The buggane spire was just as Dash remembered it, even from the ground. It was slightly more...imposing, yes, but that was to be expected when one ran with a pack of wolves instead of flying at cruising altitude towards the thing. It was night now, past midnight; the suns would be up in a few more hours. For some reason – Ghealach insisted it was because the planet spun more slowly, but everypony knew the idea of the world spinning was ridiculous – nights were longer on Domhan. That gave them plenty of time to observe the buggane council's fortress during its hours of peak activity. As Ghealach interrupted her thoughts again to inform her of, that was a profoundly odd word combination.
“Buggane councils do not fortify themselves,” she scoffed from Dash's left. “Bugganes cannot grasp the concept of fortification. Half the reason councils even dig holes for themselves is by accidentally knocking aside dirt during rainstorms. If they have picked a particularly defensible site, it is likely because they ran into it and got lost inside.”
“This council's different then,” she snapped – again. Prejudice was something she was familiar with – Zebras generally not being welcomed in Equestria, though they weren't legally discriminated against – but this was ridiculous. Couldn't she see that something strange was going on here? “I don't even think they are a council. If there's just one boss, maybe there's a hierarchy or something and they're actually able to think?”
“A plausible theory,” one of Streamwalker's wolves – Brightshine? Leaper? Telling wolves apart was hard – muttered. “Perhaps you would like to suggest it to the pack?”
“Show more respect, Burrfang,” Streamwalker growled softly. Dash grimaced; she hadn't even been close! “She is a great one.”
“She is insane, Streamwalker!” Burrfang protested. “Haven't you heard her talking to herself on the way here? It's like she is arguing with two voices in her head!”
“She is insane but effective and trustworthy, and has powers far beyond us that are useful,” the white wolf countered. “So, show respect. If she is so mad, what makes you think provoking her would be a good thing?”
“I still would not have her at my back in a fight,” the other wolf grumbled. “Who knows what she would do then?”
“Silence – buggane picket!” another wolf snapped from ahead. The pack, which had been creeping stealthily along in the brush on the edge of the clearing around the spire, halted immediately.
“Absurd,” Ghealach snorted. “Bugganes do not - “
Even Ghealach fell silent as Dash spotted something through the fronds of the fern she was hidden below – a pair of hulking bugganes, black fur making them only visible in silhouette from the firelight emanating from a cave mouth on the spire's base, lumbering methodically around the perimeter of the clearing, swiping their massive claws through the bushes as they passed and grumbling amongst themselves. As they grew closer, she could start to make out what they were saying.
“Boss is dumb,” the lead buggane rumbled slowly, as it swiped its claws through a patch of ferns. “Food escaped. Lost one chasing.”
“Cook nose-blind too,” the other added. It seemed to be along mainly as insurance; the leader checked the bushes, and the second followed behind to jump in in case of trouble.
“Boss not working,” the leader summed up, sounding pleased that his companion agreed. “Should have more bosses.”
“Boss hear that and send you away,” the second differed. “Bad to be sent away. Not come back in time.”
“Time,” the leader spat. He suddenly lunged at a bunch of ferns, roaring and swinging his claws around wildly. A nearby sapling was decapitated and the ferns would probably take a good time to recover, but the clump had been empty; was it hoping to scare something out? Whatever its reason, the second buggane chortled at the sight of the broken tree.
“Got tree good, huh,” the leader rumbled happily. “Tree knows boss.”
“Boss knows boss,” the second said, and ducked an offhanded swing from the leader. “Oi!”
“Don't badmouth boss,” the leader admonished it. “Boss send you away.”
They were past then; their low voices became inaudible over the resurgent chirping of crickets and other associated insects. Ghealach, for once, was speechless.
“They cannot hold an opinion in their heads for more than thirty seconds,” she spluttered at long last, “and yet they have a central leadership?”
“Who's being absurd now huh?” Dash whispered, giving a very Cloud Ferry-like smirk. “I think that proves they've got a boss of some kind, doesn't it?”
“It does, great one,” Streamwalker agreed, “and it seems their boss has them held together by either fear or some form of promise.”
“They are certainly structured differently from anything I've seen yet,” Burrfang growled thoughtfully. “We should advance and infiltrate the spire itself. We will learn nothing else from lurking in the bushes.”
“To enter that spire would be to commit suicide,” Streamwalker responded curtly. “We stay out here.”
“Whoever their boss is, I don't think he's coming out anytime soon,” Dash pointed out. “Someone should go in.” Not too many; a single squad would do, or whatever equivalent unit these wolves have. “Not a whole lot, maybe just one.”
“The great one speaks sense,” Burrfang concurred, nodding. “I volunteer to enter.”
