Kisu would tell few about her time in the grootslang tunnels. Those connected to the mission would know, as in the future, she would try to teach Night Light similar tricks with shadow, and the princess would have to be briefed as well. Otherwise, a future Kisu would leave it an unspoken tale, something she even thought about rarely.
Because in the grootslang tunnels, Kisu was afraid. Afraid for Savannah and for Impisi, who she blamed herself for getting involved with Equestrian espionage in the first place. Afraid for Night, the pony who had been dragged into field work and now would have to flee with the artefact. It was not a good mindset to be working shadow magic, and she would need that magic to get through unseen.
There was a fine line between shadow magic and true dark magic, and walking that line involved keeping one's emotions in check. There were things in the dark that fed on fear, things not quite of this plane, things other for whom dreams, fantasies and figments were more real, tangible and comprehensible than the creatures whose minds conjured them. In her pursuit of questions of why the world worked as it did, why a single living thread held the movements of the heavens in place, she had come across stories of parasites, things in the immaterial that ached to touch the physical realm and would hollow out a host and fill in the gaps with themselves to do so. Desires and fears were their beacons and their sustenance, and while only dark magic broke open the barrier and invited them to feed, shadow magic still brushed against the barrier, weakening it enough that a heart with too much turmoil may find itself feasted upon.
Kisu truly was attending culinary school in Equestria, but that had come after the education in magic, and the night when Princess Celestia had responded to an alarm that someone had broken into the restricted section of the Canterlot Archives and found a zebra, who was barely a mare, trembling and crying. It had taken weeks for the nightmares to stop, and months before Kisu had found the will to bend shadow again.
She would tell Night Light all of this someday, but in this instant she was alone with her thoughts and memories, her layers upon layers of fear, and she was doing all she could to calm, to focus, and to get where she was needed. Her variety of shadow cloaking was best done while standing still or moving slowly, and while it muffled the sounds of her breathing and hooves as well as concealing her from sight, it didn't silence her completely. She'd been keeping herself perfectly still, and her breathing slow, when she'd been waiting to make her entrance in the throne room, and now she needed to make her way through the unfamiliar tunnels as swiftly as possible.
She was also concealing more than just her body. With a moment's concentration, four blades slipped out of their hiding place outside and hovered around her head. It was another trick that played dangerously with the barrier between physical and immaterial, and most objects would have been destroyed in the process, but there were perks to working for the Crown, as they could afford equipment made of orichalcum. She was no unicorn, and controlling objects with her mind was not second nature, but knives were her talent, and so they danced around her as she stalked the tunnels, always stopping and cloaking herself the moment a guard drew near.
She occasionally felt the press of a security spell, so much sloppier than the wards that Impisi could create, and a flick of the knives would slice the intangible, unweaving the magic and letting her pass freely. She considered putting them to use in slicing a few throats, but hiding bodies on the way in would only complicate matters. It would be on the way out that there may not be any other choice.
The tunnels were massive, and it left her wondering about the size of the original inhabitant. Everything had happened long after she'd journeyed to Equestria, and so she only had Impisi's tales of the grootslang. It must have been one of the largest possible specimens, or perhaps the current squatters had been expanding the tunnel network. The walls she pressed herself against were were smooth to the touch, which told her very little, as that could be the natural effect of scales on stone over years, or the deliberate work of those who planned to make themselves at home.
Kisu dearly hoped for the former, honestly. If they were getting that cozy, it made the theory that one or more of the princes condoned it that more plausible, and she didn't need that extra fear throwing itself onto the pile.
Breathe. Steady her heart. One hoof in front of the other.
She could pick out each sort of guard by footstep. The heavy paws of the hedgebeasts, the bipedal hooves of the satyrs, and the much lighter steps of the abyssinians. She would fight all the more to silence herself when the last of those walked by, as abyssinian magic was based on grace, precision, and awareness, and she couldn't risk giving them a single reason to open their senses to try to pierce her cloak. There was already the risk that one of them might be keeping their senses open permanently while on patrol, as draining and overwhelming as that could be.
So many ways that this could go wrong.
Breathe. Focus. She controlled the shadows, they didn't control her. She would reach Savannah, and get them out of here.
