> Pathfinder Ponies
>  by terrycloth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Meet in a Bar
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The tavern was crowded, even by the standards of small-town taverns built near a crossroads where two trade routes meet. There wasn’t a free seat in the house, and even the standing room at the bar was full to capacity – and it was noisy, full of chatter and shouts as the rowdy crowd of would-be adventurers tried to impress each other with their skills and deeds.

For this year the annual Adventurer Test was being held nearby, for the first time in living memory. The Emperor had declared that the conquered races of fae – the ponies, griffons, purrsians, suncats, cloven, and zebras – would for the first time be eligible for entry into the Pathfinder Guild, empowered to dispense justice across the land in his name. Accordingly, a small outpost near the town of Crossroads – located equidistant between the sprawling metropolis of Bright Valley and the hidden forest citadel known as Dream Castle, the two largest surviving cities of the fae – had been selected as the location to administer the test.

Despite this, few of the fae came to participate. While not openly disloyal, as a rule, the fae had always chafed under the empire’s yoke, and only six were present, among all the goblins, orcs, humans, elves, and gnolls that competed every year. It was hardly surprising that they congregated in a relatively quiet corner…

“Of the rafters,” said the lavender unicorn, with some amusement. “I suppose that’s one way to keep out of the humanoids’ clutches.” She offered her hoof to the griffon who’d dragged her up to the little nest the flying fae had made over the heads of the crowd below. “Twilight Sparkle, fighter by trade.”

“Yeah, I could tell by that weapon… thing you’re carrying,” the griffon replied, spreading her wings to show off her prismatic feathers. “I’m Rainbow Dash, and I could kick your tail six ways to Sun’s Day.”

“Please don’t fight,” squeaked a pale yellow flutterpony, with brilliant pink butterfly wings.

“So…” Twilight Sparkle prompted. The griffon stared at her, confused. “When I hold my hoof out like that, you’re supposed to –“

The griffon gripped her hoof in strong talons from one of her eagle claws. “Arm wrestle! Got it!”

It was a very short contest, that left the unicorn rubbing her pastern, dismayed. “If I’m going to wrestle, I’d use my magic. It’s very strong, telekinetically, as you can see by my cutie mark.”

“Thank you Mrs. Exposition,” Rainbow Dash replied, rolling her eyes. “So, what about you three?”

“Pinkie Pie!” said the bright pink pegasus. “SUPER-genius, at your service.”

The griffon looked her up and down. “So, um… you spent your equipment money on a dozen vials of lamp oil?”

“No, dear, she’s an alchemist,” said the other non-flying fae who’d been dragged up into the rafters. “And yes, she’s always like this,” the zebra added, as the Pink One rubbed her hooves together and cackled for no apparent reason. “We’ve been friends forever, you see. We trained together and coordinated our tactics –“

“You’re allowed to do that?” Twilight Sparkle asked, looking surprised.

“Actually, I think you’re supposed to form up teams before you even come anywhere near the contest,” replied the last member of the Rafter Party, one of the winged felines known as purrsians. She wore an expensive suit of black leather reinforced with matte metal studs, but carried no weapons other than her own teeth and claws. “Name’s Applejack.”

“Applejack,” the griffon said, giving her a look.

“Ayup,” the cat replied, with a toothy grin. “See, there was this guard who had me cornered in an alley after he caught me stealin’ apples, and it turns out if you put a bunch of apples in a sock, they work as a half-decent blackjack.”

Pinkie Pie burst into laughter.

Rainbow Dash groaned, and turned to the zebra. “And I suppose that makes your name…”

“Well, as you know,” the zebra said, with a coy grin, “my people are known for their skills in alchemy, and in fact taught Pinkie Pie there everything she knows.”

“They did not!” Pinkie protested. “Just everything I know about alchemy.”

“But I decided that mixing potions and poisons was not for me, and turned my study to the more pure and elegant applications of the arcane. A wizard like myself is something of a Rarity amongst zebrakind.”

“Right,” Rainbow Dash said. “I should have guessed.”

As the six fae-folk finished their introductions, the good-natured clamor from below was broken by a roar of indignation from a large orc wearing a suit of golden full-plate. “There they are, the cowards!” he screamed, pointing up at the rafters. “Even after we crush them underfoot, they still think they have the right to set themselves above us!”

Rainbow Dash glared down at him, and flexed her claws. “I see somepony doesn’t want to wait for the big contest tomorrow to get his throat torn out.”

“Waaaaait!” screamed the flutterpony, placing himself between the two. “I’m sorry if you’re offended by the attitude our people had in the past, but we’re not the ones you want to take it out on. The six of us are the ponies and… other creatures who’ve decided that it’s time to make peace with our place as members of the empire, and work with the –“

“So many words!” the orc scowled. “If you think you’re one of us, why are you hiding up there in the shadows?”

“Well…” the flutterpony started.

Applejack cut in, “This place is crowded enough, we figured it wouldn’t be right for humble fae like us to take your rightful seat, your worshipfulness.”

“Ha!” the orc shouted. “So you’re cowards!”

“Take that back!” Rainbow Dash snarled.

At that point, the bartender intervened. “I’m not going to be having any fighting in this bar! It’s survived this long without being burned to the ground, and I’m not going to lose it now, not to you whelps. Take it outside!”

“Fine by me,” the griffon replied.

The orc nodded as well, and soon the bar was empty as the entire crowd filed out into the town square – the eponymous Crossroads that the village had grown up around – and formed a circle around the orc and the six fae folk.

“So how are we going to do this?” Twilight Sparkle asked. “Six against one hardly seems fair.”

The orc laughed. “Too bad none of the other flower-pickers were stupid enough to come try to compete with the might of the Horde. Another dozen and maybe you’d be a match.”

“Please,” Twilight replied, rolling her eyes. “We’re all trainee adventurers or we wouldn’t be here, and between my exceptional magical power and my carefully honed skills, I’m willing to bet that I could lay you out in a single blow.”

The orc grinned. “You’re on.” He drew a heavy two-handed mace, and set himself in a combat stance. “But when you fail, I’ll show you no mercy.”

“Failure is mathematically impossible,” Twilight replied, drawing her own heavy flail with her pink magical aura and prancing towards him, spinning the head faster and faster. She was still several feet away when the weapon suddenly lunged past the orc’s defenses, the spiked ball crunching into his chin, denting the metal of his helmet and sending a spray of green blood from between his lips as his head jerked to the side. She squinted one eye closed as the tacky liquid squirted onto her face, and waited for her enemy to fall.

He didn’t fall.

“He’s an orc, sugarcube,” Applejack explained. “They don’t go down easy, even if you’ve hurt ‘em bad enough that they won’t live to see morning.”

“Oh. Right,” Twilight said, taking a step back. “I probably should have anticipated that.”

“My turn,” growled the orc.

Twilight fumbled for her shield, which she’d left slung across her back in her arrogant surety that the orc wouldn’t be getting a return swing, but wasn’t able to stop the mace from slamming into her barding, lifting her bodily into the air, to collapse to her knees a few feet away, coughing up blood from the injury. “I’m okay,” she wheezed, dragging herself to her feet, a bit unsteadily.

“So…” Rainbow Dash asked, pawing at the ground impatiently, “My turn next?”

The orc laughed. “No need for that. You’ve got some spirit, for a bunch of woodland pixies.” He coughed, and leaned on his mace, spitting up more blood. “And she hits like a truck. I think… I think I’m going to –“

“Fluttershy!” Applejack hissed, “Heal him, quick!”

“But… I have to touch him…” the flutterpony whimpered, looking askance at the giant mace, and at Twilight’s wounds.

Applejack shook her head. “If he dies, we’re in hot water. We ain’t adventurers yet, we can’t go around killin’ folks without gettin’ our necks in a noose.”

“But –“

“Just do it already!” Pinkie Pie squeaked, grabbing hold of the flutterpony and physically dragging her over to the orc. “Make with the healy, now!”

There was a blue glow as the flutterpony channeled positive energy, and the orc got a drugged look on his face, then stared right into Fluttershy’s eyes. “You’re an angel,” he said.

“No,” Fluttershy said, covering her face with her bangs. “I’m really, really not.”

> Walk in the Park
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thanks to the party befriending the belligerent orc, the crowd was satisfied and left them alone for the rest of the night. In the morning, the Pathfinder Guild representative found their campsite and handed them the paperwork to register as a candidate team.

“Or two teams, if you’d rather. The standard team size is three to six.”

“I think having all of us on one team should maximize the odds of success,” Twilight remarked, as she took the forms and handed out the characteristic sheets to the others to let them copy over their information from the certificates they’d received when they’d completed their training.

“It might maximize your personal odds of success, but with two teams you’d have a better chance of at least one getting through,” the representative replied. “We’d really prefer for at least one team of fae to qualify. Assuming you can all pass the Trial of Wits and the Trial of Loyalty, we could put the two fae teams up against each other for the Trial of Strength, and ensure that one team became full-fledged adventurers.”

“And that the other team lost,” Rarity noted. “I think we’d prefer the all or nothing approach. After all, we’re all dear friends now, and if we accidentally hurt the other team it would be just awful!”

Twilight Sparkle nodded confidently. “I’m sure if we stick together and support each other, there’s no trial we can’t face!”

The first trial they had to face was reaching the small wilderness outpost where the test itself would be administered. Each team was given a different time of departure and a set path to take through the forest that ensured that none of them would meet, barring cheating on somepony’s part, but that didn’t mean that the forest itself was without its dangers. There was no guarantee that a team of trainees would even reach the first test before being eliminated by the creatures of the forest.

“I think that guild rep kind of oversold it,” Rainbow Dash remarked, soaring lazily back and forth above the party’s heads. “This isn’t some wild, wilderness forest – it’s just the same old White Tail woods that we grew up with.”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “You could almost say that this is a—“

“Don’t you dare,” Twilight interrupted, drawing her flail.

Pinkie Pie paused, then whispered loudly in Dash’s ear, on her next pass, “Walk in the park.”

Twilight stopped short, and turned around to face the others. She’d been in the lead, so they all bunched up before her as she blocked the path. “Okay, I didn’t want it to come to this, but this is not the sort of party where we pin tails on donkeys and blow up balloons.”

“Speak for yourself,” Pinkie Pie said, smiling sweetly. “I plan to blow up everything that crosses my path.”

“What I mean is that it’s essential that we maintain strict military discipline. You ignored my direct order –“

“Who said you’re in charge?” Rainbow Dash asked, pushing Pinkie Pie aside as she landed right in the unicorn’s face.

Twilight Sparkle narrowed her eyes. “Are we really going to do this? Because I’m fairly confident that, barring some obscene luck on your part, I could take all of you on without breaking a sweat.” She paused. “Except for Pinkie Pie, assuming she was willing to let the rest of you become collateral damage.” She spun her flail around in midair for emphasis. “One swing, one kill – while the rest of you would be lucky to do anything but scratch the paint on my armor.”

“You painted your armor?” Fluttershy asked.

“Well… no. It’s a figure of speech.”

“I was going to say, it looks quite drab,” Rarity put in. “Perhaps after the test, we can find some quality shellacs? Or have Pinkie Dearest mix something up?”

Twilight shook her head. “That’s not important! The important thing is that you acknowledge that a group of warriors needs a leader!” 

“Right!” Rainbow Dash said. “And I think everyone can agree—“

But before she could finish making her challenge, the griffon was interrupted by a series of loud, haunting howls, coming from all directions. As the suddenly frightened warriors ceased their petty argument and stood back to back, a pack of four large wolves emerged from the underbrush!

“Ha!” Rainbow Dash shouted, leaping at the nearest wolf and slamming its jaw shut with a closed-talon punch. “Stunning fist!” The cur whined, but didn’t seem particularly stunned.

“You don’t actually have to shout the names your attacks,” Twilight remarked, slamming her flail forcefully into the ground next to another wolf, as it nimbly dodged out of reach. “Oh, come on, stand still!”

There was a hissing sound in her ear as an arrow shot past, missing both her and her opponent. Out of the corner of her eye, Twilight could see Fluttershy holding a small crossbow in her teeth. “Shorry,” she said, flying higher into the air.

Pinkie Pie soon fluttered up to join her, tossing a small vial with her teeth that exploded as it bounced off the ground to land right between a third wolf’s legs. Scorched and spooked, that wolf too remained resolute, growling in rage as it continued its approach. “A wild animal who isn’t afraid of bombs? What is this dark magic?”

“Well, even if they don’t fear your bombs, they shall learn to FEAR ME,” Rarity replied, momentarily glowing black all over her body as her eyes turned into red coals. The last wolf, which had been stalking what looked like the easiest prey, took off yelping, its tail between its legs.

But before Rarity could gloat, Pinkie’s wolf, denied revenge against the aerial pegasus, was on her, teeth locked around the zebra’s throat, dragging her to the ground as she screamed in pain from the huge fangs savaging her. Rainbow Dash also went down, although her own claws braced against the predator’s legs and kept the situation from being quite as one sided.

Twilight easily shook off the last wolf’s feeble attempt to harm her, and narrowed her eyes, determined not to let it dodge her next swing… only for Applejack, forgotten by everypony, to appear from out of the underbrush just behind her target. There was a flash of claws, snapping teeth, and then the wolf’s shuddering body was lowered to the ground to twitch and bleed out its last, the light already fading from its staring eyes.

“Get. Off!” Rainbow Dash shouted, struggling with her wolf but finding herself unable to land a blow. With barely a glance, Twilight sent her flail spinning towards the griffon, caving in the side of the wolf’s head. There was an explosion behind them from another of Pinkie Pie’s bombs, and then…

“Ooopsie,” Pinkie Pie said, forehooves covering her mouth in alarm as she looked at her handiwork.

“Oh no oh no oh no!” Fluttershy cried, flying towards the crater where the wolf’s charred corpse rested atop the equally unmoving form of their zebra companion. “Please don’t be dead!” she squeaked, as she channeled healing energy into her unconscious friend.

“Oh… my…” Rarity croaked, her eyes fluttering open as the others clustered around. “I suppose I need to be more careful where I stand when danger approaches. I thought I was right in the middle of the group, and then the next thing you know –“

“Everypony but you can fly,” Applejack said. “You and Twilight. Maybe the two of you should stick together, instead of everypony rushing off to do their own thing.”

“I’m the strongest fighter!” Twilight protested. “You can’t put me on babysitting duty. I was trained to be on the front line of battle!”

“It has to be a front line fighter, if they’re gonna keep our little Rarity safe,” Applejack said. “That means you or Rainbow Dash, and good luck getting her to stand still for ten seconds.”

“Hey! I’ll have you know that in the monastery I trained in, we had to stand still for ten hours.”

“And now we know why you left to live the life of an adventurer,” Rarity said, with a chuckle.

At any rate, after using up the rest of Fluttershy’s magic healing Rarity and Rainbow Dash to the point where a light breeze wouldn’t cause them to fall over, the party continued down the path, Rainbow spreading her colorful wings proudly as she took point, while a grumbling Twilight followed on rear guard duty, sticking close to the wizard.

“So I suppose that means that Applejack’s in charge?” Pinkie Pie said, prancing next to Fluttershy without a care in the world. Applejack was nowhere to be seen – ‘scouting ahead’, as she put it.

“Well, I hate to admit it, but her tactics are sound,” Twilight replied. “She and Rainbow Dash are both fairly poor fighters, so letting them cooperate with each other to harry a single enemy’s flanks is likely to lead to less embarrassing results. It’s worth trying this formation, at least.” She paused. “What I’m more concerned about is that crossbow Fluttershy was sporting. How exactly do you load that thing?”

“Um…” Fluttershy said, struggling with just that task as she hovered just off the ground. “The man in the weapon shop loaded it for me. He said it was one that ponies could use because it only took one ‘hand’, and we can use our mouths. But— oh dear.”

“Here, let me,” Twilight said, her horn glowing pink, with a similar aura appearing around the crossbow and a replacement bolt from the flutterpony’s quiver. “A crossbow like this can be fired with one hand – or one mouth, I suppose – but it takes two to load. One to work the bolt, the other to brace the frame.” With a click, the new bolt locked in place, ready to go. “I can load it for you between battles, so it shouldn’t be a total waste.”

“Maybe she could strap it to her leg?” Pinkie Pie suggested.

“I’ve heard of crossbows that are meant to be used that way,” Twilight mused, “but they’re much smaller. Strapping a crossbow like this to a pony’s leg would mean they wouldn’t be able to walk.”

“Oh, well that’s okay,” Fluttershy said. “I can’t walk anyway. It’s my, um, my curse. As an oracle. I was cursed.” She paused. “I can’t really walk, so I have to fly everywhere.” She paused again. “I’m a very good flyer. I can hover and everything.”

“So let me get this straight,” Pinkie Pie said, scrunching up her face. “Your curse as an oracle – the burden you accepted in exchange for your power – is something that doesn’t affect you in any way whatsoever? That is sooooo –“

“Pinkie,” Twilight warned.

Pinkie Pie stopped. Briefly. Then started to quiver. “Thatissolame!” she squeaked, then flew up into the air before Twilight could react.

Rarity put a calming hoof on the fuming fighter’s shoulder. “It’s probably best just to let her have her fun.”

Twilight sighed. “Don’t you mean, let her have her pun?”

Everypony in the party winced. Pinkie Pie, floating down to rejoin them, shook her head. “Maybe you should leave it to the professionals.”

> Cautious Approach
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After the fight with the wolves, it was an uneventful trot of a mile or so before they arrived at the outpost where the Adventurer Test was being held, a tower perched atop a hundred-foot hill that lifted it above the treeline so that it could watch over the entire forest. The trail they were following was joined by dozens of others emptying into a cleared area near the base of the hill, and a paved pathway wound its way up the hill in switchbacks until it ended at a large set of doors at the base of the tower.

“Look at all those arrow slits,” Twilight said, pointing at the tower with a hoof. “This is a kill zone.”

“Doubt they’re going to start shooting arrows at us,” Applejack said, having reappeared by virtue of no longer having anything to hide behind in the open terrain. “This is a test, right? What would shootin’ us full of arrows before we even got to the tower test?”

“Our armor?” Twilight suggested. “Or whether we were stupid enough to walk right into an obvious kill zone.”

“Perhaps she has a point,” Rarity said, making sure to keep the bulk of the party between her and the tower. “The first test was said to be a Test of Wits.”

“Hey, there’s another path,” Rainbow Dash said, peering carefully at her surroundings. “Over there around the side, see? We can go around behind the hill. Maybe there’s a back entrance?”

Twilight gave her a curious glance. “And here I was expecting you to suggest a frontal assault.”

Rainbow Dash winced. “Eh, I’ll pass, thanks. I skipped out on my ‘deflect arrows’ class.”

Sticking to the cover of the woods, the party made its way around the clearing until they could make a wild dash for the lower path. No arrows were fired at them, and in fact there was no sign that the arrow slits they were so worried about were even manned. Nevertheless, the lower path did keep them out of the line of fire, as it led them down into a dark ravine. Soon, the tower was out of sight once more, and the party found themselves in shadow as the chasm’s walls rose up to either side, leaving only a small sliver of sky far above.

To add to the foreboding atmosphere, the foul stench of death filled the chasm, along with a faint buzzing sound that seemed to come from just around the next bend. Just as they reached the corner, there was a loud squelching noise from just out of sight. Once, twice, three times.

“M-maybe we should turn back?” Fluttershy suggested, breathing heavily as she pressed herself to the wall. “I don’t think this is part of the test. There aren’t any other tracks. And – and that sounded like a monster. And a monster that isn’t part of the test might be way way way too strong for us to fight.”

Pinkie Pie bounced into the air and flew around the corner. “Huh,” she said. “That’s not exactly what I was expecting. But I bet Rarity would like it!” Seeing as how she seemed confused rather than frightened, the others soon joined her.

As they rounded the corner, the party found themselves facing a truly horrific sight. Above, atop a rocky overhang that would be impossible to climb without considerable training and equipment, loomed the back side of the tower. Beneath it was a humongous mound – twenty feet high and twice that across. The buzzing came from a horde of flies that filled the air like a black blizzard around the mound, almost dense enough to obscure the sight of it. But unfortunately, not dense enough.

It was clearly a massive pile of dead bodies, of all races, in various states of decay. Humans, gnolls, orcs, halflings, goblins – every race in the empire was represented, save for the fae. The bodies near the top of the pile were freshest, and it was clear that all of them had one thing in common. They were outfitted as trainee adventurers. As they watched, another body fell from a dark opening in the overhang above, plopping onto the pile with a loud ‘squelch’.

“What in Tartarus?” Twilight Sparkle choked out, momentarily stunned by the sight.

“Huh,” Applejack said. “You reckon some of that gear they’re outfitted with is still good?”

“Do you really want to climb up a pile of rotting dead corpses to check?” Rainbow Dash asked, her beak hanging open in disgust.

“Nope,” Applejack said, and spread her wings. In a few seconds she was perched on one of the freshest corpses, checking its pockets for spare change.

“Oh my,” Rarity said, taking a few steps forwards. “Oh, my! This is wonderful!”

Pinkie Pie giggled, and clopped her front hooves together. “I knew you’d like it!”

“Do you think any of them are animated?” Rarity asked, prancing excitedly around the perimeter of the corpse pile. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to check.”

Pinkie Pie grinned expectantly, as Rarity opened her eyes wide, and extended a hoof towards the pile of dead. “Creatures who exist beyond the bounds of death, SERVE ME!” A wave of dark energy exploded from her, sliding past the living creatures in the party with nothing but a momentary chill, but sinking into each dead body as it passed, examining and rejecting them as it searched for a target.

“Woah there!” Applejack said, dropping a few shiny things into her bags as the pile shifted under her. She nimbly leapt into the air as a flailing limb swiped at her from within the pile. She stared at Rarity in shock. “What did you do, girl?”

“I –“ Rarity squeaked. “I failed. I tried to control them, but I failed. They’re all too strong.”

The pile shifted again, and a pair of clawed hands near the base dug into the ground as something tried to pull itself free.

“How many are we talking here?” Rainbow Dash asked.

The entire pile shifted again, and Rarity danced back as dozens of zombies from the depths of the pile pulled themselves to their feet.

“Run away!” Twilight squeaked, lighting her horn to get everypony’s attention, and motioning frantically with it back the way they came. “Just run!”

Twilight was the first to take her own advice, but between several party members’ flight and her own heavy armor, soon found herself at the back of the pack regardless, the zombie horde moaning and groaning as it nipped at her heels, threatening to drag her down and tear her limb from limb if she so much as stumbled.

“To the tower!” Rainbow Dash said as they emerged back into the light. “We can hide inside!”

It was a scramble for Rarity and Twilight to ascend the hillside, since the zombies certainly weren’t going to wait for the switchbacks, but with Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash flying up ahead of them, the door was open and waiting for them when they arrived. Everyone piled into the dark antechamber, and they slammed and barred the heavy wooden doors. There were some thumps, and scrapes, as the zombies clawed at the door, but it was solidly built, and held up under their attack.

“Wow, I’d really hate to be the team arriving after us,” Rainbow Dash said, peering out through one of the arrow slits at the horde of zombies besieging the tower.

“Maybe they’ll reset and go back to their nice comfy pile of dead things?” Pinkie Pie suggested.

The zombies were relentless. After thirty seconds or so it became clear that they weren’t going to give up, and that while the door was strong, it would not hold out indefinitely. The party’s only option was to head deeper into the tower. Accordingly, they examined the room they found themselves in. It was a small room, twenty feet across and half that deep, with only two exits – the gateway they’d entered through, and an elaborate golden door with no apparent handle or hinges, but jewels and decorations of all sort splattered across it in a dazzling display of brilliance.

The room was otherwise empty, aside from a sheet of parchment lying face down in front of the door.

Rarity peered at the gems. “Fake,” she said after a second. “Which stands to reason. I doubt the dozen teams of adventurers before us would have left them if they were real, no matter how solidly they’re set.”

“Watch out for traps,” Applejack said, tugging the zebra back by her tail. “Somethin’ killed all those adventurers we saw on the pile. Look at this.” Reaching into her bags with her mouth, she took out a torn sheet of paper, and showed it to the party.

Most of the writing was obscured by bloodstains, but two things were clearly visible. First, the label at the top read ‘Pathfinder Guild Characteristic Sheet’. Second was the large black seal stamped over the top of the bloodstains: ‘FAILED’.

“You found this searching the bodies?” Twilight Sparkle asked. Applejack nodded. “Did you find anything else?”

Applejack grinned. “Nothin’ worth mentioning.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes, but the winged cat just grinned wider, her tail flicking back and forth behind her in little jerks. Twilight eventually rolled her eyes and relented. “The paper must have a clue as to how to operate the door,” she said, lifting up the piece of parchment on the floor, and flipping it over to read what it said.

“What’s it say?” Pinkie Pie asked, as everypony gathered around to see.

“It just says ’I prepared explosive runes this morning’,” Twilight said. Everypony froze.

“But obviously it isn’t a real explosive runes spell or we’d all already be dead,” Rarity remarked. “They go off instantly as soon as somepony reads them.”

“Maybe we’re ghosts?” Pinkie Pie suggested. “Maybe we got explodified so fast that we didn’t have time to notice that we were getting blown up, and now we’re all on the ethereal plane standing over our own bodies and waiting for the grim reaper to come pick us up?”

Fluttershy whimpered.

“If we were ghosts, then we could walk through the walls, and as you can see they’re quite solid,” Rarity said, lifting a hoof to tap on the stone wall next to her – only to meet no resistance, and stumble screaming into a dark void.

> Secrets and Betrayal
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

”Explosive runes?” screamed an unfamiliar rainbow-maned pegasus at a small dragon hatchling. She was hovering over a table covered with maps and papers and dice, scattering them with the downdraft as a collection of other ponies scrambled to catch them before they flew off. “We’re first level, Spike. How the hay are we supposed to deal with an explosive runes trap?”

The dragon squeaked, “I didn’t think you’d actually pick it up! I mean, it’s so obviously a trap! But don’t worry, I’ve got this.”

The strange hallucination faded as Rarity opened her eyes to see the rest of her friends standing over her. “So it was all a dream?” she asked.

Applejack shook her head. “Well, if you mean the part where we got blown to smithereens because Twi was too hasty pokin’ her horn into thief business, then no, it wasn’t a dream, exactly.”

“Nonlethal damage,” Pinkie Pie said, inspecting her vials for any shock damage. “So, we all got knocked silly, and dragged here to recover.”

“We were kind of worried you wouldn’t,” said their griffon monk, pacing back and forth in the small, dusty infirmary. “It turns out that if you do enough nonlethal damage it starts to spill over, and you’re… kind of a lightweight.”

“I suppose that means we failed, however,” Rarity said in a low tone, rolling out of bed and back to her shaky hooves. “Can we try again next year?”

“You haven’t failed yet,” said a familiar voice, as the human woman they recognized as a Guild representative entered the room, closing and locking the door behind her. “As I said, it’s important to us that a team of fey makes it through the trials, which means I haven’t given up on you yet.”

“I was wondering,” Applejack said. “Seemed kind of strange that with all the other trainees being dumped on a heap o’ corpses when they failed, we got the foal-safe version of the trap.”

The representative nodded. “You all owe me your lives, and trust me, I plan to collect. But for now, all I want is for you to continue the trials. No one else knows that you set off the explosive runes --”

“What?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“No one at all?” Fluttershy asked. “This is your personal project, then. You’re betraying the Guild to help us.”

“I don’t like the idea of cheating,” Twilight said. “I’d rather just accept the failure and come back next year, to win properly. I know it might delay your plans –“

“My plans don’t allow for a group of washouts to get hit with a nonlethal spell,” the representative snapped. “If you don’t cooperate, I’ll have no choice but to fail you. Permanently.” There was an edge in her voice, that left Twilight shaken.

“Then I guess we have no choice,” Rainbow Dash snapped, flapping across the room and landing right in the representative’s face. Suddenly, she lashed out with her talons, “Surprise attack!”

The representative deflected the blows with contemptuous ease, but had less luck against Applejack’s simultaneous attack from behind, crying out as the cat’s sharp claws sank into her kidney. “Idiots! What makes you think you can take me on?” she said, producing a dagger from some hidden sheath and stabbing it into Applejack’s shoulder. “Are you that desperate to die?”

“You’re a traitor to the guild,” Twilight said, slamming her flail into the representative’s hip, skewering it with the spikes and shattering bone from the sheer force of impact. “And you’re in a very poor tactical situation, coming in here with the six of us, all alone.”

Rarity joined in on the dog pile, her hoof glowing with some dark magic, but before she could finish her attack there was a ‘twang’ and Fluttershy’s crossbow bolt sprouted from the back of the representative’s head.

She opened her mouth, gagging on the bloody arrowhead now resting on her tongue, but her body had already gone limp from her severed spine, and she collapsed to the ground, twitching one last time before going still. 

“Um…” Pinkie Pie said. “Were we supposed to do that?”

“Test of Loyalty,” Twilight said proudly, standing over the corpse. “She was asking us to betray the Guild.”

“So… the test was to kill her,” Pinkie said, giving the others an odd look. The she shrugged, and smiled. “Wow, she was really into her job!”

They took a few minutes to strip the corpse of all its belongings before dragging it to a chute in one corner of the infirmary labelled ‘corpse disposal’. Twilight animated a mop and bucket to start cleaning up the bloodstains, while the others sorted through the pile of loot.

“So… I’ll mark ‘trial of loyalty passed’ on all our sheets,” Rarity said, carefully forging the representative’s signature. “Should I mark down that we passed the trial of strength as well?”

“No!” Twilight said. “We’re here to pass these trials honestly! Also, they probably have some other people here administering the final test, since it pits two groups of adventurers against each other.”

“The dagger’s magic,” Fluttershy said softly, her eyes glowing as she concentrated on a minor orison. “So is the ring and the cloak.”

“Dagger’s mine,” Applejack said, licking at the wound on her shoulder. “She gave it to me, fair and square. And damn, it smarted something fierce!”

“Then I get the ring,” Rainbow Dash said, snagging it and slipping it onto one of her talons. “Twilight gets the cloak, I guess?”

“We’re not actually allowed to keep this equipment,” Twilight protested. “Looting the dead is a privilege of Adventurers, and we’re still in training.”

Rainbow Dash covered her face with her talons. “Okay, fine. Fluttershy gets the cloak. Now let’s find a way out of here before somepony notices she’s missing.”

“Don’t worry, Twi,” Pinkie Pie said as the unicorn watched the others rob the woman they’d killed. “The guild just recognizes Adventurers, it doesn’t turn people into them. As long as we pass the test, that means we were already Adventurers, so looting corpses is fine. It’s, like, our destiny and stuff.”

Twilight sputtered. “That makes no sense!”

“I find I’ve learned to trust Pinkie’s judgment on these things,” Rarity replied. “Now come on, let’s not start fighting amongst ourselves. The world has plenty of enemies for us as it is.”

The infirmary door opened into a narrow passageway, one of a network of secret passages surrounding a trap-filled gauntlet that the party was probably supposed to have navigated as their Trial of Wits. Peering through hidden peepholes, they spotted pit traps, spike traps, and all manner of deadly impediments, many of which had fresh bloodstains that showed that previous teams had not been universally successful at avoiding them.

Past that, they saw what looked like a small classroom with ‘Trial of Loyalty’ written in chalk on the board, while a bored-looking human man sat at a desk watching a pair of orcs try to puzzle out the answers to a multiple-choice quiz.

Finally, they reached a room where a sign said ‘wait here for the Trial of Strength’. The secret door into the room was obvious from within the passage, and no one seemed to be watching the room as they quietly emerged and took their seats at one of a pair of tables. A few minutes later, an orc in bright gold armor entered, escorted by a guild representative who pinned his characteristic sheet up on a corkboard, under a sign labeled ‘team 1’.

He looked over at the fey party, confused. “Where’s your representative?”

“She, uh, she had somethin’ else to do,” Applejack said.

“Yeah, decompose,” Rainbow Dash whispered to Pinkie Pie, who covered her mouth to stifle her giggles.

Applejack scowled at them, then turned back to the official. “She gave us our papers and said to go the rest of our way on our lonesome.”

Rarity leapt to her hooves and grinned wildly as she ran over to the cork board. “Yes! Is that what we were supposed to do with them? Pin them to the board, just like this?”

She grabbed them from her bag, and the representative immediately snatched them. “Well… it does say you passed the other trails,” he said, looking at the papers suspiciously, and then turning his gaze on the party. “This is highly irregular.”

Fluttershy cowered from his stare. “But… aren’t adventurers supposed to be irregular?” she said, in a whimper. “We’re not soldiers… or police…”

The man sighed, his attitude softening. “Fine. I was really hoping Lok’nar here would have a chance, but it looks like it’s going to be one against six.”

“Isn’t three the minimum party size?” Twilight asked.

“His team suffered some losses.”

“They were stupid, and disloyal,” Lok’nar said proudly. “But I am strong! And if I fall, I fall with pride, knowing that someone even stronger than me goes on to defend the Horde!”

“Well…” Twilight said, looking uncomfortable. “I don’t like such an uneven contest, but it would be illogical for us to handicap ourselves more than the rules required, simply for the sake of a more interesting fight.”

“Do not pity me,” the orc growled. “Weak creatures like ponies and griffons always run in packs, but I worship Fenris, the Lone Wolf. Cornered, I find ever greater strength. Outnumbered, I know that my attacks will find no lack of targets. All of you will die,” he said, grinning wildly. “And it will be glorious!”

“Hah!” Rainbow Dash said with a grin. “Then bring it on.”

The two teams were led into the arena – an open space walled in on all sides, with a dozen archers lining the walls to enforce the rules – chiefly, no attempting to leave the arena, and no flying. The six fey lined up along one side of the arena, the orc took his place on the other, and they waited for the signal.

“Fenris, give me your protection!” the orc cried, holding up his massive club, which shined with unholy light as runes appeared on his armor, reinforcing it.

“Um… does that mean the fight started?” Pinkie Pie asked. “He’s casting spells and stuff. That’s not really fair.”

“Fenris, give me strength!” the orc proclaimed, holding up his club again. This time, the runes appeared on it, leaving it shining with a faint green glow.

“Don’t just stand there!” Twilight said to the others, “charge!”

“Fenris,” the orc started, as a pony, a purrsian, and a griffon charged across the arena at him. “Bless my –“ *KABOOM*.

“Oopsie, did I interrupt your spell?” Pinkie Pie asked, then took another bomb in her mouth, holding it ready.

The orc, slightly scorched, simply grinned, and roared his defiance as the three fey charged in to melee. There was the clash of metal on metal, the pink glow of Twilight’s magic, the rainbow flash of Dash’s feathers as she and Applejack danced around to flank their target.

Rarity took a few steps towards the fight, then stopped. “I think, perhaps, I’ll wait back here,” she said. “I don’t have any spells that would actually help, and trying to use my touch of fear in melee would be…” She winced as Twilight screamed in pain as the orc got in a solid blow. “I’ll just stand back here, shall I? I’m sure they don’t need my help.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure they don’t need my ‘help’,” Pinkie Pie said, balancing a bomb on her hoof as she watched the fight. “Splash damage, you know.”

“Yes,” Rarity said, narrowing her eyes. “I know.”

“Um… maybe we could cheer?” Fluttershy suggested. “Yay!”

“Go Rainbow Dash!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing up and down. “R- A- I- N-“

There was an ear piercing screech as the griffon in question went flying against the wall of the arena, bleeding and unconscious. A few second later, Twilight took a club to the head and fell to her knees, then keeled over, stiff, her flail falling to the ground as her magic vanished.

“Oh ponyfeathers,” Applejack said, as she found herself facing the orc alone.

The three spectators winced, as a heavy swing of the orc’s club caught her right in the chest, and she collapsed, spasming and struggling for breath.

“Heh. Heh,” the orc said, bleeding and battered from his own share of wounds. He turned to face Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, and Rarity. “Three down. Three weaklings left to go. Fenris! Heal –“ *KABOOM*

“Yeah, still not going to let you cast,” Pinkie Pie said. “Come on, you two. Do something?”

Fluttershy fired her crossbow, but it ricocheted off the orc’s armor, uselessly.

The orc laughed. “I don’t need magic to finish you,” he said, then screamed, “FOR THE HORDE!” as he barreled across the arena.

Halfway to his targets, he slipped and fell on his face.

“You memorized grease?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“It’s versatile,” Rarity replied. “I figured there were enough adventurers focused on damage. I wanted to bring something unique to the table. That is my raison d’etre, is it not?”

Another of Fluttershy’s bolts failed to find a soft enough part of the orc to penetrate, as their opponent tried to climb to his feet only to have them slip out from under him again.

Pinkie Pie shrugged, and tossed her bomb. There was a fiery explosion, and then the struggling orc was struggling to stand while on fire, in a patch of grease that was also on fire. He screamed in rage and agony as the flames consumed his flesh, and soon enough stopped moving entirely.

“Oh dear,” Fluttershy said, staring at the spectacle. “I really hope that counted as a good death. That seemed to be so important for him.”

With the orc down, Fluttershy was able to stabilize the rest of the party, and they were taken to the infirmary to rest from their wounds. After a few minutes a guild cleric arrived to heal them to the point of consciousness, so that they could be officially recognized as Adventurers and take the Oath. A sketch artist drew a picture of each of their likenesses to put on their identification cards, while the late orc’s representative reluctantly filled out the rest of their paperwork.

“I wish I knew what happened to Katrina,” he said, as he handed each of them their card. “It’s not like her to skip out like this without a word. Do any of you have any clue what pulled her away with such urgency?”

“Actually,” Twilight said, holding her ID card in her magic to admire the construction. The card itself was stiff paper, with her picture and some relevant personal information, sealed into a fragile glass casing imprinted with a watermark of the seal of the Guild. “We killed her. She was a traitor.”

All motion in the room ceased, except for Rainbow Dash and Applejack’s paws meeting their faces.

“What.” The representative said, flatly. “I don’t think I heard that right.”

“She was a traitor,” Twilight repeated. “She wanted us to betray the guild. As Adventurers, we’re allowed to pass judgment on traitors, are we not?”

“We haven’t taken the oath yet,” Applejack hissed.

“I took the oath when I was six,” Twilight replied. “Shall I take it again in front of you, so we can make this all official? Or should we murder a third person for the privilege of being recognized as what we already are, and always have been? Adventurers are recognized by the guild, not empowered. The trials are so that you can weed out the pretenders. Once we passed the trials, we proved that we were Adventurers, and always had been.”

“That’s… certainly… a novel interpretation of Guild Law,” the man replied. He looked around at the six adventurers surrounding him, and at his backup which at that point consisted of a pair of goblin sketch artists already quietly heading for the door. “Fine. We’ll let you get away with this for now, but know that Katrina will be found, and raised from the dead. If she was a traitor, then you don’t have to worry about reprisal. At least, not official guild reprisal. If you’re lying, you will be hunted down and you will pray for something as merciful as being slowly tortured to death.” He slammed his hands into the table. “The ceremony is tonight at Crossroads. Try not to be late.”

> Party at the Inn
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Somewhat to everypony’s surprise, the oathtaking ceremony went off without a hitch. Katrina’s interrogation was slated to happen back in Rally, the orcish capitol, which was a week’s journey away through a dangerous mountain pass, and in the meantime the party of fey were being given the benefit of the doubt, at least for public consumption.

They were not the only Adventurers to pass the trial, although the total number was barely a dozen, out of the hundred or so trainees who’d applied. Apparently, many teams hadn’t made it through the staged wolf attack in the forest, or had been caught by the zombie horde assaulting the tower and devoured. It was a bad year for newbie Adventurers, but a good year for the undertaking services at the local church. Many of the families of the deceased were not content to leave their loved ones rotting on a pile of corpses, and paid Rainbow Dash and Applejack to stealthily retrieve the bodies for revival, burial, or animation as an undead servant – depending on their budget. Rarity offered her services as an undertaker to the church during the rush, an offer which they accepted with great relief.

“The pay isn’t much,” Rarity admitted to the others as they met once again in the bar to discuss their next step, since business in Crossroads was going back to normal and they’d all had the time to rest and recover from the ordeal. “But there are some side benefits. Orcs don’t have any funeral rites or rituals for the dead, so I was able to secure a corpse to be raised as an undead servant of my very own.”

“You’re welcome,” Rainbow Dash said. “I figured, the rule is we keep what we kill as adventurers, right? So that orc we took down was ours to do with as we please. Even if that means turning him into some kind of super-creepy horribly burn-scarred zombie servant.”

“The burns just add to the intimidation factor,” Rarity replied, waving a hoof. “I decided to go full ‘evil chic’, with decorative spikes and a skull theme on his armor… I just wish I could afford something more protective than leather. Whatever happened to that lovely golden plate he was wearing when we fought him?”

“Uh…” Rainbow Dash said. “I think I’ll let Twilight explain that one.”

“Explain what?” Twilight asked as she entered the room, the clip clop from her hooves supplemented by a faint ‘shing shing shing’ as the shiny plates of her new suit of armor rubbed against each other. The shiny golden plates did make for a nice contrast against what little of her light purple fur was still visible beneath them. She caught Rarity staring at her armor, and struck a dashing pose. “Do you like it? Applejack recovered it from the zombie pile, and I spent all week refitting it to be worn by a pony. It was easier than I expected, actually.”

“It’s… marvelous, dear,” Rarity replied. “Masterwork quality, I assume?”

Twilight smiled. “Of course. You’d have to be crazy to make a suit of full plate without giving the extra 10% to make it masterwork, and the blacksmith here has good enough tools that I was able to avoid screwing that up during the refit.”

“Indeed.” The zebra took a careful sip of her wine. “It’s quite lovely.”

“Well,” Twilight said, taken aback by Rarity’s strange behavior. “I’m glad you approve. I was worried you’d want to make good on your threat to paint it, and I’d end up covered in stripes or something.”

“No, no,” Rarity said. “I think it’s been altered quite enough.”

As they all gathered around the table to compare notes, Twilight informed the others about a lead on a job, right there in town. In fact, in that very bar. The blacksmith was the brother of the barkeep, and had suggested that in repayment for the use of his tools – additional repayment, on top of Twilight’s old armor that she’d traded to him – she could do him a favor by finding out what had had his brother so worked up lately.

Figuring that they should at least hear his story before making a decision, the party approached the barkeep and asked about his troubles. He led them into an unoccupied room, and made sure to shut the doors and windows before filling them in, in a conspiratorial tone.

“Actually, I’m glad you asked. It’s a mite embarrassing, but I should have known I couldn’t keep it from my own brother. You see, a week ago, right after the ceremony you all were in, a strange unicorn paid me a large sum of gold to rent out my basement for a week, no questions asked. Enough gold that I was happy not to ask questions. The noises I heard from down there were awfully strange, but I just figured it was some weird fey magic – unicorns, you know?

“But then yesterday, Grizelda forgot that the basement was off limits, and headed down there to fetch a new barrel of ale out of the stores, and found the whole place full of smoke. I went down to check it out with her, and called out for this ‘Trixie’ mare to show herself, but there was no response – leastwise, not from a unicorn. There were things moving around down there, though. Things with glowing eyes, like little coals. We hightailed it out of there and barricaded the door, but sooner or later we’re going to have to have someone go down and clear up whatever mess that crazy unicorn made of my basement.”

“I don’t remember any ‘Trixie’ from the ceremony, but that name sounds familiar,” Twilight remarked.

“She was dressed like a noble, but with her sneaking around like that it might not even be her real name,” the barkeep said. “Regardless, I don’t care much about what happened to her. The week’s up, and I want my basement back.”

“So what’s it pay?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“I – I thought it was a favor for a friend,” the barkeep replied, acting insulted. “Some random critters like these aren’t any threat to a group of adventurers like yourselves.”

“Uh huh,” Pinkie pie replied. “Buuuut, you see… you’re asking a lot of us. Not only to go down into a dark, creepy basement, to fight monsters that we don’t even know what they look like, but you want us to not burn down your bar in the process. Do you know how hard that is for an alchemist?”

The barkeep stared at them. “Maybe I should ask another group.”

Rainbow Dash spread her wings and poked him in the chest. “No way! This is our job, we’ve got dibs. You’ve just got to pay up once we finish.”

“Are you helping me or robbing me?” he asked, cringing back from the griffon.

“We’re protecting the public from the monsters you reported to us,” Twilight Sparkle replied. “It’s our duty as Adventurers. As a separate consideration, Pinkie Pie was offering to accept payment in return for limiting the collateral damage.”

“We know you’ve got the cash,” Applejack purred. “You told us yourself you got paid good gold to get yourself into this mess. You give it to us, and we’ll getcha back out.”

“Half!” The barkeep said. “I’ll give you half, and any damage you cause gets taken out of your share.”

With the compensation agreed upon, the barkeep showed the party to the door to the cellar, located at the back of the pantry. Between Twilight’s magic and the barkeep, they managed to shift the pile of heavy cooking supplies that he’d been using to block the door. It opened into a smoke-filled stairway, the slightly sulpherous, choking smoke thick enough to block vision. Fighting in such conditions would be difficult, but nevertheless, the party had no choice but to –

“Waaaaaaaait!” Pinkie Pie screeched, as Twilight took the first step onto the stairwell. At the fighter’s confused glance, the alchemist flapped her wings a few times. “Pegasus, remember? Let me take care of that nasty smoke.”

“You’re trained in weather control?” Twilight asked.

“Uh huh,” Pinkie Pie said, squeezing past Rainbow Dash and Applejack in the tight confines of the pantry, until she was in reach of the smoke. “Just give me a second…” she said, grabbing hold with her hooves and teeth, and then grunting as she backed away, dragging the cloud of smoke with her, back through the kitchen and out the back door into the yard, where she formed it into a large looming cloud, twenty feet up. “Eugh. That stuff tastes nasty.”

“Yeah… pegasus ponies don’t usually push clouds around with their mouths,” Rainbow Dash said.

“From the smell, it’s elemental smoke,” Rarity said, looking worried. “We might be in trouble – most elemental creatures are difficult to damage with mundane weapons.”

“Well, at least now we can see,” Twilight said, lighting her horn as she descended into the darkness.

Even with the smoke gone, the inn’s basement was a cluttered place with plenty of hiding places for small creatures. The stairs led to a large open area in the center, albeit one cluttered with crates and barrels, but there were several alcoves in the walls across from them and to the right, while to the left a rack of large casks of ale loomed, set far enough from the wall for someone – or something – to squeeze behind them.

“Go away Trixie!” screeched a high-pitched voice. “We no care you make air smell bad again, this our home now!”

“Oh dear,” Rarity said, pausing on the stairs as she kept to the back of the party, to turn and address the barkeep. “I’m afraid your basement might be infested with mephits.”

“What are those?” Twilight asked, looking around but seeing nothing, not even the glowing eyes the barkeep had described.

“Weak elementals, at least physically,” Rarity explained. “Little flying creatures, like imps. Some of them have dangerous magic.”

“Yes, we have powerful magic!” the voice squeaked, from behind the casks. “More powerful than Trixie! You leave now, or you burn!”

“Ha!” Rainbow Dash said, flying over to where they’d heard the voice. She reached behind the barrel with one of her arms, but the small winged creature she’d spotted slipped out of her grasp, slashing back at her with tiny claws, although she yanked her claw back in time not to get cut.

“Come on out where we can see you,” Fluttershy said, her eyes glowing for a second as she added, “Please? Approach.”

“Nooooo!” shrieked the voice. “Get out of my head, Trixie!”

“We warn you!” cried a similar voice from the other side of the basement. “You burn now!”

And then, the basement was filled with fiery sparks. Applejack and Rainbow Dash managed to shield themselves from the swirling embers with their wings, but Fluttershy cried out in pain, and Twilight’s armor provided no protection. While the fey were distracted, the mephits rushed out, surrounding the unicorn and slashing at her with tiny claws. Their forms were indistinct, almost seeming to be made out of smoke themselves, but ‘little flying creatures’ more or less covered it.

“Ow! Ow! Get off!” Twilight cried, as some of their attacks found her flesh.

“Don’t worry, sugarcube. I gotcha,” Applejack said, drawing her magic dagger in her teeth, and leaping to stab one of the creatures in the back.

Fluttershy gingerly reached out to heal some of Twilight’s wounds, while Rainbow Dash joined in on the attack, raking one mephit’s wings, only to watch her claws slice through the membrane like it was smoke, leaving them almost undamaged.

As Twilight flailed at her assailants, which scrabbled at her armor with their little claws, one of them backed up a step and burst into flames, filling the air with more of the sparks. Once more, Twilight and Fluttershy cried out in pain. “This isn’t working!” Twilight screamed.

“Juss ‘ang in dere!” Applejack said around the dagger, as she missed with a slash but managed to get hold of the rapidly shifting creature with one of her paws and tear out a chunk. “Too blurry to get at their vitals, but I’m wearin’ im down.”

“Please, win the fight for me, Twilight,” Fluttershy whispered, healing her again, “I’m sorry, I’m too weak to stay and die for you…” She turned and ran for the stairs, squeezing past Pinkie who was busy chugging one potion after another, and Rarity who was more or less watching the part of the fight she could see from the top of the stairs, which didn’t include actually getting within line of sight of the enemies.

“I said… get off!” Twilight shouted, nearly catching one of the mephits with her flail, but failing again. “ARGH! Don’t you dare!” she added, as, sure enough, the third mephit took a step back and burst into flames.

“Ha!” Pinkie Pie shouted, catching the mephit mid-cast with a thrown box. Unfortunately, this didn’t work as well as she’d hoped, and once more the swirl of embers engulfed Twilight and the others. When they cleared, the unicorn was barely standing, and Applejack was looking distinctly singed.

“I am sick of these Moon-forsaken BUGS!” Twilight shouted, finally catching one with her flail and splattering it into shards of smoke and soot.

“Ahh! Burn, Trixie!” squealed one of the survivors, taking a deep breath and then exhaling a cloud of choking soot. It was too much for the unicorn, and she coughed, and fell to her knees, then collapsed to the ground unmoving. Applejack too was in bad shape: still conscious, but with her face full of soot to the point where she could hardly see.

“This isn’t looking too good, is it,” Rainbow Dash asked.

“We ain’t done yet,” Applejack growled, lunging at one of the remaining mephits as it switched targets to Rainbow, and sinking her magic dagger deep into its back. It froze for a moment, then exploded in shreds of smoke, just like the first.

At that point, a lumbering zombie shambled down the stairs, followed closely by large dog. “Did somepony ask for reinforcements?” called Rarity, from the top of the stairs.

The last mephit took one look at the forces arrayed against it, and curled up in a ball. “Nooo! I give up! Trixie wins! No kill! No want to go back!”

“So… you reckon we should accept his surrender?” Applejack asked, struggling to wipe the soot out of her eyes, without much luck.

Rainbow Dash gave a pointed glance at Twilight – still breathing, thankfully, but obviously badly hurt. “Yeah, no so much.”

“Ahhh! No kill! No k – gglllrk –“

It took some doing, between the mephit’s resistance to most damage and the strange blurring effect, but between the two of them and the ‘reinforcements’, they eventually managed to take the thing out.

With the monsters cleared out, the party quickly searched the rest of the basement for any sign of trouble – or of Trixie. While there were no additional unicorns to be found, living or dead, they did find an expensive bedroll set up in one of the alcoves, near a small ritual circle drawn on the floor in black and red chalk. Other ritual components were nearby – strange candles, a silver bell, and a leather-bound book with what Rarity identified as the symbol for the plane of smoke on the cover. Rainbow Dash also spotted a pouch full of gold wedged into a small gap in one of the walls, behind a loose brick.

Which was a good thing, since between the extensive scorching from the repeated fire spells, and the crate full of fine china that Pinkie Pie had decided to use as an improvised weapon, their share of the barkeep’s money turned out to be just enough to cover their meals for the night.

Applejack just shook her head in disgust. “Never try to out-fox a merchant.”

“We didn’t come out of it with nothing, at least,” Twilight replied, dividing up Trixie’s gold into six equal piles. “If nothing else, it was certainly an experience.”

“Plus, we got this super-fun puzzle to do!” Pinkie Pie said, pushing around pieces of the shattered plates and bowls and trying to find which bits went together.

“I’m worried about this ‘Trixie’ character, though,” Twilight continued. “You don’t spend this kind of gold without some sort of plan, and what sort of Moon-forsaken plan involves summoning a bunch of wild mephits into the basement of a random inn?”

“I’m worried that these summoning rituals exist at all,” Rarity said. “These are far too cheap and easy for something that pierces the planar boundaries. Why – with these special candles, and the incantations from this book, I could open a portal to the plane of smoke.”

“Eee! Found a match!” Pinkie Pie said, holding up two pieces of ceramic to Rarity, who nonchalantly tapped them with a hoof, repairing the break with a cantrip. “Do you guys want to help? It’s really fun, really!”

“What’s the point?” Rainbow Dash asked. “It’s not like we’ll need fancy dishes when we’re out in the wilderness hunting monsters.”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “Oh, I’m not going to take them with us. Once I’ve got them all fixed, I’m selling them back to the barkeep for the hundreds of gold that he said they were worth. I mean, really – little pieces of fired clay, worth hundreds of gold? In the basement of some random inn, in the middle of nowhere?”

“More like the middle of everywhere,” Applejack said. “But I get yer point. You think he was cheatin’ us?”

“Oh, I hope so,” Pinkie Pie said, holding up another pair of shards for Rarity to mend. “Because if he was cheating us, then he’s a bad guy, and if he’s a bad guy we get to keep all his stuff!”

> Hit the Road
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The party spent another day in town, doing Pinkie Pie’s puzzle – for which they got a few dozen gold, since the merchant was able to weasel out of paying full value because a few chips were missing which meant they were no longer suitable for fancy guests – and healing up from the basement ordeal. Fluttershy’s magic wasn’t nearly enough to heal the entire party in a single day, but the local church held services in which the acolytes would use pulses of positive energy on the crowd to reinforce their faith though miraculous healing. It meant enduring a sermon about the wondrous rewards of following Kara, the shapeshifter queen, but it was hard to beat the price.

They also asked around for work, and found a few leads posted by the Guild and not yet taken by other adventurers. To the north, in the Sleeping Forest surrounding Dream Castle, a group of fey known as the Unicorn Bandits had declared independence from the empire, and was interdicting all trade, forcing caravans heading for Dream Castle to detour through the mountains, adding weeks to their trip. A reward was posted for each bandit head delivered to the guard post in the pass.

Alternatively, to the south, a group of Diamond Gnolls was suspected of illegal mining in Bright Valley territory, and a small reward was offered for information on the actual situation, with a larger reward for resolving it equitably.

“Do we really have to debate this?” Applejack asked. “All in favor of the mission that doesn’t involve raiding a gem mine, raise your claw.”

Rainbow Dash raised her claw, and sure enough she was the only one. “Oh come on! It’s not a raid – they want us to go play diplomat. Boring.”

“It can be a raid,” Pinkie Pie said, grinning widely. “If, you know, talks were to break down. Things might happen. Equipment might accidentally burst into flames…”

Rainbow Dash slowly started to smile. “Yeah… okay. I guess I can give it a shot.”

“We will try diplomacy first,” Twilight Sparkle insisted. “The Diamond Gnolls are allies, and should be given the benefit of the doubt.”

“The Diamond Gnolls are gem-stealing hooligans, dear,” Rarity said, rolling her eyes. “Everypony knows this. Still, I agree with Twilight. We should let them dig their own grave.”

With that decided, the only thing left was to set out on their journey. Crossroads only had one gate through the palisade, but from there the road split off in four directions – north to Dream Castle, south to Bright Valley, east to the mountain holds of the Cloven and Griffons (although the mountain pass to Rally was farther north), and west to the plains where the Zebra roamed, after crossing Ghastly Gorge – the location of the suspected illegal mining operation.

“So we’re going west,” Rainbow Dash said.

Twilight rolled her eyes as she rolled up her map. “Yes. West.”

The griffon nodded. “Just making sure I had that clear. Because it kind of looked like the gorge was east of here.”

Twilight frowned, and unrolled her map again, as everypony gathered around. She winced. “Right. Sorry. EAST to the gorge.”

“Also, the rising sun is that way, and the mountain range which we can see from here is the other way, and I kind of thought that the sun rose in the east.”

“I get it. I mixed up my directions. We’re going that way,” Twilight pointed with her horn towards the sun.

“Which is east,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Yes,” Twilight said through gritted teeth.

“Not west.”

Twilight grumbled, “You can stop any time…”

After figuring out their directions, the party finally made its way out of the town, through the open gate of the palisade, past the still-smoldering beacon that during the night welcomed weary travelers to the only safe place within several days’ travel. The terrain near the town was mostly open, with small hills and scattered patches of brush and tall grass keeping it from being a monotonous waste – the land was no desert, but it wasn’t suitable for farming.

However, as they neared the crossroads proper, the beacon behind them suddenly exploded into flames, swirling around in a familiar whirlwind of sparks. Before they could really react to the apparent presence of a hidden mephit, a unicorn stepped out into the road before them – blue coat, a pale mane, and the unmistakable shimmer of an arcane forcefield providing protection. If that wasn’t enough to reveal that she was ready for a fight, a pair of mirror images flanked her, as she loudly proclaimed, “Twilight Sparkle! We meet at last!”

“Let me guess,” Twilight said, breaking off from her rear-guard position to parlay with the strange unicorn. “Trixie, I presume?” 

The unicorn reared up, and cackled. “Yes! It is I, the Great and Powerful Trixie, here to challenge you to single combat for your title as an adventurer!”

Twilight’s stomach twisted as something hideous in the other unicorn’s gaze seemed to sink into her soul. “And what do I get if I win?”

Trixie cackled. “If you win, you prove to your comrades that you are not a sniveling coward. Now, step forth and face me, if you dare!”

“So… we get nothing,” Applejack summarized. Trixie turned her gaze on the feline rogue, and she too felt some horrible crawling feeling underneath her fur as something wrong in the unicorn’s gaze unsettled her. “I think we’ll pass. Right, Twi?”

Trixie cackled. “If you wish… but you may regret it. Everypony! Attack!”

“Does that mean us?” came a screechy griffon voice from out of one of the nearby bushes.

Trixie cackled some more, her eye twitching, and answered. “Yes. It means everyone. Every griffon. And the minotaur too. Attack!” She punctuated her command with a spell – her horn glowed, and a massive explosion of glitter went off in the midst of the party, covering everyone in blinding sparkles.

Twilight and Applejack screamed and tried to wipe the sparkles out of their eyes in vain, while Rarity – also blind – took a step forwards and summoned a cloud of mist to hide them, since they couldn’t see anyway.

Pinkie Pie flew up out of the cloud and readied a bomb, while Rainbow Dash, leaving a glowing sparkle-trail, flew straight at their assailant, punching the center Trixie right in the forehead, which popped her out of existence since it was only an image. Rarity’s zombie – burn-scarred, spike-studded, skull-adorned, and now fabulously bedazzled – stumbled out of the mist, shambling forwards to join Rainbow Dash, but not coming close to matching her speed.

Before Dash could get another swing at Trixie or her remaining image, a pair of griffon warriors – bedecked in chainmail, wielding shields and swords – flew out of the bushes to intercept her, one of them slicing a deep gash along her side as she failed to twist out of the way in time. A third griffon warrior intercepted the zombie, while a hulking minotaur, eight feet tall, charged into the cloud of mist.

Trixie cackled as she stepped back, and with her magical levitation pulled a hissing firework out of her bag, the fuse already lit. But before she could aim it, Pinkie Pie’s bomb – held ready to interrupt a spell – hit her in the face and exploded, setting the firework off prematurely, and sending its scorching path of destruction, which would have badly burned everypony on the road, screaming harmlessly into the sky. Dash stepped forwards and punished her with a claw to the face, drawing a bit of blood, while effortlessly dodging the griffons’ swords.

Trixie cackled again, although it was more than half a screech of pain, and stepped back, again – eating another bomb to the face from Pinkie. This time, she was expecting it, and channeled through the pain, unleashing a cone of fire from her horn that washed over Rainbow Dash and her own allied griffons.

“Damn it, boss!” said one of the griffons, “Watch your fire!”

“If you two had managed to do your job, I wouldn’t have needed to handle her myself!” Trixie sneered over the singed body of her attacker.

“No! Dashie!” Pinkie Pie screamed, as she saw her friend go down.

Trixie pointed at the hovering pegasus. “Now take her out! I’m sick of having my spells interrupted!”

Meanwhile, confused noises came from the cloud – Twilight taking the name of the Moon Princess in vain, the sound of metal on metal, the barking of a large dog, the ‘kathump!’ of somepony slipping and falling, and Fluttershy’s voice screaming “STOP!”

But out in the open air, Pinkie Pie swooped and dodged as the pair of griffons closed in on her, avoiding their swords and smashing a bomb into the back of one of the pair. It engulfed them in a cloud of fiery smoke, which she alighted on with delicate ease. Both griffons fell out of the bottom of the cloud, trailing smoke as they slammed into the unyielding dirt.

Trixie cackled nervously as she watched the burning bodies of her underlings hit the ground, but with Pinkie distracted she was able to pull out a firework undisturbed, and aim it right at her, hitting the pegasus squarely between her wings and engulfing her in an fiery explosion, which blinded her and dissolved her cloud. Pinkie fell to the ground with a ‘thump’ and sprawled on the dirt next to her victims, disoriented but not badly hurt, shaking her head to clear her eyes.

Trixie cackled again, forcing herself to laugh as her last griffon was knocked silly by Rarity’s zombie, which then proceeded to keep beating him, again and again, not stopping just because his target had stopped fighting back. “Trixie… acknowledges that perhaps you might have some skill,” she said, backing away. “We should continue this at another time!”

“Hey!” Pinkie Pie shouted. “Come back!” But by the time the spots faded from her eyes, Trixie was nowhere to be seen, so all she could do was fly to Rainbow Dash and make sure she was okay. She glanced nervously at the cloud of mist, wincing as Twilight yelped in surprise, eliciting another cry of “STOP! Stop trying to hurt my friends!” from Fluttershy. The minotaur responded with a laugh – and the swoosh of his massive axe – and then there was a horrible scream from the flutterpony. She darted out of the mist, trailing tears and blood from a massive wound, one of her legs nearly severed.

“Fluttershy! Stop!” Pinkie Pie called after her, picking up Dash’s limp form and taking to the air in pursuit.

