//------------------------------// // Chapter XII // Story: Relinquish the Sun // by Error732 //------------------------------// Celestia was accustomed to being the center of attention, but walking out of the castle with Cocoon in tow overturned any comfort she had developed with the spotlight. Everywhere they went, servants bowed, delegates greeted her, and guards shifted to attention. If she had had a speck of dirt on her hoof, somepony would have noticed it, yet no one even looked twice at the queen of the changelings, walking just behind her. Cocoon had disguised herself as a royal guard, not dissimilar from the form she had assumed when Celestia first met her (or, at least, when she first knowingly met her). To all those spectating, Cocoon merely appeared to be another pegasus, doing his job. No one questioned his presence. Celestia, on the other hand, had to have some official reason to be roaming the halls of Canterlot castle, as few if any of her actions were unscheduled. As she made her way to the main corridor, Jet Stream approached her, back from his most recent mission. "Your Highness," he greeted. "Perhaps not for much longer, I'm afraid," said Celestia. Jet Stream looked down at the floor. Several seconds passed before he answered, "I am sorry to have missed the council meeting. I read the minutes; are you on your way to offer Equestria's surrender?" Celestia nodded. "I am sorry, Jet Stream. Of all of us, I know you were most opposed." He shook his head. "No, I am sorry. I could not be the general Equestria needed. Perhaps, if I had been more skilled, we could have resisted." "No," insisted Celestia, guarding her guilt possessively, "you were a fine leader. Without your efforts, the attack could have been worse, and the recovery could not have begun so quickly." Jet Stream did not lift his gaze. "You are kind, Princess. I would follow you for another thousand years, if I could." Celestia, unprepared for such a compliment, searched for better words but only found, "Thank you. For everything." He bowed, and Celestia and Cocoon continued their route out of the castle. Celestia continued to worry that Cocoon's image was somehow incomplete; perhaps she had accidentally copied a face somepony would recognize as his own, or maybe she'd neglected to transform some spot on her flank, advertising her true identity to the world with an anomalous bump of chitin. But no pony stopped them. They arrived at the main doors, which, after some ceremony, were opened by a standing team of guards. The two of them stepped outside, and it felt to Celestia like crossing the finish line of a hundred mile race. They took to the air. Celestia spread her wings, wide as sheets, and Cocoon spread those of her current form. In moments, the two of them were high above the city, heading north. Once they had reached a steady altitude, well out of earshot of any pony below, Cocoon smiled and remarked, "You hide your nervousness well, but you needn't have worried; I'm no amateur at what I do. I'm glad you experienced that, though; perhaps you'll understand now how heavy the hoof is that holds us changelings down." Celestia had not suspected her anxiety was so transparent; the reactions of the castle's ponies had given no indication. She wondered if Cocoon could really read her so effortlessly, then, on reflection, decided she wouldn't be here if she could. "We'll be on a northward course for quite a while. When we get closer, I'll lead us down," offered Celestia. "No need," replied Cocoon. "I know the way." Already, the pair had put Canterlot some distance behind them, and Cocoon took this moment to revert to her natural form. A wave of light swept across the surface of her body, leaving behind her familiar insectoid shell and diaphanous wings. Celestia's concern must have shown on her face, because Cocoon chided, "Don't worry so much. It's dark, and we're high enough up to be invisible. Besides, you didn't really expect me to fly all these miles on such tiny wings?" She had a point. Alien as they were to pony anatomy, her transparent wings were considerably larger than those of most pegasi. For a long time, they flew in silence. By the light of Luna's prison, they could just make out the features of the landscape and the cities and settlements that dotted it. Because their path reversed the one Zhuyin had taken to Canterlot, few of the towns they passed were untouched. Scorched earth and wood dotted the hearts of every village; some bore the ashes of walls of fire, cut through homes and businesses, or sometimes open fields. Of course Cocoon knew the way. Zhuyin had marked it for them. After several hours of flying through the encompassing darkness, they began to make out shadows interrupting the stars ahead. The umbrages crept higher as they advanced, until the dim moonlight revealed them as monoliths of earth. The mountains swept far to the east and west, marking the border of Equestrian lands. Celestia called out to Cocoon, "The entrance is at the base of that mountain." She pointed her hoof at a particularly high summit. "I'll lead the way there." Cocoon had other plans. "The mouth of the cave would make for a daring entrance, but I have a better idea." Her wings beat fast enough to make a faint buzz, and she zoomed forward. She motioned for Celestia to follow as she diverted. Celestia, unnerved by the change in plans, picked up speed and followed. Cocoon led her through the adjacent