“If anypony goes in, it should be me,” Dash countered. “I'm the invincible one here.”
“Why didn't you exterminate this council when you came here first, then?” Burrfang asked.
“I can still get hurt,” she clarified. “But bugganes can't kill me. Just...break every bone in my body and smear me all over...the...ground...” This doesn't sound like a good idea anymore, she realized, wincing at the thought of that happening. How long would that take to recover from?
“Maybe a bit of pain will help you see things my way.” Cloud Ferry chuckled. “It's good to know you have some form of survival instinct, however often you ignore it.”
“So long as they do not attack you with magic, I will allow this plan to go forward,” Ghealach said reluctantly.
“Can bugganes use magic?” Dash asked.
“No,” one of the other wolves answered. “Even their supposed 'shamen' merely wave sticks around and call it healing.”
“I would have laughed at that idea a moment ago,” Ghealach replied with an uncertain frown. “Now, though...be cautious.”
“Right. Any way to help me get in there undetected?”
She felt a faint tingle as magic crawled its way across her skin like a wave of ants, making her coat hairs stand on end and eliciting a shiver from her as the odd sensation intensified. When the feeling had passed, she heard a surprised gasp from the wolves. She looked down at herself – and couldn't see anything. More accurately, she couldn't see her body.
“You are invisible,” Ghealach declared. “I can do nothing about the disturbance of the air that motion will cause and the bugganes will detect, but without confirmation from their eyes, the beasts might be confused enough to buy you time. Against kelpies, this would guarantee you undetectability. In this situation...” She shrugged. “If faced with bugganes, remain motionless.”
“I can smell her yet,” Burrfang grumbled.
“It will be helpful, though not a perfect disguise,” Streamwalker said, nodding thoughtfully. “Very well. We shall continue to patrol the edge of the clearing, great one. Give us some signal when you emerge.”
“I'm going now,” she declared. The ferns rustled as she pushed through them...and promptly tripped over a root sticking out of the ground, because she couldn't see where she was putting her foot. “Ow.”
“An auspicious start,” Burrfang muttered under his breath. Streamwalker growled softly in warning.
“Let's see you try to walk normally when you can't see your own feet!” Dash snapped at him. Streamwalker jerked his head, indicating to the others to move to a new position, quickly. She winced as she realized how loud she'd been. Stars, she could hear the bugganes coming back!
“Wind mask your scent and guide you, great one,” one of the other wolves whispered as she brushed past Rainbow Dash – and winced as her own fur got caught on Dash's kelpie coat and she had to yank herself free. “You will need that first blessing, I think.”
They are coming, the new voice in Dash's head warned her, and without further delay she galloped towards the rock spire, angling towards one of the round cave mouths that spilled warm light across the short grass of the clearing. She could hear the bugganes debating what they smelled behind from somewhere behind her - “moon smell” one growled worryingly – and eager to get away from the monsters she only stopped galloping when her hooves hit stone and a single echoing clop sounded down the length of the curving tunnel.
“I almost hope you're caught,” Cloud Ferry said with a smirk. “Being ground into a chunky sauce might help some sense stick to your insides. In addition to the sharp rocks and grit, of course.”
“Silence,” Ghealach commanded, giving Cloud Ferry a surprisingly severe look. “If you incite her to reply, it will be painful for all of us.”
“You can feel when I get hurt?” Dash whispered. She started moving again, slowly, and careful to make sure her hooves made as little noise as possible on the brown rock. Geez, sneaking with hooves on a hard surface is hard.
“Faintly,” Ghealach replied.
“Like it happened to me,” Cloud Ferry grudgingly admitted at the same time.
We have leverage with them, the third voice murmured in the back of her mind. Remember that. They have a weakness. There may be others.
Who are you? Dash thought back, as she cautiously rounded the bend in the tunnel. It opened into a vault-like juncture between it and three other tunnels, pitch-black, which naturally meant she could see perfectly fine. Two of the tunnels curved out of sight; the third sloped steeply upwards. Working on a hunch, she started trotting towards the third.
Thy reserve, the voice answered. Somehow, Dash knew that she and she alone could hear this one.
“You are working on the erroneous assumption that a buggane leader would want the highest point of his tower as a base,” Ghealach said, as Dash reached the mouth of the center tunnel.
“And you're an expert on buggane leaders now, huh?” Dash whispered back. Cloud Ferry snorted, amused, but didn't say anything.
“They are subterranean beasts,” Ghealach replied coolly. “Why would the most prestigious among them want to be furthest from the ground?”
Conditioning leaves its mark on everypony, the voice whispered. If these 'bugganes' were conditioned to take the high ground, and after their leaders left they ritualized their conditioning...