“Eee, I have to get away! He won’t listen and he’s going to kill us all!” Fluttershy whimpered, flying back into town and hiding behind the edge of the gate, blood pooling beneath her.

Pinkie Pie landed next to her, and dumped Rainbow Dash at her hooves. “Heal her, please,” the pegasus said. “Pleeeeeease! Twilight and Applejack need our help!”

Fluttershy whimpered, then gently touched Rainbow Dash and concentrated – and the griffon opened her eyes, with a moan.

“I. Hate. Trixie,” Rainbow snarled.

“Come on,” Pinkie Pie said. “We’ve got to go save Twilight and Applejack! They’re trying to fight the minotaur blind!”

With Fluttershy following far in the rear, the trio headed back to the battlefield, to find an exhausted but somehow unhurt trio standing next to the cloud of mist, still rubbing their eyes to try to get rid of the glitter.

“Don’t worry,” Twilight said. “We got him. Somehow.”

“I think Fluttershy’s summoned dog helped,” Rarity explained. “I’m not sure my grease did more good than harm. I was blind myself and I may have caught –“

“Yeah, you got both of us,” Applejack grumbled. “And not him.”

Rarity lifted her striped muzzle and snorted. “Well! Excuse me for not wanting to get in reach of that horrid axe.”

“Trixie got away,” Pinkie Pie said, frowning. “I suppose that means we don’t get any treasure for this.”

“Mm,” Applejack said, standing up and shaking herself off, then walking over to the nearest griffon, who’d been pounded into a paste by Rarity’s zombie, in the absence of other orders. The rogue poked around in the griffon’s armor, and came out with a small pouch clenched in her teeth. “Thought so,” she said, as she dumped a bit of gold onto the ground. “They looked like mercenaries. Check the others, see if they’re carrying their pay.”

And so, once again, lunchtime found the party back in the same inn, licking their wounds and counting their meager earnings. The griffons’ equipment had been worth a bit, pawned to the town blacksmith, and the minotaur had had 500 gold on him – apparently, he’d held out for a much bigger payday from the crazy unicorn.

It wasn’t until several hours later that anypony thought to check for the mephit who’d signaled Trixie about the party’s arrival – but by then, he was long gone, probably flying off to rejoin his mistress.

“She knew my name,” Twilight said. “I knew that I’d seen her before, but I still can’t place her.”

“Next time, ask?” Pinkie Pie suggested. “I mean, we’re bound to fight her again. Nopony with that annoying of a laugh tries to jump you once and then is never heard from again.”

> In a Flash
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

They met up in front of the bar the next morning before the sun rose, everything packed and ready to go. “Pinkie, Fluttershy, these are for you.” Two plain-looking slender wooden wands floated over to the pair, held in Twilight’s aura. “They cost most of the money we’d earned to date –“

“What?” Rainbow Dash asked, throwing her front claws in the air. “Come on!”

Rarity also looked perturbed. “Twilight, when we said you could keep track of the party’s finances it was because we thought you could be trusted. Did we make a mistake?”

“Nope!” Pinkie Pie said, pocketing her wand. “I think she did a great job. Right, Fluttershy?”

Fluttershy nodded. “These will be very useful.”

“Wands of Cure Light Wounds?” Applejack asked. Twilight, Pinkie, and Fluttershy nodded. “Well okay then. Makes sense.”

“You’re okay with this?” Rainbow Dash boggled. “Look, all of us have stuff we could buy that would help us do our jobs better. That doesn’t mean everypony else has to pay for them. This is completely unfair!”

“Do you want me to keep track of who the wands are used to heal, and make sure that nopony uses up more than her share of charges?” Rarity suggested.

“Do you want me to start fighting defensively and getting out of the way so that the enemies can charge the cloth-wielding mage?” Twilight countered.

“I’ll use less than either of you,” Rainbow muttered, but she dropped the argument.

Applejack rolled her eyes. “If we’re done inventin’ drama, can we get a move on before a giant force field drops out of the sky and traps us here forever?”

As the party left town once more, heading for the east road that led to the gorge, they were intercepted by –

“Just keep walking, act like you didn’t see it,” Rarity hissed.

As the party ignored him, the canine figure approaching them blinked, and reappeared in front of them, making sure that they could see the regalia of an official guild messenger on his barding. “Hey there, are you –“

“Run for it!” Rainbow Dash shouted, zipping away with a trail of rainbow colors. Giggling, Pinkie Pie flew after her, and with much less enthusiasm, the rest of the party followed.

”Hey, what are you –“ the guild messenger asked, as he blinked in front of the party only to be evaded again. “Girls? I have a –“ Again, the party ran around him. “—message and what are you –“

This went on for a while, until it became incredibly obvious that the party was not going to be able to get away from the Blink Dog sent as a messenger, since he could use Dimension Door at will. In particular, he could use it to keep pace with them and deliver his message even as they tried to run.

“He can’t force us to listen!” Rainbow Dash insisted, putting her claws over her ears. “NYA NYA NYA NYA I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”

Twilight, on the other hoof, resigned herself to her fate and allowed the messenger to deliver his missive.

His message was something of a relief to those who chose to listen to it – Katrina had been raised from the dead and had not only admitted to her traitorous behavior, but revealed that she had in fact been under long-term mind-control, which had been broken by her death, allowing her to finally tell what she knew of the true traitors who’d been pulling her strings. Unfortunately, she didn’t know who exactly was behind it, since they’d always appeared in disguise, except that it was some sort of pony. She also didn’t know their true agenda.

What she did know was that she’d been told to allow the party to succeed at the Adventurer Test regardless of their merits, after which they were to be assigned specific missions of her master’s choosing. The first mission was the one that they’d already chosen for themselves – to deal with the Diamond Gnoll incursion.

“And they actually bought this load of ponyfeathers?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I thought you weren’t listening,” Pinkie Pie said.

“Let’s just say there’s a downside to all that monk training about noticing the leaf falling from the cricket and whatever,” the griffon replied with a scowl. “Seriously, though – ‘it’s not my fault, I was charmed’?”

“The interrogators charmed her and –“ the blink dog said, blinking out mid-sentence, “—so they’re pretty sure it’s the truth. That’s why –“ he blinked out again, and had finished by the time he reappeared.

“Wow,” Pinkie said, staring at the messenger as he blinked in and out of existence at random. “You are super annoying.”

The blink dog whined pitifully. “I’m sorry – help it but – normally carry a scroll but – write it down because – of it they would know that we – then we couldn’t send you to –“

“What was that last part?” Rarity asked. “It sounded important.”

“Send you to – and if you find out what – do then report back so we can – they’re doing all this for.”

“Got it,” Twilight said with a confident nod. “You’d better run along before they notice that you’re with us. We’ll make sure to deliver a full report!”

The blink dog saluted, then vanished – and didn’t return.

“So… didja get all that, sugarcube?” Applejack asked. “You know what the Guild wants us to do?”

Twilight grinned through gritted teeth. “I have no idea.”

The party made good time along the eastern road. The terrain flattened out into more typical flat land, although a bit too dry for intensive farming. Back when the pegasi had been the masters of the weather, this had been a lush grasslands, but now, without their influence, it was a parched savannah, the natural weather patterns dumping all the rain that would have fallen on it into the mountains to the west.

At first, this was a mere curiosity – the party had plenty of water, and a dry trail was easier to trot along than a muddy one. However, around midday, smoke appeared on the horizon, quickly followed by the orange glow of a spreading fire.

“Oh dear,” Fluttershy said, eyes wide. “We need to run!”

“Can’t we just fly over it?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Applejack glanced at Rarity and Twilight. “Ya think you can carry Twi in her armor, poprocket? I’m not sure I could carry either of ‘em, but it’s worth a shot.”

After redistributing the non-flying characters’ equipment to Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash and Applejack were able to lift them into the air – barely. It was tiring to fly carrying so much weight, and slow. It was also terrifying for the two passengers, since flying high enough to avoid being roasted alive by the heat of the flames meant flying high enough that surviving a fall was unlikely.

Still, it was a solid plan – all they needed to do was pass over the flames and land in the burned-out area, and they would be safe. Unfortunately, when the fire approached, they could see that it wasn’t a natural fire at all – five flaming wolves yelped and barked as they circled under the weakening fliers, waiting for them to drop their delicious cargo so that the feast could begin!

Pinkie Pie removed one of the flasks from her sash. “Ready…” she said, as Fluttershy cocked the crossbow strapped to her foreleg with her teeth. “Aaaaim…” Fluttershy held the sights to her eye, her tongue looping out to work the trigger. “ACID!”

“What?” Fluttershy squeaked, her bolt going wide as she turned to look at Pinkie Pie. Below, a vial of acid exploded across three of the wolves, singing their fur with chemical burns.

“Well, I’m not going to use fire on them,” Pinkie said. “They’re already on fire.”

The two of them fired – er, acided – off a few more volleys before the futility of their attacks became clear. The wolves were regenerating faster than Pinkie could hurt them – in part because between the smoke and flames it was difficult to tell which was which – and she didn’t have an infinite supply of alchemical acid.

“Set me down,” Twilight said to the griffon carrying her. “The area’s mostly burned out, and it’ll free up both of us to attack.”

Rainbow Dash grinned. “I’ve got a better idea…” she said, with a gleam in her eye, as she swooped towards the ground.

“Ahhhhhh -- *thump*” Twilight tumbled across the ground, the wolf Rainbow Dash had tried to hit with her leaping nimbly aside. “Rainbow, I’m going to –“ she started, scrambling to her feet and taking her shield in her mouth. “Mmmphl! Grrmph!”

The cinder wolves closed in, one of them yelping as a vial of acid splashed across his back, but all of them united in purpose, as the purple pony waited for them to approach. They snapped and snarled, but none could get past her gleaming armor and flailing shield.

Unfortunately, when it came time for her to return the favor, she noticed that she was missing something very important – Pinkie Pie had her flail. “Frow me de fwail!” she shouted around her shield’s grip, crouching into a defensive posture.

“INCOMING!” Pinkie Pie shouted back, and tossed the weapon her way, bouncing it off one of the wolves’ heads. Twilight snatched it out of the air, and desperately shoved it into the snapping jaws of one of her assailaints, who’d taken her moment of distraction and used it to almost slip past her guard.

Rainbow made repeated passes at the enemies, trying to smack them without staying low enough for them to fight back, but couldn’t quite land a hit, and Twilight’s wild swings did little to deter them as they spread out to surround her – only for the two at her back to suddenly slip and fall as Rarity laid down a patch of grease. More acid splashed over a couple of the wolves as Pinkie Pie aimed at the ground nearby…

But one of the wolves got in a solid hit, and Twilight whimpered at the terrible sound of sizzling flesh as the wolf’s jaws sunk into her – a burst of flame scorching her hide as she was dragged to the ground.

It was the last thing the wolf ever did. Twilight wedged her flail under its jaw, wrapped the chain around its neck, and with a terrifying burst of magical strength, ripped its head clean off – catching another wolf in the side on the upswing, sending it flying as well. The spurting, headless body staggered back a few steps before collapsing, with no sign of its wounds continuing to regenerate after death. The other wolf she’d taken down didn’t get up either.

The last three wolves stayed to fight for a few more seconds, which proved to be a mistake. In those few seconds, Twilight and Rainbow Dash finished them off, with a little help from Pinkie’s last vial of acid and Fluttershy finally managing to hit her target.

“I wonder if this was Trixie’s doing,” Twilight asked, once the party was out of reach of the wildfire, whose progress had slowed considerably with the death of the monsters that’d caused it. The grass was dry, but there wasn’t enough wind to spread it very far.

“I don’t know… it doesn’t really seem like her style,” Rainbow Dash said. “There wasn’t enough cackling.”

Twilight looked unconvinced. “So, what? It was just a random monster attack?”

“They happen,” Applejack said. “There’s a reason merchants travel in groups, and it ain’t just for the pleasant conversation.”

“Um… girls?” Pinkie Pie asked. “What happened to Rarity’s zombie?”

The orc’s funeral was short, but heartfelt. In the single day they’d known him, in life, he’d proven to be a worthy and honorable opponent. In undeath, he’d beaten one of their enemies mercilessly until there was nothing left but blood and feathers. Now, as an inanimate pile of bone and ash, he could finally be at peace.

“I am such a featherbrain!” Pinkie Pie whined. “I didn’t even notice he was missing until after the fight.”

Applejack shook her head. “It’s not your fault, sugarcube. None of us did.”

“He was always so quiet,” Rarity sobbed, weeping over the remains. “He never complained, or rebelled against my orders. Not even once! And now… and now…”

She collapsed in sobs, rubbing the greasy ash into her fur.

“Kinda milking it a bit, isn’t she?” Rainbow Dash muttered.

> Dark of Night
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

As the sun set, Twilight Sparkle looked around the area they’d cleared in a small, subtle valley between two of the region’s gentle hills. “So, let’s go over the checklist. Rarity, you’re on cooking duty tonight.”

“Of course, dear,” Rarity said.

Twilight nodded, and checked the item off her list. “Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie found this campsite for us, and are concealing it from wandering monsters.” The two nodded as they fluttered around the campsite preparing things, and Twilight checked that off as well.

Which only left one thing. “Applejack and Rainbow Dash are too lazy to do anything, check.”

Rainbow Dash yawned and rolled her eyes. “I’m keeping watch.”

“Not until third watch, Rainbow Dash!” Twilight said, twisting the list in midair to show her the watch schedule. “You’re on third watch with Fluttershy. First watch is Rarity and Pinkie Pie.”

“That’s great and all,” the rainbow-feathered griffon said, “But who’s on watch now?”

“We’re still awake,” Twilight said. “So we don’t need a watch. If someone tries to sneak up on us, we’ll all have a chance of spotting them. Essentially, we’re all on watch until it’s time for us to go to sleep.”

“So I’m on watch. Like I said.” She rolled over onto her back, and batted at her own tail.

Most of the night passed uneventfully. The party hadn’t thought to bring any serious camping gear, but the ground was dry and firm and the weather was warm, so sleeping under the stars was reasonably comfortable. Rarity and Pinkie Pie spent most of their watch talking in low, hushed tones that kept the other party members from sleeping well, and as a result Twilight Sparkle fell asleep several times during the second watch.

“Don’t worry, sugarcube,” Applejack said, after waking her up for the third time. “Your secret’s safe with me.” Her grin was not reassuring.

Her slight dereliction of duty turned out not to matter, since nothing happened during the second watch either. It was during the third watch, where a well-rested Rainbow Dash was patrolling impatiently, and a determined Fluttershy kept careful watch over the most likely line of approach from her post concealed inside a large bush, that something happened.

There was a cry – a quiet whimper, from just over the hill. As one, the two fey on watch turned and flew away from their sleeping friends, chasing the enigmatic sound.

“Hey guys!” Rainbow Dash shouted over her shoulder, as she took to the air. “I hear something over thataway. Be right back!”

Rarity, Applejack, and Pinkie Pie awoke from Rainbow’s shout, but by the time they cleared their eyes and looked around, there was no sign of either of the ponies on watch.

“Well, that’s not good,” Applejack said. “Rares, wake up sleepy-horn. Pinkie, you’re with me.” There was no time to put on her armor, but she grabbed her magic dagger, and headed off in the direction she thought she’d heard Rainbow Dash shouting from. Pinkie Pie snagged her pouch of alchemy equipment, and followed after.

Pinkie Pie caught up to Applejack at the top of the hill, as the purrsian scanned the darkness for any sign of her friends. “There!” Pinkie hissed, pointing with a hoof at a half-badger, half-wolf, half-deer creature with a tail like a rat’s. “Ohmygosh! They’re following a leucrotta!”

“A what now?” Applejack asked, as she flew off in the direction indicated, Pinkie beside her.

“They must be hypnotized!” Pinkie Pie squeaked. “They can’t do anything but follow it until they get where it’s taking them! And then… it eats them!”

“Well, that ain’t gonna happen,” Applejack hissed.

Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were faster fliers than Applejack and Pinkie Pie, but were following the voices at a leisurely pace, while the two would-be rescuers were going all out. It didn’t take long for them to close the distance… and for Applejack, who still hadn’t spotted the leucrotta, to fall under the same spell. Pinkie Pie, able to see the hideous monstrosity’s mouth move as it sang its siren song, was not affected.

It was all up to her, so she made sure to prepare. The first potion mutated her into a sleek, lithe version of herself, every feather gleaming despite the lack of light. The second potion was one she’d started to prepare after the incident where she’d inadvertently set Rarity on fire, and – somehow – made the explosions of her bombs smaller and more intense. Then she flew as close as she could manage, and nailed the monster right in the middle of its back.

Back on the hill, Rarity and Twilight saw the flash of light, and started running towards the battle. Unfortunately, it would be half a minute before they would catch up, and by then…

“So, one of you has a strong enough will to resist,” the leucrotta taunted the pegasus, shaking its shoulders to flick off the rivulets of fire. “You should not have interfered.” As Rainbow Dash approached, it leapt up and tore into her, tearing out a chunk of the griffon’s flesh and then kicking her in the face. She fell to the ground, unmoving. It smirked at the hovering Pegasus. “Leave now, and the rest of your friends will live.”

The other two slowly started to come to their senses, as they reached the source of the voice. “Wha – what’s going on – Rainbow!” Fluttershy screamed, her eyes going wide as she saw the griffon bleeding out into the dry grass.

“You’ll pay for that,” Applejack scowled.

The leucrotta laughed, leaping aside as Pinkie Pie tried to nail it with another bomb, which flashed and fizzled into the dirt, then it ran behind some scrubby bushes and vanished again into the darkness.

Fluttershy took out her wand and touched it to Rainbow Dash’s wounds, which healed over, and the griffon gasped and leapt to her feet. The four stared off into the darkness in all directions, but couldn’t catch sight of their attacker.

“Raaaaainbow…” came a voice from the bushes, that sounded like the seductive call of a male griffon. “All of you, follow me… I have so much to show you…”

Applejack felt her eyes going fuzzy, but bit into her tongue and managed to break loose of the control. “Not this time, monster!” she hissed, slinking after it silently.

Fluttershy whimpered, as she watched the still-badly-wounded Rainbow Dash take off after the monster again, Pinkie Pie falling for its tricks now as well. But talking had given away its approximate position, and taking to the air, she was able to spot it. “Stop right there!” she screamed. The leucrotta turned to look, and was locked motionless by her gaze. Rainbow and Pinkie were able to catch up to it, ending its spell, and Applejack leapt from the darkness, slashing with her dagger and drawing blood.

Fluttershy held the monster’s gaze steadily. “You will NOT hurt my friends!” The leucrotta whimpered, but couldn’t bring itself to move as Applejack and Rainbow Dash took up flanking positions and tore into it, the griffon pummeling it about the head while Applejack stabbed it in the flank, then tore out its belly with her claws.

“But… but you’re just prey…” it whimpered, blood leaking from its mouth as it’s paws clutched at its spilled intestines.

“I am,” Fluttershy said gently, setting a hoof lightly on the monster’s cheek as its eyes lost focus in death. “But Rainbow Dash is strong, and she does not deserve this fate.”

By the time Twilight Sparkle and Rarity reached the scene of the battle, Fluttershy was done fussing over Rainbow Dash’s wounds, and Pinkie Pie and Applejack had thoroughly searched the monster for any valuables. It wasn't carrying any money or magical equipment, but in a hidden pouch inside its shaggy mane was some ink and a quill, and a piece of parchment with a paw-drawn map of the region on it.

A squiggly line seemed to represent the gorge, and a fortress set on the edge was described in great detail, with guard rotations and troop counts and a sketch of the anti-air ballista set on the roof of its tower. Most of the rest of the map was fairly uninteresting, with only small bits of forest here and there and of course the main road, which the party was following, with a notation that the leucrotta had found a patrol of six warriors.

“It was a spy!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed.

“For who?” Twilight Sparkle asked. “The diamond gnolls are nowhere near here. Nopony is anywhere near here, other than that fortress apparently, which should be under Empire control. We’re not exactly on the frontier.”

“It has to be spying for the diamond gnolls,” Pinkie Pie replied. “They work with leucrotta all the time. They must be spread out all through the whole gorge, not just the mine!”

“It’s an invasion!” Rainbow said, leaping into the air. “We’d better get to the fortress and warn them, before it’s too late!”

“I think you’re jumping to conclusions,” Twilight said uncertainly, then shook her head. “But it’s worth losing a little sleep on the off chance that you’re right. Let’s go back to the camp and get our things, and then head to the fortress without delay.”

> Fortress of Fear
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

With the excitement of the recent fight still running through their veins, the party of fey had no problems suiting up and moving out in the dark of night, but after several hours of forcing themselves to march through the darkness, everypony except for Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy – who’d gotten a full night’s sleep – were showing signs of fatigue. Applejack and Pinkie Pie felt it the worst, and for the last hour or so they had to carry Pinkie Pie, who’d collapsed from exhaustion.

They ended up approaching the fortress a little before noon, and it wasn’t clear how much time they’d saved, if any. On a more positive note, they had arrived in time – the fortress was still whole, and guarded by empire troops lined up along the walls. As they approached, a patrol of pony troops emerged and cantered towards them, perhaps to serve as an escort.

“Be careful,” Applejack said quietly to the others, crouching low to the ground from force of habit despite the lack of anything to hide behind in the open terrain. “Just because they’re flying the flag of the Empire doesn’t mean they’re actually on the up and up. There’s somethin’ not quite right about ‘em.”

“Relax, darling,” Rarity said. “They’re just undead. Pinkie and I passed by here on the way to the test.”

Indeed, the patrol was a dozen skeletal warriors, a mix of earth-bound ponies and pegasi, their bare bones rattling around in dented plate armor, with one surprisingly large earth-bound pony – possibly of Antean descent – leading the troop. His armor was all-encompassing, even his face hidden by a massive plate helm, but Rarity could tell that he was not undead.

The massive sergeant let out a heavy breath as he halted his troops in front of the party. “Adventurers?” he asked, after a few seconds of looking them over.

“We are,” Twilight proclaimed, stepping forwards and nodding sharply.

“ID?” the soldier asked.

Twilight produced her identification, which he leaned forwards to examine carefully.

After an uncomfortably long period of scrutiny, he seemed satisfied. “Come on in, then. The boss’ll want to talk to ya.”

As they approached the fortress, the party could see that it was far from intact. The stone walls and tower were blackened by soot, and the massive bridge over the gorge which the fortress had been placed to defend was in ruins – nopony without wings was using this road to cross over into zebra lands any time soon. The fortress was also undermanned – there were skeletal troops guarding all the walls, but it was only a fraction of the number that should have been present in a fort of this size, the undead making up for their lack of numbers with their ability to tirelessly man the wall without taking shifts. That’s not to say that there were no living souls within, but there were no living troops aside from the sergeant, and even the quartermaster and maid staff were undead.

“What happened to the bridge?” Rarity asked.

“Blew up,” the soldier answered, as he led them into the tower. “Boss can explain.”

Without much ceremony they were led to a comfortable chamber on the third floor of the tower, where the skeletal staff served them a simple but filling meal. Pinkie Pie awoke to the smell of food, and was able to partake, although she was still very tired. As they were finishing their repast, there was the sound of a door opening on the level above, and then the soft patter of leather-soled humanoid feet coming down the stairs, alternating with the clack of wood on stone.

“Ah, my newest recruits,” chuckled the aged orc, supporting himself with an ornate staff.

Rainbow Dash spit out the last of her food, looking down at the meal in horror.

“It wasn’t poisoned,” Fluttershy said, reassuring her. “I checked.”

The orc gave a hearty laugh. “If I wanted you as undead, why would I bother with poison? A circle of death would leave your bodies in a much more susceptible condition. No, no, I have plenty of undead. But I fear they won’t be sufficient, if the enemy returns in force.”

“What enemy?” Twilight Sparkle asked. “The diamond gnolls?”

“No, those cursed zebras!” the orc snarled.

The orc – whose name was Kazakh Thul – gave an explanation of his current predicament. He had at one point been a necromancer in the orcish army, but had more-or-less retired to pursue his studies in peace. He’d lived and worked in this small fort, that had hosted a garrison of orcish and pony soldiers to guard the plains from monsters and bandits, until the troops had been recalled to Rally, leaving him here alone with his undead.

Well, not entirely alone. He had more undead on duty than he could directly control, but undead soldiers not under the direct control of a necromancer tended to follow orders just as they had in life, so using his honorary rank he’d promoted one of the stable-boys to acting sergeant. The rest of the staff had died or left one by one, until only Thul and Macintosh were left to guard the fort, and they didn’t interact with each other much.

Then, just a few days ago, the zebras attacked – a battalion of zebra troops, in shiny new armor made of some strange blue metal, tried to cross his bridge in order to ravage the pony lands beyond. He’d tried to warn them off but they’d ignored him, so his only recourse was to collapse the bridge beneath them. Since then, he’d been harried by the zebra army’s fire drakes and purrsian flyers, but so far he’d managed to hold them off.

Rainbow Dash stared at the orc, then whispered to Rarity, “So he’s nuts, right?”

“He can hear you even if you speak in low tones,” Thul grumbled. “This is a small room.”

“You have to admit, your story does raise some serious questions,” Rarity said, brushing Rainbow Dash aside. “How can you be sure the zebras meant to invade?”

“I will not have my judgment questioned!” the orc shouted, his eyes narrowing in anger. “If you will not help me, then leave before I decide to add you to my forces!”

Pinkie Pie whimpered. “But I’m still so tired…”

“Okay, everypony, calm down,” Applejack said. “I think I know how we can settle this matter, without getting’ all up in each others’ faces. We know the diamond gnolls are tryin’ something, right?”

Rainbow Dash nodded. “Yeah. There was that spy.”

“So I reckon if the zebras are also tryin’ something, they’re in cahoots. We’re already heading down to deal with the gnolls, shouldn’t be hard to look for some evidence that the zebras are with ‘em. Or not,” she added, nodding to Rarity.

The orc growled softly, but seemed mollified. “If they are in league with the gnolls, it would be dangerous. Those diggers could arrange for an underground passage, right into the heart of the Empire.”

“Yeah, we could be in serious trouble,” Applejack said, flicking her tail as she rubbed up against the orc’s robes. “I don’t suppose you might have some supplies or whatnot to help make sure our mission’s a success?”

The orc snorted, as he reached down and scratched her between the ears. “Macintosh deals with the mundane supplies. You’ll have to talk to him. The most important thing I can offer you is this advice – don’t trust the zebras.”

“Are we allowed to trust Rarity?” Pinkie Pie asked, glancing at the party’s zebra.

“Only as far as you can throw her,” Thul said.

Pinkie Pie grinned widely. “Great! I can throw her pretty far, if I start high enough up.”

It was obvious that the orc didn’t completely trust even the non-zebra members of the party, since they occasionally spotted a shadow creeping around and watching them as they made their way about the fort, but he had provisionally accepted them as allies. Macintosh was significantly more helpful, opening the fortress’ long-neglected armory, which sadly had only ordinary-quality weapons and armor, all of the good stuff having been claimed by the former garrison when it left. He also made sure they were outfitted with climbing equipment and plenty of rope, as well as a proper set of tents and bedrolls.

“I bet I know someone who wants to get him into her bedroll,” Rainbow Dash snickered, as Fluttershy and Macintosh disappeared into the stables to talk about animals.

“I’m sure it’s a purely professional relationship,” Twilight said, using the fort’s blacksmithing tools to sharpen the spikes on her flail. “And if it’s not, I’m sure it’s none of your business.”

Rainbow turned to the winged cat napping in the rafters. “Applejack, you can sneak in and see what they’re up to, right? You’re all sneaky and stuff.”

“No way, no how,” Applejack said. “I don’t even want to know.”

After a long discussion, the party decided to stay the night at the fort, since resting from the forced march used up most of the rest of the daylight, and walking on a narrow cliffside path in the darkness was a recipe for disaster, even for ponies (or other creatures) with wings. The barracks had plenty of uncomfortable cots for everypony, although Fluttershy slept in the stables with Sergeant Macintosh.

During the second watch, Applejack and Twilight heard the beating of vast wings from the air above the fort, and were able to spot a dark shape looming against the stars just before it opened its mouth and spat a blinding ball of fire at the tower – a fire drake was attacking, under cover of darkness!

After blasting open the tower’s shutters with its flame breath, the drake swooped over to the window, and a gnoll riding on its back tossed something through, into Thul’s quarters. Ugly green smoke billowed from the window as it filled the room.

“Oh no you don’t,” Twilight said, levitating a javelin she’d taken from the armory, and flinging it at the drake. The small throwing spear sank into its belly, drawing blood – and its attention.

Fluttershy emerged from the stables, with Mac close behind, and shouted, “Hey you big meanie, get down here! Land!” But either the drake didn’t hear her, didn’t speak her language, or simply resisted her spell. As Applejack hid, the rest of the party emerged from the barracks to see what was going on, and the skeletal archers on the wall took pot-shots, the drake swooped down at Twilight, hovering just out of her reach and darting its head forwards to sink its teeth into her sides, piercing her armor effortlessly. 

She screamed as it dropped her, the scent of her blood mixing with the smell of her burning flesh, but was still spry enough to block an arrow shot at her by the gnoll on the monster’s back. And then, narrowing her eyes at her flying opponent, she turned tail and ran, ducking through the door into the heavy stone walls of the armory.

“Did she just run away?” Rainbow Dash asked, as Macintosh and the skeletons rained inaccurate fire on the flying attacker, and Rarity tried to use her own magic on the creature, with about as much luck as Fluttershy, who took off after Twilight, vanishing into the armory as well.

“Less talking, more flanking,” Applejack hissed. The griffon nodded, and the two leapt into the air. 

“Stunning fist!” shouted the griffon as she kicked the dragonkin in the face. Applejack was silent as she stabbed it in the back.

Rainbow screamed as her bold attack earned her a savage, flame-filled bite from the creature, whose reach far outstripped the griffon’s.

“Stop callin’ yer damn attacks!” Applejack hissed, then sputtered as a freezing burst exploded over her face, as Pinkie nailed the flame drake’s rider with a vial of something cold.

“Eep! Thought you could dodge!” she said, covering her mouth with her hooves as she saw her friend get splattered.

But the worst of her attack had hit the rider, who was slumped unconscious in the saddle. Without its rider directing it, the drake enraged, and flailed around with teeth and tail, latching onto Rainbow Dash and shaking her wildly before flinging her into the roof of the barracks, where she lay unmoving. Applejack was a bit luckier, only catching a tail slap in the face, and managed to stay in the air.

“Chaaaaarge!” screamed Twilight, bursting forth from the armory with a massive 10’ spear in her magical grip – one long enough to skewer the drake in the side. As it squirmed on the end of her spear, Mac threw a javelin which took it in the neck, and the creature shrieked as it fell to the earth with a massive thud. It didn’t get back up.

Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, rushing to her aid, discovered Rainbow Dash barely clinging to life. Between Fluttershy’s remaining magic and their wands, they were easily able to save her, and to heal the relatively minor wounds suffered by the rest of the party. The wizard emerged from the tower a few minutes later, having finally shaken off the choking effects of the bomb.

To Pinkie Pie’s dismay, the gnoll was not carrying any more poisonous bombs, but he did have a short bow with four remaining arrows, each tipped with an arrowhead of a strange blue metal, which allowed them to deal fire damage even though they were only faintly magical, and not enchanted per se. He also had a masterfully crafted chain shirt of the same blue metal, but it would take at least a day for Twilight to modify it for any of the party to wear, so it was better to settle for the lower quality but already pony-fitted chain shirts from the armory. Lastly, he had a loud, bright firework to shoot off, presumably to call in the rest of the assault once he’d verified that the wizard was down.

Despite being in what was obviously a military uniform of some sort, neither the gnoll nor the drake was wearing any form of insignia.

Kazakh Thul spent the rest of the night on guard atop the tower, watching for more attackers, but the enemy had grown wary of his power and no further attack was forthcoming.

“Blue metal,” Twilight said, staring at the arrows, which she’d claimed since no one else in the party could fire a bow. “On a gnoll. You know what this means.”

“It means the crazy necromancer ain’t as crazy as we thought,” Applejack said.

“Yeah, and you know what else it means?” Rainbow Dash said, with a grin. “It means we totally get to loot that mine.”

> Ghastly Gorge
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“We knew we were taking this path,” Rainbow Dash remarked, as she slowly flew next to the trail carved into the canyon wall. “We knew that this path was narrow and twisty.” It was built mostly following a natural ledge, but it had been improved with tunnels through some of the rock formations, and rickety wooden platforms that sometimes stretched for hundreds of yards. “Why did we pick up two large creatures just before taking it?”

Fluttershy blushed, from her perch atop Sergeant Macintosh’s back. “I’m sorry, Rainbow, but Macintosh and I share a special bond. I couldn’t leave him behind!”

“Yeah yeah, so you’re in love, whatever,” Rainbow said, rolling her eyes. “That doesn’t mean he automatically gets to join the party.”

Fluttershy cringed. “No, I mean – it’s not that I don’t love him, although I don’t know if he’d even be…” her voice trailed off into a squeak, and then she shook her head, and explained. “He’s my companion!”

Twilight Sparkle glanced at her. “Your animal companion?”

Fluttershy nodded. “My bonded mount. It’s one of the mysteries of nature – we can pick a horse, a riding dog, or a pony as a companion, to share in our power and be joined with us, forever.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Twilight replied. “Even if ponies were animals, which we’re not, why would an oracle of nature get a version of the power that’s so clearly tied to a civilized concept like the domestication of riding animals?”

“It’s a mystery!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed happily, doing a loop in midair.

Twilight took a deep breath, and managed to ignore the pun. “And he’s okay with this,” she asked instead, glancing at the large pony, who indeed didn’t seem to have any trouble carrying Fluttershy, and for that matter most of their camping gear.

“Eeyup,” Mac replied.

“Just don’t think about it too hard, sugarcube,” Applejack said, her ears flat against her head. “I’m sure tryin’ not to.”

“Fine,” Rainbow Dash said. “Fine! That just leaves the 900 pound elephant in the room.” She glared right at Rarity.

“Oh!” Rarity said, her eyes going wide. “Sparky is not an elephant! He is a sleek, efficient killing machine, and most certainly not 900 pounds.” She stopped and let her skeletal fire drake catch up with her, and nuzzled its cheekbone. “Don’t listen to that uncouth griffon, Sparky. Mommy loves you, yes she does!”

“He’s covered in evil slime,” Rainbow Dash said, deadpan. “Which you just got all over your face.”

Rarity sniffed. “Prestidigitation is a cantrip,” she said, using said cantrip to clean off her face. “And it’s not ‘evil slime’, it’s self-healing necrotic fluid.”

“Neck-rotting what now?” Applejack asked.

“It means ‘evil slime’,” Rainbow Dash explained, folding her arms.

“What it means,” Rarity said, firmly, “is that I don’t have to worry about Sparky being taken from me by something as simple as a wildfire, or some brutish fighter’s mace. Even if he falls in battle, the ‘evil slime’ will bring him back to me.”

“That couldn’t be cheap,” Twilight Sparkle said, glancing back at her with concern. “How did you convince Thul to animate Sparky for you?”

“We came to an arrangement,” Rarity said, pouting. “I don’t wish to discuss it any further.”

Everypony stared at her. “You didn’t,” Rainbow Dash said.

“NO, Rainbow Dash, I most certainly did not!” Rarity snapped.

“She totally did,” Rainbow Dash whispered to Twilight.

“Nnng!” Rarity growled, gritting her teeth.

Despite the path being clearly meant for pony-sized creatures, there weren’t any chokepoints so small that Sparky and Macintosh couldn’t squeeze through. This is a good thing, since between the rapids, waterfalls, cliffs, and rockfalls, the bottom of this section of Ghastly Gorge was not navigable, by foot or by boat.

The path was well hidden, however. Most of it was quite difficult to spot from the top of the gorge, thanks to the sheer nature of the cliffs and the depth to which they sank. The lack of direct sunlight left them in shadow for those stretches which weren’t passing through tunnels or screened by scrubby dry vegetation. They passed by a looming zebra fortress, and were overflown by several flame drake patrols, with no sign that they had been spotted.

As nightfall neared, they started looking for somewhere to sleep. An obvious place presented itself – a series of small caves carved into the side of the gorge, in an area where the slope was significantly less steep, albeit covered in gravel.

“Well, this is convenient,” Applejack said, stopping short and letting the rest of the party pile up behind her, while she peered carefully at the caves. “I reckon I should sneak up and give ‘em a once over, just in case they’re not as innocent as they look.”

“This looks innocent to you?” Rainbow Dash asked, incredulously. “Because to me it screams ‘quarray eels’.”

“Those are a myth,” Twilight said. “If anything, we’d run into Purple Worms. Or Tatzylwyrms.”

“Or diamond gnolls, maybe,” Applejack said. “Either way, I’d better take a peek.”

Rainbow Dash landed and crouched down, staring nervously at the caves. “Okay, but if you get your head bitten off –“

“Then sell my stuff and get me resurrected,” Applejack finished for her, then went in.

The rogue silently padded across the gravelly slope and vanished into one of the caves, and a few seconds later, there was a loud ”Baaaaaaaah,” and she came flying right back out, slipping on the gravel until she spread her wings and took to the air.

“Ow,” she said, circling slowly to land back near the party, rubbing a large bruise on her shoulder.

“So they saw you,” Rainbow Dash asked, as a chorus of answering ‘Baaaaaah’s came from the surrounding caves.

“Probably heard your whinin’ and wailing and were waitin’ for me,” Applejack said with a scowl.

“Actually, if those are goats, they probably hunt by scent.” Twilight said, readying her weapon. She’d swapped out her old flail for a long-handled hammer with a spear point and a hook on the back-side for prying apart armor.

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance that we can talk to them, and try to work something out?” Rarity asked.

From every cave, giant dire goats emerged, with blood in their eyes. There was no sign of equipment or sapience, just angry, territorial beasts.

As it turned out, animals whose tactics rely on knocking down opponents so that they tumble to the bottom of a cliff fare very poorly against flyers. With ‘Sparky’ blocking the edge of the trail to protect Twilight, Rarity, and Mac, the four flying warriors were able to take out the goats, eventually, using crossbow bolts, thrown rocks, and Applejack’s magic dagger which, somewhat to her surprise, pulled itself out of the goat’s skull she sank it into on her first throw and returned to her mouth to be thrown again. The goats were too stubborn to run away even after it was obvious that there was literally nothing they could do, and soon enough they were nothing but a pile of goat carcasses at the bottom of the ravine, leaving a bunch of empty caves.

One of them was large enough for the party to set up camp in. As everypony was laying out their bedrolls, Rainbow Dash flew down and grabbed a goat carcass, dragging it into the entrance.

“Is that supposed to be some sort of camoflauge?” Twilight asked, wrinkling her nose at the grisly sight.

Rainbow shrugged. “I was thinking ‘midnight snack’, but sure, let’s go with that.”

The night did not pass uneventfully. Sparky was left on guard with orders to wake the party with his tail if anything approached the cave, and that didn’t happen, but Pinkie Pie and Sergeant Macintosh awake to the sound of wings, a thump as a large creature landed, and then a rough gnollish voice.

“Woooah, Cinder. Don’t start eating until we figure out what killed them. This could be a trap.” There was the sound of metal-shod boots tromping across gravel, and then, “Huh. This looks like an arrow wound. Or maybe from a crossbow?”

Pinkie quickly woke up the rest of the party, and quickly explained. “We’ve got to stop her!”

“I hate fighting at night,” Twilight complained, giving a forlorn look at the armor that she wouldn’t be able to wear. “But Pinkie’s right. If she flies off she’ll be back with reinforcements. At the very least, the rest of the army will be alerted to our progress.”

“How should we do this?” Applejack asked. “I could sneak up…”

“No time, let’s just charge,” Rainbow hissed.

Twilight nodded. “I agree. Rarity, send Sparky in first to draw fire. Everyone else, hit them hard and fast. Let’s go!”

Sparky burst from the cave mouth, charging at the drake and sinking his skeletal fangs into its neck. This effectively distracted the drake, as it retaliated in kind, and the two drakes curled around each other in a frenzied melee. Rarity, for her part, stood in the cave entrance and blew a cloud of green dust off of one of her hooves, which swirled through the air to envelop the drake-rider, outlining her in glittering sparkles and – from the way that she immediately cried out and reached up to claw at her eyes – blinding her as well.

Twilight was next out of the cave, her lucerne hammer held in her magic as she skidded down the gravel slope – and lost her balance, rolling head over hooves to sprawl in an ignominious heap at the base of the goat pile. Macintosh fared a little better, managing to keep his feet, although his attempt at a jab with his rack-mounted lance failed to find a target. But between Applejack’s much more successful airborne approach, and some supporting fire from Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, they managed to take down the rider before she could set off a firework flare, let alone get back to her mount to flee.

Meanwhile, Sparky was losing against the living drake, but a fearsome charge from Sergeant Macintosh skewered the unfortunate creature lengthwise, and with a final ear-piercing shriek, it fell still.

“Well, this sucks,” Rainbow Dash scowled, hovering in midair with nothing to fight. “I didn’t get to do anything.”

Twilight picked herself up, and rolled her eyes. “Well, if you want to be useful, see if you can find us somewhere else to spend the rest of the night. If a pile of dead goats attracted attention, I don’t want to think about what a dead flame drake is going to do.”

“Can we make it look like an accident?” Fluttershy asked. “Or an animal attack?”

“With a wound like that?” Twilight asked, gesturing at the massive lance wound.

“I suppose we can try,” Rarity replied. “I haven’t ever worked my trade on a creature this large, but I’ve certainly made wounds worse than this one look presentable for an open casket.” She pulled a fearsome assortment of knives and clamps and other tools of torture from her bags. “Prepare to watch a master at work. Bwa ha ha ha ha!”

Most of the party declined to watch. Pinkie Pie found it fascinating, though.

The base of the canyon was navigable in that part of the gorge, and the party found another place to conceal a campsite a few hundred feet away. A flight of four flame drakes with riders did eventually arrive to investigate their missing companion, only to find a pair of corpses seemingly killed by the teeth and claws of a large creature – from the scorch marks on the gnoll, possibly a wild drake. “We’d better tell the outposts to be on the lookout for an aerial attack,” one of them eventually concluded. “Wild drakes can be dangerous.”

“You don’t think it’s that crazy wizard, do you?” another asked.

“Not likely. He’s not shy with the death spells, and I don’t see the signs.”

With that, they took off to report back to their masters.

> Silent Approach
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Setting out as the sky brightened, the party travelled most of the day without incident, still following the narrow, hidden pathway as it led deeper and deeper into the gorge. The river at the bottom of the gorge was a respectable rapid-filled stream by this point, and if it wasn’t for the frequent waterfalls and boat-smashing boulders, it might even have been possible to travel down it.

After hours of travel – exactly how many hours would have been difficult to keep track of, without sight of the sun – Rainbow Dash spotted something moving up ahead, just past a rickety rope bridge, near one of the carved tunnels. Several diamond gnolls had set up an ambush, and were waiting for the ponies in the lead to fall into their trap!

Rarity spotted them as well. She casually reached into her component pouch to cast a spell – only to have a volley of arrows fly towards her from the hidden gnolls, who’d spotted her attempt at spellcasting. Since she was hiding near the back of the party, they didn’t have a very good shot, and one arrow went wide while two more bounced off the armor of her better-protected friends, but one struck true, thudding into her chest just as she started to incant, “Glitter -- *cough*!” Sparkles exploded around her, green dust splattered to the ground as she clutched at the sudden wound, and the spell was lost.

Rainbow shouted “Ambush!” and charged over to kick the gnoll responsible in the face, but the damage was done. Twilight was close behind, charging recklessly across the bridge and splattering a gnoll’s head with her long hammer. That drew fire not only from the second rank of archers, but from another pair hiding farther back in the darkness of the cave – but none of the arrows penetrated her defense.

The remaining gnoll in the front rank shook herself out of her stun just in time to dodge Rainbow Dash’s follow-up attacks, and then the rest of the party finally realized that they were under attack. Sergeant Macintosh threw an enormous javelin, impaling one of the second-rank gnolls but not taking him out of the fight entirely; Applejack darted through the enemy ranks, weaving past them with practiced grace, and was just about to enter the cave when Pinkie Pie – hot on her tail – shouted “Wait!” and tossed a bomb into the cave, filling it with noxious smoke.

“Pinkie, no!” Twilight shouted, clambering over the low cover the first rank had used, and swinging her hammer at the next set of gnolls, slaughtering them both this time, with casual ease. “We can’t let them get away! They’ll raise the alarm!”

“On it,” Rainbow Dash said, effortlessly dodging – “Ow!” Just failing to dodge a vicious stab as the archer she’d wounded pulled out a shortsword, and then gracefully disengaging – “Darn it!” And then taking a deep, jagged slash to her hind leg as she launched herself into the air, swooping in a wide arc around the tunnel, and crying out a victorious screech as she dive-bombed a gnoll who was trying to flee out the back of Pinkie’s cloud.

Applejack leaped on the remaining gnoll on her side of the cloud from behind, raking both claws down her back and then slitting her throat with the magic dagger, finally putting an end to her run of good luck.

When the smoke cleared enough to enter the cave, they saw one of the gnolls from the cave coughing up his lungs and vomiting, and Rainbow Dash standing over the body of the other farther down the path. The dead gnoll was clutching a firework, but hadn’t had time to light it before Rainbow’s pounce.

The ponies dragged the bodies into the cave to strip them of any valuables – of which there were few, chiefly two dozen more fire arrows, and strange but non-magical amulets of blue metal, which each of the gnolls wore – while Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy attended to the wounded, and Twilight tied up the prisoner.

“Um…” Fluttershy said. “Weren’t we supposed to be talking to them first?”

“The arrow wound in my chest says that the time for talking has passed, dear,” Rarity croaked, still poking at the spot where the wound had been until Fluttershy healed it. “And this isn’t the first time they’ve instantly attacked us.”

“Actually…” Fluttershy said, trying to remember if the gnolls had ever actually attacked first, or if they’d just been ready for a fight and responded to the party’s aggression, as they had this time. In the end, she decided that she didn’t want to argue about it, and just said, “nevermind.”

“I’m actually in favor of talking,” Twilight said, using her magic to tighten the last knots around the prisoner’s bonds. “So you, gnoll. Talk.”

“You’re going to kill me anyway,” the gnoll growled. “Just get it over with. All my friends are already dead, I might as well go meet them in the afterlife.”

“Oh, oh no,” Applejack said, slinking into the cave and crawling up the prisoner’s chest until she had him pinned against the wall, tail lashing back and forth behind her. “No no no,” she said. “We’re not going to do this quick.” She traced a claw along the gnoll’s cheek, stopping just sort of his eye. “We’re going to do this nice and slow. I haven’t had a chance to really enjoy mahself in ages.”

“I’ll talk!” the gnoll squeaked, a wet patch spreading down his leggings. “Just keep that crazy cat away from me!”

As it turned out, the gnoll had a lot of information to give about the mine. The diamond gnolls had indeed been mining an old silver mine claimed by Bright Valley, which had been abandoned for decades because it never panned out. Something had drawn the ‘high priest’ to the dusty old cave, and deep inside he’d found the blue mud which, after processing, became the blue metal. They’d been discovered by a zebra patrol, but the priest had paid them off somehow, and since then the zebras had been working with them, even giving them half a dozen tame flame drakes to ride.

He didn’t know why the blue metal was so important, beyond its obvious magical properties like the way it made arrows tipped with it burst into flame in flight. It was very easy to work with, however – as easy to shape as clay, but as strong as metal once fired.

Lastly, he pointed out the secret door in the cave wall, that led to the room where they slept and kept their food and other supplies. “I’ve told you everything I know,” the gnoll says at last. “Now let me go, or kill me quickly.”

“We can’t let him go,” Rainbow Dash said. “Right?”

“Right,” Twilight said, wiping her greatsword off on the gnoll’s fur, then sliding it back into its sheath, as his severed head tumbled to the ground. “Let’s see if their secret cave has anything useful in it.”

Aside from some more fireworks and plenty of mundane supplies, the main attraction in the cave was a map of the mine’s defenses. The fortress they’d passed earlier was the nearest location with a significant number of troops, and it would take them hours to arrive on foot, although there was an elevator to the top of the Zebra side of the gorge right at the mine itself. The map didn’t detail the total number of guards at the mine, although the symbol for the flame drake hangar was very close, possibly part of the same complex.

It also indicated another hidden scouting outpost farther along the trail, maybe a half hour’s walk from the mine itself.

“If it’s set up the same as this one, we should send somepony ahead to block any runners,” Twilight said, sketching out a rough map with six ‘X’s in a line, and sending a dotted line around to the back. “And by somepony, I mean Applejack.”

“Somecat, then,” Pinkie Pie said.

Twilight rolled her eyes. “They’ll hear us coming, but wait in ambush. Rarity opens up with a glitterdust without getting shot this time –“

“I trust you have some plan to ensure that?” Rarity asked.

“We’ll know they’re there, so Rainbow Dash and I can charge them to draw their fire,” Twilight said, drawing an arrow to indicate the charge. “Be ready to fire off the spell when they draw their bows to shoot – you should be able to blind them before they can take proper aim.”

Rainbow Dash stared at the map with her head tilted. “Huh?”

Twilight let out a breath, “Okay, let me explain in detail. We wait for Rarity to ready her spell. Rarity readies the spell to fire when any gnoll takes aim at us, or when we come within ten feet of the barricade. If the gnolls are ready to fire at us when we show any sign of hostility, then her spell should hit them before they can attack.”

“But she started her spell first last time,” Rainbow Dash said, “and they managed to interrupt her before she could finish. If she’s waiting for them to start attacking before she starts casting, won’t it take longer?”

“No,” Twilight said, tapping her hoof on the map. “Readied actions always interrupt the action they were readied to react to. It seems counterintuitive, but I had it drilled into me by the weapon-master who oversaw my training. She gave me many, many practical demonstrations.”

Pinkie Pie nodded sagely. “Time in combat isn’t a matter of one thing happening right after another. It’s all sort of, you know.” She wiggled her wings a bit. “Poofy! Usually you can do a couple things before anypony can really react to you.”

“Don’t worry about it too much, sugarcube,” Applejack said.

“No, I think I’ve got this,” Rainbow Dash said. “If I got ready to fly way out of range of somebody’s sword if they attacked me, it’d be impossible for me to ever get stabbed?”

Twilight shook her head. “You can’t ready a proper withdrawal, so they’d be able to take an attack of opportunity.”

“Yeah, but I can tumble and stuff, and dodge those,” Rainbow Dash said. “And if they’re moving up to hit me, I can get ready to move out of the way if they get in range, instead.”

“I –“ Twilight furrowed her brow. “I guess that might work, for a while. I’m sure there’s a counter. If nothing else, you won’t be doing any attacking of your own.”

“Bullfightin’,” Applejack said. “That’s what she’s talkin’ about. Get a critter nice and mad and get her to charge ya, then leap to the side so she can’t hit ya. Works like a charm, since ya can’t turn in the middle of a charge.”

“Huh,” Twilight said. “I’ll have to keep that one in mind.”

After leaving the hidden cave, it didn’t take long for them to approach the second scout outpost. By this point, the trail was only a few dozen feet above the base of the canyon, which was filled with a narrow, rushing river, whose water was pitch black. As they approached the last bit of cover before being in view of the enemy, Applejack left the trail and managed to vanish into the shadows, staying out of line of sight by hugging the wall below the trail. They gave her a minute or two to get into position, and then stepped out into the open to execute their plan.

Rarity took a deep breath to steady herself, while her friends tried to act casual, waiting for her to be ready before starting their charge. Once she was calm, she quietly reached into her pouch to ready the spell components. But before she could even start to cast, six arrows arced towards her from the gnollish ranks. As before, several of them were blocked by party members, or went awry due to the gnolls’ less than stellar marksmanship, but three flaming arrows struck true. There was a flash of pain, and then nothing.

“Oh come on!” Twilight shouted, as she and Rainbow Dash made their charge. This outpost was set up a bit differently, on a wide platform-like ledge that let the gnolls spread out in a proper firing line, behind a spiked wooden barrier that would probably do something nasty to anypony trying to charge through it. Luckily for the fey, Twilight’s weapon had enough reach to hit the gnolls from beyond the spikes, and Rainbow Dash had wings. She was too flustered to get a good swing in, though, and it whipped harmlessly over the archers’ heads. Rainbow did manage to punch one of them in the face, at least.

“Um… girls?” Fluttershy said, hovering over Rarity and triggering her wand. The arrow-studded zebra didn’t move. As usual, no one listened to her.

“I guess readying a spell counts as a hostile action?” Pinkie Pie suggested, flying in behind a fearsome lance charge by Sergeant Macintosh. Since there was room for him to get into the fight this time, he’d crashed right through the barricade, letting its spikes shatter against his armor, and impaled a hapless gnoll, killing her instantly. Pinkie stopped a ways behind him and tossed one of her typical bombs, minus the smoke cloud this time. It smashed into the same gnoll Rainbow had wounded, finishing it off and splashing two more gnolls – and Rainbow Dash herself – with burning goop. Rainbow squawked in surprise, but didn’t otherwise complain.

The surviving gnolls drew swords, and three of them engaged each of the party members one on one as the fourth withdrew, undoubtedly planning to send up a flare and then run to report in person. Applejack was waiting, of course – in just the right place to step out of the shadows and tear out his guts before he even knew he was under attack.

“I think Rarity’s dead!” Fluttershy said, trying her wand again, with no more luck this time.

“So heal her already!” Rainbow Dash said, as the three of them continued their struggle against the gnolls, she and Twilight getting hits in but failing to take anygnoll down. “Isn’t that what you do?”

Pinkie Pie and Applejack joined in, pouncing on the gnolls from behind. It wasn’t any surprise to see Applejack’s target go down, spurting blood from a sudden dagger in the back, but Pinkie Pie’s pathetic ‘hi-ya!’ kick to the back of the gnoll Rainbow was fighting somehow knocked him unconscious.

The last gnoll tried desperately to pull out a firework to send up an alarm, but while she was distracted with that, Twilight’s hammer took her right under the chin, removing not only her muzzle but her entire face.

“One of the arrows is in her eye, Twilight! It’s sitting right in her brain… and another is in her chest again, and I think it hit her heart, and – and –“ Fluttershy babbled, as the rest of the party let themselves relax, with the fighting over.

“What are you saying?” Twilight asked, turning to head back towards the panicking flutterpony.

“She’s dead,” Futtershy said, wings drooping as she let herself land.

“That’s… not good,” Rainbow Dash said, hovering nearby.

“I know!” Pinkie Pie said, eyes wide in a panic. “If she’s dead, who’s controlling Sparky?”

Everypony slowly turned to look at the hulking skeletal drake.

“Wouldn’t worry too much,” Sergeant Macintosh said. “Skeletons don’t think. If they’re not controlled, they just do what they did in life.”

“You mean, try to kill us?” Pinkie Pie pointed out. “He was on their side.”

Sparky roared in rage, and pounced on Fluttershy, snapping her up in his jaws and mangling her badly, dropping her unmoving form at his feet and advancing on the others. Pinkie Pie squealed in terror, and flung a bomb in the skeleton’s face, splashing Rarity and Fluttershy’s bodies with fire, but barely slowing it down. Applejack and Rainbow Dash moved to attack it from the air, although with the canyon wall to one side they couldn’t flank – it took a snap at the purrsian rogue as she closed in, but didn’t catch her. Unfortunately, their claws and fists did little against the slime-covered bones.

“Pinkie, get out of the way!” Twilight shouted, charging for the skeleton standing over the bodies of her friends, and bringing her hammer down on its head, where it bounced harmlessly off the thick, reinforced bone.

That at least got Sparky’s attention, and Twilight, in her thick armor, was a lot harder to hurt than poor Fluttershy. She parried his jaws with her shield, while his flailing tail bounced harmlessly off her side.

“This is not workin’,” Applejack said, getting in a solid hit on the bony creature and failing to do much more than scrape off a bit of slime.

“We don’t need to kill it!” Rainbow Dash said. “If I can just cripple it –“ but she couldn’t even get in a good hit, as she dodged around looking for an opening.

“We can’t kill it, but we need to take it down,” Twilight said, finally crunching her hammer into a vulnerable spot. “We need Rarity’s body if we’re going to raise her, and Fluttershy might still be alive!”

Applejack tumbled through the air, landing on the path behind the drake to flank with Twilight, as its teeth closed around the unicorn’s leg, bloodying and burning her before she could pull it free. “Okay, sugarcube,” Applejack said, swiping with her dagger at the tail which danced maddeningly out of reach. “But there’s a sayin’, don’t throw good money after bad.”

“We can do this!” Pinkie Pie said, tossing another bomb smack in the middle of the drake’s back. This one was focused, by her targeted admixture, and clung to the skeleton and burned it horribly instead of splashing on everypony.

Twilight dodged a few more of the drake’s attacks, before landing a solid hit on its sternum – and without any fanfare, Sparky collapsed into a pile of slime-covered bones.

Fluttershy was indeed still alive, and Pinkie Pie was able to heal her with half a dozen charges from her wand. Rarity, however, was very very dead. Not as dead as the badly wounded gnoll survivors after Rainbow Dash was done taking out her frustration on them, but quite dead nonetheless.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen,” Fluttershy said, pouting over the zebra corpse. “I was supposed to be the first to die, to protect those stronger than me.”

“Honestly… she was kind of a weakling,” Twilight said. “She also had that strange fascination with the undead. We should replace her with a more traditional wizard, with fireballs and things. Maybe a sorcerer.”

“Stop talking about her in the past tense!” Rainbow Dash said. “We need to go back and get her raised from the dead, right now!”

“Are you sure?” Twilight asked. “I mean, she was always so obsessed with death. Maybe she’s happier now.”

“I’m sure,” Pinkie Pie said. “She’s my friend. Since, like, ever!”

Twilight shrugged. “Okay. Macintosh can carry her body, so it won’t slow us down very much. We can have her raised first thing when we report back from the mine.”

“No, we need to go now,” Rainbow said.

Twilight gave the griffon a look. “Rainbow, we’re a half hour from the mine, and three days from Crossroads. Unless you want her raised as an undead, that’s the nearest place.”

“Sparky gets back up in an hour,” Rainbow said, pointing at the pile of bones. “Half hour there, half hour back, and we’re fighting it again.”

Twilight responded by taking her hammer and sweeping the slime-covered bones off the trail, into the river.

“Fine, but – what if we lose? Then who’s going to raise her?”

Twilight just stared at her.

“Poprocket… how are you planning on paying to raise her anyhow?” Applejack asked. “We haven’t got much in the way of treasure yet, and giant shiny diamonds don’t come cheap.”

Rainbow Dash sighed. “Fine. Fine! You win. But I’m not going to be the one to explain to her why she missed the whole fight at the mine.”

> Assault on the Mine
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After wrapping Rarity’s body in several layers of cloth, and securing it to Sergeant Macintosh, the party set out for the mine. They’d played with the idea of setting one of the fireworks to go off on a delayed fuse, to hopefully draw off the drakes and leave the mine less defended, but while Pinkie Pie was sure there was a way to improvise a slow fuse, nothing she tried worked. However, luck was on their side – when they were only a few minutes from the mine, they spotted a trio of drakes flying overhead, heading north up the gorge on patrol.

And then at last, they arrived. The mine was set in a natural cavern – the very top open to the sky, but most of it hidden beneath overhanging stone. The base of the cavern was a wide flat area, about a quarter of it flooded behind a dam feeding a large waterwheel, which provided power to a cluster of large buildings set by the lakeside. The mine entrance itself was near the buildings, connected to them by a set of tracks for mine carts. The path the ponies were following terminated there.

On the far side of the lake were a bunch of low, flat buildings – offices, residences, or possibly barracks.

Below the dam, the cavern looked unimproved and empty, although there was a wide underground entrance that, from what they’d seen of the map, probably led to the drake hangar.

There were dozens of diamond gnoll and zebra workers going into and out of the cave – the zebras mostly pulling mine carts or otherwise hauling supplies. None of them looked like warriors. That isn’t to say that there were no warriors present – half a dozen were clustered around the waterwheel, while a large, elaborately armored gnoll screamed at a harried engineer to fix whatever was gumming up the works.

Rainbow Dash laughed out loud, as she caught a glimpse of what was stuck in the water wheel. When the others looked at her in confusion, Applejack, who’d also recognized the white-and-purple mass, explained: “Good ol’ Sparky. Guess he washed downstream.”

“Oh!” Twilight said, then gave a nasty little smile. “Do you think we can afford to wait for him to reassemble?”

“How can we not?” Pinkie Pie asked, with a wide grin.

The party hid around the corner for about ten minutes – Pinkie Pie had spent a long time trying and failing to make a fuse, so the hour until Sparky’s resurrection was almost up – until the sound of screaming signaled them to attack. Fluttershy blessed the party, and Pinkie Pie – who’d already mutated herself into her sleek, monstrous battle-pegasus form – drank a potion that made her burp out a large bubble that wobbled into a shimmering shield floating near her.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash took to the air and glided silently towards the fight. A few of the miners saw them and pointed, but the warriors were distracted by the skeletal drake that clambered out of the waterwheel and proceeded to snap at them viciously – if ineffectively -- with its fangs. The gnolls’ response was similarly ineffective, spears doing little against bones.

Unfortunately for the party’s hope of a true surprise attack, the diamond gnoll foregnoll was not as distracted as his colleagues, and turned to see what the commotion was, spotting Macintosh and Twilight advancing along the ledge. “INTRUDERS!” he shouted as he turned to run towards them. “SOUND THE ALARM!” 

Fluttershy clung to the ledge, summoning, while Pinkie Pie soared towards the enemies, still out of range of her bombs, although she grabbed one in her teeth to be ready to throw. Spotting that, Applejack grinned at Rainbow. “Bullfightin’ time,” she said, tossing her dagger at the enemy – easily blocked, but it kept his attention while she landed.

Rainbow Dash set down a dozen feet in front of her. “Got it,” she said, tensing her muscles.

Half the gnoll warriors were archers, and turned to fire on the party – specifically, at Pinkie Pie, who was a huge flying target – but the warriors who were already getting chewed on continued to focus on Sparky. 

Sergeant Macintosh saw that, and asked, “Jump down the rest of the way?”

“In this armor?” Twilight asked, shaking her head. “Remember the goats.” Mac nodded, and the two of them ran to the end of the trail instead, panicking the miners in the area, who fled without putting a fight.

