Starstruck

by Vest

Chapter 5: Confined

She couldn't believe it.

The orange unicorn flopped a hooffull of waterlogged hats and luggage boxes off of her.  Even though the tumble down the collapsing cave walls sent her for another spin, she had grown rather accustomed to the battery associated with each trip inside Jerry...err, the luggage car. Gah, she was doing it again. She really had to get over naming every inanimate object she carted along with her, no matter how many times it saved her life. While the sensation of being, well, lucky to be alive had since become a commonplace sensation, Gina couldn’t recall the last time she felt lucky to see...

...Her.

She was right there!  Right!  There!  The cobalt glow was just in her reach.  She could swear, just wisping outside the gnarled frame of the train car's window, that swirling blue apparition of a mane was close to ambush distance.  Just a quick dash up to the window, a sudden clearing of scattered luggage to clear a path, and she knew she'd be just right there!  Right there!  Everything was ready to go!  Element of magic, ready to fire in hoof, energy at full, blood rushing wildly; she was, she was, she was...p-p-pumped! And what did they decree!?  What did they dare say!?

Wait.

Wait!?  Why!? Every fiber, every hair, every nerve prickled and burned across her figure as she could swear to the heavens that she was just right there!  She could see her!  By Starswirl's OCD, she swore she could even smell her!

Well, assuming so much.  After such a lengthy tenure encased in stone, her nose hadn't quite reestablished its previous capacities, seeing as everything seemed to be smelling eerily of cactus.  Or, she hoped that was just her nose acting up. How awkward it would be if her nose was fine, and she just ended up smelling increasingly pungent of cactus for some reason...

She was quickly knocked out of her meandering thoughts, her head righting upward.

No time was wasted in voicing her protests.  "But I was...right there, all I had to...I even got the element of Magic charged and ready to...oh come on!"  She narrowed her eyes, not believing how her succession of orders were coming down upon her.  "It could have been so simple!  I was right there!  Whatever happened to simplicity!?"

She blinked hard, shaking her head and drooping her neck.  She grunted in frustration, kicking the steel train's floor...or roof.  Or wall.  It was so banged up and twisted, she didn't even know Jerry's top from his-...she didn’t know the train’s top from its bottom anymore.  Flinging the train door open, she peered out into the collapsed cavern, seeing the final lick of cobalt light wrap around the squeezing maw of giant wooden gates.  Stepping out, she waved her head high, casting the dust-choked cavern into an encompassing marigold hue.

Oh the chaos.

Whatever had happened in there, no feasible way anypony would have the dexterity, dumb luck, or super equine foresight to have survived such a magnanimous collapse.  Blades still spun in their dormant inertia. A churning jetty of white rushing water sloshed into and around itself beneath a volley of smoking and smoldering pipes. A line of multicolored embers meandered nebulously through the air, carrying with them a particular scent of burning...

...Pastries?

Only a single surviving feature stood out before her.  A lone floor tile lay undisturbed, still shimmering in pristine condition save for a painted circle and x atop it.

"Well, thank you," she suddenly beamed, nodding at nopony in particular.  "And you are right, simplicity is easy, and I too can do 'convoluted' quite well."  She hushed with perked ears, dragging herself out of the wrecked train car.  "Hah," she smiled. “I’m glad you feel the same.”

Weaving between the strewn wreckage and boulders of the collapsed ceiling, Gina hopped across the scattered blocks and columns draped across the grit-coated debris quilting the chamber floor.  After a final leap over a mound of gently smoldering cupcakes, she stopped suddenly on a lone tile.

Definitely a target.

"Very well," she conceded in agreement. "Can't argue.  It WOULD be easier to get her when she's weaker.  Without her strength or willpower, this definitely would go a lot...simpler.” Contemplating for a brief period, she started putting the new approach into place.  “We have to do it all complicated like at first...” Each piece falling into place.  “So that it becomes all simple like where it really matters.”

A plan that she...well darn, one she honestly wish she’d tried doing the first time before running headfirst into...

The vast echoing expanse of the gray aether...

That again.

Back then, wasn’t she also just right there?

Right!  There!?

“But how do you plan to weaken the Princess...?"  She waited, tilting her head upwards to the ceiling, waiting for some sort of answer.  "Hellooo?"

Well, that's odd.

As much as she appreciated the constant company, a blessing that she found herself hopelessly deprived of for years...centuries before, even she was starting to grow wary of her new 'internal' company. While a part of her was glad to have finally found the mystical code word to make them pipe down, another part wailed in disappointment that it was the question she wished they'd expound upon further.

Her eyes drifted suddenly to each side before drifting into a long blinking sigh.  "Fine, make it a surprise then," she mused in disappointment.  "I guess I'll just follow her. Keep low. Stay just outside her periphery or whatever. But what you have planned..."

She jumped off the target, proceeding towards a huge pair of wooden gates.

"...It better be fun. Because if you make it boring,” she called out, hoping to rouse their attention once more, “I’ll just make my own entertainment with them."

Hummingbird...

Hummingbird, hummingbird...

The symbol itself, Devon remembered, hardly had any presence anywhere throughout Canterlot.  It was an unusual icon, not particularly representative of actions of Canterlot, Equestria, or the various offshoots traversing horizons. In a society obsessed over symbols around dragons, apples, and stars...

…The hummingbird was hardly anywhere to be found.

Yet the symbol sang out to Devon, not because of its uniqueness, but for a reason that stemmed from an opposite phenomenon exclusive to the charcoal unicorn. Familiarity. Here it was again. That reminder, haunting him. That little nagging voice that chimed in, vocalizing his own aspirations.

Wha’ e’xactly d’ya wann’a talk about?

Scattered, unorganized, and broken, the essence of the shredded tome at his hooves, the same hummingbird stitched into the cover, pestered and jabbed within.  Why it scared Luna so much was beyond his own comprehension.  Why the Princess dropped to the floor in such a fervent stupor was probably just as unsettling to him as to what Luna was experiencing. The scene played over and over again in his head, but even that image, the sounds of her kicks and nickers still seeming to ripple between the stoic chasm around him, couldn’t dominate over...

Wuh, Dev’s, I tell’s ya, it’ll comes in one’a’these days.

That.

He had his problems.

And she...

Devon looked up.  At the end of the hallway, the cobalt glow diminished to a narrow speck.  Over the darkened silhouette of a navy blue shoulder, a single wide eye peered at him, the pupils pinched to a narrow dot quivering in retreating panic. Without any shift, all the Princess’s noise clenched sealed within, her pupil quickly dodged downward and back up to him... motioning, gesturing...

...Demanding.

Demanding with shakey jolts confined within the tightened irises to move back, to give her space, to let her think.

With a dragging lick of a hoof against the ground, he angled the split tome on its back.  The cover’s etching of the moonflower and hummingbird dipped away as it flopped to a close.  He scooped it up, counting his hoofsteps as he cautiously backed down the hallway.

It’ll come tuh’ yah.  One’a’these days, Dev’s.

The disjointed ticks of surfacing thought kept chiming in. He couldn’t keep his contemplations at an audible volume without it all jamming up, overlapping, and becoming a scattered tone of verbal static.

A green razorblade of light sliced across the wall to Devon’s side.  He peered at the narrow sliver of green arcing and bouncing in rhythm with his steps, seeing that the light source was cracking through the flaps of the architect’s satchel.  As a swell of cobalt luminance crept back down the hallway, Devon peered up to see the Princess’ horn glowing intensely again, her single panicked eye no longer beaming with piercing anxiety upon him.

Twenty haunches.

It’s all she asked for, but more than he could bring himself to give as he finally stepped beyond the mandated boundary down the stone corridor.  She dipped low against the ground.  A long, weighted sigh winded by his ears, summoning a conflicting sting between his bleeding heart and better judgments.

She clearly needed comfort,  she clearly needed space.

She clearly needed sompeony to talk to, she clearly needed time to think.

She clearly needed company, she clearly needed solitude.

“Why am I so...” Devon began, not realizing that even subtlest whispers to himself boomed explosively through the quiet halls.  Seeing the Princess flinch in response to the sound of his voice immediately hushed his thinking.

Why am I so bad at this?

Another green flash caught his peripheral vision, the underside of the satchel’s flap pinged with greater vigor.  Curiously, the charcoal unicorn unslung the straps, carefully dropping it on the floor beside the ripped tome.  After a few coaxing nudges with his hooves, the architect’s journal flopped out, a single glowing appendage hanging out of the top between the pages.  A single feather.  Identical to the pendant around his neck.

How? How did it even get...?

Devon tilted his head, leveling it to the journal. Slicing between the pages with an extended hoof, the book of old engineering opened on the page divided by the glowing feather.  Dancing left and right across the page’s top margin, the chirping teal feather rolled excitedly.  With a burst of sporadic twirls and curves, the feather swerved back into the center of the page, retaining the previous assortment of paisley curls and dots of the honesty chamber’s gatekeeper.  The glyph spun happily on the two-dimensional confines of the page, pirouetting giddily over the journal’s hoof-written words with fleeting abandon, euphoric at all the attention it had been getting.

Devon laughed “So I guess...” Seeing Luna flinch again to his voice reminded him of his lack of proper social graces.

Naw, Dev’s, you...you ain’ts bad at dis’, you’s just needs a bit ‘uh nudgin’ ‘ere ‘n’ there.  Yuh’ jus’ needs to... you know... you just needs t’get movin’!

The thoughts couldn’t be shaken.

Hummingbird...

Hummingbird, hummingbird...

The glyph on the page spun erratically in excitement, chirping and whirling, seeming to leap out towards him.  “So I guess,” Devon started again, in as low a whisper placid air would allow, “You’re coming with us, then.”  He peered down at the hopping cluster of symbols, seeing it gesture in an outreaching manner with jovial pulses and twittering.  With a sweeping step, the glyph swung towards the edge of the page, pressing against it, motioning a strangely sentient desire towards making a jump to the ripped tome beside it.

Obliging, Devon pressed the journal closer to the ripped cover.  He watched as the swirling glyph cautiously approached the edge like a kitten tapping a paw to cold water.  Then, in a narrow fiber of contracted light, the magical energy traversed from the open journal to the torn cover.  The flow receded with the transfer’s completion, the journal now returning to it’s original stained yellow page, the contents of the page now shining through.  A previously read journal entry looked back at him, the familiar passage regarding the glyph.

