Dolor was little more than a hamlet, a small cluster of houses with a single pub to share; it acted simply as a checkpoint for ponies travelling to Arclight or back. Naturally I had been through it any time I visited Arclight on business, I never actually stopped there though, I just briefly took in the stout cabins constructed from logs and planks and went on my way. I knew there wasn’t much there, so I wasn’t expecting anything interesting when we arrived, although by that point I really had no right to be surprised anymore when out of the ordinary things did happen.
As Stranglethorn and I pushed our way out of the brambles, I briefly wondered if we would get some odd looks stepping into the village from the forest rather than the path, the sort of attention that I figured Stranglethorn would want to avoid while on a mission. It turned out however; we had nothing to worry about. We didn’t get any odd looks when we entered the village… on account of the fact that there was nopony there to see us. My thoughts first jumped to Glean, but this was a very different kind of situation, emphasised by the fully grown oak tree bursting out of one of the nearby houses.
The entire village was overgrown, as if the forest itself had joined in the war. Some homes were completely obscured by walls of ivy and others had their windows broken, more plant life creeping out from within the buildings themselves. Getting a closer look at one of the more whole houses, I saw that the wood used to build it was heavily rotted, caked in mould and fungus. Even the yards and paths between the houses were overgrown with various weeds; the river that ran through the middle of Dolor was filled with reeds making it almost impossible to see the shattered remains of the bridge.
“So…” I began as we both walked through the abandoned village. “What exactly happened here?”
Stranglethorn glanced back over at me, quirking an eyebrow as if to say it should be obvious.
“Well I assume the war had something to do with it,” I continued slightly exasperatedly. “I mean, how did it get to be like this? I may not be some expert in plants, but even I know this kind of growth in two years isn’t normal.”
Stranglethorn walked up to me, raising his foreleg and pointing at my own head, his hoof hovering about a centimetre from the tip of my horn.
“Magic?” I interpreted, to which he nodded before turning and continuing on his way.
I followed after him until we reached the section of the river where the bridge used to be, Stranglethorn took one look at it before hopping gracefully to the other bank. I didn’t have quite the same confidence in my own abilities, so instead I tested my hoof on the reeds. They were so tightly packed that they appeared to be able to hold my weight, as long as I didn’t stay on them for more than a second or two I wouldn’t sink. Taking my chances, I began stepping across the river, hearing a satisfying ‘squish’ with ever step I took.
Once on the other side, I trotted to catch up with Stranglethorn who was approaching a seemingly random house. At the door he ran the flat of his hoof across the damp, discoloured face, when nothing I noticed happened, he reached up into the corner of the doorframe and knocked a small latch. I never would have noticed it if I hadn’t seen him close it, I starting thinking about what it might do, although I found out as soon as he opened the door and we walked in. Directly over my head was some kind of metallic contraption which looked like a bladed pendulum, it didn’t take much guesswork to realise that the latch Stranglethorn closed had prevented it from swinging down and impaling whoever was trying to come through the door.
I gulped slightly, imagining what would have happened if I had gone ahead of him and opened this house at random. The cabin we had entered was a two story house; the first floor that we stood in was almost completely bare, with only a trestle table as furniture and some rotting kitchen cabinets in one corner. The interior did look much cleaner than I had expected, and this house at least had no plants invading. I guessed from the booby trap set up and what came next that Stranglethorn, or some other member of the Rebellion, had come here previously and set this place up as a base.
Stranglethorn passed the stair case, crouching down in the corner of the room where he waved me over. As I approached I saw that there was a rough engraving in one of the planks he was leaning over, it was the wreath of thorns I had come to associate with him. Squeezing the plank out of the floor, Stranglethorn revealed a small hole which he reached into and pulled out a very familiar brand of metal lockbox. He carried it over to the table before reaching behind his ear and fishing out a tiny metal key, I figured it would be rude to ask how he was keeping it secure back there even though I desperately wanted to know.
“Uh, Stranglethorn…” I began uncomfortably, as a guilty thought began to make itself known. “About that lockbox, and that symbol you carve. You probably already know, but a while back I found one of those boxes and I took some stuff from it.”
It should have dawned on me much sooner, and I wondered if he had looked at my daggers these last few days and resented me for stealing them. Levitating the daggers off my belt, sheaths and all, I lay them out on the table.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have any of the other things I took from it,” I explained. “But you can have these back, I should have returned them as soon as I first starting working with you guys.”
Stranglethorn glanced at the daggers, looking genuinely surprised before shaking his head and pushing them back towards me.
“Are you sure?” I asked, surprised but a little hopeful as I had grown quite fond of them. “But they are yours, aren’t they? And I stole them and sold or gave away your other things, it wasn’t right.”
