Prince Blueblood sat on a stone, chewing on a pack of salted broccoli. Every now and then, he would raise a forehoof to wipe the sweat off his forehead, having to meddle with the furry hood of the coat he was handed. Even worse, though, were the winter goggles that had to be perched atop all their faces while outside. It was unbelievably hot, and his extremities were going slowly numb. The heat was turning the gears in his head, and the pallid skin beneath his coat shivered from the frost.
And when another wave of sand ravaged his broccoli, the stallion could but sigh and lay down on the stone, head perched atop bent forelegs. The sun blazed low in the sky at the crack of 12 PM, but regardless, the darkness was only illuminated by the lamps set up by the technical crew.
By that point, the Prince had already undergone many talks with Raven, who helped him overcome the final memories of a week prior, and was nearly considering himself sane again. It was right around when he almost decided that maybe he could throw off the presumptions of illegitimacy on his part and stop proving himself to nobody in particular, that they ran into a patch of Frozen North forest that turned into a sandy, desolate desert.
Looking no further back than a hundred meters, he could see their vehicle stand on the deep, harsh snow, surrounded by whitened evergreens. Where he sat, a sun-blackened rock kept company to a lone bovine skull. It looked scorching, possibly unsafe to sit on - in fact, his body was telling him that it was the hottest he had ever been. On the insistence of the chief engineer, however, they all kept their clothes on, as evidently the temperature did not rise any. The charming sunset of a faraway desert took up only a bit of the sky, immediately becoming surrounded by stark clouds and faint stars of a dark Northern night. Close nearby, he heard the sands shuffle and whinge as the breeze shifted them. Further away, he could clearly make out the noise of something big getting chomped on, and wailing helplessly all the while.
The wraith-eating plants from a mere kilometer back were a haunting experience, but at least they were an avoidable and overall harmless one. This patch of the Southern East covered their only way through, however.
He dared ponder if they could simply take the vehicle across the anomalous region, but even as he said so he knew there would be a good reason to decline the idea. Sure enough, their carrier was not equipped to cross sand, would likely fail if on any other soft surface, had ran out of fuel again, and, worst of all, appeared sensitive to the traces of magic in the demented area. The cause for this transformation was magical, of course, everyone knew as much.
Therefore, they came to the conclusion that three things needed to be done - the source of the magic had to be found, the source of the magic had to be shut down, and they needed to chop down more wood to feed to their machine, as well as their new thrusters still attached to the sides.
The engineering team recognized the most difficult part, and set to alleviate the pressure by getting to the forests. In passing, they mentioned a single solitary abandoned building in the middle of the desert. Blueblood sighed. That, once again, deprived them, the ViP’s, of anything resembling a real, actual, non-impromptu task. Magic sourcing and shutdown were the most basic things in modern arcanery. He knew how to do it, Raven could do it in her sleep. Any unicorn could do so - granted, especially dedicated magicians who needed a permanent effect on a designated area would concoct ways to defend for longer, but that would soon be cracked. Whatever public service magic was in use in Equestria operated on a trust system, and everybody knew that.
So all there was to do was to walk and then flick a horn, then wait in the now definitely freezing environment until they are ready to go.
Prince Blueblood sighed, packing the ruined broccoli in a bag and adding it to the trash bin he was guarding - the only job nobody else was striving to do, and so the only one he could feasibly volunteer to do. Some distance ahead, Raven was twirling a pen in the air with her magic, and looking inside a notebook. Every so often, she would look back and forth sharply, sometimes landing her gaze on him. Blueblood could just feel how each of those times, she would try to send him back to the carrier again, as if he was not idle enough laying on this scorched, freezing rock.
He merely sighed in acceptance when she set out his way, already getting up and looking at the trash, pointless to be guarded against much but the passing winds. Not even tiny saber rabbits or ice mice would cross into the damnable sands.
“Prince Blueblood, sir, I’ve been—”
“I’m already going, Raven, no need to shoo me off,” Blueblood replied prematurely, raising a forehoof to stop her mid-sentence. An unintended sad sigh escaped his throat and was just audible enough through the snow (sand) mask.
“Ummm…” the secretary fumbled, twirling her pen in the air some more before stuffing it in a pocket. “That isn’t what I meant to ask you. I intended to ask the opposite, as a matter of fact?”
“What would you mean by that?” the unicorn asked, halting his slumpy stature.
“Sir, please… I saw how you have been acting lately. I understand that all this… uh... “ she searched for a word, rolling her eyes back behind her own mask. “Um… all this, has taken a toll on you. But I can’t just let you slip into a neurosis like that. We’ve talked about this, haven’t we?”
