Sigil of Souls, Stream of Memories

by Piccolo Sky

Daybreak: Just What You Need

Knock-knock-knock.

Everyone in the room went a bit stiff at that, Sunset as much as everyone else. They had been dreading this moment for some time, after all—that someone would come knocking while Big Macintosh was out. Shining Armor held a moment before turning to the others. Stygian, immediately understanding, gave a nod before he stood and walked over to the window—shutting it completely for the moment and then silently walking back to his seat. Everyone else tried to look as casual as possible as Shining Armor stood up and walked over to the door.

He reached it and opened it up, and Sunset looked up enough to see who was at the door. She made out the head of a thin man in a bowler hat with a large handlebar mustache. Her mind went back to when they had arrived a few days ago and registered that he was one of a pair that had come along but she had never gotten a description of. She had reasoned they were secret service or the like.

“…Um, can I help you?”

“The grand chancellor wants to speak with you and your group. He says it’s urgent.”

Shining Armor hesitated a moment. Sunset felt a small knot in her stomach. “I…um…that is, one of our group already went to bed for the evening and-”

“That will be fine. You can tell him when he wakes up. Come along.”

Sunset swallowed, but only reluctantly began to pull herself out of her own chair. Marble Pie didn’t look much more comfortable about it, giving a worried glance to her from her one uncovered eye at the window. Stygian, on his part, was calm enough, although he shifted a little before standing up and walking over to one side. “Just need to change my shoes. I won’t be but a moment.”

Shining Armor was left standing there uneasily. The man in the bowler hat didn’t look particularly impatient, but neither did he look warm. After a few seconds, however, Stygian had his shoes on, and the three of them walked with Shining Armor into the hallway. They saw another man, also in a bowler hat with a handlebar mustache, was there and giving them the same stern look. Without a word, he turned about and joined his companion to lead them down the hallway. Shining Armor glanced one last time at the room before following afterward.

They only had to go about two hundred feet before they arrived at the room on the end. At that point, one man stood to one side while the other produced a key and unlocked it. He opened it afterward and stepped inside, but only to hold it open and silently gesture them within.

Shining Armor ducked his head inside and looked for a moment, but the lighting was dim and so he stepped inside. One by one, the others followed. Sunset saw the other two individuals she had confirmed were in the secret service of the grand chancellor, but they were flanking the entrance rather than him. The man himself was seated in the two-person easy chair in front of the fireplace. She couldn’t make out much of his features at first due to the shadow, but she saw his own monocle and his wife hanging on his arm. She also made out Kibitz and the other ambassadors gathered, although they were standing rather than sitting.

They also seemed to be awaiting their arrival.

As Sunset halted, she felt a wave of unease again. Much more strongly this time, and not just from her own fear. More like from the intuition she had developed after years of watching her own back. It came to a breaking point when she heard the door swing shut and click behind them.

Shining Armor apparently didn’t notice. “Grand chanc-”

In an instant, one of the men in a bowler hat stepped forward, drove something behind Shining Armor’s leg that looked pistol sized, and fired. A gunshot didn’t go off…at least, not in the traditional sense…but a flash of light and powder erupted as well as a sound like a mixture of a bang and a sandbag slamming into a wall. Immediately, Shining Armor’s leg faltered and he opened his mouth to cry out, but the man in the hat was faster as he immediately snapped on him, swung something over his mouth to gag him, and simultaneously pushed him violently to the ground.

Neither Sunset nor the others had a chance to react, because at that point the other man in a hat and the two secret servicepeople reacted by pulling out handguns of their own and firing the same odd bits of powder as one. Sunset wasn’t able to think of what before she felt the wind violently knocked out of her and a sharp, stinging pain like she had just been stabbed in the abdomen. She immediately fell to the ground in a mixture of pain and breathlessness, before the room went into a clamor.

She wasn’t sure what happened next exactly. Bodies swarmed over her and the others, but mostly on the others. She heard two more of those dull shots—both aimed at Shining Armor—before all was said and done, and both he and everyone else were at one point pinned to the ground with the weight of the servicepeople on their stomachs. They remained like that until they had their hands tied behind their backs in a painful, wrenching manner.

Somewhere through that pain Sunset was able to look up and to the grand chancellor. By now, in spite of the chaos, her eyes had adjusted, and for a moment she thought she was in some sort of nightmare—for the grand chancellor had gotten worse. Much worse. His cheeks and eyes were sunken in. His skin was pale enough to stand out even in the darkness. He looked very sick; to the point where his wife wasn’t so much hanging on his arm as helping him to stay up. He didn’t even look as if he had gotten dressed today. Yet in spite of his weakness, he regarded her and the group coldly and calmly as they were roughly bound.

“I am truly, deeply disappointed in all of you. I’ve been sticking both my neck and Manehattan’s on the line for you for the past three days in the international theater and months prior on our own stage. And how do you repay me? Going behind my back to undermine Manehattan’s interests.”

Shining Armor let out a sound at that point, but it was more of an angry grunt than a word. Sunset looked over and saw that the first thing they had done was make sure to gag him with some sort of special device.

Of course…so he can’t call out the Anima Viri…

However, she also noticed he wasn’t looking at the grand chancellor. His eyes were on Kibitz. The old man looked a bit uncomfortable, but that was all.

