Carne Asada had cultivated unicorns despite her disdain for magic users. Surprisingly blunt and unfriendly, she'd once said to my face, "If you play with unicorns, expect to get burned."
She had wanted access to her "ultimate spell," Teleport. She'd made me her bodyguard when I'd learned it, which is why she had previously given a copy to my fight trainer, White Towel, to reward me with in the hope that I would jump at the opportunity to learn it.
Like a foal offered candy!
Once, I'd used it when a pegasus had stabbed her on the street, spiriting her to safety where I could apply first aid. Subsequently, I'd teleported away a dive-bombing griffon assassin before she could strike. Useful, if not exactly in the way Carne Asada had visualized.
I had plenty of practice casting it.
I spun up and targeted the spell, racing against time. I expected the great big alicorn to grab me with her four legs, or swat me to the ground.
Streak looked back, eyes going wide. She shrieked, "Sweet Celestia!" before flapping for all she was worth up up into the trees. I think she hoped to tangle the princess by diving through dense branches.
She stalled out.
I continued forward and bounced into her flank. She swatted my ear with her nervous tail; it stung as if torn.
Celestia's golden horseshoe dug into my left haunch, jabbing my pulled muscle. Red jags of pain blazed through me. If she wanted to teleport me, she now touched me as I'd touched Carne Asada and others when I teleported them. I kept my spell, racing to cast.
I triggered my Teleport; she triggered one, too.
A loud Skreee! tried to shatter my ear drums. Midair, a sphere of darkness expanded below to envelop me.
Not just below me! The sphere was too big. It enveloped us both as my cheek rebounded in slow-motion off Streak's flank. I scrambled to adjust my vectors and splendors to offset the new barycenter.
I saw Celestia, flared wings suspended mid-flap, her feathers flexing and torquing lazily in a braking maneuver, her right foreleg reaching, teeth gritting, horn a boiling storm of golden nebulosity, with a bandage wrapped around her head to hold a wad of cloth to her ear. Red colored it.
Darkness grew around her and me, two spheres trying to merge like soap bubbles. Blue lightning spidered up, clashing and shrieking along the seams.
Our spells stalled in slowed time.
The world clicked 5º right. The spell restarted.
Teleport2 tore at my reserves of splendors. It felt like a pony ripping my hair out, only it ripped my magic. I gasped. Unfortunately, air in slowed time didn't breathe in very well, but at least we weren't in the vacuum of in-between.
The world clicked 5º right. The spell restarted.
Teleport3 felt like a monster clawed and hooked my belly. Apportioning my magic felt like desperately holding my stomach muscles against an attack while trying not to faint.
Lightning spidered up from different centers, her magic and mine competing to complete the codicils that wished us to our disparate destinations in complete violation of conventional physics.
How could I separate us? Wiggling away trying to break contact wouldn't help; Celestia was pushing her hoof into me, while I was sandwiched between her and Streak.
Worse, while time slowed, it hadn't stopped.
Beyond the lightning, the world moved. We were a thrown seven pony weight stone mass in motion.
Equuis pulled us down along a parabolic trajectory. The trees ahead grew larger. The canopies rose above us as the ground tilted into view.
The world clicked 5º right. The spell restarted.
All the muscles in my body cringed. It wasn't only my previous injuries that hurt. I felt progressively strangled by lack of air. Any Teleport required calculating targeting vectors that cancelled or translated momentum, but for the first time in my experience because I was in flight, we added 3-axis momentum after the fact. I tried to compensate, but there was only so much I could do.
Princess Celestia also compensated. The spells screeched like territorial Rocs perched on opposite mountain peaks across a valley.
The view outside the bubble dipped further.
Who had more splendors? Bits to biscotti, I'd bet on Celestia. I might pass out from lack of oxygen before I won this game of chicken. Continuing risked Streak, the locomotive who led the train barreling off the railroad trestle to the ground below. I didn't want Streak breaking her neck in the upcoming train wreak.
The world clicked 5º right. I released my spell; it didn't restart.
Total silence resumed.
Lightning spidered slowly upward as a larger sphere of darkness grew to envelope the three of us.
Celestia teleported us.
Well, it did answer one of those nagging questions. Did ponies being teleported experience the passage of time the way I did when I cast the spell? I remembered succinctly when the griffon hen had dive-bombed me. I'd seen her green eyes focus on me, even as the glove of knives she sheathed her talons with sliced deeply into my flank. Had she realized I'd teleported her away from her prey, Carne Asada? Had I seen her fury bloom?
Yes, apparently I had.
Time passed no differently regardless of who cast. Time during Teleport ticked by slowly, but not my thoughts. Freed of my previous spell, I prepped a new one as I found myself weightless and suddenly freezing in-between.
The out-teleport went Bang!
I cast Shield in front of Streak.