Our solution came in the form of a side project I had been devising, a sort of memory recollection spell that I use for... well, personal uses mostly so I wouldn’t forget everything the missus said.

Hummingbird, hummingbird...

You just needs t’get movin’!

Inhaling deeply, Devon peered onto the tome, pressing the ripped halves of the cover together.  Sensing direct eye contact, the paisley magical swirls reacted with passionate vigor, seeming to peer back with mutual intensity.  “Memory recollection spell, huh?”  Devon nudged his head lower, feeling the warm tendrils of the enchanted cover ascend and with invisible zephyrs wrap around his thoughts.  “Let’s see if this works.”  He exhaled, focusing his attention into the coalescing patterns and designs triggering various nuances of déjà vu.

Wha’ e’xactly d’ya wann’a talk about?

“Do your thing, Glyph.”

Ping!

“Wha’ e’xactly d’ya wann’a talk about?”  She swiveled around the bedroom, navigating between the scattered clothes, bags, and books on the creaky wooden floor.

Stretching out a blue foreleg, she gently rested it on the small charcoal colt’s shoulder. He flinched, sinking his head beneath fast ascending shoulders while sliding downward on the bed into a defeated slouch.  The young unicorn exhaled in agitation, silencing his mother’s outreach.

“Aww, c’mon, mother always knows that face on ya’s!” She joked while pacing back across the room, anticipating another story of her son getting picked last, getting pranked at lunch with sneezing powder, or getting called stub-shorts McTeeny rump.  “I know’s them yearlin’s all ‘rounds ya’s, they can be might’uh bit cruel but I’s can hear ya’s out!”  She turned back to face the distraught charcoal colt.  “Y’uh goin’ t’speak or are ya’-” Her voice suddenly squeaked shut as she found a piercing expression facing back at her.

This wasn’t some foalhood petulance or trivial squabble.  Yet her motherly obligations demanded at least some sort of action.  Sure, it wasn’t what he wanted, but for sure, if there was at least one thing she was determined to get right... just one thing...

That.

She had her problems.

And he...

Over the darkened silhouette of a charcoal shoulder, a single wide eye peered at her, the pupils pinched to a narrow dot quivering in retreating panic. Without any shift, all the colt’s noise clenched sealed within, his pupil quickly dodged downward and back up to his mother... motioning, gesturing...

...Demanding.

Demanding with shakey jolts confined within the tightened irises to move back, to give him space, to let him think.

Something new was starting to bother the colt, something she was not quite fully ready to take head on.  The glance was one she had received many times before, but not from her own son. It was a look of a particular dread exclusive to those struggling with the concept of growing up.

“Nuh-uh, no,” she nickered, snorting sharply as she slid up next to him on the bed. “None ‘uh this silent treatments, okay?  Not matt’uh what, if y’uh needs me to be a good mom, then ya goin’ to have’ta say, well...” She nudged him in the elbow, hoping he’d plop hopelessly against her shoulder like he always would. “Well...you’s have’ta say somethin’s!”

She nudged him again, the young charcoal unicorn remained fixated, cold, and distant.

“Aw, now’s don’t you too start acting like...” She began, but choked down the primed sentence in exchange for another.  “I thinks that... you’s an’ I... we shoulds...” Unable to figure a proper deterrent forward, she relapsed back to her original approach.

“Wha’ e’xactly d’ya wann’a talk about?”

Try it again.

The charcoal unicorn rustled on the sheets, adjusting himself slightly.  Without looking up, he muttered softly through broken breaths.  “Stargazer.”

“Stah’gaz’uh!?” She raised an eyebrow quizzically. “That cute as ‘uh kitten frolickin’ in fields ‘uh hamsters, Stah’gaz’uh!?” She smiled, aligning beside him.  Finally, making some progress!  She dipped her voice low, brushing strands of her orange mane aside, playfully coaxing her son to dish. “What a’bouts her!?”

So exciting!  So wondrous!

“She said no.”

So...

...Oh.

She tried to slip some encouragement somewhere in there. “Aww, Dev’s, now listen to me, you...” But in her own reflection, she never knew how ever handle getting turned down like this.  “I mean, at least I wouldn’t know, but I bet’chya somepony I...” She’d never known the feeling; nopony ever rejected her.  Never.  “...Well, we...I could...”

Who was she to pretend she knew what it was like?

The charcoal unicorn cracked, a pitched wail suppressed between clenched teeth. “She said,” shot out with an equal balance of sound and shudders, “She actually said she was embarrassed!”

“Aww, no no,” his mother immediately wrapped a hoof over his shoulder, tugging him in.  “That’s...” The shoulders briefly tugged to the side, but eventually rested, slouching forward ambivalently to the comforting foreleg draped over them.  “Why would’s anypony be so...so...?”

Judgmental? Shallow?

Embarrassed getting a compliment by her kin?

“She said she couldn’t believe she’d be asked to a dance by a blank flank!”  The unicorn surrendered his silent stand, unable to stop from facing the afternoon’s events. “And her friends were laughing at her!”  Devon finally made eye contact with his mother. “Because I asked!” But his mother...

...She didn’t look back.

How do you deal with rejection?  How do you deal with being turned down?  How do you handle facing your own shortcoming when somepony else throws them right back at you, and leaves you behind without...without...

“Well, lets me tells you about...” She paused.  Faults? Losses? Having better to have loved and lost? “...My cutie mark.”  Accomplishments.  There we go.  Back in line and ready to dispense of proper motherly advice, she smiled, tilting her focus back to him.

He slunk, his face drifting back to the floor.

“Well, I’s was abouts your age...well...” drifting her eyes up to the ceiling in contemplation, “...Young’uh.”  She recalled, tapping a hoof only once against her chin.  “Yep, young’uh for sure, definitely.  Prob’ly couple’a years young’uh!”

His not helping expression unfortunately didn’t bounce off the floorboards into her vision.  Then again, wouldn’t have mattered if he was looking straight at her, as she was now lost in her own inspiring story of non-rejection.

“Well’s, I kinda knews what it would be, though.  Since I was a teeny eensy weensy filly, y’see.” She curled, motioning her thigh towards him. “We alls has the sames cuties marks in our family. All the same cutie mark.”

The charcoal unicorn tilted away from her, resting on a foreleg on the edge of the bed. He couldn’t count how many times he heard the story of all the Bookmarks somehow get the same cutie mark.  Always the same recollection of events, only the pony in her company changed.

“Y’uh great step-uncle an’ I...”

Great step-uncle this time.  Devon nodded to the rhythm of the story’s wind-up. Get on with the ‘all so busy’ part, the ‘going round’ part, the ‘Boop! Same cutie mark as the rest!’ part.

“We’re alls so busy, goin’ ‘round, keepin’ everythin’ all runnin’, all’uh us. So it’s in us, ya’know.”  She pointed a hoof down, waving it around the sanctimonious adornment. “An’ one day, I’s was with ya’ great step-uncle, settin’ up this banquet for some prince, an it all went so un-hitchin’-like that sometime in’uh middle of the chicken dance...it happened...” She prodded against her mark, hoping to get some giggle out of him.  “Boop! Hummingbird!”

He sighed.

It was worse than she could imagine.  For as long as she could remember, her little charcoal colt would laugh and roll brightly when she’d start making funny noises.  Did he miss it?

“I said...Boop! Hummingbird!”

He descended his forehooves off the edge of the bed, bending his spine towards his rear legs.

Definitely worse than she could imagine.  She had to try extra hard this time.  Come on, think. Think. You can do this, just think.

“Wuh, Dev’s, I tell’s ya, it’ll comes in one’a’these days.”  She rested a hoof against his elbow.  Reflexively, he tucked it into his gut, yanking it away from her reach.  An impulse emerged within her to combat her resisting son’s reflexes, to hold him closer than she ever held him before... To show what love truly is, and that what her own love to him could mean in comparison to the encompassing machinery of life.

She conceded, swallowing down her impulse.  “It’ll come tuh’ yah.  One’a’these days, Dev’s.”

He clearly needed comfort,  he clearly needed space.

He clearly needed sompeony to talk to, he clearly needed time to think.

He clearly needed company, he clearly needed solitude.

But above all.

He clearly needed...to not be alone.

“Listens, uh...” His mother scooted to the mattress’ opposite corner. “I’m sorry...that yuh’ special somefilly wasn’t...so special enough to see who you truly are.”

Closing his eyes and angling his head up to the ceiling, he called out.  The somber voice, muffled through the coercion to hold back any foalhood tears, permeated upwards.

He called out.

Not to her.

Not to anypony in particular.

But in a quiet rippling prayer send skyward, in a voice of...but not from himself.

“... Why am I so bad at this?”

She immediately lurched forward to him, shaking a foreleg to the air. “Naw, Dev’s, you...you ain’ts bad at dis’, you’s just needs a bit ‘uh nudgin’ ‘ere ‘n’ there.  Yuh’ jus’ needs to... you know... you just needs t’get movin’!”

She motioned towards her hummingbird cutie mark, making the motion of being speedy and flying as she started to depart his room. “Just like a Bookmark, we all get hummingbird cutie marks eventually! Just get movin is all!  Just keep movin’! Worry less about... this... and just get-”

“...Moving.”

Devon shook his head, the bordering green and cyan edges pinching in around the residual imagery of his bedroom collapsing into his vision. A cobalt aura flickered and intruded upon the cover of the tome as the leather texture overpowered and seeped back into view..

“Huh?”

The image finally broke, rippling into the searing edges of intruding paisley swirls and dots that pulled it back into the form of the glyph. It chirped happily, pleased to have finally been put to use after so many years alone underground.

“We said,” Luna turned away, heading back down the corridor. “We implore thee, keep on moving.”

Albeit delayed, the unicorn’s orange eyes lit up seeing the Princess approach him, and stand so close.  He knew she’d get over her own 20-haunch mandate, and allow him to be of some use within her proximity.  “So I see you’re feeling better.”

“Be not confounded, Bookkeeper,” Luna shot back, increasing her pace into the darkness.  “We sincerely apologize, this place has magics that...as thou hast witnessed, play heavy upon my sentiments.” She stopped suddenly, curving her head around with a gentle expression. “I believe I hast acted unfairly to thee, thou need’st not remain twenty haunches from me anymore.”

“Oh, thank you Princess! I think-”

“I decree now,” She cut him off with a wave of a hoof. “Ten paces.”

