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Anguish

"I think I have the whole thing figured out," Bon Bon said. "For out here at least."

Lyra pushed herself off the wall she'd been lying against. "We should go then." She walked her way up to Bon Bon's side.

"Just a moment." Bon Bon held her back with a hoof. "There are three groups of two guards, and they come out rotating at the same interval. I want to give the last group a little longer to get away, and then we'll go in."

"What do we do after that?" Lyra asked. As she waited she glanced back towards the sky, curious about the lack of background noise she'd become familiar with, and noticed how the spell they'd encountered before appeared to have stopped firing and seemed to have disappeared completely.

"I don't think we'll have much time to figure things out," Bon Bon explained before starting to cross the street and motioning for Lyra to follow her. After they had quickly reached the other side, she continued, "They'll definitely have stationary guards farther in instead of just a patrol, we'll have to decide how to go in and do this before the next group comes by."

"Got it," Lyra whispered as the two of them began to walk down another alleyway, one they had seen soldiers walk in and out of a few times before. She tried to walk with the best balance of quietly and quickly she could manage, not resulting particularly great in either but still doing a sufficient job at both. Bon Bon outpaced her slightly and did so while making notably less noise, which was unsurprising given her background.

They reached the end of the alley, and there stopped again. The space immediately ahead of them was clear of soliders, but just a little farther in things were different. They were close to the edge of a small square, and just as Bon Bon had predicted there were ponies permanently stationed to guard it, both on its border and on top of nearby buildings. Lyra immediately threw up another camouflage spell, and nervously eyed the sky above them for any pegasi flying low looking for intruders like them.

Past the edge of the square and the guards the two mares could see their goal. The portal, not unlike the ones Twilight had used, more closely guarded just by virtue of the soldiers in the area around it. Alongside them, at least a couple of mutated ponies could be seen too, and the edge of something else that had definitely been brought in from the other side. Machinery of some kind, though neither mare could recognise it. Some soldiers were animatedly discussing next to it, seemingly precisely about it, but they were too distant for their voices to carry as anything more than meaningless sound.

Bon Bon had a quick look left and right, then drew back in. "Going by how fast the patrols usually take I think we have at most two minutes before someone comes by and spots us if we try to cross." She turned to Lyra. "Can you get us in? We can always run back out if you don't find a way."

Lyra studied the situation, looking intensely at what she could see of the square. "I can. We need to get closer though."

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