Stranglethorn shook his head again, this time more forcefully as he donned a pained expression, as if he was struggling to convey words through gestures and couldn’t find the right ones. In the end he whipped out his note book and quickly scribbled something down in his usual flourished writing. He passed the note over to me, looking very uncomfortable as he did; I glanced down at it and read it aloud.
“We’re friends,” I read. “I forgive you.”
I looked up and saw him giving me the most strained smile ever. I giggled into my hoof, stopping when I realised how insanely insensitive it was.
“Thank you,” I said with a little cough. “You’re a good friend.”
He gave me one last quirky smile before his face returned to its normal, blank state and he began unpacking the lockbox. Inside were a number of files including a photograph that caught my eye and two maps, one of the city itself and another of the capitol building, the Tower. Besides that he also pulled out a small bottle made from brightly coloured stained glass, seeing my curiosity he began scribbling another note out. As he passed it to me it read ‘Mind Fog, to help if the police try to penetrate your thoughts, only use in dire circumstances’.
“Thanks,” I said, storing the bottle away in my bag before turning to look at the map. “So I take it Arcana lives in the Tower?”
Stranglethorn nodded, reaching into his own bags and pulling out a printed letter which he passed to me. I skimmed through this one, it was addressed to Maverick and was presumably sent by one of his other agents, it explained that there was a major social function being held in the Tower tomorrow evening at the request of Arcana himself.
“Ah, I see,” I said nodding slowly. “I need to get into this function and I can get close to Arcana without it seeming too suspicious.”
Stranglethorn nodded affirmatively while I reviewed the city map to remind myself of the layout. As I scanned over it I noticed Cadance Avenue where Lyra told me to come find her, perhaps she could help me get into the event.
“Do you know anything about Arcana?” I asked, wishing I’d asked Maverick before we left. “Besides the fact that he’s a massive racist.”
Stranglethorn pondered the question for a moment before jotting a few words down in his notepad.
“Traditionalist, smooth talker, egotist…” I read out, wondering if I could use any of these to my advantage like I did with Typhoon’s obsession with micromanagement. “And what about what he looks like?”
At that Stranglethorn passed me the photograph from the lockbox; it showed a stallion much younger looking than either Maverick or Typhon, although he might have just had a lot of magic cosmetics. He had a long purple mane that was tied back in a single plat, while his coat was a shade of royal blue similar to my own coat... the coat I was wearing that is. He wore majestic looking robes; they were purple although it was hard to tell, what with the gold trimmings shinning like beacons as the light of the camera's bounced off them. I imagined ‘egotist’ really suited him, just from the smug, self-assured look he wore on his face; he might have been good looking if his face wasn’t so punchable.
“Right, well…” I glanced out the grimy window pane at the night sky. “I’ll set off about an hour before sunrise, that should give me plenty of time to look about the city and figure out a way into the Tower.”
Stranglethorn nodded before doing a quick charade of sleeping before gesturing at the ceiling. I took up his offer and went up the stairs where I found a double bed waiting; I inspected it quickly to make sure no other living things had made it their homes before deeming it sanitary and lying down on it to get some desperately needed sleep. I was able to wake up on my own for a change, a real achievement for me, a mare who once head-butted her own father on Hearth’s Warming morning because he tried to wake her up for her presents.
Before long I was back out the door, casting a wary glance up at the sinister looking pendulum as I did. Stranglethorn offered me the pipe again before I left, which I politely declined, I had done fine so far without resorting to that kind of edge, I would rather not start. Rather than trek through the forest alone, I travelled along the road straight to Arclight, which I could see high up in the distance. The city was perched on one of the highest points in the Tranquil Forest that wasn’t a mountain; as such it could be seen like a shimmering beacon for miles around.
Pivot may have been the first pony built settlement in Panchea, but Arclight had existed long before ponies had ever arrived in this country. Its exact origins were a mystery, the natives that lived there long having disappeared leaving only the one city as proof of their existence. It was theorised that their disappearance had something to do with the Nether Vale, the valley north of the Tranquil Forest, nestled between two mountain ranges. However this couldn’t be proved as nopony dared go there, few returned and even fewer came back with any memory of their time there, those that did were never quite the same.
The city was very sophisticated for the time in which it was discovered by the pony settlers, many advances in magic and technology were made simply through studying the mysterious city. The university was one of the main buildings that were added by the ponies, intended as a tribute to the city itself for the knowledge it had provided. The Tower on the other hand had never been touched, it was a monumental structure placed in the very centre of the city with five smaller towers set at intervals around the city walls, to which the Tower was tethered to by wires as thick as a Minotaur. The power generated in the Tower was transferred through those wires across the city, powering everything from the lights to the radio signal.