Devon seized his celebration short, but still managed a wry smile.  Eh. Small victories. It’s certainly a step forward!

“At this rate,” Devon laughed optimistically, “won’t be long until it’s zero haunches!”

It certainly was a step back.

Twenty-five haunches back was a long stretch in a winding hallway.

Devon found himself scrambling to get back to seeing the light from Luna’s horn as she rounded each corner, bend, and dip in the labyrinth. Every time he smartened his pace, it immediately slowed when Luna’s head lashed around, fixing him with a severe, dangerous glare reserved for those who would encroach within her bubble.

“Hast thou gone deaf?!” her voice would blare out violently without even looking over her shoulder to check. “We can hear thy muddlesome hoofbeats, and they stumble far closer than thou art permitted!”

“I know, Princess,” Devon replied, summoning up all of the obsequiousness he could muster. “But I still need something to see the tunnel by. And I haven’t seen any torches around here.”

“We are still bedazzled that a unicorn such as thee can manage not even a spark to see by,” Luna sighed, exasperated, but quickened her steps to maintain the distance. “Do not unicorn colts acquire any training and instruction?! Or didest thou simply flunk out of magic kindergarten?”

Devon let out a ruffled huff at the question and his cheeks burned in the shadow. “As a matter of fact, if you really want to know...” he began, but by the time he had got the sentence out, the light had already vanished around the next corner, creating a new sprint around unyielding and magnificently hard stone walls before she drew into his sight again. “If you must know, I did go to magic kindergarten and I aced all the written tests...and flunked every practical exam.” Devon snorted as an upswell of dust hit his nose, followed by a slight derisive laugh from up ahead.

“Truly?” Luna’s voice disappeared around another corner.

“Yes. Truly!” Devon barked, his face red hot despite the cool, musky air all around him. “And I sure don’t know how to explain it! If I could, do you think I’d be running into walls?”

“Thou art serious,” Luna didn’t even bother to turn her head, “thou cannot truly summon a spark from thy horn to light thy path?” With a whip of cobalt mane and tail, she was gone again. Embarrassment and frustration drove Devon to sprint forward, catching up with the light in a flurry of clattering hoofbeats.

“It’s complicated, okay?! I don’t know how it works! Sometimes when I’m mad or upset, it’ll just kick on! I wish I could actually do something with it but,” Devon’s words poured out as he built up a head of verbal steam. “I’ve heard every explanation to understand it, but none of it is getting me any closer to USING it!”

“Twenty-three.”

“Twenty-three what?”

Luna glared.

“Oh.”

Devon’s hooves dragged to a stop and he watched the cobalt aura fade around the corner. His diatribe blunted, the charcoal unicorn fell silent for a few seconds before he dared speak again. “Look, I can’t explain it, but no, I can’t even spark my own light. Been like that ever since I was a little colt and I’ve done everything I could to learn it.” Part of Devon was quite happy that Luna was so adamantly storming forward and that the hallways were so dark, both worked to hide his shamed blush and dejected expression. “I studied all the fundamental stuff, but whatever it is, I just can’t make it happen. They say magic is emotion, right? Well, my emotion doesn’t want to go anywhere.” Devon groaned, growing absorbed in his thoughts as he spoke.

The rhythmic tapping of Luna’s paced trot diminished, slowing to a cautious walk.  She slowly turned, peering back down the dark corridor.

“Tried about four different tutors, and even once my mom tried to do it herself,” he muttered, rounding another corner and nearly stumbling backwards when he stepped into Luna’s light. It was not distant, but perfectly still. The Princess of the Night looked back at him with a look that was equal parts sympathy and mane-tearing frustration.

“Very well, thou may walk with us,” Luna said simply, turning to head down the hallway again. “Unless thou prefer to stand there blinking. Forthwith, Mister Booksmarts!” Raising his speed, Devon trotted to close the gap until he walked alongside Luna, grateful to be able to see where he was going for the first time since they got into this place.

“That was...” Devon briefly mulled it over in contemplative silence. “...kind of abrupt. Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful but-”

“We doth not wish to partake in thy life story if it pains thee.” Luna diverted her attention away from him, and focused on scanning the ornate markings lining the gnarled corridor.  “Tis’ a long journey and before us lay many dark paths, Booksmarts,” Luna explained. “If we are to travel yonder road together, we would prefer thee alongside us, should some pitfall separate us.”

“Well I’m gratefu-”

“But!” Luna’s voice rose to a fiery boom that shook the dust from the walls. “Doth not think thou’rt forgiven or that we hath forgotten thy wild and fanciful dreams! Thou art to keep thy hooves and eyes to thyself, dost we make ourselves clear?!”

“Yes’m,” Devon murmured.

“Do we?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he proclaimed.  “Crystal.”

“Then we’re settled for now.”  She picked up her pace again.  “Time is time!”

As they wound around, the corridor suddenly expanded into the first thing they found other than dark stone and black shadow. A great door loomed up from the deep black, featureless until Luna’s light played closer to it. Beneath caked-on layers of dust and debris were symbols and sigils from a lost era. Carved relief artwork of clouds bursting with striped lightning dominated the door’s central motif. Along the edges, smaller carvings of scrollwork and occasional flowers added contrast around the dancing visages of hummingbirds.

Devon took a step back, the symbols speaking out to him again.

Hummingbird, hummingbird...

He immediately diverted his attention from the relief to the Princess.  There was the symbol again, was she...did she start to....

...No?

Huh.  No response at all.

Stepping ahead of Luna, Devon did his best to put on an integrating smile.

“Let me get that for you,” he started in the tones of practiced candor and polite culture that all Canterlot citizens picked up. Hustling to open the door for the lady, Devon laid his shoulder into it as she smiled on...

“Hrrrrrhhgnnh!”

The smile strained slightly as the door barely budged.

“Ah...heh...” Devon laughed. Oh come on, at least get THIS right! “GrrrraaaaAAAAHHHHGH!” Throwing all of his weight into pushing on the door, the unicorn got the same result, a fraction of an inch of movement before resolutely holding its ground.

“Er...Bookkeeper, if we may...” Luna said, fighting back a laugh as she delicately wove past him and, with a featherlike effort, pulled the the door open and held it for him.

A welcome apparition burst from beneath the lid, pouring voluminously into the room.

“Oh thank Celestia, LIGHT,” Devon exclaimed as the door swung ajar. To his momentary relief, it gave him some more light than Luna’s horn. Powerful illumination surged up deeper in the chamber, bathing it in a flickering, almost liquid red swath. Adjusting from the insufficient glow of Luna’s light took a moment, but with every passing second, more of the chamber pulled into full view.

So much for the welcoming light.  Of course it was going to be something predictably perilous, foreboding, and something the archive’s architects would take full lethal advantage of.  Oh, why couldn’t it just be a fleet of giddy fireflies euphorically frolicking through a daisy speckled meadow?  Why not a cavern lined with festive cakes, the candles tripwired to ignite and spew festive confetti when a passer by had happy thoughts?  Oh, oh, or why not just a single puppy that glowed in the dark.  Just a glow in the dark puppy, nothing obvious, predictable, and cliche as that right-?

No.

Lava.

Obvious, predictable, what in the graces of Celestia’s opalescent dander else.

His perspective now heavily biased from its previous standing, he took a moment to reflect. Maybe he was too harsh to the Honesty chamber’s little chirping guardian.  Shaking his head, he sighed, readying to unlatch his saddlebag to let out...

...the Glyph that was already peeking around the lid, seeming to glare at him expectantly from a dangling parchment. Ah right, Devon recalled.  Mind reader, or something.

*Snap*

Naw. Later.

Stretching before Devon and Luna, a pair of hallways ran perfectly parallel to one another for nearly a hundred yards before terminating in the murk at an ornate door. While the halls were shaped and directed identically, the contents vastly diverged from the first step. On the left was a simple, stone walkway forming a perfectly normal hall. Its only distinguishing features were a nondescript line of shelves on one wall, and raised section that looked through a gap in the wall to the other hallway.

That second hallway, by contrast, was at once much simpler yet far more of a challenge. It had no walls, no ceiling, not even a floor. Instead, it simply opened into a chasm below which was the source of the room’s fluid light, a boiling, steaming river of magma deep beneath the mountains around Canterlot. Noxious vapors occasionally belched from the crevasse in a steamy upswell. The only objects that marked it as more than a caved-in section of the structure were its clear path and a single metal rail that ran through it. High above the rail, attached by pulleys, chains and a morass of gears and cogs hung machinery, silent and seemingly inert.The rail itself held above the steaming heat of the lava flow from one end of the chamber to the other, terminating at a block on the far side and a bank of metal boxes on the side where Devon and Luna stood.

Barely large enough to hold a single pony, the boxes were simple affairs of blackened metal, hanging off of the railing by a simple, but durable hook. Each was equipped solely with an open door on one end and a single lever inside.

“Well,” Devon said, pointing his body towards the stable hallway, but not moving yet. “I don’t want to make anything happen again, but do you think we should go that way, Princess?”

“Aye, we agree. But let us both bear caution with our steps, aye Devon?” Luna responded, turning her gaze down and placing every hoof carefully. Following closely behind, Devon tried his best to put his hooves exactly where the Princess set hers before a realization hit.

Hold it.

Aye Devon?

Vociferous outburst, ho!  “Woah!”

“Hyeep!” Luna squeaked, leaping over rapidly flailing limbs in uncontrollable surprise, “what diabolical trap vexes us now-”

“No, it’s not that!” Devon laughed slightly, coming up short before colliding with Luna’s tail. “It’s just that this is the first time you got my name right.”

Wait, first time?  First time?  She’d been getting it wrong this whole time, and he didn’t have the courtesy to correct her?  Turning her head with a wild flare of incredulity, Luna found it fading as she beheld the immensely pleased smile on the charcoal unicorn’s face.

Just when she thought the overt genuflections of Canterlot were behind her.  Pfft.

If only.

“Well, we suppose that we hath,” Luna offered a small nod of acknowledgement. “For thou hasn’t set off anything in minutes. Thou hast earned it!” Her tone at the end rose, and the expectant grin that followed begged Devon to recognize the joke in her words.

Minutes passed as they worked step by tortuous step through the hallway, ignoring the bank of shelves like they were as deadly as the lava and not even daring to look at the raised area of the hall until they reached the door. Neither even dared breathe heavily until they stopped before the great portal, caked in the same dust as the previous one. Gingerly, Luna exhaled over the door, revealing a new sigil, bands of colored stone sharply angled from pearl inlaid cloud formed a bold lightning strike of rainbow colors. Another breath revealed a small button no larger than a hoof.