That meant that the foregnoll got to make the first charge. “RRrrrraaaaaaaargh!” he screamed, throwing himself into a fit of rage as he barreled at Rainbow Dash – who leapt to the side, just before he arrived. All he managed to catch was a face-full of exploding smoke bomb, enveloping him in a nasty-looking green cloud.

“Hi-ya!” screamed Pinkie Pie, charging at her own cloud and dispersing it with kick, revealing the foregnoll doubled over and vomiting. “He’s ready for you, girls!” she said, proudly.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash closed in and started kicking him while he was down, brutally pummeling him while he foamed at the mouth, too sick to fight back.

The archers spread out to avoid being caught together in Pinkie’s next bomb, and fired another volley at her. One arrow flew true, aimed straight at her face – only to bounce off her bubble-shield and spiral uselessly away while she stuck out her tongue. “Missed me!” 

Then Twilight and Macintosh charged them from the side. The sergeant managed to impale one on his lance, flicking the corpse to the side with a powerful shrug of his shoulders, sending it flying into the side of the watermill, but Twilight’s target ducked under her swing at the last second, living to fight for another few seconds at least. “Help us!” he cried to the warriors still engaged with the drake.

“Sound…” muttered the foregnoll, “Sound the Smooze-forsaken alarm, you morons!” he managed to croak, breaking away from his tormentors to stagger towards the mill himself. Rainbow Dash tried to snap his ankle with a vicious kick as he withdrew, but he was too tough to be slowed down that easily. They chased after him, lashing out with claws and dagger as he stumbled along.

Sparky continued to chew on one of the warriors, who was still clinging to life despite many lacerations and burns. Another of the warriors facing him screamed and stabbed at a tiny creature clinging to his face, prying it off but leaving him bleeding profusely. The third broke off and ran over to help out his boss, stabbing Applejack in the back.

While Twilight continued to swing at her archer, who continued to dodge her like some sort of smelly, fluffy butterfly, Pinkie Pie threw a bomb at the other remaining archer, enveloping him in a noxious cloud from which he did not emerge. That left Mac free to counter-charge the gnoll who’d skewered Applejack, only to leave the massive pony snorting in frustration as his lance was dodged as well.

The foregnoll wasn’t so lucky, and Rainbow and Applejack managed to drag him down before he could make the last few steps into the mill, where presumably some alarm could be raised – they then turned on the gnoll warrior who’d attacked them, moving to flank with Sergeant Macintosh. Another gnoll finally succumbed to his wounds under Sparky’s teeth, leaving only one warrior to face him.

That meant Twilight’s archer was the only gnoll left to raise the alarm. He tumbled and ducked out from under her threatening hammer, and darted for the mill like a rocket.

“Gotcha!” Pinkie Pie giggled, tossing a bomb for the darting gnoll – only to miss, and splatter the noxious fiery mess against the side of the building. “Or… not?” she said, chuckling nervously as the archer vanished inside.

The warrior who’d tried to assist the foregnoll, flanked by griffon and purrsian and pony – and with another stirge clinging to the side of his head, sucking his blood – plunged his spear into Applejack again, scoring another deep wound on the beleaguered kitty. It was his last act before Macintosh ran him through, and his dead body slumped to the ground.

“No no no no no!” Twilight cried, running for the mill. Pinkie Pie was close on her tail, but neither of them was fast enough to stop the archer inside from yanking on a large chain, setting off an ear-piercing wail as a large cylindrical device set among the mill’s gears started to spin. 

“AWWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGA!”

It was time for round two.

After dispatching the archer, Twilight poked her head out the door, and hissed, “Everyone into the mill!”

Since it was right there, the party dragged the foreman’s body into the mill with them, and searched it for treasure. There was some coin, but the real score was his equipment – a magical cloak with the symbol of the zebra lands, a magical blue-metal breastplate as light as mithril, an enchanted flaming longspear also made out of the blue metal, and some non-magical but high quality javelins.

While Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy healed Applejack with their wands, and she in turn worked on disabling the alarm to keep it from deafening everypony, the others explored the interior, making sure there were no more enemies inside.

As it turned out, the workers had all fled into the mine when the party attacked, and any warriors who would have been stationed inside had been drawn out to deal with Sparky – who was still dueling with the last warrior, neither of them quite managing to finish the other off. The building was deserted.

That wasn’t to say it was empty. The watermill’s primary purpose was to operate a huge press, which squeezed all the water out of the blue mud and left a powdery substance, which was placed into molds and baked in a large kiln into instant masterwork quality weapons and armor, of which there were whole crates – far too much for the party to even carry, even with Sergeant Macintosh’s assistance. Unfortunately, a quick glance showed that none of the weapons were ones the party favored, and it was unlikely that they would have time to put on the armor before whoever the alarm summoned arrived.

“Let’s smash everything,” Twilight said. “If we can destroy the mill it’ll shut them down for weeks. We can sell this blue-metal equipment to raise Rarity, and then the Empire can send a real army to take this place down for good.”

“Will we have enough time before they figure out where we are?” Fluttershy asked. “Applejack’s healed – we should leave now. All we really needed was enough to bring Rarity back, right?”

“Yes, you should all leave, come out into the yard and play,” came a hypnotic voice through the window. Everypony except for Twilight Sparkle spotted the leucrotta peeking in at them – it was wearing barding, which made it much noisier than the standard model.

Twilight, oblivious to the source of the voice for just long enough to fall under its spell, headed for the window in a daze. Pinkie Pie was closer, and looked outside to see three archers perched up on the trail, while a trio of warriors and the leucrotta waited just outside. The window was already shattered from her previous bomb, so she tossed another out, catching them all in the cloud, before turning and spreading her wings to block the path. “No Twilight, bad Twilight. Ignore the dumb leucrotta whispers!”

The leucrotta apparently hadn’t succumbed to the smoke, because its voice swung around to lead Twilight towards the main entryway to the mill – and a thrown spear sailed back through the window and stabbed Pinkie Pie in the back. The gnolls hadn’t been taken out either!

“How the hay do we break her out of this?” Applejack asked, grabbing Twilight to hold her back.

“None of us know to break anypony out of this!” Fluttershy whimpered, as she fluttered over and healed Pinkie Pie. “She’ll only be free if she catches up to the leucrotta!”

“Then I guess we’re going out there,” Rainbow Dash said, taking her place near the massive double doors leading towards the mine. “Everypony be ready to charge when she opens the doors.”

“Charge who?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“Whoever,” Rainbow said, rolling her eyes. “We just need to distract them long enough for bossy-pants here to finish falling into the trap, and then she can make a real plan.”

So everypony got in place, and then Applejack let Twilight free to go open the doors. The hypnotized unicorn’s horn glowed pink, and the doors swung open to reveal the mouth of a massive flame drake, sitting in the yard waiting for them.

And then, there was fire.

But the party followed through on the plan anyway. They charged at the drake, and between Pinkie Pie’s frost flask, Rainbow Dash’s dragon-style kick, Macintosh’s lance charge, and a lucky shot from Fluttershy’s crossbow, the drake went down hard… but not before savaging Applejack as the rogue failed to dodge past its teeth, leaving her bleeding and unconscious.

As Twilight chased after the leucrotta, who laughed and dodged out of reach while the rogues peppered her with arrows, two gnoll warriors ran around the corner and stabbed at Macintosh, one of them getting in a solid blow. Pinkie Pie tossed a bomb past them, catching them in the smoke and splash to avoid hitting her ally, and one of them started coughing heavily as the fumes got to him. Rainbow Dash ran at the other, stunning him with a solid fist to the face, but making sure to stay out of the cloud herself.

The rider snapped out of her shock at seeing her beloved flame drake slain in an instant, and panicked. “They’re monsters! Fall back! Fall back to the mine!” The archers and the leucrotta obeyed, rushing past the barricade that the workers had thrown up in the entrance, which they slammed shut behind them, locking out Twilight, who tugged ineffectually on the door.

“Let me in! I have to play with my friends!” the purple unicorn said, grabbing at the wooden beams with her teeth.

Pinkie Pie kept up the bomb barrage on the nauseated warrior, while Macintosh and Rainbow Dash focused on the other – and on his friend, who came out from around the building to join the fun. Just as Rainbow Dash took down the first with a final kick to the groin, the other got another good hit in on Macintosh, and the giant pony collapsed in a heap, groaning and struggling in vain to stand.

But by that point, Fluttershy had healed Applejack enough for her to get back in the fight.

“Yeah, Applejack!” Rainbow Dash said, as she faced off with the last gnoll. “Come on, we can still win this!”

Applejack took a deep breath. “Or die tryin’,” she muttered, as she charged into the fray, scoring a deep slash along his stomach. The warrior towered over her, raising his spear, only to freeze in place as Fluttershy shouted, “Stop!”

Pinkie Pie had drifted almost on top of the gnoll she’d been bombarding and the cloud that engulfed him with her latest throw was right at her hooves. “Girls, step back!” she said. Rainbow and Applejack complied, and she pushed the cloud right over the other gnoll, catching him in the nasty smoke as well.

…except by this point, the first gnoll had built up a resistance, and the other knew to hold his breath. Both of them converged on Pinkie Pie, and skewered her with their spears like a roast on a spit. Her wings twitched, blood poured from her mouth, and she curled up into a ball as she fell to the ground.

Fluttershy squeaked, and – out of magic – aimed her crossbow at the more wounded of the two, thunking a bolt right into his throat. As he collapsed, Applejack and Rainbow Dash converged once more on the last target, Applejack nearly gutting him before catching a spear to the chest and going down again.

Rainbow Dash winced. “Just you and me, pal,” she said, and the two danced around each other for a while, dodging each other’s blows, until she finally got in the last hit she needed to finish him off. Meanwhile, Fluttershy – as the only other conscious and non-mind-controlled party member – flew around stabilizing the injured with her healing wand.

Rainbow Dash flew over to Twilight, who was still ineffectually tugging on the barricade with her hooves. “Twilight, what are you doing. Twilight, stop!” Rainbow dash tried in vain to pull her friend away from the barricade. “She ran off, you don’t need to follow her.”

“I don’t understand what you mean, Rainbow,” Twilight said cheerfully, her eyes still unfocused. “She’s right inside!”

“Twilight…” Rainbow Dash shook her head, and then punched the hypnotized unicorn in the face, knocking her unconscious. Her beak slowly spread into a grin. “Okay, I have to admit, I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

> Getting Away with the Loot
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

It took more than twenty charges from the healing wands to cure the burns and stab wounds from the fight, but luck was on the side of the fey, and nopony was actually dead. That meant that with magical healing, it only took a minute or two for almost everypony to be conscious and more or less healthy. The exception was Twilight, who had to be hogtied and added to Macintosh’s load, since the leucrotta’s unfulfilled Suggestion didn’t seem likely to go away anytime soon.

With the remaining diamond gnolls cowering in the mine, the party had all the time they needed to smash and burn everything. They broke the massive millstones, which would have to be magically mended or replaced, ruptured the tank full of unprocessed blue mud and let it run off into the stream, and shattered the water wheel. They even breached the dam. 

When they were done, they loaded the crates of finished weapons into a liberated mine cart – it wasn’t quite as effective without a track, but it was far better than trying to carry them on ponies’ backs. As they dragged themselves and their confiscated loot back up onto the pathway that led along the gorge, there was nothing left behind them but half a dozen burning buildings – and the mine itself, of course, which they hadn’t touched.

“Reckon we should finish the job?” Sergeant Macintosh asked, looking back at the mine.

“Nope,” Applejack replied. “We almost bought the farm back there. I know, I know,” she said as he started to reply, “maybe there’s nothing left but a bunch of wimpy archers and miners who won’t fight, but on the other paw, maybe there’s something else. This haul should see us sittin’ pretty even after we pay for Rarity, so I’m in no mood to press my luck.”

“There’s three more drakes,” Pinkie Pie said, uncharacteristically subdued. Her wounds had been healed, but she kept glancing at Rarity’s wrapped body. Of all of them, she’d been the closest to death. “If they catch us on this path, we’re toast.”

“Ash,” Fluttershy said, her pink wings shivering.

Rainbow Dash scowled. “Yeah, we need to get out of this canyon, but how? We can’t just abandon Mac and Twilight, but there’s no way in Tartarus that I’m going to be able to lift them.”

“Ropes and pullies,” Twilight said.

“It wore off already?” Pinkie Pie asked, perking up.

“No, I’ve still got to go back to the mine and meet all my friends, but I can’t do that if we get burned up, can I?” she said, smiling. “All you need to do is untie me, and then fly up and drop these ropes down to haul up Sergeant Macintosh. He can use his own strength, if you find something to loop the rope around to act as a pulley. Remember lubrication!”

“We’ve got other ropes,” Applejack said.

Twilight frowned. “Okay… yes… but the ropes you tied me up with are the very best ropes. You should really let me go, and use these ones!”

“Yeah… not gonna happen,” Rainbow Dash said. “Come on, let’s find a good spot to haul them up, and get the hay out of dodge before the drakes come back.”

It wasn’t easy, but they managed. There were no really good places to scale the wall of the gorge anywhere near, but after stripping Macintosh of his armor and other burdens, he was able to climb to a spot where he only needed to be lifted about a hundred feet straight up, with a wall to brace against. By working together, with Pinkie Pie using a potion to temporarily boost her own strength, they managed to do it. The rest was simple – Macintosh had no trouble hauling up Twilight, Rarity, and his own armor, and with the help of the others even managed the cart full of loot.

As they were catching their breath at the top of the gorge after that grueling ordeal, they took the chance to look around at the unfamiliar terrain. Across the gorge were the wide sweeping plains of the zebra lands, while on this side, only half a mile away, the rocky hills were swallowed up by a dense forest, the northern limb of the Murky Woods that surrounded Drow territory. The forest hid any view of Bright Valley, although they knew enough about local geography to guess that the great city lay beyond it.

As they were taking in the view, everything was peaceful and calm. The smoke from the burning mine rose gently into the sky, glowing in the setting sun, and the only other movement was a V-formation of three large birds, heading their way from northwards up the gorge.

“Oh, for the love of apples!” Applejack groaned, as she spotted them. “Everypony, toss everything in the cart and let’s skedaddle. The drakes are on their way.”

Setting out immediately, the adventurers managed to get under the cover of the trees before finding out whether or not Applejack’s paranoia was justified, which was probably for the best. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie, who had some training in wilderness survival, managed to find a sheltered cave near a stream where they would be able to rest the night without much risk of discovery, even if the drake-riders had spotted them and sent a patrol to search the forest on foot.

However, it wasn’t any patrol, or even any forest creature, that threatened them as they rested from their day’s work. As Rainbow Dash stood guard during the midnight watch, the sad cloth-wrapped bundle sitting near the pile of the party’s gear – Rarity’s body – started to stir, as if something was moving around inside the wrappings.

Rainbow Dash scowled, and sliced open the wrappings with her claws. “Okay, little guy. It’s pretty impressive for you to sneak in past me, but nopony gets to chow down on my friends, no matter how hungry you are.” She licked her beak. Speaking of hungry, a midnight snack would hit the spot, even if it was just a raccoon or something.

It was not a raccoon. As the bindings loosened, Rarity’s corpse lunged at Rainbow Dash, smacking its hooves onto the griffon’s shoulders and, with eyes aglow, croaked, “Sooo… hungry…”

Dash found herself unable to move, or do anything but stare at the rotting face of the ex-zebra as its fanged maw hung open, inches from her throat. Before it could do anything else, Sergeant Macintosh tackled the creature off the griffon and held the corpse down against the cave floor.

Applejack and Pinkie Pie had also come awake at the creature’s attack, but stared uncertainly as it squirmed in the large pony’s grip.

“Oh no oh no oh no, this is terrible!” Pinkie Pie said as she realized what had happened, holding her hooves to her face. “If she’s undead then she can’t be raised!”

“Well then, what are we supposed to do?” Applejack asked, eyes wide in shock.

“Feed me…” croaked the creature, who stopped struggling against Macintosh, as his grip was sure and his strength much greater. Instead, it coughed, hacking up black mucus and rotting bits of flesh, and then said in a tone much closer to Rarity’s voice in life, “I’m so… hungry… dearest Pinkie Pie, please, feed me!”

Pinkie Pie squeaked. “Rarity?”

The creature nodded. “I seem to have clawed my way back to the land of the living, even if I’m not… quite myself. I’m so hungry… and judging by Rainbow’s state, I seem to be some sort of ghoul, which means I need flesh.”

Pinkie Pie shook her head rapidly. “You can’t have my flesh!”

“Oh, it doesn’t have to be yours,” said Rarity, or the creature claiming to be her. “Anypony’s will do.”

A brown shriveled lump thumped to the floor in front of her muzzle. “There,” Applejack said, “Eat up. We’ve got two carnivores in the group, so our trail rations have a bit o’ meat in ‘em.”

“Ugh,” Rarity said, around a mouthful of meat as she hungrily devoured the piece of jerky. “So salty. Applejack, how can you stand to eat this? If you’d just let it rot properly…”

“Uh huh,” Applejack said, nonplussed. “So, if Mac there lets ya go, are ya gonna behave?”

“I’m still very, very hungry,” Rarity said, squirming a bit.

“Yeah, me too,” Rainbow Dash said, stretching her legs a bit as she shook off the paralysis. “Why don’t you stay here with the sergeant, and Applejack and I can go track down a midnight snack?”

The late night hunt was tiring, but the woods were full of game, and both hunters managed to return with something. Applejack snuck up on an owl that thought it was the hunter instead of the prey, while Rainbow Dash managed to bag an entire deer, breaking the buck’s leg in her initial attack and then dragging him to the ground and tearing out his throat.

The deer in the Murky Woods weren’t fae, but it was still quite disturbing to watch such an equine-seeming creature being torn to bloody shreds by a hunger-mad zebra ghoul. Applejack and Twilight (awake now, and finally free of the leucrotta’s Suggestion) were quite shaken by the sight.

Eventually, with most of the deer devoured, Rarity’s hunger subsided.

“Oh, thank you my dears. That was quite heavenly,” she said, daintily cleaning herself with a prestidigitation cantrip. Macintosh had been unable to force himself to stay and watch her feed, and was outside vomiting into the stream.

“Not the word I’d use,” Twilight said. “I see you can use magic, does that mean you’re still yourself?”

“Mmm hmm,” Rarity replied. “Only free-willed undead retain the abilities they knew in life. Of course, my alignment might have changed…”

Pinkie Pie giggled.

“…but I can assure you that my goals align with yours as much as they ever did, my dear. I don’t even hold a grudge for the way you ensured my demise.”

“That was –“ Twilight narrowed her eyes. “It wasn’t intentional. I thought you could prepare a spell without being so obvious about it. I didn’t train with wizards.”

“That much is obvious,” Rarity replied. “Hopefully we can fill in the other holes in your training without getting anypony else killed.”

“Anypony else would have been wearing something more protective than cloth. I don’t suppose being an unholy abomination lets you dress appropriately for combat?”

“Okay you two, back off,” Rainbow Dash said, putting herself between them. “Yes, Twilight Sparkle’s terrible plan got Rarity killed, and then she murdered Sparky and dumped his bones in the river so we wouldn’t have to worry about him coming back –“

“She did what?!” Rarity screeched.

“And yes, she was too stupid to notice the giant freaking Leucrotta staring at us through the window, and got herself mind controlled which almost got the rest of us killed.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?” Twilight scowled.

“I’m just saying it’s no reason to fight.” Everypony nodded – albeit after a second’s pout in the case of Rarity. Rainbow Dash grinned, and continued. “It is a reason to give her a smaller share of the loot, though. Maybe take the 5000 gold we were going to spend on raising Rarity, and divide it among the rest of us, who didn’t get anypony killed?”

“That sounds fair,” Rarity said, grinning a toothy grin. “For my death. But didn’t you just say she almost got the rest of you killed as well? Not to mention poor Sparky. Why don’t we set aside the next 35,000 gold that Twilight Sparkle would have earned?”

“Yeah, I like that idea,” Rainbow Dash said. “Then we won’t have to hold a grudge, because she’ll have paid in full. Everyone agree?”

Applejack nodded. “An extra pile o’ cash for not being a damn fool? Sign me up.”

“No!” Twilight shouted. “I don’t agree! Even ignoring the part where you’re focusing on a single incident, you’re completely ignoring everything you did wrong and placing all the blame on me!”

“I… um… I don’t agree either,” Fluttershy said. “Twilight’s one of the strongest fighters we have – the only reason that we almost died because she was mind controlled was because she wasn’t there to fight with us.”

“I’m with ‘shy,” Macintosh said, having returned to the cave, a little green around the gills and being quite careful to keep his eyes averted from what was left of Rarity’s meal. “It ain’t right.”

“His vote doesn’t count,” Rainbow Dash said. “He’s not one of us, he’s just Fluttershy’s mount.”

“Well, Rarity’s vote shouldn’t count because she’s not even alive!” Twilight retorted. “She might be more or less the Rarity we knew, but like she said – her alignment changed. She’s forced to be evil and selfish, and we owe it to her to shield her from her worst impulses until we can change her back.”

“Okay, this is getting silly,” Applejack said. “Let’s just keep it simple. One creature who talks, one vote.”

Pinkie Pie grinned, and reached into her bag.

“No puppets,” Applejack added. As Pinkie Pie pouted, she pointed out, “You get to cast the deciding vote anyway, sugarcube. Everyone else went and we’re tied.”

“Oh!” Pinkie Pie said, smiling, then screwed up her face as she gave it careful thought. “Hmm...”

“You know that if you decide I have to work for free, I’m not legally required to continue to adventure with you all, right?” Twilight said to the three who’d voted against her.

“So don’t,” Rainbow Dash said, pointing a claw at the cave entrance. “The door’s right there.”

“No,” Pinkie Pie said. “I vote no.”

Rainbow Dash scowled, “Aww, come on! Really?”

“Really, Dashie! Do you really want to be in a group where we have to scrutinize every little thing each of us does for whether or not it was good or bad or smart or stupid, trying to figure out what went wrong because of bad luck and what was poor planning, until after every fight we have to sit around for hours arguing over every little thing and putting a gold piece value on each decision, and carefully keep track of what every piece of treasure is worth so that we can work out just how much it counts towards our totals, until we’re all dreaming every night about numbers and abacuses and go insane and start babbling incoherently and get tossed in the loony bin and then everyone blames the whole thing on Rainbow Dash for coming up with the idea in the first place?” She paused, and took a breath. “Because I sure don’t.”

“A very wise decision, Pinkie Pie,” Twilight Sparkle said, smiling sweetly.

“Fine. Whatever. I don’t even care,” Rainbow Dash said, flopping herself into a bristly ball of fur and feathers.

Applejack shrugged. “The important thing is we all stick together. A little discipline wouldn’t hurt, but we’re all adults.” She glanced at Rainbow. “More or less.”

Twilight turned to Rarity.

The ghoul smiled. “I’ll think of some other way for you to repay me,” she said. “But we can table the matter for now.”

The rest of the night passed uneventfully, and in the morning they emerged into the light of day, feeling refreshed and rejuvenated. Twilight managed to quickly sew together a cloak for Rarity out of some spare blankets, to help conceal her condition. Her offer to reinforce the cloth with armor plates was rejected, as it would interfere with spellcasting for much the same reason as any other armor.

The day’s travel through the Murky Woods was actually quite pleasant. There was much game and few predators, and no monsters to speak of, this northern section being so close to civilized lands. Once they stumbled across a small dirt road, progress was fast even with the cart, and every hour or so they’d pass a small village nestled among the trees.

“I didn’t realize so many ponies lived in these woods,” Twilight said. “If the zebras are planning to invade, the ponies here might be in trouble. We should give them some of the weapons we captured to help them defend themselves.”

“You mean ‘sell’, right?” Applejack replied.

“I don’t think villagers have that much money,” Rainbow Dash said. “We should just wait until we get to the city. Plenty of merchants there.”

“They don’t have the money, but they do have a pressing need for armor and weapons,” Twilight said. “We can’t just abandon them in the face of a full-scale invasion!”

“I really don’t think giving a bunch of peasants some spears is going to make them less likely to die if the zebras invade,” Rainbow Dash said. “They should just stand back and leave the fighting to the professionals.”

“Besides, it’s not like being conquered by zebras is some terrible fate,” Rarity added. “Even for ponies. Why, my best friend is a pony!”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “That I am!”

“You ponies are terrible!” Twilight snapped. “Don’t any of you think of anything but your own selfish desires?”

“Uh… are you having the same conversation as the rest of us?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight ignored her. “Rarity at least has an excuse. She’s forced to be evil!”

“And what forced you to be such a giant pain in the tail?” Rainbow Dash asked. “I know you’re not some namby pamby paladin of the Sun Queen, or you’d be a lot more useful.”

“She worships the Moon Princess, sugarcube,” Applejack said. “Haven’t you been paying attention? Protecting villages like this is what she’s all about.”

“But usually the Moon Princess is about protecting the weak, not encouraging them to fight for themselves,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe she’s a little confused?”

“This isn’t about my duty to my goddess,” Twilight said. “It’s just the right thing to do.”

“If it was the right thing to do, it’d pay better,” Rainbow Dash replied. “That’s, like, basic economics.”

“I’ll pay for it!” Twilight said. “Or, I mean, we can use my share. A sixth of these weapons are mine.”

“You mean a seventh, right?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“Macintosh doesn’t get a share, he’s Fluttershy’s mount,” Twilight explained. “But anyway, some of these weapons are mine, and I can do whatever I want with them, including giving them away to villagers.”

The others stared at her. “So… just how much of your share were you planning to give away?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Well, if we estimate the number of villages between here and the city, we can divide my share by that number and know how many to give away in each spot,” Twilight replied.

“So, all of it,” Applejack said, peering at Twilight closely. “Are you feeling all right, sugarcube?”

Fluttershy’s eyes went wide, and she quietly cast a spell, peering closely at Twilight Sparkle, and then at the rest of the party, before finally focusing on the cart full of weapons. “Eep!”

“I’m fine,” Twilight said. “I’m just trying to make sure that this windfall gets spread as widely as possible. It isn’t fair to try to keep it all for ourselves.”

“It’s cursed!” Fluttershy squeaked quietly.

“I know that selling it is the most efficient way to spread it around to people who can use it once we’re inside the city,” Twilight continued, oblivious, “but I think we have a chance to do some real good here.”

“Twilight, stop!” Fluttershy said, flying around in front of her. “You’re under a spell!”

Twilight laughed nervously. “Don’t be silly! I’m not under a spell. The leucrotta’s spell wore off hours and hours ago, and we haven’t run into anypony else since.”

“It’s the blue metal! It’s cursed!” 

Twilight froze, one eye twitching.

“I’ll get my rope,” Applejack said.

As it turned out, that wasn’t necessary. While Twilight Sparkle may have been charmed by the metal’s curse, making her want to distribute the blue metal as widely as possible, it wasn’t a strong enough compulsion to make her attack her friends, or even steal from them.

Applejack got out her rope anyway. “I don’t care if you think you can resist, sugarcube, I’m not takin’ any chances.”

“Make sure to gag her, too,” Rainbow Dash said. “The charm’s definitely strong enough to make her talk. And talk. And talk.”

With Twilight bound and gagged, the party made quite a splash as they passed through the city gates, into the great metropolis of Bright Valley, the second-to-last bastion of the pony race, whose capture had marked the death knell of the resistance against the Empire. When even such a stubborn foe was treated with respect and honor after being overrun – and only a minimal amount of looting and pillage – Dream Castle and the remaining minor outposts had sued for peace, accepting the Empire’s demand for an unconditional surrender.

This made the city, officially, a symbol of peace and cooperation between creatures of all species and alignments, and as long as one stayed to the central thoroughfares and markets, the illusion could be maintained. Orcish guardsmen led patrols of armored ponies to maintain order, and merchants were able to go about their business unmolested.

There were, however, parts of the city to which one should never travel. The goblin slums, the temple quarter, the back alleys of the entertainment district – and, if one was not an orc, the government plaza. All eyes were on the fey as they made their way past the sparse crowd of orcs and hobgoblins towards the city’s Mage Tower, to report on their findings about the cursed blue metal, and to ensure that it was properly disposed of.

“So you’re here to turn in some cursed items,” droned the bored orcish clerk in the lobby.

“And get our friend un-cursed, if that’s okay with you,” Fluttershy said quietly. “And, um, if it’s not too much trouble, we’d like to get paid for the cursed weapons and armor. Please?”

The clerk raised an eyebrow.

“You see… we’re Adventurers,” Fluttershy said, “so we’re responsible for our own equipment? And we were really really counting on this money.”

“We need better equipment to help us help you help us help ourselves!” Pinkie Pie explained.

“We only did this job because we thought we could sell the stuff we got from the mine,” Rainbow Dash said. “It’s not our fault it’s cursed.”

“That’s right,” Applejack said. “We could have just gone and sold it anyhow, but we came here because we knew you’d do right by us.” She narrowed her eyes. “You will do right by us, right?”

“Uh huh,” the clerk replied. He opened a drawer and handed over a dozen pieces of paper covered in blanks to fill in, boxes to check, and large blocks of fine print. “Fill out these forms, and we’ll consider your request for compensation.”

“And Twilight?” Fluttershy asked.

The clerk rang a bell, and a pair of ogre guards arrived. “We’ll make sure she’s taken care of,” the clerk said as they grabbed the bound and gagged unicorn and carried her off into the depths of the tower.

Without Twilight to help them, it took the party almost an hour to fill out the forms, after which they were escorted by the ogre guards into another waiting room on the second floor of the tower. Refreshments were served – delicious and exotic, but only because of the minor illusion layered on them to make them appealing. After far too long spent waiting, Twilight entered the room in the company of another unicorn, this one wearing the robes of an archmage. She seemed cheerful enough, although an examination with Detect Magic revealed that rather than remove the curse’s enchantment, the archmage had merely layered a stronger enchantment over the top of it.

“Your friend has given me a full report on your activities,” the mage said, his voice tense. “I understand that one of you died in the line of duty?”

Everypony looked at Rarity, who sighed and stepped forwards, reaching up with a hoof to draw back her hood. “I’m afraid I can’t really explain how it happened,” she said. “But after I died, my soul simply refused to pass on to the afterlife – it was like there were tendrils of darkness rising from the ground, coiling around my legs, holding me in place. The whole world was bathed in darkness, fields of tentacles sprouting from every surface, but passing through those still living as if they weren’t even there. To my bare spirit, their touch was cold and painful. I tried to take refuge from them within my own flesh, only to find it permeated as well. I blacked out, and when I awoke… I was like this.”

“You were conscious?” Twilight Sparkle asked.

Rarity nodded. “I almost wish that I hadn’t been. If I still needed to sleep, the experience would likely give me nightmares.”

“Then you understand why you are to tell no one,” the archmage replied. “That goes for all of you.”

“Of course, magus!” Twilight replied brightly. The others mostly shrugged or nodded.

“The boundaries of this world are failing –“ the archmage began.

Pinkie Pie gasped. “Like that book!”

The archmage motioned for her to continue.

“We found a book that let anypony open a portal to the plane of elemental smoke!” Pinkie Pie explained. “You didn’t even have to be a wizard. I bet it never would have worked if the world’s walls weren’t thin!”

The magus sighed. “Ah, yes. We’ve run across those as well. I’m afraid it’s too late to keep that a secret, but please avoid calling attention to them. The last thing we need is another invasion by the smoke creatures.”

“Another?” Applejack asked. She was ignored.

“It is the spontaneous animation of the undead that is of greater concern. Your friend here is very fortunate to have kept not only her mind, but her sanity. Most of the dead are not so lucky. We have been doing our best to relocate the corpses to places where they can do no harm when they arise, but sooner or later the word will get out, and I fear that it will cause widespread panic.”

“So what do you need us to do?” Rainbow Dash asked. “How can we fix this?”

“You can’t,” the archmage replied. “From you, we require only silence. Take other work, and pretend that your friend is still alive, or was raised by some unholy ritual. Twilight Sparkle will be in charge of enforcing this decree.”

“Of course, magus!” Twilight replied, smiling happily. “If any of them talk, I’ll report them to the proper authorities!”

“If any of them talk, kill them,” the magus ordered. “And kill anyone they talked to, as well.”

Twilight’s eyes went wide, and her ears folded back against her skull, but at last, she nodded to acknowledge the order. “For the Empire.”

“Do not think me ungrateful,” the archmage said as the horrified and indignant adventurers stared at him and Twilight. “See the clerk on your way out, and you will be compensated for your efforts so far. But this matter is above your level, and will be handled by those more capable.”

> Plumbing the Depths
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Somehow, I don’t think this was what the magus had in mind when he told us to find other work,” Twilight remarked, as she watched Applejack unlock the entrance to the city’s sewers.

“Is that going to be a problem, darling?” Rarity asked.

“I don’t think so,” Twilight replied. “If your theory is correct, we shouldn’t run into anything that isn’t already undead, and there’s certainly no point trying to keep secrets from them.”

“Glad you approve,” Rainbow Dash snapped. “Wouldn’t want you to have to kill us.”

Twilight laughed. “I’m sure he was just trying to impress you with the seriousness of this matter. I doubt he wanted me to literally kill you along with any witnesses. That would be crazy.”

“That’s the order he gave, though,” Applejack said. “If it comes down to it, you’ll have no choice.”

“I don’t think it works that way,” Twilight replied. “It’s more of a charm effect, dispelling any doubts I have about the Empire’s methods and leadership, so that I want to make the Emperor and his agents proud. If he was right there and ordered me to kill you, then maybe…”

“He was right there,” Rainbow Dash said. “He ordered you to kill us.”

“Yes…” Twilight said, shifting from hoof to hoof, prancing in place. “But I don’t think he really meant it. I guess we’ll see?”

Everyone was quiet.

“Or… maybe none of you will cross the line,” Twilight said. “Oh, who am I kidding, Rainbow Dash is bound to mess up sooner or later. Really, I should just tear out her tongue now and save us the trouble.” She giggled to herself, then glanced nervously at the other fey, who’d all stopped what they were doing to watch her.

“Maybe you shouldn’t joke about that sort of thing,” Pinkie Pie said.

Eventually, Applejack managed to open the grating covering the sewer entrance, and the party descended a slick mossy staircase into the foul-smelling tunnels beneath the city. There were signs that these tunnels had been inhabited recently – dead campfires of scavenged wood, bundles of cloth and worthless possessions that the homeless might cling to. There were other signs that this was no longer the case – bloody smears along the walls, and the occasional pile of chewed viscera.

Soon enough, they came upon proof that Rarity’s prediction had been correct, in the form of a pack of bloodstained ghouls. “Fresh meat!” one of them hissed, as they turned towards the party.

“I knew I was right,” Rarity said happily. “Where else would one dispose of a city’s worth of corpses? Now, let me do the talking,” Rarity added, as the others drew their weapons and prepared for a fight.

“Ah don’t think they have much interest in talkin’,” Applejack said, as the undead scuttled closer.

Rarity laughed, and stepped forwards. “Don’t be such a worrywart.” She turned to the slavering ghouls. “Fellow undead, I’ve come to you with an offer that I think you’ll find to your liking.”

One of the ghouls – a former earth pony – likewise stepped forwards, sniffing the air. “You bring us fresh meat?”

“Well… no,” Rarity said. “Not right at this moment. But if –“

“I smell meat. We take meat!” The other ghouls hissed and jeered at his words, jumping up and down in place.

Rarity rolled her eyes, and pulsed with dark power. It washed over the ghouls, and two of them – including the leader – calmed down, enfolded in her necromantic power. “Kill the other ghouls in your pack, then kill yourselves,” she ordered them.

“Yes, mistress,” the captured ghouls hissed.

“The rest of you can help,” Rarity added, to the party, as the pack of ghouls descended into a frenzied melee. “I have no need for such lowly creatures.”

It was a short fight. Pinkie Pie tossed a fire-bomb onto the whole pack, while the others with ranged attacks flung them at the uncontrolled ghouls. Mostly the ghouls ripped each other apart, however, not having any sort of resistance to each other’s claws. Twilight trotted up and executed the last straggler with her hammer.

“So what are you looking for?” Twilight asked Rarity. “I imagine we’ll primarily find zombies and skeletons – the magus implied that most of those who arose were mindless.”

“There is a city’s worth of undead infesting these sewers,” Rarity insisted. “I’m not certain what I’m looking for, but I’m sure that I can do better than… that,” she shuddered as she stepped through the scorched pile of mutilated flesh and severed limbs, reaching down to grab a decayed foreleg in her teeth, to chew on as a snack.

The others followed, Twilight and Macintosh gingerly making their way around the remains, trying not to step in any body.

The party did indeed find a vast horde of zombies and skeletons, which were surprisingly passive, at least in the light of day, as well as another pack of ghouls who were smarter than the first, and ran off immediately when Rarity offered them the opportunity to do so. The most powerful undead they were able to find in the high tunnels – the sewers proper, where sunlight filtered down from gratings and outhouses, and the whole atmosphere was foul but not particularly dark – was a large zombified crocodile.

“Closer,” Rarity admitted, as Macintosh grappled with the creature, “But still not what I’m looking for. Dispatch it, Twilight.”

“As you wish, madam,” Twilight replied cheerfully, and proceeded to beat it to death, or rather until it stopped moving.

It seemed that if they were to locate more powerful undead – undead of a darker nature, perhaps, who feared and hated the sunlight – they would have to go deeper. And as luck would have it, not far from the pool where they’d fought the crocodile was a large open shaft, a narrow staircase spiraling down into the darkness, with filthy water dribbling over the edge in a series of short waterfalls, leaving the stairs moldy and slick.

Applejack looked down into the darkness. “Nope,” she said.

“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe with me,” Rarity assured her.

“I know you need a new undead minion and all, but this seems like a really bad idea,” Rainbow Dash said. “I’m with AJ on this one.”

“I… don’t think we should go down there,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe if we shout down the hole, we can get some friendly undead to come up?”

“Pinkie Pie, surely you at least are with me in this matter,” Rarity asked.

The pink pegasus rubbed her hooves together nervously. “Okay, Rarity, if you’re really really really really sure that we won’t all get horribly murdered by shadows and wraiths and vampires… none of which we’re really equipped to fight…”

“Actually,” Twilight said, “we were all given magic weapons when we turned in the voucher we got from the mage tower, so technically we are equipped to fight shadows and wraiths.”

“Not me,” Rainbow Dash said. “I got a belt.”

“Monks’ attacks are magical without the need for a weapon,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes.

“Technically… I’m not a monk. I’m a ‘martial artist’,” Rainbow Dash said, making quotation marks with her wings. “So I’m trained to spot the weak points in anypony’s defenses, but I don’t have the magic touch that would let me punch a ghost. I’ll need actual magic for that.”

“Rainbow…” Twilight said, rubbing her forehead with a hoof.

“But you’re in, aren’t you darling?” Rarity said, leaning close to Twilight and smiling, showing her fangs.

“I guess I do owe you one,” Twilight replied. She turned to the others. “The rest of you, guard the rear. There’s a significant chance that we’ll need a clear escape route. On that note, Rarity – make sure to clean the stairs as we go. I don’t want anypony slipping and falling on all that moss.”

“Whatever you say, dear,” Rarity said, as she happily pranced down the stairs, Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle following with quite a bit less spring in their step.

Cleaning the slime off the slippery parts of the stairs made for slow going, but with no railing to catch hold of if one was to slip and fall – and no sign of a bottom to the shaft down which they were circling – it was probably a wise precaution. After making a full circuit of the shaft, and descending about fifty feet, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight Sparkle at last came to an opening – a wide ledge set back into the wall, which at one point had apparently been used as some sort of subterranean marketplace for trinkets and low-quality food. It had apparently been abandoned in a hurry, although the shoddy quality of the goods made it unlikely that the abandoned stalls held anything of value. A half dozen bodies littered the ground, most of them ponies, although one was a human of all things.

A closer examination revealed that while the bodies bore physical wounds, as if from vicious claws, the true cause of death was darker – none of the bodies cast a shadow.

“Eeee!” Rarity squealed happily. “I was hoping for shadows! They’d be perfect, don’t you think? Difficult to kill, but weak enough that I should be able to control several, and they’ll breed more shadows without any effort on my part.”

“And you’ll control the extra shadows too?” Twilight asked, uncertainly.

“I’ll control the original shadows, and they’ll control their spawn for me,” Rarity replied. “Without this sort of hierarchy how is one to ever control an entire army of undead?”

“Maybe one isn’t,” Twilight grumbled under her breath. “So, where are these shadows?”

“Who can say? They’re masters of stealth,” Rarity replied. “Now, stand still. The best way to lure shadows out of hiding is with a living victim to act as bait, but I’d prefer that the two of you survive this endeavor.”

With that, Rarity circled around her friends and cast a pair of spells on each – a shimmering barrier of force, clinging tightly to their hide, and a traditional mystical ward that briefly surrounded them with a blue glow, before fading. “Mage Armor, and Protection from Evil,” she explained. “The latter will only last a few minutes, so it’s best that we hurry. Come along now! And keep your weapons holstered, we’re trying to look like easy prey.”

Twilight lit the tip of her horn so that she and Pinkie Pie could see, and (after Pinkie Pie mutated herself, since that made her a little better at dodging) they began to search the shadowy marketplace.

If there were still shadows lurking in the marketplace, they didn’t take the bait. Perhaps they’d heard Rarity’s speech. After poking fruitlessly at the stalls and failing to find anything of value – even the dead bodies had already been picked over – they picked a side tunnel and headed into the deeper darkness. 

The design of the tunnel on this level implied that once it had been a conduit for sewage, much like the level above, but it had long since gone bone dry. Nothing moved, other than the ponies – not even insects, not even the air. The only sound was the clip-clop of their hooves.

And then, the quiet scratch of claws on stone came from the darkness ahead, scrabbling along the walls and ceiling, but peering into the darkness revealed nothing – except to Rarity, whose undead eyes saw through the darkness as if it was day, and saw a pair of tattered vaporous figures flanking a terrible clawed humanoid with a face hidden by a white mask.

“A moon wraith!” Rarity said with glee, even as the other two wraiths of the more ordinary variety swooped into view of the others. “So very rare, I must have it!”

“Wraiths?” Pinkie Pie squeaked, fumbling her bomb and shattering it against the wall of the corridor, brightening the area briefly with a flare of flame. The moon wraith flickered on the edge of the firelight, as it returned to incorporeality.

Twilight stepped forwards and swung her hammer at the two wraiths who’d approached, and it passed through both of them, tearing off bits of their substance and disrupting them briefly, but not even coming close to dispersing them. “I don’t think we can handle this many!” she cried. “Get your wraith and let’s get out of here!”

The wraiths split up, one attacking each of the living ponies, but for the moment Rarity’s wards held back their touch. Rarity didn’t even look back to see whether they had worked, however. Oblivious to her friends’ fortunes, she stepped forwards into the darkness, and cast a spell. “Come with me, creature of darkness. You have a far more glorious destiny than to simply lurk down here in the sewers.”

The creature exhaled, the wind from its breath like the chill of a winter’s night. “I cannot resist your call, necromancer. But soon, it will be you and your friends who serve my will. All shall fall to darkness.”

“Can we run away now?” Pinkie Pie squealed.

“Yes, yes, if you must,” Rarity said, distracted. “Try to lead the others off while I finish binding this one.”

She didn’t have to tell them twice. The two went barreling down the hallway at top speed, with the wraiths in pursuit, slashing at their heels as they desperately ran for the trickle of sunlight in the upper levels. The wraiths were faster than the ponies, however, and the protection Rarity had given them was not enough to turn every blow. By the time Twilight ran gasping to the top of the stairs – not stopping to explain as she shoved past the rest of the party and headed for the nearest exit to the true sunlight of the surface – both she and Pinkie bore the scars of the wraiths’ chill claws tearing away and devouring pieces of their souls.

But they did get away. The wraiths didn’t even follow them all the way to the upper level, and Rainbow Dash and Applejack were still wondering whether to follow Fluttershy, who’d hurried after the two terrified ponies in case they needed healing, or to stay and wait for Rarity, when the zebra herself came prancing happily up the stairs, a misty figure in her wake boiling away to nothingness as the sparse rays of sunlight touched it.

“So, did they live?” she asked.

“I reckon they did,” Applejack said. “They were both still moving around, at any rate. Running like the Nightmare herself was on their tail, though.”

Rarity nodded, with a smirk. “Then I think I can declare this expedition a complete success! Behold, my new Moon Wraith!”

Rainbow Dash and Applejack stared at the empty air. “Um…” Rainbow Dash said. “I think it burned up in the sunlight. Does that mean we have to start over?”

Rarity cackled. “It’s not ‘burned up’, it’s completely ethereal! Isn’t it wonderful? During the day, it can be the perfect scout, and at night, a terrifying force of doom for our enemies!”

Rainbow Dash tilted her head a bit. “I think the ‘perfect scout’ would be able to talk.”

“Indeed,” Rarity said, motioning for them to follow her as she headed for the surface. “We’ll need to construct some sort of dark box or something that it can hide in when it wants to talk. I hear that Moon Wraiths are wonderful conversationalists. At the moment, it’s held unwillingly in my thrall, but I just know that eventually we’ll become the best of friends!”

> On the Road Again
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Over the course of the next few days, the party of fey Adventurers took in the culture and atmosphere of the city – or at least, the market district. The party had enough random knick-knacks to sell to get a few hundred gold for each pony, which was enough to get Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie Restored to their proper state. Rarity and Fluttershy pooled their money for a wand of inflict light wounds, since trying to heal a ghoul with cure light wounds would go poorly. Nopony had enough to buy anything particularly valuable.

The primary focus of that time, however, was gathering information about potential jobs. It turned out that Fluttershy had the best luck on that front – she had a knack for seeming friendly and unobtrusive, and the ponies of the city opened up to her about everything that was going on. Applejack also knew some ponies who knew some ponies who knew what was going on, and managed to get a few leads.

One thing they both discovered was that the undead plague was hardly a secret, and hadn’t been for weeks now – nopony knew why, but the dead were rising in unprecedented numbers, to the point where it just wasn’t safe to go out at night, let alone go crawling around in the sewers. Most of the undead stayed in the sewers, and officially there had not been any surface attacks, but random people on the street near the inn were overheard talking about foals vanishing from their beds, with no sign of a body or of forced entry – what else could it be but incorporeal undead slipping in and taking them during the night?

Another possible job was as a guard or a weatherpony on a merchant ship. Both pirates and strange ocean weather were on the rise.

There were also the tasks posted by the Pathfinder Guild itself. The Drow to the south had gone incommunicado, with the last reports from agents in the vicinity being cryptic and worrying. The Unicorn Bandits were still causing trouble and obstructing the trade route from Bright Valley to Dream Castle. There were reported sighting of wild drakes harassing travelers in the pass between Crossroads and Rally. Lastly, the Black River coal mine on the edge of the Sleeping Forest was reporting acts of sabotage by an unknown party, although they blamed the Unicorn Bandits that operated nearby.

As far as the less legitimate jobs were concerned, a ritualist wizard was offering a large payout for Griffon primary feathers, and a ‘treasure hunter’ was hiring security for an expedition to a subterranean Gem Pony settlement that had been overrun by Diamond Gnolls hundreds of years ago, and was now mostly abandoned.

“My, those Unicorn Bandits are really becoming a problem,” Rarity remarked.

“If they’re really the ones behind the sabotage,” Twilight said. “What would bandits want with sabotaging a coal mine?”

“Oh, Twilight Twilight Twilight. Bandits are like children,” Pinkie Pie said, giggling. “They rob people and steal all their shinies, and what could be shinier than a diamond? And where do you find diamonds? In a coal mine!”

“Actually, you find the diamonds mostly on the salt flats near the coal mine,” Rainbow Dash said. When everypony looked at her, she elaborated. “We could see the Black River mine from the monastery – it’s the most polluted hellhole you can imagine. Nothing grows for miles around it, the lake next to it is completely poisoned, and the river where they dump their runoff literally runs black.”

“And the druids are okay with this?” Applejack asked.

“It’s not like –“ Twilight began.

“They don’t really –“ Fluttershy started. 

The two stared at each other, then Fluttershy lowered her eyes, and Twilight explained. “Dream Castle surrendered to the Empire, so the Unicorns and Flutterponies that live in the forest don’t really have a say. The Black River coal mine is a vital part of Rally’s industrial might. All the druids can do is try to mitigate the damage to the forest itself.”

“Or form a band of bandits and try to sabotage the mine to shut it down despite the Empire’s wishes!” Pinkie Pie gasped. “We have a motive!”

“Indeed,” Rarity said. “Do you know what this means?”

“It means that the bandits are really becoming a problem,” Twilight Sparkle replied.

“Well, yes, but aside from that,” Rarity said. “It means we can do one mission – and get paid twice! Eeeee!”

“Well sign me up,” Applejack said. There were no objections.

The road north from Bright Valley was wide and safe, surrounded by farms and hamlets and well patrolled by the city guard. After a day of peaceful, uneventful travel, the party found themselves back in Crossroads.

The town hadn’t changed much, although the crowds had moved on. There had been no word of further Zebra aggression, although the rumor mill had brought the people of Crossroads the general gist of the party’s story ahead of their arrival. There had been reports of undead griffons lurking in the countryside, but so far they hadn’t attacked the town, or anypony else for that matter, and the pony giving the only eye-witness report appeared to be a long-time drunk.

“He’s been energy-drained,” Pinkie Pie whispered loudly to Rarity. Everyone in the inn turned to stare at her. “What? I didn’t say anything!”

“I tol – ah tol you I wasna liar!” the drunk earth pony mumbled as he cried into his ale.

“So… is there some kind of reward for taking down these griffons?” Rainbow Dash asked the barkeep.

The barkeep grumbled. “Not from old Joe there, that’s for sure. Darn deadbeat hasn’t even paid his tab in days.”

“He can’t even afford a Restoration,” Twilight observed. “By now the drain has probably set – it’d cost thousands of gold to fix.”

“So he’s drained FOREVER?” Pinkie Pie asked, her eyes going wide. “I was ready to slit my own throat and we were only drained for a couple of hours!”

“Sometimes death would be a mercy,” Fluttershy said quietly. “But it isn’t our place to provide it. He isn’t our prey.”

“I don’t wanna die!” Joe shouted at them. “Just want… no more pain…” he finished, trailing off into a mumbling babble.

The party stood around uncomfortably, trying to find some profit in the situation. Eventually, they gave up and went to sleep.

In the morning, Joe was missing – the barkeep suggested that he’d skipped town to avoid paying his bill, but wasn’t willing to offer a bounty to drag him back. “It’s not like I’d get any of it back,” he muttered. “Poor guy doesn’t have two bits to rub together.”

So the party set off on the north road, and tried to forget the whole unfortunate incident. Unfortunately, the incident did not forget them. They were walking along when Rarity, in the back of the party, looked up at the overcast skies, and noticed that one of the clouds was actually a lot lower than the rest of the weather.

“Ambush!” she called out, casting a spell to protect herself from arrows, lest history repeat itself a third time.

Unfortunately, the party was not attacked with arrows. Four flaming jars of alchemist’s fire fell through the cloud and splattered over them, setting Twilight, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Rarity alight. As the bombs fell, a familiar cackle came from behind one of the low hills common to the region.

“Ah ha ha ha ha! So you thought you’d seen the last of the Great and Powerful Trixie?”

“Actually, we kind of figured you’d be back,” Pinkie Pie said.

Rainbow Dash leapt into the air, and scowled, “Can we make sure we kill her this time?” She vanished into the clouds, searching for the attackers.

Six Trixies appeared on the nearby hillside, and pointed their horns at the rest of the party. Noxious green smoke sprayed forth, billowing out and engulfing them in a stinking cloud.

“Nnnf, nnnnf!” Pinkie Pie said, kicking at the cloud but failing to dispel more than a tiny fraction of it. “Fine, be that way!” she said, lifting it into the air and dragging it where it couldn’t do any more harm. It was too late for Applejack, though, who was curled up and dry-heaving from the toxic fumes.

“Sounds like a plan,” Twilight growled as the cloud lifted off her, twirling her hammer and charging straight at Trixie’s position. Her weapon swept viciously through the herd of Trixies, popping two of the images but failing to hit the witch herself.

“Is that the best you’ve got?” Trixie asked, smirking, as a massive undead Minotaur, skin pale and peeling, loped up the hill behind her, and brought his battleaxe down on Twilight’s head. It rang off her helmet, and scraped off her pauldron, and failed to do any lasting damage.

“That the best you’ve got?” Twilight said right back.

While Macintosh circled around to get in position to charge the minotaur, tossing a javelin at one of the Trixies as he moved and popping another image, Fluttershy nosed into her saddlebag and took out a scroll, which she quickly read. The words glowed and vanished, and Applejack’s color returned to her.

“Thank ye kindly,” she said, then glanced up at the cloud, where the sounds of battle raged. “I’d better go help out Dash.”

A patch of grease appeared under the Minotaur, toppling him. Trixie glanced at her ally’s fall, and stepped back from Twilight, spraying her with a pair of night-dark beams from her horn that ignored the unicorn’s armor and clawed directly at her life force – and at her eyes, blinding her momentarily. The blindness actually turned out to be somewhat to Twilight’s advantage – flailing wildly at the general area meant she wasn’t distracted by the images, and she managed to land a solid blow. Pinkie Pie followed up with a bomb, popping one of the images, but splashing over the real Trixie, and engulfing her in a stinking cloud of her own.

The Minotaur slowly clambered to his feet, and took another powerful swing at Twilight while she was blind – but even blind, she was still coated in metal, and the axe rang loudly off her armor once again.

Then Macintosh made his move, lowering his head and charging at the beast – only for his lance to be turned away at the last second by an invisible field of force protecting the Minotaur.

“Ha ha ha ha! The power of friendship will vanquish your sorry band!” Trixie proclaimed. “Hey – stop that!”

But she was too late to react as Fluttershy fluttered up and lay her hoof on Twilight, healing the burns and restoring a bit of the vitality Trixie’s bolts had stripped from her.

“Consarn it, Dash!” came Applejack’s voice from above. “Watch your back, don’t let them – oh, no you don’t!” With a screech, a griffon came plummeting through the cloud layer to splatter against the ground.

“Oh, why didn’t I memorize control undead,” Rarity grumbled. The answer, of course was because she wanted to memorize multiple Glitterdust spells, so she hit the Minotaur with one of those, instead. This made it very sparkly, but failed to have any other effect.

Trixie’s spell worked much better, engulfing Twilight and Fluttershy in a cloud of spiraling sparks, bludgeoning and burning them mercilessly, and leaving the whole area a drifting cloud of ash.

“I don’t think we’re winning!” Pinkie Pie said, tossing a bomb at the undead Minotaur – splashing it with fire and setting the grease beneath it alight.

“We’re not fast enough to run!” Twilight shouted back, holding her breath as she dove into Pinkie’s cloud. Through the mist, only Trixie herself and one image remained, and Twilight swung her hammer in a wide arc through them both, popping one and leaving the other crumpled on the ground, unconscious. “Got her!” she called. “Focus on the minotaur next!”

The Minotaur, however, was busy focusing on the foolish pony who’d tried to lance him, taking softer but quicker swings, since he was sick of his axe rebounding off plate armor. The axe thunked into Macintosh’s chest, and the creature followed up by slamming himself into the pony – and as he withdrew, he took a bit of life energy with him, his wounds healing over as he drained his victim. Fluttershy squeaked and flitted over to heal her mount, as he took another feeble swing at the Minotaur, still failing to connect.

After some screeching from above, and more cursing from Applejack, the Purrsian dove out of the clouds, Rainbow Dash’s unconscious form clutched in her paws, blood from multiple wounds staining her fur. “There’s too feather-loving many of them!” she spat, “and dying made them a whole hay of a lot nastier with those swords.”

“I’m doing everything I can!” Rarity said, flicking a hoof at the minotaur, and impaling it on a pair of magical missiles. It didn’t even seem to notice. “But I can’t control any more undead without losing my moon wraith!”

“Have you considered using your moon wraith?” Pinkie Pie asked, as she tossed another bomb at the Minotaur.

“In broad daylight he’s helpless! Even the cloud cover doesn’t make it dark enough for the poor dear to come out of his basket,” she said. “I’m sorry, but – there’s nothing Xologrim can do for us.”

“It’s fine,” Twilight said, emerging from the cloud and swinging her hammer at the Minotaur from behind. “We’ve got this.” It looked like a solid hit – only to rebound uselessly off the invisible field, just like Macintosh’s lance. “I hope,” she added, staggering a bit as she recovered from the failed blow.

The Minotaur continued to focus on Macintosh, who seemed to be on his last legs – but still had enough fight in him to block the axe. He wasn’t fast enough to avoid the follow-up slam, and with yet more energy drained from him, he collapsed. Twilight didn’t even have time to swear before the looming creature swung around and dug into her side with his vicious horns, but she stayed standing at least.

Fluttershy whimpered at the sight of her protector falling – but it was clear who was the strongest. She circled around and healed Twilight again. “Please, don’t fail me,” she whispered, as she poured more energy into the unicorn, erasing some of her burns and bruises, and scabbing over the wound from the Minotaur’s horn.

Meanwhile, at the bottom of the hill, three griffons swooped down out of the clouds, chasing Applejack – only to see a much tastier morsel, wearing only robes. They couldn’t charge after correcting their aim, so they landed on all sides of her, swords held ready. “Go ahead, wizard,” one of them sneered. “Cast a spell.”

“Mm,” Rarity replied. “I don’t think that will be necessary.” She lashed out with her clawlike hooves, and snapped with her new fangs, but the griffons just laughed as they easily deflected her blows. “Although I could be wrong… heh heh…” She hissed under her breath, “Applejack where are you!”

One of the griffons screeched as a dagger embedded itself in his spine. “Right here, Rares,” Applejack said. “Although I don’t know if it’ll be enough.”

“I’m coming!” Twilight shouted from the top of the hill, “Right as soon as I –“ Her hammer finally crunched through the minotaur’s invisible armor, splattering its guts and leaving it to collapse into a smoldering heap atop the burning grease patch. “Right now,” she said, giving a little laugh.

Pinkie Pie hit one of the griffons with a bomb, the splash somehow miraculously avoiding Rarity and Applejack. “Hey, it worked!” she said, happily, as the two stared at the flame spraying all around them in confusion. “I’m getting better at this all the time.”

The remaining griffons went to work on Rarity, giving up on interrupting her spells, and instead just hacking and slashing at her undead flesh. Intellectually, she knew that it wouldn’t take many more blows to end her undead existence, but strangely, she found herself unafraid – and the swords, which sliced slickly through her rotting flesh, didn’t hurt at all.

No fear, no pain. Truly, this was what she had always been meant to be. Still some distraction, having her body torn to pieces by brutish thugs, but she managed to regain her concentration, and tossed a bundle of glittering dust at her own feet – and it was the griffons’ turn to complain, as it got in their eyes, blinding them. 

It wasn’t wise to be blind, with a rogue standing not five feet from your flank. The griffon might also not have been in any pain as Applejack gutted and beheaded it, but its bits weren’t moving afterwards.

The last griffon fell beneath Twilight’s hammer as she charged down the hill, and then everything was silent, except for the heavy breathing of the adventurers, victorious once again.

Rainbow Dash groaned, as she dragged herself to her feet under Fluttershy’s ministrations. “Urgh… they were a lot better than the last time we fought,” she groaned.

“Yeah,” Applejack said. “They did a number on ya, poprocket. Maybe next time we can charge in together?”

“Please at least tell me Trixie’s dead this time,” Rainbow said, shaking out her wings and examining them for damage.

Twilight trotted back up the hill and into the cloud of smoke. There was a sickening crunch, and a splatter, and then she emerged, blood and brains dripping from her hammer. “She’s dead.” She glanced around at the undead, who were obviously the same underlings they’d fought before, returned from the grave just like everypony else. “Although probably not for long.”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said, smiling. “I actually have a spell for that. I meant to use it on one of us, in case we wanted to be raised from the dead instead of coming back as a ghoul or a skeleton or something, but I think the Great and Powerful Trixie deserves to move on to her final reward. Don’t you?”

With her corpse sanctified, and stripped of everything valuable – and there was quite a bit of value – the Adventurers returned Trixie to Crossroads, where for a nominal fee, the priests were happy to ensure that she was buried in a sturdy coffin, deep beneath the sanctified ground of the cemetery. From the way the Magus had described the situation, this wasn’t likely to keep her from returning as an undead indefinitely, but even incorporeal undead were unable to pass through six feet of packed dirt to haunt the living. So, barring grave robbers, there she would remain.

Trixie had had enough gold on her to pay for restoring Macintosh before the energy drain set in deeply – the real reason they’d turned back right away. In addition, she had some fireworks she hadn’t had the time to use during the encounter, the gigantic magical battleaxe the minotaur had been wielding, which Macintosh thought he might be able to hold in his mouth with further training, several scrolls of cure moderate wounds, a magical cloak that Applejack claimed after she and Rainbow diced for it, and a strange magic rod which had to be identified. After a few minutes of concentration, Rarity was able to discern that it would allow three minor mind-affecting spells per day to affect undead as if they were living creatures.

“Sounds perfect for ya,” Applejack said. “I imagine that’ll come in real handy, what with all the undead you run with.”

“Actually,” Rarity said, “Enchantment spells have never been my area of expertise. This might be better in Fluttershy’s hooves.”

“Oh dear,” Fluttershy said, as the necromancer set the rod in her hooves. “I don’t know if I can pay you back for this…”

Rarity laughed. “Oh, I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

> Roadside Attractions
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The party set out north again the next morning, after healing up at the church services and resupplying. Before long they came to the previous day’s ambush site, which was mostly deserted. There were scorch marks from the fires, and dark patches on the road stained by blood and other fluids. The only creature left was the Griffon Applejack had beheaded, which was twitching – reanimated, but not reassembled.

As they made to pass, she opened her eyes. “Hey! Hey you jerks! Look what you did to me!”

“Maybe next time you can not try to kill us, and we’ll go easier on you,” Rainbow Dash said, stopping to glare at the animated head.

The griffon squirmed around, but couldn’t even roll herself over with only a few inches of neck muscle for locomotion. “It was just a job you dung muncher! That stupid unicorn paid better than anypony else.”