“I’m sorry, Shining Armor, but you couldn’t expect me to simply keep the matter quiet once you made your intentions known. Your complaint is legitimate, but you were jeopardizing the whole of Manehattan by carrying out your own designs.”

Sunset couldn’t help herself. She muttered between her teeth.

“You monocle-wearing rat…”

“You are the ones who deceived me first!” Kibitz sternly retorted. “Honestly…spying on us? You couldn’t afford us a little trust after all the faith we had placed in you?”

Sunset was puzzled on hearing that. Stygian looked the same, and opened his mouth to speak when one of the agents immediately gagged him as well. Marble Pie soon let out more panicked mumbles as the same thing happened to her.

“These two don’t have any of those ‘Anima Viris’,” one pointed out.

“Let’s not take the chance. We don’t know what these things are, exactly.”

“But what about the black-haired one?”

“She doesn’t have a Promethian Sigil. Besides, we already used the only other one we had on the big man. Leave her.”

Sunset couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable at that yet again, but her thoughts were soon interrupted by the sounds of the other ambassadors in the room.

“I hate to say I told you so, grand chancellor, but I warned you about this from the start. You cannot place your faith in these individuals. This power they command…it will make them eventually answer to no one. No doubt that’s what they’ve been doing in Equestria.”

“As much as I dislike saying it, President Neighsay has the right idea! We don’t even know whether this power these eidolons possess comes from nature or Hell itself! You’ve given them entirely too much leeway! Now look at the result!”

Fancy Pants sighed deeply, sounding partially from being emotionally overwhelmed but also from exhaustion. “I suppose I’ll have to re-negotiate our ‘agreement’ with Twilight Sparkle after this…”

“With all due respect, grand chancellor,” Kibitz spoke up, “I hardly think she’ll be very receptive if you have her brother in custody.”

“We won’t have her brother in custody, Major General.”

Kibitz and Sunset alike raised puzzled eyebrows. “Sir?”

Fancy Pants gestured to them. “Notify the Mount Aris guard. Inform them that we have recently halted an attempted insurrection within our delegation that was attempting to cause political upheaval by assassinating the spokesperson for Trottingham. We relegate them to their custody to deal with as they see fit.”

Shining Armor let out furious noises and was barely restrained, even with his injuries, but everyone else was utterly shocked. Even Sunset, always expecting to be backstabbed, couldn’t help but look stunned.

“Ex…excuse me, sir?”

“There’s nothing for it, Major General. This is the only way now. If we try to hold them here, assuming we can, then Mount Aris will start asking questions. We can’t let the plan come to light now. And after they just demonstrated how little trust we can place in them, they’ll no doubt try to expose the truth. However, Mount Aris has little regard for foreigners who are Promethian Sigil bearers. They’ll deal with them quickly and quietly, and so long as our story comes out first they’ll believe us. Then it’s just a matter of letting Twilight Sparkle know that her brother tried an insurrection. We can then forget this whole debacle ever happened.”

At this point, the agent on Shining Armor’s back had to smack him in the back of the skull with his own pistol butt to try and get him to stay down. If Sunset had been just a little less insecure, she might have lunged at him herself. As it was, she grit her teeth and sneered.

“So long as we’re criticizing each other for unequal exchange…after everything Twilight and her friends have done for you, after all the sweat, blood, and tears they’ve spilled on your behalf, you’re going to just lie to her face like that?”

“This is your doing; not mine,” the grand chancellor answered.

“Sir, I’m…not very comfortable with this arrangement… There has to be a better way.”

“We’re in the middle of a conference deciding the fate of the free world, Major General. We don’t have the luxury of options or time. Only for what is best for Manehattan.”

The old officer still didn’t look comfortable, but he could do and say nothing else.

“As for you, madam,” the grand chancellor spoke up again, “I’m going to be generous enough to give you a moment to think about your own situation.” He looked up to the agent behind her and indicated. “Take her back to the room and keep watch her. If Twilight Sparkle doesn’t end up being receptive to our account of the events, then I would prefer still having an expert on eidolons. After tomorrow’s conference I’ll ask her if she prefers silence about this matter to whatever dungeon Mount Aris keeps in this palace.”

Sunset was yet again surprised, but she had no time to ponder it. In an instant, she felt her arms seized from behind her and she was dragged to her feet. As one agent ran off to call the guard, she was roughly brought back out of the room and into the hallway. The last she saw of the others were all three of them still pinned down as the door closed behind her.

---

“And dinner is served!”

Applejack, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy all looked up from their respective tasks. Applejack had been making the rounds on the train to make sure it was secure. Fluttershy had been busying herself straightening up and cleaning as much of the interior had still been rather underused and dusty on arrival. Rainbow Dash, last of all, had been sprawled out in a chair in the common car and snoring loudly. Yet that changed when Rarity made the announcement and, much to everyone’s surprise, came in rolling a silver dining cart with a tray over the top of it.

“I must say, the headmistress certainly had a taste for the finer things. I would have died for a kitchen this lovely when I was back at school…” she mused as she wheeled the cart over to them, before removing the lid to unveil the platter. “Tah-dah! Trout meuniere with eggplant!”