“This...methinks that this be the only switch here,” Luna spoke, disturbing the tense silence between the pair. “We hath not seen a single switch nor tripwire nor tumbling combusting pastry. We beleive that we can relax somewhat.”

“So I can start breathing normally again?” Devon asked, stepping around Luna to approach the door. His eyes slid towards the door, inevitably towards the button. “Do you think we should...”

“Aye, thou may breathe more safely. As for yonder button...”

“Yeah...”

“A plan ascends, Booksmarts.”

Devon raised a hoof. “That’s Bookma-” He stopped, seeing her eyes suddenly narrow in confusion at his unexpected approach.  “I mean....” He cleared his throat, starting again.. “That’s, brilliant, eh-hehm, yes.”

Eh.  Small victories.

“Thank you, now listen henceforth.”

It’s certainly a step forward.

Embedded within an ornate ring of cryptic designs and symbols, an amber apple-shaped jewel reflected back at her.  Within, the mirrored countenance of her frustration warped and bubbled across the oddly curved surfaces, only to further exaggerate the quantity of rancor wrenching her face.

"I said!" She said. "Unlock this stupid door!"

In the amber reflection, Gina's brows dipped to a menacing scowl, her forehead expanding to a caricature's depiction of a Goddess of unbridled hate.

"Open!"

Make that, Goddess of unbridled hatred of inanimate objects.

"Open sesame!"

The giant double doors responded in the general manner inanimate objects react to speech.

She huffed, leveling atop two swiveling forehooves with her back legs tighlty clenched upwards. Bolting, the hooves cracked into the wooden facade, the thundering blast of reverberating noise echoed through the chamber.

Emerging from the diminishing sound, another series of rhythmic mechanical groans and creaks emerged from behind the stone walls.  Behind her, a draping rope pulled towards the ceiling, snagging taught and lifting a giant swinging axe blade into the ceiling.  Another series of rickety clangs and shrill grating carried forth.

Beside her, a tile shook. As the melody of churning machinery came to an abrupt stop, the tile popped up.  Curiously, she tapped a forehoof against it, but even the most ginger touch caused it to react suddenly as it jolted back in the ground. In her peripheral vision, the amber apple flickered, seeming to reflect a bright shimmer falling rapidly towards the-

*Brk-KLANG!*

She jumped, spinning around twice! Her back firmly planted against the wooden door, Gina breathed out heavily from the unexpected startling blast of falling metal. With a surrendering whack, the giant swinging axe blade fell flat on the ground.  The rope gripping its base ascended along with the song of activated mechanics resetting the device behind muffling walls.

The room slowly crawled across the ground, various instruments of messy destruction slowly plodding towards the wall.  Gears, wires, springs, and extending metal work slithered through the various alcoves and recesses of the walls, retreating back into the dark compartments that housed them.  As each trap reset, Gina found herself stepping before the door as panel after panel jumped up in a manner ready to be pressed.

Accidentally planting a rear leg atop a stray panel, her body dipped downward as her weight pushed it down with immense force.  A volley of whirring air rushed towards her from all directions as a torrent of narrow flickering white specks of light grew in their speedy approach to her.  Her ears were suddenly overwhelmed with a stinging bombardment of whooshing bullets, pattering menacingly against the stone wall behind her! Sharp clanging complimented each passing projectile as she aptly weaved between the oncoming perilous blurs.  Her vision flickered white as a metal flash ushered a lone white streak barreling straight for her eyes.  She dropped her jaw in a sharp gasp for air-

*Kling!*

-Before catching the shiruken between tightly clenched teeth.

"Hyuh!" She laughed through pressed molars and ringing metal. "Nuffin' to it!"  She whirred her neck back, and with a spin, flung the shiruken towards the oncoming volley. It pinged deftly off a flickering white blur, and in a blink, ricocheted between several others that ricocheted into many more.  The shiruken spun back around, slicing the air just past her ear before spiraling towards the giant wooden doors.

The amber reflection of the orange unicorn split into several as the projectile impaled firmly through the jeweled apple.

Looking down at the arrangement of ascended tiles around her Gina suddenly laughed at the revelation that befell her.  "These aren't traps!" She smiled, scanning the various alcoves lining the walls. "It's a combination lock!"

She immediately planted her hooves onto the panels, pressing them in a determined order.

"Bring it."

At the first hint an approaching whine, she leapt into the air with a wild spin, careening haphazardly through a hurricane of darts.  She kicked off the wall, flipping forwards to an upside down dash along the top of the cavern, dragging her hooves across the ceiling's stone.  As a ceiling slab before her rustled and plummeted, she kicked off of it with another roll with her forelegs outstretched.

Screaming with a metallic war cry, a giant swinging blade rushed to intercept her.  Swiftly, she tucked in her legs, feeling the cold kiss of steel gracing the air just behind her fetlocks. She wrapped a foreleg around the wire, planting firmly atop the wire, riding it back across the cavern in a swooping arc.  She dropped down, gripping the top of the blade while hanging off its side as she felt the rapid clanging of lances buffeting the opposite side.

As the blade reached the top of its returning arc, Gina pressed off the blade's side with reaching legs, grabbing tightly on the handles of two lances firmly embedded in the wall.  A prickling crawl sauntered down her hoof, and as she looked up, she saw a multicolored regiment of spiders descending down the wall.  She shook the hoof-sized arachnid off with a grunt, and descended down towards other lances, halberds, spears, and knives also sticking out of the wall.

A sudden torrent of gushing water, blasted against the base of the wall, knocking the makeshift ladder of impaled weapons out from underneath her.  She grit her teeth, seeing the approaching army of frighteningly large spiders narrowing in on her, before a thudding rumble of rock augmented in volume around her.

Seeing the large rolling boulder passing undisturbed through the gushing flood water, she jumped towards it.  Her hooves immediately rebounded and were swept from beneath her, and after a quick tumble across her back, she regained some footing on the massive whirling rock.  Like some maniacal circus act, she shuffled rapidly atop it, keeping her inverse momentum in tune with the boulder as she rode it across the chamber.

The massive swinging blade cut precariously close to her again, just missing the boulder on its return.  Yet when seeing it whiz past her into another hanging arc, Gina narrowed her eyes, focusing all her attention on the knot connecting the huge blade to the fragile looking wire.

Her horn illuminated, sparkled, and immediately blasted a narrow dagger of marigold light that sliced cleanly through the wire.  In just a couple seconds, the wire lit up, glowed, and popped as its intertwined fibers snapped.  The blade swung free in a schizophrenic spin, clanging off the ground and landing sideways just in front of the boulder.

The giant rolling projectile diverted off the blade violently, casting Gina into the air.  Careening sideways, she reached for the glowing edge of the wire, but was immediately snagged by an unexpected rope wrapping around her shoulder.  She reflexively wrapped around the errant rope, but immediately curled up her haunches at the caustic bite of extreme heat piercing up her rear legs.  She recoiled, and looked down to see the sparkling glow of burning cupcakes emanating through a tote.

She quickly peered ahead to see the boulder rolling right on track, making a quick line straight for the large double doors.

Perfect.

With her horn, she wrapped a thick miasma of telekinetic energy around the tote below her. In a strained tug of her neck, she snapped the fiery tote free, levitating it in the air beside her.  Swinging back across the cavern, she lined up the tote, aiming it for the door.  In a pulse of rapid magic, the tote torpedoed forward into the giant wooden door, immediately sending a clamoring plume of multicolored fire biting up to the wall.  The door began to warp and curl into itself, weakening and cracking off its hinges.

At the pinnacle of the return swing, she dismounted, whirling and flipping back to the ground.  Beneath her, the boulder contacted its mark, smashing vehemently into the door's blazing wood.  A sparkling blast of debris shot upwards, hundreds of smoky trails flying past the careening unicorn as she plummeted in a standing spin to the ground.

Through the churning maelstrom of smoke, embers, and raining detritus, an orange blur dropped into a boulder-size hole, landing gracefully in a three-point stance with a lightly blazing forehoof lifted above her head.  The unicorn gave the hoof a quick shake, extinguishing the flame, as a final piece of dropping debris ushered an end to the explosive symphony.

A flaming cupcake landed with pristine grace into her raised forehoof.

She sauntered forward through the forcibly opened...or, forcibly exploded with fire and boulders door.  Not looking back at the slowly drooping doorframe behind her, she took a slow step forward...

*Kra-kwooom!*

...Taking a single bite out of the flaming cupcake, not giving a single glance to her large wooden adversary as it collapsed and promptly exploded into a swirling ball of erupting fire in her wake.

Through a dim hallway, the two stallions strode in a quickened cadence.  The metallic rustle of armor rippled behind them, the clattering noise of the rapidly passing figures unsettled several months of grit, detritus and other coats of neglect.

Trailing behind, struggling to keep up, Private Jetstream found himself careening over slipping appendages as they failed to grip upon the wadded rugs lining the seldom regarded wing of the Canterlot castle. Regaining his balance, he continued his rapid sprint, pushing strenuously to regain the lost distance between himself and the excited succession of jangling descending into the muddy atmosphere.

The Captain was certainly excited. As far as Jetstream could recall, he'd not heard such euphoric melodies of jangling since Captain Shining Armor pranked the mess hall with fake posters for Luna's kissing booth.

He just hoped this occasion wouldn't end the same way; a wasted night being shouted at, cried on, and solemnly promising under punishment of death not to tell anypony about all the crying.

Breaking around another corner in the dust-laden hallway, Jetstream screeched to a stop, nearly planting his nose into the prickly buckles lining the Captain's red jacket.  "Here it is," Stormblade seethed through gasping breaths.  "Finally convinced Celestia to lend me a break."

"Convinced Celestia?" Jetstream tapped against his chin for a second, the gears whirring in his head. "But...sir, Captain Stormblade, weren’t you assigned to clean-up? I don't think you even had a meeting with her, sir."

Cracking open a pair of creaking double doors, a thin sheet of lemon-tinted light cast down the Captain's face.  "Well, I didn't meet her directly so to speak but..." He sloshed around an explanation, hoping for something good and believable to stick.  "But she'd understand the resources I need."

Eh, believable was optional.