In all the years since ponies had inhabited it, the same level of magical technology had yet to be replicated anywhere else. While we now understood how to do such incredible things that the city taught us, actually doing it proved to be a very difficult and time consuming task, and by extension, expensive. Canterlot made use of many of the same technologies, and plenty of other towns and cities across the pony nation used some of them in the form of localised electricity, but it was still very exclusive.
The city itself was very majestic; walls were carved from marble, the street tiles were done in mosaic patterns, the streets themselves were wide and lined with slender copper poles topped with balls of ethereal light. The city was very staggered, with many levels beyond the ground. Most buildings were tall enough to be classed as a tower anywhere else, with external steps leading to platforms, balconies and even whole streets on higher levels. Similar to Port Mule, many buildings enjoyed being adorned with creeping wall plants and hanging baskets spilling over with flowers.
The city really was massive, I had forgotten just how big until I was standing at the city wall and had to crane my neck to see the top of it, or even the top of the narrow archway leading in. What was even more daunting was the knowledge that no matter how high up the walls or the buildings in the city went, they were all dwarfed by the Tower itself. While I had never been inside it myself, it was common knowledge that it was over fifty stories tall. On either side of the archway were two unicorns in pale blue robes whom I presumed to be the police I was warned about, they each wore porcelain masks with haunting facial features and a kite shaped purple gem embedded in the forehead just below where the horn protruded.
Beyond the four police ponies and the tall archway, I could see the streets of Arclight, bustling with life as dozens of ponies made their way to work. It didn’t escape my notice that every one of them was a unicorn, as I began walking the last stretch up the inclining road I wondered if there were any non-unicorns left in the city or if they had all moved to somewhere more tolerable. As I reached the archway I did my best not to slow down or speed up or do anything that might draw unnecessary attention my, I still remembered my success at infiltrating Fort Mule and was hoping for a similar success this time.
To my surprise, but by no means my dismay, the police ponies didn’t even look at me as I walked in. In fact, once I was a safe distance away I glanced back to confirm that, sure enough, they weren’t moving at all. It was as if they were simply statues that looked a lot like living breathing ponies, once you added the lack of movement to the creepy masks I was suddenly given even more reason to avoid tussling with them. The ponies in the street however were more than eager to look my way, their eyes gravitating towards my forehead to confirm I was one of them before offering me a welcoming smile.
The first time I visited Arclight I was awe struck by the wonder and beauty of the city, I admit I felt a similar feeling seeing it again for the first time in two years as I approached the wall, but after seeing the guards and the cultish grins of the passer-bys, my awe was quickly giving way to a disturbed feeling. Rather than wait to get ambushed and asked if I wanted to learn more about the lord and saviour Arcana, I quickly made my way down the street to my first destination. While I remembered my way well enough from the map and the memories that were steadily coming back to me, I still read the street signs to keep me right.
I mounted a stone staircase on my way, in doing so I managed to put myself in a position where the tall buildings around me no longer obscured the sight of the Tower. Even at a distance I felt a bit height sick looking it up and down, it was a very shapely structure, with very pronounced curves which I always assumed were necessary to help with whatever technological wonders went on inside. At the very highest point was a bulbous head, a huge sphere shaped room that sat just above the point where the five wires joined into the Tower.
All the way up the length of the Tower there were large metal rings at varying intervals, slowly rotating around the body, occasionally one might shift slightly further up or down or switch the direction in which it was rotating. There were three similar rings surrounding the spherical head, except these tended to moves much faster and gyrated around it in every direction, it was all so wonderful and interesting… and utterly mind boggling. Tearing my eyes away from the place I would find my target, I carried on my way, following one last sign and ascending one final tall flight of stairs to Cadance Avenue.
Only then did it occur to me as my eyes swept over the city houses that I hadn’t a clue which one Lyra was supposed to live in, she had never told me, just to find her in Cadance Avenue. While I pondered my situation, a very familiar, melodic strumming wafted down from an open window into the street that was empty bar myself, that certainly narrowed my search down vastly. Running my gaze down from the open window I saw a front door directly below it, so marching up, I checked myself over in the poor reflection of the frosted glass.
I was presentable, having given myself a quick clean up this morning for this very occasion. I was a bit worried about what Lyra would think of my weapons, but I was confident in my ability to weave together some lie that would put her at ease. Satisfied that I was presentable, I reached out and rapped loudly on the front door, the music stopping almost instantly. I only had to wait a few minutes before the door was opened by the turquoise unicorn who looked briefly confused before she saw who it was knocking on her door.
“R…Rarity?!” Lyra exclaimed, her eyes widening and a grin spreading across her face.
“Hello again Lyra,” I greeted warmly. “I was just in the neighbourhood and thought it might be good to catch up.”