Daring Do and the Throne of Ouroboros

by Tolerance

7: Port Call

Daring stared at her still sleeping cabin-mate. With the exception of a few minutes of wakefulness to maintain her well-being, Sunny had been kept under some sort of sleeping spell that wasn't a sleeping spell.

A knock on the door broke the silence. She been expecting it, of course. Aaron was nothing if not punctual, and if their sleeping comrade was any evidence, he was many other things as well. "Daring? Are you awake?"

"Yes. Come on in."

"How's Sunny doing today?"

"Same as always, I guess. I've been meaning to ask you about, um, whatever it was that you did to Sunny. And listen, I know you told Captain Stirrup that you weren't going to talk about it, but I think I'm entitled to this information if we're going to be doing this adventure thing together. I mean, is she going to stay like this forever or what?"

"Oh, no. Most certainly not. My Influencing was quite strong, but it should wear off soon. The effects vary between canines so there's really no way know how long it takes exactly."

"D-did you do that to me? I mean, before, in the den."

"I thought I made it clear that it only worked with the canis?"

"Oh-h. Right. Um, just checking is all. I suppose... So how does it work, exactly? Was the kiss a requirement, or did it just require the whole staring thing?"

"So you did hear about that."

"Yeeeah...."

"Needless to say, that came to be a bit of a shock, but it was likely do to her apparent inebriation. The focus on eye contact just has to do with something buried deep inside dog physiology. Dogs are very keen on reading cues, Daring, they've been that way since longer than you could possibly know."

"So what kind of message were you sending Sunny then?"

Aaron was suddenly pensive. "I-" he stopped, sighing "It’s a bit difficult to describe, but, if I had to put it into words, I made her see myself as her master. In more than just a title."

"Oookay... That's... wow..."

"Yes, Sunny literally can't do anything without explicit orders to do so. My orders. To be honest, I loathe myself for doing that to someone. No one should have their free will removed."

Daring thought it over for a moment. "I suppose that explains why she's just been sleeping this whole time. Instead of making Sunny suffer through any of that, you've basically minimized the time she has to deal with it."

"But I," Aaron stopped for a moment, "I'm still not sure I should have done even this much."

"Oh, please. I saw the state of the mess deck. Sunny did a number on more than just the furniture, I might add. If you hadn't shown up when you did, who knows how many more crewponies might have been hurt. You said it yourself, she didn't have any control over her actions. At least this way her ‘lack of control’ is under control. By you, I might add, the one she seems to respect the most."

"Then I hope she leans towards forgiveness once my Influence wears off."

"Yeah, I don't think you'll have a problem with that." Daring said whilst thinking about Sunny's actions before their flight. There was no way that kiss was 'accidental'. “From her perspective, you can do no wrong.”

"Let’s hope that she respects herself a little more than that when she’s awake, shall we? Anyway, back to business. I'm told we only have a few hours before we reach our destination. So, Sunny. Time to wake up."

Immediately Sunny's eyes opened and she sat up.

"Even so, that’s not going to stop creeping me out anytime soon."

