The Engineer’s Wings

by Keeper of time RD

Chapter 21: Seeking the Path

Once they’d retrieved the book from the secret compartment, Scootaloo and her friends made their way to Fluttershy’s inn.

They had all read the book, although it was actually rather generous to call it that as only a few pages had anything on them. What little information was in the book amounted to three riddles, each with an accompanying picture. And from their own experience, it was easy for the crusaders to see that the first two riddles pointed to the caves of the Unicorn Mountains and the Temple of the Earth in their own valley. With that figured out, it was equally easy to see that the third riddle was pointing to a tower on the peaks of the Foal Mountains.

One big problem came up when they tried to find said tower, that being that none of the maps of that area showed any towers in the Foal Mountains. Let alone one on a peak.

With nothing more to learn on the topic, the Cutie Mark Crusaders waited for the adults to finish their task and return to the inn as well.

Scootaloo was asleep but fidgeting by the time Rainbow Dash and the others did return. While the fillies who were awake told tales of nightmares plaguing everypony who dared to sleep under this eternal night, the adults had returned with stories of nightmares given form by dark magic hounding their every step through the Everfree Forest.

“In a way, I’m envious,” Sweetie Belle said softly. “At least her nightmares aren’t bad enough to wake her up.”

“Don’t be,” Apple Bloom responded. Although she wasn’t certain, the farm filly could guess that no nightmare could rouse her pegasus friend because what pain could possibly compare to what the waking world had already given her?

Although it had been unsaid, Sweetie Belle could see as much written in Bloom’s eyes. “I’m scared,” Sweetie said. “I wish Celestia hadn’t asked us to be a part of this! I wish I could just hide under a bed and wait for all of this to be over…”

“So do Ah. And Ah’m scared too,” Apple Bloom answered. Then looking to their sleeping friend, she added, “But crusaders stick together! If Scootaloo is going to see this through to the end, then we owe it to her to do the same. So? Crusaders forever?” she asked holding her hoof out.

Sweetie Belle looked to the slumbering pegasus filly, bumped her hoof to Apple Bloom’s and whispered, “Crusaders forever!”

“Feel better?” Bloom asked.

“Yeah,” Sweetie answered. “Although I still with I could get some sleep instead of just rest.”

With a yawn, Rainbow Dash said, “If we’re still waiting on Celestia, then rest sounds like a good idea right now.” Then after looking at the clock and seeing it saying eight o’clock, she added, “Eight huh? Is that AM or PM?”

“With the night refusing to end, does it even matter anymore?” Scootaloo said, rubbing her eyes.

“Sorry, Squirt. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay, it was a nightmare anyway.” Stretching and accepting a cup of hot chocolate from Spike, Scootaloo noticed the new golden necklace with a ruby in the shape of a lightning bolt that Rainbow Dash had, and added, “Are those the Elements of Harmony? Cool!”

“Yeah, turns out I’m the Spirit of Loyalty. Pretty cool huh?” After posing heroically for a second, Dash continued, “AJ’s the Spirit of Honesty, Flutters is Kindness, Rarity’s Generosity, Pinkie Pie’s Laughter, and Twilight’s crown thingy means she’s the Spirit of Magic.”

“Cool!” all three fillies said in awe.

“So what do we do now?” Sweetie Belle added warily.

Twilight Sparkle stepped up to answer. “Well, according to the legend, these Elements of Harmony are what defeated Nightmare Moon the last time. Now that we have them, and given Celestia’s orders, I suspect we are stuck waiting for the Princess to tell us when and where we need to be to confront Nightmare Moon.”

As if on cue, not more then ten seconds after Twilight finished speaking, Spike let lose a belch of green dragon fire. As the flames dispersed in the air in front of the youthful dragon, they left a rolled-up letter in their wake.

The purple unicorn was quick to move behind her assistant and read the letter over his shoulder.

“Well? What does it say?” Rainbow Dash asked impatiently.

Spike cleared his throat and read aloud, “My most faithful student, Twilight Sparkle. It is as I feared. It seems that Nightmare Moon is content to besiege us from afar. Sending only nightmares given form by her magic, while remaining on the moon herself, and thus out of our reach.

“While the royal guard can most certainly fight off the dark magic creatures for a time, with the nightmares interfering with restful sleep, it is only a matter of time before grave mistakes are made. If Nightmare Moon will not come to us, then our only hope is to take the Elements of Harmony to her and face her on the moon.”

“On the moon! How are we supposed to do that? No pony has ever been to the moon! Not before Nightmare Moon anyway!” Twilight interrupted.

“I don’t know, but there’s more to the letter, so maybe Celestia will mention that if you let me finish. Now where was I? Right, there!

“If Scootaloo and her friends succeeded, they should have with them the tome containing the full version of the legend of the Triple Crown, the treasures created by three friends who were also craftsponies of exceptional skill. Each crafted an artifact, one for each race. The Staff of True Light was the unicorn treasure and The Tranquility Stone was the artifact of the earth ponies. While not even the full version of the legend names the pegasus artifact, it does say where the three chose to hide it. And I can personally assure you it can help you reach the moon. –Celestia.”

* * * * * * *

Several hours had passed since Celestia’s letter had arrived. Twilight had studied the full legend of the treasures of the Triple Crown. She agreed with the fillies’ conclusion that the tower was somewhere in the Foal Mountains. Although she also deciphered that the legend was hinting that the Staff of True Light was intended to reveal the tower and the Tranquility Stone was the key needed to enter it.

