the canyon walls for some avenue of escape. “There's no way we can climb or fly away fast enough. ...At this rate we may have to fight our way out. We could at least stun it long enough for one of us to flee.”
“What about the cave?”
“You really think that’s any safer? There could be something living in there that’s even worse than the dragon for all we know.”
“We don’t have much of a choice!” Lightning said. “The dragon can’t follow us in there, at least we’d be safe for a little bit--” The dragon roared again. It turned the corner and cast its red red gaze on the two ponies. It snarled and prepared to break into a run.
“Well,” Polaris said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this but... I’ll take my chances out here with the dragon.” The dragon bared its fangs. “You go on ahead, do whatever you see fit. I’ll hold that thing off and join you if I can.”
“You’re not serious,” Lightning said.
“I promised to get you to the border once my work was done. It’s now far from complete, but we can’t always get our way.” Polaris saw that Lightning was completely unmoving. Her eyes were aghast. “Don’t you worry, I’ll be fine. I won’t be any more daring and stupid than I have to be, I still intend to become a professor after all. I have plenty of adventures ahead of me I’m sure.
“Besides,” Polaris muttered to himself. “Better the devilish death you know than a slow, uncertain death in the dark. I think.”
Lightning shook her head. “...I can’t.”
“Pardon?” 
“Sorry, but I just can’t leave you here!” Lightning gripped Polaris and made a mad dash for the cave with her wings. The dragon howled at them as Polaris tried to struggle free. It reached out its long clawed hand and swiped at Polaris. 
“Woah-woah! Sisters!”
The dragon finally slammed its claws down and squeezed its talons. It impatiently shifted the rocks and brush from its palm and searched for its prey, but it found no pony in its claws. That was before it noticed the last of Polaris’ tail disappear into the tiny hole in the edge of the canyon. It reared back its head and howled in anger. 


Lightning groaned and shook her head as she lay against the cold, pebbled floor. Polaris nearly bumped his head on the low ceiling and swore under his breath. The tiny crevice did indeed lead to a much bigger cave on the inside. The top of the cave drifted further and farther from the ground as one walked inwards. They spotted at least two tunnel entrances branching ahead of them. The tiny hole didn’t grant much illumination, but they could make each other out well enough. They could still hear the dragon shuffling about outside, snarling. It seemed to have lost track of them, for now.
Polaris checked his saddlebag. Not only had his drafts been sucked away, but the few pears he kept from the grove were now one step away from pair jam, and his bag was now dark and sticky. With just a touch of resignation, he offered a brief thanks in the name of the Sun and Moon. He then cast a glance at Lightning. She lay on the ground, slumped over on her side. Her eyes were wide open but her belly rose and fell rapidly as she caught her breath.
“Well, I hope you’re happy,” he said. “Not once, but twice I offered a noble act of service and both times you rejected them! First you insisted on sharing in my misery, and now you drag me along into yours and robbed me of an honorable confrontation with our foe.”
When he looked back at Lightning, she was back on her feet. She was backing away from the entrance with her eyes locked on the outside. Before Polaris could ask, Lightning answered. “It smells us,” she breathed.
“It what?!”
The ceiling shook as something pounded at the earth outside. Lightning was instantly on her feet and backing away from the crevice.
Just then the crevice was blotted out by a dark shape. Claws reached in through the tiny hole. The stone wall formed cracks and fissures as the hand squeezed its way inside. Polaris and Lightning flung themselves in opposite directions and hugged the sides of the cave as the dragon’s hand aimless groped around the floor. Not once, but twice did its claws just barely brush against one of their hooves. Lightning screwed her face and looked away as she suppressed a whine.
The claws raked the pebbly floor and drew rocky shrapnel from the solid stone floor. A sliver of rock slid next to Polaris’ hoof. Cautiously, Polaris reached with his hind hoof and scooted it towards him. Lighting eased herself further into the cave, and Polaris did the same after he pocketed the stone.
Finally the dragon seemed to give up. It pulled its claws back through the crevice, but the two ponies did not move. Just when they thought it might have been safe, the small room was suddenly illuminated by the red glow of the dragon’s eyes. They heard it snort and snarl in anger. 
And then it was gone. 
Normal daylight filtered into the small cave.
Very carefully, Lightning sidled along the stone wall. "What are you doing," Polaris hissed over to her.
“We have to go deeper into the cave!” she said.
Polaris was about to protest when the ceiling shook and pelted him with dust and pebbles. The air hissed outside. Polaris managed a glance outside the hole just in time to see the dragon's tail swinging towards the hole. He dove out of the way just as the tail met the stone with a thunderous crash. The whole room shook, rubble fell from every direction outside until the hole was completely blocked by stone and rocks. Polaris' eye twitched before he followed after Lightning. “Oh, if you insist!”