She found herself nearly shoved to one side a moment later as Pinkie Pie dipped her head in with a much smaller tray, which she immediately unveiled. “And for dessert, my first sticky toffee pudding!”

“Sounds great,” Rainbow Dash called. “Uh…you don’t mind if I just have dessert, do you? Not much of a train appetite. What kind of dessert wine do we got?”

“Landsakes, Rarity,” Applejack muttered. “I go to the trouble of catchin’ them trout and you go and muddle ‘em up all fancy like. All ya’ needed to do is blacken ‘em a bit and slap some salt and ketchup on ‘em with a side of taters.”

“…I think it looks delicious, Rarity,” Fluttershy meekly added.

Rarity, who had been growing increasingly incensed, immediately nodded. “Thank you, Fluttershy. At least one of us knows how to appreciate fine cuisine… You may help yourself first.”

“Oh, um…I-I-I don’t know if you forgot, but…um…I’m a vegetarian. I’ll have some eggplant, though.”

Rarity’s eye let out a twitch, and she seemed to barely restrain herself from flinging the platter across the room. Pinkie Pie, however, slid over to Twilight’s side, cheerfully bearing her pudding and waving it underneath her nose.

“Oooooooh, Twilight! It’s din-din!”

She blinked, shook her head a little, and turned. “Hmm…what? Oh. Oh, sorry Pinkie. I was just…looking out the window and thinking.”

The girls all turned to her at that, some looking pretty concerned. “Twilight, dear…I know you tend to be on a bit of the introverted side, but you’ve been unusually quiet this entire trip.”

“Seriously,” Dash added. “I thought pulling you out of that egghead emporium at the school would get you to talk more, but I think you’ve been more quiet over the past two days then your whole time cooped up in the library. Here I figured I’d be the only one bored on this trip once we stopped running into trees to watch the engine chew through…”

Twilight sighed, bowing her head, and noticing that even Spike was looking up at her with some concern. “I’m sorry, everyone. It’s…it’s not boredom, though. It’s that I haven’t been feeling too well since Luna gave me this.” She patted the place on her chest where the pendant was under her shirt. “Well…no, I suppose that’s not it. I really haven’t been feeling too well since I started planning to go on this trip.”

“Why, Twilight?” Fluttershy asked. “Is…is there something bad this way?”

She shook her head. “It’s not that. It’s…it’s…well…” She closed her eyes and sighed. “Luna talked to me in the library the night before I managed to decipher the map.”

“For real?” Dash retorted. “She sees us off at the platform, she listens in on this trip planning, and she sees you the night before? This has got to be some kinda record for her…”

Her joke, unfortunately, seemed to fall flat with Twilight. “She…was asking some odd questions. Ones I never really thought about before. And ever since she said that one thing to me right before we left, I’ve been thinking about them more and…and…”

She gave a small shudder, drawing into herself and looking to one side.

“I’ve…been getting a bad feeling about this trip.”

Applejack frowned. “You reckon we’ll get all the way up there and that Crystal Core or whatnot won’t be there?”

“Or…” Fluttershy asked with a gulp. “S-S-Something bad will be there instead?”

“That’s just it. I’m not nervous about any of that. I’ve…I’m…” Another sigh. “I don’t know what it is. It’s just…it’s silly, is what it is.”

“Oh, there’s nothing wrong with silly!” Pinkie chirped. “Come on, Twilight! You can tell us!”

Her head sagged again. “You all know me. I may be able to do magic but I still look for reasons for everything. Logical explanations. That’s why I don’t want to think about this feeling. It’s got to be just superstition or nerves or something. But I just can’t get it out of my head. I…”

She looked up to everyone.

“I feel like I’m heading to some place that’s…bad. Or more like some thing or situation that’s bad. And there’s some feeling deep inside me that’s saying I shouldn’t be going this way, but…I don’t know why not. And I can’t think of why not no matter how hard I try. It’s like…like I should know why, but for some reason it won’t come to me. Like when you know you have to do something but you forgot the reason for it, and all you can remember is that it’s important to do that thing and that you have to do it no matter what. Only here it’s that I need to turn around and go back.”

A moment of silence passed over the car. Everyone looked uneasy for a few moments, even Pinkie. However, Applejack snorted and waved her hand at it. “Just a bunch of heebie jeebies. With that Sombra runnin’ ‘round, we’re all in a tizzy lookin’ for trouble behind every tree.”

“Yeah!” Pinkie readily chimed in. “You don’t have to worry, Twilight! You have us with you!”

“Pinkie’s right,” Rarity stated more decisively. “It’s all a bunch of codswallop. Now that you’ve shared it with all of us, you’ll begin to forget all about it. I’m sure once you have a good meal inside you and a good night’s sleep, you’ll chastise yourself for being so silly in the morning.”

Twilight was quiet a moment before smiling and nodding. “Yeah, you’re probably right. And I’ve never actually tried meuniere before, so this should be a real treat.”

Fluttershy smiled back momentarily, before she looked up a little. “Um…does anyone else notice that we seem to be…slowing down?”

The others were confused, but then looked up and out the windows. It was getting late at this point and it was already a cloudy day. Yet they had left much of the thicker forest behind and the trees and country were sparser. As a result, they could clearly see that objects were slowing down around them. Not only that, but the rhythmic chugging of the engine was slowing down too.