In a rapid swing of his shoulder, bursting rays cascaded over Jetstream, the new blast of radiance forced him to stagger backward.  Brushing aside stray licks of rainbow mane draped over his forehead, he shielded his eyes, waiting for his pupils to adjust to the brightly lit foundry before him.

Well, for a bit.  As the glare faded away and his focus pinched details together, the perceived extensive foundry he expected started to coalesce into...

"I present, Forward Operations HQ!"

...A bucket closet.

Well.  "Sir."  Good time as any for a quip.  "I believe Celestia would understand just how much you'll need for...umm..."

Stormblade nudged against Jetstream's shoulder, gesturing with a drawn out wave across the walls covered in crudely hoof-drawn maps and mugshots. "Behold, Jetlag," Stormblade dashed to the middle of the closet in an outstretched flailing of limbs, "We now have a full-blown command center for our royal pursuit!"

"Sir, we..." Jestream trailed off, quizzically dragging across the tacked documentation draping up the room.  "But, can we even...? I'm unsure, Captain Stormblade, sir-"

"Private Jetlag!" The Captain stomped on the ground, a steel bucket clanged off a shelf into a rolling bustle of metallic disappointment. "Again with the disregard to properly addressing authority!"

"Sir, but I said Captain Sto-"

"Head quartermaster!"

Jetstream paused. Any elaboration? A hint as to where he was coming from? Who was the Captain suddenly designating as head quartermaster of-...oh for the love of....

"Right."  Sigh.  "Sir."  Gyeck.  "Head quartermaster, Stormblade."  Blyech!  "I feel we're-"

"No, no, no," Stormblade cracked a limb in a sporadic wave for silence. "Captain Head Quartermaster Stormblade!"

Blyeeech!

"Yessir, Captain Head Quar-"

"Actually," The Captain Head Quartermaster spun in place, facing the opposite wall.  "Rescind that order, it sounds terrible."  Oh?  "Doesn't work."  Oh!  Something intelligent!  Finally, Jetstream exhaled in a long relieved puff, a warm unfamiliar tingling ascending from his stiff smile muscles.  "I prefer...Commodore!"  And, tingling gone.

Whatever, roll with it.  "Yessir, well chosen." If years under Stormblade's service didn't render his emotions to be indecipherable between praise and sarcasm... "Agreed." ...even if he couldn't remember a single instance of praise to contrast with... "Well, as I was saying Captain Commodore Stormbl-"

"Private, don't be so stupid!"  Maniacal wide eyes locked onto the private with tightly contracted pupils.  They immediately recessed into a gradually rising chuckle. "I mean, haw hawr, seriously." THAT kind of chuckle.  The condescending one. "You nitwit, hyeh heh, how could I be both a Commodore...and a Captain!?"

Jetstream took a second to ponder where his life went wrong.

"Hyaw haww, that's...that's  just crazy talk!"

The private came up blank. There really was no determinable landmark where all his life's regrets converged.

"Come along, private, we need to interrogate the citizens on the Princess' whereabouts." The Capt-...the Commodore quickly paced to a stack of papers, each a listing of names and faces.  "Gotta do it all legitimate like."

Yep.  No landmark whatsoever.

"Good cop, bad cop.  And I need you to be the ultimate most atrocious bad cop you can be to my undeniably charming good cop routine."

No landmarks. Just fate in general.

Clunk.

“Confound it!”

Clunk.

“Oh come on, that hit it square!”

Clunk.

“Fie upon yonder button!” Luna heaved another ancient, priceless tome from the relative safety of a tipped-over bookshelf, a pulse of magic scattering it against the door in a useless tumble of words. Huddled behind the makeshift barricade, Devon could only watch in horror as history itself was turned into ammunition in a vain effort to strike a small button.

“Luna, you aren’t going to hit...”

“Be silent! We almost got it! Thou art ruining our concentration!”

Clunk.

Snorting, Luna hefted another book in her telekinesis, but as it floated by his face, Devon spotted a familiar insignia. Before the Princess could launch it, Devon snatched it in his teeth and immediately wished he hadn’t as the force of the magical throw flung him over the barricade and into a head-over-hoof tumble across the room, still clutching the book tightly in his teeth. A whipping smack resonated with a subtle echo as Luna buried her face into a hoof.

The frustrated Princess seethed. “What. Art. Thou. DOING?!”

Staggering to his hooves, Devon stumbled and spun back towards Luna, spitting the book out in front of her before speaking.

“Look at...the...whew...” He shook his head, waiting for the stars and chimes to filter out.  “Look at the cover!” he pleaded, pressing a foreleg’s hoof down onto it to emphasize the emblem. “It’s that same flower and hummingbird thing that was on the journal that’s in my bag!” Nonplussed, Luna seized it in her magic and started to line up another throw.

“And?” she asked, raising a brow as the unicorn seized it in his mouth again.

“Anmphhphmp!” he argued before remembering to spit it out. “Pitoo. And if it is like the last one, it might actually tell us how to proceed!” Conveying a look to Luna to make sure she wasn’t planning to launch it anyway, Devon cracked the cover and began to scan the entries. It was another journal, in mostly the same hoofwriting as the previous.

“Pray tell,” Luna rolled her head away, continuing to scan around the room.  “You insist upon further reading this?”

“Can’t really think of anything else.”

“Fine,” she sauntered to another corner, her eyes drifting to each brick along the wall. “Be quick and summarize the important information for me, if you’d be so kind, Devon.”

Year 2 Month 5 Day 12

The locking mechanism is complete. Very simple compared to what we just accomplished, but this chamber’s defences are not from the door itself. It is as simple as two ponies pressing each button on either side of the door together. Naturally, getting to those buttons happens to be the chamber’s defence. It is far ‘safer’ than the Chamber of Honesty, to be certain, the only dangerous aspect is in the hooves of one of those going through the chamber. And should they simply stay their course, no harm can come to them.

Considering the Princesses’ aversion to the previous traps, their suggestion for such a machine strikes me as unusual. While it is certainly not as direct as a simple trap, the amount of stress this can put on somepony seeking the inner sanctum is distressing to say the very least. One cannot argue that it is not an effective test of one’s loyalty to their cause, but crafting those boxes knowing their purpose has driven a quiet fear into this entire mechanism.

I will be happy when we move past this room forever.

“Okay, so...” Devon began.  “Locking mechanism.”

“I said important information,” the Princess groaned, tapping a hoof on any brick that seemed in the least misshapen. “We need not information we’ve been chewing over for the last several minutes.”

“And...and...okay, apparently...” Devon combed over the words picking them out.  “We just need to push two buttons at the same time.”  He skimmed ahead. “All we have to do is...hmm...that’s weird.”

“What’s weird?”

“The whole challenge is...” Devon reread the passage again, ensuring he got it right.  “Staying the course and just remaining loyal to, well...” Too easy.  Had to be a catch.  “Staying the course, uhh, let me read ahead real quick.”

“More reading?  Fie, I might just hurl yonder brick at one button while leaning against the other.” The Princess quickly paced away. “Do catch up for cider and beignets when you’re done.”

Year 2 Month 6 Day 3

Three workers in one day have been removed from the rail. We had assumed that pegasi would have little trouble erecting the machinery, but we gravely underestimated the danger posed by the fumes. Were it not for the quick thinking of our unicorns, they would have been overcome and lost to the lava.

The planners have held a meeting to ensure that the rail is able to work as the plans dictated. An open car is now unfeasible given the fumes.

Evening Addendum:

Walls have been added to the car and size reduced. It is believed to be effective at blocking enough of the fumes to allow safe passage, but now they resemble coffins more than part of the test. I suppose that the protection is necessary, otherwise the chambers beyond would be inaccessible, morbid as they may be.

I have volunteered to test these new boxes tomorrow. So long as I stay true to the course of the plan, no harm should come to me. The emergency release is not to be touched in transit.

“So...Luna.” Devon scratched a hoof behind his mane, his eyes peering at the black pony-sized boxes seemingly engineered by a demigod of claustrophobia.  “Those dark black metal things...they’re not containers.”

“I hath determined as much, they’re much too small.”  She lifted a foreleg, nestling it along a crate’s top edge.  With a strained metal squeak, it lurched forward with the slight altering of weight.  “Too flimsy, too loose, perchance a holder for a flugelhorn.”

“Eh...” Devon peered again at the crates, unable to disagree with the Princess’ observation.  “Yeah.” Though he couldn’t help but disagree with the journal’s engineering credentials at thinking a pony would fit in one.  “It’s actually a transport mechanism.”

“For what?”  The Princess nickered, nearly tipping over a row of the small crates.  “A wombat?”

Again.  Couldn’t disagree.

Year 2 Month 6 Day 4

I am fully convinced of the effectiveness of this trial.

While I recover, somepony else will take over recording. Given the sudden nature of this, I had to ask my fiance for her help, it took some convincing but I think she will be quite helpful. I am extremely grateful for her support when I came out of that dreadful box, if it were not for her intervention I would have fled into the abyss in my panic.

Her task is simple. All she has to do is illustrate the proper operation of the machinery to move the box from one end of the chasm to the other. The illustrations are prepared.  I fully trust my dearest to handle documenting the next test result while I explain from across the chamber.

“Yeah,” Devon groaned. “A wombat. Or a wallabee. Or a platypus. Or...”

Luna chimed in. “Somepony who’s spent his entire life,” she smiled, gazing in revelation upon the charcoal unicorn, “dealing with height issues.”

“Implying...!?”

Year: Whatever, Month: Don’t Care, Day: Hearth’s Warming in July

Ha! I’m totally writing in his journal That little cutie is totally trusting me to do this! Ah, he’s a klutz, but sweet. Oops, starting to ramble. Fine I’ll dictate for him.

Reporting in as assistant scribe to royal scribes, durp da dwippity doo, test was a success and blah blah blah motor mouth snickerdoodle patootie wendigo breath uh-oh! I better go, he’s wrestling me for the pen, I won’t go without a fight my lov

“Buh? Um...”

“Whatforth be thy troubles?” Luna asked with a wryly raised eyebrow. “Thou hast struck upon too hard of a word? We didn’t believe that such a thing could happen!” As Devon turned to address the remark, he found a jovial smile, none of the irritation or anger in it from mere minutes ago. Did she...just make a joke?

Progress!