There were torches on the walls, and whenever Kisu passed near them, their light would dim slightly, and the shadows would grow deeper. She felt like each moment she needed to pause beneath them was shaving years off of her lifespan, but each and every time, she held steady. She'd been doing this long enough that anything less would be an insult to the training that the princess had funded. Celestia had seen potential that night in the archives, and Kisu had been repaying the debt ever since.
She finally found the side-tunnel that she was looking for, and she fought to keep herself from breaking into a gallop. More careful slicing of defensive spells earned her entry, and as she made her way deeper in, she started to hear the rattle of chains. Low and behold, she found the curled up form of a familiar sunny yellow, with much paler-looking metal attaching to limbs and neck.
Kisu took a breath, and let the shadows recede. "Come on, Sav," she said in just barely above a whisper. "It's time to go."
Earns twitched, and then Savannah slowly uncurled, blinking in the darkness until they seemed to finally see her. "Oh thank Celestia..." they murmured, and then tried to rise, only to jerk to a stop partway up as chains went taught. "I didn't give up a word of anything, but I don't think they were trying hard about it. They mostly just left me here in these." A hoof briefly lifted, went down. "I think it's electrum. Enchanted. Otherwise I'd've already got it off."
One of Kisu's knives swung out, slicing one chain after another as it swirled through the air, the metal falling away as if it were paper cut away by scissors. "And now it's not." She pressed her body against Savannah's, trying to offer what stability she could to the taller creature. "Now come on, let's get out of--"
"Well, well, well... Looks like taking the occasional 'random' stroll past this tunnel was a good idea after all..."
The way was blocked, and Kisu recognized both voice and glow before she'd even turned her head. Crimson Flame was standing directly in her path, several satyrs behind her wearing simian grins and holding makeshift clubs. Kisu hardened her features. "I suppose I should give you a chance to stand down and let us pass."
Laughter broke out, Crimson's the loudest of them all. "Oh you are a riot..." She gestured with a foreleg, the goons behind her all taking a step back. "You boys keep back. Needles can shove his 'not worth it' in his pie hole--" Her colours distorted, her mane lighting with flame, transforming much faster than she had in the auction house. "--Because this little case of colic is mine!"
The amulet floated above the table, steadily rotating in the air as Night Light's magic probed its secrets. The analysis spells revealed enchantment after enchantment, interlocking together like gears in a clockwork device, so many moving parts that it was difficult to understand the shape of the whole. He kept scanning it, each pass of the spell revealing more, and he found himself slowly beginning to understand. As he'd expected from Princess Celestia's descriptions, amplification was part of what it did, but it was nothing like classic amplifier spells, and there was so much more going on that was harder to identify.
So engrossed he became, he initially didn't notice the glow surrounding the amulet change from his own gold to a bloody red. He realized what was happening just in time to duck under the blast fired off from the jewel, but the smell of singed hair told him that he'd only barely reacted in time. "Celestia!"
"Hey!" Impisi stormed over and smacked the amulet with her hand, a symbol briefly flashing into sight on her palm. The red glow vanished instantly and the artefact fell to the table with a clatter. She then crossed her arms, growled at the amulet as if warning it from acting again, and looked to Night. "Be careful with that thing. I told you, the wards aren't fully charged. They'll dampen it, but they're not as powerful."
Night Light took a deep breath. "I'm sorry." He took hold of the amulet again, this time making sure to keep an eye on the colour. "It's clearly been protected against tampering. Unsurprising, since I'm sure Sacanas wanted it to stay in her own hooves."
Impisi eyed it warily, and didn't move from his side, also standing vigil against any sudden moves. "That mare was a real piece of work, huh?"
"She founded a movement that rejected alicorns as abominations that went against the natural order," Night replied in deadpan as he sent a fresh scanning spell washing over the amulet. "And accused Princess Celestia of being some kind of parasite in a pony's skin. You tell me."
It was a Tartarus of a way to handle a rejected marriage proposal. The sheer arrogance and entitlement of it boggled the mind, deciding both that she had a chance to rule beside the centuries-old monarch and that, when that dream was dashed, she could usurp her instead. Yet that indescribably selfish mind had produced innovation after innovation, and her works were still out there, sitting innocently in places like the duke's collection until they suddenly saw the light of day again.