“What in tarnation…?” Applejack spoke up.

“I better check with Double Diamond…” Twilight spoke up as she began to rise from her chair.

“I’ll come along,” Dash added.

“Me too!” Pinkie chirped.

As everyone began to move with her and head for the front of the car, Rarity groaned. “Can we all at least try the meuniere before it gets cold? No? Oh, very well…”

It wasn’t long before the six ladies and one dog made their way out, ignoring the growing wind and cooler temperature as they made their way up to the engine compartment. Twilight looked around a little at the surrounding countryside as they did. It looked as if things weren’t only getting more sparser and more remote, but they were actually up in the hills now and several rock formations were jutting out along the way as the terrain grew more irregular. She realized they had been coming up on the last of the mountains if the map was to be believed, and from here on in things would level out again all the way to their destination. Of course, they would have to get through this part first…

At any rate, she only glanced around for a little while. They were indeed getting higher and, as a result, the elevation was getting both steeper and shearer on either side of the train. They finally worked past the coal car and toward the engine, but as there wasn’t too much room in there Twilight and Spike went in first with the others filing in behind her. The door was open, so she peered inside and saw Double Diamond easing back on the throttle.

“What’s going on?”

He glanced back at her, but was silent for a moment longer as he looked back ahead. Then he pointed. “Right there.”

Twilight looked out. It was a bit hard to see with the fading sunlight, but a sign was painted with big white lettering that stood out enough for her to read the text.

TRACK OUT: 2 KM

“I started seeing those signs 8 kilometers back.”

“Wait…huh?” she remarked in confusion. “Those have to be out of date. No one’s been up this way for eight years.”

“Well, I’m not taking any chances. The last roundabout is up ahead, and if the track really is out there’s no way else for us to turn around. Besides, look how fresh the paint is.”

Twilight was caught at that. To be honest, the paint was fresh. Over the past eight years the elements should have torn any sign up to the point of illegibility; painted white or not. Why could she still read this one?

At any rate, Double Diamond kept slowing down the train for the next two kilometers until it was chugging practically to a stop. Fortunately, being a small locomotive with a small load, that wasn’t too hard. While the sun continued to set, both Twilight and the others could make out more man-made shapes around them—obviously the remains of the roundabout station. She had known they would be coming up on this spot. It was the very place they were to make their last branch split off, the one Luna had specifically pointed out, before they had a straight shot to the destination.

The signs kept coming the whole way, and each one looked as fresh and new as the one she had spotted. Including the last sign that read: “TRACK OUT: 300 METERS”. Yet that only made things more confusing. The roundabout station had definitely seen its share of wear and tear. Why did the signs look so new…?

The train finally stopped, and as Double Diamond idled it Rainbow Dash hopped right off with Twilight and the others more gingerly following afterward. “Maybe these signs are for the right fork? Luna said that we had to take the left track…”

Rainbow Dash stepped away from the engine a little and looked up ahead down the way. She immediately stopped as her eyes widened. “Then I think Luna needs to get herself a new map. Look.”

Twilight and Spike finally reached the ground, and she moved out as the others began to step down and follow after her. However, even in the growing darkness, it was impossible for her to miss what Dash was pointing out—and soon it made her gape.

As run down as the area was, it was still in relatively good shape compared to much of the world that had once been claimed by the Light Eaters. A few of the old sheds and stations for the trains were still standing among others that had been ruined, and rusted and rotted as it was the area still resembled something of what it had looked like when operational. Both the old roads and tracks could be made out. Sure enough, the branch was just up ahead, and it was quite a branch at that. The track to the right broke off and headed up and over the rising hills—cresting the top all the way over to the horizon. The track to the left, on the other hand, went down into a lower valley that had been carved out of the encroaching mountains—an almost sheer rocky pass giving into a cliff-like valley that careened down into a river hundreds of feet below and stretching through the range before them. There was a stretch the length of three football fields that was a wooden suspension bridge before it even hit the precarious cliff rock.

As Luna had informed them, the track on the right had been blockaded off, and from the looks of it years before the Lunar Fall. However, the track on the left had also been far more recently blockaded, and with good reason. A very large portion of the rocky valley had collapsed right on top of the track and had smashed the bridge to pieces. It was now clearly nothing except a track to oblivion.

Fluttershy gulped on seeing it. “Oh my…”

“Merciful heavens…” Rarity added.

“I ain’t no stonecutter, but I know a washout when I see one. And this one must have happened not too long ago,” Applejack commented. “Everything’s still fresh and ain’t weathered at all. Dagnabbit…we must have gotten here just a day or two too late…”

“We should be thanking Harmonium that we did,” Rarity retorted. “If we hadn’t, either we might have been caught up in that rockslide ourselves or not seen any of these new warnings and sailed right to our dooms.”

“Well, that’s just great…” Dash groaned. “Now what?”

“Maybe we can fix it?” Pinkie asked a little hesitantly. “I know how to dig rocks and Applejack is good at building things…”

“I think this one’s something that’ll take more than a couple o’ two by fours and nails to patch…”

“Um…could we walk the rest of the way?” Fluttershy meekly suggested.

“Not on your life!” Rarity shouted so loud it made her jump. “I am completely ill prepared for a trek through a mountainous valley! My boots don’t have the waterproof lining and my dress is far too light colored for all of the dust!”