“Har har,” Devon groused, turning the book around and pushing it towards Luna. “Maybe you know what that word is, but I sure haven’t seen it.” Laid out on the paper, consuming page after page before Luna was a series of what at first glance appeared to be charcoal drawings. However, there was no marks from any tool, the lines were perfectly clean, burned into the paper without causing any damage or blackening. Beneath the burned lines, tantalizingly out of reach forever, lay diagrams of all of the machinery.

“What befell the pages?!” Luna croaked, heart falling. “Howforth will we cross now?!” Barging her head past Devon’s, Luna lit her horn and flipped through more pages. Each one marred by the same burned images. As page after page flipped away, Devon started recognizing the images. It was slow, at first, for even Devon’s recognition of them came from the muddy corners of his mind.

The view of a classroom from the perspective of a student.

The back of a filly’s head.

Straining his eyes, Devon recognized the filly, and soon the situation. Chiming Hearts School. Stargazer, pegasus. How did this get here? This book is a thousand years old! Devon flipped another page, and the image changed again. The filly had turned to face the drawing, her eyes fixing on Devon’s like he was actually there.

Another flip. The filly’s face had twisted into a look that was equal parts scorn and embarrassment. While nothing could be said on the page, Devon immediately knew what was happening. The memory was a constant sting on the back of his mind. His first fumbling attempt to ask for a filly to be his special somepony in a childish fit of awkward colt affection.

“Devon, no way! I can’t go to the dance with a blank-flank like you!”

He could swear he could hear the voice in the drawing, the recreation of his memory was so vivid. It was as if it was Stargazer just shouted him down in the last chamber after admitting his affections.

“We are not thy lady!”

Devon furiously whipped through page after page of the same memory repeated. Each exposure to it drew more details of it back from the dusty recesses of his memories, each detail reflected in the picture that followed. Where before, it was merely a charicature of his memory, now the pages resembled the memory itself in perfect detail, down to the math problems on the chalkboard that were up when a young colt made his decision to show his feelings and affections for the lavender pegasus. This isn’t possible! How are these...

Devon’s mind raced until he reached the end of the drawings and schematics. As the page flipped over, a force slapped across his mind, disorienting yet familiar. Just as his mind recovered from the rush, he heard a telltale chirp of pride. Glyph squealed in delight, burning the images from Devon’s memories and moods into the pages.

“Ugh...sorry, I...” he exhaled deeply, trying to mask the impression the surge of repressed memories exuded. “You!” He flinched hard, regaining his composure by lunging an accusing hoof at the paisley whirling ball of opalescent happiness.  “You, Glyph, drew over every single drawing!”

The Glyph retreated, the tone of chirps and purrs descended to a minor scale of whimpers and apologetic whines.  Devon grit his teeth, dropping his quivering forehead to the page, only to emerge a second later with a determined smile.

“Well!” He slammed the book shut, hoping the force smacked the Glyph hard enough to awaken its Hoofrian ancestors.  “This got a lot harder...” Devon sighed, turning his attention back to the bewildering mass of levers, toggles and gauges. “Do you remember anything about this, Princess? Anything at all?”

“Nay...” Luna shook her head with a look of embarrassed apology.

“But you were here, weren’t you? I mean...back then?”

“We most certainly were, Mister Bookmark, but...” Luna trailed off, letting out a small giggle. “Back then, we were not so interested in such gizmonic devices of frick and frack. We were trying to bring about a nation!” Luna’s cheeks flushed as momentum built in her diatribe. “We were trying to bring ponies of all creeds together AND keep the night sky! We-”

“Okay!” Devon interrupted with a yelp. “You were busy, I understand. Just thought it might help us in this situation.” Turning his gaze to the wider chamber, he let out a small groan. “Since you can’t just fly over and make this easy...one of us is going to have to...” Devon hesitated, part of him knowing exactly how the following conversation was going to play out. “One of us will need to ride in one of those boxes. What do you think, Princess? Shoul-”

“Very well, if thou volunteerth for the ride, we shall guide thee from these controls!” Luna beamed happily. “We must say, we were worried that thou were going to bid us into that befouled box! Truly thou art a paragon of loyalty to volunteer for such a task!”

“Well, actually I...” Devon sputtered, even as Luna swept alongside him, guiding him towards the beginning of the chamber, where the boxes lay. “I was going to ask your opinion because...”

“We do not forget such bravery, Mister Bookmark! Thou shalt earn some of our respect yet!” Luna added with a chuckle and grin that Devon struggled to identify. Was she truly thanking him, or just chiding him. “And we thank thee for thy trust in operating the machinery! While we would hath believed thou hath a nack for such things, we shall not let thee down!” Placing a hoof on his shoulder, Luna addressed Devon with heavy sincerity.

We do not forget such bravery, Mister Bookmark!

Hold up.

Mister Bookmark!

His...name.

“Hah, Princess! Finally, you’re-!”

“Getting a plan together, yes!” Eh.

“No, what I-”

“We shall stick to thy plan til the end!” Small victories. “Should the journals speak truth, we must not groweth distracted or diverted.” By the time her praise and solidarity had completed, the pair stood in front of one of the boxes.

This seemed like a worse and worse idea.

While the journals emphasized the simplicity of the task, he couldn’t help but feel there was some silver lining, as no architect as wild-minded as one to even etch a swinging tote of flaming cupcakes on a rope with a straight face...no, couldn’t be this simple.

Placing one hoof on the floor of the casket, Devon felt every fibre of his being clench down. The casket seemed tinier than before. The gap over the lava seemed longer. The fumes seemed deadlier. Halfway into the iron box, the unicorn hesitated and turned, looking over his shoulder at Luna. Part of him begged the rest to get out of that box as fast as possible, find some other way around this problem. But when he saw Luna’s look of reassuring determination, he remembered the agreement.

Staying the course.

"Fear not, Mister Bookmark!” The name again. His heart fluttered subtly within, knowing she was finally getting it right. “For we shall extract thee from yonder iron box forthwith! Thou hast nothing to fear, we shall retain due watch over thee." Her words carried over the squeal of the ancient hinges as the box closed around him.

“I’m going to hold you to that, Princess,” Devon said with a final deep breath before darkness swallowed him. Please hurry.

*Kuh-Slam*

Please hurry.

Closing his eyes, Devon tried to turn his focus to the sounds that leaked in from the tiny cracks in the door. But even Luna’s near hoofsteps sounded despairingly distant and soft as she walked around to the elaborate machinery to operate the rail and its new cargo. Muttering a small curse at the small swirl of magic that obscured the directions in the journal, Luna pressed down one of the levers experimentally, having nothing more than guesses to go off of.

From her perch, Luna watched as long-neglected machinery jerked to life that it had not had for a millennium. A hook from the railing rolled out and snagged the casket, filling the chamber with the hideous clamour of metal scraping stone until the casket finally lifted from the floor with an alarming wobble.

“Gyeah! Woah!”

Inside, Devon’s world was nothing but sound and movement and neither of those senses were telling him things he liked. He could not decide what was worse, the scraping as his self-imposed prison ground towards the lip of the chasm, or the unsettling silence when it was undoubtedly beyond that precipice. What he for sure didn’t like, however, was the swinging that pitched his body back and forth against the black iron walls. With a squeak, Devon lost his balance again, and had to dodge the emergency escape lever as he slipped down the wall in a tumble.

“Easyeasyeasyeasyeasy!” he wailed despondently as momentum carried one swing into another, scattering the unicorn’s balance again. A forward lurch hurled Devon’s head against the wall, sending his glasses scattering towards his hooves in a black oblivion. Blind, Devon lowered his head to grope for the fallen spectacles, but came up short when his teeth found a stiff metal lever. Immediately, Devon decided his glasses weren’t worth it, for one bump on that lever would rip the doors open and send him tumbling out into a very unhappy end.

As tumbles and discomforts began to accumulate, a deeper gnawing uneasiness crept into Devon’s mind. Part of him wished he had not been so smitten by the Princess to agree without complaint to enter this casket. Devon hated the dark. And he hated closed spaces more.

Please hurry.

Not so much what the darkness contained.  Not so much what closed walls harbored. No. It was what they brought out.

Hurry.

What they brought out...within...

...Him.

Luna pursed her lips, carefully balancing the heavy dark casket along the track. Before her, the iron container swung a few haunches from the edge, but the machinery had ground to a halt. Beside her, the Glyph chirped, happily devouring into another one of the journal’s blank pages to swirl and dance burning patterns into the old parchment.

“We are truly glad thou are enjoying thyself, Glyph...” Luna groaned, reaching out to try another lever. However, she could not repeat the success at lifting the casket, and the machinery groaned as confusing commands caused it to shudder and jerk violently, pushing the casket a few haunches down the line in a sporadic and disquieting jerk. Closing her eyes, she tried to remember when she saw this last, but such a distance was simply a haze of notions and fleeting visions, all focused elsewhere, certainly not on the machinery.

In a frenzy, Luna threw three more levers and adjusted a dial. She did not wait to see what the results were. “Blighted machinery for simple foals!” she barked in undisguised disgust as her magic lit a toggle and spun it. Across the chamber, the chains and pulleys kicked into unsteady life. However, while it moved, every motion of the chains was jerky and spastic, infuriating Luna further. She could see how it should work, but without understanding the controls before her, every motion threatened to cancel the last.

Minutes passed and frustration gave way to an angry apathy. Every time she had seemed to move the box forward significantly, the Princess would hit some lever or trigger some mechanism that sent it skidding backwards to start the procedure over again. While she worked at it, Luna’s eyes wandered, powerlessness over the whole affair draining her perseverance. Resting her chin on a forehoof, Luna idly kicked one of the books she was previously using as ammunition, sending it tumbling end over end until it landed face-up.

“Atlas of Astrological Beauty - Artist’s Edition...” Luna read aloud, blinking a few times as the title washed over her mind. It was one of her favorite books, even from before her banishment. What was it doing out here? Wistful memories of her youth hit her strongly, the younger Princess spending hours laying out a canvas and plan for how her night sky would awe and amaze.

Or it would...should anypony notice it...

Shaking her head of the unworthy thoughts, Luna turned her eyes back to the machinery and tried a new combination of levers. Her reward was a shower of sparks and the box flipping end over end on its chain in a mane-raising front flip. However, as the same puzzle fell before her, with barely any progress made, Luna’s eyes roamed again. To her side, another book lay against the steps leading up to the console.

Great Galaxies of Starswirl.

