Ahuizotl sat alone in a room inside a hidden temple. He was looking out a window at the setting sun, watching as the many shades of orange and pink swirled together in a beautiful masterpiece before fading into a dark purple. If he looked closely enough, he could make out a few stars beginning to shine on the horizon. They were just barely visible with the sun still hanging in the sky, but they were there. Not that it mattered; Ahuizotl's thoughts were elsewhere.
At his last battle with that accursed Daring Do, she had said something that got him thinking. But it couldn't have meant anything, right? They were enemies, and that was how they would stay. So why did it hurt to think that? Why did it hurt to think about that one time when Daring wasn't alone and he failed because of it? Because of what she had said. The way she said it made it sound like a joke, but it stood out more than anything else she had ever said. It actually mattered to him, for once, what his nemesis had said and done. He hated it.
As the last rays of sun faded out of existence entirely, Ahuizotl stood and moved away from the window. It would do him no good to think about her any longer. He had barely survived when the fortress collapsed after that last battle, and he had to find another way to take over now that the rings were destroyed. Here, in this hidden temple, was the best place for that. No others knew of its existence, and if they did they could never find it. It was invisible to all but him and the few minions of his that had survived, for he had granted them the ability to see the temple as he could.
Now, with the night closing in, Ahuizotl left the room and headed towards the main room of the temple. He wasn't sure what his next move would be, but if he didn't come up with something soon he had the chance of being stopped before he even began his plan. After all, it was only a matter of time before Daring found this temple. There was no doubt in his mind that she could find someone to make the temple visible. So why didn't he care?
The answer was simple. Everything circled back to what she had said before he gained the ring to bring eight hundred years of relentless heat. He knew it was supposed to be a joke, and he kept telling himself that, but it didn't matter. Her raspy voice could have held all the sarcasm in the world, and it still wouldn't have mattered. Because he believed what she had said, and it confused him all the more. Even if he hadn't believed it, or even if she had meant it, it shouldn't have mattered. It only mattered because she hadn't meant it, and it struck a chord deep within him.
It hurt, to think that she hadn't meant what she had said at all. He tried to push it aside, pretend it was nothing, but it couldn't be done. For once in his life Ahuizotl couldn't lie. And it was all because of her. Daring Do, the pony he considered to be his greatest foe, had now gotten him so confused he couldn't even plot his revenge. He couldn't lie, couldn't think about anything but Daring. He tried constantly to avert his thoughts, but they would always swerve right back to that day and those words. That one sentence composed of exactly eighteen words. He had counted them once, when the sentence wouldn't stop running through his head.
Of course, that sentence still ran through his head multiple times a day. If there was even a momentary lull in his thoughts, that sentence would play. Her raspy voice, and the words she said would run through his mind relentlessly until he let himself begin to think about her, about Daring Do. And it hurt him so much to know that she didn't mean what she had said, but he couldn't figure out why for the life of him. At this rate, he would probably die before he figured it out, and that fact made him hurt even more. Yet he still didn't know why.
When he looked up, he saw that he was at the doorway of the main room. With a deep breath that was released as a sigh, he stepped into the room. From an opening in the ceiling shone the moon, bathing the room in a silvery light and highlighting the ancient writing along the walls. For what must have been the hundredth time, he began to read the glyphs, though his mind was still otherwise occupied.