The four heroes stood at the city gate, paused at the threshold.
“You go first,” Bon Bon said, nudging Spike. “You’re the big strong dragon.”
“But you’re the party leader,” Spike said. “Don’t you have to go first?”
“What? I’m the party leader,” Moondancer said. “And I’m not going in front. Wizard, remember?”
“I think Spike should be the leader, if the leader has to go in front,” Derpy said. “He’s got the most armor.”
“Fine, I’ll go first,” Spike said. “But you know it’s just going to drag you all along with me if something weird happens.”
“I’m ready,” Bon Bon said, setting her hooves in a wide stance and bracing herself. Derpy landed next to her, and Moondancer pulled her staff in close.
“Here goes,” Spike said, and took a step through the gate.
Nothing happened.
“Keep going,” Bon Bon said. “The transition might not be exactly at the gate.”
Spike shrugged, and ambled forwards, the others following cautiously about ten feet back. After about a mile, it was obvious that nothing was going to happen. The city was getting small behind them, and fields of tall grass rose to either side of the tidily maintained dirt road.
“Great,” Moondancer said. “We’re going to have to actually walk all the way to the dungeon, aren’t we.”
“Not me!” Derpy said, soaring in lazy circles over the rest of the party. “I get to fly!”
“Can you fly a little higher?” Bon Bon asked. “Keep an eye out for random encounters.”
“If you want,” Derpy said, flapping her wings a few times to gain a bit of altitude. “They’ll probably just jump out of the grass, though. It’s pretty high.”
Sure enough, after a few more miles of walking, they suddenly found their path blocked by a loose formation of chickens.
“Hey! Why did the chicken cross the road?” Derpy asked.
“I don’t think it was to get to the other side, or they wouldn’t have stopped,” Spike said. He drew his sword, made sure his shield was ready, and advanced on them, waving both in their general direction. “Shoo!”
“Bok,” said the chicken in the lead.
“Come on, get out of the way,” Spike said, taking a slow, lazy swing.
The chicken easily dodged. “Bok bok,” said a different chicken.
“Maybe we can just walk around?” Derpy suggested.
“Bok bok BAKAW!” crowed a chicken in the back, and then they all leapt at Spike, claws and beaks outstretched.
“Hey,” Spike said, as they pecked and clawed at his armor with a series of little ‘pings’. “Hey! That kind of stings!”
Bon Bon wound up with her fancy ladle, and whacked one of the chickens hard enough to send it flying in a cloud of feathers. It landed in a heap and didn’t get back up. Derpy and Moondancer joined in, whacking at the chickens and scraping them off of Spike, who was curled up in a ball behind his shield, making sure to cover any exposed bit of flesh from the flurry of attacks.
One of the chickens Moondancer had hit wobbled a bit and got back to its feet. “Bok,” it said.
“Dark Eidous,” Moondancer replied. There was a flash, and a crackle of thunder, and the charred remains of the chicken flopped to the ground, smoking.
“Good work, Spike!” Derpy said. “Are you hurt?”
“Why –“ Spike said, standing up and shaking his head to try to get his wits about him. “Why did they attack like that?”
Moondancer finally managed to look away from the roasted chicken, and gasped. “Oh Celestia, Spike! You’re covered in blood!”
“It’s not mine,” he said, looking around for something to clean off with. “Derpy was hacking at the chickens with a cutlass.”
Derpy focused her eye on her cutlass, and slowly wiped the dripping thing off on the grass. “Well, they were evil chickens. What else was I supposed to do?”
“If Fluttershy ever hears about this, she’s going to kill me,” Spike said.
===
A few hours later, they were attacked by another group of chickens, and Moondancer opened up by saying ‘Dark Eidous’ right away. While this did call down a lightning bolt to kill one of them, the other five leapt right at her, and she got pecked and scratched up painfully before Spike managed to attract their attention with an angry roar.
“Muffin?” Derpy offered.
“Let’s try the candy,” Bon Bon said, tossing her a piece.
Moondancer caught it in her magic, shrugged, and popped it into her mouth. “Not bad,” she said. “Is it working?”
“It’s hard to tell under your dress,” Spike said, walking around behind her and lifting up the skirt to check a nasty bite on her flank. There was a loud ‘clang’ as her staff rapped on his helmet, and he stumbled back. “What gives?”
Moondancer glared at him. “You were looking under my robes!”
Spike looked confused. “And?”
“Pervert.”
“Oh come on,” Bon Bon said, taking a hoof and flipping the bottom half of Moondancer’s dress up onto her shoulders, leaving her rear half bare. “He’s not going to see anything you didn’t flash around all day in Equestria.”
Moondancer curled her tail between her legs, but resigned herself to the examination. “You know I live in Canterlot, right? It’s not quite as much of a nudist colony as Ponyville.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Bon Bon said, distracted, staring at her butt.
Moondancer looked back over her shoulder. “So is it working, or not?”
“Kind of?”
Derpy hovered over Moondancer’s back, and gave it a good stare herself. “It’s healing really slowly.”
“Regeneration?” Spike suggested. “We can eat the candy before we get hurt, and it’ll heal us a little all through the battle?”
“We’re all going to be really sick of candy by the time this is over, aren’t we,” Moondancer said.
“And muffins,” Bon Bon added.
Derpy gasped. “Blasphemy! Great Muffin, smite the unbeliever!”
After a few seconds of silence, nothing happened.
“Aww, I wanted to smite somepony,” Derpy said. “Dark Eye-Does?”
Nothing continued to happen.
“Leave the smiting to the professionals,” Moondancer said, magicking her robes back over her rear end, then cleaning and repairing them with a quick cantrip.
===
Spike dragged his sword along the dirt road, which seemed to go on forever. There were mountains in the distance, Derpy assured them, and they were making progress, but as far as the other three could see it was nothing but an endless channel of dirt carved through an overgrown field with grass taller than their eye level.
“How long have we been walking?” Spike asked, looking up at the sun. It was still directly overhead, just like it had been when they started. “Is the sun even moving?”
“Of course it isn’t,” Moondancer said. “They’ve never even heard of Celestia.”
Bon Bon scrunched up her forehead. “So it’s daylight all the time? How do they know when to go to sleep?”
Spike flopped forwards onto his shield, and curled up on top of it like it was his basket.
Bon Bon glanced at him, then sat down to get some rest herself. “I mean, they can’t all have baby dragons.”
===
“Wake up!” said Derpy urgently, jostling Bon Bon until she opened her eyes. “Wake up wake up!”
“I’m awake, relax,” Bon Bon said, yawning. “What’s on fire?”
“I don’t know, but there’s a big column of smoke from over by the mountains to the… the… the that way!” she pointed, perpendicular to the road. “Something’s on fire!”
While Derpy woke the others, Bon Bon looked up at the thin trail of smoke rising into the air. It didn’t look like a brushfire – it was too concentrated, all in one place.
“What is it?” Moondancer grumbled, laboriously rolling to her hooves and cleaning the dust off her robes.
“Something’s on fire,” Bon Bon said, then smiled. “I think it’s a sidequest.”