//------------------------------// // Fun // Story: Love Is...? // by ambion //------------------------------// The desert sand was soft underhoof, while the sun above was harsh and absolute. The dunes stretched in every direction as an ocean of colour untouched by water, with windswept ripples and swirls all its own. Luna’s hooves sent little slides of sand in motion as she crested a dune. Celestia landed softly next to her, the last few sweeping strokes of her wings sending a blast of sand out into the still air. “Good timing sister,” Luna said as she unslung a sadle bag. “I admit I had entertained some small worry that you wouldn’t be able to attend. Or wouldn’t want to...?” Celestia scoffed. “And miss this? I’m not that uptight. Everything went well with your half of things, I take it?” “Naturally,” said Luna, giving the bag strapped to her side a hearty thump. “Everything we need is right here. And your end?” Celestia stretched with a deep bow. “Canterlot thinks we’re on sabbatical. A relaxing break with sunshine, peace and quiet.” Luna grinned, so Celestia added with a pout, “It’s not entirely a lie.” “Only mostly a lie,” Luna chuckled. “Peace and quiet would quite undermine the whole point of being here, don’t you think?” She batted her sister with a blue wing. Celestia took a haughty stance. “I’m in this for the academic interests.” “So you keep trying to tell me, not that I believe it for a second. Come now, let’s dig up this tomb already. And then bash mummies.” It started with the twinned glows of alicorn magic, a crackling line of sparks that sank into the quiet sand. Something shuddered through the ground, and a wind picked up, swirling in on itself with arcing bolts of magic zapping across it. The flurry rose, in height, in sound, sand content, until it was scooping up the desert by the tonne, lifting it in a storming fountain of which the two alicorns shared its eye. With a thunderclap and a flash the whole thing exploded, spreading the sand outwards in every direction for a thousand paces. Fine grains fell sparkling through the once again still and quiet air. Luna sneezed, brushed the particulate from herself hastily and rummaged through the bag. “Ah, yes. Here we be. The lost tomb of Tooty-Fruity the Uncommon. Oh Celestia, do look at the pictures on the door! Very exciting! Shall I shatter this timeless find to untold pieces so that we may begin the fun, or would you like to? Celestia shook sand from her wings as she approached the door. It was greatly exaggerated in size, even for an alicorn. Neither her nor Luna could actually read horsey-glyphics, but the skulls, spears, monsters and other pictographs of the like spoke on a very international level. The door, of the sort likely to hold untold horrors at bay, could easily have weighed several tonnes. Eons had added everything of mystery and majesty to its image and taken nothing from the granites strength. Prying it from its hinges took some small effort. Frowning with concentraion, Celestia levitated it gently to one side, laying the giant door neatly into the side of a dune. “We’re not vandals,” she explained with a smile. “It is an artifact after all.” Luna only huffed. “Spoilsport.” She could not tarnish her enthusiasm for long though, and as they left the world of light and heat behind she grew ever more excited. “Perhaps there’ll be bone wraiths!” she said hopefully. “Mummies go without saying, but bone wraiths add an element of speed and danger that I really find quite exhilerating. Or sphinx golems! Oh, sister, look at my shillelagh. Studded with moon-chaste silver no less for that little extra something.” The short club indeed shone with a slight silvery luminescence of its own, just barely visible against the light spells both alicorns had conjured. “Planning ahead,” Celestia said gravely, “that’s unlike you.” “They passed deeper into the necropolis, passing collapsed corridors and trivial dead-filled dead-ended antechambers along the way. “Well yes, I wanted to make sure this went off well. It’s been very long since we went raiding together.” “An age,” Celestia agreed. “Do you have an extra one of those, by any chance?” Luna beamed. Not literally, which would have been magical and explosive, but the expression, which can have almost the same effect. “That I do, which I had crafted knowing you’d ask just that!” One in blue magic, the other in white, the twinned beat-sticks hovered like vanguards ahead of the alicorns. “Let’s keep score!” “Luna, no, I don’t want to.” “Oh surely you do!” Luna sidled up to her sister. “Or are you hesitant, thinking you are going to lose? Which you will, certainly.” Celestia halted and gave her coy sister an eyebrow-envigorated expression of incredulous disbelief. “Certainly?” “Of course,” Luna flaunted. She lunged around a corner ready, finding a complete lack of anything remotely eldritch. Mildly dissapointed, she settled down a tad. “Try to find a trap or some such thing. I was hoping we’d have at least had to dodge poison darts or leap spike traps by now.” “Patience,” Celestia chided affectionatey. “I’m lead to understand this tomb is extensive. We could be here all day, or even get lost. There could be all manner of monsters in here with us. Maybe they’re surrounding us even now, cutting us off from all hope of escape.” “You know just the things to say to cheer me up. I have missed our little adventures.” Luna hugged Celestia. As she did so a stone underhoof shuddered and sank with horrible groaning slowness. In the indeterminate distance in an indetermanite direction, the low groan of something evil and ghastly rose. “So it begins,” said Celestia, smiling. “And fine, we’ll keep score. What’s the prize?” she asked, in a louder voice now because unspeakable terrors from beyond the craven grave were closing in. “How about first dibs on the loot?” Luna shouted over the horrid din. “Fine by me!” Celestia sidestepped a badly sung glaive, bashing a mummy’s head clear off. “First point to me!” she cried. Luna dove headlong into the press of ancient dried flesh and bandages, cackling gleefully as she wrought havic on their rank smelling rank and file. “Oh, oh! There’s my bone wraith! Dibs!” Luna went lunging after the monstrous spectre. “I love it when we go clubbing!”