Ryan had to stay in hiding for a few days after the events of Ponyville since Twilight was on a warpath to find him now. He constantly had to look over his shoulder when he was moving and once she had almost caught him when he was filling up his water bottle. The only reason he got away was because he had headed into the deepest part of the forest, where she didn't dare follow. Unfortunately for him, he didn't know the layout there as well and the ground gave out under him as he fell into an underground cave system. A vine grabbed his leg and prevented him from falling to his death, but he knew that it had been broken.
'And that is why I find you like this?' the silver mare asked him as he hung upside down, gritting his teeth as he tried to cut through the vines with his knife. 'I must admit that you have a good deal of luck, more so than most others I have met.'
"Oh yeah, I'm really lucky," Ryan growled as he missed a swipe with his knife and nicked his leg, causing him to swear as the silver mare shook her head at his antics. She began to glow as she healed his leg wounds (both of them) before turning her magic to the vine, causing it to recede and drop him to the ground at the same time. He growled as he got up, but he looked down at his leg and moved it around. "Thanks for healing me, but now I need to find out how the hell I get out of here."
'Then allow me to accompany you, for it seems that anything you do ends up with you in pain,' she said, Ryan frowning at her before moving deeper into the cave system. The silver mare followed him inside and while at first he thought that he could use her as a light source, he found while she was shown she gave off no light.
"So why the hell don't you create shadows?" Ryan asked her as he held his hand next to her but didn't see his shadow on the wall. "You give off light but you don't create shadows."
'I...do not know myself,' she said with a shake of her head as she lifted a hoof to look at it, Ryan placing his hand on the wall to feel what felt like bricks. 'I myself am not one hundred percent certain what I can do yet. These powers are still...strange to me.'
"Heh, some god you are," Ryan muttered as he felt his way along the wall, turning on his stun baton to light the way for the both of them. The silver mare laughed at his statement, which caused him to turn around to look at her. "Did I say something funny or are you just nuts?"
'I am no god, trust me on that one,' she said as she followed along besides him, Ryan looking for any kind of exit in this hallway while the silver mare spoke. 'I have met a god and my power now is nothing compared to the power he has...I do not know why I am saying this to you though, you are not even one of the champions. I should be assisting the last one.'
"You still talking crazy?" Ryan asked her as he tried a door handle that he had come across, only to snarl as it refused to budge. He tried kicking it only to fall over holding his leg, the door refusing to budge. "I have no idea what you mean by gods or champions, so unless you want to give me your life story can you start talking sense?" The silver mare blinked twice as she looked at him, wondering how he could call her crazy when some of what he said made little sense. He stopped talking at that point and continued to move, smiling when he saw a light coming from around the corner. "And while I enjoyed this little talk, I need to get out of-" He froze the moment he turned the corner, leaving the silver mare to look at him in confusion.
'Human?' she asked him as she looked into his face, confused to see that he was completely frozen in place. She looked down the hallway only to find that there was nothing there except darkness that was occasionally broken up by torches on the walls. 'Has something happened? I see no reason for you to be acting like this.' Ryan still didn't move and the silver mare frowned at him, before letting out a sigh and looked into his mind for a moment to see what he was seeing. To her surprise she found that all of his focus was on the torches in front of him, more specifically the fire.
'You have a fear of fire?' she asked him with a chuckle. 'You, who have taken on a hydra and a giant serpent with nothing but your wits is afraid of fire?' She said this in a joking tone, but found that he still wasn't responding. She tilted her head at this, figuring that he would have insulted her a bit for that remark, but...nothing. She frowned and cast a gust of wind down the hall, blowing out all of the torches. The moment the fire went out Ryan blinked and looked down at her.
"What are you looking at?" he asked her before continuing on like nothing had happened, intriguing the silver mare. If he had any idea of what just happened, he sure wasn't showing it. "So do you know how to get out of here or am I just going to wander around to till I die of boredom?"
'I suppose that I could teleport us out,' she said, causing Ryan to look back at her with shock.
"You can teleport us?" he asked her, growling when she nodded and placing a hand on his face. "And I suppose you enjoyed just watching me walk around aimlessly?"
'A bit,' the silver mare said with a smile. 'Now take off that artifact and I will remove us from this cavern.' He did so hesitantly and she cast a silver light around them, causing them to vanish from the underground cavern.
:":
"I hate pony magic," Ryan muttered after he was done throwing up into a bush, the silver mare just having finished snickering at him.
'I must admit, you are the first human I have met who has had that kind of reaction to magic,' she said with a smile, but it vanished when he saw Ryan's eyes widen in shock.
"There are more humans here?" he asked her with what sounded like...desperation to her. "Where are they? How many are there?"
'Calm yourself, there are no more human on this world,' she said to him, causing him to glare at her.
"But you just said-"
'I can travel between realities, with many worlds and many outcomes,' she said to cut him off. 'Those are the worlds that I have met the other humans, not this one. The only reason I am here at all is because you are so horribly lost without somepony to help you.' Ryan opened his mouth to answer, but then he remembered just how many times Zecora had saved him. Hell, even Derpy had saved him a while ago.
"So what are you then if you're not a god, some kind of interdimensional cop helping those in need?" he asked her, surprised when he only got silence as her answer. "Or are you some kind of villain that is collecting people to use in an evil plan? Just because you ponies don't look evil doesn't mean you can't be, Zecora's a great example of that," he grumbled.
'No, I am just a concerned pony trying to save her world,' she said before turning her head to the side. 'Come, I will escort you back to Zecora.' Ryan wanted to know more, but she said nothing else as they walked through the forest. The two came to a stop outside of Zecora's hut, where she came out to greet Ryan once he had knocked.