"Just a few more days..." Aaron said to himself.

~~~~~

After the Scarce Eclipse had departed, their stop just long enough to unload the group and their gear, the trio found themselves a few miles outside of Dodge Junction.

"Alright, so now what?" Daring asked. "Do we even know what one of these stars looks like?"

"Well, no. But we're not entirely out of options. Sunny do you remember the plans for the antenna?"

Sunny slowly shook her head 'yes'.

"Are you able to set an antenna up right now?"

Again, Sunny nodded in confirmation.

"Great, then, while me and Daring set up our little base of operations, I need you to sink the antenna over by that reddish rock. There should be plenty of raw materials to work with.

Daring watched sunny slowly walk over towards her indicated worksite before returning her attention to Aaron. "Okay, so what are we doing for our camp? Because I really don't feel like sharing my only tent."

"Psh, look who you're talking to." Arron reminded daring as he summoned a couple slabs of rock from the ground at perpendicular angles to one another. In a matter of seconds, the Canis had a rather large structure which was probably stronger than most pony dwellings.

"Showoff..."

"So, will you need assistance with setting up your own sleeping arrangements or...?

"If there's one thing I don't need with, it's help setting up my own stuff. Why don't you scavenge up some firewood or something. Or do you have a geomancer trick for that too?"

"There's probably a spell or two that might be of some use in that area, but if there is I don’t know them off the top of my head. Just keep an eye on Sunny while I'm gone, alright?"

Daring waved him off before unrolling the tent and scattering her stakes. Setting up the tents was one of her least favorite activities, mainly because it meant that she'd eventually have to put everything away. And it was damn near impossible to stuff everything back in its packaging. She looked back at the dog's structure for a moment. There's be plenty of room for the three of them in there. The pegasus briefly wondered if she should abandon her own tent, and ask Aaron if he felt like sharing, before she shook her head at the prospect.

Having even a little bit of alone time from her travelling companions would be nice for a change. Not that there was anything wrong with the Canis. She'd only known them for a few weeks, but Daring was a loner at heart. If anything she was definitely not used to all of the attention she was suddenly getting.

Spotting Sunny off in the distance, drawing some circles in the ground with her staff, Daring sighed. Even for one in Daring's line of work, there was only so much weirdness a pony could take. Snapping the hollow poles together, the pegasus got back to work on preparing her tent. Thinking back to it, this was probably the most normal thing she's done since stumbling into the dog's den in the first place. Then, there was the whole geomancy thing, the complex Canis observatory place, and now the Canine mind control. Daring wasn't sure this trip could get any weirder.

Tying a string to the forward pole, Daring stacked the lanyard to the ground and adjusted its length, pulling the line taut until the forward part of her tent was propped up. The next part of her grandiose quest involved searching for some supposedly ridiculously-powerful artifacts, whose very existence, lest she forget, may threaten not just Equestria, but the world itself. That, was something she knew how to deal with. Even if no-one knew what the stars looked like, or who was even after them, but none of that mattered in the end. Capturing the stars was a good, simply defined goal.

Raising the rear pole of her tent, Daring staked it in place before moving on to the lines attached to the four corners of her tent. The stars were supposedly used to free Princess Luna, then called Nightmare Moon, from her thousand-year slumber. If that was true, then who, if not Celestia, knew how to use them? Had the stars always existed, or where they created at some point? Before seeing them move through the recordings that were stored within the Eye of Canis, Daring had always assumed that the stars were some artifact of Celestia's imprisonment spell, not physical objects used as a catalyst. What an odd set of things to leave laying around for anyone to find.

Daring moved around her tent, tightening the canopy lines until the tent canvas was trim. Satisfied with her work, she set about gathering rocks and building a ring for the campfire. Sure, Aaron or Sunny could make trivial work of that task too, but it wasn't like the pegasus had anything better to do at the moment. Thinking about it though, Daring realized that the Stars weren't even the biggest mystery here. Aaron, the defacto leader of what she originally thought was the Canine's religious sect, he was a real mystery. It was obvious that he never told the whole truth if he could help it. He fit right into the role of a guardian/adviser with little to no effort at all. Honestly, Aaron kind of reminded her of either Celestia or Luna in that regard, even though neither one of the sisters was a Canis, or, well, male.

Now that she thought about it, was Aaron an immortal too? Since that first dinner together, Daring had a rough idea who had sent the letter which landed her in this situation in the first place. If it was Discord, the spirit of Chaos, was he known to Aaron because of the Eye?

No, the Eye wouldn't tell them that he liked to prank like nobody's business. Discord had to have had a run-in with the dogs at some point in their history, and yet, it seemed as though Aaron had actually met the draconneque himself. The Lord of Chaos's latest reign likely wasn't long enough for his influence to spread that far, which meant that they could only have met over a thousand years ago, during the original reign of chaos.

Staring intently at her circle of rocks, Daring shook the tumbling thought train out of her head. That whole line of reasoning was a little convoluted, wasn't it? She supposed she could just ask Aaron about it, but when does a conversation ever veer towards 'hey are you some sort of living god?'

Her immediate tasks complete, Daring looked back towards Sunny's worksite, only to see the poor dog slumped over in unconsciousness.

"Oh, pony feathers!" The pegasus exclaimed as she rushed to Sunny's side.

The dog was breathing, at least, but Daring couldn't work out why she'd collapse like this. It didn't look like she'd exhausted herself doing whatever she was doing over here. Inching Sunny's staff to the side, Daring nudged herself underneath the dog's much heavier frame. She was going to have to drag Sunny back to the camp.

"Why didn't I volunteer to look for firewood?" Daring grumbled as she nudged their combined mass towards the tents.

~~~~~

Just as Daring had finally reached the stone structure, Sunny began to stir.

"You doing alright up there? Figures you don't wake up until after I drag your butt back to camp."

