The maintenance tunnel leading into the Royal Castle proved to be smaller than Alistair had anticipated. Even as he squirmed along his belly the rugged concrete walls kept on pushing up against his arms and legs all the while his head came dangerously close to banging against the sides whenever he’d push forward. If he was having so much trouble getting through, he could imagine the stallion ‘Pen’ from earlier must have had an even more difficult time getting through.
Which brought his attention back to that shifty looking peach furred pony and the lies he’d led Alistair on as the truth.
For one thing, ‘Pen’ bore a striking resemblance in both appearance and voice to a coworker of his back in Equestria’s External Affairs. He’d gone under the title of ‘Pencil Press’ and had kept the illusion that he was a timid desk jockey, willing to go along with whatever menial task was asked of him all the while displaying something less than zero in terms of self-confidence. Alistair couldn’t help but grin at this.
The colt had definitely played his part well, no doubt a cover by the Night Lord agent to keep an eye on both him and any sensitive information that passed through Equestria’s diplomatic powerhouse. It was a tactical one-two punch and only Celestia knew how much the agent had acquired in the years that he worked there.
Still, if Alistair and Pen—Pencil, whatever—already knew him beforehand, why hadn’t the colt acknowledged it when he first laid eyes on him? Was he trying to protect his cover? Maybe keep face when his sister Shale Press around? He certainly wasn’t hard too miss, being the only human in Equestria after all…
Alistair couldn’t come up with anything concrete to answer the flurry of questions, but he knew that an explanation remained behind it, as did all things the Night Lords decided to get into.
Sighing, he continued to crawl ahead.
----------
“A greenhorn,” Pen Press mumbled bitterly as he and his sister Shale crept through the forested section of the Royal Canterlot Gardens, the underbrush gently swishing past their hooves. “I honestly can’t believe Eclipse let him come along for something like this important. It’s ridiculous.”
Shale sighed cheerfully. “I heard you the first time you know, you don’t have to keep repeating yourself to get the point across.”
“Oh, but I do! It’s the only way you’ll ever listen to anything I have to say.”
“I’m listening to what you saying, I’m just choosing not to acknowledge it.”
Pen feigned a pouting frown which quickly flashed back into a legitimate expression. “But seriously, there’s something not right about this. I mean, sure, if we’re just rigging an election or tipping off a few bandits I can understand that we bring a little squirt along with us. But now? Here? It’s insane.”
Shale continued to move forward as she responded, but she could feel a disapproving glare beginning to form. “I hope you’re not starting to question your given orders. Master Eclipse is the reigning Night Lord; we are his loyal servants, and the only pony to defy them is the Dark Queen herself.”
“Spare me the rhetoric, Shale,” the stallion said impatiently. “Just because he’s been granted the title doesn’t make the old colt omnipotent. His predecessors made mistakes and he most assuredly will, and I’m afraid one of them is happening as we speak.”
She gave out another sigh, this one real in its anguish. “Pen, we can we please not get into this again? Now isn’t the place.”
“Why not? Here we are, resting all of our hope in some wimpy little kid with less experience than he’s got facial hair, and going along with it just because Eclipse said so? What kind of sense is that?”
“Pen, its all part of the—”
“—Plan?” he interjected sourly. “So just because it’s part of a misconstrued plan formulated by some senile old fool that makes the situation somehow better? Are you really that blind to what’s going on here? This is important!”
Shale halted suddenly and turned around to face her brother with an icy stare, cold enough to freeze him right in place. “Look, you’re a great brother and I really do love you, but for now, shut up.”
Pen’s eyes widened in shock as he slowly began to shrink down in his own irate grandeur. Taking his stunned silence for granted, she continued.
“Things are already in motion, Pen. I can’t stop them and neither can you, so complaining about what’s already happened isn’t going to do us any good. There’s a darn good reason why the trainee was set ahead and I’ll be sure to inform you of it once this is all over. Okay?”
Pen shakily nodded in reply.
“Good, now let’s keep moving. That distraction isn’t going to start itself.”
----------
The tunnel let out into an air duct chamber, which in turn led out into a twisting series of air vents that more than likely spanned the entire complex and beyond. It would’ve been a nightmare trying to navigate such a cramped catacomb in the dark, but thankfully the first vent slit was exactly the one he’d been looking for.
Unscrewing the panel’s tiny screw with the ends of his fingernails, he silently pushed the metal panel away and shimmied out of the claustrophobic tunnel.
What followed was a long series of crouching, walking, peering around corners, running, sprinting, peering while running, standing, sweating, and every other action that ensured that he wouldn’t be spotted by the Castle’s shadowy protectors. To say the entire ordeal was “fun” would be a blatant lie on his part, but he most certainly felt a rush of excitement as he traversed the dark and ornate hallways at an hour that would have certainly landed him in deep trouble.
He thankfully never caught sight of the gold-plated guardians as he crept along through corridor after corridor, but every now and again he would hear the distant thumping of hooves against carpet, reminding him that the possibility of failure was still a very much real scenario.
Turning one last corner, he stopped dead in his tracks and looked down the vacant space. A large set of double doors sat off to the left, their length reaching from the floor to the ceiling with glass slits along the middle that spiraled up in a translucent path. There was no sign or marker by its gates but the pull of energy he could feel channeling out from it told him all he needed to know about what lay behind the gaudy doors.
Alistair smiled wickedly, he had arrived.