It was another fillyhood desire, one she remembered fondly wanting year after year for birthdays and Hearth’s Warming, but was never available, even for royalty. Not so much a book as simply a collection of charts, drawn back in a day when ponies would appreciate the night sky and dedicate elaborate tapestries to it.

So rare, yet so sought after for its invaluable information, what was it doing just rattling around in the open instead of being guarded by a regiment of her armored best in the deepest wing of the Starswirl archive?

Biting her lip, Luna swallowed down the urge to take just a moment to flip it open to a chart. Her duty was on that box which swung precariously over the lava. Halfway there now! Throwing her focus back into the levers, the Princess of the Night finally thought she was getting the hang of it. As the casket moved along the chain, Luna had to step to the side to keep her view locked on it and as she stepped, she nearly tripped. Over a book.

“I’m just as good!” - a Little Sister’s Guide to Recognition.

Luna hadn’t even noticed that book at her hooves. She should have noticed it, she was nearly standing on it! “By my troth... what is befalling this chamber?” Luna whispered, though her eyes now danced between Devon’s casket, the controls and the books, all seemingly angled that she could see their titles or elaborate covers. A solitary bead of sweat ran across Luna’s cheek as title after title ran past her eyes.

Princesses’ Guide to Night Skies.

Celestial Lullabies and Arias.

Ruling Alone.

“Begone, foul temptors!” Luna snarled at the air, slashing a deadly semicircle with her mane and tail. “Thou shalt not divert me!” Behind her, Luna heard another book fall and furiously swung her head around.

“Be...GONE!” the Royal Canterlot Voice boomed, sending every book scattering and tumbling into the wall behind her, obscuring covers and blasting them into dark crannies. “Ha!” Luna crowed triumphantly. “We are not so easily diverted from our goals. Such a simplistic test shalt not trap US!” With a final, satisfied snort of air, Luna turned regally back towards the control console.

Laying across it was a book.

Second Chances: A Guide to the Long Lost Art of Breaking Past Obligations

The title stared up at Luna accusingly.  In even grander letters along the bottom, the author’s signature leaped with unwavering pride off the page.

G. B.

Faltering backwards, Luna could feel her resolve cracking and straining. “Thou...” she breathed, “shalt...NOT...divert us!” With a wild forward kick, Luna slammed her foreleg into the book, sending it spiraling into the oblivion of magma.

Devon did everything he could to focus on anything but his surroundings. Anything but to think on the tight confines and the constricting darkness that all but had weight on his shoulders. Closing his eyes, he tried to focus on the subtle movements lapping the exterior of his confines; the tiny mechanical sway as each gear clicked or chain pulled to drag him inch by tortuous inch across the chasm. Pressing his cheek against the iron door of the casket, Devon tried to feel the furnace-like heat of the lava below him, but the only warmth on the metal came from his own breath. Were it not for knowing that he was mere inches above the flow of magma, the unicorn could believe he was anywhere.

"Just a little bit more..." Devon said, repeating it over and over in a small private whisper. "Just a little bit more..." Despite his protests to enter the casket in the first place, Luna had assured him that she wasn't going to leave him until they were both through this ordeal. Focusing on her words, Devon fought to keep his breathing paced and calm, and to wrestle his out of control heartbeat down to a reasonable pace.

"Fear not, Mister Bookmark.”

A hollow clang reverberated around him as he slammed the back of his head against the metal wall.

“Thou hast nothing to fear, we shall retain due watch over thee."

The echoing metallic bang receded, leaving him alone with just the sound of his heavy breath.

She meant every word. Luna wouldn't leave me.

Just the sound of his heavy breath.  Not even the gears and cantankerous mechanisms around the container resumed.

A soft smile cracked Devon's lips. Her words, her eyes with that glitter of protective determination. How could he not loyally trust those words? Devon stepped into this horrible box without a doubt in his mind that the Princess would free him, either by pulling him back or at the other end and that thought sustained his courage. Sustained, that is, until the devil of imagination introduced one element to his consciousness. One element that had no standing in a place as this.

Doubt.

But what if she didn't mean it?

A question raised in the back corner of his mind only needed a moment to infect and spread throughout Devon's emboldening routine now undermined every effort to keep his courage and wits. Every effort to dismiss the intruding vision of Luna simply opening the next door and moving on only caused it to appear elsewhere in his mind. One doubt birthed a second, and each doubt’s offspring yielded another and another until his head swam with hallucinogenic echoes straining from worry and wrought tension. Calm breaths gave way - they gave way to erratic panting and, drumming, Devon could feel a wild drum solo going on where his heartbeat should have been.

She didn't mean it.

"Luna? Princess?" Devon called against the unmoving iron door, forcing every bit of calm into his voice that he could muster. "Are you out there?" Lifting a darkness-shrouded hoof, he reached through the abyssal mire, clanging a hoof on the door, knowing full well that there was no way she could hear him if he was still traversing the pit. Even though the logical side of his mind stoically knew this, it still fed the growing wellspring of panic that rocked through his heart. Devon called again, louder. "Luna!" His hoof rattled the door with harder, stronger and more desperate knocks. Maybe she will hear those, or they will make the casket rock back and forth and tell her that something is wrong.

For a fleeting moment, his eyes moved towards where he knew the escape latch lay. All it would take was one pull and he’d be gone. But then the plan would collapse.

She's long gone.

"LUNA!" Devon howled at the top of his lungs. All of the calm was gone, replaced by icy terror. Abandoned by those his heart sung for. But worse still, abandoned in a tiny...dark...claustrophobic..
.
"Gah!" Devon gasped as magic surged through his body, reflexive and instinctual. When emotion took over his reserved and focused mind, magic that normally stayed out of his grasp burst forth. He was like a colt still, only able to show his basic magic as a burst of pure emotion. And this burst was just light, a sparkling surge of blue-gray light that brought a moment's illumination to his iron prison. All around him pressed walls of cold metal, so blackened by time that they seemed to drink up the light of Devon's horn. It was completely nondescript, and served to halt his out of control breathing for a few seconds as he finally got something to look at.

Before it began fading again.

"N-! No! No! Wait!" Devon squeaked as darkness swallowed him again and the panic swelled up. As if on cue, his magic surged instinctively. The grey light flowed out of his horn and filled the chamber with a fading luminescence. Again, Devon saw the same four plain walls of iron. But as the light burst forth, Devon swore his position at changed. When he entered the casket, he was upright, and he had no room to shift or move in the tight enclosure, but now it seemed like he crouched in the corner, propped against the wall near the door. A moment of confusion gave way to a creeping, dank familiarity as the light died out again.

"Stop!"

Devon yelled before he even could think to speak, and moments after darkness engulfed him, the panicked instinctive magic rushed out of his horn again, light climbing back up the walls.

The walls were no longer iron, but appeared as nothing but simple wood found in any home in Equestria. Panting breath filled the chamber as Devon tried to squirm upright again, but his hooves found no purchase, his back found no direction to move against the intense walls.

The interior twisted, faded, and played tricks on his mind. His grasp upon the intangible reality shuddered, then immediately regained a new focus in a completely different rendition of total darkness.

A flicker of light traversing through imagined cracks danced along draping objects above him; a line of old clothes hanging above him, their texture and fabric coasting in and out of existence as his mind wobbled between the casket and...

And...

As he saw the walls changed into a distantly familiar wood, a new fear clung at Devon's gut. It was not new to him, but one long forgotten and, until now, happily left behind forever.

She said she couldn’t believe she’d be asked to a dance by a blank flank!

That thought snapped into his mind again as each horror fought for primacy. Predictably, darkness started swallowing the chamber again as the surge of light lost its spark and, despite his efforts to control himself, Devon knew he would be lighting the room again. His magic was completely beyond his control now, the unicorn merely a passenger to the nightmare playing out in front of him. As the light returned, the walls did not change, but below his hooves and flank, Devon felt an odd, sickeningly familiar feeling. Reaching down with a foreleg, Devon blindly sought the velvety sensation that ground underneath him. Squirming, the unicorn rolled once before the sensation moved underneath him. It could only be one thing, a memory. A foalhood symbol of comfort and protection, but its warmth was hampered by a sheen of moisture.

Just as he drew it to eye level, the darkness took hold again, leaving the unicorn with the lingering feeling, the hollow comfort of a blanket that was his comfort in this place before. In Devon's mind, the casket was completely gone, replaced by the cloying terror and sickening sense of loss and abandonment within the warped walls augmenting in ascending height.. Whatever was in his hoof, despite never being seen, was perfectly known, known as well as anything he had grown up with. But in this space, in this clutching darkness, all of the comfort of a foalhood blanket provided normally only fueled his terror.

Why was it taking him here?

"Get me, get me...” He silently choked on stifled breath, trying to find enough bearing to render the words.  A flash of memory shot through him, a familiar exclamation that held diligently within the gnarled wooden closet.  “...OUT OF HERE!" Devon yelled at the top of his lungs.

Of all places...

The hope that Luna could somehow hear him and pull that off was a single dying ember of hope, but part of Devon hoped that the yelling would at least give his mind something new to attach to as the darkness swallowed him again and magic nervously sparked through his horn.

Why here?

The sensation of cloth on his foreleg melted away as the light came up again, revealing the same wooden walls. There was nothing new, and despite his trembling, Devon finally felt his tension ease fractionally.  It was as he was instructed, after all.  If the casket’s designer just wanted him to sit through whatever mental trial he somehow schemed, whatever erratic memory it was supposed to trigger within him to trip him up and really put him to the test, so be it. All he had to do was not pull that lever.

Fine.

“Fine!”  The sudden intrusion of an agitated murmur beyond the walls forced Devon’s eyes wide.  "Gets outta f’ere." That voice...distant and muddy and painfully familiar. "Gi’t outt’a f’ere righ’ now!"

The words were charged with rage and anguish, the seams of something precious tearing apart with every syllable. All the unicorn could do was what he had done before; the same reflex coming naturally to him in some vestigial trance.  Holding back the quivering warmth encroaching from the corner of his eyes, he pressed himself tighter against the small corner, covering his ears with his forelegs to bury his face, hoping that the voices would die down.

"You aren't needed here! Y'never were!"

That the voices would just give up.

"Get out of here and just GO!"

That the voices would move beyond his range of hearing.

"We alls goin’ be better off wid’out you!"

That the voices...would go back to...go back to the way they used to...

“Nev’uh!  No!  I’s nev’uh’d ev’uh thoughts that way abou’tya ev’uh!”