The two moved as quickly as they could manage in the dark. The rattling rubble from outside made the urge to break into a gallop hard to resist, but it doesn’t need to be said what a bad idea running through a cave would be. 
“Well, what now Private?” Polaris asked. “It appears we are in for even more of a long haul than before.”
Lightning looked around carefully. “Um… I’m no whatever-ologist, but the atmosphere in here seems pretty breathable, so air’s getting in from somewhere, right? Maybe if we keep moving we’ll find another exit.”
“Well of course,” Polaris kept reaching for a wall that wasn’t there to steady himself. “But the matter of a pony passing through such a portal is the real problem. We barely fit through the one that got us here.” Lightning opened her mouth to say something but then Polaris cut her off. “And no, I still can’t ‘feel my way’ out of here, I already tried, thanks for asking.”
“Actually I was going to ask if you could cast a light spell with your horn.”
“Oh, of course! That’s why you dragged me along in the first place, isn’t it? You were banking on some stereotypical unicorn power that I may or may not have to save the day.”
“...Can you though?” Lightning asked with a smile.
Polaris frowned. He winced a little as magic coursed through his horn. The horn’s spiraled markings turned from purple, to pink, to white, and then it was bright enough to light up a small circle around the two of them.
“Yes, but my point is you didn’t know that.”