“…Plus, we still have nearly 300 kilometers to go,” Twilight added.

“Oh yes, that as well.”

“Well, well, well! Small world!”

Twilight and the girls, and even Spike, gave a mutual jump at suddenly hearing a man’s voice calling out from behind them. They snapped around and Twilight saw an alarming sight. A very elaborate collapsed wagon, one looking like it was the kind a traveling ‘snake oil’ salesman might use, was being pulled up along the road not far from where they stood. What was pulling it was truly eye-catching…a goat, a buck, a boar, and an ox somehow working together.

In the driver’s seat was a very tall and lanky man in a brown suit with long coattails, a stovetop hat, and a tuft of a beard just barely illuminated by a lantern hanging alongside it. However, he waved cheerfully to them none the less.

Instantly, however, Twilight was apprehensive. Although she supposed she could have been distracted, she didn’t recall hearing the wheels or jingle-jangling of the wagon until she had first heard the man’s voice. What more, Spike gave a quiet growl barely audible to her.

“It’s him!” Fluttershy remarked.

Twilight spun to her in confusion. “Huh? Who?”

The others looked to her, pausing for a moment, before Dash winced. “Oh yeah… Everything with Sunset Shimmer and Nightmare Moon happened so fast we kind of forgot that part, didn’t we…?”

“This big tall somewhat-spooky peddler pointed us the right way to get an airship to find you when you got kidnapped, Twilight!” Pinkie cheerfully explained, pointing to the man as he pulled the wagon to a halt.

She blinked, looking even more confused. “Really?”

“But what in tarnation is he doin’ all the way up here on the other side of a forest full of nightmare critters?” Applejack sounded out, half to the girls and half to him.

“Why, an old peddler goes wherever he’s needed, my fair lady,” the tall man answered, removing his hat and giving a bit of a bow…while simultaneously exposing his wild, only-somewhat-kempt hair that spiked almost into the likeness of irregular horns. “It seems that some lovely engine workers from Manehattan decided that it might be simpler to go down through Equestria to get to Canterlot rather than try to tunnel their way through forest overgrowth, and when I heard they were coming, well…I figured that opportunity had come knocking.”

He reached into his coat.

“You know how they are. Always in need of more railroad ties…”

He flung his arm out, casting a bunch of material toward the ladies. Twilight nearly leapt back, only to see, much to her surprise, that they were neckties made out of ribbons fashioned into the likeness of railroad tracks.

“…And blasting caps.”

He reached in and pulled his arm out again, this time holding a trio of riding caps in his hand. He flung them into the air and, in a gesture that caused Spike to yelp and cringe, they immediately ignited into bright and colorful fireworks. Pinkie laughed at the sight, but the others gave little starts in surprise of their own.

Once recovered, Twilight looked puzzled. “Wait…you’re saying that they tried to go up and around to get up here? That…doesn’t make any sense. There are no railroads that don’t run through Equestria they could have taken…”

“Well, I’m not a rail authority,” he shrugged as he replaced his hat and dismounted from the wagon. “I’m afraid I have little need for them. I’m a man of the road. Plus boars make excellent garbage disposals.” He patted the animal as he passed by it while walking up to the ladies. “The point being is that, like you, it seems that I arrived here just a little too late. After being so kind as to blockade this little washout, they seem to have all run out of funds, packed up, and gone home.”

He grinned.

“Or maybe they just got eaten by something large and monstrous. You never can tell nowadays.”

Fluttershy and Rarity alike gulped at how casually he said that part.

“But it would seem that my poor fortune is your good fortune. While I was trying to get my bearings to make my way back to what passes for civilization, I happened to notice a little something over on that hill yonder.”

He gestured to one side. Twilight and the others looked, spotting one of the intact sheds for a split second. At that point, however, it suddenly gave an old, loud creak, and much to their surprise it seemed to pick that precise moment to finally collapse due to age. All four walls gave out and fell over outward, with the roof breaking apart right down the middle and coming with it. An instant later, the entire thing had fallen in a rather loud cacophony; stunning and shocking the gathering.

Twilight got a further surprise, however, when she noticed that the act had revealed something behind it. In particular a very new-looking, well-maintained, and top-of-the-line engine from Manehattan. Complete with a coal car that looked loaded and even a caboose behind it. It wouldn’t have looked nicer if it had been fresh off of the line.

“It seems our workers left behind one of their modes of transport in their haste. Now, I just happened to overhear that, for whatever reason, you ladies would like to go north from here. Obviously you won’t be going along this track, and the one to the right has been blockaded off. But lo and behold! That engine right there is well past the blockade and right on the right track, so to speak. And good luck for you.”

He proceeded to point to one of the signs on that track. This one was actually older and more appropriately weather-beaten, but it clearly had a weight limit on it.

“Even if you could move this blockade there’s no way your engine would make it, but you’ll find this other train is just your size. And it seems the rail workers managed to get that way open before their…ahem…untimely departure.”

Twilight was so stunned by what had just transpired that she barely heard him. When her mind finally got clear, however, she looked at the man a little uncomfortably. Subconsciously, she had begun to step a little away from him, but he merely stood there and kept smiling.