“This isn’t good!” Twilight kept muttering with every map or book she tossed aside.

“Y’all keep saying that, sugarcube,” Applejack said. “But ya have yet to share ‘what’ ain’t good.”

“It’s just like the Crusaders said! None of the maps show any tower in the Foal Mountains! And what’s worse is that none of the books here have any record of a tower out there either! At this rate we’re going to have to hike over the entire mountain range to find it!”

Scootaloo raised an eyebrow. Everypony else offered words of determination along the lines of ‘if that’s what it takes, that’s what we’ll do!’

Then the door to the room swung open and a pegasus in E.U.P. Guard armor entered. He quickly made his way over to Twilight Sparkle. He then pulled the Tranquility Stone and a scroll out of his saddlebags and presented them to her.

“Thank you, sir, but what’s this?” Twilight said.

“A spell scroll. Celestia said you would need to cast the spell within it in order to survive the conditions on the moon once you get there.”

“I see, thank you.” Then turning to the others she added, “Come on girls, we’d best head to the train station. We’d better get started since it looks like we have a lot of hiking to do.”

Scootaloo couldn’t take it anymore and voiced her confusion. “If we’re looking for a tower in the middle of nowhere, shouldn’t we be flying? That sounds like something that’d be easy to see from the air!”

Pulling the orange pegasus aside, Rainbow Dash said, “Scootaloo, in case you didn’t notice, flying at night is really dangerous. Especially far away from towns where their lights can show you where the ground is. These are exactly the conditions where a mountain really can sneak up on you. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not crash into the side of a mountain I couldn’t see.”

“I can see just fine,” Scootaloo said, tapping the side of her head, or more precisely the strap of her crystal-lensed goggles.

“Wait! Those goggles give you night vision?”

“I don’t think it’s the same thing as night vision. It’s like when a cloud gets in the way in the middle of the day. When you can see fine but everything’s in the shadow of the cloud so there are no shadows. That’s what it’s like. Why do you think I’ve been wearing them since the night refused to end? I like being able to see what’s around me!”

A smile slowly grew on Dash’s face. “Forget the train station, we’re going to the airport!”

* * * * * * *

They wound up ‘borrowing’ a small cargo airship from Ponyville’s airport. Technically it belonged to Mr Rich, and technically the airport staff had taken refuge in the central part of town, so there wasn’t anypony around to relay a note informing him that they were borrowing it.

And by now nightmares given form had been seen fighting the guards around town, so it was decided that it would be just as safe for Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle tag along on this expedition. Maybe even safer given their intention to be in the air and away from all the towns being attacked.

Scootaloo stood on a box and gave the control wheel a spin, guiding the air ship into a turn to continue their search. They’d reached the Foal Mountains and been searching for over ten hours now. Twilight had insisted on a systematic switchback search pattern, and it was time for another wide turn as they slowly progressed eastward.

Then a distant peak caught her eye. It seemed to have a much more needle-like point than the rest of the peaks on the spine of the mountain range.

Turning the ship toward the mountain peak drew Twilight’s attention. “Why are you deviating from the search path? Do you see it?”

“I think so. Over there,” the filly answered, pointing out the front window of the airship’s bridge. As the seconds ticked on a smile grew on her face. It took a moment, but then they were close enough for Scootaloo to see what she’d been looking at. “Whoo hoo! Found it!” she cheered now that she could plainly see that it was indeed a tower atop that peak.

With a few tries and little bit of coaching from Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo was able to bring the airship down and park it on a ridge not more than a few minutes’ walk away from the tower. As they approached, they found three large stone obelisks set in a triangle formation with a smaller stone in the center.

“Are we there yet?” Pinkie Pie asked as she hopped along.

“Yes,” Scootaloo said, approaching one side of the formation.

To everypony else, the filly seemed to be looking at the stars above an empty plateau beside the stone formation. But to Scootaloo, she was looking on a white stone tower with a base as wide as the airport hangers back in Ponyville and well over a hundred feet tall, maybe even two hundred. There were no windows on the tower, but there were two sets of runes, one about a third of the way up and the other at the two-thirds mark. A cone shaped roof made from what looked like a silver metal capped the top of the tower.

“It’s right here- Whoa!” That last part being when Scootaloo startled herself by pushed her hoof into the steps leading up to the Tower’s front door. “It’s not just invisible! I can’t even touch it!” she declared, pulling her hoof back.

“Wow! A phasing spell powerful enough to hide an entire tower is a true marvel! I didn’t even know that was possible! I wish I had time to study it!” Twilight said in a voice of pure awe.

Yet the unicorn pulled the Tranquility Stone from her saddlebags and used her magic to levitate it over to the center stone of the formation, which had an indention of the same size and shape as the Tranquility Stone.

“Everypony, stand back!” she warned just before putting the artifact into the groove of the center stone of the triangle formation.

Immediately, the Tranquility Stone’s light flowed into the center stone, causing runic patterns to appear as the light made its way down the small pillar. The light spread along the ground to the three larger stones of the triangle. Then the magic moved into the air off to the side, swirling its way upward until the tower appeared in the wake of the magical torrent.

Once the tower had fully appeared, the simple iron door at the base of the tower opened. And with that, the nine ponies gathered before it entered the tower.