Hoping the voices would go back to....

“But we’s has a son now, and if y’wanna know why I stays, b’cuz a’least he’s one w-who’da accept my’s, m-my, my’s...”

To the way they used to...

“...My love.”

Hoping.

“Unlikes y-you!”

Hoping the unfortunate truths he’d resigned himself to acclimate to were just a pessimistic byproduct of foalhood whimsy.

“Get out!  Get out!  Please, just get out.  Get out.”

Why here?

“Get out.”

As the flare of light from his horn sputtered away again, Devon didn't notice, his eyes were pinched tightly shut and his head curled inward against his chest. Every muscle seized completely, locking him tightly in a fruitless struggle against an unconquered fear.

Hoping.

To the charcoal unicorn, it was an eternity before his senses even flickered back to life when he cautiously moved one foreleg off of his ear, and then the other. His eyes were still closed, but a tiny bit of his mind was starting to emerge again.

Is...is it over? It's quiet again.

Quiet, but the mare’s words still echoed forth.  “Get out,” it rang in his stored cogniscience.  “Get out.”  They throbbed and pounded against his mind.  “Get out.”

As they did for years before.

Meekly, Devon tried to shift his body and lift his head away from the fetal curl he had locked himself into.

“Get out.”

Finally, with a surge of strength, he opened his eyes just as his horn let out a final involuntary sputter of panicked luminance.

“Get out.”

Devon let out a choked gasp before a new scream burst forth from his lungs.  Somehow, the interior was now scratched in overlapping words!

GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT
GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT
GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT

Scrawled in panicked fervor, the casket’s walls reflected back a phalanx of hastily etched words!  Dozens of messages, hundreds, all of them seemingly carved in by the same unsteady author, jagged and disconcerting. Every single one carried the same terse pair of words.

No!

GET OUT

Stop!

GET OUT

I must...I must...

GET OUT

I must get out!

Breath flooded out of Devon’s lungs. The interior of the casket pulsed again in a black swath of sporadic magic.  The closet interior returned, and he clamored over foalhood hooves back into the draping clothes hanging dizzyingly above.  The tension in his heart mounted, his breaths carried tremendous rhythm that racked his ribs, yet through momentary breaks of his body screaming for an escape, he heard it.

Hoofsteps.

Heavy hoofsteps.

Hoofsteps descending upon the closet door from the outside, the mare’s panicked screaming from before trailing distantly behind them.

Get out.

Get out!

Devon grit his teeth, readying his body to run with all his strength.  Brushing the draping fabric away and kicking aside a pile of books and toys, he reached feverishly for the closet door handle.  But in the handle’s place...

An emergency lever.

“Don’t yous all leave!” Sobbed the mare in the distance, her crackling voice barely piercing through the old closet walls.  “Please, I begs ya’, don’t!”

The heavy hoofsteps sounded again, this time receding away before disappearing behind a slamming door.

“Not now, not...never!” Her own voice followed along, disappearing into the inaudible distance. “Don’t leave!”

Don’t leave.

His head swam.

Don’t leave.

Bubbles appeared in his vision.

Don’t leave.

His body retreated, flopping back against cold steel.  He clenched his teeth, feeling the distant familiarity of warmth creeping up his nose, a tense quivering pulling at the inner corners of his eyelids.  He found himself in a new quiet, an unsettling quiet, not even the sound of his own spastic breathing registered.  He held a hoof to his chest to make sure he was even still breathing. Nothing much else to do.  He could finally adhere to the demands of the challenge.  He could stick to it.  After all, riding through the darkness, unknowing what’s ahead, pretty much defines loyalty, does it not?

He rode contentedly, silently, but quivering and broken through the confined darkness. His emotions flared uncontrollably, yet through the resonating pangs of memory, he sought any comfort in the darkness.

Without choice, finding comfort was easy.

And without much else to detract, the comfort came in abundance.

The comfort came in the black.

His voice cracked gently, his nose sniffed heavily.  He tried to wipe away the gathering moisture starting to flutter into his eyes, but hardly touched a hoof to tear before the casket door swung open, dropping him to the cold stone floor mere inches from the edge of the crevasse.

The casket’s door banged open and in a tumult of limbs, the charcoal unicorn fell out. Luna smiled broadly at the movement.

“Huzzah! We hath succeeded against this vile trap! We shan’t tell thee of our travails but t’was...Mister Bookmark?”

Fully expecting the unicorn to triumphantly step from the temporary prison, Luna held back a small gasp as Devon trembled at the edge of the box. Like it were more dangerous than the lava, the unicorn threw himself out of the metal chamber, splaying out on the floor before tightening into a fetal ball. As soon as the ball tightened, Devon grew still, the only signs of life from the unicorn being the occasional kick of a leg by reflex, and steady, pained breath.

“Mister Bookmark!” Luna called, shocked. “Mister Bookmark, thou must hold!” Pressing against the pitted gate, Luna could only watch as another bout of trembling slid Devon closer to the edge. “Mister Bookmark! Answer me!” Luna called again, only receiving a pained gasp from the charcoal unicorn in reply as a shot of air hit his lungs.

“Nhg...” Devon risked opening his eyes. Moisture clouded his vision, throwing the chamber into little more than a series of blobs and undefined shapes. Gingerly, he lifted his head and turned towards the shouting cobalt blob.

“Mister Bookmark!” shouted the blob. “The door!” Squinting, Devon cleared his vision and beheld the blob morph into the concerned face of Princess Luna, still trapped on the other side of the gate. As his eyes cleared, Devon’s body strained to action. Ignoring the wild visions still running rampant through his mind, he swung his head in the direction Luna pointed and found the twin to her button.

“Okay...coming...” he murmured, feeling more like he was being called down to breakfast as a colt once again. Slowness permeated his frame and each step felt like it was an eternity. Every instinct or reflex, his history with the ache that seeped out of his heart, begged Devon to simply collapse and let it pass, but he pressed on, fixed on fulfilling the plan. Luna did her part, and now it was his turn.

“Thou art nearly there!” Luna called encouragingly. With a final heave, Devon threw his hooves at the pressure plate, letting momentum press it down and into the slab. For a terrifying moment, nothing happened, a passing spectre of dread that caused both of the ponies to flinch before their ears were assaulted by the sound of scraping stone and creeping wood. Before Devon, the chamber door swung open, the lingering light from the magma behind him casting a feeble flicker into inky shadow. Behind him, the separating gate between him and Luna opened with a loud clank. Duty done, plan completed, Devon finally caved to his heart’s pain. Slouching to his flank, Devon sunk his head down, staring into the cracked stone floor.

“Devon...” Luna lowered her voice as she stooped down to the slouched unicorn. “What foul fate did thou face within that wicked box?”

He didn’t answer. Devon simply stared down into the cracked floor, lit by the erratic glow of lava.

“Devon?” Luna took another pair of cautious steps nearer. “By my sister, what foul magic hath been cast ‘pon thee in that box?” Genuine sympathy washed over his back and shoulders, but he remained fixed on the point ahead of him. Part of the unicorn ached to cave in to the stresses and strains clinging onto his spirit, but another part was louder.

Don’t say anything.

“Devon! Speak to us!”

I don’t need to tell her a word.

“I...” Devon’s voice silenced Luna. Pausing to swallow a thick mouthful of shame, he turned his head around to face her. “I’m fine.” It was a terrible lie, horrible, and Devon did nothing to hide it. To Luna, he looked like he was expecting punishment, or simply resigned to a guilty confession for nothing.

“Art thou positive?” Luna pressed. “What befell thee? We are embarked ‘pon this quest together, Mister Bookmark.”

“I’m serious!” Devon barked, his tone mixing with a flare of heat like the lava behind him. “It was just..”

He clearly needed comfort,  he clearly needed space.

He clearly needed sompeony to talk to, he clearly needed time to think.

He clearly needed company, he clearly needed solitude.

But above all...

Pray tell, confess thou art a deceiver!

 ...He clearly needed...

For I’d rather believeth thee simply a liar, a deceiver, than a...a...

...To not be alone.

For at least then thou would’st be upon the grasp of salvation!

“Just some spell or something...it’s fine.” Devon forced the explanation, hoping that weariness would mask his tone. “It made me see something that wasn’t there and I freaked out a little, that’s all, really.”  Devon sniffed sharply, banishing the latest torrent of tears that threatened to cascade down his face. “Don’t worry, I can handle it.” His voice cracked slightly.

No pony cries this much.

“Devon...” Luna began. He could tell that she didn’t buy it, nopony with a pair of ears would buy a lie so transparent, especially when all the signs of his face and body proclaimed the agony that he just endured. “If thou art certain,” she spoke as Devon’s eyes met Luna’s. Where before Devon would see an accusatory or frustrated fire, he saw only an ember, she caught his lie but sympathy was overtaking her urge to yell the truth out of him, “then we shall make sure that we are more careful later on. We can’t risk thee too much, t’would seem that thou art as needed here as we.”

Devon looked down over his hooves. In the featureless stone, he saw every bit of the lie and a withering shiver down his spine told him that Luna knew the lie as well. But rather than call him on it, Luna simply accepted it. She shouldn’t have.

Why didn’t she say so?

“Come!” Luna called, her tone already back to its determined focus. “We hath a long road ahead of us. And we cannot complete it with thee staring at stones, Mister Bookmark! Fear not, such a fear spell fades quickly!”

There was no spell.

"We must keep moving," Luna urged him into movement with an encouraging nudge of her wing. Reluctantly, Devon rose from his haunches and started a slow canter towards the yawning chamber door. Expecting Luna to stride past him and lead the way, the unicorn kept his head down until the same nudge hit him again. Right beside him, the Princess intentionally kept in step with him.

"We shan't leave thee after such a battle with such foul traps in the box." Her smile was genuine and, at last, Devon felt a stir of courage. Better to just leave it like this. No need to talk about it. If she's happy, I'll manage.

"Sure," Devon finally replied. "Thanks." And, now as a pair, they proceeded further into the unknown in companionable silence.

"Gft...nyeah heh hee!"  The laugh was a whisper, drowned out by the lingering rattle of machinery and chains. "Oh you gotta be kidding...those two?! No way." Hefting herself down the book-strewn safe path, an orange unicorn stepped quickly, but stealthily forward, maintaining a whispered conversation.

"Wait...hang on, you want me to what?"

"And how do I do that?"

"Ooooh...."