"Hello my friend," she said as she saw him. "Still haven't met your end?" Ryan growled at the usual greeting he got when he returned from one of her errands, but before he could answer he saw the silver mare turn to leave. He opened his mouth to say something, but she shook her head.
'Do not say anything, as I am cloaked from all who I wish not to see me. Zecora cannot see me and you would look like a crazy person if she saw you talking to nothing,' the silver mare said with a chuckle.
"Oh quite contraire my friend of silver light. You have not escaped my sight," Zecora said with a wicked smile. Ryan looked at her with a raised eyebrow, but that was nothing compared to the reaction that the silver mare had.
'How?' she whispered, Ryan figuring that there would be horror beneath her hood if he could see her face.
"I have trained myself to see the unseen. Now won't you both please come in for some tea?" Zecora asked as she turned to leave, the silver mare remaining dumbstruck in place.
'How could she do that? Not even Black Adam can see through my guise,' she whispered to herself. Ryan turned his head at what she said, wondering if he had heard that name before. He shrugged it off and followed Zecora inside, the silver mare hesitantly doing so only after a few moments of remaining in place. 'It should not be possible, not with the creation magic that flows through me. How?' Zecora sat the silver mare down and poured her some tea, but when she looked at Ryan another one of her wicked smiles was on her face.
"Training time?" Ryan asked with masked fear.
"Training time," Zecora said, Ryan doing his best not to break out into tears as she lead him out to the back. The silver mare levitated her tea and followed to the two outside, her eyes locked onto the zebra the entire time as she slammed her staff into the tree, vines falling down when she did so.
"Please tell me we are not doing tree battles," Ryan whispered.
"Oh don't be a coward and flee. Now get your ass in that tree," Zecora said with a laugh as she shot up the vines and rested on one hoof on the branch above them. Ryan, after taking a moment to steady himself, climbed up after her, balancing on the tree fairly well. "Now then, the key here is to balance. Can you do that without your usual defiance?"
"Yeah, I can do it," Ryan grumbled as he got up, drawing his stun baton and pointing it at the zebra. "So I take it that you're just going to forget all of the telling me what to do and instead kick my ass until I get your lesson?"
"See, you can learn. And you may take the first turn." Ryan cursed his luck as he looked at a vine next to him that lead to her tree and he quickly grabbed it, using the vine to swing towards her. She shook her head at him and went to chop the vine when he pulled out one of the smoke pellets and tossed it onto her branch, blinding the zebra.
"That was not part of the fight! How cheap of you to take my sight," Zecora said as she tried to clear the smoke from her eyes.
"Screw you, I'll take whatever advantage I can get!" Ryan yelled as he swung back around and let go of the vine, heading right towards Zecora. He saw her smile too late to stop and could only watch as she spun around and kicked him below the belt, causing him to miss his branch and collapse to the ground below. "So will you continue fight unfairly? Or am I going to have to get scary?" she asked with a grin.
"Not...a rhyme," he wheezed as he picked himself up, climbing back up onto the branch and trying to figure out another attack pattern. He placed a hand on the trunk and realized that the tree he was on had to be really old. He looked down at the stun baton and realized that Zecora's tree looked as old as his. With a smile, he figured out what to do. 'Let's see that zebra burn.' He leapt from tree to tree as he got close to her, smiling when he noticed that Zecora was shielding her eyes a bit more in case he tried that trick again.
"Burn!" he yelled as he struck the branch she was standing on, nearly snapping it off as it erupted into flames from the electricity. Zecora saw the fire and leapt off the collapsing branch, rolling onto the ground before turning towards Ryan while preparing herself to fight him...only to see that he was lying under the branch, looking up at the flames with the same petrified look on his face as when she had lit the fire.
'He truly does not know that he is afraid,' she thought to herself before she saw that the branch was about to fall onto him. 'But that means little if he doesn't live another day!' She ran forward as she said this and dove towards him, kicking the flaming branch into a pool of water before landing in front of Ryan, watching as his expression returned to normal.
"What happened?" he asked her as he looked down at the ground. "Did you make me black out again, because eventually the brain damage is going to become a problem?"
"We are done for today, now please go away," she said in a very serious tone, raising a hoof to silence Ryan when he tried to ask her a question. He looked at her with a shake of his head before he walked over to the silver mare, who had finished her tea despite not needing to drink.
"Well she's gone crazy, so I expect to be dead by the end of the week," he said to the silver mare, who still continued to look at Zecora with a scared stare on her face. "Are you still upset about what happened back there? Trust me, that damned zebra can probably see into the future if she wanted to, don't take it so hard."
'But not even the most powerful beings could see me when I did not wish to be,' the silver mare said quietly as she stood up, shaking her head as Ryan shrugged and headed back to the castle. The silver mare then walked over to Zecora, who was making a list of sorts. 'Care to tell me how you can see me or why you are so powerful?' Zecora didn't answer for a moment before she looked at the mare and raised an eyebrow.
"I will tell you how I see, but only if you do something for me," Zecora said as she looked at Ryan, who had just vanished into the forest. "That man carries with him a burden that he will not explain, but even with his carefree attitude I can tell it causes him pain. If you can find why he is so pained, then as for how I can see you I will explain." The silver mare nodded and vanished into nothingness, leaving Zecora to finish her list.
:":
Ryan let out a sigh as he finished the page for the silver mare, having a great deal to write about her despite to her mysterious nature. He looked out the window at the rising moon and wondered to himself why Zecora had called off the training early. He placed a hand on the back of his head to make sure that there was no wound she wasn't telling him about before shrugging and rested against the wall.
'I wonder why she could see the silver mare since that pony was so certain that she couldn't be seen?' Ryan thought to himself before shrugging and closing his eyes. 'Whatever, I can ask her if she's still here in the morning.' He fell asleep a few minutes later, so he never noticed the silver mist that went inside of his mind to see what scared him so.