“Many times.” He sighed.
“Yes, exactly. So… while you are coming to your senses… I thought that I could offer for you to lead our way to the source of the magic, and even take command while we extinguish it!” Raven did her best to make that sound like an undertaking worthy a grown stallion, not a fourteen year old undergraduate.
Blueblood took a double-take on the sigh, and made an even deeper one. He was not getting a better offer.
“Then so be it. Lead on,” he said idly, tilting his head towards the oblong tall building to their east.
“Um, sir…”
“Oh, right. Right, apologies. Force of habit. That way.”
“Correct. You’re… doing great. Yours is the compass, after all.” She pointed at his flank in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere even further up.
“Thank you.”
On their way there, they did not talk so much. They had, indeed, talked quite a bit as time went on. Being both secluded to the renovated VIP cabin, it was somewhat natural, but after their poor encounter with the locals, Raven insisted on talking to him more. In frankness, he failed to understand what the point of it was - or what exactly she was saying. He struggled to even remember most of what their conversations where about. His mind went blurry, no matter how hard he tried.
It was reminiscent of his childhood memories with the court psychiatrist, and those were far from enticing, so he simply gave up. Maybe his memory was just giving in by itself? For what it was worth, there was little worry in him when he thought back to all that had happened ever since they set out back on their way. The visit to the capital became utterly distant, and all the other events no longer caused him mild panic attacks, or alcoholic relapses.
Thankfully, soon enough, they had reached their destination, and Blueblood finally had something new to focus on - in particular, the peculiar shape of the structure.
“I thought you said this must have been a ruin that got caught in this magic field?” he pondered aloud, looking at the strange writings he could not recognize and the distinctly abnormal architecture. He almost recalled that this looked an awful lot like some ancient sort of structure that commonly began with a “Z”, but even then he was not too sure. Maybe they just looked familiar. “I don’t quite know, but this does not look local.”
“No, it… doesn’t,” Raven answered, walking by the large, pyramid-like structure. “The only ponies ever to live in this region, according to research books, were…” She halted unexpectedly, tilting her head left and right. “These Northern leftovers from before the Union, and those of the Crystal Empire. The Northerners don’t build this way at all, and the entirety of the Crystal Empire was lost a thousand years ago. Besides, what was captured in picture did not look like this at all…”
As the mare pondered to herself, Blueblood removed his goggles, seeing how they had left the sandstormy area. He gazed at the strange symbols on the sharp, angular walls. They looked a lot like hieroglyphs - or whatever the letters the South-Eastern countries used were called - but much swirlier, contradicting the blockiness of the building if he said so himself. There was a shadow of a doubt cast upon his judging it as a leftover from the afflicted area, or as a mere fragment of the magical anomaly now. Atop of what Raven said, of course.
“This would be the entrance,” the mare called out to him, pointing to a dark opening located between two ascending sets of steps. Blueblood perked up somewhat, not having noticed it before, and throwing off the unpleasant assumption of having to ascend to the top of the building. “Could be a bit more difficult to dispel this one if it had created this as a side effect. I’m sure you will handle it, though.”
“Very well then…” he said, having to shimmy to the side a little as the entrance was just a bit too narrow. Somewhat more unpleasantly, it was also pitch black. Him and the secretary went on for some time, until the Prince finally stumbled on a dislodged floor piece, and had to be caught by the tail.
Reestablishing himself, he spat some errant dust out of his mouth, and completely unhooded itself. It seemed reasonable enough now that they were no longer exposed to seemingly nonexistent winds. Raven tried to look ahead, only finding more gloom, and made a “chirk” with her horn, establishing an arcane flare above them to illuminate all of the hallway.
As soon as she did that, the entire building shook, whined, creaked, and threatened to collapse. Blueblood latched onto a brick in the wall, but ended up pulling it out, and tumbling down once again, causing Raven to drag him out to safety once more. The shaking continued, as well as the wailing, and now a significant sandstorm added itself into the mix, causing the stallion to spit yet more unwanted substances out of his mouth.
The secretary grunted as she pulled him out of the collapsing hallway, and finally found a stopping point in what must have been the main and only chamber of the weird structure. From where she stood, she could see the rest of the anomalous desert, even recognizing the pinetrees at the very horizon. With a low murmur, she went to check on Blueblood, but he had already managed to get himself up and finish spitting.