"Mikosem tamma, monei toron linnu kimtenem..." Came the groggy reply.

"Yeah, well, just hold on for a little longer, we're almost there." Daring grunted, eased the dog onto the nearest stone bench before continuing. "How are you feeling?

"My head..." Sunny said whilst attempting to shield her eyes from the shaft of light that sailed in behind the pegasus.

"I'll bet. I've got to say though, you're already looking better than when we were on the ship."

It was only then that the Canis realized that the ground wasn't actually moving beneath her. "W-where's Aaron? I need to-"

"'You need to' nothing. Aaron'll be back after he collects some firewood. What you need to do is recover."

"Ugh, what happened?"

"That depends, what's the last thing you remember?"

Thinking back, Sunny suddenly found that her recent memories were obscured, as though she were looking at them through an extremely dirty glass. "We were on the ship..."

"Yeah, and... Anything else?"

"There was this blue pony who wanted to try some of this funny-smelling fruit drink he had. He was being nice because he didn't know we could eat some of the pony food he was making-..." Sunny stopped, everything after that was in a jumble. Things stopped making sense and then Aaron-"What happened to me!?"

"Whoa, there, slow down. I'm sure Aaron can explain it a bit better, since I wasn't there at the time. But from what I understand, you lost control of yourself. Aaron thinks it was the booze, but we're not one hundred percent sure what caused it." Daring sat on her rump next to the earthen cot before continuing, "You pretty much wrecked the place though, knocked that Blueberry guy and a few others around before Aaron showed up and-"

"And what! Tell me, I beg of you. Please tell me I did not strike master Aaron as well!?"

"Oh, I wouldn't say you struck him, but I hear you gave him a smack, all right."

"What do you mean?"

"Yep, right on the lips. And the nose. I'm pretty sure there might have been some tongue action, but needless to say, I'm a bit surprised you had it in you."

Sunny curled up into a ball, her tail covering her face in embarrassment. The revelation matched the hazy glimpse of events that she had in her mind, as well as the memory of Aaron's face when it finally resolved itself in her mind. After all of their time together, all the times she'd spent being everything that her Master could ever need or want, were her feelings that one sided?

Daring noticed the tears welling up just before the dog started sobbing. 'Crap. Looks like I took it too far...', "Oh, Sunny, don't be like that. So I might have been pulling your leg a bit on the whole 'tongue action' thing, but it's not like it's the end of the world or anything."

"But it is! I-when... Look, we trusted each other, and- and when I did that to him, I violated that trust, don't you get it? Aron probably hates me now..."

"Hey! I know for a fact that whatever you two had going on before is still there. It might not look like it, but I can tell that he still cares for you. Granted it may not be in the, um, romantic sense, but Aaron's probably not the kind of guy to really show it if he were, you know? Besides, when he used that Influence thing on you so that you'd calm down and stop attacking everypony, he told me that he hated having to do that to you. He hated that he had to take away your free will, even if it was only temporary. And do you want to know why? Because he values you for who you are. Some leaders only care about their subordinates only so far as they can be used as tools. Trust me, I’ve met some of them, but with Aaron? He genuinely likes for and cares for you Canis, doesn't he?"

"Y-yes... you're right..." Sunny said amidst the sniffling.

"Of course I'm right! Now buck up and get yourself together before he gets back!"

Unfurling herself and wiping away her tears, Sunny inhaled deeply in order to clear her senses. The fresh air helped tremendously for clearing her head, both of her tumultuous feelings and her torturous headache.

"There we go! Feeling better now?"

Sunny slowly nodded in agreement, "Mm-hmm," She said, before taking another deep breath.

Daring turned for the exit, "Yep, now you stay there for a bit, while I go find Aaron. He's going to want to know that you've woken up."

"Thank you, Daring..." was all that the pegasus could hear as she vaulted away from the stone 'tent,' still unsure of what to think of the display of emotion only a few moments ago. Letting in a sigh of her own, Daring wondered, not for the first time, just what she'd managed to get herself thrown into...

Comments

[Royal7]

Daring waved him off before unrolling tent and scattering her stakes. Setting up the tents was one of her least favorite activities, mainly because it meant that she'd eventually have to put everything away. And it was damn near impossible to stuff everything back in its packaging. She looked back at the dog's structure for a moment. There's be plenty of room for the three of them in there. The pegasus briefly wondered if she should abandon her own tent, and ask Aaron if he felt like sharing, before she shook her head at the prospect.

unrolling the tent