The sky was cloudy with the slight wind. A group of seven ponies walked one by one on a mountain trail, which led to the Castle Danger.
“How long are we walking?” Mistral asked.
“For two hours,” Golden answered, flashing his horn in order to determine time.
“Two hours and seventeen minutes to be precise,” Fire flashed his horn from the Tiny's back.
Byrk was in charge, Frist was carrying saw after him, then there were Golden, Silver, Mistral and Tiny. The path was not dangerous. Crossing Welcoming mountains was like jogging compared to the Ruby mountains or Goatcasus, nevertheless, everypony was cautious.
“Crap, this rag pinches my wings!” Mistral angrily complained, trying to adjust jacket with her hoof.
“We haven't found anything for pegasi,” Frist answered, his voice reflected tension from the saw weight.
Byrk stopped on a small hill and turned, “You may give it to me to carry,” after that he looked at Mistral, “all jackets for pegasi were reserved and we couldn't take even one for a day. Probably some kind of pegasi wing will arrive into the town tomorrow.”
“You... better... take it...” Frist grunted.
Byrk used his magic to levitate package on his back and commanded, “Let's go. Small shelter is not far away. There we can rest a bit.”
Passing 300 meters they appeared in front of small hollow in the rock. Group decided to hide to rest from the gradually building up wind. Fire thought he saw some silhouette back on the trail, but he decided not to pay attention to it since he already was a bit tired and seeing things. He created magical fire and everyone gathered around it. Fire's horn glowed green light, making the same-coloured warm fire.
“I've never learned that spell,” Frist spoke.
Byrk carefully dropped the saw and sat nearby. “It's definitely elemental magic, but I haven't seen somepony keeping such flames for so long,” he said, being kind of interested in such performance.
“I personally had to work with the formula,” Fire answered, being a bit shy. The flames began to twist in unnatural patterns. “It's heavily dependent on the emotions and feelings for now and far from being as straightforward as simple fire spell is. It's not that you need to be emotional for this, on the contrary, you must be calm,” flame started to calm down.
Frist exclaimed, “That's the reason why I'm bad at complex spells! Manipulation – easy! But casting more abstract magic... It's too hard to hold my emotions,”
“I would like to learn that,” Byrk calmly answered, as if Frist wasn't there.
“Look, first you need to remember something, like, warming your soul,” started Fire, “Imagine it close to you, but keep it abstract. Then you need to fool yourself with being cold, it's not necessary here, it's already cold enough. Combine this with the fire spell and you should get something like this fire,” Fire pointed at the twisting flames, “Try it!”
Byrk closed his eyes, his horn flashing from time to time. On the third flash very small bright-red flame burst out of it quickly disappearing mid-air.
“Wow, that's a great result!” Fire cheered.
Byrk shook his head from side to side. “I thought it would be easier.”
“How you say in Severyana? Hard in training, easy in battle?” Fire smiled, “it's easy to sustain the spell, just don't lose a feeling of warmth.”
Fire continued to help Byrk in his attempts to create flames, while Mistral asked, “By the way, Tiny, will you tell me about that wagon or not?”
“The one from Luna Nova, right?” specified Tiny receiving positive nod from Mistral. “Weeell... It was a thesis project of two graduates from special talented unicorn academy. Fire was escorting us on a trip. No idea what we have to do with the unicorn academy though—”
“—Royal Decree №542: All creatures must receive broad education regardless of their body's ability to apply learned skills,” Silver said as if reading it from somewhere.
“Anyway, no idea why we need this. I won't be able to enrol there,” Tiny shrugged his hooves.
“Doesn't matter, your child might be a unicorn, for example,” Silver answered.
“I don't know. Knowledge about cloud engineering wasn't very helpful for me,” Frist pointed out.
“Yes, but—” Silver wanted to answer, but Mistral interrupted him, “—What happened with the wagon for Luna's sake!” Silver shut his mouth and leaned back.
Tiny continued, “So, they made magical automated wagon, without any mechanical propulsion. But they forgot that magic stored in crystals can have different origin. They've got a crystal from different batch for the demonstration. During it wagon suddenly turned into the crowd. Fire swiftly reacted pushing ponies to the sides. Wagon nearly hit him when he teleported onto it and together with the students and lecturers tried to stop it. They managed to stop only in the end of the street.”
“Yeah, enchantments are painfully complicated,” Golden remarked,” consider magic origin, mood, emotions, Moon phase and so on...”
“How aren't you afraid to study it?” asked Mistral.
“It's fascinating!” exclaimed Golden, “Greatest inventions come from the enchantments.”
“Golden, enchantments are dangerous. During my first year one third-year student was kicked out of the university for being too careless with the rules of the enchantment school,” Frist warned.
“I know what I'm doing. No hate or other vicious feelings while casting, never experiment alone and so on... I know the rules by heart,” Golden answered.
“You will get yourself in trouble one day...” Frist replied.
“Hey!” everypony heard a mare's voice from the outside of their space. Yellowish earthpony with light-yellow tail appeared from the corner of the trail. She wore brown jacket and ushanka. She looked at everypony with her red eyes and said, “If ya' want to get to the Castle Danger before the sunset then ya' better hurry, it's nearly evening already. It's two hours of walking from here.” Her eyes stopped on Mistral, “And hide ya'r wings if ya' don’t want to freeze 'em.”
Mare stepped into the hollow space hiding from the wind. Fire greeted her, “Fire Sense, manipulative and elemental schools' specialist,” he lightly bowed his head.
“March Gustysnows, nice to meet ya'. What a group of students is luuking for in the Castle Danger?” she asked.
Frist answered, “We need to test our prototype in the harsh conditions,” he rose from the fading green flames and shook his head in the package direction, which Byrk put on his back.
“And how—” Tiny wanted to ask how she knew they were students, but March nodded in their direction without waiting for him to finish his question, glaring unequivocally once more at Mistral's bared wings. She hid them embarrassedly under her jacket before the flames finally died out.
March commanded, “Come on, we don't want to be lost in the dark. A blizzard is gathering.”
Now March was in charge leading them through the trail. After an hour they could see pegasi clouds, but the blizzard was getting stronger. Gladly, they have past the dangerous part and now it was just a matter of time when they will get to the village.