“Well… I suppose this is an unstable magical zone for a reason. That, or this place had suffered too much wear and tear during its time in the anomaly. I’d… question some of what happened,” she said to herself. “But this shouldn’t be a problem, this is all common enough. Are you ready?” She pointed Blueblood to a lectern at the far end of the chamber, elevated above the rest of it, with two round spiraling stairways leading up to it. It emitted an inconsistent brownish-purple glow, one that the few windows and intact objects in the room also shared.
The Prince nodded in response, looking around himself. The mare allowed him to take lead, somewhat wary of the narrow curvy stairs and their loose compatibility with the stallion’s complexion, but ready to catch him again. Her forelegs ached a bit after all the dragging, but it was nothing major. She centered her thoughts on the strange nature of the place, primarily.
These were normal enough - constructs that just happen to shape themselves when a field of magic is left active for far too long. Raven had seen a fair few of those on her assignments, and they were not so bad. This one’s main issue was the strange choice of architecture. One would assume that a rogue magical field in the Frozen North would take on something feral, or Northern, or Crystal at the very least. This, her architectural knowledge told her, was something really, really old, and from the opposite end of the world. The general shape seemed somewhat consistent with the old Southern ruins by the seaside, but most of the ornaments, decorations, and writings appeared Sad-Arabic in origin. Her eyes halted on a few of the writings, barely able to recognize just a few words, but the dialect appeared far older than what she knew of the language. From her own experience, it was more likely than not just a random arrangement of words, like with that one anomalous bakery that advertised “Radiant Winter Bran Fluff”, “Meaty Cupcakes” and “Individual Miniature Strikers”.
A loud, unpleasant cracking sound and a shrill gasp from Blueblood alerted her to reality after the five seconds she dedicated to letting herself think just for a while. By accident, the mare failed to suppress her glare, but the Prince seemed not so concerned about her attitude, pointing downwards rapidly, mouth quivering and eyes shaking.
As she looked down, it finally occured to her that the poorly lit chamber was filled not with rotten debris, but many, many equine bones. Practically all of the floor was covered with them, very few intact, most thrown around in chunks. They had yellowed with time, and bits of them filled up nooks and crannies of the chamber. It was as if a storm of not sand or snow, but bone, went through that place, lodging tiny bits everywhere, leaving only somewhat heavy ones to litter the floor.
“Skeletons,” Blueblood whispered in abject fright, mostly to himself it seemed.
“No, no, Prince Blueblood, calm down… This is normal,” Raven assumed out loud. “No skeletons here. There wouldn’t be anyone to contribute one in such a place. This is clearly made by magic, remember? The most this is is an imitation… and not an intact one. That means we definitely have what it takes to shut it down, return to our vehicle, and proceed on our way. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
The stallion merely gulped in return, his gaze fixated on a massive skull just below the pedestal with the lectern. Despite her own statement, Raven could not help but find this a little strange. It was definitely not absolutely impossible for something like this to have been created by accident, but it was eerie nonetheless. Besides, the skull the Prince stared at… Even a passing glance at it made her frown a little.
It was distinctly equine, albeit not a pony. Much longer and much, much bigger. Giving it another look, she gently pushed Blueblood further ahead, herself taking a few seconds to inspect it.
All she had got out of it was that the neck bones were missing, crudely so, and that, despite enough time having passed for these to at least go yellow, it still bore a husk of purple-ish headwear, and through its empty eye sockets jewels could be seen that must have adorned it prior.
An exasperated, croaky sigh from above signaled to her that she underestimated Blueblood’s ability to ascend the stairs. He complained:
“This… this... thing, it will not move! Could you lend me some help? Just… not too quickly, I think I may take another ja— Ow!”
Raven was already halfway up the stairs when a loud crack and a sudden wheeze became fruit of the stallion’s efforts. On the large stone pedestal, there was only a lectern with a rotted, darkened book, and what looked at the very first glance like a lever. Blueblood was correct to assume that the lever was to be pushed, as a disablement mechanism was intrinsic to the vast majority of anomalies such as this one.
Only the very second look told her that this was not a lever. Sure enough, floating in the now chillingly windy chamber was an extremely long, sturdy, metal staff, with a much darker, mustier lower half, all in all two meters or so long. Staves were not a usual component of such places, and them floating upon having caused wind and wail to happen was also very strange.
“Oh, come on, how did you…” She started towards Blueblood, frowning heavily, letting out nose through her air as sand, picked up by the sudden winds, got in through the crashed opening. “Sir, you could have waited! It’s… It’s… It’s not very safe to do this alone!”