Polaris cast his light unto the ceiling and marveled at the different gradients and sediments of the stone.
“Absolutely fascinating,” he said. “If I’m identifying these rocks correctly, these caves and mountains may very well be composed of elder stones!”
“What’s an elder stone?” Lightning asked. “Sounds kind of silly if you ask me. Isn't any rock pretty old?”
“Yes, but this stone is the rocks of rocks! The oldest of old stones. This very material supposedly  comprised the surface of Cabalos back when dragons roamed and old magic ruled. It was stone like this that the Alicorns tread when they first arrived, before they healed the earth. So of course it makes sense that the Badlands are the only place left to find such things, being the scar of the old world and whatnot.”
“...Huh,” Lightning nodded as if she understood. “Wait, how tough is this stuff supposed to be?”
“Oh, it’s basically indestructible!” Polaris said. “Why, it’d take a very powerful tool or spell to even chip this stuff. It’s the densest rock on Cabalos this side of a Meteoran… er, nevermind.”
“Is this the same stuff the entrance was made out of?” Lightning asked.
“Oh, most definitely! In fact… wait…” Polaris seemed to catch on to what Lightning was getting at. He produced the sliver of stone from his bag, the one the dragon had clawed from the entrance of the cave. “Oh dear.”
“That dragon can claw through this elder stone like it’s nothing,” Lightning said with a sad frown. “It may just be a matter of time until it finds us again…”
“Now now,” Polaris said. “There’s nothing telling us that it absolutely can cut through this very rock, perhaps the entrance had been weakened by the elements. Why... the rubble from earlier couldn't have been entirely elder stone...”
“Maybe,” Lightning said. “I don’t wanna put too much past a dragon. They find ways to surprise you, in the bad way.”
“Well, if worse comes to worse, we can deal with it like we did the torus,” Polaris said.
“I guess,” Lightning said as she stared at her feet. Something glimmered on the cave floor as Polaris’ light passed it by. “Wait, what’s that?” Lightning pointed.
“What’s what?” Polaris looked where Lightning directed him and the article lit up once more.
“The shiny thing!” Lightning bounded after it.
“Private, wait! Oh blast,” and Polaris followed her.
Lightning tugged at some heavy, circular object with her mouth and pulled it closer to Polaris. She set it down and had him shine his light on it. It was circular, almost completely metal, and was covered in swirled markings along the edges, with a V-shape emblem on the front. A leather strap was bolted to its underside, which looked fairly new.
“A shield?” Polaris blinked. He pawed at it with his hoof, as he couldn’t lift it with his horn without cancelling their light. “Peculiar. What’s it doing all the way down here? It looks like it’s pony-sized.”
Lightning crouched down and examined it as closely as she could. “It almost looks Meteoran!” she said. “I recognize these patterns…” Suddenly Lightning’s face paled and her eyes widened. She backed away from the shield and began peering over her shoulder.
“Hullo? What’s come over you?”
“You don’t think…” Lightning gulped before she looked at Polaris. “You don’t some pegasus flew down here and… d-died, do you?”
Polaris blinked. She was trembling, her eyes were shrunk with terror, and her wings were stuck tight as a clam to her body as she earnestly looked to him for some kind of encouragement. He knew it was up to him to dispel her current distress as delicately as possible.
“Oh it’s entirely possible,” he said. “The Badlands are infamous for their stories of ponies to pay a visit only to never return, the Mercurial Mountains most of all, where we are now in fact. However...”
Lighting’s countenance absolutely plummeted before he could even finish. “Th-then the stories about the mountains really are true!” she gasped.  "It really was a mistake to hide in here! These places are bad luck, and they could be crawling with ghosts!”
Polaris paused. “Ghosts? Oh please, don’t be silly.”
“It’s not silly!” Lightning cried.
“No, Private. I am not a stallion of superstition. The concept of restless spirits I hereby professionally put, is silly. Undead phenomena has long been disproven. It was around two hundred years ago when the great unicorn Wizard Stygian published his studies on the--”

Woah, Nelly! Let’s go down
Let’s go down, Let’s go down!
	Woah, Nelly! Let’s go down
	Down to the valley to play…

The words kept repeating, and for a while the two ponies listened in a terrified stupor. The sweet, melancholy voice crept around the room and seemed to get louder and louder. Polaris shook himself free and got back to his feet. “Well! Regardless of what I think, I declare we’d best get a move on!” He butted Lightning up with his forehead, carefully as not to prod her with his horn. “And let’s just leave that old shield where we left it. Chop chop! Double time soldier, let’s move!”
The two found themselves running. They stopped once the singing had died down, and they found themselves back in a large, honeycombed cavern. The two stopped to catch their breaths. Lightning was on the verge of tears and kept peering behind them, perhaps expecting some spectral disaster to leer out at them from the darkness.
Polaris recovered his composure the quickest, and wiped his glasses off. “Auditory pareidolia.”
“Auditory what?”
“Auditory pareidolia,” Polaris repeated. “Mistaking a series of random noises for a pattern. A simple illusion of the ear many individuals experience during moments of intense stress, or any otherwise uncomfortable situations.”
Lightning crept closer to Polaris as she still spied on the tunnel where they had exited. “A-Are you sure?”
“Positive! You can trust me,” Polaris said with a smile… followed by a loud, dry gulp and a nervous chuckle. “Anyway, I’m sure some fresh air and sunlight will do us good right about now, so we’d best continue in earnest.”
They’d barely taken a step forward before their ears were blessed by a familiar sound.