Fluttershy looked at the ground. “You were weak, and so you died. It’s the natural order.”

“I’m not dead!”

“Uh… ah hate to break it to you, but,” Applejack said, looking at the head, then over at the eviscerated body lying a few feet away. She did a doubletake when she saw Rarity sink her teeth into a rotting thigh and gobble down a chunk of flesh. “Oh, for pony’s sake, Rarity!”

Rarity gave a little pleasured squeal, and started shoveling rotting flesh into her mouth with her clawlike forehooves. “Ooooh, this is simply divine! I haven’t had properly rotted flesh in… well, ever!”

“What – what is she doing? What is she doing to my body?” the griffon asked, eyes rolling frantically. Rainbow kicked the head until it rolled to face the gory sight. “Stop it! Stop eating me!”

Rarity didn’t even slow down. “You’re not… *om nom nom* not using it anyway *nom nom nom* and I’m just so *riiip* *squelch* *om nom nom* so hungry!”

“Oh, Blaze’s teats… just kill me…” the Griffon head wailed.

Twilight seemed to consider it. “If we completely destroyed her body, would she still come back from the dead?”

Rarity paused in her gobbling long enough to answer, wiping off her bloody muzzle, ineffectually. “Oh, I’m certain she would – as an incorporeal undead, most likely. A shadow, wraith, or possibly a ghost?”

“Yeah, not gonna happen,” Rainbow Dash said. She punted the griffon head over the hill, shouting, “So long, beakbrain! Have fun watching the grass grow!”

“I hate you all! I curse you! Cuuuuurse youuuuu!”

There were no immediately obvious effects of the Griffon’s curse, as the party moved on. Heading north, the terrain became dryer and flatter, with less and less vegetation, until they finally came to the ancient shoreline which marked the edge of the salt flats. From that point on, there was nothing but dry white salt, with the road simply a series of ruts from wagon wheels, marked by a line of small stone posts.

By that point it was almost dusk, however. Fortunately, only a few hundred feet away was the spot where the road branched west to Rally, and there at the crossroads was a small rustic inn.

“Kind of suspicious, don’t you think?” Rainbow Dash said. “Right when we’re about to make camp, way in the middle of nowhere, there’s an inn?”

“We’ve done a normal day’s travel,” Twilight said. “We’re travelling at a fairly normal speed, and covered the normal amount of distance that anypony heading north from Crossroads would cover. Of course there’s an inn.”

“Yeah, but –“ Rainbow Dash started, then scowled. “I still think we should keep our eyes open. This could be a trap.”

“I’m sure we’ll be perfectly safe, with Rainbow Dash on guard!” Twilight replied, smirking. “Better keep an eye on the stablehands – you know half of them are secretly looking for ponies to kidnap and ship off to Goblin lands.”

Rainbow Dash kept an eye open as they approached, but the only suspicious thing about the inn was how few ponies seemed to be using it. The stables were empty, and while there was smoke coming from the chimney, there was no sign of anypony in the common room either, when she glanced through the windows.

As they entered, a frightened voice came from the kitchen. “Who’s there!” A glittering mane and pair of eyes peeked around the corner, followed by the rest of a young Gem Pony. “Customers? You’re just in time! I was about to lock up for the night.”

“Where’s everypony else?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I don’t know,” the innkeeper replied, darting around the room and closing the shutters on all the windows, while motioning for the others to come inside. “I don’t want to know. I just know that as long as I keep all the windows closed, it’s safe. They can’t open windows, or doors, and they only come out at night.”

“They?” Rarity asked.

“I haven’t seen them. You have to understand, I’m still here because I haven’t seen them,” said the Gem Pony. “My brother saw them. He opened the window just a crack, and peeked out, and then started gibbering and raving and then he went outside, and I never saw him again.” She shivered, and looked like she was about to cry. “But it’s okay. You got here in time, and all the windows are shuttered, and once we shut the door, we’ll all be safe until morning! Won’t that be fun?”

“Thrilling,” Rainbow Dash said, flopping onto a bench next to one of the tables.

The party all took their seats as the innkeeper – the acting innkeeper at least, since the rest of her family was apparently missing – went to the kitchen to start a meal for eight. The inn was brightly lit, with plenty of lanterns and a cheerful flame crackling in the hearth, but it was still far too quiet. The innkeeper had said that the enemy would be waiting, but there was no sound of footsteps, or of anypony banging on the shuttered windows, or of anything. It was just… quiet.

“Okay, I’m going to take a look,” Rainbow Dash said. “Ten gold says the innkeeper’s a loony.”

“I’ll take that bet,” Applejack said.

Rainbow Dash looked at Twilight, who shrugged. “What?” the griffon asked. “Not going to stop me?”

“If you start acting crazy, we can just tie you up,” she replied. “You managed to tie me up, after all, and I’m a much better fighter than you.”

Rainbow snorted, then turned and opened one of the shutters, just a peek – for a split second, then slammed them shut, rubbing her eyes.

“So I take it you owe me 10 gold,” Applejack said, reclining lazily on the table.

“Yeah yeah,” Rainbow Dash said. “There’s something out there, all right. Buck me in the head, they hurt just to look at.”

“What are they?” Twilight asked.

“I don’t know, some kind of weird-as-hay giant butterflies with glowing purple wings,” she said. “Lots of them, too.”

Rarity perked up. “Did the wings have black patterns on them, that seemed to move on their own?”

“You’ve heard of them, then?” Twilight asked, as Rainbow gave a tiny nod.

“Indeed I have,” Rarity said, giving a serious look from under her hood. “Gloomwings. Giant mesmerizing butterflies from the Plane of Shadow – living creatures, oddly enough. Nasty things. They confuse you if you look at them, and weaken you if you just happen to get close, and if they manage to defeat you, well! They implant you with their eggs. It’s quite fatal, once they hatch.”

“What would they be doing here?” Twilight asked.

“Harassing an inn, obviously,” Pinkie Pie said. “I mean, really, Twilight, that was so obvious even Rainbow Dash figured it out.”

“I did?” Rainbow Dash asked. “I mean, of course I did. It was obvious.”

Pinkie Pie just stared at the griffon. “Wow.”

“What?” Rainbow Dash said.

“Really, Rainbow Dash, how could you not pick up on that? She out and out told us,” Applejack said, shaking her head. “Wow.”

Rainbow blushed and covered her face with her wing. “Shut up! I didn’t mean it that way!”

“While I like teasing Rainbow Dash as much as the next pony,” Twilight said, “what I meant was, why are they here? Another portal? Some kind of planar weakness? This might be important!”

“Weren’t we ordered not to look into that sort of thing?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight scrunched up her nose. “We should at least find out what’s going on, so that we can send a report.”

“Don’t worry, darling,” Rarity said. “Xologrim should be completely immune to everything the Gloomwings can do. I’ll send him out to find the source of these creatures.”

Twilight opened her mouth, then nodded. “Okay. That’s actually a really good idea.”

Rarity released Xologrim from his basket, after dinner, once everypony had retired to their rooms, and gave him his orders. Obediently, he set out to follow the Gloomwings back to their lair.

By morning, he hadn’t returned.

“You’d know if some critter had done him in, right?” Applejack asked.

Rarity sighed and shook her head. “No, I wouldn’t. I didn’t even know Sparky had been destroyed until you told me. The entire process is rather finicky, and the burden of tracking how powerful the undead I command are is entirely on my shoulders. But what could have destroyed a Moon Wraith? Certainly not a mere Gloomwing. He’s probably just being difficult.” She sighed again. “Intelligent undead are never fully under control. You understand, of course? It’s allegiance, not slavery.”

“I understand,” Twilight said.

Applejack frowned. “So he escaped then, you reckon.”

Rarity held her head up. “I’m certain he’ll be back soon. I’ll make sure to check my basket for him as we travel, and then we’ll have our answers.”

“Do you think we should go look for him?” Rainbow Dash asked. “They probably nest somewhere around here, and there’s not much around here.”

“I have faith in my servant,” Rarity replied. “We shall press on!”

So, with Rarity’s basket still empty, the party set out to cross the salt flats. According to the innkeeper, it was only a half-day’s travel to the coal mine, so there was little chance of being caught outdoors at night. There was also little chance of anypony sneaking up on them, since the salt flats were flat, and they could see for miles. The weather was still somewhat cloudy, but there were enough breaks in the clouds that a low-lying cloud like the griffons had used would be difficult to conceal. Their only opponent, therefore, would be boredom.

After several hours of walking, they spotted something on the road ahead – a dark lumpy mass from a distance, but as they got closer the keener eyed members of the party were able to recognize it as the burned remnants of a wagon.

“Bandits?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Bandits,” Pinkie Pie said, nodding.

“We should prepare for a fight, then,” Rarity said.

After casting their longer-lasting defensive spells, the party continued on. On reaching the wagon, they were able to find further evidence that it was the work of bandits – the wagon, as well as the dessicated corpses of the two earth ponies who’d been pulling it, were riddled with arrow wounds.

“Wait, arrows?” Twilight asked. “Unicorn bandits used arrows.”

“Unicorns can use arrows,” Fluttershy said. “You can use your horn.”

“We don’t, though. It’s stupid,” Twilight said. “It takes years of training, and we’re terrible shots.”

“Doesn’t take a crack-shot to hit the side of a wagon, or the earth pony pulling it,” Applejack said. “You can use a bow, can’t ya?”

“Well of course I can use a bow,” Twilight said. “I just don’t, because I’m a terrible shot, and it would be stupid.”

“Maybe you can tell the bandits that, and they’ll run up and fight us with daggers,” Pinkie Pie suggested. “Everyone knows that telling somepony they’ve been training their whole life to do something stupid always makes them reconsider their entire life and start over from scratch with a new career more in line with their critic’s preconceptions.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Fine. We have bow-using unicorns. Excuse me if I’m not shaking in my horse shoes at the prospect.”

“I can’t believe they just murdered these two guys and left them to rot,” Rainbow Dash said. “I mean, look at the wagon – they didn’t even take anything. They just burned it. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Pinkie Pie giggled maniacally. “Oh, you don’t need a reason to burn things, Dashie. Maybe they just didn’t have a good enough reason not to.”

Twilight glanced at the wagon, then back at Pinkie Pie. “Do you know something we don’t?”

Pinkie Pie nodded. “Lots of things!”

“Something to do with the wagon.”

“Well, I know fifteen different ways to set a wagon like that on fire,” Pinkie Pie said, resting her chin on her hoof. “And that’s just sticking to things we have at hoof.”

“Do you know which of them the bandits used?” Twilight asked, patiently. The patience was practically dripping off her in rivulets, and soaking into the salty ground.

“Boring old alchemist’s fire,” Pinkie Pie replied, after taking a closer look, and a long sniff. “You can smell the phosphorus.”

As the ponies examined the wagon, Rainbow Dash noticed a cloud approaching from the northeast. It was distant, but approaching fast – a dust cloud, like the one kicked up by a large group moving quickly. Her sharp ears could just barely make out the sound of ponies approaching at a gallop!

“Bandits at two oclock!” Rainbow Dash shouted, flapping up into the air to get a better look. As the rest of the party started to get into position – Rarity and Fluttershy taking cover behind the wagon – she swooped and dodged as a volley of poorly aimed arrows headed in her general direction. “And they’ve got bows!”

“Chaaarge!” Twilight cried, rearing up on her hindlegs.

“Waait!” Fluttershy protested, setting a hoof on Twilight’s armored flank, and casting a spell that made a strange crackling sensation ripple over the purple unicorn’s body as her hide toughened. She did the same to Rainbow Dash and Applejack, and then they were out of time – the bandits had arrived.

There were six unicorns, in a rainbow of pastels, but they were not wielding bows. The bows were held in the clutches of equally brightly-colored goblins, riding on the ponies’ backs. Ponies and goblins alike were dressed in shining armor with the symbol of a unicorn’s head proudly displayed. As the unicorns charged, swinging greatswords held in their teeth at Twilight, Macintosh, and Applejack, the goblins peppered the party with randomly aimed arrows.

Dash swooped down to flank with Applejack, breaking the hind leg of one of the ponies engaged with her, distracting it long enough for the rogue to slit the unicorn’s throat with her dagger, then leap up onto the dying pony’s head to maul the goblin rider.

Twilight focused on one of the riders first, slamming her hammer into his chest, and following through to break the mount’s back. Her goblin, like Applejack and Rainbow’s, managed to roll free of the falling pony and get to his feet.

Fluttershy put her barkskin spell on Macintosh, who flailed about with his lance but failed to do more than scratch his opponents’ armor. Seeing him in the worst state, Pinkie Pie tossed one of her bombs at his foes, engulfing all of them in a cloud of choking green smoke.

Rarity flung her own spell at Twilight’s foes, blinding the goblins as green sparkles clung to their eyes.

“Halt!” came a loud, high pitched voice from the still-settling dust cloud behind the bandits. Obediently, the bandits – the surviving bandits – backed off from the party a few feet, weapons held ready but not continuing the attack.

Another unicorn emerged from the cloud, this one sporting a pair of scaly green wings, and a strange curl to her horn. On her back rode a goblin festooned with shiny gems and bits of metal, obviously the leader. “You’re not merchants,” he said. “Or easy prey. What are you doing here, in Unicorn territory?”

“What are you doing here, goblin?” Twilight asked, scrunching up her nose. “Goblin lands are far to the north, past the orcish wastes.”

“They serve nature, just as we do,” said his mount. “With their help, we will throw off the chains of oppression, and end the depredations of the Empire’s minions! The Sleeping Forest will awaken at last!”

“Uh huh,” Rainbow Dash said. “And murdering random merchants is the best way to go about that?”

“Their deaths were regrettable,” the winged unicorn said, ears flattening a bit. “But we cannot allow the Black River mine to resupply!”

“So you are behind the sabotage!” Pinkie Pie said, pointing a hoof. “I knew it!”

“No!” The winged unicorn took a step back, looking frustrated. “No! There is no ‘sabotage’! The gem ponies have dug their own grave, and if they aren’t stopped it will be the doom of everypony on this continent!”

“Care to go into a little more detail on that, whirlybird?” Applejack asked.

The pony blinked. “Whirly --? My name is Wind Seed, not ‘Whirlybird’. And we’ve already said too much. You must turn back, and let us deal with the miners.”

“Or we could kill you all, and collect the bounty,” Twilight Sparkle said, hefting her hammer. “So far, you don’t really seem like much of a challenge.”

“Is this what has become of pony honor?” asked the goblin leader. “You would attack those who seek to save the world from the emperor’s madness, simply because one of his lackeys offered to pay you for it?”

“All who oppose the emperor must die,” Twilight said, with a grim smile. “Adventurers – charge!”

“Adventurers!” the goblin spat, as he raised his bow and put two arrows casually into Rainbow Dash’s chest, dropping her like a sack of potatoes. “No wonder our students couldn’t handle them.”

Wind Seed laughed. “Of course they’ll be no trouble for us, brother,” she said, then set her sword in her mouth as she charged at Twilight, who held her back with her shield.

The dismounted archers focused their fire on Fluttershy, who’d spent the interlude stabilizing the two downed unicorns and healing the party. “Get the healer!” one of them squeaked, but between them they managed only one solid hit.

The still-mounted pairs charged at Twilight, Macintosh, and Applejack, as before. The goblins were poor mounted archers, at least while their mounts were in motion, and the unicorns for their part were unable to gore the defenders with their horns.

Rarity made the ground beneath Macintosh’s opponents slippery, but the ponies were able to keep their feet and dodge his lance. They weren’t able to dodge Pinkie’s bomb, or the flames licking at their hooves as the patch of grease caught on fire, and one of the riders – who’d taken both bombs directly in the face – fell to the ground as a burning lump.

Twilight sized up her opponents, and decided to even the odds before dueling the bandit leaders. She swung her hammer powerfully at the weaker goblin/pony pair – only for the goblin rider to pull back on his reigns, making his mount rear up and place her head directly under the falling hammer. Her face – or what was left of it – was driven into the ground, and her nearly-headless body thrashed and spasmed in death, pinning the rider beneath.

Applejack was not prepared to face her enemies head on – not without Rainbow Dash to flank – and nimbly disengaged, leaping at the surviving rider harassing Macintosh. The goblin was nimble as well, however, and ducked out of her way before she could sink her dagger into his neck.

“And their tactics are abominable,” the chief goblin said, taking aim at Twilight next. “Don’t they know that we’re the real threat?” He loosed a pair of deadly arrows, one of which she deflected off her shield, the other penetrating her armor but failing to pierce her hardened skin.

“Servant of evil, you’ve slain my student, now taste my vengeance!” Leaf Wind proclaimed, her sword bursting into holy flame. Down it came, the power of righteousness behind it – and it rebounded off Twilight’s armor as if it was made of tin. “What? Impossible!”

“I am not evil,” Twilight responded. “I serve the Moon Princess, and the Emperor, and defend the weak – like the miners you harass, and the merchants you’ve murdered!” Down her hammer came, and while she failed to injure Leaf Wind, the bandit chief took a heavy blow to his shoulder.

Meanwhile, the lower ranking bandits failed to do much against Applejack or Macintosh. The pony bandits tried to edge around him, out of the grease fire, but the riderless one lost his footing and plunged into the fire instead – incidentally dodging yet another of Macintosh’s attacks. The other one accidentally moved to put his rider’s back to Applejack, who took the opportunity to tear out the goblin’s kidneys with her claws.

The dismounted archers had more success firing at Fluttershy, who’d tried to take cover behind the wagon but had left her flank exposed. As three arrows sank into her rear, she squeaked and pulled further behind cover. Pinkie Pie glowered at the pair harassing their healer, and left cover to get close enough to engulf them in another sickening green cloud full of fire and poison.

As for Rarity, she took the goblin’s words to heart, and tossed her last glitterdust onto him and his ‘sister’, blinding them both.

“Ahhh!” he screamed, “Leaf Wind, I can’t see, and the purple one hits like an ogre! Retreat! Retreat!”

“This isn’t over!” cried the blinded unicorn, as she leapt into the air and withdrew, flying off at a speed impossible for the party to match. “The Unicorn Bandits will save the world, despite your interference!”

Two unicorns, and one rider, followed suit, tearing off across the salt flats at high speed. The rest of the bandits were either dead or down – one puking up his guts from Pinkie’s cloud, another pinned under the corpse of his mount.

“Surrender or die,” Twilight said, to the one at her hooves.

“Surrender! We surrender!” the goblin squealed.

After checking on Rainbow Dash and making sure she wouldn’t succumb to her wounds, Fluttershy went around seeing how many of the enemy she could heal, as the rest of the party saw to securing them with hobbling ropes, and removing their weapons and other valuables.

In the end, only the pony whose head Twilight had crushed, and the goblin Applejack had all but disemboweled, were impossible to save, leaving the party with four unicorns and five goblins as prisoners. It was a bit unwieldy, but they were able to tie them into a chain that could move slowly along the salt flats – and it was only a short distance to the Black River mine.

The bandits’ equipment was very high quality, and uniform – none of the scavenged, low quality gear you’d expect traditional bandits to wield. Furthermore, the goblins all wore chain shirts made of mithril, obviously unicorn make. Somepony had paid a lot of money to equip them, more than they could possibly hope to recoup by looting random merchants. Particularly when they destroyed the goods instead of stealing them.

“Obviously, these aren’t real bandits,” Applejack said, glancing at the prisoners. “They’re a bunch of kids playing at being bandits.”

“We aren’t playing!” one of the prisoners protested. “Our cause is just!”

“Is that what the goblins told you?” Twilight said, scowling. “You idiots! Goblins enslave ponies! They have for thousands of years!”

“Ponies are the best horsies,” one of the goblins said. “Especially the red ones. They go fastest.”

“Yes yes, and they talk, not like the stupid lizards we ride back home,” another goblin chimed in.

“They’re our friends,” the unicorn said to Twilight. “Not our masters.”

“Your only master is the Emperor,” Twilight replied. “Perhaps you’ll have time in prison to meditate on that, before your execution.”

> Hot Time in the Old Town
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Black River Mine was visible from a distance, as a black patch in the midst of the endless white plains of the salt flats. From the blackness rose a black-walled fort, a few hundred feet across, with crenelated walls and a huge black gate. Nearby was a black lake, its calm surface gleaming in the sun, and a black river that wound its way through the fort itself before running south into Ghastly Gorge.

Behind the black, polluted landscape were the towering trees of the ancient Sleeping Forest, home of the Unicorns and Flutterponies and said to be the birthplace of all ponykind. The Black River Mine was at the very edge of the salt flats, only half a mile or so from the forest, and that only because of the logging they’d done for the wooden support beams that kept the mine from collapsing.

As the party approached, their train of prisoners in tow, several glittering Gem Ponies looked down from the walls, and must have liked what they saw, for the cast iron gates swung open to admit them. Inside the walls was a small town of black-walled buildings, on either side of the Black River. Everything was covered in coal dust, except for the Gem Ponies themselves, whose crystalline coats seemed to shed it naturally. Their equipment was not so blessed.

“Blaze’s fiery mane!” Pinkie Pie squealed, bouncing up and down excitedly as she looked around at the buildings, “This is the best town ever!”

“I don’t know, Pinkie Pie… it’s kind of dingy,” Rarity said, glancing around as they led the prisoners towards the town square, where hopefully an official of some sort would take them off their hooves.

“It’s made out of coal!” Pinkie said, grabbing onto Rarity’s cloak. “The whole town is actually made out of coal!”

The rest of the party stopped short.

“That can’t be safe,” Twilight said. “Doesn’t coal… burn?”

“Ach, that it does, lassie,” said a grizzled old Gem Pony – his crystal coat chipped and weathered – wearing a complicated harness loaded down with well-worn but very high quality mining equipment. “This whole place be a heyoooge fire trap, iffen we don’t keep all use o’ fire under tight wraps. So iffen you have any of the fire magics, we ask that you swap them out as soon as possible, and all fire weapons or other magic items are to be checked in at the armory so we can put them under lock and key. Do any of ye have any fire sources to declare?”

“Er… I have a flint and tinder?” Rainbow Dash said.

“That be fine, ye cannae set coal afire with such tiny sparks,” the pony declared, circling the party to examine each of them in turn with a pronounced limp. “Anypony else?”

“Nope!” Pinkie Pie said. “Not me!”

He froze and looked at her. “Ye look like an alchemist.” He spat the last word, with disgust.

“Haha, that’s a good one,” Pinkie Pie said, nervously tapping her forehooves together as she hovered just off the ground. “Who ever heard of a pegasus alchemist?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Twilight Sparkle said, pushing Pinkie aside and meeting the Gem Pony’s gaze. “We’re official Adventurers, here on Pathfinder Guild business, which makes us exempt from safety regulations in the pursuit of our mission.”

“If ye burn down the town, ye die tew.”

“Nopony’s burning down anything,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sure Pinkie Pie will be very careful about using her flame-based concoctions. Won’t she?” With that, she glared at Pinkie, who shrunk back and nodded quickly.

“Very well, there’s nae help for it,” the Gem Pony said with a sigh. “My name’s Deep Bore, and I’m the forepony of this here mine. Welcome tae Black River – I take it you’re here about those cursed bandits?”

“You think?” Rainbow Dash said, gesturing at the train of prisoners.

Deep Bore nodded. “Let’s get these lot to the dungeon, and see iffen we can get anything of use outta ‘em.”

The interrogation was relatively painless. The Gem Ponies didn’t have the stomach for torture, but in addition to the usual intimidation tactics, they had several adepts capable of casting Charm Person. The bandits spilled everything they knew.

Most of them only knew what the party had already gathered, but one of the goblins had been eavesdropping on their leaders, Wind Seed and her rider, Chatterbomb, who weren’t the leaders of the entire operation but were the leaders of the bandits charged with keeping the road closed. According to Wind Seed, the problems the dwarves had been having probably meant that they’d broken through into the ‘Armory’. Wind Seed seemed to think that this was a disaster in the making, while Chatterbomb was eager to get his hands on the contents. He hadn’t heard what they’d decided, but the next day the bandits had started their attacks on the mine in earnest, rather than just maintaining a blockade.

“There have been attacks on the mine?” Twilight asked.

“Aye,” Deep Bore replied. “Strange flying critters with leathery wings tried dropping fire bombs on our heads, although our ballistae saw ‘em off. And just two days past our loggers were ambushed, and lost half their number before they could escape to the safety of our walls.”

“So what do you know about this Armory?” Applejack asked.

“We dinnae know a blasted thing,” Deep Bore said with a scowl. “We’ve been doing naught but following the seam, and a week past we lost contact with the exploratory tunnels. Since then, evil mists, poison butterflies, and the wretched undead remains of our own poor colts and fillies have been crawling the deep tunnels, to the point where our mine is all but shut down – and with a major shipment coming due! We’ll miss the blasted quota.”

“Butterflies?” Rarity asked, curiously.

“Aye, they come out an hour before dusk, and it’s best if ye nae be out with ‘em. Drive ponies mad, they do.” Deep Bore spit. “Our sage says they’re the pets of the Flutterponies from ancient times. If nothing else, surely they’re the work of the bandits.”

“So we just need to clear out the mine, right?” Rainbow Dash said. “Ghouls we can handle, no problem. Evil mist… yeah, whatever. And the butterflies are gone at night. So what’s stopping us from waiting for sundown, and just taking care of everything tonight?”

“Um… I’m really low on magic,” Fluttershy said, looking down and hiding her face with her bangs.

“As am I,” Rarity said. “The bandits we faced on the way here put up quite a fight.”

“I’m good!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing. “A little low on bombs, but I’ve got plenty of alchemist’s… ice. Lots of cold, cold, freezing potions to throw at ghouls, who aren’t really hurt that badly by cold.” She paused, and turned to the Gem Pony. “Is acid okay?”

Deep Bore shrugged. “Every day ye wait is another day closer to missin’ our quota, but if ye nae think ye can handle it, we can offer a safe enough place to lay yer heads.”

The party were offered quarters in the workers’ barracks, where there were plenty of empty bunks after the losses to the bandits and the monsters in the mine. Twilight and Fluttershy had to put up with some nasty looks from miners who’d lost friends to the Unicorns, but nopony did anything worse than glower in their general direction. The night was spent with the windows shuttered tight – a curfew, to protect everypony from the Gloomwings.

Late at night, everyone awoke to the sound of a huge explosion, coming from the direction of the coal stockpile.

“Is it the bandits?” Rainbow Dash asked, as the party hurriedly grabbed what equipment they could gather up in a few seconds, before rushing outside.

“It has to be,” Twilight replied, as they all stood aghast at the massive pillar of flame. “Pinkie Pie, can you do anything about this?”

“Ice bombs, coming right up,” she said, reaching into her bandolier to grip a white ceramic jar in her teeth. “For what good it’ll do,” she mumbled around it as she took wing.

“You! Adventurers!” shouted Deep Bore, galloping towards them. “Yer strong, aye?”

“Yeah!” Rainbow Dash said. “Where’s the fight?”

“Git to the lake!” When she looked at him blankly, he ran around behind her and pushed with his head against her haunches. “Git! Git along! There’s nae time t’ waste!”

“I’m getting! I’m getting! Don’t get your tail in a twist!”

There was no fight at the lake. What there was, was a bucket line. The bulk of the firefighting was accomplished by ponies using magical rods enchanted to cast Sleet Storm, but the raging coal fire was beyond the ability of the magic to extinguish just like that, so they fell back on brackish water – with the buckets on the return trip full of smoldering coal, which was dumped in the lake where it couldn’t set anything else on fire. Pinkie Pie quickly ran out of ice bombs, but was able to gather the steam into rainclouds which she poured back onto the fire with a quick kick.

By morning, the fire was out, and the stockpiled coal was still mostly intact. As the party collapsed, exhausted, they saw Deep Bore glaring at a heavily armored Gem Pony, the leader of the camp guards.

“How did ye let this happen? We cannae afford this!” the forepony shouted.

“One of them snuck past the wall, and planted bombs. I found my sentries with their throats cut. They defended your coal with their lives, you ungrateful sot.”

Deep Bore shoved him. “Excuses willnae keep the auditors off our backs!” He took a few deep breaths, and pointed to the nearest ponies, who happened to be Twilight and Pinkie Pie. “You! Set up stakes outside the camp. You!” he pointed to the guard. “Bring out the prisoners! Iffen they like fire so much, let’s see how filled with joy they be when their brothers burn at the stake!”

Twilight and Pinkie Pie looked at each other.

Pinkie grinned. “This should be fun to watch.”

Twilight groaned as she got to her hooves. “It’s not like they don’t deserve it. The traditional punishment is hanging, though.” She looked around. “Where do they keep the wood?”

Before they could find the supplies, let alone set up the stakes, the guards returned from the prison. “The prisoners – they’re gone! And all the guards dead!”

“Oh,” Twilight said. “Right. It was a distraction. They started a coal fire as a distraction.”

Pinkie giggled. “I like the way they think.”

With their rest interrupted, and the hours of grueling work putting out the fire, it took until around noon for the party to be fully rested, with all their spells prepared for the new day. As they put on their armor and gathered up their things, Pebble – the guard captain – came to inform them that funeral services for the guards killed in the attack were to be held shortly, and that if they could say a few words about how they were the Empire’s agents there to wipe out the bandit scourge, it might help morale.

“Wait just a second,” Rainbow Dash said. “You’re going to bury them? Just like that?”

“Of course,” Pebble replied. “We return our fallen to the earth, so that far in the future, they might grow into a new vein of precious minerals for our foals’ foals to dig up.”

“But what if they come back?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Rainbow, stop,” Twilight said.

“I mean, I’m not saying that everyone who dies comes back as undead or anything –“

“Rainbow?” Fluttershy said. “You remember, um, the thing?”

Rainbow ignored her. “But if they did, you’d want to be able to check if they were still, you know, them. Right?”

Pebble frowned. “The miners lost to the mists rise again, but these brave souls died a clean death, if not so much of an honorable one. And none of the undead we’ve seen have been anything but wild, hungry beasts, without even the smallest shard of mercy or sanity.”

“You could try feeding them,” Pinkie Pie suggested. “Although you’d have to feed them rotten meat and the only rotten meat around is them, and it’s hard to feed somepony to herself. I guess you could try to trick them into eating each other, but then they’d be all eaten so it wouldn’t matter if they calmed down.” She pouted. “This is hard.”

“If they’ve gone feral, it’s unlikely that they can be saved,” Rarity replied. “Perhaps we could destroy some of the mindless undead from the mine, and feed them to the miners? If they rise as ghouls or the like, of course.”

“Everypony, please stop talking,” Twilight Sparkle said, prancing in place nervously.

“We do need to destroy the ghouls anyhow,” Applejack said. “Might as well keep the bodies where we can keep an eye on ‘em. You know, in case they got back up or something.”

“Really,” Twilight said. “Stop.”

“So, put the dead guards in one cell, and the dead miners in another cell –“ Rainbow Dash started, only to be interrupted by Fluttershy’s hoof being shoved into her beak. She put her taloned hand against Fluttershy’s chest, and gently pushed her back. “But I want to see if Twilight will really try to kill me.”

“No you don’t!” Fluttershy said. “She’s stronger than you!”

“How else are we going to break the charm?” Applejack asked.

“It’ll wear off!” Twilight said, stomping a hoof. “The blue-metal curse wasn’t permanent, so I wasn’t ordered to go back and get it refreshed!”

Pebble stared at the adventurers. “Is there something going on that you need to explain? I’m a bit lost.”

“No!” Twilight said, glowering at him.

“Just hold off on the funeral for a few days, could you please?” Rarity asked. “I’m something of a professional in these matters. If there’s still call for a funeral, I promise to make it one to remember.”

> Working in a Coal Mine
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The entrance to the mine had a few gem ponies on guard, but by far the majority of the forces on duty had their attention directed inwards. After passing through an old, mined-out section that now served as the mine’s office, the party followed the tracks to the edge of pony-controlled territory. The mine was mostly laid out laterally, the seam travelling north rather than running up and down, and they hadn’t descended very far by the time they reached the barricades, although they’d been walking for almost half a mile.

The gem ponies eagerly lent them a mine cart to carry back the bodies of the fallen – they already suspected that the ghouls were returning to undeath after being slain, since the attacks were relentless and the number of miners lost to the mists was not infinite.

“Just follow th’ tracks, and yew’ll git to the new tunnels soon enough,” Deep Bore told them. “Take care iffen ye decide to stray from the path. There be a lot of branches which did nae play out in the long run, and more than a few end in a terrible fate if ye nae be cautious, and ye all look like surface folk, so it’s not too likely ye even know how.”

“I’m sure we’ll manage somehow,” Rarity replied. “But thank you for your consideration.”

Macintosh was put on cart-pulling duty, as the strongest pony among them. For light, they’d been sold a set of lightstones at cost – functionless ioun stones enchanted to shed light, that could be set to orbit each adventurer’s head. They had a few sunrods for emergencies, but the gem ponies discouraged their use despite their lack of heat. Torches and lanterns, of course, were right out. They’d also been forced to take a rod of Sleet Storm, just in case they’d forgotten to leave behind some source of fire – if used promptly, it could prevent the coal from catching fire and permanently ruining the entire mine.

“I’ve got a spell I’d like to cast on each of you,” Rarity said, walking from pony to pony and casting the skin-tight Mage Armor on each, under their normal armor. “If this mist is incorporeal, this should help protect you. I can’t cast it on everypony, so I’m afraid Macintosh and myself will have to go without.”

“I’ll give everypony Barkskin,” Fluttershy said. “That should help against the ghouls. Um… sorry, Rarity, but I have to skip somepony, and I don’t think it would help you as much. Just try to stay out of their reach?”

Pinkie Pie tossed a glowing vial to Rarity, who caught it in her teeth. “Just in case,” she said, leaning close and whispering loudly into Rarity’s ear, “It’s an Invisibility infusion.”

“Thank you, dear,” Rarity said, tucking it into her robes in an easy to access pocket. “I hope it won’t come to that.”

“We should be able to keep them off you in these tunnels,” Twilight said, looking around at the maze-like warren of stone pillars and wooden supports. “Macintosh is on rear guard, and to get at him they’d have to climb over the cart. If they attack from the side, they might get in a quick strike, but you can hide behind one of us after that.”

“Are we done preparing yet?” Rainbow Dash asked, clawing at the ground. “Can we go now?”

“We’ve been going,” Twilight said. “Technically, we’re already there. The ghouls could attack us at any time – everypony keep an eye out!”

The mine continued to stretch out endlessly before them, staying more or less level, but despite their lack of stealth, the party was undisturbed. Rarity and Pinkie Pie occasionally heard the clip-clop of quiet hooves around them, but nothing came into the range of their light, or even of Rarity’s darkvision.

Until, finally, with their paranoia at its peak as they passed a major side-tunnel on their right, glittering eyes stared back at them from the darkness, in all directions.

“Dragon strike!” cried out Rainbow Dash, charging down the side tunnel at the eyes there. Her curled talon smashed right into the chest of a suddenly illuminated gem-pony ghoul, but it was wearing armor, and ignored the blow.

Twilight glanced nervously at the ghouls in front of her, and decided to wait for them to approach, rather than charging off and leaving the party. “Applejack, help Rainbow. Everypony else, don’t wander off!”

“There’s some to the left, too!” Pinkie Pie said, tossing a vial at them that did not explode, although the ghoul hit by it hissed in anger as the acid ate away at its flesh.

The ghouls charged, the two from the left clawing at Pinkie Pie to no effect, the two in front failing to even get within reach of Twilight Sparkle before being splattered against the tunnel walls by her hammer’s superior reach. Behind them, another pair clambered into the cart, delayed for a moment by the blockage, and to the right, the ghouls which Rainbow Dash had bravely put herself into claw’s reach of swarmed her with a flurry of blows, one of which slipped past all her defenses, and the magical spells layered to protect her, and scraped a thin cut down her side.

She froze, paralyzed.

“For pony’s sake, Dash!” Applejack said, launching into the air and throwing herself to the griffon’s defense, the dagger in her teeth slamming into an undead pony’s chest and sending it flying back to land in a motionless heap.

Fluttershy tugged a scroll from her belt, and quietly read the words on it, waving a hoof at Dash, who suddenly started moving again. “Please be more careful, I only had one of those.”

Macintosh shrugged himself out of his harness, and skewered one of the ghouls behind him with his lance.

“We’ve got this!” Twilight said. “They’re not so tough.”

Then, from behind each set of ghouls, a river of strange gray mist flowed along the ground, towards the defenders. Twilight, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie felt it flow around their legs, ignoring their armor, both mundane and magical, to suck out their vital fluids, leaving painful oozing wounds and staining the mist pink with their blood.

Another cloud of mist in back tried to do the same to Macintosh, but ended up pooled in the bottom of the cart instead, and failed to connect.

“Oh dear,” Rarity said. “These aren’t incorporeal, or even undead. I’m not sure how you’d fight them.” She swiped at the one devouring Pinkie Pie with her claws, and to nopony’s surprise, the flesh of the creature flowed around her claws, leaving no sign that she’d attacked. “It’s like trying to bite soap suds,” she remarked.

“I heard of this, I know I have,” Twilight said, as she took a step back and brought her hammer down on the mist, splattering it every which way, although the remains were still animate, and pulled back together. “Magic weapons work, but their weakness is fire!”

“On it!” Pinkie Pie shouted happily, fluttering back a step and engulfing the mist – and the ghouls – in one of her trademark fiery explosions.

“No!” screamed Twilight and Fluttershy in unison, as the walls and floor caught fire.

The ghouls and the mist continued to attack, but Twilight and Rainbow were able to keep from being further drained, and the mist near Rarity appeared to be paralyzed, as well as on fire, while the ghouls there attempted to flee from the sudden coal fire, one of them collapsing into a flaming heap before it could escape. Macintosh, holding down the rear, was drained, however. Rarity turned to assist him, and while she barely managed to damage the mist harassing him, it too was paralyzed by her ghoulish magic.

“Um… oops?” Pinkie Pie said, tossing a vial of freezing liquid to put out the fire, and finishing off the paralyzed cloud in the process. “I think I got it,” she said, just as Fluttershy engulfed her in a sleet storm from the rod.

Twilight splattered her cloud, this time for good, and then turned to go help Rainbow and Applejack, who were struggling. They’d managed to flank and dismember the remaining ghoul, but their cloud was almost unharmed. Fortunately for them, help was one the way, and they managed to dance around avoiding its blows until Twilight arrived to put an end to it with one solid blow from her hammer.

The remaining ghoul and paralyzed mist were easy enough to mop up. Fluttershy healed the hemorrhaging bruise-like wounds from the mist, and a dripping and miserable Pinkie Pie emerged from the Sleet Storm, completely soaked.

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson,” Fluttershy said to her, sternly.

The seven ghoul corpses were piled in the cart, but there was little left of the vampiric mist. Burned and oozing, the ghoul who’d run off was easy enough to track down a side passage, although following it had its own dangers – ghouls, even feral ones, were cunning, and would not be above leading the party into a trap.

“We’re supposed to clear the mine, so I guess we’d better finish the job,” Twilight said.

“If we’re following a trail there we’ll have a trail to follow back, at least,” Pinkie Pie noticed. “And yep! There’s a trail, clear as day.”

The others stared at the ground. “I don’t see it,” Rainbow Dash said, squinting.

“Just follow auntie Pinkie Pie,” the pegasus said, bouncing down the tunnel, following the nearly imperceptible trail of ooze.

Pinkie Pie led the party through a maze of twisting and turning passages, that eventually started looking less like a mine and more like a warren of tunnels dug by a pack of ghouls. Eventually the trail led to a large chamber, full of the corpses of gem pony miners, littering the floor. Was the ghoul among them?

“Nope!” Pinkie Pie said. “He’s hiding in that dark alcove. Fluttershy, can you flush him out?”

With a twang, the flutterpony’s crossbow bolt shot into the darkness, and the body of a ghoul slumped to the ground, impaled through the eye.

“Oops,” Fluttershy said. “I think I hit him too hard. He’s not running anywhere.”

However, the motion did attract the attention of the true threat in the room – from the shadows near the ceiling, where the party’s light failed to reach, dropped a massive pale caterpillar, bristling with writhing shadowy spines. It lunged at the dead ghoul, mandibles dripping a shadowy venom, and where it splattered over the body, nothing remained.

“Run,” Rarity hissed. “We can’t fight this.”

“Why not?” Twilight asked.

Rarity scowled, and continued in a subdued tone, “Its venom can turn us to shadow with a single hit, its bristles are poisonous and paralyze anypony trying to attack it in melee, and it’s very very tough and resilient. Not to mention that each of those bodies you see there is likely infested with another one of the creatures, just waiting for somepony to jostle it to burst forth and devour us.”

Twilight frowned. “So we lure it out into the tunnel,” she said. “Applejack can hide in a side passage and take sneak-attacks with her returning dagger. I can probably hit it with my hammer, and Macintosh with his lance, without getting stung by the bristles. Your Glitterdust spell can blind it, to keep it from biting us, and since the walls here are dirt instead of coal, Pinkie Pie can let loose with her fire. Rainbow… can continue to be useless.”

“I’ve got a potion that’ll make her immune to poison for a while?” Pinkie Pie suggested.

“Awesome,” Rainbow Dash said. “It won’t know what stunned the living daylights out of it, then.”

“Ah don’t like this, Twi,” Applejack said.

“If we kill it now, we can destroy these bodies before the other worms hatch,” Twilight said. “Otherwise, this mine is lost, and it’s vital to the Empire. We have to do this.”

“At least we get the drop on it,” Pinkie Pie said, tossing Rainbow Dash a glowing vial.

Rainbow, Macintosh and Twilight shouted to get the creature’s attention, lying it wait for it to approach, while the other four tossed firebombs, daggers, crossbow bolts and a glitterdust at it. The worm reacted slowly, and they had time for another volley before it emerged from Pinkie’s stinking cloud, retching and twitching from the sickening vapors. That meant it took a third volley before crawling off into the shadows to hide and recover --  but the glow from the glitterdust lit it up light a Christmas tree, and it had nowhere to hide except for the space behind the cloud from the bombs.

“I can go kick the smoke away?” Pinkie Pie offered, not moving.

“You would die,” Twilight said, matter of fact. “We can wait. Get ready to hit it again before it reaches us.”

Ten seconds later, the worm burst from the mist and charged at the waiting warriors, into another volley of fire and glitter and daggers. This time, it shrugged off the glitter and the choking smoke, but it was on its last legs as it finally came within reach of the warriors, and Rainbow Dash’s claw to the face knocked it back, staggered, at which point Twilight and Macintosh stabbed and hammered at it until they were sure it was dead.

“Piece of cake,” Rainbow Dash said, with a smirk.

“With a proper strategy, there’s no enemy we can’t overcome,” Twilight replied, a wide grin on her face.

“So… how exactly do we get rid of the rest of these bodies without settin’ em off?” Applejack asked.

“We get help,” Twilight said.

Unfortunately, the gem ponies were not amenable to Twilight’s original suggestion that they accompany the party into the mine to assist in dispatching any additional worms that might hatch in the process of disposing of the bodies. Fluttershy’s puppy dog eyes, and Applejack’s wheedling and threats, were all similarly ineffective – they’d lost too many ponies to take that much of a risk.

They did agree to construct a worm-proof barricade with arrowslits, and with the whole town working together, completed it in record time. Macintosh and Twilight hauled it down to the worm-infested side passage, and using borrowed crossbows strapped to their hooves, the party took their position. They fired a shot into each body, to see which were ready to hatch.

To their pleasant surprise, none of them were – and maybe none of them were ever infested. Instead, they got up and leapt at the party, but half a dozen ghouls that couldn’t even get at the adventurers through the barrier were easy enough to dispatch.

“We should burn the bodies, just in case,” Twilight said, once none of the undead were moving.

“We should burn all the bodies,” Pinkie Pie said. “If we’re worried there might be eggs in the ghouls that were lying on the floor, what’s to say there aren’t eggs in the ghouls that were running around?”

“Then what are we going to feed the guards?” Rarity asked.

“Can anypony check them for eggs?” Twilight asked. She looked around, but was met with silence. Finally, reluctantly, Pinkie Pie raised a hoof.

“I suppose I could as well,” Rarity said. “I’m not trained in medicine, but I’ve seen the insides of enough corpses.”

Between the two of them, they managed to satisfy themselves that the destroyed ghouls were not hiding the eggs of more Tenebrous Worms. If the Gloomwings had been infesting more bodies, they were stored in a different chamber.

They took the cart full of ghouls to the prison, and Rarity prepared to chop up the bodies as a feast for the dead guards, should they rise.

Pebble, however, was not amused. “You want to do what?”

“Please,” Fluttershy said, gently pushing him towards the door. “Rarity knows what she’s doing. Please, trust her – the miners have lost themselves, but there’s still hope for the guards.”

“It won’t be pretty,” Applejack said. “Maybe it’s best if you don’t watch. I give ya my word of honor, we won’t do anything to disrespect your dead.”

“But – she was going to –“ Pebble started.

Rarity interrupted him with a laugh. “Never watch an undertaker at work, dear. It’s never a pretty sight, but the end result is worth it, I assure you.”

Fluttershy smiled at him, and gently prodded him in the chest until he backed up far enough for them to slam the door.

“I hope this works,” Applejack said. “Or it’s going to be awful hard to explain away all the mess.”

“If it doesn’t, I’ll just sew them back together,” Rarity said, taking a bonesaw to one of the former ghoul’s limbs. “No harm done,” she added, over the sound of tearing flesh.

> Terrible Butterflies
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“GRAAAARRRRR!”

Twilight Sparkle smacked the flailing limb aside with her shield, as one of the reanimated guards attempted to drag Rarity closer.

“I don’t think they kept their minds, Rarity!” Pinkie Pie said, throwing bits of meat at one of the other ghouls that was gnawing on the bars to the cell.

“Now now,” Rarity replied, “let’s not jump to conclusions. They might just be confused and frightened. Dying is rather traumatic, after all.”

“They’re undead,” Twilight said. “They’re immune to fear.” She lunged at the ghoul who kept trying to reach out and grab Rarity, but it didn’t even flinch. Instead, it took a swing at her, instead, scraping the  claw-like protrusions on its hoof down the side of her armor. “And confusion.”

“I think I understand their mindset a little bit better than you, dear,” Rarity replied. “I was being metaphorical. For the undead, fear is converted to hatred, and confusion to mindless aggression.” She nodded to Pinkie Pie’s efforts. “If they were acting rationally, wouldn’t they be accepting her offering of food?”

“I’m not offering them food, I’m assaulting them with food!” Pinkie Pie shrieked, throwing a bit of meat right into her target’s eye. It responded by snarling, and chewing on the bars.

“Regardless of the cause, if they’re unable to control themselves, we’ll be forced to destroy them,” Twilight replied. “They’re a threat to the town.”

“I… I think I have an idea… maybe,” Fluttershy said.

The others stopped to watch as she took out the Lesser Rod of Threnodic Spell they’d taken from Trixie. Gripping it tightly in her teeth like a bit, she turned and stared at the undead struggling at the bars, focusing on the one trying to get to Rarity. “Okay, you,” she said around the rod. “Think!”

The ghoul snarled, and redoubled its efforts. “Think!” Fluttershy repeated, and the ghoul stepped back, blinking.

“Quick! Get it some food!” Twilight said.

Rainbow Dash blinked, and tossed one of the severed limbs they’d prepared to the ghoul, who looked at them blankly, then down at the offering… and started to eat, curling up and snarling around the meal. “Soo… sooo hungry…” it moaned.

“Think!” Fluttershy commanded the ghoul that Pinkie had been pelting.

It snarled and shook its head, then slurped one of the bits of meat that had stuck to its face into its mouth with a long, discolored tongue. “Moooore,” it moaned, and Rainbow Dash tossed it another one of the legs.

The other two gouls sulked sullenly in the back of the cell, one of them clawing at its own ribcage, the other banging its head against the wall.

“I’m sorry, the rod only works three times a day, and the first spell was resisted,” Fluttershy said, looking sadly at the remaining pair.

“Don’t worry,” Rarity said, readying her magic. “I can take it from here.”

Once calmed, and fed, the undead guards were able to regain enough of their minds to at least talk about their ordeal. None of them had seen their assailant, who’d struck them down instantly and silently from hiding.

They also didn’t have much interest in continuing to guard the town. “We’ve done our duty,” one of them said. “We died for this doomed cause once. We don’t owe them anything.”

“Ah, but you owe us,” Rarity replied. “And we could certainly use your help. We’ve been contracted to clear the mine, and the last creatures that we know for certain make their lair there are some very dangerous butterflies – that is, very dangerous to everypony who isn’t undead. To you four, they should pose no threat.”

“And no gain, either,” one of the other guards grumbled. “I doubt bug meat is even worth eating.”

“What about… revenge?” Applejack purred, while quietly cleaning her claws. “Accordin’ to Deep Bore, the Gloomwings are the bandits’ pets, and it was the bandit’s leader who did y’all in.” She looked up, her tail flicking lazily. “I bet they love those Gloomwings more than anything.”

“It’d be like murdering those bastards’ puppies,” said the first ghoul, with the beginnings of a grin. “Yeah, okay. I’m in.”

Before they could hunt for the butterflies, it was finally time to hold funeral services for the ghouls killed in the mine. No necromantic control was sufficient to return their minds to them, after so much time as mindless beasts, but Rarity’s taxidermy was enough to allow for open caskets, so long as no one disturbed the hay-filled funeral outfits where the bulk of the ghouls’ flesh should have been. Gem ponies didn’t usually use caskets in their funerals, but so long as their dead compatriots were consigned to the ground, they were willing to accept a slight variation in the normal ritual with only minor grumbling.

Then the coffins were nailed shut, and buried under six feet of salt. Unless something dug them up, that would be enough to contain the undead that would inevitably re-raise, regardless of what they reanimated as.

The funeral had been held at dawn, so once it was over, the gem ponies hurried inside to protect themselves from the butterflies that would soon return.

“Don’t worry, girls,” Pinkie Pie said, as she helped Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack tie on their blindfolds. “Rarity says the butterflies aren’t very dangerous if you can’t see them.”

“Ah’m not so dangerous myself if I can’t see ‘em,” Applejack grumbled.

Rainbow Dash fidgeted as her sight was obscured. “And how come you three get to keep your vision?”

“Because they won’t hurt us very much if they’re confused,” Twilight explained, again. “Somepony has to keep their eyes open, to tell us where to swing. They’re also our best trackers, in case the butterflies make a run for it.”

“What about Macintosh?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy looked at the large pony, who stared back at them blankly. “I reckon I’d better cover my vision too, Miss Fluttershy,” he said.

“Heh heh, sorry, I forgot he was there,” Pinkie Pie said.

In addition to the blindfolds, the party had barkskin cast on them, and mage armor for Rarity and Rainbow Dash – without incorporeal undead to fight, which the Vampiric Mist was not, even if more remained, it was only useful for the two adventurers who didn’t wear armor. Pinkie Pie, in addition to using her ‘battle pegasus’ mutation, had finally figured out a new formula commonly known as ‘Lesser Restoration’, that let her cure the blood-draining effects of the Vampiric Mist. She administered it to everypony who needed it.

Thus prepared, the ponies waited in ambush, standing… out in the open in the middle of the town square, right in front of the mine entrance?

“We want them to see us,” Twilight said, as Applejack and Rainbow Dash reluctantly joined her and Macintosh. “If we look like easy prey, they’ll come down where we can hit them.”

“’Like’ easy prey,” Applejack said, reaching for her blindfold, but putting her paw back down on the ground at the last second.

“We’re the bait,” Twilight said cheerfully, standing proud and tall in her gleaming golden armor as the morning sun rose over the town walls. “Try and look tasty.”

“Girrrrls,” whispered Pinkie Pie loudly enough for the four to hear her from her hiding place, forty feet away. “They’re coming!”

“How many?” Applejack asked.

“Um… lots?”

Fortunately, the swarm wasn’t tightly packed enough to fall upon the party all at once. The first half dozen descended on the ponies acting as bait, their mandibles scraping uselessly off Macintosh and Twilight’s armor, but sinking painfully into Applejack’s flesh – without being able to see to dodge, she was a very easy target.

The party members who weren’t blindfolded were ready to respond, Pinkie Pie tossing a bomb at the cluster while Rarity and Fluttershy cast spells, and the ghouls charged out to bite at the giant purple pests. Their charge was fairly ineffectual, although one did sink her fangs into a gloomwing’s leg. Inky ichor squirted across her face.

“Nope nope nope!” Applejack squeaked, staggering as the insects’ pheromones weakened her, and the many painful bite wounds threatened to overwhelm her. She scrambled for a hiding place where the bugs couldn’t reach, getting a little bit of covering fire from one of Pinkie Pie’s bombs. The gloomwings either didn’t see her or didn’t care to follow, most of them staying to fight the ponies still standing in the open, inflicting a few scratches, while a pair headed for Pinkie Pie, who was able to dodge their attacks and resist the confusing patterns of their wings, at least for the moment.

Then the second wave of the swarm dove to join the vanguard, tearing chunks out of Twilight and one of the ghouls. Twilight, Macintosh, and Rainbow Dash failed around wildly, but weren’t able to hit without seeing what they were swinging at. The ghouls had slightly better luck, scratching up two of the butterflies, one of which froze in place, paralyzed.

Fluttershy inhaled the pheromones from the butterflies who’d flown to attack Pinkie Pie, and sank to the ground, too weak to fly under the weight of her armor. She managed to keep her wits, and started summoning a creature to help fight the enemies.

Rarity, unaffected by the confusion or the poison, stepped forwards and incanted the spell she’d worked out overnight – a variant of fireball, only much more elegant. Shards of diamond-hard slivers shot forwards into the gloomwings menacing Pinkie Pie, tearing one of them to shreds and badly wounding the other, which Pinkie Pie finished off with an icy vial from her bandolier.

The gloomwings continued their assault, savaging Twilight and taking down one of the gem pony ghouls. The last wave of the swarm dove in to join the attack, two of them breaking off to attack Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy. Pinkie managed to dodge, but Fluttershy shrieked as the fangs sank into her shoulder, and her spell was lost, the half-formed summoning portal dissolving in a shower of sparkles.

“This isn’t working!” cried a bleeding Twilight Sparkle, as her hammer once again failed to find any targets. Macintosh and Rainbow Dash had similar luck. The ghouls fared a little better, paralyzing another of the gloomwings, but that left more than a dozen active, surrounding the beleaguered ponies and griffon.

Fluttershy, too weak to fly over and heal anypony, and unwilling to try another long cast, tried to shoot a crossbow bolt at the butterfly menacing her, but her shot went wild. “What do we do?”

“Glitterdust!” Rarity cried, spraying a cloud of green sparkles onto the chaotic melee surrounding the ponies in the center of the square. “If we can’t see, don’t let them see either! Pinkie Pie, use one of your gas clouds!”

Pinkie Pie gibbered in confusion, and started gnawing on her own wing.

Five of the gloomwings were blinded, and flew up in the air, out of reach of the wildly failing weapons from the blindfolded ponies. Another was paralyzed by the ghouls. The rest continued to claw and bite, slowly wearing down the party.

“Glitterdust!” Rarity cried again, trying to blind the rest of the gloomwings, while Fluttershy continued to miss with her crossbow and Pinkie Pie continued to gibber, although since a butterfly was trying to bite her, she was swiping at it uselessly with her spiked horseshoes.

Two more gloomwings, blinded by glitterdust, flew up into the air, and the previously blinded blutterflies flew into the mine, their glowing forms vanishing into the depths. There were still five attacking Twilight and company, along with the two on Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, but the tide had turned. Twilight finally squished one of the ones attacking Rainbow Dash with her hammer, and Fluttershy managed to bounce a crossbow bolt off the one attacking her, although it didn’t accomplish much.

“I can’t take much more of this,” Rainbow Dash said, as a butterfly she couldn’t see bit her on the wing. She was bleeding from half a dozen similar wounds, and was unsteady on her claws.

“Keep it up!” Rarity said. “We’re winning!”

“Are you sure about that?” the rainbow-feathered griffon asked, whirling on the butterfly that bit her and smashing in its thorax, although it wasn’t out of the fight quite yet.

Rarity laughed as she scraped her clawlike hoof along the side of the butterfly menacing Pinkie Pie, which obstinately refused to be paralyzed by her ghoulish magic.

Pinkie Pie shook herself out of her daze long enough to throw a bomb into the melee, but her aim was way off, and the spray of random fire as it shattered on the ground splattered all three of her friends, as well as the butterflies. “Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!”

“Can I get some healing, or something?” Rainbow Dash cried, dodging madly as the butterfly’s terrible claws and teeth sought to put an end to her resistance. She counterattacked, lunging forwards and sinking her beak into its neck, then shaking the hapless creature back and forth before spitting it to the ground and stomping on its corpse.

“I’m sorry, I can’t move!” Fluttershy sobbed. “I’ll try to summon something… again…”

“I can’t… hit… anything,” Twilight complained, as she swung her hammer around fruitlessly. “Am I even close? Am I aiming at the right general area?”

“Yes! But try to aim a little higher?” Rarity suggested, as she managed to get another claw scrape on the Gloomwing that had turned away from Pinkie Pie and tried to bite her, this time paralyzing it. One of the other ghouls also managed to paralyze a gloomwing, leaving five in the fight.

But another ghoul went down, and Fluttershy took a nasty bite – but this time, she didn’t lose her spell. A small air elemental appeared before her, and she mimed covering her eyes and twirling around, to tell it how to fight. Somehow, it got the idea, and spun around into a miniature dust devil, sweeping over the Gloomwings and sucking two of them into its vortex.

“Awhaaara! Sweerie awhaaara!” Rarity said, and the air elemental seemed to understand, flying over towards her with its cargo in tow. Rarity smiled. “Dasha.” And then blasted it, its passengers, and the Gloomwing still harrying Fluttershy with another Diamond Spray. Somewhat to her disappointment, it failed to kill any of them. “I was expecting that to be a little more dramatic.”

Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy failed to comment on the matter, instead gibbering insanely as the additional Gloomwings in close quarters with them overcame their resistance to the confusing patterns. Even in her confusion, however, Pinkie Pie had enough presence of mind to throw a bomb into the elemental, detonating it on one of the butterflies, turning it into a flaming torch, but killing the elemental in the process.

With that, the remaining butterflies turned tail and fled into the mine. Rarity and the ghouls went around and made sure the half dozen paralyzed butterflies wouldn’t be getting back up. Given the all clear, Twilight and the others removed their blindfolds, and limped over to Fluttershy to be healed.

Applejack returned a minute or so later, with a bunch of gem ponies with javelins and small two-pony cart-mounted ballistae. “I was, er, I went to get help,” she said, sheepishly.

“It’s okay,” Twilight said, as the gem pony medics called on divine power to radiate healing over the group, Rarity and the surviving ghouls standing discreetly off to the side. “How many of them got away?”

“Eight,” Fluttershy said, taking out her wand of inflict wounds to tend to the ghouls. “They flew into the mine. We’ll have to track them down.”

“Don’t worry about your friends,” Rarity told the two ghouls who’d made it through the fight. “They’ll likely be good as new in the morning, and judging from a certain griffon we met several times on the road, it’s easier to keep your wits about you the second time.”

“Oh, right,” one of them replied, giving her a confused look. “That’s good I guess. When can we get back to the killing?”

> Striking (out at) the Root
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Not wanting to wait another day and risk losing the trail, or let the spells they’d cast to augment their combat strength expire, the party quickly headed into the mine, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy tracking the surviving Gloomwings. The trail was difficult to follow, but Pinkie’s keen instincts allowed her to spot the signs of the monsters’ passage.

“How exactly do you track flying creatures across a stone floor? In the dark?” Rainbow Dash asked, as Pinkie Pie flitted this way and that around the corridor, making ‘mmm hmm!’ noises every time she found a trace.

“Trade secret!” Pinkie Pie said, giggling.

“Butterflies shed scales from their wings,” Fluttershy said, from her position on Macintosh’s back. She was still too weak to fly, and so was using him as a mount. “Not very often, but when they’re flying quickly in a panic, more often than they would otherwise, especially if their wings are damaged.”

Pinkie Pie pouted. “Fluttershy! That’s a secret!”

Fluttershy ignored her. “There’s also splotches of blood from the ones that were wounded. Their blood is black so it’s hard to see against the coal, but it’s shinier.”

“Stop giving away all my tricks!”

“So we’re not just following the train tracks into the deepest part of the mine?” Applejack asked. “Because I can’t help but notice that we’re following the train tracks into the deepest part of the mine.”

Pinkie Pie grinned. “Isn’t that what you asked me to do? To follow the tracks?”

Whichever set of tracks the party ultimately followed, they were led to the same place – the end of the line, where the mine cart tracks came to an abrupt end at a large, hollowed out chamber, from which narrow exploratory tunnels extended to map out the seam. In the middle of the chamber, four of the Gloomwings flitted around the ceiling, avoiding the attention of several drifting clouds of vampiric mist. As the party approached, both sets of monsters turned to face the new source of food and warm bodies.

The Gloomwings wasted no time diving at their foes, diving at the party before anypony could react, fluttering their mesmerizing wings and biting at Pinkie and the ghoul that was keeping her company in the front line. Pinkie’s eyes lost focus as she was overwhelmed by the writhing patterns, and she screamed and flailed wildly with her hooves at the butterfly that had bitten her, only for it to nimbly dart out of reach. 

Twilight steeled herself, and managed to keep enough control of her mind to close her eyes. She shoved Macintosh aside, leaving him squeezed in the corridor that, for him, was a tight fit, and got close enough to swing her hammer over the head of the ghoul, slamming it into one of the gloomwings and crushing its thorax. Macintosh followed her lead, closing his eyes and skewering the creature with his lance.

On his back, Fluttershy closed her own eyes, and started summoning.

Unfortunately, the dead Gloomwing left a hole in the line for the vampiric mist to flow through, and with their eyes closed the first that Twilight knew of its arrival was when she felt her blood drain from her body as it coiled around her, slowly turning pink as it absorbed her life. Applejack and Rainbow Dash charged forwards to help her, the griffon managing to disperse a bit of the foamy substance with a swipe of her claws.

Twilight opened her eyes, trying to keep from looking at the butterflies since she was being attacked from a different direction, but wasn’t able to avoid glancing at them… but even in her confusion, the sting from her bleeding wound was enough to focus her efforts on attacking her enemy, although in the close quarters she couldn’t use her hammer, and the greatsword she pulled out as a backup had much less of an effect on the misty substance. 