“I've got a hunch.”
“As sound a method of determining our course of action as any.” Ghealach sighed and shook her head.
The tunnel doubled back on itself after forty feet, still sloping gently upwards, and then doubled back again, and again, and again, until Dash's mental map painted the thing as a corkscrewing, primitive staircase. Other tunnels branched off now and then, and through a few of those she caught sight of the fires the bugganes maintained. Sometimes, there would even be a buggane or two squatting around them, like immense shaggy boulders, their face-tentacles waving around in the air. There was a breeze, thankfully – blowing inwards, towards Rainbow Dash. They wouldn't be able to smell her.
She began to notice differences between the bugganes as she climbed. Size differences only, at first – this buggane would be bigger than that buggane, that third would be bulkier than a fourth – but eventually she began to pick out more specific things. One buggane, stooped over particularly severely, had silvery streaks in its fur. Another was missing a face-tentacle, possessing only twenty-one instead of the usual tweny-two. Another had a thin pink scar marring one arm, running from the shoulder down to the wrist and winding lazily around its elbow. As she noticed differences, she realized with a sinking feeling that there were a lot of differences - and thus, a lot of differing creatures.
“How many bugganes are there, even?” she muttered quietly, as she passed the mouth of an interior cave where three or four of the beings were heaped together in a big pile, apparently asleep and not clawing out each others' throats. “There's got to be at least forty!”
“It seems, if anything, Streamwalker's estimate was lowballing it,” Ghealach agreed. “This is a vast assembly of bugganes. I have not seen the like since...”
“Since when?”
“I approve of the dramatic pause,” Cloud Ferry said, smiling. A genuine smile – that was rare from her. And it was directed at Ghealach. Dash was immediately suspicious of this apparent camaraderie, but she held herself in check.
“...since the War of Nightmares,” Ghealach finished quietly. “This is...unexpected. With the chaos inspired by a large-scale buggane uprising, toppling Beta Centauri could be made far simpler. This could change many things.”
“I don't know a whole lot about ruling a country,” Dash hissed, “but I kinda doubt a good ruler thinks like that.”
“You invalidated your opinion before you even rendered it, Rainbow Dash,” she responded. There was a distant, calculating look in her eyes. What was she planning? Hay, even Cloud Ferry looked concerned. Unfortunately, Ghealach didn't deign to let them in on her thoughts, and Dash was prevented from asking by reaching the top of the corkscrew ascent.
Warm yellow light spilled out from the tall archway, obviously widened by whoever lived beyond it – deep furrows were cut into the rock around its rim, and crushed and powdered stone littered the ground in front of it. Careful to not step on any of the sharp shards, Dash slipped through the archway and along the wall, staying well away from the large bonfire that sat in the center of the chamber. They were at the top of the rock spire, and the roof of the chamber was crumbling, leaving open great gaps that she could see the stars through. Numerous small boulders were scattered throughout the space, casting dancing shadows as the fire shifted and twisted. She clambered on top of a larger rock, as far from the fire as possible, careful to hold her wings still so her feathers wouldn't rattle, and from her new vantage point she could see four bugganes – one with a blood-crusted nose, hunched over almost nervously between two larger, burlier specimens, and then a buggane that had to be old, so old its fur had gone completely white, hunched over with a staff on the opposite side of the fire from the trio.
“A shaman,” Ghealach surmised. “Likely a particularly canny one, as well, if he has managed to rally so many of his own kind to his cause – whatever that cause is.”
“Is that the same buggane whose nose you crushed in your daring escape?” Cloud Ferry asked. They all knew the answer; of course it was. And now it looked like it was about to be judged by its 'boss'. Dash winced at the thought that her escape might have killed two living, thinking beings, instead of just one. Would they execute this one? Stars, she'd only ever heard about executions as a rumor back home – something the griffons did for really bad criminals, the murderers and the rapists, and even then only once in a while. She didn't have any doubt, though, that bugganes would be capable of executing one of their own.
Be thou silent and listen, the voice urged her. We are scouts, not assassins. Observe and report.
“This is an exceptional - “ Ghealach started, but Dash silenced her with a glare. Maybe she could pick up some of her intent. They were bound together, after all. Dash needn't have bothered – the bugganes stood in silence for another ten minutes, the crushed-nose one fidgeting more and more as time passed, until finally the white buggane surprised Rainbow Dash by straightening to his full height and lumbering easily around the bonfire, staff in claw, like some kind of ambulatory giant pear covered in fuzzy white mold. It stopped before Crushed-Nose, growling softly, a noise a that reverberated throughout the cave, as its face-tentacles waved frantically around.