“But you said I could!” he said in his defense, turning her way. She saw genuine remorse in his eyes and hung her head momentarily.
“I said we could! You saw how complicated this construct was, it would not have been safe to do it by yourself - the two of us, we could have done so easily, and you’d have contributed your share!”
“But I—”
The argument was interrupted by loud clattering and ear-piercing wailing. Blueblood fell on the ground, covering himself with his forehooves, while Raven looked to the source of the noise, and left her jaw open. Sand got in immediately, but that did not much distract her from the spectacle.
The bone pieces scattered all over the chamber were flying rapidly towards the center, massing themselves into a tight clump. Some that were lodged in the walls hit her and the Prince on their way back, slashing through their clothes, not enough to harm them, but significant of their movement force. The lectern - the rotted book in particular - now shone a powerful brown and purple. She had begun to piece together what was happening.
“SIR, WE HAVE TO GO.” The mare knocked on Blueblood’s back, and began to pull him away and downstairs before he even responded.
The exact picture did not form in her mind by the time it was already complete, when they arrived downstairs that is.
“HahahahahahaHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH! HAH! HAHAH!” a booming, nasal, somewhat croaky voice cackled passionately, echoing off the walls near the two.
“Oh sweet heavens how could—” she heard Blueblood mutter to himself, but his voice was silenced by the thing in the middle.
It… spoke, very vehemently, clearly directing its words at them, standing right before it where the skull used to lay. Only Raven had no idea what it was saying. For some time, the mare had no idea what it looked like, either - sand had gotten into her glasses and eyes. As she took the former off, though…
Floating in the air before them was a ghastly, ghostly figure composed of bone and energy. All the little bone pieces, shattered and scattered across the room, were in it - some did not hold too well, many left cracks to show, and a couple were missing, but together, they completed a big equine skeleton. That skeleton, Raven was correct before, was not of a pony. That was a horse. A much bigger one than the ones that currently inhabited the Sad-Arabic Emirates.
It floated vertically, its angled, crooked forelegs grasping the staff, which now illuminated the chamber a very bright brown. The same brown, with inklings of purple here and there, composed the rest of the horse’s body. It was skinny, tall, and yet more massive than its kin that Raven was aware of. A snout riddled with wrinkles and sores, as well as a ring of jewelry wrapped across the neck and behind the ears. A cluttered, clumpy, long purple beard that stretched below even where its hind legs were - some meters above the two ponies. The brown and purple energy composed clothes as well - wavy, dingy, once-luxurious robes with cuts and blots all over them, and an uncharacteristically bright crown atop its head. Jewelry of the same high quality riddled its body, each foreleg equipped with no less than four massive rings and bracers. Finally, deep in the back of its head were two flaming, staring, pinprick golden eyes.
Raven and Blueblood’s staring at the figure disallowed either of them from listening to what it was saying, or saying anything themselves. The mare was the first one to concede that the beard must have meant that this was a “he” - that, as well as the voice, had to be clear. As for the rest, they just stared, very slowly backing off into the wall, the Prince slowly pushing into Raven’s side.
The figure, in the meantime, gestured excessively, and continued to talk. When the most either of the ponies responded with was following his long, ugly forehooves as they threw themselves all around, he loudly knocked itself on the skull, the hoof going right through the energy-composed skin and coat. An echoing sigh emitted from him, and Blueblood jerked violently, letting out a loud scream, as he was pulled from Raven. The signature brown and purple enveloped him, pulling him into the sand storm that raged around the figure, despite how much he reared back and how Raven almost caught him by the tail.
The mare almost yelled out in denial when the Prince’s head was thrust forward, mouth forced open, and unpleasant brown energy was poured into it, but the moment she opened her own mouth, sand snuck its way inside. When she’d stopped coughing, it was just in time to catch the stallion as he was thrown back to her. Doing so with most of her body, she was able to recognize that he was still alive, and appeared to be functional.
“Is this… seriously… how you talk now?” the ethereal, croaky voice pondered a-very-loud. “This… is not… right.” Raven, gripping Blueblood tight as he shook, eyes staring at the horse in the middle of the chamber, now recognized his speech. He spoke Equestrian… with a very thick Sad-Arabian accent, and not one that was much present nowadays, but still.
“This is wrong. What is this word salad?” He spat indignantly, a boney tooth landing in front of the ponies, and being pulled back in by the exasperated floating skeleton. “A lot of it is… hm… Oh come on!”