valley to the far side of the mountain, then descended. She followed some invisible path full of zigs and zags, deliberate yet cryptic. Cocoon's eyes scanned the crags and crevices of the mountainside, and from these she divined the proper direction. At last, she settled on a particular patch of forest, and the two of them threaded a small opening in the treetops before landing on steeply inclined ground. From there, they continued on hoof, Cocoon leading the way with careful strides. They meandered past a creek, over a small hill, then stopped and turned around. Celestia didn't spot it until Cocoon had already started toward it. There was a small opening in this side of the hill, camouflaged by darkness and foliage. Even if Celestia had known it existed, she never would have found it on her own. Cocoon smiled at Celestia's astonishment. "The rear entrance, Your Highness. We'll be much safer this way; the dragons couldn't even fit a toe in these tunnels." "How did you know this was here?" asked the princess. "I was hatched in these caves." Cocoon motioned for Celestia to follow as she stepped into the darkness. Celestia hesitated at the mouth of the foreboding tunnel, but she had to agree; it was probably safer than the front door. The entrance was large enough for most ponies, but it was snug for Cocoon and Celestia. Celestia had to fold her wings tightly against her back to squeeze through, and even then she had only a few inches of clearance. She ducked her head and bent low, wary of protruding rocks and roots hanging along the walls and ceiling. It smelled wet and fungal in here, and the moonlight vanished behind them as they advanced. As her eyes adjusted, Celestia could see the floor in only vague shapes and shadows, but her hooves could feel the vivid squish of moss and mushrooms with every other step. Celestia illuminated her horn, flooding the tunnel with light to help her footing. Cocoon stopped dead in front of her and hissed, "Not so bright! You'll give us away. Besides, you'll want your nightvision when we reach the nest." Celestia brought the glow of her horn down to that of a dim candle, embarrassed by her ineptitude. As the arbiter of night and day—and royalty, besides—she was accustomed to wide open spaces and light at her command. While her last visit to these caves had been unsettling, at least she had had the freedom to spread her wings. Cocoon, meanwhile, seemed at ease. Her slitted eyes had no trouble probing the darkness, and her paper-thin wings clung to her back like a film of water. If anything, she seemed comforted by her surroundings. She was, after all, revisiting her childhood home. "The dragons weren't here back then," whispered Celestia's guide, "but I have a pretty good idea of where they'd keep their hatchery. It's the deepest chamber large enough for them." "What if the tunnels have changed since you were bor—hatched?" Celestia struggled to funnel all her anxiety into quiet sentences. "There could have been a cave-in, or an earthquake." Cocoon replied, unperturbed, "Unlikely. It wasn't all that long ago; we changelings don't enjoy the longevity that ponies do. I am no exception." As she squeezed through a narrow neck of tunnel, Celestia pondered how different her life would have been if it had been even a few centuries shorter. Cocoon did not seem so young. How long did she have left? Celestia pushed the conversation past mortality. "It's a convenient coincidence that you know these tunnels so intimately. Otherwise, you'd still be in Canterlot, and I'd be surrendering the kingdom right now." "I wouldn't call that last part a coincidence," said Cocoon. "If I hadn't been hatched here, or the dragons hadn't made camp here, I never would have revealed myself in the first place." She froze in place for a moment, and a draft of air wafted up from somewhere ahead. "Stay close. The tunnels branch out here. You wouldn't want to get lost and emerge in the wrong chamber." Celestia squirmed forward, her legs and back aching from the strain of her awkward gait. Cocoon started off again, veering left. Where she'd stood, the tunnel forked. The two paths were identical in lighting, subterrain, and stench; the only meaningful difference to Celestia was that Cocoon had taken the left path. She followed. The tunnel turned sharply downward, demanding a cautious pace from Celestia. Twice she lost her balance on a misplaced hoof, slipping on a loose pebble and sending it clattering forward. Cocoon had moved far enough ahead of her now that Celestia could only hear her the muted echo of her hoofsteps. After a couple dozen more careful steps, the tunnel forked again; Celestia followed the patter of Cocoon's hooves to the right and renewed her pace on the more level ground. Again, the tunnel forked, and she navigated by ear. A twist in direction, a sudden angle up or down, and another fork, and another. Soon, Celestia had lost track of how many junctions she had passed, and Cocoon's lead had grown. She found herself frozen in place at a four-way intersection of blind passages, unable to discern the direction of Cocoon's distant steps. An unsettling thought crept into her mind. Perhaps Cocoon had meant to lose her. She could return to Equestria alone, posing as the Princess herself, with none to question her. She could take revenge on the kingdom that had imprisoned her, placing her fellow changelings in seats of power, dismantling Equestria from the inside