“Cook.” The white buggane practically spat the word out, causing Crushed-Nose to cringe away from it. It turned around and looked into the fire, slamming the worn but of its staff – which looked like it was just an uprooted sapling, minus the branches – into the ground with enough force to make the logs of the bonfire shift. They crackled as they grated against each other, sending a burst of sparks soaring up with the smoke to vanish through one of the holes in the roof. One log even popped free entirely, rolling roughly down the sloped bonfire and coming to a rest against one of the boulders towards Rainbow Dash, out of her sight.
“Noisy thief-bird stole food,” Crushed-Nose grumbled, almost sullenly. It took an involuntary half-step back when the white buggane turned back around, but the white one didn't have anything to say for the moment. Instead, it shuffled heavily towards the evidently still-burning rogue log – Dash could see the smoke curling up from the opposite side of the boulder – and bent over to grab it. Then, with a mighty heave and a loud roar that made her stiffen involuntarily, it hurled the log into the bonfire.
The fire flared brilliant white and burst out in a shockwave of light. The buggane's roar hung in the air, reinforcing itself and growing louder and louder until with a feeling like a thunderclap racing through her, Dash felt the air split and the roar dropped in pitch, becoming something terrifying and altogether different – the bass, feral bellow of an adult dragon.
Crushed-Nose was kneeling now, shaking with fear. The two guard bugganes had stepped back and removed themselves from the clear zone around the bonfire, and now stood with their backs against two larger boulders, waiting patiently it seemed for their leader's command. The white buggane itself, its fur singed soot-black by the fiery blast, loomed over Crushed-Nose, breathing heavily. It let out a low, slow growl that sent shivers down Dash's spine. Sweet Celestia, what did it do?
“That was...unexpected,” Ghealach murmured. “I can see how it managed to bind these others to it. I would not have suspected a buggane shaman of actually possessing ability with magic, but it seems that tonight is full of surprises.”
“It's not acting,” Cloud Ferry said. “I can see the magical field around it. That isn't a voice-changer spell. It almost looks like - “
“Is that an astral projection cord?” Dash whispered, spotting the brilliant crimson line that exited the buggane's head and plunged into the heart of the blinding white flames.
“Very, very interesting.” Ghealach frowned thoughtfully.
“Tell me what you saw, buggane,” the white buggane ordered, its voice altered beyond recognition. It was sonorous, harsh, and laced with the self-assured arrogance of a being with unchallenged power. It was deep, echoing, and above all else, furious. Crushed-Nose quailed beneath its weight. “What, exactly, raided your 'kitchen'?”
“Thief-bird!” the buggane cook wailed – actually wailed, thoroughly cowed into submission. If it could bow any deeper, Dash was sure it would have made an effort to grovel at the white buggane's feet. “Noisy four-foot thief bird! Made sky rain rocks! Stole food!”
“Noisy, four-footed thief-bird,” the white buggane rumbled thoughtfully. Then, almost to itself – impossible with the way the voice carried – it chuckled. “Sister dear, what are you trying now...”
The white buggane grabbed Crushed-Nose's head with both claws, bending it up to stare into its own fiery, slit-pupiled eyes. “You lost a buggane to this...thief-bird, Speaker, did you not?”
The white buggane shuddered and nodded. The voice echoed out of its mouth again. “Cook. Know this is the only reason I allow you to survive this failure. Your kind are expendable and numerous, but gathering you takes time. Fail me again, and you will be expelled. Do you understand?”
By way of response, Crushed-Nose simply nodded and moaned. The white buggane – the Speaker – nodded again, jerkily, as if it had trouble controlling the movement.
“Keep them in line, Speaker for the Flames,” the dragon's voice said again. “Prepare them. There is not much time left.”
And with that, the flames faded slowly back to their cheerful yellows, oranges, and reds. The Speaker for the Flames sagged and collapsed to its knees. Before, she would have been reminded of a landslide or an avalanche perhaps; now, it just looked drained, a cast-off husk tossed to the floor. Crushed-Nose didn't move from its kneeling position. It just kept shaking uncontrollably, either from relief or residual fear – Rainbow Dash wasn't entirely sure which.
We are outmatched, the new voice whispered slowly. We must retreat and regroup, and determine how to face this new threat.
How do you think I should get out of here? she asked it.
The gaps in the ceiling, the voice answered.
Silently, with as much stealth as wings of glass-clear iridescent metal would allow, Rainbow Dash flapped and rose into the air. So exhausted were the bugganes from their ordeal that they didn't even glance in her direction as she passed above – and if they had, her invisibility would have protected her for long enough to slip out of the smoke-hole above the bonfire and into the dark night beyond.