Fluttershy’s spell completed, summoning a trio of small air elementals behind the Gloomwings… but before she could order them to close their eyes, they were already confused. Fortunately, their position left them only able to attack the enemies, although one of them instead started attacking itself. The other two focused on the vampiric mist, but their attacks were largely ineffective against it. They did attract its attention, at least.

The frenzied flailing of the ghoul in front had paralyzed one of the other mists, which left only two to try to drain more blood from Twilight and Pinkie. Pinkie managed to dodge out of the way, but Twilight staggered as another oozing sore formed under her armor, feeding the mist surrounding her.

“Wait a second,” Rainbow Dash said, narrowing her eyes at the mist, as she spotted its weakness. “I know how to deal with this.” And with three swift flaps of her wings, she dispersed the creature.

“What in the name of the wind was that?” Applejack asked.

“It’s called skill,” Rainbow said with a smirk.

Meanwhile, the front line was in chaos. Pinkie and Twilight were still flailing around in confusion – Twilight managing to hit herself with her sword – and the crystal pony ghoul went down under a butterfly’s claws. Fluttershy kept her eyes off the enemies, and spent her time healing Pinkie and Twilight with her wand. The healing from each charge was weak, but it at least closed the bleeding wounds left by the mist, although the mist surrounding Pinkie Pie kept re-opening them.

“Well, watch this, poprocket,” Applejack said, biting down on her dagger and leaping at her target, slashing at it with her claws as she pounced, opening up a large bleeding wound, although since her target was undead, no blood emerged. Her target was also in the opposite direction of the mist or the Gloomwings, and supposedly on her side.

“Hah, betrayer!” hissed the ghoul Applejack had attacked in her confusion, and his claws raked at her wings, although he failed to catch the nimble winged cat.

“Stop fighting!” Rarity commanded.

“She attacked me first!” the ghoul complained.

“It wasn’t a request!” Rarity replied, backing her command up with a spell.

Rainbow Dash leaped forwards to take the place of the fallen ghoul, flapping her wings to attempt to disperse another patch of mist, with less success. “Pinkie Pie, please snap out of it!”

“Rain… bow?” Pinkie Pie said, turning to blink and look at her friend… only for the butterfly she’d been fighting to suddenly bite down on the back of her neck, and impale her with its wicked clawed forelegs. They sank into her back just beneath her shoulder blades, and with a sickening squelch emerged from her chest, covered in blood and bits of lung tissue. Pinkie Pie coughed, flapping her wings weakly, then slowly slid off the impaling limbs and collapsed to the ground in a pool of blood… which was quickly siphoned up into the waiting mist hovering above her. A butterfly that had previously been distracted by the elementals shifted its focus as it saw her fall, and darted through the party – flashing momentarily in front of Twilight’s gaze, which she’d tried to avert – and landed on the fallen pegasus, a spike-like ovipositor emerging from its abdomen.

Fluttershy gasped, and channeled the rest of her divine energy into one last healing spell on Pinkie Pie… to no effect. She was already dead.

“Don’t let it implant her!” Rarity shouted. “If the eggs hatch, there’ll be nothing left to revive!” She charged forwards, shouldering past the others until she could shout out a few words of arcane power and reach towards the Gloomwing perched on Pinkie’s back with a hoof cracking with electricity. Her desperate move was for nothing, however – it fluttered up out of the way as she swung at it, then landed back on Pinkie and prepared to implant.

Rainbow Dash turned to slam at it with her claws, tearing rents in its wings. As it dug its ovipositor into Pinkie’s flesh, she grabbed it in both of her foreclaws and tore it in two, leaving its pieces to splatter to the ground. Its severed abdomen convulsed, and a spray of tiny black eggs spilled across the stone floor, fizzling like tiny firecrackers made out of shadow and evaporating into nothingness.

Unfortunately, there were other butterflies, and with single-minded focus, the next landed on Pinkie Pie and began to inject her. Twilight risked opening her eyes to try to stop it, and viciously slammed her hammer right into Macintosh, denting his armor and drawing his own confused attack in retaliation, which she managed to block.

Rainbow Dash shook loose the insect bits stuck to her claws, and leapt on the second butterfly, tearing it to pieces as well – but everypony who wasn’t out of their minds with confusion could see that she was too late.

The remaining Gloomwing turned to flee, but Rainbow Dash wasn’t about to let her get away. As she ran off after it, Twilight dispatched the remaining patch of mist, and looked in dismay at Pinkie Pie’s body. “What do we do?”

“I don’t know,” Rarity replied. “Perhaps if she rises as an undead before the eggs hatch, her flesh will prove unappealing? None of the ghouls had living eggs in them, after all. Otherwise… it would be best if we burned her body now.”

“Can we cut the eggs out or something?” Applejack asked.

“We can try,” Rarity said, looking uncertain. “But Pinkie Pie herself was the only one of us skilled in that art.”

“Then we need to get back to the surface,” Twilight said. “Dash!” she called out down the tunnel. “Get back here!”

There was no reply.

“You stay here and try to get the eggs out of Pinkie Pie,” Rarity said. “Let me go find our prodigal Rainbow. She’s probably babbling nonsense and chewing on her own wings, and I’m immune to the confusion.”

Meanwhile, Rainbow Dash chased the Gloomwing down the narrow, twisting tunnel, until a light ahead marked the end of the line. There, in a chamber that looked less like a mine and more like a crypt, what looked like an undead unicorn gave a comforting caress to another wounded Gloomwing. He turned to stare as the griffon approached.

“You! Are you the one who’s been murdering my children?” the unicorn asked, his voice dry and cracked, his face contorted into a snarl.

“And what if I am?” Rainbow Dash asked.

With a short incantation, and a flash from his horn, the unicorn shot a beam of magic into the griffon’s eyes, blinding her.

“You think that’s going to stop me?” Rainbow Dash screeched in rage, throwing herself at the spellcaster. Her claw scraped against his hide, but it was like punching stone.

“Kneel before me, fool, and perhaps I’ll spare your life!” the unicorn intoned, firing a gray beam of exhaustion from his horn that had no effect whatsoever on the griffon.

“Your monsters killed Pinkie Pie! I’m going to tear out your throat and leave your corpse for the ghouls!” Rainbow Dash cried, stepping forwards and slamming two more fists uselessly against the wizard’s stone flesh.

“Cease your squawking, little bird,” the wizard snarled, and with a *pop*, the griffon was no more. Instead, a brightly colored songbird fluttered in midair, chirping in impotent rage.

After several blind attempts to peck out the wizard’s eyes were completely ignored, songbird Dash chirped indignantly and flew for the exit, only to be snatched out of the air by a hidden ghoul.

“Be quiet,” Rarity hissed, as she shoved her into a pocket of her robes.

Rainbow squirmed, but couldn’t escape her grip. Quiet as a mouse, Rarity slipped away back towards the party.

By the time Rarity returned with Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy was a panicking, bloody mess. Between her lack of formal training, and the best available surgical tool being Applejack’s dagger, Pinkie’s corpse lay open in front of her, mangled and flayed, with most of the organs removed. Despite their desperate measures, they’d been unable to even locate the eggs.

“We need to leave this place, now,” Rarity hissed. “Before the rest of us end up dead, or worse.”

“No argument here,” Applejack said.

Pinkie Pie was wrapped up in her cloak, and tied to Macintosh’s back, and the party retreated from the mine with all due haste. At the surface, they were met by Deep Bore and Pebble, who took their news with grim concern.

“So ye failed us,” Deep Bore said. “Th’ mine is still a deathtrap, and two or ye met yer end, or near enough.” He glanced at the brightly colored songbird, who chirped back at him.

“We can finish the job later,” Twilight said. “We’ve cut down on the number of Gloomwings significantly, and cleared out the ghouls and the mist.”

“Which only leaves the lich,” Pebble said. “I’m not sure we can re-open the mine with a lich lurking in the depths.”

“Well… no,” Twilight replied. “But he hasn’t shown his face personally, has he? You’ll still have to avoid the Gloomwings, but if you stick to the middle part of the mine, he’ll probably stay in the depths doing… whatever it is he’s been doing. At least for the next three days.”

“Three days?” Applejack asked.

“One day to make it back to Crossroads if we leave now, and press on through the night,” Twilight explained. “Two days travel back, at a normal pace. Oh, we’ll probably need a day there recovering. So, four days.”

Applejack paced back and forth, her tail lashing. “And if we run into trouble on the way?”

“Then we’ll deal with it,” Twilight replied, gritting her teeth. “Crossroads is the nearest place with a real Temple, and nothing less is going to save Pinkie Pie from being worm food.”

The trip back to Crossroads was miserable. A stinging salt-storm engulfed them as they traveled through the flats, the acid salts burning their flesh and draining the remaining charges from their wands of Cure Light Wounds before they finally emerged onto the hilly plains. They had a few hours of travel, which might have been pleasant if not from the acid burns that no one had any magic left to cure, before another more conventional storm rolled in, and soon they were slogging through the mud as a driving rain tried to melt them into a puddle of exhausted flesh.

In the end, they were still five miles out when Twilight and Macintosh, weighed down by their armor, collapsed in exhaustion. Rarity, as an untiring undead, had to slog the rest of the way with Pinkie Pie’s corpse tied to her back. Her delicious, enticing corpse...

Rarity shook her head to banish the thought. “No, Rarity. Raise Dead will not restore missing limbs or organs, so you cannot snack upon Pinkie Pie. Besides, she’s too fresh to really taste good.”

Rainbow Dash gave a sharp chirp, riding in her mane.

“Oh… but I’m so hungry,” Rarity moaned.

Rainbow Dash landed on her muzzle, and shook her head back and forth.

Rarity sighed. “FINE. I suppose I can find some offal once we reach town.”

Once they did reach town, they had little trouble convincing the priests to quickly cast Remove Disease to kill the Gloomwing eggs, as a matter of public safety, as well as a preservation spell to prevent Pinkie Pie from rising as undead. It wasn’t until the others arrived in the morning, with the treasure looted from the bandits and from Trixie’s gang, that they were able to negotiate for a Raise Dead.

At standard rates for pawning adventurers' loot, they didn’t have enough.

Fluttershy was unrelenting, however, and with Applejack’s help they managed to trade everything they had to sell, along with some fireworks and healing scrolls that Pinkie Pie had on her, for the series of spells needed to bring her back and get her up to full strength. One of the Restoration spells would have to be cast after a week had passed, of course, but they made sure to get the agreement to cast it on her at that time in writing.

After the intense negotiations, the spell itself was almost an anticlimax. The pink pegasus was placed on an altar, a large diamond clutched to her chest, and with a flash of magical energy, she took a loud gasp of air, then coughed and choked, a pained look on her face.

After the Restoration spell, she was more herself.

“So what was it like, being dead?” Rarity asked.

“It was horrible!” Pinkie Pie said. “It was sooo boring, like I was watching everything that was happening but I couldn’t do anything because I was dead! I just had to lie there like a corpse and wait for you to get me to a priest. I can totally understand why you came back as a ghoul.”

“Chirp,” Rainbow Dash said, perching on Pinkie Pie’s head and dancing back and forth. “Chirp chirp!”

“Right,” Twilight said. “Now we need to get Rainbow Dash changed back. Can anypony cast Dispel Magic?”

No one answered.

“Can we afford to pay someone to cast Dispel Magic?” she asked.

“Sugarcube, we can’t afford tonight’s dinner,” Applejack said. “Those greedy priests drained us dry. We even had to sell that axe Macintosh was plannin’ to use later on.”

“They actually gave us a really good deal,” Fluttershy said. “I mean, compared to what we would have gotten if we’d sold the weapons and armor to anypony else.”

“We didn’t actually pay them for healing Rainbow’s eyes,” Rarity explained. “Fluttershy managed to wheedle it out of them. When we asked for a Dispel Magic…” she shook her head. “Everypony has their limit. We convinced once of the acolytes to try, but his spell didn’t work.”

“So we’re still down one,” Twilight said with a frown. “It’s only Rainbow Dash, but after that last disaster…”

Rainbow Dash chirped, and fluttered up into the air.

“What?” Twilight asked.

The brightly colored songbird did a circle in midair, then dove at a nearby barrel, slamming her beak into it. With a loud crack, the wood shattered. The diminutive creature fluttered back and forth, smacking her beak and claws into the wood against and again, until nothing was left but splinters.

Everypony just stared.

Rainbow Dash chirped, and landed on Applejack’s head. She chirped again, nodding towards the gate.

“Okay,” Twilight said, blinking the confusion out of her eyes. “I guess we can work with that.”

> Back on a Different Track
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The storm broke by the time the party was ready to leave Crossroads once more. The roads were still muddy, which slowed their progress, and they didn’t make it to the inn by nightfall. Since they’d still have time to reach Black River Mine after a second day’s travel, they decided to make camp in the wilderness instead of pushing on to the inn – there were still a few Gloomwings left, who might be haunting that area after dark, and running into them unprepared had been a costly mistake, last time.

Since she’d spent all day napping in Applejack’s hat, Rainbow Dash was volunteered to stand watch all night. In the middle of the night, she spotted a lone leucrotta sneaking up on the camp, and while it didn’t seem to recognize her as a threat, it did recognize her as a potential alarm system, and began its hypnotizing chant.

Rainbow Dash easily shook off the magic, but decided to play along, holding her wings out in front of her and hopping across the grass towards the leucrotta like some sort of zombie. The leucrotta wasn’t fooled… but her act was so bad that it just stood there staring in morbid fascination, and didn’t react in time when she got close enough to attack.

The first peck to the face stunned it, leaving it vulnerable to a series of high-speed claw attacks from all angles, as the tiny songbird danced around it, inflicting surprisingly nasty wounds. But it recovered eventually and fought back, snapping at the fluttering menace and catching her between its teeth, only to have those teeth broken as Rainbow Dash burst back out into the open air.

Soon, it was howling in pain and begging for mercy, which was not forthcoming. Another angry chirp and a bone-cracking squelch later, and its howls abruptly ended. Looking up from her kill, Rainbow Dash spotted Twilight, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy watching the fight from the edge of the light from their campfire.

“Chirp!”

“You looked like you had it handled,” Pinkie Pie said, with a shrug. “Besides, if we helped you fight we’d get all worked up and we’d be too tired to memorize spells in the morning.”

Rainbow Dash seemed to consider this, then gave a shrug-like flick of her wings, and headed back for the camp.

“Although I don’t know what’s up with Twilight,” Pinkie Pie said, glancing at the purple unicorn standing there staring off into the night, still not reacting to the battle. “I mean, yeah, she doesn’t have her armor on, but she probably could have killed it in one blow.”

Twilight closed her eyes, and let out a shuddering sob, tears running down her cheeks.

“Oh… kay? I’m sorry? I didn’t mean to insult you?” Pinkie Pie said, backpedalling into the air at Twilight’s reaction. “I’m sure you had a really good reason for not helping Rainbow Dash?”

“I don’t have any reasons,” Twilight said, dropping to her knees in the grass. “Not anymore. Everything was so clear, and now, I just don’t know.”

“Don’t know what?” Fluttershy asked, approached her with concern.

“I don’t know anything,” Twilight said. “I was taught things, and I figured things out, and I believe things, and I thought that was the same thing as knowing them, but now all I know is that knowing is so much more than that.” She looked up at the night sky. “I need to get the spell re-cast.”

Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy stared at her.

“The loyalty spell,” she said. “For once in my life, I knew that what I was doing was right, instead of having to pretend. For once I wasn’t just lying to myself and trying to get other ponies to believe me.”

“But it was all fake,” Pinkie Pie said, scrunching up her face. “It was just the magic tricking you.”

“Are you saying the Empire doesn’t deserve to exist?” Twilight asked. “Are you saying it’s an evil abomination and should be overthrown? Are you a traitor?”

Fluttershy squeaked and fluttered back, out of the line of fire.

Pinkie Pie just giggled. ”Yes, yes, and no. I mean, sure, the emperor is kind of crazy and locked himself away in his castle for hundreds of years and nopony even knows what kind of undead he is, and the orcs that run everything are all bloodthirsty and corrupt, and the goblins are jerks who like to enslave ponies, and the gnolls are all obsessed with fighting and territory, and the ponies are miserable because everything else picks on them, and the only recourse is to ask for an Adventurer to pass judgment and hope that they take your side which is completely random because half of them are totally evil.

“But that doesn’t make me a traitor. I’m on the Empire’s side.” Pinkie grinned after giving her speech, and then suddenly gasped. “I know what you should do, Twilight! Kill yourself!”

Twilight scowled. “How would that help? It’s not like I would stay dead.”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “But when you came back as an undead Rarity could mind-control you and you wouldn’t have to think. If you came back as a mindless undead, you double wouldn’t have to think!”

“Um… Rarity’s pets don’t exactly have the longest lifespan,” Fluttershy said.

“True,” Pinkie admitted, “but even if you weren’t her pet, being undead means you don’t feel any fear or pain.”

“I’m not afraid,” Twilight snapped. “Or in pain. My problem is doubt.”

“Then become my minion,” Pinkie Pie said. “Trust me completely, and when I show them all, you can stand by my side when I say ‘I told you so’!”

“I can’t trust you completely just because I decided to,” Twilight said. “Doubt isn’t something you can turn on and off like a switch. Not without magic.”

“I think…” Fluttershy started, then cringed back as if expecting to be shouted down. When it was obvious that Pinkie Pie and Twilight were waiting for her to finish, she continued. “Maybe you’re feeling doubt because you’re trying to do the right thing by thinking about what’s right and what’s wrong. Maybe instead you should just do what makes you happy.”

“Doing what’s right makes me happy,” Twilight said. “Knowing what’s right makes me happy.”

“Killing makes you happy,” Fluttershy said. “I’ve seen the way you smile standing over the shattered bodies of your enemies. So… next time you have to decide who’s right and who’s wrong, just kill whoever’s most annoying. Or if both sides are annoying, kill everypony.”

Twilight rested her forehead against her hoof. “Fluttershy… if I killed everypony who annoyed me, I would have killed Rainbow Dash a long time ago.”

“And I’m sure she would have deserved it,” Fluttershy replied firmly.

“But you like Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said. “You worry about her all the time. You used up a scroll that you bought with your own gold to save her.”

“Oh, I don’t have any problem with Rainbow Dash, but this is about you, Twilight.”

“Fluttershy,” Twilight growled.

“Oh! Am I annoying you?” Fluttershy squeaked, fluttering back a bit. “If you’re going to try to kill me, I’ll fight back, sorry. But don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll win!”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Twilight said, standing up. “I’m not going to kill any of you. We’re a team. That’s how we’re strong. Even if we annoy each other, we fight together, and that’s how we’re strong enough to take down any monster that’s thrown in our path.”

“Yessss,” Pinkie Pie hissed, then cackled and rubbed her hooves together. “We will walk the path of destruction together, and the fools who stand in our way will be destroyed!”

Lightning flashed behind Pinkie Pie, on the far eastern horizon, but the thunder was well delayed, and faint. The storm had long since moved on.

In the morning, they continued on towards Black River Mine. They reached the inn by lunchtime, and found it much the same as they’d left it. The same young gem pony was still the only inhabitant, and she still insisted on keeping the inn open despite the lack of other travelers.

When asked, she didn’t know whether or not the remaining Gloomwings were still swarming every night – she’d never seen them, and with the shutters all tightly closed she couldn’t hear them.

“What in the name of all that’s unholy are we going to do about those Gloomwings?” Applejack asked. “Sure as salt we can’t fight a lich with our eyes closed.”

“I have an idea, actually,” Pinkie Pie said. “I got a really really really good look at their wings while I was staring at their wings like a zombie last time we ran into them, and I noticed something really important.”

“Oh?” Rarity asked. “Do tell.”

“Their wings,” Pinkie Pie said, leaning over the table and continuing in a loud whisper, “are purple.”

The other adventurers stared back at her, until Applejack finally said, “I don’t get it.”

“If we couldn’t see purple, we couldn’t see their wings,” Pinkie Pie said. “And then we wouldn’t be confused.”

“So you have a potion that can make us not see purple?” Twilight asked.

“I was thinking I might be able to mix up some green glass,” Pinkie Pie said. “It’ll make purple look black, and then the patterns will be black on black, and we won’t see them.”

Twilight nodded pensively. “If you can make the glass, I can probably set it into a pair of goggles for each of us. If it works, we’ll be able to essentially ignore them.”

“And the lich?” Rarity asked. “Not only is a lich a powerful spellcaster, but his hooves paralyze, like a ghoul.”

“I know the anti-paralysis spell now,” Fluttershy said.

“If we need to use it, then it means he’s been reduced to attacking in melee, which is good news for us. We need to keep the initiative,” Twilight explained. “Interrupt his spells, blind him with glitterdust, flank him so he can’t just step back to cast safely. We need to force him to fight defensively and then terminate him with extreme prejudice. That’s our only hope to take him out without losing anypony else, and we can’t afford to lose anypony else. At least not until the gem ponies pay up.”

“They still owe us for the bandits, don’t they?” Rarity remarked.

“You mean the bandits who escaped?” Applejack asked.

“We turned them over, so they owe us the bounty,” Twilight said firmly. “If my priorities had been straight, I would have made them pay up before we left.” She took a deep breath. “It would have been an awkward conversation, but we almost lost Pinkie Pie because we didn’t have that money.”

“Oh, it’s okay, Twilight,” Pinkie Pie said. “Even if I got eaten by the worms, I probably would have come back as a shadow or something.”

After lunch, the party headed out onto the salt flats. They were almost in sight of the Black River Mine – just coming up on the burned wreckage of the old caravan – when the wind started picking up. Particles of salt lifted from the ground and in seconds, the salt storm that had menaced them on the trip down was back, stinging acid salt driving into their skin and eyes.

“Not this again!” Rarity complained, pulling her cloak tighter over herself, uselessly.

“Pinkie Pie, can you do anything about this storm?” Twilight asked, shouting over the wind.

“I can try?” Pinkie replied, looking around for a cloud. She flew up into the air, and quickly emerged into the open. This was no natural wind storm – it was a tightly demarcated 30’ cylinder, following along with the party as they gravely trudged onwards.

Realizing that they were under attack, she ducked behind the storm to hide, and tried to get a look at who might be causing it, but there was no sign of anypony – nothing marred the dull white of the salt flats aside from the storm, and the ruined caravan a few hundred feet away.

At any rate, a self-contained cloud was easy enough for her to move. She set her hooves against it and pushed it to the side, off of the party. “This isn’t natural!” she yelled down to them as they emerged from the receding edge of the stinging, howling wind. “Someone’s casting a spell!”

The party looked around, and Rainbow Dash suddenly chirped angrily, and dashed forwards towards the caravan.

“She must have spotted something,” Twilight said. “Everypony, charge!”

Applejack was the fastest, her great cat heritage enabling her to run like the wind across the open terrain, quickly catching up with Rainbow Dash despite the songbird’s head start. The others fell a bit behind, and were able to see a new storm swirl into being around the two in the lead, while the other storm fought against Pinkie Pie’s control, and broke free of her grip to swoop down behind them, although it wasn’t fast enough to catch up. Pinkie charged at the chasing storm and tried to kick it into nonexistence, but it stubbornly continued to exist.

“Spread out!” Twilight ordered, as she saw the storm chasing them. The party tried to follow her orders, Fluttershy and Rarity breaking left and right. The storm around the lead pair followed Rainbow Dash as she tried to swing around to the side, while the storm behind dissolved and reformed around Fluttershy and Macintosh, who refused to part from each others’ side.

That left Applejack free to make a sliding dash for the caravan, only to backpedal in panic as she nearly ran right into their assailants. “Mummies!” she shouted – or tried to shout, but the dry air around the two withered undead ponies seemed to suck the moisture right out of her body, turning her cry into a tortured croak.

Setting her dagger in her teeth, Applejack leaped at the nearest mummy, but its leathery hide turned her blade easily, and it retaliated with a heavy hoof, breaking a few of her ribs as its aura of dryness continued to suck the life from her. She ducked under a blow from the other mummy, which would surely have done her in had it connected.

However, the distraction she provided meant that the salt storms dissolved, and seeing what was going on, Fluttershy began summoning some elementals to help the fight, while the others continued to try closing the distance. Dash swooped down behind the mummies, preparing to attack, while Rarity and Pinkie Pie slowed to a stop to either side, preparing to use their own abilities.

Seeing the rest of the party finally arriving to assist, Applejack wasted no time turning tail and running back towards Fluttershy. “You girls can take it from here,” she said, her voice dry and raspy.

The mummies ignored Rainbow Dash, not recognizing the bird as a threat, and split up to advance on Pinkie and Rarity, slamming their hooves into them painfully, and in Pinkie’s case draining her moisture with their aura. Rarity, as a fellow undead, was not affected, or at least not harmed. Rainbow Dash was not amused, and flew after the one menacing Pinkie Pie, pecking it in the back of its leg – but the mummy’s flesh was too tough and leathery for her to break any bones.

Pinkie, for her part, flew up out of reach – and out of the dehydrating aura – and dropped a bomb on the mummy’s head. Not only did it burn easily as the alchemical fire splashed over it, but its hooves slipped out from under it as Pinkie’s bomb left a greasy patch of oil on the ground beneath it.

Fluttershy finished summoning her elementals, getting a pair of them this time and sending them to help Pinkie and Rarity, then fluttered over to ease Applejack’s pain with some healing magic. Applejack smiled. “Thanks, sugarcube, but I think I’m going to sit the rest of this one out.”

Rarity pointed to the flaming mummy as the elemental approached her and her opponent, and rattled off a short sentence in Auran. She then retreated from the battle slowly, the mummy which had tried to attack her following behind like a loyal puppy, entirely under her spell.

Then Twilight finally finished her charge, her hammer slamming into the flaming mummy and sending black salt flying everywhere as its hide ruptured in a dozen different places from the sheer force of the blow. It staggered to its hooves and took a last, weak swing, hitting nothing, before Rainbow Dash and the elementals finished it off.

The fight was over.

Rarity sighed as she looked at her new thrall. “I’m afraid I can’t keep him,” she said. “He’s strong, but he can’t turn off his aura, and there are still far too many living creatures around for a constant moisture-draining effect to be socially acceptable.”

“Do you need me to put him out of his misery?” Twilight asked, as Pinkie Pie mixed up some healing potions, and Fluttershy gave the most badly injured a few simple healing spells. Without their wands to top everypony off, most of the party was going to let the minor burns from the salt storm wait for one of Black River Mine’s medics to cure with a healing pulse.

“No, I’ll take care of this myself,” Rarity said, scratching at the salt, and then digging into it in a shower of loose salt and dust. “It’s unusual for a ghoul to be putting bodies into a grave, but he should be happy enough packed in salt, and unable to further interfere with travelers along this route.”

It took seconds for her to dig a pair of graves, as the party looked on, amazed. “Can all ghouls dig that fast?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“Many of us can, yes,” Rarity replied, crawling from the second hole. Twilight lifted the remains of the destroyed mummy, and dropped them inside. It took several tries, and a final pass to scrape in the loose salt, since the mummy had come to pieces as it died.

“That’s so cool!” Pinkie Pie said, grinning as she flew up into the air, looking towards Black River. “If we let the bandits kill all the miners, I bet they’d have no trouble making quota!”

Deep Bore was not impressed with Pinkie Pie’s suggestion, once they finally arrived at the mine. He was equally unimpressed by Twilight’s interpretation of the bandit bounty.

“Let’s go doon tae th’ jail and take a peep at our pris’ners, nae? Or go oot tae th’ wall and count bandit heads?”

“Do you want us to finish clearing out your mine, or don’t you?” Twilight replied. “If you’re going to cheat us on this, why should we trust you to pay up for your other contracts?”

“Ach, we’ll pay for that one, lass. The mine’s been quiet as a grave since ye last were ‘ere. One of the boys took a peep and spotted the lich’s tunnel all walled up with stone – ye may not have fought him off, but he dinnae want any part of ye!”

“Be that as it may, we can’t just let you cheat us on the matter of the bandits,” Rarity said. “Quite apart from our reputation, we have expenses that need to be paid.”

“Then go take care of ‘em! We cannae pay ye for a service that still needs doin’!”

“You offered a bounty per bandit,” Rarity replied, “Not a commission to end the bandit threat. We defeated fourteen bandits, but only brought back proof of the deaths of three, as well as nine prisoners. Therefore, you owe us for twelve. That you couldn’t hold on to the ones we remitted into your custody is none of our concern!”

“The way I figure it,” Applejack said, lounging on a nearby rooftop and cleaning her claws with her tongue, “Either you pay us what you owe us, or we see how much more efficient the mine would be with undead workers. A pack o’ ghouls probably wouldn’t pay us any mind if we took our pay right out of the till.”

Deep Bore’s ears flattened against his head, and he sputtered at the threats – but there was no denying that if they wished to, the party could easily make good on them. “We dinnae keep the money here!” he spat, finally. “It’s all in th’ bank, off in Rally, waitin’ for the bandits to be cleared out so we can buy supplies and nae watch them burn tae ash under bandit arrows!”

He paused, and smiled, the afternoon sun glinting dangerously off his coat. “But iffen ye think the bandit threat be put down for th’ moment, surely ye won’t mind travellin’ with th’ caravan that carries the coal to Rally? When it arrives safe, our kin in th’ city can pay ye, ye thieving magpies.”

Twilight looked at Applejack and Rarity, then motioned them over to huddle and discuss the deal. “So they want us to guard their caravan… how dangerous of a mission is this?”

“Aside from the bandits out on the flats, not very,” Applejack said. “The pass is guarded by half an army of orcs. It’s as safe as walking down Main Street in Bright Valley.”

“So, perfectly safe, as long as we’re on official business,” Twilight said. Applejack nodded.

“And if we do run into bandits, it will only be an opportunity for us to run up our earnings,” Rarity mused. “Although the danger of fire arrows destroying the coal is a bit worrying.”

Twilight nodded slowly, then turned to Deep Bore. “We’ll do it, on one condition. You need to give us more of those fire extinguishers, to protect the coal.”

Deep Bore frowned, but nodded. “On loan,” he noted. “We’ll be keepin’ count, and expecting them back!”

“Of course you will,” Twilight replied. “I wouldn’t expect any less.”

> Whirlwind Assault
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The adventurers set out on their escort mission at dawn – there was talk of going under cover of night, but Applejack pointed out that the goblins among the bandits could see in the dark, unlike most of the party, and that the coal train would be extremely hard to make stealthy, especially once it was on fire. At least during the day, everypony would be clearly visible from miles off – there was nothing to hide behind, and both the bandits and the caravan would leave a huge cloud of salty dust in their wake, impossible to miss.

They were two hours out from the Black River mine, still heading south towards the tiny inn where the trail branched west towards the pass, when the telltale cloud of approaching bandits appeared to the east. There was no question of trying to outrun them – the six gigantic wagonloads of coal were pulled by teams of four gem ponies each, but were still very slow.

“We should prepare for a fight,” Twilight said. “They’ll be on us in less than a minute. Hopefully, they’ll back off when they see that we’re here guarding the caravan, but if they do try to attack we need to make sure that they regret it.”

“And that we don’t die,” Pinkie Pie added. “Most of our spells are defensive.”

“Ah think ‘not dying’ is part of what they’d regret,” Applejack said. “Takin’ us out would probably make ‘em mighty happy.”

The party cast their defensive spells, and indeed it was only minutes before the enemy got close enough to start taking extreme-range potshots at the caravan with their fire arrows. Even at extreme range, their shots had a good chance of hitting the massive wagons, and four of the six were set on fire in the first volley.

Twilight grabbed her ‘fire extinguishing’ rod, and summoned a Sleet Storm over the nearest wagon. “Everypony, hit the wagons with the extinguishers! Even the ones that aren’t on fire! They can’t set them on fire if they’re already frozen. Gem ponies – stop the wagons and take cover behind them! I don’t want them taking you out as a backup plan.”

Rainbow Dash, not having an extinguisher due to being far too small to carry one, immediately headed for the distant bandits, flying as fast as she could.

“Oh no,” Fluttershy said, and started to cast a spell to summon some Air Elementals to support her. 

Pinkie Pie and Applejack also raced off after the angry songbird. “Sorry, Twilight,” Pinkie Pie said. “But we can’t just let her run off and get killed!”

Macintosh and Rarity, at least, extinguished two more of the flaming wagons.

The next volley from the bandits set the last two wagons on fire, and sure enough there were a few arrows aimed at the gem ponies pulling them, although from extreme range none of them even came close to hitting. Still, that convinced the last of them to hurriedly dislodge themselves from their harnesses and hide out of sight.

The three ponies on extinguisher duty engulfed the rest of the wagons, hopefully before any of them had time to catch fire properly since they wouldn’t be able to tell through the sleet. Fluttershy finished casting her spell, although it only managed to summon a single elemental.

Twilight frowned. “You might want to tell it to pace the rest of the party. If gets there by itself it’ll just get torn to bits before it can accomplish anything.”

“Actually, if it’s okay with you, I wanted it to get there first?” Fluttershy said. “If it turns into a whirlwind, it can lift the bandits up into the air and drop them. I don’t think any of them could fly…”

“Wait, that tiny thing can lift and carry ponies?” Twilight asked.

“A small elemental makes a small whirlwind,” Rarity explained, saying a few words to the elemental, which demonstrated by forming a swirling cone of salt, twenty feet high. “But even a small whirlwind is large enough to lift a clumsy or unlucky target into the air.”

“Or a willing target…” Twilight said thoughtfully. “I think I know how we can get to the bandits. Fluttershy, keep summoning them and sending them out there – we’ll go with the… the third wave. That should get us there around the same time as Rainbow Dash makes her attack.”

“Oh dear,” Fluttershy said. “It’s going to be a bumpy ride… I don’t think they can carry anypony without hurting them.” She began to cast as Rarity gave the first elemental its instructions in Auran.

“We can take it,” Twilight said confidently. “You have to come. If those bandits brought their leaders along with them, we’re going to need you there to heal us,” she added. “Rarity and Macintosh can stay behind to guard the wagons, in case they have a second wave.”

“But mostly, we’ll just be keeping the wagons extinguished, I imagine,” Rarity said with a frown.

“If you want to come, I’m not going to stop you,” Twilight said. “You were critical to our success the last time we encountered these guys.”

By then, the bandits had noticed the oncoming adventurers, and switched their arrows to target Applejack and Pinkie Pie – but the range was still too great for them to hit a moving target except by luck, and luck was not with them. Fluttershy’s second wave of elementals was larger – three of the ‘small’ 20-foot whirlwinds sped off towards the distant bandits.

As the first air elemental rapidly approached, the bandits seemed to notice that the danger from it was more imminent than they’d thought – apparently, they had orders not to engage the adventurers, as they immediately turned to flee at top speed, the archers firing inaccurate flaming arrows from the backs of their mounts as the elemental closed in – only two of the arrows hit, but between the impact and the flames, that was enough to disperse the whirlwind before it reached them.

“Should we turn back?” Applejack asked, keeping pace with Pinkie and Rainbow Dash. “Looks like we ran ‘em off.”

Rainbow chirped angrily, and attempted, without much success, to fly even faster.

“Guess that’s a ‘no’. Their mounts’re wearing heavy enough armor that we should catch ‘em eventually, although we’ll have to wade through a whole hail ‘o them arrows before we do.” She frowned at the thought, but didn’t turn back.

Back at the wagons, Twilight frowned. “Rainbow Dash isn’t turning back, so the attack’s still on. Come on, everypony who’s going – get ready. This next wave is our ride.”

Fluttershy summoned another three elementals, and after a quick explanation from Rarity, each of them picked up one of the adventurers and lifted them into the air, then dashed off after the fleeing bandits.

It was a very bumpy ride.

With a wave of three elementals closing in, the goblin archers only managed to take out one of them before the other two slammed into their lines, each of them swerving to run down the entire line of fleeing bandits, trying to lift all of them up. Four of the goblin-pony pairs were sucked up by the first elemental, one of the goblins also being dragged from his saddle… one of the remaining unicorn mounts was nabbed by the second elemental. The last lucky bandit remained free.

Unfortunately for the original plan to drop them from a great height, the bandits were able to strike back at the elementals from within the whirlwind before they rose at all. The goblins had no real melee attacks and were essentially helpless, but the unicorns flailed about with their greatswords, and quickly destroyed the first elemental, which had been full to bursting, leaving the four ponies and their riders sprawled out on the ground, delayed but no longer captured.

The second elemental survived the attacks of the lone pair it had acquired, and managed to scoop up three more sets of archers and riders – minus the rider who’d been torn from his saddle, who managed to dive to the side and avoid it – and lifted them up eighty feet in the air before dropping them. None of the four unicorns who were caught survived the fall, their bodies splattering like flies caught in a swatter, the red of their blood staining the salt under their broken corpses. The goblins were a little tougher, and for the most part managed to land on their erstwhile allies, and while they did not escape unharmed, none of them were killed. Of course, without mounts, they now had no way to escape.

Twilight, Rarity, and Fluttershy, in their own elemental ‘mounts’, rushed towards the bandits, and at Rarity’s shouted suggestion, attempted to pick up the rest of the party in passing.

“Woah, nelly!” Applejack said, staring at the splattered ponies and dodging aside as the whirlwind swept past.

“Don’t be a chicken!” Pinkie Pie shouted, laughing as she flew willingly into the swirling winds. Rainbow Dash likewise allowed herself to be picked up. For them, it was a short flight – only two or three seconds – before they were deposited right on top of the remaining enemies.

Twilight and Rarity, not having wings, went sprawling helplessly across the sand when they were dropped at high speed, but the others could disengage safely and act.

“Stop!” Fluttershy shouted at the surviving unicorn who was close enough for her to effect, and he froze, staring into her eyes, as the goblin on his back frantically kicked him in the sides and urged him on.

“What’s wrong with you, Branchsnap? We need to get out of here! The boss said not to try to fight them!”

A possible reason why their boss might have said that came in the form of one of Pinkie’s bombs, which exploded over them, burning them horribly and leaving a slippery patch of greasy salt under Branchsnap’s hooves, dropping him to the ground with his rider pinned beneath him.

Rainbow Dash dove at one of the injured goblins, but even sprawled out on the ground the nimble creature managed to evade her beak.

The goblins scrambled to their feet and recovered their bows. “Focus on the pegasus!” one of them shouted, pointing his bow at Pinkie Pie. Two arrows from the scattered volley hit her, sinking deep into her side and scorching her coat. She hissed in pain, but didn’t go down.

Branchsnap’s rider, pinned beneath him, beat on the unicorn’s sides to try to get him to move, but he was still pinned in turn by Fluttershy’s command.

Rarity chirped something to the remaining elementals, and all four of them shot off after the one fleeing unicorn and rider who hadn’t been delayed. After being battered by multiple whirlwinds, one finally managed to lift them off their feet.

While they were doing that, Rarity herself adjusted her position to line up her spell, and then blew a hooffull of diamond shards at two of the wounded goblins. One tried to take cover behind the corpse of his mount, but was still cut to pieces by the swarm of tiny glass shards; the other goblin was caught completely by surprise, and the pieces of his remains were sprayed in a ten foot cone past where the blast had hit him.

Twilight charged the least-wounded goblin, the one who’d been pulled from his unfortunate mount’s saddle by the first elemental, and then evaded the whirlwind that lifted his friends up to their doom. His luck had run out. Her hammer hit him perfectly under his chin, and his head went flying across the salt flats like a hoofball, landing fifty feet away and rolling another twenty, while his headless body slumped to the ground at her hooves.

Rainbow Dash was a little less dramatic about taking down her target, who’d rudely ignored her in favor of shooting at Pinkie Pie, but a beak to the base of his skull put him down, just the same.

“Stay!” Fluttershy snapped, continuing to hold Branchsnap helpless in her gaze. All he could do was whimper, as Pinkie Pie doused him again in flame, this time aiming mostly for the pinned rider, since their arrows seemed the more dangerous weapon.

In the distance, there was a pair of faint screams as the other surviving archer/rider pair failed to escape from the whirlwind, and were lifted a full hundred feet into the air and dropped. The screams cut off suddenly as they hit the ground, and they did not get up afterwards.

“Surrender!” Twilight ordered the last pair, her giant hammer held threateningly overhead as she trotted over to where the goblin squirmed helplessly under the paralyzed pony.

“We surrender! We surrender!” the goblin squealed.

“You know we can’t take them prisoner,” Rarity said.

“I know,” Twilight replied, her hammer dropping and shattering the goblin’s skull. “And I was talking to the unicorn,” she added to the twitching corpse. “Branchsnap, was it?”

“I surrender too,” he said, curling up in a ball as Fluttershy released him. His horn lit up to lift his sword and toss it away from himself.

Twilight smiled, and rested her blood-soaked hammer on the ground. She leaned down to the cowering bandit. “I want you to take a message to your boss. You can stop attacking the mine – the Armory is sealed away again, and guarded by a lich. The gem ponies are stupid enough to consider the problem resolved, but neither you nor they are getting to those ancient weapons any time soon. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” he said, shivering. “Please don’t kill me.”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Twilight said. “But I’m afraid I do have to make sure that you can’t ply your trade as a bandit any time soon.”

“Are you going to break off his horn?” Pinkie Pie asked, grinning. “I bet I could make something magical with a unicorn horn.”

“No, he keeps his horn. His magic is pathetic, but it’ll let him write out the message when he gets back to his camp,” Twilight said. “I’m breaking his jaw so he can’t wield his sword.”

“What?” Branchsnap asked, “No – dongggrrllgllll…” He squirmed and struggled as Twilight’s magic closed around his jaw, and as she narrowed her gaze and her horn blazed brighter, there were a series of sick snaps, crackles and pops as it was dislocated, shattered, and twisted until his entire muzzle was a bloody ruin.

Twilight turned her back on the grisly sight. “Pinkie Pie – take their ears for proof we defeated another dozen bandits. Rarity – eat your fill. We’re heading into civilized territory, so it might be a while before we have any more corpses for you. Fluttershy –“ she paused, then patted the quivering Flutterpony on the shoulder, and gave her a wide, friendly smile. “Good work.”

> Shattered Illusions
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because of the extinguishers, and because the bandits were so expeditiously dispatched, the damage to the cargo was minimal, and the party arrived at the inn around nightfall with no further excitement. The party’s moderate injuries were not beyond Fluttershy’s remaining healing magic, and none of the gem ponies had been hurt.

As night fell, the young gem pony in charge of the inn herded everypony inside and closed the shutters tightly, warning them about the gloomwings. The Black River ponies told her that the swarms had stopped, but she wasn’t eager to open them regardless. You could never tell what might be lurking out there in the dark.

“Well, for starters, there’s going to be one of us,” Applejack said, as the party gathered around a small table in the now-crowded inn to eat. “We’re still too close to bandit territory for my liking, and they’ve done night strikes before.”

“Night strikes that began with the sentries’ throats being cut,” Rarity pointed out.

“Maybe we should all stay up,” Twilight suggested. “Not you three – the spellcasters need their rest. But the rest of us can pull an all-nighter, and sleep on the carts in the morning. If they don’t attack tonight, I doubt they’ll try something during the day, when we’re even farther away from their usual camps.”

Rainbow Dash chirped angrily, hopping up and down on the table.

Rarity chirped back at her, in Sylvan, “I’m sorry, dear, but I can’t make out a word you’re saying.”

“I don’t think she’s speaking Sylvan,” Twilight replied, in the same language. “I think she’s just chirping randomly.”

“Well, perhaps we should teach her,” Rarity said, in common, as she took out a quill and some parchment for Rainbow Dash to write with. “This is getting embarrassing.”

Rainbow Dash stared at them, and clumsily wrote, with ink on her claw, “Bird language?”

“It’s actually pronounceable with any sort of animal noises,” Fluttershy explained. “But you’ll be a griffon again soon enough. I’m not sure it’s worth learning an entirely new language.”

“To tell the truth, I find her far easier to tolerate when she can’t talk,” Rarity said. “No offense, dear.”

Rainbow Dash didn’t need to talk to express her feelings about that. Instead, with dramatic slashes that splattered ink everywhere, she quickly wrote out, “Hide. Ambush them back.”

“Makes sense,” Twilight said. “Although Mac and I aren’t very good at hiding.”

“I’ll dig you two a spider hole,” Rarity offered. “Pinkie Pie’s studied wilderness survival, so she should be able to conceal it well enough. Perhaps Fluttershy can help.”

“I suppose,” Fluttershy said, poking at her food with a hoof again, but still not eating.

“Is something wrong, dear?”

Fluttershy stirred the noodles on her plate again, and then turned to look at Twilight, sternly. “You shouldn’t have done that to Branchsnap!”

Twilight blinked. “What do you mean? He was a bandit. I had the moral and legal right to sentence him to death for his crimes. If anything, I was being merciful.”

Fluttershy shook her head. “That wasn’t mercy! You were already so much stronger than him, and you made him even weaker! You should kill the weak, or force them to serve you. You shouldn’t cripple them!”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “The point of fighting bandits is not to breed a better quality of bandit. Besides, he’ll be fine. The Unicorn Bandits are well funded. I’m sure they have healers.”

“Well, yeah,” Applejack said. “They’ll have healers. I’m sure they’ll cast all the cure spells on him he needs… but unless they’ve got a good surgeon in camp, that’ll just heal his muzzle all wrong. And once that happens, well, it’ll take a miracle for him to ever use his mouth again.”

“Or a Wish!” Pinkie Pie pointed out.

Applejack chuckled. “Well, sure, a Wish’d do. Or a Heal spell even. The point is, powerful magic, that they might not care to give to a lowly grunt, ‘specially one that failed them.”

“Then they’ll send him home to his family, and perhaps he’ll learn a trade that doesn’t involve the slaughter of innocents,” Twilight said, unimpressed. “This could make him a better pony.”

“Or a bitter cripple, begging for coppers in the gutter,” Pinkie Pie said.

“Or a thief,” Applejack suggested.

“Still better than a bandit,” Twilight replied, levitating a roasted tomato to her mouth and crushing it between her teeth.

The non-casters in the party spent the night on watch, hidden in the stables or in the ‘spider holes’ Rarity dug for them that were then painstakingly camouflaged by Pinkie and Fluttershy. Keeping watch all night was far more difficult than merely standing watch for a few hours, and as the night dragged on uneventfully, Applejack and Rainbow Dash eventually drifted off to sleep. Twilight Sparkle and Sergeant Macintosh managed to stay up all night long, but from their vantage point buried beneath the ground they had poor visibility.

Regardless, the night passed, and in the morning the two would-be guards were awoken by the sounds of the others having breakfast and otherwise preparing to move out. Twilight and Macintosh emerged from their hiding places to join them. As they gathered to compare notes – all of which could be summed up as ‘nothing happened’ – Rainbow Dash noticed a small piece of paper stuck to the middle of Applejack’s back. The visible side said only, ‘read me’.

Rainbow Dash grabbed the edge of the paper in her beak, tore it loose, and as the others watched in confusion flew at least sixty feet from the rest of the party and set it down carefully, ‘read me’ side still up.

“What in tarnation?” Applejack asked.

“It was stuck to your back,” Twilight said, frowning. “They were here, but all they did was leave a note?”

“If that was all they did,” Applejack said with a frown. “I’ll go check the wagons.”

While she attended to that, Twilight headed over to the paper and, staying 20 feet back, flipped over the paper with her magic. Sure enough, there was writing on the other side. She lifted it up until she could read it, and it did not explode. Squinting her eyes, she tried to read the words without getting any closer.

From a distance she had a hard time making it out, but eventually managed to parse the entire message:

It does not surprise me that the gem ponies would make peace with a lich. They have never had any regard for nature, why should they have any for the natural order? Perhaps for now the Armory is beyond our reach, but our other grievances remain.

As for you, go, protect the coal. We would rather have you on the other side of the mountains where you can’t interfere. But when you get to Rally, take a good long look at what the Empire is doing with it. The Emperor is insane, and you are helping fuel his insanity.

You will note that I delivered this message without murdering or mutilating any of your friends. In the future, I hope you will do me the same courtesy. Actually, I hope that we never meet again.

Wind Seed, Paladin of the Sun. 

At no point did the message explode, burst into flames, or otherwise give any indication that it was anything but what it seemed. When eventually investigated by a spellcaster, it radiated no magic and was not contaminated by poison. Applejack, likewise, found no sign of hidden traps or explosives on the carts.

“I still don’t understand how a Paladin could work with a bunch of bandits,” Pinkie Pie said. “Shouldn’t she get smitten or something?”

Rarity scoffed. “I suppose that where righteousness is lacking, self-righteousness is enough to satisfy the gods. She’s a paladin of the Sun, so actual results don’t matter as much as long as she thinks she’s doing the right thing.”

“To be fair, the Emperor is a bit loopy,” Applejack said.

“If you believe the rumors,” Twilight replied. “But what you can’t deny is that the Empire works, and as long as it does, it’s our duty to protect it.”

The massive carts full of coal ground along the western road towards the mountains at a slow but steady pace. True to their word, the bandits offered the caravan – and the party – no further trouble, and other creatures avoided the large gathering.

On the second day, the road acquired a noticeable upward slope, and the salt gradually turned to dirt and gravel. At midday they passed the first peak, to the south, and were officially in the pass. According to the gem ponies, they were a little behind schedule, but would press on through dusk, if necessary, in order to reach the first of the orcish fortresses.

Just after the sun vanished behind the mountains, although the sky still glowed brightly enough that it was still clearly daytime, the party spotted a pair of bat-winged creatures circling a peak to the north. Spotting the train of wagons, they formed up and dove towards the pass at high speed.

Applejack was the first to identify them. “Flame drakes!”

“Stop the wagons!” Twilight shouted, nosing through her saddlebags for her extinguisher. “Everypony, put up a Sleet Storm!”

Once the coal was protected, the flying members of the party took to the air, ready to attack the drakes if they got close. Unfortunately, they didn’t need to get within range of an upward charge to use their fireball breath, although their first attack was a warning shot in front of the first wagon, the fire splattering harmlessly across the stony ground.

They were in range of Glitterdust, and Rarity sent a cloud of sparkles exploding in one of the drake’s faces. If it was blinded, it showed no sign of it as the pair circled back up into the air to wait for their breath to recharge.

Pinkie Pie flew over to Twilight, who was watching them nervously while standing ready with the extinguisher rod. “Just ignore them, they’re being silly billies,” she said, hovering over the armored unicorn’s head. “Drakes are territorial, and they must have set up a territory that includes part of the road. We’re way too many ponies for them to actually try to fight off, though. They won’t do anything more than posture as long as we don’t try to actually go for their nest.”

“We can’t protect the wagons from fire as well if we’re moving,” Twilight said.

Pinkie pouted. “If we sit here until the rods run out of daily charges, we’ll be even worse at protecting them.”

“Daily charges?”

Pinkie nodded. “Yeah. Most rods like that have three.”

“Gah! Moon forsaken penny-pinching unspoken featherbrained…” Twilight grumbled, but signaled for the wagons to start up again. And sure enough, while the drakes swooped down to make several more attacks, none of them were actually aimed to hit anything, just to intimidate.

“There’s something rather odd about those drakes,” Rarity said to Applejack, who was watching over the second-to-rearmost wagon. “When my glitterdust hit one, it didn’t seem to get its sparkles right away. And look at the ground here!”

Applejack landed on the wagon to get a closer look at the perfectly ordinary patch of ground that Rarity was pointing at, and looked back at the dark-robed ghoul, perking an ear curiously.

“This is where their first fireball hit, and the ground isn’t even scorched!”

“Dirt and rocks don’t scorch, much,” Applejack noted. “So you think, what, that they’re not really drakes?”

“They may not even exist at all,” Rarity replied. “Someone wants us to think that this pass is being harassed by wild drakes, and to hurry past this section. I wonder what they’re hiding?”

“Think I should go check?” Applejack asked. “I can be, ya know. Discreet.”

Rarity frowned. “The last time we sent a single creature out to scout, we never saw or heard from them again. And you’d be slightly harder to replace than Xologrim.”

“Point taken. Guess we’ll just hafta leave it up to the authorities when we get to the fortress.”

As Pinkie Pie predicted, the wild drakes eventually left the party alone as they proceeded on past their peak. It was dark when they reached the orcish fort, but there were torches burning on the walls, and the guard contingent directed the wagons into a covered courtyard where they’d be somewhat protected against aerial assault.

There weren’t very many orcs on guard, for the size of the fort, and the ranking officer present was only a sergeant. When asked, he revealed that the bulk of the garrison had been called back to Rally, leaving only a skeleton crew to hold down the fort.

“Do you know anything about the wild drakes that seem to be plaguing the eastern road?” Rarity asked.

“Ah, them,” the sergeant said with a grunt. “We were going to send a force down to root ‘em out, before the recall order.” He led her into an office, and showed her a topographical map of a part of the mountains. “We scouted out the plateau where they seem to be nesting,” he said, pointing it out, “but none of our scouts could get close enough to see how many drakes were up there without getting eaten.”

“I think they may not be drakes,” she said. “Someone or something is creating illusionary drakes to scare off travelers.”

The orc snarled. “I wouldn’t be surprised. The kobolds and harpies are always trying to claw their way into the pass, although illusionary drakes don’t really sound much like either of them.”

“I can see kobolds using illusions,” Twilight said, having followed them into the room. “They like tricks.”

“They like traps,” the sergeant corrected. “Anyway, we don’t have the numbers to send anyone to investigate this, especially if it’s not just some wild animals. I don’t suppose you lot –“

“We need to stick with the caravan,” Twilight said. “We can’t afford to get distracted by this sort of side-quest.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Rarity said. “Besides, they don’t have real drakes, and there’s hardly any point in acquiring the skeletons of a bunch of kobolds.”

“I think I remember seeing this task posted back in Bright Valley, actually,” Twilight said. “Maybe somepony else will be along to handle it. If not, we can check it out on the way back.”

In the morning, the party heard the caravan wagon-pullers arguing loudly with the orcish garrison. When they went to investigate, they discovered the wagons chained up to the hitching posts with large iron padlocks.

“I’m sorry,” the orcish sergeant said to the gem ponies shouting at him, not for the first time, “but I’m afraid that current conditions in the pass are too dangerous for us to allow a shipment with military significance to continue with such a small escort. Until we receive reinforcements, or something happens to improve the situation,” he looked directly at Twilight and the others as he said that part, “I’m afraid that you’ll have to wait here for your own safety.”

“You realize that we could slaughter your entire garrison and continue on our way, right?” Twilight said to him. “It wouldn’t even be hard, and we have the legal authority.”

The orc laughed. “That sounds just like an adventurer. I have a better suggestion – go fight the enemies of the Empire, instead of being a whiny bitch.” He spat at her feet. “Or do you think I’m afraid of you?”

“You really should be,” Pinkie Pie said. “She’s killed a lot of people.”

“Now now,” Rarity said. “This isn’t the most subtle of tactics, but there is a reward for the task he’s asking us to take on. In a way he’s doing us a favor by ensuring the caravan will wait for us to finish.”

“It’s not a very big reward,” Twilight grumbled. “It’s a reward for chasing off wild drakes, not uprooting a camp full of – I don’t even know what.”

“Whatever they are, they’ve got magic,” Applejack said, flicking her tail lazily. “Maybe some of it’s the sort you can pick up and carry away.”

> Hidden Hive
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Following the orcish scouts’ map, it only took a few hours for the party to get within visual range of the plateau suspected of harboring the ‘drake nest’. The route stuck to the cover of forested slopes and valleys, so the so-called drakes circling overhead were unable to spot their approach. They were also a good distance off, so unless the Adventurers managed to alert the camp and then waited several minutes before attacking, they wouldn’t be involved in any fight.

Once the party got to the limit of the easy cover, Applejack was able to sneak closer to take a look at what was actually waiting for them. The approach was a hundred feet of scree, difficult terrain to cross on foot, followed by a fifty foot ascent up a rough cliff. At first glance, the top held only trees and underbrush, but a closer look revealed a hidden fort – walls of netting disguised to look like an ordinary forest, with the ‘trees’ being a series of guard towers. Applejack saw no sign of occupants in any of the towers, although it was possible that they were simply hiding from her.

Applejack returned to the party to report. “I couldn’t really see through that wall they had up. It looked like I should’a been able to but it was better than it looked. Didn’t want to risk sneaking over the wall when I couldn’t even see the feather-lovin’ guards.”

“How are we going to get up there?” Rarity asked. “Air Elementals, again? That was a very rough ride, last time – if we’d run into serious opposition at the end of it we could have been in trouble.”

“Dire bats,” Fluttershy said, quietly. “I can summon giant bats to carry you up. They won’t be big enough to get Sergeant Macintosh though.”

“So bats for us, and an air elemental for him?” Twilight suggested. “It won’t be as bad as the chase – we don’t have to ride them nearly as far.”

“And when we get there?” Applejack asked.

“The wall doesn’t sound very sturdy…” Twilight said.

“It sounds flammable,” Pinkie Pie said, with a grin that faded into a pout. “And if it’s not I suppose Rarity knows Diamond Spray.”

“Or we could fly over the walls,” Rarity suggested, “and save the Diamond Spray for the enemies.”

“I’d rather face them piecemeal, if we can,” Twilight said. “We have a better shot at that coming in from the side.”

After a few minutes casting various defensive spells and summoning the bats and elementals, the assault began! By their own wings, or gripped in the claws of the massive bats, the party rose towards the plateau – except for Macintosh, who (alongside a second elemental whirlwind) was whisked to the top almost instantly, and dropped next to the wall. As they tore into it with their fierce winds, he thrust with his lance, hoping to snag it on enough of the debris lodged in the net to tear a section away. Between them, they tore a small hole in the wall, revealing the shadowed interior of the fort.

As Macintosh looked inside, he saw that the camouflaged fort had a roof made out of similar netting to the wall he’d just broken through, which meant that flying in was not an option. The only thing that looked like a gate was a wooden door set into the center of the ceiling – there was no apparent means of access for creatures who couldn’t fly. Which made sense, since there hadn’t been any road or path up the side of the cliff.

Unfortunately for Twilight’s plan to defeat the enemies in detail, the interior was open except for a rough circle of huts that looked like they were made out of sticks and leaves cemented together in some fashion. In the center, four harmless looking pegasi wielding huge blades strapped to their forelegs were talking to a nasty looking kobold, whose bandolier of flasks and pouches of reagents marked him as an alchemist, like Pinkie Pie. The pegasi stared back at Macintosh in surprise, then went blurry, as if they’d cast a magical spell to partially conceal their presence.

Rainbow Dash was the first of the main pack to arrive, and immediately headed for one of the disguised guard towers. Once she got close, she could easily spot the windows through which the guards would look, and once she was inside the guard hiding and spying on the party’s approach was quite obvious. She chirped loudly, slamming into one of his – hers? Its? It was some sort of pony-shaped bug – into one of its hind legs and spraining it badly. Green blood oozed from the cracks in its chitin.

The bug monster whirled and tried to gore Rainbow with the nasty, curved horn on its head, and when that failed, tried to bite her with its actually relatively normal looking fangs – but as a songbird, she was just too small and fast for it to catch.

The bugs in the other towers had better luck. Four of them were able to get an angle on the incoming flyers, and spat globs of green goo at them. Twilight’s bat was hit, but managed to keep its wings unstuck enough to flutter the rest of the way to the edge of the cliff and drop her off safely. Pinkie Pie was similarly partially gummed. The third bit of goo was aimed at Applejack, but went wide. The fourth hit Rarity’s bat dead on, and glued one of its wings to its side. The two of them spun around, out of control, slammed into the cliff and then plummeted to the base.

The towers that couldn’t focus on the flyers were still able to aim at Macintosh. He was glued in place by a green blob, and then pummeled by two bolts of force.

Twilight shouted, “In the name of the moon!” and charged past him at the creatures inside. Since the pegasi were so harmless, she ignored them as targets, and focused on the kobold, slamming her hammer into him. Up close, she could see that he was under the effect of his mutation, much like Pinkie Pie’s battle-pegasus form – his muscles bulged, and he merely grunted as he took her blow, then stepped closer and lashed out with claws and teeth. She blocked his jaws with her shield, and one claw with her shoulder guard, but the other drew blood.

“For the storm!” Pinkie Pie shouted, giggling, as she struggled to fly up to the plateau. She tossed a bomb into one of the guard towers, splashing it into the face of the bug that had spat at her, engulfing him in flame. And nasty green mist. And covering all the nearby surfaces in grease, for the hell of it. The material of the tower proved to be quite flammable, going up like a torch soaked in pitch.

Applejack flew up to help Rainbow Dash, surprising the bug which had just turned to face its attacker. She swooped up behind it and slit its throat, which gushed blood just as she would have expected from a mammal. It gave a wet cough and lifted a hoof to try to stop the bleeding, then collapsed.

Fluttershy’s air elementals moved to attack two of the guard towers not otherwise occupied, tearing off bits of the fake trees’ structure and battering the monsters inside. Fluttershy herself flew inside to support Twilight and Macintosh, saying a few words to give her companions the blessing of nature.

Big Mac grunted, and strained against the goo holding him to the floor, his muscles bulging under his bright red coat – and the goo could not hold him, although it slowed his charge as he shook the confounding magic out of his mind and charged at one of the ‘harmless’ pegasi. Despite the slowing effect, he was still able to build up quite a bit of momentum, and struck true despite the fuzziness, impaling the hapless mare.

Even pinned to the end of his lance, however, she wasn’t quite finished. She scraped herself off his lance, and before he could blink he found himself looking at four wounded pegasi, all grinning at him with a wicked glint in their eyes. The other pegasi likewise multiplied, gaining their own mirror images, then all four flew up to the ceiling net and stuck there, out of his reach.

Rainbow Dash flitted out of the now-empty tower, homing in on one that wasn’t engulfed in poisonous smoke or being harassed by an elemental. The bug inside wasn’t surprised to see someone fly in through the window, but did seem a bit taken aback as it saw that it was being attacked by a tiny bird. It wasn’t crippled by her strike, but it reacted just as the other one had, turning to attack her with horn and fang, and failed even more miserably to even get close to hitting her. This one managed to dodge Applejack’s sneak attack, however, as she followed the songbird to their next target.

There were flashes of green light from inside the whirlwinds, and the bug who’d been bombed and gassed dragged himself out of the cloud of doom and dropped to the ground inside the fort, coughing and wheezing. Twilight’s dire bat squeezed into the fort and tried to bite him, but he scuttled back just in time to avoid its fangs.