out. Or she could simply renew the war against the dragons, dooming countless ponies to further massacre. Or, perhaps, she would just alert the dragons to her presence and encourage them to breath fire deep into the lesser tunnels. The darkness grew more profound. The ceiling pressed down on her; the walls tightened their grip. She tried to think of a plan, but her thoughts circled back to claustrophobic panic. "Hey," came a voice, shaking Celestia out of her hysteria. Cocoon stood in the tunnel to her left, an annoyed look on her face. "Stop lagging behind." Celestia would have jumped with fright if the ceiling had permitted it. It took her an embarrassingly long time to reply, "Sorry. It's very cramped down here." Cocoon sighed. "For the most powerful pony in Equestria, you sure are helpless. I'll slow down, but we don't have forever." She backed up, found a spot just wide enough to turn around in, and continued forward. Celestia caught her breath and pressed on after her. She chided herself for being so paranoid. Cocoon had been nothing but trustworthy so far; any suspicions Celestia had were hypocritical. If anything, Cocoon should have been wary of her. The farther Cocoon led her into the tunnels, the more methodical she became in her movements. She slowed her pace, not just for Celestia, but to avoid dislodging rocks or banging a hoof too firmly on in the resonant tunnels. As they came to one of the intersections of several tunnels, where the ceiling mercifully lifted enough for them to stand upright, Cocoon stopped. "Listen." Cocoon stared down one of the passages, and Celestia's eyes followed her gaze. She could see nothing, but her ears picked out a sound just barely audible. It was quiet, slow, and rhythmic. Her whole body tensed as she recognized the sound of a dragon breathing. "It's sleeping," said Cocoon, in a hush. "Keep your light as low as you can manage. If it wakes up, end the spell, because it will see it for sure. Also, whatever you do, don't wake it up." Celestia did as she was told, and the tunnels faded with the light. The two of them slinked on in lockstep. Celestia mimicked Cocoon's stride as if she were following her hoofprints in snow, every step in the exact same place. She inhaled and exhaled as silently as she could manage, so the only competition to the sound of the dragon's breath was her own racing heartbeat. Placing one hoof at a time, they rounded the final turn. The tunnel opened up, and they emerged into a vast chasm. Its boundaries were too large and too dark for Celestia to see its size, but the acoustics betrayed its scale; she could hear the sound of the dragon's breath ricochet off of distant surfaces. With her horn was as dim as she could manage while finding her feet, she could just make out the outline of the sleeping wyrm. The long, serpentine silhouette curled atop the soft glitter of gold and the colorful flicker of a variety of gems. From this distance, they could not yet spot their objective. Cocoon nodded her head at Celestia, and they ventured out from the tunnel opening like mice into a kitchen. They split ways, Cocoon heading to the dragon's tail and Celestia to its head. If they were lucky, they'd find their target before meeting in the middle. Celestia held her breath as she stepped onto the mattress of riches under the dragon, cowed by the prospect of displacing enough coins or jewels to trigger an avalanche. She and Cocoon had had to rule out the strategies of flying or levitating, as the noise and wind of flight or the glow of magic would likely awaken the dragon from its slumber. She touched one hoof down on a pile of gold and shifted her weight tentatively onto it. A single coin fell an few inches before resting amidst its fellows. She advanced another hoof. Though she traveled a distance that she might have walked in seconds under normal circumstances, many minutes passed before she came close enough to inspect the area nearest the creature. Cocoon, immersed in the darkness at the far side of the chamber, no longer kept her company. She essayed to push all thoughts from her mind, as if they, too, might awaken her host. Finally, she arrived beside the dragon's head, and she saw its face clearly for the first time. Zhuyin lay beside her, her face almost as vicious as when waking. Her breath, a fierce gale that stank of smoke and sulfur, swept over Celestia with every exhalation. Celestia's thoughts returned to their last encounter, and she stifled a gasp. She fought her body's panic while she stood frozen in place. Her instincts conflicted within her, vying to flee, to scream, or to begin some hopeless attempt at vengeance. She had a purpose here, she told herself, and it did not involve suicide by dragon. She forced calm upon herself, and searched for the egg. Her obligation to be thorough kept her by Zhuyin's head for many minutes but at last relented, and she trekked with painful trepidation along her neck. Each stride she made was barely the length of one of Zhuyin's scales, and with each one she ducked low to be sure the egg was not wedged under a particular stretch of dragon. She wondered if Cocoon was having better luck with the tail. The neck widened and merged with a massive midsection, and Celestia detoured downhill to follow the perimeter of Zhuyin's forelegs, one slunk over the other as she lay on her side. If climbing the hoard had been difficult, descending was nearly impossible; the precious