Woah Nelly…

The haunting melody from earlier suddenly descending upon them. It crept from the ceiling and danced along the floor around them as they walked. Lightning shifted closer and closer to Polaris as they walked together. She attempted to pull him closer with her wing, but he avoided her. She saw him shakily adjust his glasses with his hoof.
“S-so, a-audit-ditory para-whatever, h-huh?” she asked.
“Y-yes, most certainly,” Polaris affirmed. “You ca-can count on it…”

Woah Nelly, Let’s go down
	Let’s go down, let’s go down!
	Woah Nelly, Let’s go do---AAAAAAUGH

From somewhere above a shape struck the ground and let fly a large cloud of dust from the impact. There was a twanging and almost musical sound, accompanied by a crunch. “Oof!” Lightning and Polaris backed away and huddled together. The unicorn cast his light unto the figure and elicited a surprised yelp from them. They had a white coat and a green mane. They wore a saddle with several small bags tied to it.
Lightning blinked. “By the Brothers, another pony!” 
“It seems I’m destined to meet falling ponies from on high today,” Polaris said with a grumble.
Without any misgiving Lightning ran to the pony’s side. “Are you okay?”  she asked.
“I’m fine,” the figure croaked. “My lute broke my fall.” He retrieved a broken contraption from the ground. It was a stringed instrument with a now very bent neck. He sighed and sadly stowed it away into his saddle.
“...Sir Meadow Skip?” Polaris asked. 
"Nobody's ever called me sir before... I like it! Glad to catch up with you two! It seems the wind carried us on the same path after all!"
The unicorn shook his head. “Of course, it was another pony,” he let out a sigh of relief. “Those noises had to have been made by another living creature. It’s the most obvious solution, really.”
 The galloway looked at the pegasus and unicorn. “So… hey. What’s up.” It was more of a statement than a question.
“You were, until a few seconds ago, that is,” Lightning said.
“How long have you been down here?” Polaris asked.
“Down here with you?” the galloway asked. "Oh, I've been here the whole time. I only just got into the cave though. It was shaking something fierce outside so I squeezed into a little cubbyhole, next thing I know I'm in these caves."
“He must have hit his head,” Polaris said. “Speaking even more nonsense than usual. ...So long as that mystery is solved...” And Polaris continued as carefully and quickly as he could.
“Oh, you’re leaving already?” the galloway asked.
“He’s very serious about his work,” Lightning said with an understanding nod. “But you should come with us! We’ll get out of here together!”
Polaris almost screamed. “Private? Let’s not trouble this stallion any more for his time, he’s probably very--”
“Oh, I’m not busy at all!” The galloway said as he trotted forward. “I’d be happy to accompany you.”
“Great,” Polaris said in a way that almost made it sound not-so-great.
“I’d gladly play a song for you…” Polaris looked back at the galloway with horror. “...But seeing as my instrument is a little bent out of shape right now, that will have to wait.”
“Thank you Sisters,” Polaris mouthed.
“Aw, that’s too bad,” Lightning said. "Your singing was so lovely!"
"Why, thank you!" The galloway smiled and cast a sideways glance in Lightning’s direction. “And I will look forward to playing for such a kind and lovely filly such as yourself,” he said with a bow.
Lightning’s face flushed and she waved a hoof. “Oh no! There’s no need for that,” she said. “I was just being polite. I would really want to hear you play again once things have calmed down, though.”
“If you’re both done with your theatrics,” Polaris said. “Maybe we’d cover more ground if we weren’t so busy chatting it up with the galloway." 


