A spyglass reflected the image of a castle floating briskly through high clouds.
Romulus lowered the instrument from his one good eye. He clenched his teeth under his beak, flying at a courageous height beneath the shadows of circling dragons.
Just then, the air crackled with static electricity. The wind shifted, spiraled, and then—CRACK!—a yellow unicorn mare appeared in mid-air beside him. "Romulus, Don Canter's stallions want to know—" The magic of her teleported faded, and Sunset Shimmer plunged like an anvil covered in bacon grease. "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!"
With a sigh, Romulus reached out and calmly gripped the mare by her tail. "Try not to scream. Dragons have good hearing, despite their dense and scaly heads."
"Guhhh!" Sunset Shimmer flailed, dangling upside down. She frowned up at the griffon bounty hunter, sneering. "What the buck, you cycloptic turkey?! When I honed in on your signature, I thought you were perched on a mountain top or something!"
"You know, for all of your book reading, you're still a gullible soft-hoof idiot. Has anypony ever told you that?"
"Fine. Whatever. Just give me a report so I can port back to the other punks and keep their restless butts pacified." Sunset frowned, folding her forelimbs as she dangled. "They're starting to think that all of this is a wild goose chase... that we're wasting their valuable time."
"Look at that." Romulus pointed with his other talon. "Tell me if that is a waste of time."
"Huh? What?" Sunset twirled about. At last, her eyes spotted the upside-down sight of the castle, and she gasped. "Whoah! Celestia taking a mud bath!"
"Seen the likes of it before?"
"I... I've seen some pretty fantastical things, sure!" She gulped. "Even conjured them! But never have I seen this sort of stuff in the scaly palms of dragons!" She levitated loose a pad of paper and a pen and started taking furious, furious notes. "The sheer amount of manapower that's required to keep all of that afloat is mind-boggling..."
"Could the chaos shards be doing it?" Romulus frowned. "And if so, would it wear them down any?"
"Wear them down...?!"
"You know... dilute the reserve power and such nonsense." Romulus groaned. "Because, I swear, if we get there and the shards are just as powerful as worn-out light bulbs..."
"Chaos doesn't work that way," Sunset Shimmer explained. "Much like Harmonic Energy, it's constantly renewable, so long as a piece of opposing energy is existing and resonating elsewhere on the same plane. It's the flux between the two that allows for kinetic dispe—"
"Yeah yeah yeah... whatever. So it won't be a jaded bunch of charcoal once we get to it. Good."
"But... how do we even know that it's there?" Sunset asked. "It's too far away for my leylines to detect, and Rainbow Dash is nowhere to b—"
"The damnable Equestrian's flown into the Castle."
"She... she has?"
"I saw her just now," Romulus said, his beak's nostrils flaring. "Along with her little stone dragon friend."
"Since when did stone dragons have antlers?"
"Don't press the issue!" Romulus grumbled, raising Sunset so that their eyes more closely connected. "The fact is, they're in the Castle! And if something's drawn them there, then the shards must be there in waiting!" He peered up at the floating structure. "And the same can be said about Aatxe."
"Then... then this is it." Sunset tightened her upside down jaw. "This is where we spring our trap."
"Perhaps. Perhaps not."
"Huh?"
Romulus tapped his break with his other talon. "Rainbow's already flown into the lion's den, so to speak. She's a courageous pony... but a dumb one. I suspect she's already got a trap sprung for her."
"Soooooo... we don't intervene?"
"Let's play it out. If she comes out of this as a smoldering corpse, then we'll know just how tough the 'Big Boss' of the dragons is."
"And if she comes out of this unscathed?"
"Then we spring the trap. Torture her. Threaten her friends. Do what we can to get her to tell us what she's seen on the inside."
"Ohhhhhhh..." Sunset slowly nodded with an evil grin. "We get her to do reconnaissance for us!"
"Precisely. But still... wouldn't hurt to get into position just in case." Romulus peered east. "The castle's heading back towards the Barricade... and swiftly. Port back to the rest of the group and tell them to gallop due north. We should be able to cut off the Castle's path at this rate."
"How do we even plan to reel it down?"
"Leave that to the experts," Romulus grumbled, then released her tail. "Now poof."
"Gaaaaaaah—!" Sunset twirled, performing a teleportation spell before she could plunge into the forested treetops below.
With a sneering breath, Romulus turned and gazed up at the floating mountain and the structure on top of it. After a few moments, a wicked grin crossed his avian features.