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You and Me in the dark

Chapter 4. - You and Me in the dark

Archive and Lantern walked in silence, the only sound that could be heard was the uneven clip-clop the injured pair’s hooves were making on the stone floor as they broke through the darkness with the torch lighting their way. They were pressed against each other for support, and Archive could feel the quickening heartbeat of Lantern, as the vibrations passed onto her sensitive plates from the pony.

“Don’t be afraid. There should be nothing down here that could hurt us, otherwise it would have already shown itself and done so by now.” said Archive trying to calm Lantern.

Lantern wasn’t scared of what lay in the darkness, he was reacting to the smaller nymph’s presence by his side, and as he realised she could feel his elevated pulse, he took a long audible breath around the torch in his mouth, kept it in for three seconds, then let it out with a sigh. He learned the calming technique in his archery training classes. Archery wasn’t a mandatory skill for pegasus guards, but they weren’t barred from taking it up, they just usually didn’t. Learning to use a bow is not the easiest thing for non-unicorns, but it is quite highly valued, especially if they can get to a level even a unicorn would have a hard time reaching.

Lantern was a terrible shot. He passed the test, but just barely. His weapon of choice was the spear for close quarters, or javelin for mid-range combat. All that was probably useless to him, now that his hooves were broken.

The deep breath helped to force his pulse to lower noticeably, and Archive gave him a happy little buzzing sound and a nod of her head, that made his efforts useless as his heart rate started to climb again. Archive looked up to him and saw the pony’s cheeks were red and he was sweating.

She felt concerned for the stallion and asked him “Are you alright?” scrunching her face. Lantern just nodded, not looking her in the eye. “I think you might have a fever.” she added. Lantern shook his head in return. “Okay, stop now!” she commanded in a stern voice.

They stopped, and Lantern plopped down onto his haunches pulling away from the side of the changeling. He wedged the torch into a pile of rocks, then started panting lightly.

“Are you tired? We could have a little break here, so you can gather yourself a bit if you want.” offered him Archive.

“N-no, it’s okay. I’m just feeling a little hot under my coat. I’m kinda thirsty. We should go on, maybe we can find some water on the way as we’re looking for food.”

Archive looked around, peering into the darkness, out of the illuminated area the torch provided around them. “There’s a small pool there, about fifty or so steps away.” she indicated the direction with her holey hoof.

“How do you know?” asked Lantern with wide eyes, trying to make out the water source in the distance, but having no success with it.

Archive looked him in the eyes with a half lidded stare, pointing to her own glowing green orbs with her hoof, and only saying “Duh.”

“Oh...right. Changelings can see in the dark.” after a few seconds of hesitation he added “Well, sounds good to me. Take us there. Who knows? We might be able to get some more moss or maybe even mushrooms around the pool.”

With that, he got up from his sitting position, took the torch in his mouth, and Archive took her place on his left again to help him move easier.

Once they reached the edge of the pool, Lantern held the torch above the water and sniffed a couple of times. He couldn’t feel the obvious smell of stale water, so he judged it would be safe to drink. As he was leaning above the surface of the water, his center of gravity shifted forwards, and the resin splints couldn’t provide traction on the slick stones under his hooves. He fell head first into the knee deep water as Archive shrieked in a terrified voice “LANTERN!”

Lantern surfaced from the water with a loud gasp of air, then suddenly he started to laugh in a thunderous volume. Archive just kept looking at him, like he had gone mad. When his laughing fit passed he said in a cheerful tone “Well, that certainly helped me cool down.” smiling from ear to ear.

Archive let out a breath she didn’t realise she was holding, until Lantern finished his sentence.

Lantern’s eyes widened as he looked up and he said “Wow!” with an awestruck face.

With the light of the torch gone the wall on the far side of the pool lit up with thousands of little specks of bluish colored light, almost like the night sky. Archive followed Lantern’s stare, but couldn’t see anything. She asked in a confused tone “What?”

“It’s beautiful.” he said, leaving his mouth hanging open.

The glow in Archive’s eyes dimmed and she forced her innate nightvision off. “Wow...that really is beautiful.”

Lantern turned his gaze in the direction of the changeling. As she looked up at the shining wall, the little blue lights reflected off her smooth black plates. Lantern mumbled quietly “Yeah, it is.”

As Archive looked back at him, he quickly lowered his head, looking away from her to the water and started to lazily lap at it to drink some of the crystal clear water. The fresh water brought a thought to his flustered mind.

“By the way, how did you bring me water yesterday? I didn’t see any kind of container around the fire.”

A mischievous glint ran across the changeling’s eyes, as her mouth turned into a wide grin, showing off her long fangs. “Well, wouldn’t you like to know!?” she said, then moved her head above the pool slowly, took a sip of water into her muzzle, straightened up, leant her head up and squirted it out in an elegant arc, almost like a black statue of a fountain. She even struck a pose for her little attraction.

Lantern was still drinking, when he saw what she was doing. He flushed instantly and spit the water out much less elegantly than she did. Archive collapsed from the laughter on the shore at his reaction, and started rolling from side to side, clutching at herself, when she suddenly slipped into the water by accident.

As she surfaced, she could hear Lantern laughing and splashing in the water. She scowled at him a little, then she started laughing as well.

The two of them were laughing in the shallow water under the glimmering wall, like a pair of lunatics.

When they could breath again, they started to climb out of the water. Archive’s chitin plates dried almost as soon as she was out on the shore, but Lantern’s coat absorbed a lot of water, and he was dripping heavily. He shook himself to get rid of the water, but after that he started shivering.