The three bugs in the back towers shot bolts of force at Twilight and Macintosh, striking glancing blows on him, and hitting her right in the face – but aside from a few scorch marks, she was able to blink away the effects and slam her hammer into the alchemist’s gut, staggering him back a few feet – but he was still standing, and looked angry more than anything. She could see some of his bruises slowly shrink before her eyes, as he regenerated from her blows.

He stepped a few feet further back, clumsily mixed a bomb from his bandolier, and almost fumbled it as he tossed it in Twilight’s direction – but she was no better at dodging than he was at throwing, and was engulfed in flaming liquid. Fortunately, he wasn’t the sort of alchemist to focus on his bombs, and a quickly fading fire was all there was. It still hurt more than his claw had.

“Drop!” Fluttershy shouted up at the wounded pegasus clinging to the ceiling, but she laughed and shook her head, then gave a loud shrieking cry. In response, four more of the bug creatures emerged from the huts and flew up to cling to the ceiling, flinging a barrage of bolts at Fluttershy, making her whine as they pummeled her side.

Macintosh charged at the only enemy he could reach, but while his lance made contact with the hulking mutant kobold, it was off-center and failed to seriously damage him.

Then the ‘pegasi’ on the roof opened up with their own green bolts, all of them focusing on Fluttershy, spinning her around, screaming in pain, as they pummeled her again and again… but while their rate of fire was much faster than the bugs’, the bolts were no stronger, and even after taking more than half a dozen hits, she was still conscious.

Rainbow Dash continued her duel with the bug in the tower, but despite a flurry of pecks only managed to connect once. That was more than it managed in return, of course, and focusing on Rainbow Dash let Applejack absolutely maul it, tearing off both wings before planting her dagger in the small of its back. “Next?” she asked, before taking it back in her teeth.

One of the bugs in a back tower spat entangling goo at Twilight, and managed to glue her to the floor, out of reach of her target, while the others pelted her with annoying green bolts. She drew the greatsword she kept as a backup weapon and scraped herself free, then advanced on the alchemist with murder in her eyes – but she’d lost intiative, and he was able to claw and bite her as she closed in.

It was no use, though – the furious unicorn smacked the mutant kobold’s feeble attacks aside with contemptuous ease. Macintosh tried to get behind him and stab him with his lance, but the alchemist’s thick hide turned the lance aside once more.

One of the back towers exploded in green mist and flames as Pinkie Pie finally managed to get an angle to throw a bomb at it, despite the green goo slowing her movement. Fluttershy took advantage of the momentary distraction to dart into one of the huts and heal herself.

Just then, the ground in the middle of the clearing shook and dirt sprayed, as Rarity emerged from the tunnel she’d been digging. Seeing that most of the enemies were clinging to the netting above, she sprayed a barrage of diamond shards straight up, shredding the netting and painfully pelting most of the enemies hanging out overhead. The wounded pegasus, already nearly dead from Macintosh’s earlier assault, cried out one last time before her images winked out and she fell, thumping to the ground as a sodden mass of shattered chitin and bright green blood.

One of the other pegasi clinging to the tattered ceiling shrieked again in the strange language, and the barrage of green bolts shifted its focus, aiming at the wizard. The massive barrage pummeled her again and again, leaving her cloak in tatters and huge rents in her undead flesh. Rarity blinked, and (half dazed) just said, “Ow.”

Applejack and Rainbow Dash, finally able to see what was going on inside the fort thanks to the holes in the ceiling, swooped in to help, attacking two of the bugs. Applejack’s fell to the floor, dead; Rainbow Dash’s looked tattered and worn, but managed to hold on for the moment.

The last two active tower bugs shot stinging bolts at Twilight, but failed to dissuade her from finally planting her hammer in the alchemist’s skull. As his brains oozed from the ruins of his shattered face, he shrunk and shriveled down to normal kobold size, his wounds no longer healing.

Then another tower exploded.

Macintosh threw a javelin at one of the ceiling pegasi, but the mass of blurry figures kept it from hitting anything. “What are we going to do about those flyers?”

Rarity limped over to the pair, and smiled. “Leave it to me, dears.” A cloud of dense mist surrounded them, shielding them from the rain of green death.

The bugs on the ceiling turned to fight Applejack and Rainbow Dash in melee, biting and stabbing with their horns, but didn’t manage to score any hits. The pegasi, however, dropped into the mist, not willing to give up the hunt for the juicy spellcasters. One ran right into Twilight, slashing at her with his leg-blade – the other two stumbled across Rarity, and she only grimaced as they cut her down.

Rainbow Dash dodged a blob of goo from the remaining tower (just before it too exploded), finished off the bug she’d been fighting, and then shifted a few feet to flank another with Applejack, pecking it in the back to get it to turn its attention away from the rogue. As always, Applejack took that opportunity to tear it into little bitty bits.

In the cloud, Macintosh found himself being stabbed by a bug that had escaped from one of the burning towers, which ducked neatly under his lance as he turned to hit.

Twilight, facing off against a mirror imaged, blurred pegasus, closed her eyes and swung her mace blindly in his general direction, and was rewarded with a solid crunch.

A hoof came out of the mist and touched her on her back, and she felt many of her wounds close. “I’m sorry I was hiding,” Fluttershy said. “I would have died.”

“It’s fine,” Twilight said, panting as she opened her eyes and stared back at her enemy, watching for its counterattack. “Don’t die.”

The pegasi who’d finished off Rarity closed in on the pair, one flanking Twilight with his friend while the other sliced at Fluttershy. Fluttershy escaped without harm – while no use against the green bolts, the barkskin spell and shield potion were quite effective against blades. Twilight, in a much worse position and attacked by two enemies, still managed to deflect most of their blows, but one struck true, opening another painful gash in her side.

Rainbow Dash finished off the last of the bugs who’d attacked her and Applejack, then turned to look for more targets – and saw two bugs whose towers had finally been destroyed by the whirlwinds, and were now flying free in midair. She flew over to the closest, and as it turned to look at her Applejack snuck up from below and gutted it. Sure enough, strange magical insects were unable to live without their intestines, and its corpse plummeted to the ground.

The other was busy taking pot-shots at Pinkie Pie, who responded with a bomb that engulfed it in green mist. “My bug bombs work outdoors, too! Eep!” A green bolt shot past her from the edge of the fort, as another singed escapee from a bombed tower joined the fray – just in time to get swept up in one of the whirlwinds, which swooped around searching for targets.

In the mist, Macintosh finally finished off the bug who’d tried to harass him, and moved in to support Twilight, who was flailing around blindly, without much success. Fluttershy stuck to her back and continued to heal her, although she was running low on powerful magic. A Cure Light Wounds spell was not enough to gain ground against the vicious slashing wounds inflicted on her friend.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack, hearing the sounds of battle and Twilight’s pained grunts, descended into the mist to see what they could do to help. “I’ll try to take down the images,” Applejack said, slashing at one only to draw blood as she hit the real pegasus by mistake. “Um… oops?” Rainbow Dash’s follow up attack did hit a figment, shattering it.

Twilight and Macintosh continued to fail to hit their targets. “Gah! Stop dodging!” Twilight shouted at her opponent, as her blind swings went wide again. “Statistically, you should be dead by now!” 

Pinkie Pie descended from above, and tossed a bomb that exploded at Twilight’s feet, spraying fire over the mirror images and the pegasi, but somehow missing all of her friends. “These really work better when I can make them poison and trip everyone,” she grumbled.

“They’re flying, we’re not,” Twilight said, while Fluttershy channeled the last of her powerful magic into one last good healing spell on her.

Rainbow Dash stripped the last image from one of the pegasi, and gave him a painful peck on the nose, while Applejack slipped around behind him and clawed open his side. He gave an angry shriek as he collapsed, green flames engulfing him as he reverted to his true form.

Another pegasus, the one harassing Fluttershy, was badly gored by Sergeant Macintosh as he circled around and made a pass at both remaining enemies, and managed to land a hit on the second, through the mist and the blur and all of the images. Another splash of fire from Pinkie Pie finished her off.

Twilight’s wild flailing finally managed to connect with the third, and the pegasus was dead and turning back into a bug before he even hit the ground.

“Is that – is that all of them?” Twilight asked.

“I think so,” Applejack said. “Is everyone okay?”

“They got Rarity,” Twilight replied. “I hope she comes back as herself.”

“I’ll help her, if she needs it,” Fluttershy said. “I still have enough magic for that.”

“What were those things?” Macintosh asked.

Everypony else stared at him. “Changelings,” they said, almost in unison.

“They’re not native to this plane,” Twilight said. “What are they doing here?”

“We’re not native to this plane either,” Fluttershy said.

“We’re native enough now,” Applejack said. “And they didn’t come over with us.”

“A few did,” Pinkie Pie said, “but their descendants are practically ponies.”

“The doppelgangers?” Twilight asked. “These were a lot nastier than doppelgangers.”

“Everything in Faerie is nastier,” Fluttershy said. “That’s why we left. We were nothing but prey, there.”

“And what in the name of all things green and glittery was a kobold doing with ‘em?” Applejack asked.

There were a few enemies left alive, when the party emerged from the mist, but all were battered and some were nauseous, and they fell quickly to the party’s assault.

Once the camp was actually secure, a quick search of the kobold’s possessions and the huts provided a sort of answer to Applejack’s question – according to some documents written in Sylvan, the kobold was a liaison to the changeling swarm, which was harassing the pass at his request. He also had the only useful magical treasure from the entire camp, a Cloak of Resistance.

The changelings did have a supply of goo in their glands that Pinkie Pie thought she’d be able to turn into tanglefoot bags with a little work. Harvesting it would take time, however, and time was in short supply.

Firstly, the camp was on fire, and the fire was spreading. It was already getting a little hard to breathe, and flaming leaves and sticks had set alight several of the huts.

Second, the destruction of the camp had not gone unnoticed, and the two ‘flame drakes’ from the peak were nowhere to be seen – but presumably were heading for the camp to help their comrades as fast as their wings could carry them.

“Rarity’s down, Fluttershy’s out of magic, and most of us are hurt,” Twilight said. “I don’t think we want to wait and fight two more of these spellcasters, especially not ones that can apparently turn invisible. Rarity had the Glitterdust.”

“Chop off the heads and put them in a sack,” Pinkie Pie said. “That’s where the glands are, and the orcs’ll want to see the proof of what was here with their own eyes.”

“We should take the kobold too,” Fluttershy said. “Rarity will want something to eat when she wakes up.”

> Too Quiet
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The party managed to gather up the loot and the corpses (or pieces thereof) that they wanted to take with them before any more changelings arrived, and quickly headed for the cover of the forest. Twilight and Macintosh had to climb down the vine-covered cliff wall, and… well, they didn’t die in the attempt, although they did their best. 

During the trek back to the orcish fortress, the party got the feeling that they were being followed several times, although they never managed to spot anyone or anything specific. Perhaps they were simply jumping at shadows, and the rustles in the underbrush were from ordinary forest creatures. They made it back without having to fight, at least, and well before sundown, although too late in the day for the caravan to set out.

Twilight Sparkle dumped an oozing sack at the orcish sergeant’s feet. “There. The pass is safe.”

“Safer, anyway,” Pinkie Pie said.

The orc opened the bag, then closed it again without changing his expression. “Did you get them all?”

“We got their leader,” Applejack said, “and everyone who was at the camp. There might’a been a few out on patrol or something, but most of ‘em are there in that bag.”

He looked at the wrapped up body on Macintosh’s back. “Looks like you lost someone.”

“Heeheehee,” Pinkie Pie said, rubbing her hooves together. “She’s just… resting? Saaaay, do you have a dungeon or something we could lock her in for the night? Just in case she’s grumpy when she wakes up?”

The orc narrowed his eyes. “We’ve got a graveyard. It’s consecrated. Seems to hold them, if you bury them deep enough.”

“Please, sir,” Fluttershy said, smiling sweetly. “We know what we’re doing. We’re professionals. If you could show us to the dungeon, we’ll make sure that everything is taken care of by morning.”

The orc was unable to resist Fluttershy’s charms, although he did post a pair of guards at the dungeon entrance, just in case. The dungeon had a dozen cells, none of them occupied. Each had a small opening to an underground cave full of waste that could be used to stow dead bodies – or pieces thereof – that the party wished to remain dead, although of course the orcs preferred that they be buried properly, since that tended to last longer.

While they waited for Rarity to rise, Pinkie Pie took Rainbow Dash aside. “I think I’ve figured something out that might help,” she said, grinning. “Just stand right there, and don’t move.”

Rainbow Dash chirped curiously, as Pinkie Pie started to prepare one of her bombs.

“Trust me!” she said, bouncing it between her hooves, then gripped it in her teeth and poured the contents over the polymorphed griffon. There was a slight glow, and a tingling feeling, as if the songbird had an additional pair of legs that had fallen asleep – but then it faded, and she was still a tiny bird. “Rats,” Pinkie Pie said. “Let me try that again.”

“What are you doing?” Twilight asked, as Pinkie poured another vial over Rainbow Dash. Her question was answered immediately, as Rainbow suddenly popped back to full size, once more a griffon.

“Anti-magic bombs,” Pinkie Pie said. “They dispel magic. And without lighting the target on fire! Normally that’s a drawback, but if it’s a friend who needs it --”

“Aaaaaaahhhh!” Rainbow Dash said, as her hindlegs collapsed under her. She curled up, squeezing and rubbing them with her taloned forelegs. “Ow  ow ow ow ow.”

“You okay?” Twilight asked.

“Cramps,” Rainbow Dash whimpered. “I haven’t moved these legs in like a week.”

“Huh,” Applejack said. “Does this mean you’re gonna start dyin’ again?”

“Hey, I haven’t died even once!” Rainbow said. “But yeah, it was kind of awesome being so tiny. Nothing could hit me! I don’t suppose you have a potion that’ll turn me back?”

“Hmm,” Pinkie Pie said, taking out her spellbook and flipping to an empty page. “I might be able to mix up something to make you a little smaller, but not as small as that. One day, though – I’ll turn everypony into songbirds! Heeheeheeheehee!”

The party waited around for something to happen, late into the night. Pinkie Pie spent the time turning the changeling glands into tanglefoot bags, but the rest had little to occupy them.

Sometime after midnight, Rarity’s body finally stirred, the zebra’s head lifting under the tatters of its robe. It let out an angry hiss, and lunged at the bars.

“Think!” Fluttershy shouted, glaring at her ghoul friend while wielding the threnodic rod.

Rarity blinked, and comprehension seemed to dawn once more in her eyes. “So hungry…” she growled, eyeing Fluttershy with drool dripping from her fanged jaw.

Twilight levitated the butchered pieces of kobold through the bars, tossing them to the ghoul one by one until they were all gone.

“That’s all you have?” Rarity asked, licking the last of the putrid juices from her hooves.

“Unless you want to eat changeling heads,” Rainbow Dash said. She’d spent the last hour bouncing one of them off the wall and catching it again. At some point it had animated, gaining the ability to hover, and occasionally tried to bite her as she swatted at it, but whatever sort of undead a hovering severed changeling head was didn’t seem to be much of a threat. The rest of them were safely locked in one of the other cells, where they bobbed around like some sort of skull swarm.

“No… no,” Rarity said. “I think they’ll be more useful as they are. It’s been too long since I had an undead minion. We can keep them in Xologrim’s basket.”

In the morning the sergeant gave Rarity a thorough inspection, and wasn’t fooled at all by her attempts to hide her undead state. Seeing that she was lucid, he grudgingly allowed her to go unburied. “What’s in the basket?” he asked.

“A few friends of mine,” Rarity replied, opening it to unleash the swarm, although she kept it from attacking anyone. “If you have any more skulls to donate to my collection, it could get significantly more powerful.”

“They’ve got a whole graveyard,” Pinkie Pie said. “All you’d have to do is dig them up!”

“You are not unearthing the bodies of our fallen to add to your collection, necromancer!” the orc snarled, putting a hand on his axe.

“We’ve lost enough time as it is,” Twilight said. “We don’t need to spend all day fighting undead.”

Rarity sighed. “Fine, fine. I’m sure I’ll come across plenty of skulls in our further adventures.”

The next few days of travel seemed like they were designed to make a liar of her. The pass was as safe and quiet as it was supposed to be, with no sign of monsters, or changelings, or kobolds, or even other travelers. On the third day they reached the second of the three orcish fortresses guarding the pass, only to find it completely deserted, and stripped of everything useful. A poster plastered across the main gate declared that the garrison had been reassigned in its entirety, and directed travelers to move on to one of the other fortresses if they needed assistance.

The poster had been placed across the gate as a seal, but since it had been posted the gates had been opened, leaving it fluttering in the quiet breeze, the wax affixing it to the gate broken in half. A quick inspection revealed that the intruders were small, with clawed feet – possibly kobolds. The tracks were days or weeks old, so there was little else that Pinkie and Fluttershy could discern from them.

The central fortress was located at the top of the pass, and by flying a few dozen feet in the air, most of the fey could get their first view of Rally, far in the distance. When it had been founded, hundreds of years ago, it had been nothing more than the rallying point for the hundreds of formerly independent orcish tribes that wandered the wastes past the mountains – a collection of tents and wagons, with no permanent structures.

Now, the city was massive – as large as Bright Valley, meaning a population in the hundreds of thousands, at least. Most of it was a tangled warren of shoddy buildings built in no particular pattern, filling every inch of space inside the high stone walls. Here and there, seemingly at random, a large tower, ziggurat, or blocky keep rose from the chaos. Unlike Bright Valley, there was no form of zoning or planning involved in the city’s layout, with one exception: in the center was the Military District, off limits to everyone except for the orcish military, and even then only if they were under direct orders to enter. It was surrounded by its own wall, even higher than the one around the outskirts of the city, and even under the best conditions it would have been difficult to get a good look at what was inside, even from the elevated position inside the pass.

At that moment, it was impossible, because the entire military district seemed to be on fire. There was no visible glow or anything, but a thick column of smoke rose from it, obscuring it completely and dissipating only slowly as it rose into the sky, where it formed into the hazy grey clouds that they’d been seeing and thinking nothing of for days now.

“Wow,” Rainbow Dash said. “They must be burning a lot of coal.”

“This probably isn’t the only mine feeding Rally’s industry,” Twilight said, appraising the load they were escorting. It was a great deal of coal, but also represented several months of the mine’s output. It seemed unlikely that it could be responsible for the sheer amount of pollution visible from the pass. “What could they possibly be making that would put out that much smoke?”

“Maybe they’re building an army of iron golems?” Pinkie Pie suggested. “That’s what I’d make.”

“Yeah, that would be great,” Rainbow said. “Do you think they’d let us have one?”

“No,” Twilight replied. “Iron golems are expensive.”

“Expensive, but totally worth it,” Pinkie Pie said. “When they’re finished, all those silly kobolds and goblins and zebras and diamond gnolls are going to be like ‘Oh please please don’t hurt us mister Emperor! We’ll be good! Honest!’”

“I suppose we’ll find out more once we arrive,” Twilight said. “I doubt Wind Seed would have called an army of iron golems ‘insanity’, though. It’s actually a quite sensible use of resources.”

“She’s a crazy sun-addled bandit who’s been talking to too many druids,” Rarity said. “She probably thinks golems are ‘unnatural abominations’.”

The caravan camped for the night at the fortress – even deserted, it was still a good defensive structure – and moved on in the morning. After three more uneventful days, they were approaching the final fortress, when they spotted something unusual off to the side of the pass. A wide, paved trail led up to a cave in the side of the mountain, which had been completely collapsed and blocked off by rubble. The gem ponies in the caravan were able to tell the adventurers that on their last trip, it had been open.

“That’s the entrance to the kobold caves,” Applejack said, as the party took a short break to investigate the collapse. “It’s how their ambassadors and the like get out from the underdark to talk to everypony.”

“It looks like it was collapsed deliberately,” Twilight said. “And recently.”

“And explosively,” Pinkie Pie added. “You can still smell the gunpowder. I mean, if you stick your hoof in the gunpowder residue and then sniff really deep.”

“So what?” Rainbow Dash asked. “We already knew the kobolds were causing trouble. The orcs decided they were sick of those gravel-brained cave-lizards and dropped a bunch of rocks on their heads.”

“They collapsed the entrance, not the entire underdark! Do you really think this was the only way out?” Twilight said.

“It’s a big, convenient exit right next to one of their forts,” Rainbow Dash said. “How far are we from the fort, anyway?”

Applejack flew up and peeked over the next ridge. “Um… about 300 feet?”

Twilight blinked. “Okay, I can see how that would be too close for comfort.”

Like the other fortresses in the pass, the third fortress was understaffed, with no more than twenty orcs in the garrison, although the commander was a full Colonel, and in charge of security for the entire pass. He explained that as a temporary measure, most of his troops had been called back to Rally – and that judging from the other forces he’d seen coming through the pass, it had been happening everywhere in the lands to the east. Not just orcs – pegasus, griffon, unicorn, and earth pony troops had also come through.

“Any zebras?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“No, no zebras,” he replied. “They were part of the Horde, so they’ve got their own command structure. Not like most of you lot, who had to be crushed underfoot until you saw what was best for you.”

“What about goblins?” Pinkie asked.

“The goblins live to the north,” Twilight answered her. “They’re from this side of the mountains, and also autonomous. The ones we saw at Black River probably came through the Nightmare Pass, north of Dream Castle.”

“You’ve seen goblin activity on the far side of the pass?” the colonel asked, looking surprised.

“Nothing official…” Twilight said. “But yes.”

The colonel nodded. “I’d like to hear anything you have to say about conditions out east. Since the recall, we haven’t gotten much word. Why don’t you all join me for dinner, and we can compare notes?”

“Sure, I don’t see why that wouldn’t work,” Twilight said.

“Yeah, I’m getting sick of trail rations,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Already?” Pinkie Pie asked. “You were eating birdseed, like, a week ago.”

“And now I’m eating trail rations,” Rainbow replied. “And they suck.”

As it turned out, joining the Colonel for dinner meant eating in the large mess hall, with most of the troops – save for a few who were needed to keep a lookout. He explained that this was the officer’s mess, but since they’d taken most of his orcs but not his cook or his supplies, they’d all been eating together whenever they could.

The spread was simple, but hearty – a large roast goat, some heavily spiced potatoes, along with steamed cabbage and a heavy drink made out of yogurt. Most of the fey weren’t carnivores, but what they could eat was delicious –

“Stooooop!” Fluttershy said, leaping over to knock a forkful of meat out of Rainbow Dash’s claw. “Everyone, stop eating!” She tried to lift the table and flip it over, but was far too weak.

“Fluttershy?” Twilight asked, a forkful of cabbage halfway to her mouth.

“It’s poisoned!” she said. “It’s all poisoned!”

The Colonel looked insulted, but before he could reprimand her, several of the orcs, the ones who hadn’t paid attention to Fluttershy’s initial outburst and had eaten some of the food, started to choke and thrash and foam at the mouth.

“Guards!” he shouted, pointing at the party. “Arrest them!”

“What?” Twilight said. “That’s insane! Fluttershy is the one who warned you about the poison!”

“You’re the only newcomers we’ve had in days,” the Colonel said. “Do you think it’s a coincidence that poison suddenly shows up in our food the same day that an alchemist arrives? Everyone knows they’re poisoners.”

“Noooo, I’m more into arson,” Pinkie Pie said, hovering up into the air and looking nervous, as the orcish guards started to draw their weapons.

“Now look here,” Applejack said. “Let’s not do anything hasty. We know the kobolds are causing trouble, and they like poison as much as ten alchemists. They probably staged this to target us –“

“It’s no good,” Fluttershy said, as she watched the orcs close in. “They’re charmed. All except for him.” She pointed to the Colonel.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to imply, but you can explain yourself from the inside of a cell,” the orcish Colonel replied. “Guards, take them into custody. If they resist, kill them.”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said. “That’s not going to happen.”

There was a flash of light and smoke, as Pinkie Pie tossed a stink-bomb at the middle of the table, engulfing the orcs seated closest to the party. “We can get out the top!” she said, nodding towards the stairwell at the back of the room, as she hovered up towards the ceiling, out of reach of the orcs’ axes.

Twilight drew her hammer, and trotted around the edge of the table to attack the Colonel, who blocked her blow. “If we take him down, will that break the charm?” she asked. “Because that’s a lot of orcs.”

“Nope,” Pinkie Pie said.

“Colonel, we can’t just arrest an adventurer!” said one of the orcs who’d been poisoned.

“But if he attacks them, like with poison, that’ll break the charm. So those orcs might be on our side,” the pink pegasus added.

Several of the other orcs stood back from the table, looking confused and wary, as their companions robotically drew their weapons and then flew into a rage.

Applejack tumbled out of her seat and around behind the Colonel, stabbing him in the back and opening a long, bleeding gash, as Rainbow Dash leapt across the table, shouting “Stunning fist!” as she punched him right in the face, breaking his jaw.

Meanwhile, two of the charmed orcs charged at Macintosh, their axes rebounding from his armor with a loud ‘clang’, while another two hacked away at Rarity with rather more success, leaving her nearly destroyed – but still animate, for the moment. Two more of them choked on the fumes from Pinkie’s bomb, while the last two moved to guard the door, since they couldn’t get to the adventurers to attack without climbing onto the table, which was on fire.

The boss tried to give further commands, but the blow to the face had, in fact, left him stunned, so he stood there like an idiot with his mouth open, until the loss of blood from Applejack’s strike finished him off, and he collapsed face-first onto the table.

And turned back into a changeling.

Fluttershy cast a small negative energy spell on Rarity to heal her as much as she could manage, just before the heavily wounded wizard ducked under the table and vanished from sight – and in her place, a swarm of skulls engulfed her attackers, biting them and firing force bolts at other orcs nearby.

Not wanting to destroy the swarm, Pinkie Pie threw another bomb at the orcs attacking Macintosh, engulfing them in flames and knocking one prone with a grease patch. “Or we can fight them right here in the dining room,” she said. “I guess that works too.”

Twilight jumped up on the table and slammed her hammer into the orc who had kept his feet, crushing the bones of his shoulder, although he was too angry to notice. “Any orc who isn’t charmed – your leader was replaced by the enemy! Help us fight off his charmed minions!”

With a roar, the remaining orcs flew into a rage and attacked, two squaring off with the door guards while the other two charged the orcs on either side of the table, one hacking at an orc engulfed in the swarm while the other slammed his axe repeatedly into the orc who’d slipped in the grease. The orcs fought with no concept of defending themselves, and every axe strike struck true, slicing flesh and drawing blood, as the enraged humanoids hacked away at each other.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash charged at the orcs who’d been menacing Rarity – while her invisibility might have let her escape, it was better to have friends covering her. Applejack cut a long gash in one orc’s belly, but as the loops of his intestines started to ooze from him, he gave no sign of noticing the injury, and it certainly didn’t slow him down. His axe rose and fell, opening huge gashes in the purrsian’s hide, while his friend swatted randomly at the skulls, to no effect.

“Stop hurting my friends!” Fluttershy said, meeting the gaze of the orc fighting Applejack – and as if her eyes had shot daggers, he reeled back and collapsed, unconscious.

On the other side of the table, the orc who’d fallen tried to stand up, flailing about in the grease and giving Macintosh an opportunity to skewer him – and managed to lift his head just high enough to take the lance in the back of his neck, his entire face coming detached as it pierced his brain and cracked open the front half of his skull. The other orc slammed his axe twice into the giant pony’s side, however, the firm blows cutting clear through the armor and opening grievous wounds.

There was the sound of Rarity’s voice incanting the words of a spell from the back of the room, and a wave of colorless energy swept over the party, speeding their movement. Twilight’s hammer rose and fell rapidly on the orc who’d cut at Macintosh, turning both of his shoulders into useless lumps of shattered bone and meat, before caving in his chest and sending him plummeting to the ground, quite dead.

Pinkie Pie used her extra speed to swoop across the room and drop a flaming grease patch on the charmed orcs guarding the door, burning them and dropping them to the ground, and their less charmed friends easily chopped them to pieces as they tried to stand back up and get back into the fight.

Applejack, limping and badly hurt, tried to hide under the table and toss her dagger at the last orc still fighting in the middle of the swarm, busy trading blows with one of his fellow orcs, but he kept his eye on her and managed to take it in a less vital part of his anatomy, although it still drew blood. Rainbow Dash flew up over his head and dropped down, shouting “Stunning F—whaaa?” Lightning flashed around her claw as it slammed into his head, the electricity crackling over him and scorching his skin.

“Hey, cool. That never worked before,” she said, then threw herself to the side to dodge the orc’s counterattack, his axe swinging wide as he roared in agony.

“I said stop fighting!” Fluttershy said, and although this time the rays of force from her admoninshing gaze slammed into the back of his head, he still collapsed.

Macintosh charged the last of the still-charmed orcs, and his lance impaled the hapless soldier, pinning him to the ground while his former comrade finished him off.

The party looked around at the carnage – the feast table on fire, the changeling in badly-fitting orcish armor slumped at the head of it, red orcish blood and the bodies of soldiers scattered all around. “This is going to look really bad, isn’t it,” Twilight said. “The rest of the garrison is probably charmed too.”

“We will stand with you,” one of the orcs who’d fought on their side said. They’d all been injured, but none of them badly, and the small amount of poison they’d ingested hadn’t been enough to burn through their orcish constitution.

Fluttershy tried to see if she could save any of the orcs who they’d downed, but orcs tended to fight on well past the point where other races would fall to the ground, dying – which meant that all of them were dead, except for one of the ones she’d hit with her spell, who was rapidly bleeding to death from Applejack’s attempt to gut him. She touched him with a hoof and gave him a small healing spell, which brought him just barely conscious.

That was conscious enough for him to swing at her with his axe, opening a large gash in her side before Pinkie Pie’s bomb splashed over him – without any fire, this time. He blinked, and dropped his axe, holding his barely-patched together gut. “I yield,” he said, holding up his hand. “Kill me if you must, my life is forfeit for this shame!”

“Nah, it’s okay,” Pinkie Pie said. “You were just charmed. Could happen to anybody with a really, really weak will.”

Twilight raised her hoof to her forehead.

Pinkie Pie nodded. “Like Twilight there – she would totally have been charmed, just like you were.”

As it turned out, the rest of the garrison was not charmed – the changeling spy must have had the ability to cast something resembling the Charm Person spell at will, but not to maintain it any longer than the few minutes that it normally lasted, so only the orcs actually in his presence at any given time were under his spell. They were not happy to see so many of their friends dead, but they were orcs, and soldiers, and the fallen had died in battle, so they were not about to grieve, either. They did send a message to Rally by signal mirror, telling them what had happened.

The cook, who had poisoned the meal, was nowhere to be found. A search of the keep revealed the true cook’s body, along with that of the Colonel, packed into a crate in an unused basement store room. Both had animated – or been animated – as mindless zombies, who neither attacked nor acknowledged the orcish soldiers who found them during the search.

On the lighter side, the orcs confirmed that since the party had defeated the fake colonel in fair combat, and avenged their true leader, they were allowed to claim his equipment – a powerful magical glaive that could freeze its targets, a magical version of the standard orcish breastplates which Twilight could adjust to fit one of the party, if any of the fey were up to wearing medium armor, and another cloak of resistance.

“None of us use medium armor, so that’s just something to sell, I guess,” Twilight said, examining the breastplate. She turned her head to the other side and frowned at the glaive. “The real question is if I can modify this into a lucerne hammer without destroying its magic.”

“I’m sorry, dear,” Rarity said. “Magical weapons don’t work that way.”

“The real question, is who closed that tunnel just over the ridge,” Applejack said. “Was it you folks?”

“Yes,” one of the orcs answered. “The Colonel ordered it sealed. He said there were rumors of trouble with the kobolds, although we hadn’t seen anything.”

“Was this before or after he was replaced with a bug?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“It was recent. Three days.”

“Judging by the state of the zombies, that would be ‘after’,” Rarity said. “Soon after.”

“That’s about what I figured,” Applejack said. “The kobolds wanted that tunnel closed. I reckon they’ve got something in there that they don’t want anyone stumbling across.”

“Of course they do,” Twilight groaned, glancing towards the smoke column rising from Rally. “Do you think we could come back and investigate it after we finish escorting the caravan? We’re only about a day’s travel from the city at this point, and we could really use some better equipment.”

The party waited around for a few seconds, but none of the orcs or caravan ponies chimed in with a reason why they should invade the kobold cave immediately.

Twilight sighed with relief. “Right, then it’s settled. Let’s find some non-poisoned food, and set out for the city in the morning.”

> City of Smoke
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The party of adventurers ran into no further trouble escorting the caravan to Rally. The coal was taken off their hooves at the Black River Company’s headquarters, and while they expected to have to argue for their payment, it was handed over without question, including the extra bounties for the bandits they’d fought during the escort mission. They did have to give back the extinguisher rods before they could get paid, of course.

After that, they got directions to the Pathfinder Guild in order to collect on the other mission, for chasing away the drakes. The Guild turned out to be one of the blocky keeps, which made it easy for them to keep heading in the right direction most of the way there. While they were still three blocks from their destination, however, a drift of smoke seemed to seep out of the alleyways and shroud the streets in gloom – and as they watched, everyone scurried into the nearest building or other shelter.

“Come on!” hissed a voice from a building with an ambiguous sign – it might have been a café, or possibly a store selling musical instruments. “You need to get inside!”

“Well, I don’t think muggers would have been able to stage all this, so we might as well do what they say,” Twilight said. The others followed her in.

The store (which turned out to sell both food and musical instruments) was packed with dozens of random people off the street – mostly orcs, but maybe one in three was some other race, and the races of fey were not uncommon. Some of them looked nervous, but most of them just looked bored.

“So, what’s going on out there?” Rainbow Dash asked, trying to peek through one of the store’s windows. It had been boarded over for years, however, and she didn’t have much luck.

“Some idiot opened another portal,” said a grey and pink pegasus hovering near the ceiling to give herself a bit more breathing room. “If you stayed out there, you’d be up to your neck in mephits.”

“We can handle mephits,” Twilight replied. “Is there a bounty?”

“I don’t know. Maybe? The army’ll handle it though, we just have to wait until they give the all-clear.”

“I bet that’ll come quicker if we’re out there helping,” Rainbow Dash said. “Come on, who’s with me?”

“Rainbow, the army doesn’t usually like being ‘helped’ by civilians,” Twilight replied.

“Since when are we ‘civilians’?” Rainbow asked.

Twilight shook her head. “They’ve been training together as a unit, and have specific tactics and formations that they’ll be using. We’d just be in the way. Besides, you saw how the orcish soldiers fought at the fort – they’re not going to be stopped by a few lousy mephits.”

After an interminable wait – it must have been ten or fifteen minutes – a booming voice rang through the walls. “All extradimensional invaders have been purged from this sector. Citizens may go about their business. Praise the Emperor.”

“What, is he a god now?” Applejack asked, as they were pushed back out onto the street by the impatient crowd behind them. There was no sign of fighting, or destruction – perhaps it had happened in another part of the ‘sector’.

“Maybe he’s trying to become a god,” Pinkie Pie suggested. “I heard that if you get enough ponies to worship you, POOF!” She gestured with her hooves and spun around in midair.

“I think you also have to die,” Rarity replied. “Preferably in full view of your worshippers. I suppose if one was going to stage their own public death, this would be a good time to do it. The chances of coming back in some form are rather high.”

“I’m pretty sure the Emperor could afford a Raise Dead spell,” Twilight said. “It’s probably just some weird turn of phrase his underlings decided they liked.”

It wasn’t clear why a guild of adventurers – even one that had been absorbed as part of the Empire’s government – would need such a large building, but the Pathfinder Guild in Rally was huge. It occupied a full city block, and had four stories above ground, and who knew how many below. For all that, the windows were more like arrow slits, and the heavily reinforced front door led into a small lobby and waiting room. A bored-looking orcish clerk sat behind the counter, writing on something that was kept out of sight of anyone entering.

Twilight approached the desk. “Hello there. We’d like to –“

“Please take a number,” the clerk said, pointing to a small stack of thick paper cards in a bin near the side of the desk.

Twilight looked around. “But there’s no one else here.” The clerk continued to stare at her impassively, so she took one – it had the number ten on it – waved it around a little, and then went to sit with the rest of the party.

The clerk scribbled away at the form she’d been working on for another few minutes, before looking up. “Number seven?”

Twilight looked at the card again, then back at the clerk.

“Number seven?” the clerk repeated. “Last call for number seven.” When no one responded, she flipped over something on her side of the counter. “Number sixteen?”

“Oh come on!” Rainbow Dash said, leaping to her feet just as a shadowy figure seemed to materialize in front of the desk, handing over a small card. The griffon blinked, then sat back down. “What?”

The party couldn’t make out what the shadowy figure discussed with the clerk, or determine any logic to the order that the next dozen numbers were called in after its business was finished. Perhaps one number in three had someone respond – and it was pretty clear that not all of them were teleporting in under their own power. Eventually, their number was called.

“We’re here to collect a bounty,” Twilight said, returning to the counter. “We handled the drake job, in the pass.”

The clerk nodded, and turned to search through a filing cabinet, until she found a folder, which she flipped through for a few seconds before finding what seemed to be the relevant sheet. She lit a small candle, and set it on the counter next to her. “So, you killed the drakes that were harassing travelers?”

Twilight felt a flicker of something poking at her mind, but managed to shake it off. “Um… yes?”

The clerk frowned as the candle flickered. “Please don’t resist the candle, ma’am. Now, repeat again, did you kill the drakes that were harassing travelers in the eastern pass?”

Twilight took a deep breath, and let the candle’s magic affect her. “Not exactly,” she said, finding it impossible to lie, even for the sake of simplifying matters. “The drakes were an illusion created by a changeling hive that was hired by a kobold alchemist to harass travelers in the pass. We destroyed their camp and killed everyone there, which should resolve the situation.”

The clerk frowned, and ticked off a few things on the sheet in front of her, then looked it up and down a few times. “Okay. That qualifies.” She opened a drawer and took out another form, filling it in and handing it to Twilight. “Take this to the sales department, they’ll handle your payment. If you have any equipment recovered on your mission, you can turn it in there for standard guild rates.”

“Um…” Twilight said. “Where is –“

The clerk pointed to a door on the right side of the waiting room. “Just follow the signs, ma’am.”

The sales department turned out to be a similar small, empty room, although when they arrived a sales-orc was already waiting to greet them. He handed over a bag of coins in return for the paper from the front desk, and helped them sort through the treasure they’d recovered from the bandits and the changelings.

“We pay a set price for magical and masterwork items, as good as you’ll find anywhere else, and full value for gems, artwork, and coin,” said the orc in an expensive suit.

“Is there anyone who doesn’t give full value for coin?” Applejack asked, perking an ear.


“You’ve obviously never tried to deal with goblins,” the sales-orc said with a smile. “We also sell a wide variety of magical items. We charge list price as long as we have them in stock or can get them through the blink dog couriers. Large exotic items may incur an additional charge. We also have enchanters on hand to upgrade any items that have sentimental value, and we offer full value trade-ins for many items, if you want to upgrade your equipment and get back on the job as quickly as possible.”

“So if I wanted to trade in this freezing glaive for a freezing lucerne hammer –“ Twilight asked.

“Ah, no. Exotic polearms aren’t on the trade-in list.”

“It’s not exotic,” Twilight said with a frown. “It’s martial.”

The orc smiled and spread his hands apologetically. “The only pole-arms on the standard list are lances  and longspears. Everything else is classified as exotic. We do still pay the standard sell-back rate for oddball items, of course, and if you want to pay to upgrade one of them, it’s not any harder for our enchanters.

“And as always,” he said. “If you think you can get a better deal elsewhere, Rally does have other merchants. I assure you that our prices are competitive for all legal items. After all, we’re not here to make money – we’re here to make you --” he pointed at the party “—the most effective Adventurers you can be, within the limits of your budget.”

“Right,” Twilight said. “Why don’t we sell everything we’re not using, split up the cash, and then meet back at the city gate in… three days?” She looked at the orc questioningly. “To upgrade the magic on my hammer?”

He examined it closely, then handed it back and nodded. “We do swift enchanting for no additional charge.”

“You mean split up?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Is that really a good idea?”

“I’m not saying that we need to all go our separate ways, but Rarity and Pinkie Pie are probably going to be spending all their time in a library somewhere, scribbling in their spellbooks,” Twilight said. “I don’t think the rest of us are going to want to wait around and watch. This is the capitol city of the Empire, it should be reasonably safe.”

“We can at least all stay at the same inn, and meet for dinner,” Rarity said.

“There’s an unofficial inn for Guild members staying in town, if you’re interested,” the sales-orc said. “It’s just down the block. I can give you directions. It’s got an up-to-date posting list, if you’re looking for more work.”

Rarity smiled. “That would be lovely.”

After selling the Colonel’s magic items, and the equipment taken from the bandits, and combining it with the payout from their recent missions, the party ended up with about ten thousand gold pieces to spend, each, with a bit left over to cover a room at an inn, meals, and other incidental expenses. Twilight spent all of her share before even leaving the room. Rainbow Dash and Applejack spent some time checking out the other merchants in town, to see if the sales-orc’s claims were on the mark, but eventually ended up back at the guild to spend their money as well.

Rarity told the others that she was interested in certain… exotic materials, and vanished off on her own for several days, only reappearing at the inn, at night, to talk to the others and reassure them that she was still alive, and in fact making wonderful progress on her project.

Twilight, Fluttershy, and Macintosh, on a trip around town to see if they could find any sort of entertainment, ended up caught in another smoke incursion, and weren’t able to find anywhere indoors to hide. They managed to stay out of the way of the actual fighting, but were able to watch the battle between the orcish troops and the invaders from the plane of smoke. The mephits, as it turned out, were not the only form of elemental creature coming through the portals – there were also what looked like nagas whose snake tail was made out of dense smoke, who fought the orcs hand-to-hand much like Rainbow Dash. As Twilight had predicted, the Empire troops – a force of earth pony infantry, with a few clerics and wizards in support, in this case – made short work of the enemies, although several of their number were injured in the process.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash tried to gain access to the Military District, but were turned back at the gate by the guards, who refused to believe Applejack’s line about being summoned by the general without any sort of supporting paperwork, and were thwarted from flying over the wall by fierce enchanted winds.

On the last night, after Twilight had finally retrieved her now slightly-more-magical hammer, the party checked the job board to see if there was any paying work that might be more urgent than investigating the kobold lair. The only thing that stood out was an offer to be ‘on call’ to fight off minor planar incursions in the capitol. The wages being offered were almost insultingly low, however.

“Maybe we should have checked the board before we spent three days bumming around town,” Applejack said, frowning at the listing.

“There’s only one reason I can think of that anypony would take that offer,” Rarity said. “If we assisted the military with these… ‘planar incursions’, we might be in a better position to find out just why the capitol is suffering from planar incursions at all. We’ve seen these portal-opening books before, back in Crossroads, but all that came through were a small number of mephits. Nothing like what we’re seeing here.”

“And if it has anything to do with what’s going on in the military district, we might be able to take a closer look at it, like Wind Seed suggested,” Twilight said. “Still… I’m more worried about the kobolds. The military seems to have the situation in Rally under control. I’m worried that the situation outside of the capitol is getting less and less under control with every passing day.”

Applejack shrugged, and returned to the table. “I don’t care much what we get up to next. It may not be a paying job, but there’s always a profit in a good ol’ fashioned dungeon crawl.”

In the morning, Rarity ran off to put the finishing touches on her ‘project’, and the others waited for her outside the gate. After a short time, they saw her emerge, accompanied by four large two-pony wagons, their contents covered by tarps. With the help of her porters, she removed the cover from the first wagon, revealing a large skeleton of some sort of wingless dragon. She placed two large onyx gems in its eyes, then unfurled a scroll and read the words inscribed upon it, in the spidery language of magic. Purple slime oozed out of nowhere to coat the bones, and the gems in the now-animated skeleton’s eyes vanished, replaced by faint blue lights. The skeletal dragon stood up in the wagon, then bowed its head towards the necromancer, in submission.

“The revenge of Sparky?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Oh, these are much better than Sparky,” Rarity replied, with a fangy grin. “For one thing, they fly without wings, meaning their skeletal form doesn’t leave them grounded.” She turned to the skeleton, and motioned for it to rise, and it shot up into the air with surprising speed. “For another… I have four of them. Uncover the next, will you dearies?”

As the porters uncovered the next wagon, Twilight frowned at the hovering skeleton that had already been animated. “What sort of creature are they? I’ve never seen a dragon like this.”

“Well, of course you haven’t,” Rarity explained, as she placed the next set of gems. “They’re native to the Jade Empire, on the far side of the world. When I heard that there was a relatively intact specimen available here, I knew that I had to have it! Imagine my surprise when the procurer told me he could get his hooves on another three.”

“How much did you end up spending on this?” Twilight asked.

“Well…” Rarity said, looking a little embarrassed. “Not more than ten thousand gold, I can assure you that much, and most of that was for the scrolls.” She paused. “Well, half of it was for the scrolls.”

“She spent almost everything,” Pinkie Pie stage-whispered. “I had to chip in to help her pay for the ink to copy the spells I bought for us.”

“Sugarcube…” Applejack said. “You know you’re just going to lose ‘em in a day or two at the most, just like every other undead you’ve ever had. What in Kara’s name made you think that spending all your money on a bunch of hyped up dragon bones was a good idea?”

“I will not lose these,” Rarity hissed, turning to glare at the rest of the party. “And if I do… then any griffon or unicorn that is in any way responsible had better hope that they can hide from my vengeance, because it will be swift and terrible!” She stomped at the ground.

“And if they go crazy, and try to eat us?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Then I suggest you let them,” Rarity replied. “Now, let me get back to work. I’m sure we’d all like to get on the road as soon as possible.”

> A Good Old-fashioned Dungeon
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Without the caravan slowing them down, it only took about six hours to return to the fortress in the pass. The sun was low in the sky, and glowed a dirty red, filtered through the smoke from Rally, but nopony was too tired to continue on.

As they approached the fort, they saw what was left of the garrison manning the nearest wall and the anti-air ballista on the tower. They seemed to recognize the party, however, because they relaxed their grip on their weapons and opened the gate as they approached.

“It’s all been quiet,” said the acting commander of the fort. “No movement from the kobolds and no sign of changelings. We’ve been going everywhere in pairs. The cook’s still out there, and we don’t want him replacing any of us.”

“Probably ran off with its tail between its legs once it realized the jig was up,” Applejack said. “No sense trying to sneak into the same place you just lit a fire under, when there’s a whole Empire out there with its mind elsewhere.”

“I think this fortress is a little too important for them to just ignore,” the commander replied. “From what you said last time, you’re here to go burn out the nearby kobold nest?”

“Or whatever we find in there,” Pinkie Pie said, bobbing happily in the air. “Something’s going to burn!”

He nodded. “Do you need us to help clear out the rubble? It’ll take us a few hours – using more bombs would just make the situation worse.”

Rarity lifted her head to address her skeletons. “Crackle, Garble, Opal, Sparky II – go clear the cave for me, will you dearies?” The dragons swooped off, leaving a rush of wind in their wake that tossed the ponies’ manes and kicked up a small cloud of dust.

“You named them?” Rainbow Dash asked, giving her a look.

Rarity huffed. “Just because they’re mindless creatures animated by dark energy to do my every bidding, doesn’t mean that they don’t deserve common courtesy, like addressing them by name.” She headed for the far gate, that led to the pass and to the collapsed tunnel. “It does mean that they require supervision, however. The rest of you can wait here, if you don’t feel up to the hike.”

Applejack laughed. “Oh don’t start that, daisy-chain. We’re with ya.”

Even with the ability to fly, it was difficult for all four of the skeletal dragons to help clear out the passage. Their size made it possible for them to lift boulders that smaller creatures would have had to shift with levers, but at the same time it made them often get in each others’ way. After the second traffic jam, where all four skeletons deadlocked waiting for the others to move, Rarity ordered Opal and Sparky II to stand guard, while Crackle and Garble did the digging.

It went surprisingly quickly, for all that – in less than ten minutes, the passageway was clear: a ten foot by ten foot passageway, rough hewn and irregular, and lit only by the light that shone in from the entrance.

“We’re not going to be able to have a stealthy scout, with the light that dim,” Twilight said. “Skeletons first, since they can’t die?”

Rarity frowned, stroking the slime-coated ribcage of one of her minions fondly. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. They also can’t report back what they see. Unless… idea!” she said brightly, turning to smile widely at Applejack.

“I’m not gonna like this, am I,” the purrsian said, ears flat against her skull.

“There’s nothing to worry about, darling,” Rarity said. “I can clean you off with Prestidigitation easily enough. Just be a dear, and climb into Sparky II’s ribcage. We’ll put light cantrips onto his eyes, but you can stay hidden inside his bones.”

“Ugh,” Applejack said, wincing. “Fine…”

Applejack couldn’t really hide very well inside the skeleton, since the bones didn’t provide enough concealment and there was little room to move. She could ride there without trouble, at least, climbing in through what would have been the belly. Rarity fussed and fiddled with her, trying to add a touch of camouflage, but the best they could do was make her frizz-furred bulk look like a shapeless lumpy part of the skeleton. It would have to do.

After about fifty feet of winding back and forth, the passageway widened into a large cavern, about a hundred feet from end to end. The floor sloped down quickly into a large pool of water that took up most of the center of the cave, leaving only a narrow, slick margin around the outside to walk on.

On the far side of the pool, a pair of narrow passages led further into the underdark.

Applejack gave the room a careful search, aiming Sparky II’s head like a giant spotlight, but didn’t see any sign of movement, except from indistinct lumpy shapes here and there in the water – possibly cave fish. “It looks clear,” she said to Twilight and Dash, who were waiting a ways back as the second rank. “Slippery, though, and I can’t tell how deep the water is. Those of ya without wings of your own might want to hitch a ride on a dragon.”

“Do we have to?” Twilight said, with distaste.

Applejack tried to judge the odds of a unicorn in full plate making it all the way around the pool without slipping. “That depends. How well can you swim?”

“Fairly well, actually,” Twilight said. “At least, in theory. I’ve been reading up on principles of armored buoyancy.”

“Twilight,” Rainbow Dash said. “Don’t be stupid.”

The purple unicorn fumed. “Fine,” she said at last, then stomped to the back of the party, where the other three skeletons were pulling rear-guard duty. “Opal can carry me.”

While Sparky II circled the pool on patrol, Applejack squirmed out of his ribcage and fluttered to the passage on the left, landing lightly on the slippery slope near it, and examining it carefully for traps. Unfortunately, it was the slippery slope itself that was trapped – rather than being merely slick, it had been actively greased. Thanks to her quick reactions, and her wings, she managed to scramble into the tunnel instead of getting dunked, and found no sign of any traps in the corridor itself.

“Looks, uh, it looks clear,” she said, after making sure nothing was waiting for her down the hallway – it was quiet, empty except for a precession of closed doors to the left, until it ended in another collapse. “Caved in, though, but with a bunch of doors? The other way’s probably the way in deeper, but maybe we should check ‘em out?”

“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said, launching herself into the air to fly over the pool. “We need to get all the loot!”

Suddenly, the cavern was lit up by a crackle of electricity, as a pair of faintly glowing orbs appeared out of nowhere to bathe the griffon monk in lightning. She screamed, and swerved out of the way of another pair, that tried to give her the same treatment.

“Will-o-wisps!” Applejack shouted. “Hit them before they –“

The wisps zapped Rainbow Dash again, then vanished.

Applejack fumed. “Oh, for pony’s sake!”

Rainbow Dash took a swing at the spot where one of them had just been, but didn’t connect with anything. Her eyes went wide. “I’m not dying here!” she cried, taking evasive maneuvers as she fled back towards the party.

Applejack faded back into the dark corridor, going quiet as she tried to hide.

Rarity fired a sphere of glittering dust into the spot in midair where Rainbow Dash had been attacked, and four sparkling spheres appeared. “They’re immune to most magic,” she warned the others. “But gather around, and I can protect you from their attacks.”

Meanwhile, Sparky II had leapt into action, snapping at one of the will-o-wisps, only for it to dart nimbly to the side, avoiding his teeth. Twilight yelped as the skeleton which had taken her in its claws launched itself down the corridor, the rest of the party throwing themselves to the side to avoid being trampled. Each of the dragons squared off with one of the wisps, and these had more luck sinking their teeth into the bobbing balls of sparkles, although they seeped through the cracks between their teeth and reformed, only slightly the worse for wear.

Fluttershy flew up and cast a spell on Rainbow Dash. “There,” she said. “Now the big scary will-o-wisps can’t hurt you.”

“Shut up,” Rainbow Dash snapped as she wheeled in midair to face the battle again. “I’m not scared.”

Pinkie Pie flew up next to them, and tossed a bomb at the wisps. “Please hit please hit please hit,” she chanted, as it was  a rather long throw, but it sailed gracefully to impact on one of the creatures, which didn’t react until after it had exploded in flame and poison smoke.

Two of the wisps emerged from the cloud and darted for the right corridor, although they seemed unsteady and wobbly. The third, much less hesistantly, made a bee-line for the left corridor, adding its own illumination to the glitterdust, and revealed Applejack, who hadn’t found anything to hide behind other than the corner. Lightning crackled around the purrsian rogue, who fought back with dagger and claw the best she could without getting any sort of drop on her enemy. The wisp easily dodged all her attacks.

Twilight’s coughing came from inside the cloud. “Don’t let them get away! The last thing we need is for them to do hit and run attacks on us for the next few hours!”

“On it,” Rainbow Dash said, charging after the pair that were trying to flee. “Stunning Fist!” Her fist did more than stun her target – it obliterated it, glowing speckles bursting in all directions and showering slowly down around her, like a firework.

“Magic Missile!” Rarity cried, and glowing darts flew from her hoof to impale the other fleeing will-o-wisp, which whirled around in midair, out of control, until it too popped.

“Please hit please hit please hit,” Pinkie Pie chanted again, as she swooped across the room and tossed a bomb at the wisp harassing Applejack. The wisp dodged, easily. Applejack was caught completely off-guard, and showered in flames. “Eeee, sorry!”

Fluttershy was right behind her. “Stop!” she cried, glaring at it.

It bobbed in place, ceasing its attack, for the moment. It still deftly sidestepped Applejack’s attempts to hurt it.

“Exploding Fist!” Rainbow Dash cried, slamming her claw into the creature’s side, and scoring a solid hit. The creature didn’t explode, although it did look stunned.

“Right, you stupid dragon. This way!” Twilight shouted, as Opal finally emerged from the cloud – the other skeletons having ceased their attack as soon as their targets were out of sight. It did a pass by the stunned wisp, snapping at it with its teeth as Twilight, still suspended in its claws, swung her hammer. Neither managed to hit – even addled, the wisp was a slippery target.

But there were just too many targets for it to keep track of, especially in its current state, and Applejack finally managed to plant her dagger in it solidly, twisting her neck to tear out the creature’s guts. Like the others, it evaporated before the body could hit the water.

“Or you can just ignore me completely, and go fight without protection,” Rarity said huffily, from the far shore.

“Sorry, Rarity,” Pinkie Pie said. “I just kind of got carried away. We can gather up now?”

“No, no, the moment’s passed,” she said, lifting her muzzle. “The spell wouldn’t last that long, spread between so many targets, and who knows if we’ll find anything else in here that uses lightning.”

Fluttershy was able to heal Rainbow and Applejack’s wounds with one of the wands of Cure Light Wounds she’d bought, although it took almost a dozen charges – Rainbow in particular had been fairly close to death.

The rest of the party made their way across the pool to the left corridor – except for the dragons, which waited in air above the pool, and Macintosh, who waited in the entryway. They were too large to fit easily into the narrow corridor, so it made more sense for them to hang back until they knew which way to go to get to the next open area.

There were three small five foot wide doors in the corridor, spaced twenty feet apart. The third looked like it would be impossible to open unless it opened inwards, since it was blocked by the pile of rubble. The other two were barred securely – with the bars on the outside, as if to keep something in.

Applejack frowned at the supports for the heavy wooden bar on the nearest door. “It’s rigged,” she said.

“Rigged?” Twilight asked.

“Some mechanism somewhere’ll make it fall off, and let the door open,” she explained. “Y’all hang back, and let me check for pressure plates.”

There were no pressure plates in the corridor, at least that she could find, but the other door was similarly rigged to open at some signal.

“I could fix ‘em so they won’t open, if you want,” Applejack offered.

“Wouldn’t that defeat the purpose?” Rarity asked. “We’re here to search these rooms for treasure, are we not?”

“Rarity, they wouldn’t be rigged like this if there was anything good behind those doors,” Applejack said. “It’s a trap. There’s not going to be any treasure.”

“We don’t know that,” Rainbow Dash said. “Come on, let’s open them up!”

“The door’s rigged to come unbarred, not to spring open mechanically,” Twilight noted. “That means that it’s probably some sort of monster behind it. I’d rather not have it stalking us from behind, while we’re occupied with something else. Although I suppose disabling the mechanism might be sufficient… I could go either way.”

“I think we should listen to Applejack,” Fluttershy said. “She’s the trap expert.”

“Yes!” Pinkie Pie said, giggling and doing a little dance. “That means it’s up to me to decide! The power – the POWER! MUA HA HA HA HA HA!”

“You want to open them up, and roast whatever’s inside, right?” Rainbow Dash said.

Pinkie Pie frowned. “Nah. I only have so many bombs I can mix up in a day, and we don’t know how big this dungeon is. Seal ‘em up.”

Applejack let out a sigh of relief, and went to work, slipping a pair of goggles over her eyes as she fiddled with the mechanisms. “There,” she said after a few seconds. “It’s done.” She moved on to the other, and disabled it just as easily, then pushed the goggles back up onto her forehead. “Now, can we move on to something that isn’t just one big trap?”

The party flew – or were carried – over to the other corridor, the one the will-o-wisps had tried to flee down. It looked exactly the same as the left tunnel, except that the mysterious barred doors were on the left instead of the right, and there was no cave-in blocking the way. Applejack made her way down the corridor, carefully disabling each bar, until she reached the T-intersection eighty feet down.

To either side stretched a similar corridor, with barred doors set into the far wall every twenty feet.

“Right,” Applejack said, settling down for the long haul. “Don’t worry, girls, I’ll have this sorted in a jiffy.”


> Security Theater
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

As it turned out, the limited range of vision provided by the light cantrips and ioun torches the party was using had exaggerated the actual scope of the trapped area. All told, there were eleven barred doors, one of which was blocked by a cave in and five of which Applejack had already disarmed by the time she reached the intersection. To the left, the corridor met up with a side passage that was completely blocked by the back side of the same cave in they’d seen earlier, and then ended in yet another cave in only a few feet beyond that. To the right, there was one additional door in the far wall, and then the tunnel ended in a second barred door directly ahead. The mechanisms were extremely easy for Applejack to jam, especially with the help of her Goggles of Minute Seeing.

Having disabled them all, however, the party was left with nowhere to go.

“If we have to open one of them up, we should start with one of the ones that faces a T-intersection,” Twilight said. “I can stand back in the corridor and swing into the room with my hammer, and if they step outside to engage, they’ll be flanked by Applejack and Rainbow Dash waiting to either side.”

“What if they shoot arrows at you?” Rarity asked.

Twilight shrugged. “Then I’ll charge.”

“What if they shoot nasty poisonous tentacles at you, paralyze you, and then drag you into the room to devour you at their leisure?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“Then I hope the rest of you can save me?” Twilight said, giving her a strange look. “Actually… that would make a pretty nasty trap. How about we tie ropes to the three of us who’re planning to fight, and have Big Mac or the dragons hold them? Just in case.”

Thus prepared, the party got into formation – with Pinkie Pie behind Twilight so that she could throw a bomb into the room if the forces inside looked dangerous enough to warrant using one up. Applejack and Rainbow Dash each grabbed one end of the heavy oak bar, and together they lifted it off its mount, letting it fall to the ground with a loud ‘THUNK’. The door slammed open, almost smacking Rainbow Dash in the face, and revealed a flaming skeletal pony just through the doorway. Behind it was a room crammed full of more flaming skeletons.

Rainbow Dash tried to counterattack, but the angle was awkward and she couldn’t quite hit it. Pinkie Pie poked her muzzle into one of the pockets of her bandolier, and tossed an icy flask into the room, dousing the flames on half a dozen skeletons, which collapsed into inanimate bones. Without the flames blinding their vision, Pinkie and Twilight could see a more powerful looking undead hiding among them – an earth pony, or gem pony perhaps, with dessicated skin, hollow eyes, and its guts hanging out of its belly, dragging along the floor.

Before they could react to that, the rest of the burning skeletons charged, trying to push their way into the corridor. Twilight easily deflected their claws, but just being close to them was enough to singe her fur.

“Rarity!” Fluttershy said, grabbing a rod in her teeth. “Catch!” Rarity was surprised, but managed to grab it, and transfer it to a hoof.

Twilight recognized it from the shopping trip. “It’s a lesser metamagic rod of reach spell,” she said, as she brought the butt of her hammer down on the skeleton in front of her, destroying the fragile creature in an explosion of flame that washed over her, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash. “It’ll let you –“

“I believe I know what you have in mind,” Rarity said, channeling her communal resistance spell through the rod. The party glowed briefly orange, and the heat from the skeletons faded, no longer burning them.

“Invaderssss…” croaked the creature lurking among the skeletons. “You will join my herd!”

Shoving its minions aside, it burst into the hallway and vomited its guts onto Twilight’s face. She bashed in its head with her hammer as it approached, but losing most of its skull didn’t even seem to slow it down – if anything, it just made it easier for the putrid organs to emerge. Twilight’s armor offered little protection from the disgusting fluids that seeped into her mouth and nose, and she felt her muscles lock in place from sheer disgust as her senses were overloaded.

But before it could take advantage of her paralysis, Applejack and Rainbow Dash put the plan into play. They jumped on the undead pony – clearly once a gem pony, up close – and tore it to pieces. Applejack removed its two right legs with her claws, and cut its guts in half with her knife, but it didn’t stop moving until Rainbow Dash stomped on its chest, shattering its ribcage.

Despite the remaining skeletons’ mindless ferocity, with the party protected from fire it only took a couple more flasks of alchemical ice to wipe the rest of them out.