Impisi let out a snort and shook her head. "Yeah, I can see why the Thunderstrikes would be fans of her work."
"Other than the fact that she saw all non-unicorns as the future servants of their rightful superiors, of course."
"Eh, years after someo--somepony's death you can ignore all those little inconvenient details." She shrugged her shoulders. "Though I'd've loved to see how she'd do trying to invade Farasi looking for servants. If the kelpies didn't drown her, get enough of my people on the shore and she'd slam into a wall of anti-magic so hard her grandparents'd go null." The chuckle at the mental image was short-lived, and Impisi squinted at the amulet as it spun. "What's it even do?"
"That's what I'm trying to figure out." He cast another spell, starting to feel a press not from Impisi's wards, but from his own fatigue and hunger. He considered asking if she would be willing to make something just to ensure that he didn't pass out on his hooves, but he could feel himself closing in on the answer he sought. There was one moving part that felt like a core one, and its purpose kept slipping from him, like a word on the tip of the tongue. "There's hundreds of interworked spells, and..." Somewhere in his mind, the candle lit, and his eyes widened as he dropped the amulet and leaped a body length backward all at once. "Sun and moon..."
Impisi already had her hands up, palms glowing. "What? What is it?"
Night took in a shaky breath. "She very much didn't want this in anypony else's hooves." He took a few steps forward again, and his horn lit with a different spell. "I think I know what I'm working with now, and the princess was right that nothing will permanently deactivate it. Sacanas gave it a life and will of its own."
It was Impisi's turn to hop backward, as if she expected the amulet to suddenly leap up and try to bite her face. "So we're casually hanging around an age-old and still-active violation of international magical law?" When Night nodded, she threw her arms up in the air. "This is fine! Great! Fantastic, even! Exactly how I wanted to spend my day!"
"Sacanas is a lot of the reason that those laws exist." The spells to place the amulet into dormancy flowed from his horn, now that he knew which layer of its enchantments to target. They were less of an off-switch and instead something much more like a sedative spell that would be applied to a living creature, and now he knew why. "There are Equestrian scholars still figuring out how she did certain things... so that nopony else can do it again."
"And sun-flanks trusted my wards to contain this thing. Tartarus' chains, I don't know if I'm proud of that or want to call her nuts." She gave a swift shake of her head, watched the amulet float down and settle on the table for the final time, and then spotted Night's expression. "I know that look. I'm really good at reading equine facial expressions. You're thinking about doing something stupid and reckless."
The corner of his mouth quirked. "Seen that one a lot, have you?"
"I'm cubhood friends with Kisu," she said as though it was answer enough, and he resolved to get a few stories from that time when this was over. "So I take it we're not booking it back to Casabronco?"
Night finally tore his eyes away from the amulet, and he tilted his head back until he could meet her eyes. "Answer me honestly, Impisi. Can she handle that many goons?"
Her hesitance was answer enough for him, but her words confirmed it. "She could turn any average goon into shredded lunchmeat. The kirin, between her and Savannah, I'm not worried about. But the kirin and a whole cave system full of goons?" Long fangs bit nervously at her lower lip. "I'm worried." Then, a beat later, she added, "You're going after her."
"I haven't known her long, but..." He gave the amulet one last once-over, to make sure his spells had taken. "She's a friend. A new one, but a friend. It feels wrong to walk away now, and my part of securing the artefact is done, anyway." He peered at it more, this time not taking in its magical qualities, but its appearance. "Do you have anything silver laying around that you won't miss?"
Impisi blinked in surprise at the change in topic, but only for a moment. "Would sterling work? I've got a few pieces."
"It should. The copper in the alloy rarely interferes." He grasped the amulet, tucking it away in his saddlebag again, a new set of spells coming together in his mind. "Bring it here, and some rope. Hurry."
She listened, but even as she hurried toward the kitchen, she shot over her shoulder, "All you herbivores are crazy, you know that?"
"And proudly so."
He just hoped it was the variety of crazy that was crazy enough to work.