“…At a loss for words?”

Twilight swallowed. “Ex…excuse us a moment.”

Turning around, she faced the girls and quickly motioned for them to stand back. Fortunately, with the exception of Pinkie Pie, they all seemed to be in agreement. They proceeded to walk away several meters as Double Diamond, curious about what was going on, stepped out only to start marveling at everything. At any rate she ignored him as she spoke with the others.

“Everyone…this…isn’t right.”

“I…think I gotta agree with you, Twilight,” Applejack nervously answered.

“Convenience is one thing, but this…?” Rarity answered. “There’s something certainly…eerie about this man.”

“You mean…s-s-scary…” Fluttershy spoke with a tremble. “Do…do you think he really knew people from Manehattan would be here…?”

Twilight swallowed. “I’m not honestly sure anyone from Manehattan was ever here.”

“There’s no way Manehattan would give ‘em a brand new train just like that just to get workers around…or that it’d still be this clean,” Dash added. “So…how the heck did he get one up here? Or how’d he get up here without Sombra coming along and soul sucking him?”

“Hmm…maybe he got really lucky?” Pinkie suggested.

Applejack frowned. “Twilight, this here fella…he feels, like…wrong ta’ me. Everything about this here place feels wrong.”

“I have to agree, darling,” Rarity quietly answered, making sure the peddler wasn’t seeing her lips. “Before he seemed a bit convenient and eccentric. Now…now I don’t feel comfortable around him at all. He doesn’t even have a Promethian Sigil and yet he somehow made it this far? And following business? Preposterous. Even if those workers had come north, there’s no one to sell to for hundreds of miles.”

“Thousands if you go the long way,” Dash added.

Twilight bowed her head, standing quietly for a few moments. Even Spike looked at her expectantly for what she would say next.

She finally sighed. “I think we should take the train.”

“Yipee! Another new train! I hope its kitchen’s as nice!” Pinkie cheered.

Everyone else was less than enthused.

“Are…are you sure, Twilight?” Fluttershy nervously asked. “What if it’s…some kind of trap?”

“Mark my words, that fella’s up ta’ somethin’,” Applejack added.

“Maybe…but we don’t have a choice. I’m already nervous that Sombra has been up this far since we haven’t run into anything yet. Even if he hasn’t, this is the only way we’ll get to the throne. We’re definitely not going on Luna’s original plan. He’s right…I looked at the old map and even if it wasn’t blocked like she said, the Tiberius wouldn’t make it. The only route we can take would need months to repair, and even if we had the resources and people who knew how to do it we don’t have the time. But most of all…”

She looked down and shuddered a little.

“I was ready to dismiss my bad feelings before as jitters when you all talked to me. Now, though…I know I don’t want to be up here any longer than I have to be.”

“Huh?” Dash asked. “What do you mean?”

“Just that I want to be done as quickly as possible and back in Canterlot. I’m willing to take a chance on that train for that. If he wanted to sabotage our trip…he could have just painted out the signs and let us go right into the ravine.”

Fluttershy gulped at the thought, letting out a whimper.

“You…got a point there,” Applejack half-muttered.

“As dreadful as this affair is, I must say I don’t want to be out here any longer than I have to be either…” Rarity added. “I suppose we have no choice.” She sighed. “I’ll start moving over the things. So much for my trout meuniere…”

“Aw, don’t be sad!” Pinkie added as she cozied up to her. “That’s nothing sticky toffee pudding won’t fix!”

Dash frowned. “Damn… I was hoping we’d get to run the Tiberius into a monster at some point…”

Fluttershy winced. “That…does bring up another problem, though. The Tiberius won’t run without Twilight’s pendant. So we’d end up having to abandon the train…”

Dash shrugged. “Eh…those Manehattan engines are easy enough for me to run. Especially on a small one like that. If we want to send Double Diamond on back we could.”

“I’d actually feel better about that,” Rarity pointed out. “It would be nice to have someone going back to Canterlot to inform them about our…change of plans.”

“But…doesn’t Twilight need that pendant to get into everything in Canterlot when she gets back?”

The ladies looked to Twilight. She actually seemed more nervous about this than the previous dilemma. She reached into her shirt, pulled out the pendant, and held it before her staring for a moment.

Dash finally shrugged. “I mean…Double Diamond would just have to hold onto it until you got back, right? And we won’t be more than a couple days behind.”

“I know, but…” Twilight quietly responded, still staring at it before trailing off.

“What?”

A pause, then she shook her head. “Nothing…probably nothing. I know Luna wanted me to have this, but…I’ll just let him hold onto it and not tell her until I get back.”

Moving a little reluctantly, she began to pull it off of her neck. When she finally had it removed, she began to walk to the engine. “I’ll explain the situation to Double Diamond. Everyone else, move over into the other train.”

As she parted, Rarity and Fluttershy turned to head back to the train. As for Pinkie Pie, she hopped excitedly before the other girls, who were still looking at the peddler as he, seeming pleased with their decision, went back to his own cart.

“Isn’t this great? He’s helped us out twice now!”

“Yeah…” Dash slowly answered. “And showed up right when we needed him…with just what we needed. I mean, he ended up helping last time, but…”

“Maybe he’s a guardian angel?”