By the time Twilight recovered from her paralysis, the rest of the party had had plenty of time to thoroughly search the room. It looked like it had once been the living quarters for a group of pony miners, before everything was looted and smashed, and the occupants massacred and turned into undead.

“Oh my gosh!” Pinkie Pie said, her eyes going wide. “Oh my gosh! You won’t believe what my headband is telling me!”

“It can talk?” Applejack asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Only to me,” Pinkie Pie said. “Or to anypony who wears it I guess. It knows allllll about history and it says that this used to be a mithril mine, like fifty years ago, before one day the miners mysteriously vanished. A few weeks later, the kobolds showed up.” She narrowed her eyes. “Suspicious!”

“Well, I guess we know what happened to them,” Rarity said. “It’s a shame that nopony investigated before the grandchildren of the kobolds responsible died of old age. I suppose we could consider this mission one of vengeance, for their sake?” She shook her head. “It rings hollow, since we were already planning on exterminating the horrid creatures.”

“We were planning on investigating the dungeon to figure out what they’re hiding here,” Twilight said, trying in vain to scrape the remains of the undead’s attack from her armor. “But I have no qualms adding ‘exterminate the kobolds’ to the task list.”

Rarity smiled, and whisked her clean with a prestidigitation spell.

“Right. So what’s the plan? Open all of these doors until we run out of undead?” Applejack asked.

“If it was just undead in here, that would be a solid plan,” Twilight said. “They come in manageable packs and can retreat easily if we get too worn down. But kobolds are notorious for setting traps – they won’t sit idle if we leave to rest. So if we’re being methodical, we should eliminate as many doors as we can. For example, the doors in the collapsed hallway and its counterpart couldn’t possibly lead anywhere if we assume a two-dimensional layout for this area, so we can eliminate them.”

“Can we assume a two-dimensional layout?” Rarity asked.

“Hmm. If the mine was run by gem ponies, then yeah, I reckon we can,” Applejack said. “They’re not too imaginative with the architecture.”

“Let’s sketch it out,” Twilight said, taking out a sheet of paper and some ink and a quill. She drew in lines representing the hallways, and boxes representing rooms approximately the size of the one they’d found behind the first door. “Huh,” she said, pointing directly to the right of the tunnel they’d taken from the lake. “This whole area here is blank. That’s probably where we want to go.”

“Search for secret doors?” Applejack suggested.

“That, or we could just take the closest door and see if it connects,” Twilight said, gesturing with the quill until it arrived at the first door, which was also unique in being the only door set at the the end of a hallway instead of being off to the side. “Okay, that should have been obvious without drawing this map.”

“So what’s the plan?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Those bars are heavy, and loud. I don’t think we’re going to surprise anypony on the other side.”

“Rarity, your skeletons are smart enough to open doors, right?” Twilight asked, with a smirk.

“Yes… you’re planning to send them in first?” Rarity asked.

“Isn’t that what they’re for?” Rainbow Dash asked. “It’s not like they can be killed, right? Evil slime?”

“Very well,” Rarity said, with a sigh. “Just remember what happens if this gets them killed.”

With the help of a Reduce Person spell, the party brought Macintosh across the lake in a skeletal dragon’s claws, and then they all backed up to leave the hallway open for the dragons to squeeze through the five foot hallways and approach the door. Before ordering them to attack, there was time for last minute preparations before the assault.

Pinkie Pie passed out Shield infusions, and gave Rainbow Dash a special infusion. “It’s not a songbird, but it should help a little.”

“It’s not permanent, is it?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Pinkie Pie giggled. “Oh, I wish! But nah, not yet. It’ll only last a few minutes.”

With a shrug, Rainbow downed the vial, and squawked in surprise and discomfort as her body shrank and recongfigured itself into an eagle the size of a large dog. She gave a triumphant shriek, and fluttered around Pinkie Pie’s head happily.

“So much for stealth,” Applejack muttered.

“We’re going for surprise of a different sort,” Twilight said. “I don’t think they’re going to be expecting the dragons.”

The CLANG as Sparky II removed the bar was deafening, and then it flung open the door. With a nerve wracking ‘click!’, all the remaining barred doors in the hallway twitched, as the mechanism attempted to release the bars – but Applejack had done fine work disabling them all, and they all stayed shut. After a second, there was another ‘click’, and then a rapid ‘clickclickclick’, as if somepony was trying to trigger the mechanism multiple times.

Then the hallway in which the dragons were preparing to press into the room was engulfed in fire. Explosion after explosion, looking similar to a Fireball spell. Although badly burned, the skeletal dragons attempted to follow their instructions and push into the room, past any enemies near the door, so that the party would have room to charge in after them. Sparky II, who led the charge, was hooked on some sort of polearm and slammed into the ground directly in front of the door – the other three skeletons managed to fly past him as instructed, however.

Twilight charged after the last of them, and swung her hammer at the source of one of the four axe-like pole-arms rising and falling to beat against Sparky II’s bones. Her swing smashed into an elaborate barricade protecting the kobold warrior.

The room beyond the door, illuminated dimly by light cantrips on two of the dragons, was immense – at least a hundred feet in each direction, and spanning multiple levels. The door in which Twilight stood appeared to the be the top level – a balcony, sloping down towards the center of the room, with tiers of seats, most of which had been torn up and shredded, but enough remained to make the entire room difficult to move through for anypony larger than a kobold. There was a railing, after which it dropped off into the darkness. Far to the right, the circling dragon occasionally illuminated a remarkably well-preserved curtain, closed to conceal the stage.

Four barriers each concealed a heavily armored, pole-arm wielding kobold, making them almost impossible to attack from the doorway, and leaving a killing ground between them where anypony attempting to enter the room would provoke at attack from all four of them – as Sparky II had. It seemed unlikely that the warriors were the ones who threw the fireballs, since the dragons’ charge had happened almost immediately afterwards and they’d still been waiting ready for it, but there were no other kobolds visible.

“Twilight, Duck!” Rarity warned, as she flung her own fireball over the unicorn’s shoulder. It sailed between two of the barricades and detonated twenty feet into the room, the wall of fire stopping a few inches in front of Twilight’s nose. The blast of fire washed over the kobolds, who screamed in pain and alarm, but more importantly the explosion shattered the barricades into burning splinters, and cleared away the debris from almost half of the balcony.

It also finished off Sparky II, who collapsed into a heap of slime-covered dragon bones. The slime began slowly, slowly pulling the bones back into shape, but it would take an hour for them to actually bring him back.

With the way clear, Applejack and Rainbow Dash charged into the fray. They had to charge to reach the target, since they’d been waiting so far down the hallway, so they couldn’t flank, but Applejack managed to slip her knife into a weak spot in the warrior’s armor, plunging it into his chest, and Eagle Dash clawed at his face, distracting him from the bleeding wound.

The relatively tiny Macintosh charged one of the other kobolds with his lance, crushing his breastplate and breaking his ribs, but failing to take him down… until Fluttershy followed up with a crossbow bolt, which slipped in through a gap in the armor exposed by the lance’s strike and sunk deep into the kobold’s neck, dropping him.

Pinkie Pie flew into the room and hovered over the melee, holding a bomb ready to throw if the wizards who’d shot the fireballs showed their faces. The party was already protected from fire, but most wizards had more than one spell.

Instead of a wizard, however, a quartet of kobolds in lighter armor, wielding bows, appeared out of nowhere in the clear part of the balcony, and started firing arrows at her. That was close enough for Pinkie, who threw her bomb, but she missed her target, and the kobolds skillfully ducked under their cloaks to deflect the splash – except for one, who was a little too slow, and ended up with burning liquid seeping into his clothing, burning him slightly… and setting off the remaining fireball charges that were hanging around his neck.

That burned him rather more severely, although not enough to take him out of the fight. The other rogues were able to evade the blast, and Rarity’s resist fire spell protected the party, since many of them were caught in the sudden fireballs as well.

When the blast cleared, however, Pinkie Pie was lying unconscious, pincushioned with arrows, bleeding heavily from several shots to her chest.

The warrior kobolds flailed their polearms at Dash and Macintosh and Applejack, trying to trip them, and while Dash dodged them easily and Macintosh managed to keep his feet, Applejack went down, and got hit over the head while she was sprawled out in front of him. It didn’t hurt much, except to her pride.

Fluttershy, seeing Pinkie Pie bleeding out on the floor, reached for her metamagic rod, before remembering that she’d forgotten to retrieve it from Rarity. She squeaked, and darted out into the middle of the room to heal her dying friend. One of the kobolds tried to trip her as she passed, but Twilight threw herself into the way and was tripped in her place. Fluttershy landed on Pinkie Pie, and shoved as much positive energy into her as she could manage, which brought her conscious and, more importantly, stopped the bleeding before she could die from her wounds.

“They were invisible!” Pinkie Pie said, as she quietly healed herself with a wand, trying to keep a low profile until somepony else got the archers’ attention.

Twilight tried to climb to her feet, but was tripped again and hit over the head for her trouble, although it didn’t do any damage. “Stop that!”, she cried, and swung back at the kobold from the floor, rocking him back with a heavy hit, even from her awkward position.

Applejack was a little more graceful in leaping back to her feet, and her target was much more badly wounded, and had been spun around with his back facing her as Rainbow Dash continued to harass him. She plunged her dagger into his back, and he fell.

Macintosh charged past the fallen kobold warriors to attack one of the rogues – the one on fire from having his equipment explode on him – but didn’t quite manage to catch him with his lance. The other three were engaged with the surviving skeletal drakes, although only one of them was clumsy enough to get bitten.

Then, they all vanished.

“I told you!” Pinkie Pie said. “Invisible!”

That left two hapless kobold warriors to fight the party alone. One of them beat on Twilight as she sprawled out in front of him, bruising her slightly before she hit him again and finished him off, then stood up, teeth clenched. “Yes, we’re definitely exterminating these guys.”

The other skittered away into part of the balcony that hadn’t been fireballed, and still had plenty of debris for cover, and managed to hide.

Fluttershy held her forehooves to her temples, then flew up into the air and spread her limbs wide, a ring of blue light tracing along the boundaries of every solid object, and purging all forms of invisibility from the area… but the kobold rogues were still nowhere to be seen.

“Invisible and also hiding,” Applejack said. “Smart little buggers.”

“Hmm…” Pinkie Pie said. “If I was a kobold, I’d be hiding right… there!” One of her bombs went arcing over the skeletons to explode into a cloud of stinking mist in a seemingly random place among the debris, about thirty feet back from where the rogues had disappeared. Macintosh, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash advanced towards the skeletons, and got ready to leap on any kobold popping out of hiding to attack.

On Rarity’s orders, two of the skeletons similarly prepared themselves, while Opal, who had one of the light cantrips, began a sweep of the back half of the balcony, her pool of light and shifting shadows failing to reveal any hidden kobolds among the broken chairs – until one leaped out and shattered her with a well-placed blow from a short sword, and her bones clattered to the ground around him. Everypony leapt to attack him, only to be met midway by three more fireballs, thrown by the other hidden rogues.

Crackle shattered and collapsed in a heap. Macintosh was stopped midway by the tangle of debris, too thick to charge through. Garble, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash reached the target, but none of them managed to connect – and then he vanished again.

Or at least, he tried to. The room was still purged, and he remained clearly visible. Rainbow, Applejack, and Garble made short work of him.

The others were attempting to stay hidden, but they’d given themselves away. Twilight charged at one of them, leaping over the tangle of chairs not cleared away by any of the fireballs to slam her hammer into his head hard enough to drive it entirely into his chest. There was a flash of green fire, and what lay crumpled at her feet was not exactly a kobold – but not entirely a changeling, either.

“You nasty little things! Stop breaking Rarity’s undead!” Fluttershy squeaked, but her target managed to duck out of the way of her wave of disapproval, cackling and pointing at her.

Pinkie Pie threw a bomb centered between it and the last kobold, engulfing them in poisonous smoke again.

Macintosh shouted, “There!” as he spotted one crawling away towards a door in the far wall, and tried to catch it with a tanglefoot bag, but it was too far for him to hit accurately.

Near the back, where she’d been waiting and conserving her spells, Rarity suddenly found herself under attack by the warrior who’d hidden earlier – who tripped her, and hacked at her repeatedly with his polearm while she was down, although he failed to get through an ablative barrier of hardened air that she’d set up before entering the dungeon. She tried to retaliate with her claws, from the ground, but while one did draw blood he didn’t succumb to paralysis. Garble flew across the room at impossible speed to protect his mistress, and caught the kobold solidly in his teeth. 

While they tusseled, the party searched the room for the fleeing kobold rogues. “It looked like he was sick from the cloud, but that won’t last long,” Macintosh said, as they scanned the room.

“There!” Pinkie Pie said, and tossed a vial of alchemist’s fire, which illuminated a kobold-like shape that burned as it scurried away. Twilight threw a javelin at him, and it stuck in his back – he collapsed to the ground, still breathing but moving very slowly now.

At the far end of the room, the door opened and a shadowy figure escaped.

“I’m okay!” Rarity called from back near the entrance, as her remaining skeleton shook its head back and forth, finishing off the warrior, who’d ablated most of her barrier before going down. “In case any of you were wondering.”

“One of them got away,” Applejack said. “More of them’ll be coming.”

“And we’re stuck here for the next hour, waiting for Rarity’s skeletons to reform,” Pinkie Pie said, pouting.

On the plus side, upon looting the kobolds, the party found a good deal of magical equipment – the armor was magical, they all had been wearing cloaks of resistance – the rogues’ more powerful than some of the ones in use by the party – and their weapons were masterwork quality, except for the rogues’ bows which were also magic. The warriors had tanglefoot bags that they hadn’t used, and potions of silence which they hadn’t had time to drink, and the rogues were carrying dust of appearance in case any potential attackers tried to take a note out of their book. There were also two rather small fireball spheres left on the dead rogues’ necklaces.

One of the rogues wasn’t actually dead, so Applejack tied him up in the case anypony wanted to interrogate him.

Investigating the lower level of the theater, the party found a massive kobold nest where the main level seating had been – kobold eggs everywhere, along with furniture, bedding, half-eaten meals, and every other indication that until a few minutes ago, a large kobold population had been huddling underfoot, waiting for the outcome of the battle overhead as the invaders fought their champions. When the party had been victorious, they’d all snuck away, somewhere – perhaps out the large set of the double doors that in an aboveground theater would have been the main entrance.

“Some of these eggs look… wrong,” Pinkie Pie said.

“They’re like the rogues we fought,” Rarity said, examining one closely. “A hybrid between kobold and changeling. I wonder how they taste?”

“I wonder if we could get anything for ‘em in the city,” Applejack countered.

“Yes, because I’m sure there are plenty of people who want more kobolds in the world,” Twilight replied. “Oh, go ahead, we can try to sell them.”

“Thank ‘ya kindly,” Applejack said, grinning as she packed them away.

On closer inspection, even the warrior kobolds they’d fought had had slight changeling features – vestigial horns, under their helmets, and patches of chitin among their scales.

“I’m glad we took a prisoner,” Twilight said. “Before we kill him, let’s see if we can get some answers.”

They set Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash on watch on the door they’d come through, so that Fluttershy’s purge would reveal any invisible attackers somehow flanking them, and Rainbow’s keen eyes could spot anyone trying to sneak through the open passageway. They set Garble on guard on the other upper level door, his bulk making it difficult for anypony to get into the room even if they managed to open the door, making for an effective barricade. Applejack jammed one of her less-loved lockpicks into the lock on the double doors below so that they would no longer open with the key. Momentarily safe-ish, Twilight and Applejack woke up the injured and restrained kobold and started asking him questions.

“Let’s start with the basics,” Applejack said, picking at her fangs with her dagger while Twilight stood nearby looking dangerous. “How many of ya scruffy little varmints are there, and how big is this dungeon you’ve set up for yourselves?”

“There are hundreds – thousands of kobold warriors!” he chittered, his eyes darting around wildly. “Our city stretches for miles! I am among the weakest of our kind!”

“You see, that’s what I call a bad lie,” Applejack said. “You know why?”

The kobold frantically shook his head.

“Because it means I got to do something messy to ya. Now, hold still. What do you think, Twi? A finger?”

“An eye,” Twilight replied. “See how good he is at shooting his bow with an eye-patch.”

“No! No! No! Stop!” the kobold squeaked. “I’ll tell you the truth now! Hundreds, yes, but of warriors only dozens. Most are not as strong… the strongest were here to protect the eggs.”

“You don’t understand,” Twilight said. “You already lost the eye for lying to us. Telling the truth now will only keep you from losing more.”

“Twilight!” Fluttershy said, in a voice usually reserved for their enemies. “What did I say about maiming ponies?”

“But he’s a kobold!” Twilight protested. Fluttershy kept glowering at her until she backed down. “Fine, fine, you can keep your eye, as long as you tell us everything.”

“Yes! Yes! I’ll tell you everything!”

The kobold babbled on for quite some time. Every so often, his eyes would shift to glance at the doorway through which his friend had escaped, as if he was expecting reinforcements to burst in and rescue him – but Garble was guarding the door, and no kobold even tried to open it. Whatever plan they had for the party, it apparently did not involve a rescue.

His story started long before he was born, when the kobolds expanding from the underdark came across a recently abandoned mine. After half their expedition was eaten, they discovered that it was not abandoned per se, but infested by undead. Their cleverness and cooperation allowed them to bottle the undead up in a part of the complex they didn’t need, however, and they set up shop. It was a surfacer mine, and access to the surface made it a stop on the trade route with the orcs, bringing them much prosperity… at least until the dark elves managed to conquer and enslave the home warrens, leaving them cut off.

“Yeah, elves do that,” Twilight said. “We had to kick them out of our forest.”

“And then they stole most of our weather magic!” Pinkie Pie said. “Elves are jerks.”

The kobold was happy to agree on that point, at least. Eventually, once the party tired of insulting the elven race in absentia, he moved on to the rest of his story.

His tribe had broken away from the warren because its leaders liked to perform magical experiments considered too risky for even kobolds to stomach near their nests. The most recent leader had been researching portals, and after a few near-disasters trying by-the-book elemental portals, had managed to open one to something resembling an alternate Prime Material Plane. There, they’d contacted strange, magical bugs that shared many philosophical and cultural traits with kobolds, and had entered into a partnership, that included cross-breeding experiments performed by the leader’s three apprentices. Their experiments had led them into the study of alchemy rather than wizardry, but the successful breeding of powerful hybrid kobolds was worth the distraction from pure magical studies.

Then something happened to the changeling hive, and they had to close the portal. The leader was trapped on the other side, and the apprentices began squabbling among themselves. One left with the handful of pure-blooded changelings trapped on the kobold side of the portal, to carve out a territory in the overworld. One rejected the hybrid project entirely, and she and her weakling followers were cowering in some corner of the complex. The third led what remained of the tribe, and would be killing the party shortly.

He glanced at the door again, but the expected rescue party was still nowhere to be seen.

“So where’s this portal?” Rainbow Dash asked. The Beast Shape spell had worn off, along with many of the party’s other magical spells. 

The kobold pointed at the stage. Fluttershy flew closer and cast a spell to detect magic, only to squeal in pain as she was briefly blinded by the magical output. Applejack flew over to help her, but she shook her head and smiled, so the rogue went to examine the curtain by nonmagical means instead.

“Huh. It looks like it’s hanging loose, but it’s hard as iron,” Applejack said. She tried to scratch it with her dagger, but couldn’t leave a mark. “Harder than iron.”

“How do you open it?” Twilight asked the prisoner.

“Not here,” the kobold said. “There are controls, but not here. But you don’t want to open it! If you open it it will be very bad!”

The whole party turned to look at the looming curtain.

“Maybe…” Pinkie Pie said, prancing nervously from hoof to hoof. “Maybe we don’t want to wait here for a whole hour?”

“Yeah, we’ve probably already waited too long,” Applejack said. “By now those varmints’ll have something nasty waiting for us, for sure.”

“I am not abandoning my minions,” Rarity said, stomping a hoof.

“We can move them somewhere else,” Twilight suggested. “I know, we can hide them in that room we cleared of undead. The kobolds don’t know which one we opened, and the rest are still full of angry skeletons, so they can’t just check.”

“Ooh,” Pinkie Pie said. “I like it. We can hide them there, re-bar the door, and if we all die down here, then we’ve re-stocked the dungeon for the next group of adventurers! We’ll be like subterranean druids!”

“I suppose it should be safe enough,” Rarity said, reluctantly.

Twilight nodded. “Then we’re agreed. Let’s kill the prisoner and move on.”

“But I did everything you asked!” the kobold whimpered.

“It’s nothing personal,” Twilight replied. “But we can’t effectively hold you. You’ve probably already escaped from those ropes.”

The kobold quickly slipped his wrists and ankles back into the bonds, and held them up for Twilight’s inspection. She just narrowed her eyes.

“Look! Over there!” the kobold squeaked, but nopony was fooled. Twilight lifted her hammer to strike a finishing blow, and the kobold dove aside, leaving the ropes behind, and hid among the debris. Rainbow Dash spotted him as he scurried through the maze of broken chairs, but he was too slippery to be hit by her stunning fist. He tumbled past Garble, and opened the door.

The door burst open, and a wave of steaming green liquid flowed over Garble and the kobold, both of whom threw themselves to the side to avoid the worst of it, as the acid began to eat away at that whole section of balcony. Garble was able to fly up off the crumbling structure, as it collapsed to the level below, but the kobold only just barely managed to climb back up onto the part of the balcony where the party awaited him.

“Um…” he said, staring at the warriors arranged before him, and the long stretch of balcony scoured clean by fireballs that he’d have to cross to reach the remaining door. “I surrender! Again!”

Applejack snuck up behind him and clubbed him over the head with a sack full of provisions, and the kobold collapsed.

> Onwards and Downwards
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You know, these are pretty light,” Twilight Sparkle said, as they bundled up the piles of slimy bones that, in a bit less than an hour, would regenerate into Rarity’s pet dragons. “Garble could probably carry all of them with him, and the kobold too.”

“I don’t believe he could carry quite that much and still fly,” Rarity said, eyeing her remaining pet. “Perhaps in two trips. Did you want to try to carry them with us as we proceed?”

“We at least have to keep an eye on the squirmy little bugger,” Applejack said. She’d been sitting on the kobold since she’d knocked him unconscious, half to keep him from escaping again and half to keep the others from casually murdering him. “He won’t wake up for a bit, but when he does he’ll be off like a cockatrice in the henhouse.”

“Or we could kill him,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Heehee! You can’t kill Applejack’s new boyfriend!” Pinkie Pie said. “We should put him in with the dragons. They’ll probably wake up first.”

“And kill him,” Applejack said, ignoring her first sentence.

“Not these dragons,” Pinkie Pie said. “When they were alive, they were good dragons, so they’ll do good dragon things if you let them sit around on their lonesome.”

Twilight frowned at that. “I thought they were mindless, and only followed orders?” 

Sergeant Macintosh shook his head. “Skeletons don’t argue, but if you leave them be they pretend to do what they did in life. That’s how my previous commander had so many watching his walls.”

“Huh,” Twilight said. “Well, that would be kind of amusing, and with the door barred from the outside, he couldn’t really escape.”

Pinkie grinned. “I just wish I could be there to see the look on his face.”

After depositing their prisoner and re-barring the door, Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy did their best to conceal any tracks that might reveal to the kobolds which door had been opened, while Applejack made sure the mechanism was still disabled in the exactly the same way as the ones on the doors which hadn’t been opened. Once they were confident that the kobolds wouldn’t know which door to open, they headed back to the theater to decide where to head next.

The party gathered around the big double doors on the lower level, and watched while Applejack’s deft mouth and paws repaired the lock, and quietly unlocked it. “Everypony ready?” she asked, in a low voice, as she carefully dripped oil down a wire inserted between the door and the frame, to oil the hinges.

Fluttershy finished a quiet chant, and a trio of small stony creatures rose from the floor. “Ready,” she whispered.

Applejack and Rainbow Dash pushed open the huge double doors, making sure to stand to the side where any immediate fire wouldn’t hit them.

The doors opened smoothly and silently, revealing a huge, carved tunnel sloping slightly downwards into the darkness, stretching as far as they could see, with pillars and arches of stone reinforcing the ceiling.

But before the doors had opened far enough to allow anypony through, they hit a pile of precariously balanced metal cans, knocking them over with a huge, horrible racket and spreading greasy waste across the floor of the corridor in front of them – slippery and littered with loose round objects, it would be very difficult terrain to walk across without slipping and falling. Not to mention that the noise had undoubtedly alerted any waiting kobolds.

Applejack followed one of the opening doors, which were heavy enough to continue opening even after knocking over the pile. She clung to it to avoid making any more noise, and peered around the edge for any sign of kobolds. She saw a series of arrow slits to either side, one set to each side of a pair of small doors in either wall, but couldn’t tell if anything was hiding behind them before she had to fly up to the stone ‘rafters’ to stay out of sight.

Twilight and Macintosh were right behind her, but the two heavily armored warriors stalled out on the slippery patch, although they managed to avoid falling. “There’s kobolds taking a bead on us from either side,” Macintosh said, spotting movement through the arrow slits.

Pinkie Pie said, “Give me a sec,” and drank an extract of True Strike, joining Applejack taking cover in the rafters, as she readied a bomb.

“Distract them,” Fluttershy said, motioning to her elementals and pointing in the directions she wanted them to go. They sunk into the floor and only a slight rumbling noise gave them away as they moved into the rooms – followed by cries of alarm from the kobolds behind the arrow slits as enemies appeared among them.

A couple of arrows – but far short of the barrage expected – flew from the arrow slits to ping harmlessly off Twilight’s armor. Rarity advanced to join her and Macintosh, only to slip and fall with a clatter of cans. Despite that, she summoned a cloud of mist to obscure them from any archers who might cease to be distracted at some point.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, and flew over the slippery patch to land in the center of the hall. Seeing doors to either side, she picked one at random – to the left – and flung it open. One of the kobolds waiting behind it tripped her, and hacked at her while she was on the ground, but the other three were already busy trying to fight two of Fluttershy’s elementals and couldn’t join in.

“Just –“ Twilight tried to advance, only for one of her hooves to step on a can, crushing it and sending her falling onto her belly. “Hold on for a few seconds, and –“ she made an attempt to stand, with no better luck. Beside her, Macintosh was similarly flailing. “Gah!”

Fluttershy finished a second summoning, and a giant bat appeared, grabbing Twilight and dragging her out of the slippery patch, then circling back to get Macintosh. Fluttershy advanced behind it, staying near Twilight, but peeking out of the cloud of mist. Not seeing any particularly dangerous targets – just some ordinary-looking kobolds beating up on Rainbow Dash – she simply said a few quiet words to bless the party’s efforts.

Applejack took aim from the rafters, and flung her dagger at the kobold standing in the doorway Rainbow had opened, then tsk’d as it bounced off his shield, which just happened to move into place to block it. The kobold she’d almost hit looked up, and spotted her, but had no way of responding, and his friends were oblivious.

Pinkie, for her part, tossed her bomb with magically-guided ease through one of the arrow slits into the room on the opposite side, and a flash of fire followed by leaking green mist made it clear that that was no longer a room that one would wish to be in. One of the kobolds inside opened the door, coughing and choking on the poison, and another ran out of the stinking cloud, spotted Rainbow Dash, and started running across the open hallway, waving his tiny rapier.

Rarity couldn’t see through the mist surrounding her, but she could hear the sounds of fighting, and ordered Garble to attack. The skeletal dragon burst out of the cloud and intercepted the kobold, sinking its fangs into the creature’s side.

Rainbow Dash leapt to her feet, flipped up over the heads of the line of warriors still fighting the elementals, and cried, “Stunning Fist!” as she punched the one in back who’d tripped her. He staggered back, dropping his polearm and looking dazed.

From the other door, another polearm-wielding kobold emerged, moving up to threaten Garble – and behind him was another one of the hulking, mutant kobold alchemists they’d fought in the changeling camp, accompanied by a large humanoid form that seemed to be stitched together from pieces of dozens of different creatures, many of which had had scales or fur or chitin. One of its massive fists slammed into Garble’s side, dislodging several of his ribs.

Twilight emerged from the obscuring mist, and swung her hammer in a wide arc, battering both the golem and its master. “So you’re the one in charge,” she said, smirking as the kobold snarled at her, blood dripping from its shattered muzzle. “Well, not for long.”

Applejack dropped silently from the rafters and sunk her dagger into the mutant kobold’s back… only for it to fail to penetrate the creature’s scales. “Well, shoot. That would have been properly dramatic and everything.”

“I know! It’s so unfair,” Pinkie said, tossing a bomb directly into the flesh golem’s mouth as it tried to say something. Flames burst from its eye sockets and from the seams in its neck, showering the other nearby kobolds, but the golem managed to stay standing, although its movements were slower.

Fluttershy’s bat dragged Macintosh out of the grease, and he got to his hooves and stumbled from the mist, advancing on the largest enemies. “You can change it when you tell the stories,” he suggested.

Garble tore apart the kobold in his teeth, who’d failed to do any harm to the skeleton with his rapier, then started on the polearm kobold. The kobold took a nasty gash to his side from the dragon’s claws, but hooked Garble on his polearm, pulled him out of the air, and slammed him into the ground – not hurting him, but at least making him an easy target for a follow-up attack, which hit solidly but failed to even crack the bones.

Rainbow Dash, off in the room to the left, sheathed her fist in lightning and focused her attack on the other polearm kobold, who was just recovering from being stunned. His scales scorched as electricity arced up and down through his flesh and his armor, and a follow-up kick to his chest took him down. “Who’s next?” she said, turning to face the other three kobolds in the room, with a grin.

“My turn!” said the mutant kobold, turning on Applejack in a flurry of teeth and claws. The rogue’s skin was still tough as bark, however, and she was barely scratched by his assault, although one swipe did draw blood. His golem fared even less well, taking a clumsy swing at Twilight that went two feet above her head.

“If you insist,” Twilight said, swinging her hammer at both of them again, this time in a downwards arc that finished removing the injured golem’s head before staving in the kobold’s chest, from the side. Both collapsed, leaking blood and fluids onto the stone floor, the golem unravelling at the seams and the kobold shriveling back down to normal kobold size.

Macintosh charged past their corpses and impaled the remaining polearm kobold, pinning him to the ground next to Garble. Pinkie Pie tossed more fire at the kobolds trying to face off against Rainbow Dash, while Fluttershy’s elementals pummeled them. The surviving kobolds screamed in terror, and ran off.

“Let them go!” Twilight said, as Rainbow Dash looked ready to follow them. “They’ll just lead you into more traps.”

“Right,” Rainbow Dash said, fluffing her wings angrily as she stared down the twisty tunnel the kobolds near her had vanished into. “I knew that.”

“The leader came from the other way, so that’s where we’ll find their treasure hoard, if they have any,” Applejack said. Pinkie Pie kicked the cloud of mist from her bomb to clear it away, but while there were other exits from the room, there was no sign of which of them the kobolds inside had taken. “Let’s strip these guys, and see if we can… uurgh,” she groaned, licking at the wound the mutant kobold had given her.

She frowned, and spit. “Oh, hay. I’ve been poisoned,” she said, wobbling a bit.

“Um… I can mix up a remedy, if you give me a minute?” Pinkie Pie said.

Applejack winced. “You… get started on that. I’ll just take a little lie down, here.”

By the time Pinkie Pie was finished, Applejack was barely moving. “I think it ran its course,” she said. “Leastwise it stopped gettin’ worse. I’m not sure I’m going anywhere any time soon, though.”

“Drink this?” Pinkie Pie said, smiling weakly.

The infusion helped a little, and after a second dose, Applejack was at least able to stand under the weight of her gear, although she was still too weak to fly. At least her fighting style relied on precision more than force, and she could still be relatively effective in combat, although of course much less mobile.

The equipment recovered from the dead kobolds was similar to what they’d seen before, except that the rapier-wielding kobolds – which they’d only killed one of – had magical armor and shields. Rarity took the dead kobolds’ heads and added them to her swarm of skulls, still in its bag, to make it a little more powerful, and to keep them from coming back as independent undead.

The rooms to either side were obviously armories and guard rooms, although there were no weapons still on the racks – the kobolds stored their weapons elsewhere. The one to the left, where Rainbow Dash had been fighting, only had one other exit – a twisting, natural-looking passage that smelled like rot and decay.

The one to the right, from which the leader had emerged, had three exits: a worked stone tunnel to the right, that stretched off straight and level, with a series of barred doors to the left; a staircase, also to the right, leading up to the level above and possibly eventually connecting to the balcony; and a secret door that Pinkie Pie spotted in the left wall.

After carefully checking it for traps and finding none, Applejack opened the secret door to reveal a staircase leading down. “Yeah, it’s trapped,” she said. “Most every stair is – no, wait. Every stair is trapped, I just didn’t spot that one the first time.” She checked a few more stairs, which were also trapped. “For pony’s sake, there have to be some safe stairs or nopony can ever go up and down.”

“Can you disarm them?” Twilight asked.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll get on it,” Applejack said. “They’re simple pressure plates. Easy as pie.”

While tedious, Applejack was not wrong about the ease of disarming the traps, and the party slowly made their way down the stairs. At the bottom, they found a lever which would have disabled all the traps if they were still active.

They also found the alchemist’s workshop – a table stained with blood and worse, on which the golem had likely been assembled, along with instructions for building a golem, and equipment and supplies for building other magical items. There was also, of course, a full alchemy set of exceptional quality, although it was not in any way portable. Pinkie Pie thought that she could scavenge several hundred gold pieces worth of quality glassware and parts from it, if she was willing to destroy it in the process.

There was also a large cask of purple worm poison, like the sort used on Applejack, with several dozen doses remaining.

In the back of the room was a large vault door, heavy but unlocked.

“I don’t see any traps,” Applejack said.

“It’s got to be trapped,” Twilight insisted.

“I know that, but I don’t see none, so I can’t disable ‘em,” Applejack snapped. “I guess we can all stand way back and you can open it with your magic or something, right?”

“Worth a try,” Twilight said.

The party backed up the staircase, and Twilight lit her horn to swing the door open from a distance. To nopony’s surprise, there was a flash of magical light, and a gigantic demonic bear appeared, bony spikes jutting from its shoulders. It wasted no time charging at the nearest target, swiping with a massive paw.

Twilight blocked the paw with her brand new magical shield, and countered with two crushing blows from her hammer. It was still up, so Rainbow Dash leapt over her back, ducked under a paw that tried to intercept her, and slammed her fist, crackling with lightning, into the bear’s jaw, lifting the hulking creature up off the ground briefly before it disintegrated into a shower of magical light.

“Piece of cake,” Rainbow Dash said, posing in the middle of the room and blowing imaginary smoke off her talons.

Inside the vault was no hoard of gold and jewels – there were a few scattered pieces, but it appeared that the kobolds had spent most of their money long ago. Instead, there was a pile with a random assortment of the items the kobolds had been seen using. This was their armory.

There was also a table, dusty from disuse, which Rarity recognized instantly as a wizard’s laboratory, used for experimenting with magic and developing new spells and rituals. Aside from various bits of equipment which were portable enough and would fetch a good price, there were eight portal-opening books, labelled with draconic symbols for the elemental and para-elemental planes, each with a matching set of five candles of various colors. Next to them was a massive tome, bound in the hide of a purple worm.

“Mine!” Rarity said, rushing across the room to grab it.

“Okay,” Twilight said, a small smile on her face. “You’re the wizard, so you can probably make the best use of it.”

Rarity opened it carefully, and read through the preface. “It says this is Rendrax the Magnificent’s study of Planes and Portals. With this tome, a wizard of any skill should be able to open a –“

The words of the preface peeled themselves off the page, transforming into a large serpent which sank its fangs into Rarity’s nose, before vanishing. The ghoul was engulfed in a shimmering amber field, staring motionless at the book still held in her hoof.

Pinkie Pie threw several of her dispelling bombs at the field, but it was no use. “Sorry, I’m out,” she said, as she reached for another catalyst and found that part of her belt bare. “I can try again tomorrow? I recognize the spell, and she’ll be stuck like this for days.”

“Can we move her?” Twilight asked, walking over and tugging on Rarity’s tail, but she wouldn’t budge. “Huh. Guess not.”

“That’s, uh,” Rainbow Dash said, poking at the frozen ghoul. “That’s really not good.”

“Huh,” Applejack said, examining the room. “Actually, this isn’t such a bad place to rest. If we lock the door, I doubt the kobolds will be able to do much to us. If they knew how to unlock the vault, it would’a been locked. Not to mention that their leaders are pushing up daisies.”

“Not all of them,” Rainbow Dash said. “There’s supposed to be three, and we only fought two.”

“The third was an outcast,” Twilight said. “But with his rivals disposed of he’ll take over, right?”

“Hmm, true,” Applejack said. “Him or that other rogue that got away. Neither of them is going to bust through a door like this one, though.”

“And how will we get out?” Rainbow Dash asked. “I don’t see any other exits.”

“If we free Rarity, she’ll be able to memorize Knock?” Pinkie Pie suggested.

Twilight looked around, but there were no objections. “Sounds like a plan, then.”

> Trapped in a Box
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Before locking themselves in the vault, the party sent Applejack – with an invisibility infusion from Pinkie Pie, for extra stealth – to see whether it would be safe to bring down the regenerating skeletal dragons. Unfortunately, the answer was ‘no’ – there were enough kobolds still moving around that it would almost certainly lead to a fight, and worse, several of them were in the hallway repairing the traps that Applejack had disabled, which meant there was a good chance that more flaming undead would be unleashed. Since their fire resistance had already worn off, they decided to stick with the original plan, and retrieve the dragons in the morning.

They pulled the vault door firmly closed, and the mechanism engaged, locking it securely. From inside the vault, there was no way to even attempt to enter the combination, but they had planned for Rarity’s Knock spell to do the unlocking, once they managed to free her.

Since it had been nearing nightfall when the party had entered the dungeon, they were tired enough to sleep. Despite their secure location, they still kept watch. This was fortunate, since it was Rainbow Dash and Applejack, on second watch, who noticed that the air was going bad. The vault was sealed, and apparently air-tight – and while the vault was huge, they had six breathing creatures inside, one of whom was exceptionally large. With the air running out and no obvious escape, the threat of slow suffocation loomed.

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic, Rainbow,” Twilight said, yawning a bit as she woke up. “I have a backup plan.”

“We all die, and awake as undead?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“No,” Twilight said.

Pinkie Pie rubbed her chin with a hoof. “We all read from the book and get put in suspended animation like Rarity?”

“That wouldn’t actually help, since the spell eventually wears off,” Twilight noted.

“But Rarity would be awake,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Oh right, she didn’t have Knock memorized, so we’d still be trapped,” Pinkie Pie said. “Oh! But she wouldn’t die from the suffocation, so she could take all our heads and make her skull swarm even stronger!”

“And that’s a good thing?” Applejack asked, perking one of her ears.

“Well, not for us,” Pinkie admitted.

Twilight sighed, and lit her horn, levitating one of the elemental summoning books from the wizard’s table, and dropping it in Pinkie Pie’s hooves.

“Ooooh,” Pinkie Pie said. “We can summon a bunch of mephits, and let them kill us quickly before we have to die a slow, agonizing death from asphyxiation!”

“That’s the air book,” Twilight said. “It’ll open a small portal to the Plane of Air. The smoke portal in the inn filled the basement with smoke, so I figure an air portal will fill the vault with air.”

“And mephits,” Applejack noted.

“We can deal with the mephits,” Twilight replied.

The ritual in the book was extremely easy for Pinkie Pie. It had been written with much less experienced students of the arcane in mind, and she was able to power through it in about a half hour. That was enough time for the rest of the adventurers to start feeling slightly woozy, but nopony was anywhere near passing out by the time the circle was drawn and the candles were arranged. Pinkie Pie tapped one of her infusion vials carefully with a hoof, making a ringing noise, and the portal opened, the blue light from a sunlit sky shining into the dimly lit vault. As they’d hoped, fresh air rushed through as well.

It took a few minutes for the mephits to show up, but sure enough, half a dozen of the curious creatures eventually emerged, looking around the vault in wonder, staring at the walls, the tables and books, the pile of equipment, and of course all the living and unliving creatures.

“Hey, get away from that!” Applejack said, as one of them started poking at the saddlebag where she’d stashed the hybrid eggs. “Shoo!”

The mephit swatted back at her half-heartedly. “What’s in there? Who are you? Where is this?” The others soon joined in with a chorus of questions. “What is this? What are you? Is there anything in here? Why are those bones moving?”

“Shhhh!” Fluttershy said. “Shh, quiet down, little ones, and we’ll explain everything.”

The mephits immediately landed on the floor in front of her, staring expectantly. Fluttershy opened her mouth to talk, and then closed it again, shrinking back from the mass of staring eyes. “Um… Twilight, can you explain everything?”

The mephits turned to follow Fluttershy’s gaze, and Twilight sighed. “Right. Let me start at the beginning. Thousands of years ago, the ponies and other fey races of this world escaped from a hellish dimension of magic and trickery to the Prime Material Plane. There, they were greeted by the goblins…”

Twilight’s story went on for a while, and while Pinkie Pie (and her headband) had to continually correct the innacuracies in her story (the goblins, for example, were the ones who had opened the portal to bring the ponies through), the mephits seemed equally fascinated by any version of the story, and remained docile for the hours and hours it took for the party to finish their rest. As Fluttershy began her prayers to the forces of nature, and Pinkie Pie started mixing up her day’s allotment of catalysts and infusions, Twilight let the lecture wind down, bringing it in to the present day.

“Oh!” One of the mephits said. “This is mixworld!” She looked around. “I thought it would be bigger.”

“The rest of it is through there,” Rainbow Dash said, pointing to the massive vault door.

“We’ll be closing the portal soon, so if you want to go home you might, um, want to go home,” Twilight said. “I hope you found your stay educational, and can pass the knowledge on to your friends and family.”

“But we just got here!” one of the other mephits said. “We want to see the rest!”

“They aren’t hurting anypony,” Applejack said, as Twilight frowned. “Let ‘em stay.”

“We also can’t close the portal until Rarity rests,” Pinkie Pie pointed out. “Since she’s going to cast Knock for us.”

“Fine,” Twilight said, and the mephits cheered and danced around her, hugging her legs and tugging on her ears and tail.

Fortune was on the party’s side, and Pinkie Pie’s first attempt to free Rarity from the amber stasis field was successful. It also only took three more doses of Lesser Restoration to restore Applejack’s strength. Rarity, as an undead, did not need to sleep to regain spells – merely to rest – so she spent the next few hours studying the book on portals, careful to avoid the trapped section in the preface.

The mephits, and Pinkie Pie, occasionally tried to read over Rarity’s shoulder, but the text was dense and the few pictures were complicated and heavily annotated diagrams, so they found little to interest them. Twilight tried to start another lecture, but the mephits had had their fill. Rainbow Dash tried to challenge them to an arm wrestling contest, and after nearly tearing one of their arms off, only Fluttershy’s quick intervention – with words and a healing spell – kept a fight from breaking out.

After countless hours of reading, during which the entire party (not just the mephits) started to get increasingly antsy and stir crazy from being cooped up in a large but rather sparsely furnished room, Rarity closed the Tome and sighed. “I have good news, and bad news,” she said.

“What’s the good news?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“I know how to close the portal, permanently.”

“Do we really care?” Twilight asked. “If we can chase off the kobolds here, the orcs can keep the controls under guard, and just make sure it stays closed.”

Rarity shook her head. “The bad news is that we need to close the portal, permanently, or Rally is doomed.”

“Explain,” Twilight said.

“The portal is a prototype,” Rarity said. “It has, let us say, ‘quirks’. One of its quirks is that it weakens the dimensional barrier any time any sort of portal or teleportation magic is used in the general vicinity. The general vicinity is interpreted very, very loosely. Rally, for example, is easily within range.”

“And it’s chock full of wizards, teleporting willy-nilly,” Applejack said.

“Not to mention the crazy people who keep opening smoke portals,” Pinkie Pie said. “Oh! And the blink dog couriers. They’re blinking all the time!”

Twilight winced. “I didn’t even think about the blink dogs.”

Rarity continued. “The text indicates that the effect is minor and ignorable, but given what we’ve seen happening in the world lately, I think we can all agree that the author was being a little bit optimistic.”

“So how do we close it, then?” Applejack asked.

Rarity reopened the book, and flipped it to a certain page, with an intricate illustration of a portal stabilizer. “Since the controls are on this side, the stabilizers will be on the far side, and we need to go through and destroy them.”

“Right,” Twilight said. “Like knocking over the candles for the little portals.”

“Except that these candles are thirty six foot tall stone obelisks,” Applejack said, examining the illustration.

“Inches, Applejack,” Rarity corrected. “Thirty six inches. Still not completely trivial, but it should at least be within our power.”

“Assuming we can even get to them,” Twilight said. “The kobolds seemed very scared of whatever it was that’s on the other side of that portal.”

“Oh no,” Rainbow Dash said. “We’ll have to face something that even kobolds fear. I’m quaking in my boots.”

“You’re not wearing boots,” Pinkie Pie said.

“In the weird alternate universe where ‘scares kobolds’ means ‘scares Rainbow Dash’, I am,” she said.

“Oh! Are you a kobold there?” Pinkie Pie asked.

Rainbow stared at her for a few seconds, then rolled her eyes. “So, right. We fight our way to the portal controls, open the portal, kill whatever’s on the other side, then knock over a few obelisks. Easy peasy, and the world is saved forever. No more stupid undead, no more smoke portals, just sunshine and rainbows.”

“Mmm,” Rarity said. “Perhaps.”

Twilight motioned for her to continue.

“This isn’t Rendrax the Magnificent’s original manuscript,” Rarity said, tapping the tome. “It’s a first edition, quite valuable, but it was printed in Bright Valley. There’s no telling how many other copies of it are out there.”

For a few seconds, there was silence.

Twilight broke it, turning towards the mephits with a terrifying grin on her face, her mane starting to look frazzled under her helmet. “Sooo… friends… we’re friends, right?” She lunged towards them, one eye twitching. “How’s the Plane of Air this time of year? Temperate? Breathable atmosphere? Plenty of ground for ponies without wings to stand on?”

The mephits backed away from her, and hid behind Fluttershy, shivering.

Eventually, the party managed to convince Twilight that they didn’t need to abandon the world to its inevitable fate quite yet – there would be plenty of time to jump ship later, after things got really bad. Rarity sat down to meditate and memorize her day’s spells.

“Remember to memorize a Knock,” Pinkie Pie said. “Otherwise we’re stuck down here.”

Rarity frowned. “Knock?”

“I helped you write it into your book,” Pinkie Pie said. “It opens doors. Even locked ones!”

“You want me to use Knock to open that door,” she said, gesturing at the massive vault door that had them trapped. “A modern, admantium-reinforced vault door with a mechanism that likely weighs several tons.”

“Uh huh,” Pinkie said. She frowned. “Is it going to be hard? Will you need to memorize two?”

Rarity shook her head. “Pinkie, I can’t Knock that door. An arch-wizard might manage to pull it off, but I’m not nearly powerful enough to even have a chance! Applejack would have better luck picking the lock.”

“Uh, don’t know if you noticed, but there’s no lock to pick on this side,” Applejack said.

“Precisely,” Rarity hissed. “We’re going to need another way out.”

“Um…” Fluttershy said. “I might have a way out. The forces of nature are pleased with the amount of fighting we’ve been doing, and I’ve got a few new spells. One of them lets me shape stone?”

“Yeah, and I worked up a new formula,” Pinkie Pie said. “It’ll let you burrow through solid stone, and leave a tunnel behind too.”

Twilight tapped her hammer against the back wall. There was a loud clang of metal on metal. “I don’t suppose any of you learned ‘shape metal’?”

“Oh,” Fluttershy said. “Sorry.”

“Never fear,” Rarity said. “If it’s up to me to save the day, then save the day I shall. Pinkie Pie, prepare the burrowing infusing – we’ll need that as well.”

“As well as what?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“I could leave it as a surprise,” Rarity said, smirking. “But fine, since you’re twisting my leg. Diamond Spray was never intended as an attack spell. It’s meant for breaching walls.”

After an hour of spell preparation, the party was finally ready to leave the vault. Twilight closed the portal, and packed up the books and candles to take with them, in case they needed them later. The party put up their long-ish term defensive spells, including a communal ‘delay poison’ from Pinkie Pie that would keep everypony from suffering the effects of any poison they ran into until it wore off.

“One sip each,” Pinkie said, as she passed the infusion around. “Save enough for everypony!”

Rarity handed the metamagic rod of reach spell back to Fluttershy. “Sorry, dear, I forgot I still had this. I memorized my communal resistance with reach spell natively, this time, so I don’t require it any longer.”

“Thank you,” Fluttershy said, “for giving me back my own property, which I paid for and everything,” she added, in a mumble.

“Any time, dear,” Rarity said sweetly. “Now if we’re all ready…”

At the party’s general assent, Rarity aimed at the ceiling, and sprayed a cone of diamond shards at the metal there. The noise was terrible, and metal dust and debris flew everywhere, but when the smoke cleared, there was a half-inch crater in the ceiling, revealing more metal behind it.

“Um…” Applejack said.

"You memorized two, right?" Pinkie Pie said, giggling nervously.

Rarity frowned. “Not as such, no. I could try a fireball…”

“Okay, stop right there,” Twilight said, lifting her hammer. “Let me handle this.”

“You’re fixing to hammer through the metal?” Sergeant Macintosh asked, looking skeptical.

Twilight spun the hammer around, to show him the pointy end. “It’s a Lucerne Hammer. It’s designed to puncture armor plating and tear away chunks of it to expose the pony inside. I don’t usually do that because armor is expensive and we can sell it, but this is basically the same thing.” She swung at the thinned section of ceiling, and with a ‘chunk’, the hammer hooked itself into place. “Trust me, I’m a professional. Now I just need to pull…”

There was an ear-peircing screech, and the section of ceiling peeled downwards, revealing bare stone.

“Wooooow,” said one of the mephits, staring at the flap of jagged, torn metal in amazement. He poked at it, but it didn’t budge, being solid iron.

“It’s just a simple application of leverage,” Twilight said. “Now let’s get out of here. We have a portal to close.”

> Behind Enemy Lines
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Because of his large size and relatively high capacity for independent thought, Sergeant Macintosh was the one to take the Burrow infusion. The party had him dig the tunnel in a spiraling arc upwards, aiming generally towards the room where they’d left the rest of Rarity’s skeletal dragons. They were about fifty feet short and a level too low when they burst out into a massive dimly lit cavern, with glowing mushrooms growing everywhere, and a waterfall at the south end that fed a meandering stream that ended in a marshy pile of odorous waste to the north.

It was also full to the brim with hundreds of kobolds of all sizes, completely surrounding the new tunnel entrance that Sergeant Macintosh had just opened in the floor. For a few seconds, everypony and kobold stared stupidly at each other.

Applejack was the first to react, walking out into the midst of them. “Okay, y’all. You don’t look like the fightin’ sort, so if you surrender and lay down with your claws behind your heads –“

She was answered with a volley of arrows out of the darkness. Most of them went wide, but one planted itself right in her chest, interrupting her speech.

“If that’s the way you want it,” Twilight shouted, pushing past both Applejack and Macintosh and taking a wild swing with her hammer, which somehow failed to connect with anything – the kobolds were unprepared for a fight, but still small and quick.

Rainbow Dash was right behind her, but sailed up over the crowd and zeroed in on the ones with bows. Behind her, Pinkie Pie threw a vial of flaming alchemist’s fire into the crowd, and the screaming started.

The party was swarmed by panicking kobolds – Twilight and Applejack were surrounded by frenzied little lizard-dogs who desperately clawed at their armor, Macintosh could barely hold back the rampaging horde that was trying to escape down the tunnel the party had come out of, and Pinkie and Rainbow Dash were pelted with dozens of rocks and sticks.

“Hey, stop it! Get away from our friends!” cried the air mephits. Several of them hopped onto Macintosh’s shoulders and head, and breathed cones of sand and grit into the crowd surrounding the party, slicing shallow wounds into their scales, a few of kobolds going down as a particularly nasty shard sliced open their throat or chest. The rest of the mephits leapfrogged into the air and breathed on other parts of the crowd from above, spreading pain and death and panic among the screaming masses.

Then the door – where the two bow-wielding kobolds wearing actual armor and armed with actual weapons were standing, next to a fortified barricade that was pointing the wrong way – exploded in flames. The two guards survived, but dozens of unarmed kobolds, desperately trying to climb the barricade to get out of the room, perished in fire. Then Garble burst from the tunnel, landing in the middle of the crowd and crushing a random kobold in his teeth.

Applejack looked around desperately, but there was nowhere to hide that wasn’t full of screaming kobolds. She killed three of the ones closest to her, and tried to join up with Twilight whose second attempt sent a kobold’s head splattering against the ceiling. Nearby, Macintosh lay about him with his lance.

Four air elementals flew from the cave, turning into whirlwinds and sweeping up any kobold too slow to dodge. Dozens of victims splattered against the walls and ceiling, unable to withstand the crushing winds for more than an instant.

Overhead, Pinkie Pie found herself the focus of the archers’ ire, but her ablative barrier kept the arrows from hurting her as she tossed another vial into the crowd, killing another half dozen. Rainbow Dash was more focused, and zeroed in on the actual warriors, shouting “Elemental Fist!” Lightning flashed, and the body of one of the archers flew over the barrier and into the hallway beyond, landing with a thump.

The rest of the kobolds remained berserk, although none of them were getting any closer to Macintosh, Twilight, or Applejack. A few were trapped in close combat, and the rest threw whatever they could get their claws on, but none did much damage. Some of them aimed at the mephits, but the projectiles passed through the small creatures like they were made out of air.

Rarity gave an insane cackle as she flung another fireball into the densest remaining concentration of kobolds, while her pet dragon lashed out with fangs and claws, tearing apart the panicking creatures that tried to run from him.

Rainbow Dash, standing in front of the southern exit to the cavern, spotted several doors opening in the corridor beyond, and a dozen more kobold warriors charged out into the hallway, while arrows from the far end pinged against the stone walls, narrowly missing her. The remaining kobold next to her glanced nervously at the large lever that was positioned between them, behind the barricade, and tried to push her back away from it, prodding at her with his rapier.

“So you don’t want me to pull this, huh?” Rainbow asked, ducking a second stab and grabbing hold of the lever. “Well, let’s see what it does.”

She gave it a yank, and the floor in the tunnel outside dropped away, dumping the kobold reinforcements into an acid-filled pit. As they screamed and splashed into the hissing green liquid, Rainbow let go of the lever, and the floor closed up, cutting off their agonized shrieks.

“Noooo!” screamed the kobold in anger, just before a fiery bomb exploded in his face and his scream turned to something with less words and more clawing helplessly at his face as his eyes melted. He was put out of his misery by a passing elemental slamming him into the wall and breaking his neck, as the quartet of whirlwinds went screaming down the corridor towards the archers at the far end – only to be stopped by a hastily shut door.

Rainbow Dash turned back to look at how the rest of the party was doing, only to see that aside from the seven of them, and the mephits, nothing in the cavern remained alive.

“That was way too easy,” she said, taking cover behind the barricade and peering over the top to watch for anyone else approaching, her claws on the lever that controlled the trap.

What was left of the kobolds’ mushroom farm was a gruesome field of death. Small flames burned from tents or bodies that had been set alight, illuminating dozens – hundreds of shattered corpses, most of which had died in agony. None of them had any armor, or any weapon more dangerous than a sharpened stick. Twilight, Applejack, and Macintosh were knee-deep in a pile of corpses, and covered in kobold blood, and the stench of burning flesh filled the air.

A quick scan of the room’s perimeter revealed that while there was a northern exit, a twisty tunnel which would have connected with the guard room they’d found earlier, it was thoroughly collapsed. The only entrance to the chamber was the hallway that Rainbow Dash was guarding. Behind a gauntlet of traps and all of their warriors, the kobolds’ civilians had thought themselves safe.

They had been wrong, and now they were all dead.

Twilight Sparkle’s face was grim as she took out a sheet of paper and a quill, and checked off ‘Exterminate the Kobolds’ from her list of objectives.

“Oh, Blaze take the lot of them,” Applejack said, her tail dragging in the bloody mud. “Why did they have to go and fight? Not a one of them had the slightest clue what they were doing, and they had to know who we were.”

“Applejack, Applejack, it’s not your fault,” Pinkie Pie said, patting the sulking kitty on the head as her ears flattened. “Kobolds are really, really dumb.”

“No, Pinkie, they ain’t,” Applejack said. “They’re smart as any other folk. I guess they just panicked.”

“They were weak,” Fluttershy said. “Now only the strongest kobolds remain. Maybe you can make peace with them?”

Applejack turned to look at her. “After we killed all their kids and families? You really think they’ll give up now? Now they’ve got nothin’ to lose?”

Fluttershy looked away.

“Here,” Twilight said, looking up at the spot on the ceiling. “Macintosh, if you’re still able to burrow, dig up right here. Everyone else, stand back – the ceiling here looks really unstable.”

They had to cast Reduce Person on Macintosh so that Garble could lift him to the ceiling, but once there it was the work of moments for the ceiling to crumble and drop chunks of rock on both the pony and the skeleton, crushing and burying them. There was a scream of panic as a kobold in the room above tried to grab hold of the crumbling edge of the floor, only to plummet and smack into the pile of rocks, where he lay unmoving. Sparky II, Opal, and Crackle descended in a more dignified manner.

As Macintosh burrowed his way out of the pile of rubble, Fluttershy examined the kobold who’d fallen – the one they’d taken prisoner, the day before. “I think I can save him,” she said.

“Don’t bother,” Applejack spat. “As soon as he finds out we killed his whole tribe, he’ll just kill us as soon as he gets the chance. Nothing we can do to work with any of them now. Might as well let him die not knowing. He’ll be happier that way.”

Fluttershy nodded, and kept watch on the kobold as he slowly bled out onto the rocks.

“How are the mephits holding up?” Twilight asked, as Rarity wove her way through the piles of bodies, bringing up the rear.

“Disturbingly well,” Rarity replied, glancing back at the curious creatures as they laughed and played with the dead bodies and debris. “I’m not sure that they understand what happened.”

“Might be best if we left them here, then,” Twilight said. “We came up behind the kobolds’ lines, but it won’t take them long to switch things around to keep us bottled up in here. We need to find the portal controls before they spring something nasty on us.”

While the party could burrow wherever they wanted, returning to the level above seemed pointless unless they planned to leave immediately. The choice was between burrowing through the west wall to return to the theater, and taking the only existing exit. Since the corridor Rainbow was watching led through what would have been the backstage area of a working theater, it seemed a better bet for finding the control room.

Examining the hallway, Applejack was able to verify that the floor was breakaway and would drop anypony without wings into a pit when triggered, and that she could jam it shut to make the hallway navigable, although she’d have to re-jam it every five feet to be safe. There were also arrow slits in either wall, although only the south wall had doors. A quick stealthy peek through the nearest slit in the north wall showed that it opened up onto the stage. The curtain was still closed, but from this side they could see that there was an arrangement of ropes and pulleys woven through the scaffolding far overhead.

As far as Applejack could tell from looking at it through the narrow slit, everything on stage – including the curtain and hopefully the portal – was controlled from the room at the far end of the hall. 

“Is that burrow infusion still working?” Twilight asked.

“Should have a minute or two left,” Pinkie Pie said.

Twilight nodded. “Then I say we forget the pit-trap hallway and use the stage. Burrow through the wall right here, run across the stage to the far end, and burrow right into the control room. If we’re quiet about it, they’ll never know what hit them.”

“Burrowing isn’t really quiet,” Rarity said.

Twilight smirked. “It is if Mac drinks a potion of silence first.” She frowned. “They’re probably watching the hallway. Can we get a cloud of mist to keep them from seeing what’s going on?”

“Of course, darling,” Rarity replied. “Do we want to do any other preparations?”

“Potions for everypony!” Pinkie Pie said, passing out her Shield and Beast Shape infusions. “And then…”

Rarity gestured, and the end of the hallway was obscured by a cloud of mist. Macintosh downed the potion of silence, and vanished into the mist. When they could hear again, the others followed, through the ragged hole torn in the wall.

As soon as the party emerged from the mist, while Macintosh was still halfway across the stage towards the far wall, there was the creak and groaning of a mechanism being triggered, and the entire stage sank twenty feet, leaving them in a large, deep pit. Arrows rained down on Macintosh from arrow slits in the far wall – likely from the control room – and with a clattering, rasping, grating noise, the curtains covering the portal began to open, letting through a dim green glow from a widening gap in the middle.

Rainbow Dash screeched in anger and charged at the kobolds shooting at them, but as an eagle wasn’t any more able to fit through the narrow arrow slits than she would have been as a griffon. The warriors ignored her, firing past her to target Macintosh, whose burrowing infusion was the real threat.

Applejack flew up to the catwalks, grabbed one of the sliding ropes in her teeth, and jammed it into a spinning gear, stopping one half of the curtains from opening any further, at least for the moment. She looked around, but didn’t see anypony else up in the darkness with her.

Fluttershy dashed across the room, keeping out of line of sight of the arrow slits as she prepared to open a larger hole in the wall. Below her, Macintosh tore at the stone at the edge of the pit, but it would take a while for him to burrow up into the control room from that far below.

Twilight looked around, unsure what she could do to help, and Rarity laid a hoof on her shoulder. “Come, we must be closer,” she said, leading the fighter across the stage toward the arrow slits. “Once one of our friends opens a hole, I can get you up there to destroy them all.”

Twilight nodded. “I’ll be ready, then.”

Behind her, spots of darkness appeared in the green glow from the portal, which was still opening, although only at half speed. Kobold-shaped pools of darkness flung themselves from the light onto the dimly lit stage, and silently sped towards the nearest living creature they could spot. The first Twilight – or anypony – knew of their presence was when they dove on her and latched on with chilling claws, draining her strength and leaving her to collapse under the weight of her armor, as she felt pieces of her soul torn away.

She screamed in agony, and suddenly the party realized that the kobolds and their arrows weren’t the biggest threat.

Rainbow Dash pushed off the wall and dove at the shadows, sheathed in lightning as she struck, but while its form was tattered, she couldn’t get a solid hit on a creature with no substance, and it clung to its unlife.