We came down tilted wildly over, but falling toward a fluffy field of chrysanthemums. White ones, considering how they looked pale orange and blue as we nosed down into them. I jerked my legs out of the makeshift harness.
Streak bounced up and off of the shield, caught mid-flutter, and she swerved drunkenly up and then down, like a butterfly caught in a downdraft.
I purposely keeled over into a roll, twisting toward the onrushing ground. While Proper Step had (purportedly) thought teaching me certain things was "not lady-like," defense training had not been one of them. Wealth attracted bandits and foalnappers. I'd learned to fall without hitting my head or horn, or otherwise injuring myself, the day my tutor had introduced me to the mats. Practice had made it instinctual.
I repositioned the shield wildly behind.
I heard huge wings flap as Celestia pulled away, taking the hoof gouging into my flank with her.
I hit, ripping leaves and cracking stems. After two somersaults, I popped up on my four legs.
I shoved the shield at her, while glancing behind. Streak landed in the greenery, stunned, wings splayed, frost steam rising. I hopped back and put myself between her and Celestia, touching my left rear leg to her barrel.
I shoved the shield at the princess. She reared and hopped back, pressed by the blue-green half-arc apparition, strike points flaring brightly.
I shouted, "Back off!", meeting her purple eyes with my glare.
I didn't contest her for who would blink first. I needed to know where I was. I needed to escape...
Taking Streak with me.
That complicated matters.
Castle Canterlot boasted many gardens, but other than laying on a convenient lawn to study a book, I'd had no use for them. This, however, I thought I could guess. The Mistmane Botanical Garden to the south. We stood at the edge of a pocket woods, aspen by the silvery bark. Rolling hills of flowers swayed on the breeze coming up from the Ponyville Plain. The bailey wall beside the precipice stood fifty pony lengths right, with its flowing parapets. Madly flowering rose gardens perfumed my left. Waving giant sunflowers, likely confused by the never rising sun, obscured my view of the castle—the keep and ballrooms, judging by the small stovepipe towers I glimpsed to one side and the grand windowed sweeps of wall to the other, all with easy garden access and a view.
Considering the closest walls protected ponies from accidentally jumping off the cliff ancient engineers had built the castle into, the closest exits were as far away as any exit could be within the fortification. For me, if not for Streak. On second thought, the royal guard would drop her before she flew over the wall.
Princess Celestia released a bright flash from her horn.
I guarded my eyes with a hoof, but it was over and she didn't move to take advantage of my flinch. I queued Teleport.
I looked at her. "This is between you and me."
She stepped far enough back that my shield stopped flashing. I let it contract, saving splendors.
She smiled wanly. "I train heroes for Equestria. I'm not letting you run away."
I cast Teleport, even before Shield faded.
I cringed, expecting at least a Levitate Push to throw off my casting.
Darkness enveloped Streak and I. We passed in-between toward the sunflowers. I had a vague idea what lay beyond the ballrooms positioned near the university buildings inside the battlements. At this hour, I expected them empty, and was already calculating the vectors for my second Teleport as our in-teleport split the dawn with a loud pop.
Streak coughed. She had kept her mouth open and had her lungs emptied into vacuum. "Hold your breath!" I shouted, giving her an instant to gasp. I tuned my vectors to inside the closest great hall.
I cast.
A spray of blue-green sparkles shot from my horn in a bright cascade, hissing like a bottle rocket. My head thumped as if I'd hit against my mattress.
What?
I ducked. The counter spell!? Just delayed? I got Streak on her hooves and we scrambled, heads down, toward a big weeping willow I hoped would shield us from Celestia's sight.
I pointed at my mouth.
Streak inhaled.
I emitted another flare and fizz of sparkles. Shoot!
My heart leapt into my throat. I could very well have alerted the guards, too!
Streak pointed a wing that now held her camera. Not at my horn, but around us in a curve. She whispered, "That red color."
Redness popped into my perception. It had gone from dark blue to red after Celestia had released her flare. Illuminate did not cause this. I wheeled around, looking up. A faint red glow surrounded the gardens; it gleamed as a ruddy Kirlian reflection off the inside parapet wall.
I said, "No, no, no," as I walked toward the castle, pretty sure what I'd find. I waved my horn as I got close. I recognized the magic. Shield. Some pony had us under a dome nearly a quarter area of the castle grounds.
Not just any Shield.
It resolved into a pulsating smokey apparition two or three hoof lengths thick as I approached. I sensed interlinked codicils and magic equations that went beyond anything I'd so far learned, and it had nothing to do with Barthemule. It wasn't a different mathematics, just a simple spell extremely well interlinked, fractalated, and splendor-efficient in the extreme.
"Wow."
I pushed my hoof into it—and it didn't give at all. It could have been stone! This was somepony's special spell, and it wasn't Celestia's because she had cast Illuminate.
I still had Teleport queued. I calculated a vector to just outside the apparition.