Applejack frowned. “Not sure I like someone keepin’ an eye on what I’m doin’, angel or devil. What’s he get outta all this?”

“Who knows,” Dash answered. “But so long as we’re both getting something out of it, that’s alright. I’m going to go check out that engine just in case there’s any other of his ‘little surprises’ in it…”

She began to walk over, and Pinkie happily bounced after her. Applejack cast one last look at the peddler, before she sighed and followed them.

“Kinda hope this is the last time we ever get a visit from our tall friend…”

---

“It’s not enough that they come here in droves. Now they’re trying to assassinate ambassadors?”

“Who cares? Just dump them in the hole.”

“It’s getting pretty full down there…”

“That’s their problem.”

The heavy wood and iron door, supported by an equally heavy ring and chain, was yanked up with a large creak and groan. It opened only into utter blackness. But even if Shining Armor had the ability to speak, he wouldn’t have been able to ask anything about it before he was unceremoniously tossed right into it.

His eyes widened even as he plunged into utter blackness, because he realized at once that he did not hit terra firma within ten, twenty, or even thirty feet of falling. When he did finally make impact, it was about fifty feet below or rough stone. A cry of agony went through his gag, as he nearly dislocated the shoulder he landed on from the plunge. Yet moments after, he heard cries from overhead. He had a split second to decide whether to use his small regained bearings to try and brace the next person or get out of their way to avoid mutual injury before Marble Pie crashed down as well. It wasn’t long before Stygian joined them.

“We better figure out what to do with them soon. They’ll eat the palace out of house and home if we get many more of them.”

That was the last thing Shining Armor heard overhead before the heavy door slammed shut again—plunging him and his companions into total darkness. He immediately let out an angry noise, but he knew already it fell on deaf ears. They were now locked in the silence of whatever dim place they had just been thrown into. The only sounds were the guards’ footsteps overhead departing. Instead, he sorely began to pick himself up into a seated position while trying to ignore his injury and figure out where Marble and Stygian had landed.

Yet he only had a few moments to do this before he heard a girl’s voice in the darkness. “Can Yona do it now?”

Another girl’s voice, much quieter and softer, answered nervously. “Not yet… I think they’re still too close.” A few seconds passed, until the footsteps were gone. “Alright, now.”

Shining Armor looked about in the darkness in confusion, but obviously could see nothing. However, he gave a start a moment later when he felt a pair of meaty, powerful hands grab him by the shoulders from behind. He began to call into the gag again.

“It’s ok! It’s ok!” the softer voice called out. “We’re just going to get those gags off. Right, Yona?”

“Right!” a bigger voice sounded from right behind Shining Armor—obviously the owner of the hands. “Yaks best at undoing locks!”

“I’m not sure about that…” a new voice answered. “But yaks definitely best at throwing useless bits of bone into their braids that you can use for lockpicks.”

Shining Armor felt a bit of work behind his head, when suddenly the metal clasping around it released. He let out an exhale of relief as he felt the gag fall out of his mouth, and the hands released him as they moved on to the next person. After catching his breath and letting his agony subside a little, he looked around in the direction of the voice. “Who’s there?”

“Oh, I’m Ocellus,” the milder voice responded. “Over here…well, at least I think over here…is Smolder. And the girl with the lockpick is Yona.”

“You’re…you’re kids?”

“Hey, I’m thirteen,” the voice of who Shining Armor presumed was Smolder retorted. “I’m old enough to serve as infantryman in the Dragonlands National Army and gut a guy to death with my bayonet. Heh…I’ve been practicing for that too. I’ve got a shank I’ve been making in here somewhere… Never can be too careful when you’re in the hole.”

“Um…to answer your question, yes,” Ocellus answered, far more mildly.

Another gasp went off nearby, that sounded like Marble Pie, before he heard more shuffling from her moving on to the last member. “They threw three kids down here?”

“Three?” Smolder echoed. “Ha! You hear him? ‘Three’, he says.”

“By my last count, there’s at least 337 people down here.”

Shining Armor was stunned. “What…?”

A few other murmurs of ascent went around the black chamber from no less than two dozen voices, but the way they echoed quickly made it clear that they were reverberating off of many others.

“Men, women, children…not sure if there’s any babies too or if the dark just got to someone…” Smolder went on.

“And we’re from all over too. I came from Fillydelphia, but Smolder’s from the Dragonlands, and Yona’s all the way from Yakyakistan. Um…Everfreesian is only her second language, so she has a bit of trouble with grammar. She finds ‘Yakyakistani’ too hard to pronounce.”

“‘Yak’ shorter and easier to say!” the bigger voice retorted, right before there was one last click and Stygian exhaled.

“That takes care of the gags, but I better find that shank if I want to cut your ropes…” Smolder muttered.

“They don’t mind at all that you’re able to free yourselves?” Stygian asked.

“So long as we’re quiet whenever they open the hatch to this oubliette, they never check on us,” Ocellus answered. “Besides…it’s not like we can go anywhere. All they do is lower food and water on a rope and they can cut that anytime they want.”

“But what did they throw all of you down here for?” Shining Armor asked.

“Bad circle marks,” Yona half-snorted. “You get bad circle mark, and no one in Mount Aris like you. Throw Yona and her friends into hole. Yona say Mount Aris soldiers are cowards. Too scared to watch yaks in prison cells if have bad circle marks, so throw into hole so don’t have to guard them.”

