"Ah, this is the life", Celestia smiled as she reclined on a particularly comfy couch in the Crystal Empire. She floated a piece of light, cloud-like cake towards her.
"Indeed sister", Luna chuckled, "perhaps we should consider an early retirement".
"I have to say", Twilight tried to add, "it's really nice getting to spend time with the three of -"
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK
The door swung open to make way for a panicked Shining Armour, charging breathlessly into the room.
"Your majesties", he gasped.
Usually Cadance would have interrupted with a 'Cadance is fine', but she sensed now was not the time.
"The Crystal Heart is missing! Our guards are searching the empire but there's no sign of it anywhere. At this point it seems likely it's somewhere outside the empire."
"We'll search for it right away", Celestia declared, and all four princess stood up and opened their wings, ready to fly.
"Uh, doesn't someone need to stay behind to rule Equestria?"
"As captain of the royal guard, I believe that responsibility falls on you." Celestia smiled with her usual calmness.
"Me?"
"Yes, don't worry, I told the most annoying petitioners to wait until tomorrow."
"Alright, well, good luck then, I'll try and keep things running smoothly," Shining then turned to his younger sister, "and stay safe Twily".
Twilight Sparkle smiled. "Will do, BBBFF!"
With that, the princess took off, and soared elegantly out the window and into the sky - well, most of them did. Twilight went spinning uncontrollably into the clouds above the Crystal Empire.
"Woah!" the young princess shrieked as she went face first through several clouds the pegasi had spent the last hour carefully constructing, leaving a trail of disintegrating cloud vapor behind her.
She finally came to a stop when she crashed flank-first into Cadance, who giggled wildly.
"I didn't even say 'ladybugs awake' yet" Cadance laughed.
"It's not funny" Twilight grumbled, unimpressed, as she stabilised her wings.
"Alright," Celestia interrupted. "If you were a crystal thief, where would you go?"
"How would thou know what a thief would do," Luna accused, "perhaps thou art the thief!"
Suddenly, Twilight's eyes lit up with realization.
"Of course, the crystal mountains!" she exclaimed. "Nopony with any common sense would follow them there! It's cold, desolate and there's no food for miles!"
"See Luna, at least one of us is sensible," Celestia replied with a smug smile, "now, let's head for the mountains."
"Wait, WHAT?!" Twilight gasped as she struggled to keep up with the three princesses, now flying energetically towards the mountains, "we're actually going there? With no plan? And we're not telling anyone where we are?"
"Calm down Twilight," Celestia replied, "we're alicorns, a bit of snow is hardly a threat."
"Yeah, it's really kind of exciting! We get to dodge avalanches, and climb huge cliff-faces, and -" Cadance began, before seeing the expression of pure terror on Twilight's face. "Right, not helping."
Suddenly, Twilight stopped flying. She assumed it was because of fear, but then noticed the piles of snow on her wings.
"Help", she managed to get out, before plummeting towards the ground beneath her, screaming.
Cadance zoomed down effortlessly and caught Twilight safely by her forelimbs. Twilight blushed with a mixture of embarrassment and relief.
"Sorry, I'm not really used to flying in the cold."
"It's okay," Cadance replied comfortingly, "as exciting as it would be to fly into a blizzard, I think we'd all better make a landing. We do need to conserve our energy after all, and we're already over the mountains."
The other princesses nodded in agreement, and, Cadance still carrying Twilight, they made a gentle landing on the snow below them.
The landing spot was a small clearing, surrounded by dense pine forest in every direction. A narrow path could be seen leading to a rocky outcrop up ahead, with what appeared to be a cave in it. Twilight was about to make some kind of sensible suggestion when Cadance unknowingly interrupted.
"Goodness me Twilight, you weigh twice as much as last time I saved you from a pit of doom - how much cake has Celestia been giving you?"
"Now now, Cadance, there's nothing wrong with a bit of cake!" Celestia protested, flicking some snow in Cadance's direction.
"Hah! Thou should talk, I saw thee eat ten pieces of cake just this morning!" Luna laughed, kicking a clump of snow at Celestia.
Within seconds, a full-blown snowball fight had broken out.