terrain threatened to fall away from her at the slightest mistake. She passed the joints at the middle of the mammoth appendages and gradually distinguished clawed feet below. She recognized the curved black razors that had nearly punctured her magic back in Canterlot, each easily large enough to cleave her in two. Celestia had to marvel that any creature could hold so potent a weapon at all times, even in sleep. She stared at the lethal instruments and the scales from which they protruded. There was something under them. A spotted purple something, too large, dull, and round to be any familiar gem, rested just inside the curl of Zhuyin's left forefoot. Celestia resisted the urge to gallop toward it and gingerly progressed closer. Still a dozen feet away, she was sure of what she was seeing. The unhatched heir of dragons, encapsulated in an egg only the size of a watermelon, lay in its mother's grasp. Celestia scanned the darkness for any sign of Cocoon. Wherever she was, she was too distant for Celestia to see, much less signal. She would have to approach it alone. She ventured closer to Zhuyin's claws than she imagined any surviving pony had. She progressed only inches at a time, her eyes flicking between the unstable mounds of gold below and the captivating egg ahead. It was only a few feet more. Her hoof slipped. A coin tumbled down the side of the hoard, skittering across its surface before clanging into a silver goblet below. The chalice resounded at the collision, then toppled over, dislodging coins that scattered coins that scattered coins. The tintinnabulation grew in volume until it at last settled on the cave floor. Zhuyin stirred. Celestia leapt from her place on the pile, abandoning the egg and swooping into the darkness. Behind her, the dormant limbs and claws came to life. Celestia extinguished the light of her horn just as she bumped into a stalagmite twice her height. She scurried behind it. Zhuyin's roar shook the cavern, shaking rocks loose from the ceiling and further disrupting the riches beneath her. Celestia shrank behind her rocky cover, and she heard the unforgettable eruption of flame pouring from Zhuyin's maw. The fire briefly illuminated the entrance to the tunnel through which Celestia and Cocoon had entered. It was too far for Celestia to flee unnoticed. The ground shook. Zhuyin was walking. "It takes a very stupid creature to enter a dragon's lair," boomed Zhuyin, in what was for her a subdued tone. "But a truly imbecilic one to wake her. What could it be, I wonder? A rat? No, I believe I heard something larger . . ." Celestia huddled low. Zhuyin's earth-shaking steps were traversing the cavern. Celestia could see no sign of Cocoon, who had probably fled when Zhuyin awoke. Celestia could hardly blame her. The plan had failed, and there was no reason for both of them to die. Celestia's mind raced through a catalog of spells as the inevitable approached. She didn't think she could teleport out from this depth, especially given that she didn't recall the path she'd taken in. She knew from experience her best defenses would likely fail her against Zhuyin's strength. She would have to try something desperate, an attack of some kind. She lamented that she would be lucky to displace a single scale on Zhuyin's hide. A sudden crash echoed through the chamber. Though loud by pony standards, it was too quiet to be Zhuyin's doing. Something—Celestia guessed who—had disturbed the treasure pile. Zhuyin turned about, and her steps receded. Celestia peered out from her hiding spot and confirmed it. Zhuyin was spewing fire, illuminating the cave as she hunted for the source of the noise. The cavern had grown very hot from these repeated blasts, and Celestia realized that, even if Zhuyin never found her, she might very well cook in this heat. She would have to act now. Under the momentary cover of Zhuyin's turned back and the muffling cacophony of continuous flame, Celestia spread her wings and leapt into the air. She darted over to the hoard, directly over the egg, then banked sharply as she plucked it up with the magic of her horn. She held it fast with one leg and beat her wings one last time, then brought them in and bolted toward the crawlway at breakneck speed. When she was halfway there, the firelight behind her flickered. Zhuyin had ended her inferno, for now, and was turning, slowly about. Celestia was nearing the exit, and she pulled her wings to her sides. Zhuyin's pupils contracted, adjusting to the renewed darkness. Her uncanny draconian vision sharpened just in time to catch the faintest flicker of light, but not quite quickly enough to spot the alicorn scurrying to safety. A new sound caught Zhuyin's attention, something far larger and noisier than her present prey. From the main tunnels, Fucang descended, snarling with scorn. "What has happened?" he demanded in the elder tongue. Zhuyin hesitated, as she scanned the room once more. "Nothing," she replied. "Some slithering cave creature awoke me." Fucang thundered back with contempt, "I don't care about your sleep." He uttered a curse older than the equine race. He pushed Zhuyin aside and inspected the room himself. "Where is the egg?" Zhuyin's eyes widened, then turned to the empty divot in the hoard where their offspring had once been. She ran her claws through the riches, sweeping aside a hill of wealth, but found nothing. She returned her attention to Fucang, seeds of blame in his eyes.