Polaris poked at the ground with his horn. He furrowed his brow and muttered something to himself. Meadow watched with a pensive smile on his face. He sidled closer to Lightning and put a hoof over his mouth and whispered harshly. “Don’t look now but I think he’s lost it…!” Lightning frowned and shook her head at him. That was just before Polaris soundlessly crept up to her and tapped her shoulder. She yelped and jumped five feet into the air. Polaris looked down at his hoof and swore. 
“Nothing, blast!”
“Don’t scare me like that!” Lightning cried.
“It would appear your charge is completely gone…”  Polaris said. “I was hoping that your interminable zap-age was somehow effecting the magnetism with my divining... So even though my divining should have gotten clearer, why can’t I get a grasp on these tunnels? In theory I should have been able to map a way out of here ages ago, but if I press more than a few steps away with my divination the path completely muddles up, and by the time we reach the area I attempted to scan, it’s wildly different than from what I anticipate. It’s almost as if the tunnels themselves are shifting…”
Lightning giggled nervously. “But that’d be crazy, right?” She looked between Polaris and Meadow. “...Right?”
“It definitely doesn’t contradict any of the legends about this place,” Meadow said. “Famously, though the badlands are rough to navigate, the Mercurial Mountains are even worse.”
“Worse how?” Polaris asked.
“Worse like say… climbing up for days and never traveling for but a few feet, twisting, winding canyons that lead to nowhere, or a vast shifting tunnel network that runs throughout the entire mountain range.” Lightning and Polaris just kind of stared at the bard. “Oh come on, you two! Don’t tell me a Meteoran Border guard and a Lustrian scholar have heard nothing about this place? And stop that staring, you’re gonna make me blush.”
“H-How did you know I was a border guard?” Lightning asked. “Or that he was a scholar?”
“Oh, it’s your armor -- light armor at that, you’re obviously some kind of scout. As for the unicorn -- it’s the way you use advanced vernacular to mask your lack of understanding.”
“Color me surprised, bard,” Polaris looked more than a little irritated. “I didn’t think you had the capacity for such cohesive thought.”
“Polaris!” Lightning said.
“Why thank you, that’s not a condiment I get often,” Meadow said with another light bow.
“And we’re back. ...Back on topic, what exactly do you know about this place?” Polaris asked. “When I was inserted here all the written material I was given fit on a napkin.”
“Well, I would've divulged earlier were you willing, but since you asked...” Meadow brushed off his hooves importantly. “Maybe this vital information wasn’t important enough to Lustre. Homebred unicorns have this tendency to ignore theories and observations that aren’t cooked up by their own scholars. That happens a lot.”
Lightning giggled.
“Continue…” Polaris urged.
Meadow trotted onwards as he spoke. “See, the legends have it that the Badlands aren’t cursed per say but enchanted by a powerful spell.”
“What does the spell do?” Lightning asked as she and Polaris followed.
“Well for starters it makes it extremely hard to navigate these parts,” Meadow said. “And the harder you think about it, the worse it gets. You’ll be walking in circles for days, or climbing the same hill forever without ever getting any higher.”
“But that’s impossible,” Polaris said. “Physically impossible! To perpetuate such a perturbing perceptual phenomenon would require extremely powerful magic.”
“Like I said, then,” Meadow said with a wink. “Legend has it these lands were enchanted to keep people who don’t need to be here out.”
“And who determines that?”
Meadow shrugged at the unicorn’s question. “Destiny, fate, iunno. Still figuring it all out myself.”
“If your legends are true, then fate must really like trapping random ponies out here to expire,” Polaris thought back to the shield. “The distinction between curse and spell seems a little pointless to me.”
“Do the legends say anything about how to escape?” Lightning asked hopefully.
“No, but there are theories,” Meadow said. “One theory says that you have to want to be somewhere rather than think. If you want to know the secrets of the mountains, you might actually find your way… or you’ll just find yourself at the entrance again. And if you want to go home, supposedly, you’ll eventually find your way out.”
Polaris and Lightning both were quiet for a moment. 
“So what you’re saying is…” Lightning said slowly as she pieced it together in her head. “If we stop worrying about getting lost and just wish for something, we’ll be alright?”
“Navigational suicide,” Polaris decreed darkly. “I don’t care what magic is in place, you’ll never get out of any cave without your sense of direction. Depriving yourself of something so basic sounds like a recipe for trouble.”
“Then just let me take the lead for a bit!” Meadow said.
“I’d rather not,” Polaris said.
Lightning prodded the unicorn’s leg lightly. “But it’s kind of his turn now, isn’t it?”
“I never agreed to turns,” Polaris frowned and snorted, but Meadow was already far ahead and in the lead anyway. "We're never getting out of this." Less than a couple strides later the air grew sweeter and the musk of the cave died away. “We may actually be getting out of this!” Polaris declared.
“Oh, I hope there are at least birds on the other end,” Lightning said. “I haven’t seen any since I came here, those mountchasers kept scaring them away.”
“I noticed that too,” Meadow said. “It was so quiet and eerie out there. The poor things were probably hiding scared in their nests.”
"Hiding scared like us," Lightning studied her hooves as she trotted along. “We never would have made it if it weren’t for that hooded-pony person.”
“Again about that, Private?” Polaris asked. “Shouldn’t you know better than to blab on about that sort of thing to strangers?”
“Meadow’s not a stranger anymore, he’s a friend. Right, Meadow?" When Lightning looked ahead, he was nowhere to be seen. He must have turned a corner, but why didn't he respond? “Meadow?” Lightning cried. She ran forward to find him, but when she turned the bend, he was nowhere to be seen. She was about to dash forward, but Polaris held her back and pointed down the corridor.
“...Light,” Polaris said with a gasp. He had trotted a few paces ahead of Lightning and stared down the corridor.
Lightning blinked. “Did you just say my name? Like for real?”
“Light!” Polaris switched off his spell and pointed with his hoof. There rested a single dot of light in the darkness, maybe less than a minute of galloping away. “The end of the tunnel! The galloway was right!” And he took off running. 
"But where is the galloway??"
"He's clearly survived worse, trust me!"
Lightning cast one last uneasy glance at the spot where Meadow had stood mere moments earlier before she took off after Polaris.