“Maybe we should get back to the fire.” offered Archive with a giggle, at how Lantern reminded her of a dog. “I think you might have cooled down a little too much, and we don’t want you to catch a cold. Even I start to feel a little chilled here, and your torch got drenched. We still have some wood at the fire to keep us warm, and we can try to look for food in the morning.”

Lantern looked at the glimmering changeling from behind his long wet mane with a smile and said “Yeah, let’s do that. I’m kinda getting tired too, so some rest by the fire sounds great.”

They stood next to each other and Archive guided him back to where their little fire was. The makeshift fire pit they put together from smaller rocks only had a couple orange colored embers left in it. Archive dumped the rest of the driftwood she gathered previously into the ring of rocks, and started to blow onto the glowing pieces to get the fire burning again.

She settled next to Lantern, who was lying by the pit and looked him over. The pegasus stallion was a lean but strong thing, as his kind usually were. His short, blue-gray coat was glistening with water by the light of the fire. He had a long, pale blonde mane, that was brushed behind his ears. On the right side of his face, he had a scar, that ran from his cheek to the base of his ear, where his fur didn’t grow back properly. Archive took a fleeting glance at his rump, where his cutie mark was. It pictured a lightning bolt, splitting a boulder in two in a clear line. She looked up into his bright green eyes, that were reflecting the flames as he stared into the fire. He was a handsome devil...for a pony, that is.

She kept gazing at him, when he noticed from the corner of his eyes that she was staring at him, he turned to face her. “Yes?” he asked.

“Oh, nothing...I was just wondering, erm...what your cutie mark means? I mean, I can make every kind of mark appear, so they doesn’t really mean anything to me, but I know you ponies get them when you discover your special talents.”

“This old thing here?” he looked at his mark. “Well, sometimes cutie marks can be quite cryptic, but in my case, it’s as literal as they get. When I was learning weather magic back in school, I accidentally made a lightning bolt so strong, that I started to lose control of it, so the teacher had to take it over, but even she could hardly keep it contained, and she had to drop it from the cloud our school stood on. Everypony run to the edge, to see where it would land. The bolt landed on a large boulder, half the size of a barn, and cleanly cut it in two equal halves. When we looked up from the ground, I had this little beauty on my backside.”

“Wow. That must have been a crazy powerful lightning then.” she mused.

“Well, since then, I’ve learned to control it, but I never found any actual use for my special talent, so I though maybe in the Guard I could make use of it. When I joined up, and shown them what can I do, they were impressed, but told me there would probably never be an opportunity to use it.”

“Hey, maybe we can use it to get out of here.” said Archive brightening up.

“Yeah, I thought about that, but there’s more than one potential danger in using it down here, as well as the conditions and my state isn’t really let’s me build up a bolt that strong.”

“Oh, that’s too bad.” deflated Archive. “Umm...and what about...that scar?” pointed the changeling to his old injury, fearing that she may dig up something he might not want to talk about, but her curiosity wouldn’t let her be, if she didn’t ask.

Lantern started chuckling, which made Archive feel at ease. “Back in my academy days, we would spar in pairs in spear training. One day I got paired up with this colt. He was young and fiery. He came at me, like I was the worst enemy of Equestria. We would spar for almost an hour. By that time, all the other cadets we’re over their drill, and they gathered around us to watch and cheer. I was at my limit, but I couldn’t get an advantage on him, all I could do was keep him at bay. He was tiring as well. He suddenly took a step forward and stabbed at me, cutting the right side of my face with the tip of his spear. Just then, I found a small opening in his stance, pulled his leg from under him with the blunt end of my spear, and took him to the ground.”

“He got suspended for injuring a senior cadet, but on his trial I told the jury that my injury was partly because I couldn’t take him down faster, and pleaded that he would make a great guard, if, and only if he was supervised properly. The Judge had a sense of humor. He would let him stay, if I would agree to have him as my junior adjutant. Never before in the history of the Guard, had a non-officer have a subaltern. It was punishment enough for him, and a reward for me.”

“Two years after I graduated, he did too, and he requested that he be placed under my command. In the years we spent together, we became best friends. He’s an earth pony back in Canterlot by the name Rusty Sickle. He’s probably in a hospital now, thanks to that no-Queen, Chrysalis.” he gave a long sigh. “He is tough as nails. I’m sure he made it with a few scratches.”

Archive felt a little saddened by the last part, but gave an apologetic smile and said “I hope your friend is alright.”

“He’ll be fine.” said Lantern with a smile of his own.

The fire died out when the last piece of wood was spent. Lantern’s fur dried, but without the fire, the cold of the cave started to creep up on him again.

He whispered in the darkness to Archive “W-would...would you mind...erm, you know!?”

Archive giggled and said “Yeah, no problem...if you don’t call me ‘scum’ again.” she joked, then went over to him. She lay down behind him and draped her legs around his side to pull him closer.

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I regret it.” said Lantern sadly.

“It’s okay. You couldn’t have known better.” she said in a shushing voice, and soon both of them fell asleep.

Author's Note:

For all your burning questions and stupid trivia: Tumblr
Ask the characters Themselves!

I hope you guys will like this chapter at least as much as the previous ones.
See you all when our little pair wakes up.

Thanks for the help:
-Christs Disciple
-Dragonalias
-StarChaser01
-Scruffy
-Pseudonymous