“You mean Promethian Sigils?”

Smolder snickered. “Well look at you. You must be from out west, using that fancy name for them. In the Dragonlands they just say you’re marked, while in Yakyakistan they say you’re cursed.”

“Most of us are down here because they have Promethian Sigils,” Ocellus explained. “A few of us like me were here because we were trying to help them travel or were relatives. There got to be too many refugees on the borders of Mount Aris, so they put them in here.”

Shining Armor paused. “I…don’t suppose you have anyone down here who lived at a relocated colony in Manehattan, do you?”

“Who said that?” a distant voice called out in the darkness.

“I did! Are you from the Manehattan colony?”

“Yes, I am! Who are you?”

“I’m Shining Armor, but that’s not important right now! How did you get to Mount Aris?”

A pause. “Are you with Manehattan?”

Shining Armor noticed it was a sharp, accusatory tone. And definitely not friendly. He hesitated a moment before answering. “…I was with their delegation, but then they set us up to throw us down here. We’ve been trying to find out what happened to the people from that colony.”

Immediately, he heard an angry swear. Not just from the voice but several others.

“You should know! You’re the ones who brought us here!”

“Wh…what?”

“You assholes said you were going to relocate us! The next thing we know we’re being shoved into a train at gunpoint and dumped off at the front door of Mount Aris, and as soon as the government gets sick of us begging for passports and food they leave us in this hole to rot!”

He heard a scoff from Smolder. “At least your government had enough sense to lie to your face. The Dragonlands just threw us out on our rear ends. From there we all tried to get a lift from some wealthy industrialist who was supposed to have family in Fillydelphia, and instead they only get us this far.”

“Oh, you do not want to be in Fillydelphia right now,” Ocellus spoke worriedly. “The new president is really stirring people up against eidolons. Enough to where he got the new congress to agree to deport them all out of the country; even if they’re long time citizens. I tried to volunteer with an organization that said they were going to give them relief and relocate them to safe families, but when we arrived at Mount Aris the address didn’t exist.”

“When Yona and other yaks come down with bad circles, great yak shaman come to Yona’s village. Great yak shaman says yaks with bad circle marks need to travel across Greater Everfree and climb to top of sacred mountain to remove bad circle marks. But when yaks come to Greater Everfree, yaks can’t find sacred mountain. Yaks think maybe Mount Aris is sacred mountain since it biggest, so yaks go there.”

A pause of silence in the dark dungeons.

“Normally I’d make a crack at her for that, but we did trust an industrialist, so I think the folk remedy people have the edge on us,” Smolder answered.

“That’s what’s been going on, everyone,” Stygian spoke up again. “Something much bigger than just Manehattan. Someone…maybe a group of someones…has been trying to gather the eidolons. Manehattan had already lost too many and the remaining ones were accounted for by the government, so they have to impersonate the government to bring them here. Everywhere else they just exploited fear and panic.”

“What?”

“Of course…” his voice grew quieter. “That’s assuming that Manehattan hasn’t been in on it the whole time. It wouldn’t make much sense, true, but both the grand chancellor and the major general have been keeping their secrets from us. If nothing else, an official could be in on it.”

“But who would be doing that?” Shining Armor responded. “And why-”

He cut himself off as he felt a hand on his shoulder. A much bigger and firmer hand even than the one that had grabbed him a moment earlier. He nearly jumped or called out on it, until he recognized the grip and size…

“…Big Macintosh? Is that you?”

“Eeyup,” a familiar voice answered.

“Oh, you know each other?” Ocellus asked. “They threw Mr. Big Macintosh down here just twenty minutes before you arrived, but we had a hard time figuring out who he was as he doesn’t seem to be a man of many words…”

“Pretty beat up too, from the glimpse I got of him,” Smolder half-chuckled. “He must have really done something to tick them off.”

A gasp came from Marble Pie’s direction.

“Well now, that makes things even more incriminating.”

Shining Armor turned back to Stygian. “What?”

“It struck me as odd that they would have thrown us into this oubliette if they had merely spotted Big Macintosh looking around. How would they know where he was looking unless they were present at the same spot, when we’re supposedly sequestered to only one hall? The answer would be that he was looking at some place they were allowed to be and he saw something he wasn’t supposed to have seen.”

Shining Armor felt uneasy at that. “So you’re saying…Big Mac learned about all of the people being stuck in here, they saw him, and then they wanted to make sure they’d keep him quiet.”

“By throwing him, and us, in here with everyone else. Let Mount Aris take care of our ‘disappearance’.”

A moment of silence passed as the dark possibility came over Shining Armor. Yet what broke it was most unexpected.

“That ain’t it.”

Both he and the others perked up their heads at the new voice. Shining Armor was perplexed as it was right behind him, until after a few seconds he realized who had spoken.

“Big Mac?”

“This ain’t what I saw in the window. I saw somethin’ worse. A lot worse.”

Author's Note:

I hope what Big Macintosh saw isn't a little too obvious.

Comments

[dannny43]

I hope what Big Macintosh saw isn't a little too obvious.

Eh, with the detail you went into about fancy pants appearance and if one pays enough attention, it's a little obvious.