The two ponies slowed down as they reached the exit. It appeared as nothing more than a giant ball of light. They squinted and lowered their heads so they wouldn’t be overwhelmed. They felt their hoofs step off of smooth stone and gritty dirt and unto grass. It wasn’t the dry, crackly kind from the woods or hills from earlier, either. It was soft and healthy, and its smell instantly filled their nostrils. Wind gently tossed their manes, but it wasn’t harsh and dry like outside, it was cool and pleasant. Lightning thought she heard the babble of a small stream.
Once they opened their eyes, for miles and miles around all they could see was green. The cave exit had taken them to a large overhang where they had a perfect view of everything for miles around. Green grass, green trees, mossy stones and vine-covered cliffsides. A nearby brook flowed downhill and fed into a small river that winded down grassy hills into a lake. Birds chirped and small critters scuttled around in the trees.
They were inside a very wide and deep valley. How could they have missed it during their climb? Even Lightning should have been able to at least catch a glimpse of it during her surveillance runs in the air. And then there were those strange tower things... Six of them.
“It’s all so lush!” Lightning said.
“Remarkable!” Polaris gasped. “Absolutely remarkable. In the midst of all that blight lies this oasis... It’s like a little slice of arcadia.”
“Yeah, and it’s really green and pretty too…!”
“How could something like this exist? Are we even in the mountains anymore?” Wherever Polaris looked, all he could see were steep cliffs that rose for miles in every direction.
“...What are those?” Polaris asked.
“Those what?”
“Don’t you see them? Those… white, obelisk things.” Polaris pointed and Lightning Bug spied the six large pillars resting at different points in the valley, miles apart but perfectly legible even from their vantage point. They seemed to be covered in carvings, though she couldn’t make anything out from this distance.
“I think those are monoliths.”
“Please, see how round they are? They’re obelisks.”
“But they’re flat at the top. I'm from Meteoras, we know our pillar architecture.”
That wasn’t even the strangest part. Further ahead the two of them saw something unmistakable. Smoking chimneys and thatched roofs. A dirt path right beside them led down to them. Houses; a small village. 
Somebody was living at the bottom of the valley. In fact one needed only look so far before even more clusters of houses appeared in the hills, below the cliffs and beside the forests and lake. Shapes moving in and out and between them. The distance was great but it was no less clear to either of them. The inhabitants of this valley were ponies.
“This is no mere hidden reservoir or oasis, this is a veritable community,” Polaris said. “All this time, right under each nation’s nose, there have been ponies living in the Mercurial Mountains!”