He thrust himself upwards, gesturing madly and swirling the staff in his forehooves. Artificial thunder followed his speech, and the sand spun much quicker.
“They banished me for a hundred years! Did those stupid, barbarous, indignant, sleazy cat-birds take over in so little time?! Did they? Answer me, you deformed mutants!” he screamed, his voice becoming a booming falsetto. “They probably let you all out of your pens and dealt away with us while we were at it, didn’t they?!”
“We’re not mutants!” Blueblood screamed in return, somehow challenging the croaking of the ancient creature with his own voice. “We are Equestrians! And there are no catbirds ruling us!”
“Eque— What? Oh… Oh, oh.” The creature went silent for a moment, while Raven patted Blueblood on the back, if only for still being conscious. A pat turned into a massive kick as the figure swung its staff, crashed it through a wall, and roared in its high pitch:
“IDIOTS! DEGENERATES! CRETINS! NE’ER DO WELLS!” In addition to the thunder, he now struck the floor with his staff after each word. “ONE HUNDRED YEARS! AND MUTANTS TAKE YOU OVER! WELL, GOOD RIDDANCE!” He spun around, and made some form of gesture to the frozen wasteland outside…
....Raven and Blueblood only noticed then that the desert had receded significantly, and the majority of the landscape outside was now the old, familiar, Frozen North. Only their chamber contained sand, for all they saw. The same appeared obvious to the floating skeleton, who stared at the vista, forehooves dropped down and the staff barely levitating by its side.
“And they turn our great deserts into… this,” he whispered angrily. “No, no. No, no, no, no, no! You were idiots! You banished me! You banned my teachings! You made me into a story for little children, no doubt! But you cannot be so worthless! NO! If you were, I’d have been Vizier for fifty years now! I, Al-Walid, the Hocus Magistre, have taken more time to take over the world than these stupid creatures did?! NO.”
With a roar, the shape turned its head to them, not bothering to turn the rest of the body around. In that manner, it floated close to the two, and bent down, the skull and the unshapely equine face on top of it all too close to the ponies. Blueblood receded backwards with a gasp when the ethereal beard went through his own snout.
“What year is this,” Al-Walid asked them. He drilled through both of them with his eyes, dedicated one to each of the two.
“One thousand and two years since the fall of Nightmare Moon,” Blueblood answered with a gulp while Raven stared at the thing.
“I have no idea who that is.”
Before the secretary could come up with ways of situation management for this encounter, Blueblood somehow found it in him to keep talking.
“The… sister of Princess Celestia, who went renegade and wished to overthrow her rule.”
“Who is Princess Celestia.”
“The… um… ruler of Equestria for the past… uhhhhhh… two thousand years?”
“Is Equestria where you undercooked abominations live?”
“We’re not—” Blueblood’s voice croaked no less than four times, and he stopped. “Yes, it is.”
“You have been around for two thousand years.”
“Well… there were dark times when the windigoes ruled us… but they aren’t documented very well…”
“Windigoes.”
Al-Walid stared at them, especially Raven, who let Blueblood speak for the time being, and sighed. It turned away from them, and faced towards the great white expanse.
“He lied to me. The Master went and lied to me. And now…” he threw his forelegs up in the air. “Now, these de-evolved degenerates rule the planet.”
The mare shot her eyes wide open, getting a bit of sand in them right away, at the mention of a Master. As soon as she rubbed it out, she peeked over Blueblood to look closer.
“Some lichdom. You…” The skeleton looked around and pierced through them once more. “Are you worth conquering? Are you?! Who am I even talking to, how did you manage to pass all the traps these stupid freaks set up at the entrance? I know they did! I was world evil to them! They’d never have left my remains guarded by less than ten times the amount of idiotic little mechanisms than would be excessive!”
The two ponies took some time to process what was said, and Raven was the first to speak out. Her mind raced, and her eyes shifted back and forth, cold sweat dropping from her forehead, but not much else could be done.
“We are a diplomatic envoy to the occupied territory of the North lead by Prince Blueblood.” She tapped on the shivering stallion’s back as he stared abstractly at the lich. “He is among our greatest specimens, and if you dispose of us, I will fight to the end to preserve him.”
The three of them stared at each other for a period of time. Blueblood alternated between Al-Walid and Raven, Raven at Al-Walid, and Al-Walid at both of them.
“This is your greatest specimen. How did you—”
“We are a peaceful kingdom that extends the ties of friendship to any and all. We currently take up sixty percent of the largest continent on planet Equis.” Raven’s eye twitched a little and her voice shook, but yet she spoke on, reciting from memory.