A few sparkles shot into the air with a pyrotechnic fizz. I heard a shutter click. I rubbed the pain in my temple, frowning at Streak.
She shrugged, giving a grin that barely made it to her lips. I decided she hid behind the lens to ease her anxiety.
I said, "I'm glad I didn't have you fly for it."
"Yeah, I'd be one of those poor sparrows that flew into a window and broke her neck." She swallowed hard. "What now?"
I narrowed my eyes. "That Shield dome—the physics of dispersion guarantees that whoever is casting the spell is inside with us. We find... her? Him? And if he doesn't stop, I beat the horse apples out of him."
I heard hooves slowing as a big equine pushed through the sunflowers. The princess said, "Or, you could just agree to be my student. It's not that much to ask." She looked to Streak. "You're her friend. Can you talk some sense into her?"
A shutter clicked before I saw Streak twitch downward. It was that puppet reflex I'd witnessed on Ponyville Way. Instinct wanted her to bow. Instead, she answered, "I—I've tried. Um, Your R-Royal Highness." She gulped before quoting Running Mead from last night. "'It takes two ponies to agree to a deal.'"
I moved between Streak and the princess. I had three options:
I decided not to lie. If I lied to the princess and said I agreed when I didn't, nothing I ever did again would change me from being a liar. I hated to admit it, but my life and hers were inextricably intertwined. I needed any leverage I could get to deal with her. That might be only my word. I had to tread carefully. I had said it many times before, but today it was very true—I was going to learn something about myself!
I wasn't about to agree to anything with the accursed alicorn.
My magical opponent needed to be in the center of the dome to make it this symmetrical only if he cast at the limits of his ability. Judging by what I sensed of his magic, I wouldn't be so lucky. He had only to cast asymmetrically applying more splendors toward the further distance and less toward the near distance to create the impression of a rounded dome, masking his position. I had to test the field strength around the edges of the dome to triangulate his position. He could counter by compensating for my changing location in his vector math so I didn't see differences, but with the vegetation, that might prove difficult.
I backed my flank into Streak. "Inhale," I said.
We popped out below the apex of the dome. Nopony here.
We both splashed into a fountain, Streak on her side. The lapis lazuli-tiled fountain sported four half-fish half-pony statues, their expressions frozen in a perpetual surprised O. No water came out. We were spared being spat upon by sea ponies. Streak fluttered to the brick walk circling it, where she fluffed her feathers to spray away the water, then shook herself out and wiped her camera.
I dodged the liquid. I still saw nopony.
Celestia teleported in with a bang an instant later. She sighed. "It's been a long day for me, too."
I heard a shutter click followed by another.
"Why don't you just raise the sun and go to bed, then?" I snarked.
She shook her head. "You aren't going to find Shining Armor that easily."
Streak said, "At least we know his name so we can ask nicely, first."
I grinned toothily at her. "I'll ask nicely." I glared at the princess as she furled her wings. "One time."
The princess had appeared in a patch of ornamental grasses. She folded herself down. "I'm just going to have to convince you."
"Really? If you knew anything about Running Mead, you'd know that phrase really ticks me off."
She looked ready to apologize, then gave a little royal smile. "I'll wait. We'll wait. The sun will wait."
"Oh! You're going to play chicken with the sun, are you?" Escaping the Shield dome was just the first step of getting into the castle, then escaping from there. One impossible task after another. I'd have to solve them as I got to them. No other choice.
My ears perked up. I heard something rhythmic. Somepony trotting on a brick path, approaching in a pergola trained with grape vines. I couldn't see who, but were I the princess, they'd be palace guards.
I heard no rattle of armor. I didn't think I'd be so lucky as to meet Shining Armor this quickly.
Princess Celestia said, "This way, Quincy. The filly I wanted you to meet went exactly where I told you she would go."
I popped out another Shield, placing it so I could protect against the newcomer or Celestia who was at a right angle to the pergola exit. If Celestia put somepony on the field, they had to be a real nightmare!
As the hoof steps closed, they also slowed and sounded hesitant. Depending on how much Celestia knew about me, they had to know I could strike hard physically as well as magically. Probably prepped a spell, one to disable me. I took the delay to switch to Mirror-Shield and queued my wonky Stun.
When the hoof steps halted just inside the shadows, I also noticed some of the bricks were loose in the walkway leading from it. I queued Levitate as an alternative spell, taking a page from Sunset's very wise low-level unicorn playbook. Given a moment of reflection, I swapped throwing a brick for Stun.
Unexpected was always preferred.
"Well?" I asked.
A unicorn in a green and grey military uniform jacket with a white shirt and green tie stepped out. He wore a matching green field hat pushed down on his unruly white-striped yellow mane. His bright yellow fur was the sun that had not yet risen.
Forget about nightmares—
This stallion was a ghost!