"Listen, I -" Twilight tried to speak up before a huge ball of snow hit her face-first.
"Woops, sorry" Celestia giggled.
Twilight stood up, shook off the snow, and repeated Cadance's breathing technique. Calmly, she turned to the other princesses, who had now quietened down.
"Listen, I don't mean to be disrespectful, but shouldn't we be taking this mission a bit more seriously?"
"Right, we did get a little carried away. We don't get much time outside of the public eye, to just be ourselves." Celestia explained, smiling calmly. "What we should be doing is deciding which way to go."
"Well that rocky outcrop looks like a good start. Whoever stole the Crystal Heart would have taken shelter there before moving further into the mountains. There might be some clues left over."
"Good thinking, let's start heading in that direction."
Twilight followed quietly as the other princesses raced ahead, chatting and giggling.
-- ☁ --
"...so that's when I said, you can't have your cake and eat it too!" Celestia chuckled.
Luna and Cadance laughed hysterically - even Twilight let out a little chuckle as she followed the group.
"Griffons are certainly amusing, sister" Luna replied, between laughs, "but it appears we have arrived!"
The princesses turned their attention to what now revealed itself as a very large, dark and menacing cave. Twilight had second thoughts about entering, but decided that getting out of the cold was worth it. She lit up her horn and led the way inside, closely followed by the others.
The inside of the cave was lined with many strange crystals, and consisted of a series of large, open, interconnected tunnels. A strange sound could be heard echoing past every now and then, but the ponies thought nothing of it. Eventually, they found their way to a massive open hollow. Twilight took a step forward - then saw what was in front of her and leaped back in shock.
"Dragon!" she whispered. "Sleeping!"
"There'd be smoke if it were sleeping," Celestia noted, "which means it must just be resting here. A temporary stopover - but why would it stop here, unless -"
"Unless it was doing something it didn't want us to know about", Twilight concluded, "like taking the crystal heart!"
Twilight covered her mouth, she had just called out loud enough for somepony in Cloudsdale to hear her. With a loud grumble, the dragon stretched, roared, and looked straight at the princesses.
WOOSH! The princesses narrowly dodged a huge blast of fire. Cadance wasted no time in taking to the air, whooping with excitement as she flew every which way, firing magic laser beams at the dragon.
Angrily, the dragon whacked Cadance face-first with its paw, sending her flying into the cave wall.
Twilight Sparkle rushed to her old foalsitter's aid, while Luna stepped up to take on the dragon next.
"THOU SHALT CEASE THY BRUTISH WAYS!" Luna declared in her Royal Canterlot Voice, smiling with eagerness and determination. "I CHALLENGE THEE TO A BATTLE OF HONOUR! WE SHALL TAKE TURNS ATTACKING, AND THE LAST ONE STANDING IS VICTORIOUS!"
The dragon smiled back at Luna and attacked with a massive blast of fire, which Luna easily held of with a shield spell, before Luna launched a counter attack.
"HAH, 'TWAS BARELY A WARM BREEZE!" Luna snorted playfully, launching an equally massive beam of magic at the dragon, slamming it into the wall.
The dragon whimpered as it shakily stood up, Luna waiting for it to attack. But no attack came.
"AHA, YOU GIVE IN?" Luna asked, full of pride.
The dragon nodded, but when Luna approached, it launched a massive blast of fire, hitting her off-guard and sending her crashing into the ground.
"YOU DISHONORABLE LIAR! I SHALL SCORCH THEE A THOUSAND TIMES OVER!" Luna threatened, however, her older sister stepped in before she'd even finished talking.
"Don't you EVER TOUCH MY SISTER" Celestia roared, causing all 3 other princesses to stare at her in awe.
Celestia's mane turned into a bright, flickering fire, melting the roof of the cave above it, and her eyes began glowing as brilliantly as the sun. In one massive blast, Celestia sent the dragon crashing all the way through the mountain and tumbling down the other side.
Celestia's mane and eyes returned to normal, and she sat on the cave floor, breathing heavily, smoke rising from the cooling drops of lava around her. The others gathered around her, speechless.