“Planet Equis. Peaceful kingdom. Sixty percent,” the lich repeated after her.
“This place is the most dangerous part of the entire planet, and is populated by the few that refuse our rule.”
“How many?”
“Less than ten thousand renegades.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Ponies alone? Two billion.” Raven had begun to grin just a little, mostly out of nerves.
Al-Walid had attempted to speak, but stopped himself with a hoof. Then he did so again, and stopped once more. Then he raised his staff up in the air, and a faint purple glow seeped through the roof, returning shortly and causing him to shake his head. He floated up in the air for a few moments, cradling his skull in his forehooves, as the ponies watched. A monumental sigh escaped the lich. He extended a forehoof to them, and peeked one eye out.
“What do you know of the Great Deserts?” he demanded in frustration.
“They are an empty wasteland of sand, nomads, oases, and our set of vassal states, the Saddle Arabian Emirates.” Raven nodded as she spoke, ears and eyes both twitching by then.
“Saddle. Arabian.”
“Yes, Saddle Arabian Emirates.”
“They export oasis moisture and cloth,” Blueblood squeaked a fact in.
Al-Walid retreated into his previous pose. An even larger sigh escaped him.
“I was going to rule the Great Desert Empire, you know. Was steps away from it, before the… Pursuer Corps, I think they will call it in this primitive mish-mash, found me in the middle of a ritual. I had my power already when they struck me down, and left me headless. The Master promised… that lest my phylactery be destroyed, I would return in a hundred years to a weakened, soiled empire to rebuild to my liking. It sounds good, don’t you think?”
Neither of them responded. The lich floated to the middle of the room.
“Now, I wake up, and this…” He threw his legs to the sides and his head backwards, the skull nearly falling off. “THIS is what I see? This is what time has done to MY planet? Equestria? Planet EQUIS? THIS is your Prince?”
Faint ethereal breaths left him as he floated, burning eyes shut. When they opened, the lich was fuming, staring right at the confused duo, and twirling his staff rampantly.
“I think not.”
Raven shut her eyes in disbelief, immensely relieved that her plan worked. It would make absolutely no sense in retrospect, but it worked…
“I want no part in this.”
She allowed herself a sigh of relief, clutching Blueblood’s still staring body.
“This is a punishment worse than I had ever earned, and all I had earned was a place on the throne of an Empire that no longer exists.”
The two ponies felt immense magic seep out of the place, a massive discharge - much like what they intended to do. There was little to no sand left, and the brown and purple glow had grown weaker. On the horizon, a dozen of equine figures bearing lights could already be seen.
“And a certain SOMEBODY,” Al-Walid screamed, ramming his staff into the large circle in the middle of the room, sending glowing cracks outwards. “CLEARLY. DESERVES IT. DON’T YOU THINK, MASTER?! YOU BE DAMNED!”
The hole grew, wider and wider, and finally, a vibrant brown lightning was launched into it, illuminating the entire Northern forest outside. A massive quake, much worse than when the hallways collapsed back when they so presumptuously entered, took over the ground, sending a few of the faraway ponies tumbling down.
“Hehehehehehehahahahah! HAHAH! SO LONG! MY PLANS ARE RUINED, BUT I HAVE ESCAPED THIS TORMENT!” the lich cackled abundantly, gripping the staff with his hooves. “HAVE FUN IN THIS POINTLESS GENERATION, “MASTER”! You did… tell me… to awaken you… after all… Ha-ha-haaaaahhh…”
Al-Walid dissipated into thin air with a flash, his skeleton immediately rotting apart and disappearing from sight, likely to go back where this place truly belonged. Raven let go of Blueblood for just a second, mouth gaping at the dissolved ancient mage, but that was enough for him to have charged towards the crack, forehoof lent back as if for a punch. The Prince roared dementedly, screaming something incoherent.
The mare charged after him, towards the eerily glowing pit, and only just barely tackled the stallion at the very edge. Both of them came close to rolling inside, their heads hanging off the cracks. Raven did all she could not to look down, knowing to focus on pulling both their weights outwards. She signaled with a hoof and yelled for the engineering team to help, feeling her body grow weaker and weaker.
Finally, an external force rolled her over, pasting snow and sand all over her face and glasses. A louder thump, coupled with resistent whines, was for Blueblood. He had spent that entire time staring into the pit of whatever the lich broke free in his dying moment. Raven, for better or worse, was spared from that fate.
That said, the bizzarre red line that crossed her vision before her consciousness decided to give in was not much calm.