Finally, Celestia spoke up. "Um... sorry. I - don't know what what got into me. I guess I'm just a little protective, after, you know."
"I - I did not know it affected thee so much sister," Luna replied, "I thought it was just I who -"
"I-I didn't know either."
"By the way, sister," Luna began, in an attempt to lighten the mood, "I think you just threw our best source of information off the side of a mountain."
"He was going to attack you Moonbutt", Celestia giggled.
"Hah! I would have kicked his flank to Canterlot and back in twenty seconds!"
"That's great and all," Twilight replied, pointing to the entrance to a nearby room, "but look at this!"
The princesses gasped, wide-eyed, at the massive pile of crystals in front of them.
"It's worth more than the Crystal Empire's national budget," Cadance exclaimed, "it must've taken years to collect all this.
"Well, if the Crystal Heart is located anywhere, then it must be here," Luna decided, "I'm going in!"
Luna jumped straight into the room, before being flung right back and landing on her flank.
"A magic shield..." Twilight thought out loud, "that can't be right, unless..."
Suddenly Twilight smiled.
"It's using a magic puzzle!"
"An PUZZLE, that activates MAGIC", Twilight continued to squeak. "I've read about them so much but oh my gosh, one that actually exists, this is so -"
"Um, I'm glad you're excited Twilight," Cadance interrupted, "but perhaps you should solve it instead of talking about it?"
"Oh, heheh, right."
Carefully, Twilight examined every aspect of the room, still glowing with curiosity. The gems seemed to be arranged in a large circular pattern.
A circle, what would a circle mean? There must be some hint in the centre!
In the middle, Twilight saw a pile of charred wooden logs.
Hey, it almost looks like a -
"Aha!" Twilight announced. "It's activated by fire! There must be some trigger in the roof to turn the spell on and off!"
"Alright then", Celestia said with a smile, "stand back!"
With a big WHOOSH, Celestia's horn sent a beam of focused sunlight at the wood, causing it to go up in flames instantly. The shield disintegrated and the princesses charged into the room.
-- ☁ --
Hours of searching and still nothing. It was nearly time for Luna to raise the moon, and the princesses would have to give up and head home soon or their subjects would start to worry.
"Ugh, I can't believe it's not here!" Twilight groaned. "I should've known this would be too obvious a place to hide it, I'm sorry."
Celestia giggled. "There's no need for that Twilight. If it wasn't for you, we'd probably have been here still trying to figure out what the shield was!"
"I - suppose you're right." Twilight smiled.
"Besides, we've had a good chance to relax and chat for a while, we don't get to do that very often."
Twilight frowned in realization.
"And all I've done is complain about it. I'm sorry Celestia, I just wanted to help, and I ended up not sparing a second to catch up with you."
"Well, there's always the walk home!"
Twilight smiled as the princesses made their way out through the tunnel Celestia's firey rage from earlier had created.
-- ☁ --
"...So that's how the Haycart technique works."
"That's very impressive Twilight, it takes most ponies years to pick up a spell that complex!" Celestia complimented as the party retraced their old hoofsteps along the forest path.
Twilight blushed and smiled. "Well I'm sure plenty of other unicorns could do it too."
"Don't be so modest, Twilight".
"My sister is right, thy magic skills are indeed impressive," Luna added, "if only thy flying was on the same level."
"Hey!" Twilight protested, and the three of them giggled, Cadance joining in as well.
Within a few seconds, Twilight had launched a snowball at Luna, and anarchy had once again erupted.
"Your majesties! We've been looking for you everywhere!" a stallion's voice called out.
The princesses all turned in shock, still holding snowballs, to see Shining Armour and two guards standing before them. The guards bowed, and Shining struggled not to laugh
"Wait, were you - "
"Yes," Celestia admitted after an uncomfortable few seconds, "we were."
"Go Twily!" Shining laughed.
"Traitor!" Cadance responded.
"Anyway, we found the Crystal Heart. Turns out the cleaning staff had it - would've been nice of them to tell us what was going on, but apparently not."
"It's alright," Twilight smiled, "it was kind of fun anyway".
-- ☁ --