“Close it. Close it!” Twilight shouted, and Applejack tried to comply, but the best she could manage for the moment was to keep it from opening any further – there was still a five foot gap between the curtain edges, plenty of room for more shadows to emerge.

Fluttershy dropped onto Twilight’s back, and cast a ward which she hoped would hide them from the shadows. “Be quiet, and still, and maybe they won’t see us,” she whispered in Twilight’s ear.

There was a *whump* as Pinkie Pie threw a bomb at the shadows – a wave of force passed by Twilight and Fluttershy, but tore into the undead, dispersing the one that Rainbow had already wounded. Rarity’s dragons tried to finish the other two off, but their attacks were sadly non-magical, and passed harmlessly through the undead.

Rarity glowered at the shadows. “OBEY ME!” she cried, and one of them recoiled, struggling in the grip of her will. The other hissed at her, and lunged again at Twilight – but while her body was weak, her mind and her magic were unaffected, and her hammer smashed it to ribbons before it could finish her off. Fluttershy squeaked as her spell was broken.

“Sorry,” Twilight said. “But it wasn’t working, and I don’t think I can take another hit.”

Something much larger than the shadows they’d fought loomed in the portal, but with it only open a crack only another of the smaller shadows could fit through. It flew at Pinkie Pie, but she was able to outmaneuver it and stay away from its claws.

Overhead, Applejack looked around at the ropes and pulleys she’d jammed, and spotted what she needed to do. She grabbed another rope and looped it around a slowly spinning gear, and as the mechanism groaned and creaked from the strain, the curtains slowly began to close.

Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash finished off the new shadow, as an arrow from the kobolds sank into Pinkie’s thigh, blood gushing down her leg as it hit an artery. “We can hold off the shadows! You guys get the kobolds!”

“Okay,” Fluttershy said, and touched her rod of reach spell – and the wall near the arrow slits reshaped slightly, an inch-thick gap appearing around a twenty-foot high section of wall, which slid down to form a ramp. Briefly. Before sliding the rest of the way to the ground and shattering. Still, the kobolds were left exposed.

“Special delivery, one magic unicorn!” Rarity said, cackling, as she pointed a hoof at Twilight, and an invisible force flung the immobilized unicorn right into the midst of the enemies. “Charge!”

Twilight squealed as she flew through the air, “Rarity, whaaaaa –“ but she swing her hammer instinctively at the fanciest looking of the enemies, and it smacked solidly into his chest. He was still moving, so she hit him again, and caught one of his friends on the backswing, as his shattered body flew down onto the stage. The skeletal dragons were right behind her, tearing into the survivors and tearing them apart, their attempts to fight back or escape futile, trapped between Twilight and the phalanx of skeletons.

The huge dark shadow beyond the veil surged at the closing portal, but it shut, just in time. There was a *thud* and the iron-hard curtains rippled, but no more shadows came through.

Rainbow Dash finished off the last of the small shadows with another lightning blow.

“Rainbow! That one was mine!” Rarity complained. The griffon-turned-eagle screeched back at her, and she rolled her eyes. “I suppose I’m better off focusing on more powerful undead. Still, you could have asked.”

“Good work Applejack!” Pinkie Pie shouted up into the rafters. “You really saved our…” she dropped, and skidded to a halt on the still-lowered stage floor, and took a look at her leg. “Wow. That’s really gushing.”

“Then heal it,” Fluttershy said, as she flew into the tunnel Macintosh was still burrowing. She paused at the edge of the silence, and used her rod of reach to close the similar wound she’d spotted on him.

“Fine, make me do everything myself,” Pinkie Pie said, giggling as she took out her wand. “Boop!”

Twilight found the lever to return the stage to ground level, and the party gathered in the control room. Pinkie Pie tried to brew up a remedy to restore Twilight’s strength, but she’d used so many on Applejack that morning that she couldn’t even give the unicorn enough strength to walk.

“I guess I’m riding in Garble again,” Twilight said.

“Or you could take off your armor,” Applejack suggested.

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” Twilight replied. “It’s the first rule of adventuring – never take off your armor. Except to sleep.”

“And bathe,” Rarity suggested.

Twilight shook her head. “Bathing is inefficient if the party has a wizard capable of casting Prestidigitation.”

“And so is using the chamberpot,” Pinkie Pie said, grinning. “You can go in your armor and nopony will know, then whisk it away with magic later!”

“Huh,” Twilight said. “I hadn’t thought of that.”

“I’m not wiping your bottom for you,” Rarity said. “If normal biological processes are too complicated for you to handle, I’m sure that you’ll be much happier as an undead.”

“Well, I came awfully close just now,” Twilight said. “Shadows, huh.”

“Yeah,” Applejack said. “Shadows.”

“Big shadows,” Pinkie Pie added. “Only the teeny weeny ones got through, but there was a big one waiting.”

“We’re not really prepared to fight shadows, are we,” Twilight said. “We have no defenses, and only a few effective attacks.”

“So… shopping trip?” Pinkie Pie asked.

Twilight nodded. “I don’t think we have any choice.”

> Rush Hour
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hoping to get the necessary supplies before all of their defensive spells expired – or at least before  the hundreds of kobolds they’d killed came back to life – the party loaded all their looted treasure onto Rarity’s skeletal dragons, along with the nearly-paralyzed Twilight Sparkle, and Rarity herself to direct them. They were instructed to buy only what they needed in order to fight the shadows – the rest would be split up among the party as normal.

In the meantime, Applejack would work on repairing the portal controls, while the others guarded the area to keep the kobolds from trying anything.

“We’ve got to do something about all those bodies,” Applejack said, as she unwound the tangled ropes so that she could re-set the gears that had popped off their shafts after her sabotage. “There’s a sanctified graveyard at the fort. We could bury ’em there.”

“Or we could use the pit full of acid that’s right here,” Rainbow Dash said. “It’s got a lid that automatically closes and everything.”

Applejack frowned. “Won’t dissolving ‘em in acid just turn ‘em all into ghosts? Last thing we need is an army of kobold ghosts.”

“Nah,” Pinkie Pie said. “I recognize the stuff. A green acid like that, that doesn’t eat through stone won’t eat their bones either. So we’ll just get a horde of acid skeletons, trapped in a pit. It’ll be the most trapped pit ever!”

Moving the hundreds of kobold bodies into the pit took a while. Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, Macintosh, and Pinkie Pie were still working on the task by the time Applejack finished repairing the portal mechanism. She took a look at them, covered in soot and blood, and said, “I’ll go scout for the nest of rebels that’s supposed to be hidden around somewhere. Don’t go anywhere.”

It didn’t take Applejack long to find them. After eliminating the two exits from the control room – one of which led to the acid pit hallway which the others were filling with kobolds, the other of which was a straight shot to the guard room at the far end, and probably also full of traps – there was only one place left to check. When Fluttershy had attempted to shape the wall into a ramp out of the stage when it was a pit, she’d exposed an additional room on the top level, right above the control room.

The room was heavily trapped, but a quick check showed that all the traps were controlled from the room below, which would have made it safe to walk through even if Applejack couldn’t fly. Of the two exits from that room, one led to the balcony door that the kobolds had previously booby-trapped – there were a few other rooms down that way, but they were abandoned and empty. The other exit led to a hallway that ran behind the stage catwalks, dead-ending somewhere near the twisting tunnel they’d originally come through to enter the dungeon.

Halfway there was a set of barricades surrounding a heavily reinforced door, which was currently closed and locked. Listening at the door, Applejack could hear low kobold voices and other sounds of movement. 

Applejack silently retreated from the door, and headed down to get Fluttershy. “Hey, sugarcube. You got another one of those stone shape spells?”

She nodded.

“Then come on. I’ve got a door that I’d rather not have opening any time soon.”

The door wasn’t very large, and Fluttershy was able to spread almost a foot-thick layer of stone over it, ensuring that it would probably not be opening ever – it would be slightly easier for the kobolds inside to dig out through the walls.

Aside from that encampment, there were no signs of any kobolds anywhere else in the complex – if there were any left alive, they were staying hidden, or perhaps had run away down the passage that led deeper into the underdark, to take their chances with the dark elves.

With Applejack finally lacking any excuse not to help, they managed to dump all the bodies into the pit a few minutes before Twilight and Rarity returned, goggles covering their eyes and their manes windswept.

All told, it had taken them a little less than an hour – the barkskin, delay poison, and Fluttershy’s invisibility purge were still in effect, although they would be expiring soon.

“First off, how much did you spend,” Applejack said, as the two giggling mares extracted themselves from the dragons’ rib cages.

Twilight’s horn glowed, and five gold pieces dropped into a pile at Applejack’s feet.

“This is my share?” she asked, one ear flattening.

Twilight grinned. “Nooo, that’s all of what’s left. You can split it up while we pass out what we bought.”

“What’s got you in such a good mood?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight reached up and removed her goggles, placing them in her saddlebag, before re-donning her helmet. “Um. The dragons. They were fast.”

“How fast?” asked one of the mephits. The six had wandered off while the adventurers were moving bodies, but two of them had wandered back to greet Twilight and Rarity upon their return.

“Undead are tireless,” Rarity explained. “That means we could have them fly at full speed the whole way there. We covered twenty miles in twenty minutes.”

“And I had my eyes closed the whole time, because the wind was, wow,” Twilight said. “But goggles are cheap if you don’t need them enchanted, so I could see everything on the way back.”

“I’m surprised you weren’t shot down by the army,” Macintosh said.

“Well, we were stopped, but we just showed them our ID and they let us past,” Rarity said. “We’re not the first adventurers to go rushing around at impossible speeds. They were mostly confused since we were using skeletons instead of the more traditional ‘phantom steed’ spell.”

“When we got to the guild, we headed right to the purchase area instead of waiting at the desk,” Twilight said. “They dragged me off to a cleric to heal me, while Rarity handled the purchases.”

“You let Rarity decide what to buy,” Applejack said. “All on her lonesome.”

”What did she do, blow it all on some mumbo jumbo to let her skeletons fight shadows for us?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Basically,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes. “I think it’s safe to say that she isn’t getting a share the next time we have a bunch of treasure to divide up.”

“Hmph!” Rarity turned up her nose. “Amulets of Ghost Touch were the most effective way to let them assist us against the shadows, and in the long run my skeletons will be our most effective weapon against incorporeal undead. They’re naturally immune to almost everything that sort of undead uses as an attack. Speaking of which,” she took out a bag and passed it to Fluttershy. “I didn’t spend all of the gold on my pets. A good chunk went to those scrolls of Death Ward. They won’t last long, but it should be plenty of time to destroy the shadows, or at least the portal stabilizers.”

“We also got Pinkie a wand of lesser restoration so that she can stop using all her infusions on it,” Twilight said. “And a ghost-touch rapier for you, Applejack. It’s a better weapon than your dagger for most normal fighting, and it’ll let you hit shadows’ vital areas. I know precision is most of your combat style, so it was more important that you have ghost touch than me or Macintosh.”

“What about –“ Rainbow Dash started, before Rarity tossed her one of the Ghost Touch amulets. “Oh. Thanks. I’ve already got an amulet.”

“Yes,” Twilight said. “Unfortunately, the only standard item to enchant all of your natural weapons at once is an amulet, so you’ll have to switch off. There was a ‘body wrap of mighty strikes’ –“

“Yeah, I saw those last time we were shopping,” Rainbow Dash said. “It looked like a good deal until I read the fine print. It’s basically useless.”

Twilight nodded. “So, is the portal ready?”

“We’re good to go here,” Applejack said.

“Then let’s get those Death Ward spells up, and bring on the shadows!”

Even though the party hadn’t bought Death Ward spells for them, the mephits were eager to follow them to the other plane…

“No,” Fluttershy said firmly. “You will die, and turn into more shadows for us to fight. Stay here, okay? We’ll be back soon.”

…but Fluttershy was able to convince them to stay behind in the trap-filled dungeon, where it was relatively safe. Once she’d cast the Death Ward spells on all the living members of the party, Applejack threw the lever in the control room, and the curtains began to open, filling the stage with a bright green light.

And shadows. Lots of shadows.

Three of the kobold shadows leapt through the gate as it opened, rushing at the three nearest targets – Rainbow Dash managed to dodge, but Pinkie Pie took a set of dark claws down her side, while Twilight was caught off guard, and the shadow that attacked her was able to rake its claws across her throat and sink them deep into her chest – it would have been a devastating hit, if the Death Ward spell hadn’t rendered the shadows’ attacks completely pointless.

“Wow, I didn’t even feel that,” Pinkie Pie said. “I think I’ll save my bombs.”

Applejack swooped down from the control room to stab the shadow assaulting Twilight with her new rapier, and the creature jerked and twitched as she impaled it through what would have been its heart, had it not been a soulless monstrosity. Macintosh finished it off with his lance, sweeping the enchanted weapon through its form and dispersing it.

Fluttershy hit the shadow menacing Pinkie Pie with a crossbow bolt, and Twilight trotted over and dispersed it with her hammer. “If all we’re up against are these little ones, it’ll be trivial,” Twilight said. “We saw something larger last time, though – it might not even be a shadow, so stay on your guard.”

Rainbow Dash gave the third shadow a one-two punch, destroying it. “Yeah, yeah, thank you captain obvious.”

“Now now, Rainbow,” Rarity said, as she set her skeletons to lurk in wait to either side of the widening gap in the curtains. “Twilight is at best a corporal. She was never commissioned, after all.”

The curtain swung open wider, and three more tiny kobold shadows flew out to uselessly menace the party, this time flying towards Macintosh, Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie again. Once again, the Death Wards held, and the shadows’ claws passed through their targets to no effect.

But a much larger darkness loomed in the portal. Pinkie Pie got a bomb ready to throw at it when it finally came through.

As Applejack sprung across the stage to skewer – and instantly destroy – the shadow who’d tried to claw Fluttershy, the looming darkness finally arrived.

It was a giant, bristly worm, ten feet long. A shadow itself, but its mouth dripped with liquid shadows that sizzled as they ate away at the wooden floor. It lunged at Rainbow Dash, and while the Death Ward protected her strength from being drained by its mandibles, it also showered her fur and feathers with acid, leaving painful burns.

Rarity’s skeletons were waiting for it, and bit at its shadowy flesh, but only one of them managed to hit the swiftly writhing worm with a solid bite. The creature hissed in pain, but it was a minor wound. Pinkie Pie’s bomb exploded in a burst of concussive force, which rippled down its length, but it managed to stay in the air.

Macintosh ignored the impotent shadow who’d tried to claw him, and charged at the new threat – like Pinkie, Rainbow Dash was flying close to the ground to lure the shadows in range of his and Twilight’s attacks. His lance struck true, and he dragged it down the length of the worm, but it was a merely physical weapon, and could not tear the worm’s guts out like it might have. Still, the shadowy substance of the creature was heavily disrupted by the powerful charge.

Twilight followed, swiping her hammer through the creature’s head, with similar results. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Just keep it up – it can’t take much more!”

Then the Gloomwings arrived. Or rather, the gloomwing shadows, their wings writhing black on black and an aura of weakness washing over everyone near them. The Death Ward protected the party from the aura, but did nothing against the confusion from the wings, and nopony had prepared to avert their gaze.

Rainbow Dash managed to keep her head together, and lightning crackled around her fist as she punched the acid-spitting shadow – which burst open, destroyed at last. With a final scream, it dissipated, and the rest of the shadows stopped, almost as if they were afraid. The two remaining kobold shadows turned and ran back through the portal.

“You are mine!” Rarity said, sending a burst of darkness at the shadow gloomwings. Two of them wavered, and flew over to her side. She gestured for them to fly up into the catwalks, where they would be too far away to confuse the party with their wings.

As Pinkie Pie gnawed on her own leg, and Applejack tried to skewer Fluttershy, the skeletal dragons fell on the remaining gloomwing shadow and tore it to pieces. Twilight ran full speed into a wall, while Fluttershy clumsily took a swing at Applejack with her unloaded crossbow, but with the gloomwings gone, they were able to snap out of their funk. The others also came to their senses shortly, without doing any serious damage to themselves or their companions.

Twilight staggered a bit, and rubbed her forehead near her horn, which she’d just tried to drive into a stone wall. “I hate gloomwings.”

“There’s probably more on the far side,” Applejack said, watching the portal as it opened the rest of the way. “They backed off when we killed the big one, but they might pounce us again if we go through.”

As the curtain reached its furthest extent, the green glow brightened into a brief, blinding flash – and then instead of an opaque barrier, what they saw was a window into another world.

There was a wide clearing, a hundred feet in diameter, surrounded by ropey walls of vines and thorns and sticks – changeling construction, like they’d seen at the camp up on the mesa. This looked older and better made, but it was also completely dead. The leaves were brown and curled, the vines shriveled, and the ground dry and dusty. Here and there were shattered eggs, with the skeletons of young changelings and kobolds lying abandoned. Something seemed off about them…

“They don’t have shadows,” Pinkie Pie whimpered.

“Yes, they do,” Rarity replied softly. “We were just fighting them.”

Around the perimeter of the clearing were the portal stabilizers, set in a circle. The party could see four, but if the spacing continued there were a total of eight. As far as the party could see, there was nothing moving in the clearing – no sign of the shadows, or anything else.

“Let’s go,” Twilight said. “We smash one of them at a time. If the portal starts to flicker, everyone run back through – we won’t have long before it collapses, and I don’t want to be trapped in the middle of an undead changeling nest.”

“And if it just up and shuts off all sudden-like?” Applejack asked.

“When we put out the candles on the air portal, it flickered for a few seconds before it shut,” Twilight said. “This portal works on the same principles, so I’m willing to bet it’ll have the same behavior.”

“Willing to bet all our lives?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Oh, Nightmare’s teeth, no,” Twilight said, laughing nervously. “If we get trapped, I have several back-up plans for surviving and possibly returning to our own world.  But I don’t think it’ll come to that.”

“Actually, we shouldn’t have anything to worry about,” Rarity said. “According to Rendrax’s Tome, a destabilized portal of this size should take several minutes to close completely.”

Twilight nodded. “But just in case, if there’s any visible sign of the portal wavering, drop everything and run back through.”

“Got it,” Rainbow Dash said, and flew out into the clearing, making a beeline for the nearest obelisk. The rest of the party was close behind.

Before Rainbow could get halfway to the obelisk, giant leprous bats descended from the ceiling, baring their fangs as they swooped at her. Behind them, another shadowy gloomwing flapped its mind-warping wings.

The undead bats surrounded Rainbow Dash, but she managed to twist and dodge and avoid all their attacks. Lightning crackled around one of her claws, but her swing went wide -- her second swing, as well. Frustrated, she head-butted the bat, which connected with its nose, shattering it in a spray of rotting ooze.

Twilight tried to charge in to help her, but caught sight of the gloomwing out of the corner of her eye and ended up tripping over her own hooves. As she stood back up unsteadily, she smacked her hoof against her head, over and over, as if to knock the confusion loose.

Pinkie was right behind, taking out a force bomb to throw at the annoying gloomwing – but as she looked at it to aim, her eyes started to move in circles, and she spaced out, trying to follow the patterns.

Macintosh managed to avert his gaze from the gloomwing, and charged at the ghoul bats menacing Rainbow Dash. The flighty creatures were too agile, however, and what looked like it was about to be a solid hit ended up hitting nothing but air. Clinging to his back, Fluttershy, who’d been less successful with her attempt not to look at the gloomwing, gnawed on his armor, squealing softly.

Rarity tossed a ball of glitter at the ball of bats, blinding several of them, while her dragons swarmed the shadow that was confusing so many of her companions. This one was luckier than the last that they’d attacked, and managed to avoid several of their bites. But while it was distracted, Applejack charged at it with her rapier and skewered it in the head – and it disintegrated, turning to dust which swirled away into nothingness, starting from its wings.

The blinding glittery dust seemed to have no effect on the ghoul bats, which chirped to locate their prey by sound. One sank its teeth into Rainbow Dash, and she felt all her muscles seize up, as she was paralyzed. The others turned to bite Macintosh, and although one managed to get its fangs into him, he shook off the paralysis.

Twilight moved in to assist, smashing her hammer into the bat about to feast on the paralyzed griffon, getting its attention at least, and following through to smash into the back of one of the ones going after Macintosh. Pinkie Pie shook herself out of her daze and used a firebomb, splashing burning liquid over three of the putrid creatures. Fluttershy launched herself from Macintosh’s back, dodged an attack from one of the bats as she passed, and cast a spell to break Rainbow’s paralysis. Then Rarity’s skeletal dragons descended on the melee, each picking out a different bat to savage with their teeth.

Surrounded, the bats had no choice but to fight to the last. One managed to bite Twilight, but couldn’t paralyze her. Then, between Twilight and Macintosh and Rarity’s dragons, which could finally bring their claws and tails as well as their teeth to bear, the bats were utterly destroyed.

If there were any other shadows hiding in the clearing, they stayed hidden.

With all the enemies destroyed who were willing to face the party in combat, it was a simple matter to walk over to the obelisks and shatter them. Twilight was able to shatter two obelisks in about thirty seconds each, with her hammer. Macintosh took about a minute to shatter one with his bare hooves, since trying to use his lance would have shattered it instead of the stone. Rainbow Dash took a little longer than Twilight, and was about halfway through her second when the portal started to shiver, a ripple of instability running around the edge.

As planned, the adventurers dropped everything and ran back through the portal before it collapsed.

After several minutes, it had still not collapsed, and in fact there had been no other sign of instability.

“If we wait any longer, we lose the Death Wards,” Twilight said. “I don’t know if any shadows hiding there can tell, but if they aren’t still intimidated we’ll be defenseless against them.” She took a deep breath. “You all wait here – I’ll go through and smash the rest of the obelisks. I’m best at it.”

“Nope,” Macintosh said. “I’ll go.” The others turned to look at him. “You’re all adventurers, critical to the Empire’s security. I’m just a soldier. If we’re risking anypony on this, it should be me.”

“Okay,” Twilight said. “But you’d better not get lost, mister. Fluttershy needs you.”

“I can be replaced,” he said. “But I don’t intend to die today, don’t you worry.”

The obelisks visible from the stage side of the portal were already smashed, but there was a secret door near the control room – not secret from the control room side – that let them into the theater so that they could watch Macintosh through the other side of the portal as he went to work. He smashed the first obelisk without incident – it had already been weakened by Rainbow Dash. The second took a bit longer, but eventually fell.

As he was working on the third, the Death Ward spells finally faded. For a few seconds, it looked like it wasn’t going to matter, but then the shadows emerged, and began to approach. With a grunt of effort, Macintosh kicked over the obelisk, just as the shadows closed in and began to claw at him, draining him.

He ran for the portal, with the shadows on his tail.

“Come on, come on,” Fluttershy whimpered, as her mount ran for safety.

Macintosh burst through the portal, into the theater, with four dark shadows trailing him. Twilight tried to swing at them as they passed, but her attack went wide. Fluttershy summoned positive energy into her hoof, but didn’t manage to touch the darting shadows with it.

Pinkie Pie did manage to hit them with a force bomb, at least, although it wasn’t enough to destroy them. Rainbow Dash and Applejack followed up, and each managed to finish one off.

The remaining pair stayed focused on Macintosh, draining away a bit more of his strength before Rarity’s belated volley of magic missiles destroyed one of them, and her flight of skeletal dragons overwhelmed the other.

With only one obelisk remaining, the portal’s instability was clearly visible. With nothing else pressing them for time, the party was able to wait for a few more minutes until, with a loud SNAP, the window into the realm of Faerie finally vanished, leaving them watching nothing but an empty stage.

A wave of dispelling energy washed over the party, but most of their active spells had already faded by that point. Rainbow Dash did lose the mage armor spell that Rarity had put on her in the morning, but nopony else was affected.

As Fluttershy embraced her mount, and thanked him for not dying on her, Pinkie Pie took out her new wand to heal his strength drain, but Twilight put a hoof on her shoulder. “Save it,” she said. “It’s much cheaper to just pay someone to cast the spell back in Rally. We’re done here, so there’s no urgent need for him to be at full strength right away.”

“Pay them with what?” Applejack asked. “Rarity spent all our cash, and we didn’t get any more loot from the portal.”

“Oh, come on!” Rainbow Dash said, throwing up her claws. “Are we broke again?”

“Eheh,” Twilight said. “We’ve got five gold – that’s enough for an inn room at least?”

> Portal Hunters
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After healing their wounds and making sure that the remaining kobolds were still locked in their little section of the dungeon, the party left to report to the orcish garrison nearby, and then head on to Rally to look for more work. The air mephits were amazed at the sight of the mountains and prairie and, in general, of so much solid ground, stretching out in all directions, and rushed off to explore it before the party even got to the fort. That was the last they saw of them.

The orc in charge of the garrison thought that it might be worthwhile to contact the breakaway kobold tribe in case they were willing to be reasonable neighbors. The kobolds had once been trading partners and allies, after all. The adventurers decided to leave him to that, and pushed on.

They reached Rally around sundown, and found an inn near the gate where they could spend the night before heading back to the guild to report. There was a curfew in the city, now, with the military not considering it safe for anypony to be out on the streets at night. According to an uncomfirmed rumor from the other people at their inn, anyone caught violating curfew was considered to have ‘volunteered’ to join the army. After all, they wouldn’t risk getting caught by the smoke monsters rumored to be stalking the streets if they weren’t willing to fight.

“So all we need to do is –“ Rainbow Dash started.

“No,” Twilight said. “We’re not going out to get caught in the hopes they’ll let us into the military district after we’re conscripted.”

“Yeah. Being an Adventurer pays way better for the same work. It was posted, remember?” Pinkie Pie pointed out.

“It barely paid anything,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Which is better than the literal nothing they’re giving to ‘volunteers’,” Twilight said. “We’d also have to use standardized equipment and tactics, which would be a complete waste of our talents. Let’s wait until morning, and see if we can use our success against the kobold portal to negotiate for better pay.”

In the morning, they visited the Pathfinder Guild, and while the guild wasn’t paying out for closing random portals, they did pay a small amount for the information on kobold activity, and gave the party a certified copy of their report, verified under Truth Candle, for them to show the military. The military was paying a set fee per portal closed, and they might be able to argue that the kobolds’ portal counted since it had been contributing to dimensional instability.

They were disappointed to hear that the military officer they were told to contact was not stationed inside the closely guarded military district. Instead, they were sent to a small keep built into the western wall, overlooking the barren plains that the orcs had originally called home.

Captain Skyflash, a brightly colored young Pegasus, was available to field their request.

“Yeah, no,” he said. “It’s outside the city, so we can’t pay you. The funds were approved for hiring mercenaries to close portals inside the city. I’d get yelled at if anyone found out. If you’re so hot on closing portals, though, we’ve got a bunch.” He waved a hoof at his map of the city, where a dozen red Xs were scattered throughout the outer section. “How about this one,” he said, pointing to one near one of the larger marketplaces. “There’s smoke, there were mephits until we rolled in and wiped them out, but we couldn’t find the portal. It’s probably underground somewhere. We don’t like sending soldiers underground. Pisses off the Sewer Lords.”

“The who?” Twilight asked.

“Some of the more exclusive establishments set up for business in the city’s original sewer system,” Rarity explained. “Of course it’s been expanded several times since then, so there isn’t any actual sewage.”

“Black Market types,” Applejack added. “Can’t imagine what Rarity would have gone looking for in a place like that.”

“Maybe expensive dragon bones?” Pinkie Pie suggested.

“Presumably nothing illegal,” Twilight said. “At any rate, you want us to search the sewers for a portal you can’t find, Captain?”

Skyflash nodded. “It’s one of the small ones, so it only pays the listed fee, but if you can prove you can handle yourselves, we’ve got a bigger one we’ve been looking for a specialist team for. That’ll pay a bit more.”

“How much are we talking?” Applejack asked.

“Five hundred.” As the party stared at him, unimpressed. “For one day’s work,” he said, throwing up his hooves. “That’s more than I make in a year!”

“Remind me never to join the army,” Rainbow Dash said.

The marketplace near the suspected portal was shrouded in smoke, and looked mostly deserted when the party arrived. After a few minutes of walking around, they spotted where the merchants and customers had gotten off to – one of the nearby blocks had waxed tarps draped over the buildings and alleyways to create a pocket of clear air, maintained by a combination of air elementals and weather-working pegasi at the entrances.

While that allowed the common folk to shop in relatively breathable air, it left several city blocks shrouded in smoke and deserted. Somewhere in the cloud – or underneath it – was the portal that the party had been assigned to close.

“I say I clear away this smoke, and then we’ll be able to see where it’s coming from,” Pinkie Pie said. “Easy as pie.”

“Think you can move the whole thing?” Twilight asked. “It’s huge.”

The pink pegasus shrugged. “Still one cloud, right?”

It took a bit of effort – the massive cloud of smoke kept wanting to break apart into smaller puffs, and ooze around Pinkie Pie and choke her with its fumes – but as a practiced flyer and weatherpony, she was able to keep it in one piece as she lifted it up into the sky. It helped that the smoke wanted to rise, as it was slightly warmer than the surrounding air.

After a minute or so, even the edges of the cloud were twenty feet off the ground, which was enough clearance for the rest of the party to search for the source. Rainbow Dash was the first to spot the smoke rising from a series of tiny cracks in a large glass mosaic set into the middle of a major intersection, which depicted the Emperor as a massive orc, smiting shadowy foes with a flaming spear.

“We’re going to have to pay for this if we break it, I reckon,” Applejack said.

“There’s no reason to break it,” Twilight replied. “We know the portal is underneath the street, here, and that there’s a network of tunnels and sewers. We can find an actual entrance and work our way around.”

Applejack was the one to spot the suspicious markings near a small sunken doorway beneath a building nearby, which reminded her of the symbols she and her friends had used to mark hidden areas back in her days on the streets. Sure enough, the door was unlocked, and opened to a staircase leading further down, into the underground. There were further markings at the next intersection, but to reach the source of the smoke the party had to head in the opposite direction.

Unfortunately, the tunnel quickly dead ended at a cave-in, choked with loose bricks and dirt.

As Rarity moved up to see if she could burrow her way through the dirt and see how far the cave-in extended, Pinkie Pie peered curiously at one of the bricks off to the side, and pressed it firmly with a hoof. There was a ‘click’ and a scraping nose, as the entire ‘cave in’ shifted slightly. Rarity and Twilight gave it a good shove, and it scraped open like a particularly thick and heavy door.

A nauseating stench, a mixture of smoke and sewage, washed out over the party from the room beyond. It was a small chamber, about ten feet by twenty, with massive round vault doors set into the left and opposite walls. A more ordinary looking door was directly across from them, and dim light filtered in from a window next to it.

They could all hear the sound of running water. After a few seconds, it was joined by a haunting melody in a high-pitched voice, sung in what Rarity recognized as Ignan. The words encouraged the warriors of justice to push back the forces of evil.

Applejack darted silently across the room to peek through the window, then ducked to the side and flattened herself against the ground as the creatures waiting out there spotted her. Rainbow Dash stepped up and opened the door, looking for what had spooked the rogue.

Behind the door was a large chamber overlooking a pool of murky water, well-lit by sunlight filtering through the glass mosaic of the Emperor, set into the ceiling above. The water was twenty feet below, with the just-opened door opening onto a cast iron staircase that led down into the water. On the far wall, four large pipes spewed foul liquid that splashed off a slippery slope and then ran into the pool. In the far corner of the room, at the top of the slope, two of the smoke naga guarded a dark doorway, and two smoke mephits hovered in midair near a rickety catwalk that crossed over the center of the pool, from left to right, on the same level as the door just opened.

While Fluttershy stayed near the secret door and started to cast a summoning spell, Macintosh ran out onto the balcony and tossed a tanglefoot bag at one of the mephits, but his throw went wide. Pinkie Pie was a bit too far back for her bombs, so she drank one of her Shield infusions and moved up behind him.

Rarity motioned her skeletal dragons to squeeze past the party and push out into the room, since it was a large open space. As they lunged at the mephits, she unleashed her swarm of skulls to assist.

Garble and Crackle managed to double-team one of the mephits, biting down on either wing and pulling – but while it was somewhat injured by the blows, its wings slipped through their teeth like smoke and it was not torn in two, like it should have been. The floating skulls’ attempt to assist the other two dragons in pinning down their own mephit were completely futile – they couldn’t get any purchase with their teeth. They did have one effective attack, however – as they swarmed through the air, the changeling heads shot off a few poorly aimed bolts of green energy, and one of them slammed into the far mephit, nearly taking off one of its legs.

Twilight looked around, and didn’t see any way to get into the fight – the stairs led down into the water, which was probably not somewhere she wanted to go. “I don’t suppose you can open one of the big doors?” she asked Applejack, pushing on the large door to the right experimentally.

With a rumble, it rolled to the side, revealing a pair of waiting smoke naga, who immediately attacked with bare fists.

“I didn’t do it!” Applejack said, dodging a punch from one of the monks, only to dodge right into his other fist. While she was reeling – and feeling sick to her stomach from some nauseous substance that passed through her skin as the creature hit her – its smoky tail whipped around to slam into her side, feeling quite solid despite its vaporous appearance. It tried to wrap around her and trap her in its coils, but she slipped free. Then the creature’s eyes glowed, and fast as a blur, a fourth attack took Applejack on the chin, nearly breaking her jaw.

Twilight faced off with the other naga monk, taking three heavy blows in quick succession that dented her armor and left her reeling in pain. She managed to block the tail with her shield, at least. She shook her head to shake off the sickeness. “It’s an ambush! They must have heard us opening the door.”

The other large door had also opened at the same time, and another pair of monks stepped into the room, one of them mauling Rainbow Dash with a flurry of blows while the other slithered past to strike at Rarity, still standing in the doorway the party had entered through.

Out in the room, the mephits fearlessly ignored the undead, focusing on Macintosh with a barrage of screamed curses that slammed into him like solid blows. A third mephit flew into view from around the corner of a large structure that jutted out into the room near the ceiling, and unleashed a barrage of magic missiles at Macintosh, finishing him off.

After seeing the mephits instantly drop the heavily armored warrior, Applejack slammed the door shut with a quick kick from her hind leg, to keep them from joining the fight, and then seemed to flash out of existence. She reappeared behind one of the monks, flanking with Twilight. Her rapier impaled him right through the back, poking out the front of his chest, while her claws tore at his kidneys.

Rainbow Dash attacked the other pair of monks, shouting ‘Stunning Fist!’ as her first swing impacted the creature’s solar plexus. He didn’t seem stunned, not even after her follow-up swing crackled with lightning, and her beak tore into his shoulder.

Fluttershy finished her spell, and a large tiger appeared behind Rainbow’s target, leaping on it with claws and fangs. But the monk easily dodged the large cat, almost as if he had been expecting it to appear. Fluttershy screamed, “You monster!” and glowered at him, but while he recoiled as if he had been struck by her gaze, he didn’t fall.

Rarity kept up her defenses against the naga menacing her, and swept her hoof, unleashing a wave of energy to speed the party’s movement. “This would be going a lot better if we’d all cast our defensive spells,” she said.

“Sorry, I was saving them for the big portal!” Pinkie Pie said, as she pulled out a potion and drank it. And then nopony said anything else, as silence filled the area, stopping just short of Fluttershy, who continued her spell.

In total silence, Twilight’s hammer rapidly beat a series of rapid blows into both of the monks facing her, and the one Applejack had mauled collapsed, bleeding heavily from his wounds. He took a last halfhearted swing at Twilight, then stopped moving.

His friend focused a flurry of punches on the armored unicorn, but with the mephits’ bard song cut off his attacks were much less accurate. One still hit her fairly solidly, but she remained standing. Another monk attacked Rainbow Dash with similar results, while the last focused on Rarity. Even without magical assistance, he knocked the ghoulish wizard around like a training dummy, undead ichor spraying everywhere.

Rainbow Dash’s claws crackled with lightning as she dueled her naga, and she laid him out on the ground. The tiger roared silently as it leapt over the corpse, onto the naga attacking Rarity, sinking its fangs into the snake-man’s skull while its claws raked the smoky body, pulling him off the wizard and pinning him to the ground beneath it. Fluttershy finished summoning an elemental, which struck at the pinned naga, then summoned a dark energy to her hoof and touched Rarity with it, healing her wounds a bit.

Rarity stepped back behind Fluttershy, out of the silence, and cast a mirror image spell.

Pinkie Pie had been holding a bomb to throw at the pinned naga, but it was impossible to hit it without also hitting Fluttershy’s summons, so she turned and detonated it against the naga fighting Twilight and Applejack, knocking him off his feet.

As he fell, Twilight’s hammer came down and splattered his skull, then she took a step back, turned around, and repeated the process on the naga under the tiger, finishing him off as well. Applejack had been waiting for her to move in position so that she could flank, but now had no one to fight. Twilight pointed down the hallway, and Applejack followed her hoof with her eyes and spotted another small door in the side wall, halfway to where the hallway ended in another large door.

She shook her head, and instead of running to check it out, slipped past Twilight and the others and with an exaggerated limping motion, stopped in front of Fluttershy, who grimaced at Applejack’s state and healed her a bit.

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, and flew down the hallway, throwing open the door. “Singing mephit!” she shouted, although nopony in the party could hear her, thanks to Pinkie’s silence. Regardless, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight followed. Rarity and Pinkie stopped next to the doorway to fire magic missiles and a force bomb at the mephit in the room, while Twilight ran in and splattered the creature against the control panel it had been operating, cutting off its song.

The control panel had six levers, the fourth and fifth from the left pulled down while the others were in the ‘up’ position. It also had four large dials, which were all set to ‘10’.

Above it was an arc of transparent glass, through which Twilight and the others could see out into the pool room. The mephits were all down – one of them splayed out atop the catwalk, the others nowhere to be seen. Two of Rarity’s skeletal dragons remained in the air, the others missing and presumably sitting at the bottom of the murky pool, waiting to regenerate. Macintosh was on the landing at the top of the staircase, unconscious but still breathing.

There was no sign of the monks they’d spotted on the slope earlier – the doorway they’d vanished into was now shut, however.

“Those guys hit pretty hard, but if we got all the mephits I think we can take them,” Twilight said. “Let’s take a minute to heal, then we can use these levers to open the doors and go find the portal.”

Between the spells that Fluttershy was willing to use to heal, and many many charges from the wands of cure light wounds, it took about two minutes to heal everypony, including Sergeant Macintosh. Rarity was going to send her remaining dragons into the water to retrieve her downed undead, but Applejack and Rainbow Dash spotted things moving in the water –a huge horde of zombies, nearly filling the bottom of the pool. Anything that went into the water was going to have a very hard time getting back out without being dragged down by the undead.

“If you can tell me where the bones are, I think I can drag them out with my magic,” Twilight said. “I can use it without entering the pool, and hopefully the zombies will ignore the moving bones. Since they aren’t alive. Or undead.”

“I have a cantrip for purifying water,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe I could clear it enough that we could see them?”

“This pool is awful large for a cantrip,” Rarity said. “But perhaps if we could shut off the inflow, and cast it repeatedly.”

Twilight turned the four dials on the control panel down to zero, and sure enough the flowing sewage from the pipes reduced to a trickle.

“Maybe we should take care of the portal first?” Applejack suggested. “I get that Rarity wants to keep her dragons, but they won’t do squat for another hour, regardless of where they’re sittin’.”

Twilight nodded. “Right. Let’s try these levers…”

Quick experimentation confirmed that the levers worked exactly like Twilight expected – each lever  controlled one of the large doors, arranged in order. Unfortunately, the first lever was jammed, which kept her from opening the final door that would have given them a quick route to the chamber that they suspected contained the portal. Instead, she was able to open a route that went back past where they’d come in, and around to the other end of the slippery slope, where there was another small door. With the sewage no longer flowing, they could cross the slope and get to the spot where they’d spotted the monks.

Or of course they could fly.

Twilight sighed. “Rarity, I’ll need you to clean off that surface so that we can walk on it safely. Stay behind me. The rest of you can wait on the catwalk until we’re ready, or hover in midair or whatever you think is best.”

Cautiously, the party made its way around the perimeter of the room, with no sign of enemy action. Ready for anything, Twilight threw open the door.

Behind the door were four more of the naga monks, and another mephit, which instantly burst into song. The two that could reach through the door attacked Twilight, one of them slipping an attack past her guard.

Pinkie Pie drank a potion of silence, and hovered over Twilight’s head so that anyone standing in the doorway would be cut off from the mephit’s bard song. Twilight stepped back so as to be able to use her weapon’s reach, and smashed the naga standing in the doorway with a pair of powerful blows. Rainbow Dash took Twilight’s place in the doorway, ducking under her hammer, and punched the nearest naga in the stomach. It collapsed at her feet.

The mephit scowled at the silence, and flung a volley of magic missiles at Twilight, which stung, but were hardly enough to take her down. Another monk stepped into place in the doorway, and he and his companion unleashed their attacks on the interposing griffon.

Most of the attacks missed, but there were a lot of attacks, and the ones that slipped through hit hard. Rainbow might have been in trouble if Fluttershy hadn’t aimed her rod of reach, from where she was hovering back beyond the silence, and healed most of her wounds.

Rarity flung a burst of Glitterdust into the room, blinding the monks, which let Applejack toss her returning dagger for deadly effect, slicing a thin line across one naga’s throat, which started spraying copious amounts of blood against the door.

Pinkie Pie threw a bomb at the mephit, which exploded with a wave of force – the mephit was tossed around in the air, but managed to remain flying. However, the splash from the explosion knocked over all the candles on the portal the mephit was flying over, and it started to flicker, about to close. After watching Twilight slaughter another of his companions – the naga flailed around blindly, unable to dodge her blows – and having little to do that was helpful, with the silence negating his song and his sound-strike, the half-dead mephit fled back through the portal before it could close.

Rainbow Dash advanced into the room, crackling with electricity as she pummeled one of the blinded monks. Both tried to attack her, despite their inability to see, and between them got one hit in. She wasn’t nearly as badly hurt this time, but Fluttershy healed her anyway, since one of the monks managed to blink the sparkles out of his eyes.

But then Applejack lodged her dagger briefly in the throat of the one that was still blind, and between Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and another bomb from Pinkie Pie, the last two naga fell before they could do any more damage. The portal was closed, and the party was victorious.

Retrieving Rarity’s skeletal dragons from the lake took some doing. Even with the inflow valves shut, Fluttershy’s purify food and drink spell had almost no effect on a body of water the size of the pool. A small section of water near where she cast would become instantly pure and clear, but it would dissolve into the rest in seconds. Pinkie Pie and Twilight did some math based on what they knew of the spell and their estimate of the depth of the pool, and guessed that it would take several hours until it was clear enough to notice any difference.

Pinkie Pie tried using her alchemical weapons to destroy the horde of zombies, but her alchemist’s fire and acid had little effect underwater. Her frost vials worked, however, and she was able to drive them back from the center of the pool, where they suspected the bones were sitting.

Twilight was able to use her horn’s magic to drag the resulting icebergs to the side of the pool, but to her surprise, was not able to effectively dredge the bottom of the lake with it – when she tried to project force at a distance, it stopped at the surface of the water.

Eventually, Fluttershy summoned a water elemental, and with the zombies driven back it was able to retrieve the bones without incident. 

“I’m sorry you had to use a spell for that,” Twilight said. “I didn’t realize the ‘unseen servant’ couldn’t swim. It’s not even a real creature – it’s just a mental construct that I use to project my magic over long distances.”

“Sparky II and Opal were saved, and that’s all that matters,” Rarity said. “Now, let’s go collect our 50 gold and try not to take the extra resources we spent on this fiasco out of poor Skyflash’s hide. He’s not the one who decided to rip off the adventurers who are willing to clean up his mess.”

“Actually, I think we’re safely in the black on this one,” Applejack said. “Take a look at what all those monks were wearing.” She tossed Rarity an amulet. “Looks awful fancy. Like, magic fancy.”

Rarity cast detect magic, and smiled. “Oh. It’s a basic enchantment, but yes, I’m sure these are quite valuable.”

> Smoke Birds
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After Rarity’s dragons regenerated, the party returned to the keep, where Skyflash was happy to pay out the 50 gold for closing the small portal. He was disappointed that it had taken the party over an hour to return. “The big portal’s only getting worse, the longer we let it sit.”

“It’s going to have to sit overnight,” Twilight said. “Our healer’s tapped out after the ‘small’ portal.”

“Yeah, what gives?” Rainbow Dash asked. “There were eight of those stupid naga monks, and five mephits that you didn’t mention were freaking bards! How is that only worth 50 gold?”

“Huh,” he said, looking at the angry adventurers. “And here I thought you girls were good at this sort of thing. You seriously had trouble with the monks and the mephits?” He frowned, and looked at his map. “Maybe you aren’t up to this after all. Who else can I get…”

“We can handle it!” Rainbow Dash said, pushing Skyflash away from his map.

“Tomorrow,” Twilight said, dragging Rainbow Dash back. “We can handle it tomorrow. You’re not going to get us to run off half-cocked with reverse psychology.”

Skyflash grimaced. “Look. Those things you fought – those are the weakest of the enemy forces. Those are the ones we can take out with conventional troops and tactics. This…” he pointed to a large red mark blotting out a half-mile square of city territory. “This is worse. It’ll have those, and worse. Spellcasters. Smoke elementals. Even those sun-forsaken Smoke Birds.”

“Smoke birds?” Pinkie Pie asked. “What kind of smoke birds?”

Skyflash continued to frown. “Never saw them before. Aren’t in any of our books. Look sort of like big blurry bird-men made out of smoke. They spit out Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill, bursts of fire over a wide area. Impossible to see from a distance, in the smoke. Just being near them can kill you. They’re the real problem with a conventional assault.”

“We can take them!” Pinkie Pie said. When the others looked at her, she explained. “That’s all poison and fire. Rarity’s still got her resist spell for the fire, and I’ve still got my delay poison for the poison! It’ll be cake.”

“I suppose…” Twilight said. “If we had some way of drawing them out.”

Skyflash slowly began to smile. “That I can help with.”

The large portal was concealed by a bubble of smoke almost a half mile on a side. Skyflash and his troops set up in hidden positions near the edge of the smoke, ready to attack as soon as the party confirmed that the Smoke Birds were down.

They were going in with a punishment troop – 20 prisoners arrested for unspecified crimes, who’d agreed to work off their sentence faster by enlisting in the army. These were recent ‘recruits’, and had no training to speak of. They certainly were not proficient with the heavy plate armor and tower shields they’d been given to wield.

“This is not a suicide mission,” Skyflash said to them. “Your job is to march into the smoke and stand fast, no matter what happens. You are not required to kill the enemy. You are covered in so much metal that the enemy won’t find anywhere to hit. Protect yourselves, but do not run. Any of you that runs out of the smoke will be executed for cowardice. Do you understand?”

The conscripts gumbled, but many of the grumbles sounded vaguely like ‘yes sir’.

“Forward… march!”

KA-CHUNK. KA-CHUNK. KA-CHUNK. Struggling under the weight of their armor and the ridiculous, unwieldy shields, the conscripts headed into the smoke.

Disguised by Pinkie’s infusions, aside from Twilight and Macintosh, who were disguised by painting their armor gray, the party went with them, taking up the rear. Sparky II and Garble flew quietly overhead, shrouded in invisibility. The smoke was dense, but not as dense as magic fog – they could still see about 20 feet without much difficulty, and vague shadows further than that.

And then, above them, on the flat rooftop of one of the dark buildings looming to their left, they heard frenzied, nonsensical chanting, and the scritch-scratch of claws on stone. 

Fluttershy immediately began casting a spell of her own, the party hanging back from the conscript troop which continued to advance into the mist.

Applejack cringed. “This is gonna hurt.”

“It’ll be over before you know it,” Twilight said, in a low tone of voice.

With gentle puff of fresh air, an air elemental appeared. Rarity snapped instructions to it quickly in Auran, and the world vanished in a swirl of air, as it turned into a whirlwind and swept them up onto the roof, to face the chanting figures. They were disgorged a dozen feet away, and five feet in the air. Twilight and Rarity managed to keep their feet this time, but Macintosh stumbled and splayed out on the ground, ruining his chance to charge at them while they were unprepared.

Fluttershy and Applejack immediately threw tanglefoot bags at the three dancing, blurry figures, but while their aim was true, the packets of sticky goo flew right through their targets, as if they were illusions.

“They’re displaced!” Pinkie Pie said, nailing one with a force bomb, knocking it off its feet. Their dance ruined, the other two turned and snarled.

“Grapple them!” Rarity said, as she blasted the creatures with Glitterdust. “Don’t let them get away!”

Her invisible skeletal dragons attempted to comply, appearing out of nowhere to wrap themselves around their targets, but while one managed to curl up around a smoke bird, the other passed right through the image, missing entirely – to Rarity’s disappointment, the Glittering dust only outlined the image of the creature.

Twilight ran up and attempted to slam the slippery creature with her hammer, but was also led astray by the displacement.

Rainbow Dash (in eagle form, but disguised as a pony in armor) charged at the third, slamming her beak painfully into a wing joint, dislocating it. The smoky limb hung uselessly at the creature’s side.

The grappled smoke bird fought back fiercely against the skeleton wrapped around it, clawing with its arms and legs and biting, but Sparky II was resilient – sharp claws and teeth did little against bones.

The blinded smoke bird let out a loud screech, and Twilight and Applejack staggered back, dropping their weapons as they cringed and covered their ears – the others fared better, however.

The crippled smoke bird unleashed a cloud of stinking poison gas at the party, which enveloped everyone who hadn’t charged up into melee – and had no apparent effect, as they were temporarily protected from poison.

All three of them released a cloud of black spores, which spattered over anyone nearby, spreading into a network of black tendrils that tore at their flesh and constricted painfully.

Fluttershy’s elemental swept past, trying to capture the smoke birds in its whirlwind, but while it managed to clear away a bit of the smoke, it wasn’t able to lift any of them. Fluttershy tried another tanglefoot bag, with similar results as her first.

Macintosh, however, was on his hooves and able to charge – only for his lance to scrape off the creature’s body, which was tough and armored despite its ephemeral appearance… but another of Pinkie Pie’s force bombs arced over his head, and knocked it off its feet. At which point the skeletal dragon that had tried to grapple it before simply attacked, biting and clawing at it while it lay there on its back.

Rarity shot at the smoke bird facing off against Rainbow Dash with a pale grey beam, but it passed harmlessly through the creature’s image. Rainbow Dash did manage to peg it with a pair of strong blows from her wings, however. It lunged forwards to retaliate, but she managed to dodge everything but its beak, which landed a glancing blow.

Then the smoke bird lying prone at Twilight and Garble’s feet suddenly vanished.

“They can teleport?!” Twilight cried.

“He didn’t go far!” Fluttershy said, turning and pointing to the glowing form, still clearly visible through the smoke. She flew towards it and tossed another tanglefoot bag, which splattered over the creature. Unfortunately, the bird managed to avoid being glued to the roof. Macintosh charged across the rooftop at it, but again his lance failed to penetrate. The air elemental, back in non-whirlwind form, swooped around behind it to attack it as well, but the displacement ruined its attack.

“What’s the point of tangling them if they can just blink away?” Applejack asked, grabbing her rapier and swinging around to flank with Rainbow Dash. Her rapier sank flawlessly into the creature’s image, accomplishing nothing. “Oh, hay, this is just –“

Pinkie Pie used her next bomb against the two smoke birds who were still next to each other – but missed her target, and the uncontrolled splash managed to do more damage to her friends than to the enemies.

“Pinkie!” Applejack shouted, as she hopped back out of the splash. “Watch yer fire!”

“It’s not fire, it’s force!”

“I’m sorry, Sparky,” Rarity said, as she positioned herself to catch two of the birds in a Diamond Spray. They were sliced up a bit by the razor shards, but Sparky II, as Rarity had predicted, was torn to bits again. Garble leapt at it as it struggled to free itself from the pile of bones, and sank claws and teeth deep into its flesh… and with a mournful shriek, its smoky aspect evaporated from its form, and it fell to the ground as an all too solid and fleshy bird-man, unmoving and bleeding from a dozen horrible wounds.

Rainbow Dash and Twilight tried to finish off the other, which was looking awfully shaky after the diamond spray, but all their attacks went straight through it, and for all their efforts they couldn’t find where the real creature was standing.

That was their last chance. Both remaining smoke birds vanished, not staying close this time, or even in line of sight.

After a minute or so, the black tendrils stopped trying to kill Twilight and Rainbow Dash, and crumbled to dust. The smoke birds did not return. After making a few more attempts to draw them out with the conscripts, the party had to retreat, as their protective spells were starting to fade. 

Skyflash was not amused to hear of their failure. “They can teleport?”

“And they’re displaced,” Twilight said. “Blurry, invisible in smoke, and displaced.”

“And they can teleport,” Rainbow Dash added.

“We hurt them pretty badly,” Twilight said. “If they don’t have clerical support, you might be able to hit the portal while they’re still afraid to face us. They didn’t come back and harass the conscripts while we marched them around the block.”

“They have bards,” Skyflash said. “Bards can heal.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Twilight said. “We’re completely tapped out. Maybe if we march in with your army we can bluff them?”

“I’m not risking my soldiers on a bluff,” Skyflash said. He was quiet for a few seconds, as if trying to think of some solution to the dilemma. Finally, he shook his head. “Nightmare’s teeth, I’m going to have to call in a strike.”

“A what now?” Applejack asked.

The orcish army set up a perimeter around the great bubble of smoke, hundreds of troops stretched out for more than a mile to keep a watch on the perimeter. Once they were in place, one of their wizards sent up a dancing light, which blinked in a sequence of shapes and colors. Thirty seconds later, the rain began to fall.

Somewhere in the military district was an entire Empire’s worth of siege engines, and all of them were trained on this one section of city. Lightning flashed, acid splattered, bursts of freezing mist billowed from the cloud. The buildings visible from the edge of the smoke crumbled. After a minute or two, mephits and naga from inside the kill zone started trying to flee – in disorganized groups, ones and twos, easily cut to pieces by the army.

After five minutes, the smoke started to clear. Whatever portal had once been in that sector of the city had been destroyed by the barrage – but there was nothing left of the city itself, just block after block of smoking ruins, with even the streets collapsed into the sewers.

Applejack stared at the destruction in horror. “I’m not paying for that.”

> Scapegoats
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Okay,” Applejack said, after they took their leave from Skyflash and his troops. “Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to walk all casual-like over to the Pathfinder Guild, we’re going to sell what we have and buy what we can, and then we’re going to get the hay out of dodge before somepony puts a shiv in our backs.”

“I don’t see how anyone could possibly blame us for this,” Twilight said, following along after the all-too-calm Purrsian. “We failed at one attempt to take out the smoke birds, yes, but it was Skyflash who decided to reduce half the city to rubble.”

“That’s why somepony with a fair mind and a generous spirit wouldn’t blame us, dear,” Rarity said. “The Empire and the people of this city are likely to have neither.”

“So what – you want us to just run away and live like fugitives for the rest of our lives?” Twilight asked.

“Nah,” Applejack said. “We buy some hats of disguise, move to another city, and lay low for a few weeks. That should do it. When they can’t find us they’ll blame somepony else. Now come on – let’s do one last bit ‘o shoppin’ while we can still show our faces.”

There was no trouble on the way to the guild hall, or inside the guild. After selling the loot taken from the mephits and nagas at the small portal and buying hats of disguise to go around, and some wands of cure light wounds to replace the ones already drained, and a wand of faerie fire in case they ever ran into more displaced creatures –

“I’ll hold on to that,” Applejack said.

“But – but – I love using wands of spells I can’t cast!” Pinkie Pie said, pouting.

“You can’t cast any spells, technically,” Twilight said.

“Exactly!”

Applejack rolled her eyes. “I can’t cast any spells either, and I also can’t do squat against critters I can’t see clearly, while you can still hit ‘em with bombs. So I should be the one wastin’ her time flinging a faerie fire.”

“Fine!” Pinkie Pie said, folding her forelegs and grumbling, “frizzy fuzzy felines.”

After buying supplies out of the raw gold pool, there was only a couple thousand gold left for each pony to spend on personal possessions. Still, it was better than being broke.

By then it was getting late, and the curfew would soon fall over the city. The adventurers headed back to the inn near the gate, and paid for rooms for the night. They ate dinner in the common room, and made sure everypony saw them go up to their rooms. Then they snuck out the window at the end of the hall into an alleyway, and burrowed under the wall.

“HALT!” said an orcish guard on the battlements, as they retreated from the city.

“We’re adventurers on official business,” Twilight said, showing him her identity card. Unfortunately, the wall was high enough that she couldn’t levitate it all the way up to where he could read it clearly, but it was close enough that he could at least recognize what it was.

“No one is allowed to move around after curfew,” the guard replied. “My orders did not include any exceptions for adventurers.”

“But we’re not even in the city!” Rainbow Dash shouted back up at him.

“The borders of the city extend 1200 feet from the walls, to establish a kill zone,” the guard said, drawing a bow.

“But we outrank you,” Fluttershy said. “Can’t we just give you new orders? I promise we’re not causing any trouble.”

“You’re not in my chain of command,” the guard said. “Plus, I haven’t verified your identity. Wait there, and I’ll send a patrol to arrest you.”

“This is pointless,” Rarity said. “Macintosh? If you would, after I cast.”

As she tried to cast her spell, the guard fired his arrow, but Twilight leapt into the way, catching it. In her chest. But then the obscuring mist was up, and the party was able to burrow another 1200 feet to be officially outside the city.

“That looks like it hurts,” Rainbow Dash said, as Pinkie Pie pulled out the arrow and healed Twilight’s wound. “Have you tried catching them on your shield?”

Twilight sighed. “Someday, I’ll figure that part out.”

The party spent the night on a mountain slope, half a mile away from the road that led up into the pass, their camp hidden from the road in a slight depression. There was no sign of pursuit or alarm, and no creatures were wandering around that close to the city, so the night passed uneventfully. In the morning – 

An hour before dawn, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie started whispering to each other, and occasionally looking at Rarity, who was reading through the portal book again, while resting in preparation for preparing the new day’s spells. She kept watch on them out of the corner of her eye, until they broke and Pinkie Pie flew over to talk to her.

“Hey, Rarity?” Pinkie Pie said. “I was able to finish another recipe in my potion book. Do you want to look through your notes and see if we have anything to trade? I brought some spell ink!”

“Unfortunately, the spells I’ve been working on aren’t shareable,” Rarity replied. “One projects a cone of fear, the other,” she glanced down at Rendrax’s Tome, “Well, it’s dimension door. I was inspired by my recent reading material, although I’m afraid the spell itself is no different from the standard.”

“Oh. I already copied down all the spells I really wanted last time we were in town, so all I could come up with is Aura Sight. It’s not really useful, but –“

There was a loud smashing noise from the other side of the camp, followed by the all-too familiar sound of bones clattering to the ground. Rarity stated to rise, but Pinkie Pie put a hoof on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about that. Have you decided what you’re going to memorize tomorrow?”

“Pinkie, something is attacking the camp!”

“Twilight and Fluttershy can take care of it, don’t worry,” Pinkie Pie said. “But I was thinking, maybe you should memorize a bunch of animate dead spells? Like, say, four of them?”

“Pinkie – you know I trust your insight, but why in the world would I memorize four copies of a spell –“ There was another smashing sound, followed by the sound of Twilight laughing, and saying something that Rarity couldn’t quite make out. “Something is going on here.”

“It’s a surprise!” Pinkie Pie said, grinning.

“It sounds like Twilight is sparring with my dragons, and you’re here keeping me busy.” A third smash. “That means that you’re involved in this.”

“Nah, it was all Fluttershy’s idea. She even bought you all these stones!” Pinkie Pie hoofed over a small bag of onyx gems. “So that you can animate things. Well, re-animate.”

A fourth smashing sound, and then Futtershy said, “Okay, we’re ready!”

“Well, she’s not!” Pinkie Pie called back. “She still has to memorize her spells!”

Rarity closed her eyes, and mimed taking a deep breath. “Did you just destroy my skeletal dragons.”

“Nope!” Pinkie said. “Twilight did. Fluttershy helped. She had to bless them so they wouldn’t regenerate.”

“Why did you just destroy my skeletal dragons?” Rarity asked. “I’m asking you this calmly, but if you don’t have a very good reason, I am going to continue asking it less calmly while feasting on your entrails.”

“Because Fluttershy’s nature spirit patron thing decided she’d done enough fighting, and taught her a few new spells,” Pinkie Pie said. A wave of darkness rolled across the land, and Rarity could feel herself becoming slightly stronger, empowered by dark energy. “And she learned desecrate.”

“Ah,” Rarity said. “Animate dead has an improved effect when the undead in question are originally animated on desecrated land. You could have just asked.”

“Next time you die, we can see if it works on you!” Pinkie Pie said. “Oh! We should have killed you to test it! Now we’ll have to make another patch.”

“I’ll forgive you for my minions, this time, because you’re paying for their reanimation, and they should come back stronger,” Rarity said. “However, if you ever do anything similar to this again without my permission, I will feast on somepony’s entrails. Do you understand?”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “I guess we’ll have to wait until we can grow entrails back, then.”

Sparky II and company were re-animated an hour later, and while they looked exactly the same, lore dictated that they would be slightly tougher than they had been before. Also, there would forevermore be a patch of land a half mile from the road dedicated to the Nightmare. The next group that decided to use the shallow depression to rest would be in for a nasty surprise.

They reached the orcish fortress in mid-afternoon. The acting captain of the garrison came out to greet them. “Welcome back. I hear you’ve been busy.”

“Do we know you?” Applejack asked. She was disguised as a fiery-coated wolf. Most of the rest of the party hadn’t bothered to change species, but they had changed coat colors and clothing, to humor Applejack’s paranoia. “This is our first time through the pass.”

“Uh huh,” the orc said. “I must be mistaking you for some other warband that runs around with four skeletal sky dragons.” He gave a snort. “I suppose that’s for the best. If you were really Twilight’s bunch, I’m supposed to tell you to head back to Rally for questioning.”

“Questioning about what?” Twilight asked.

“About why one Captain Skyflash’s headless body was found nailed to the door of the guardpost, right next to his suicide note.”

“He nailed himself to the door after cutting off his own head?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Wow. He’s good.”

“It wasn’t actually suicide, Pinkie.” Rainbow Dash said. “Pinhead. I mean pinhead. You stupid featherbrain.”

“Um… maybe we should just… go?” Fluttershy suggested. “After all, if we’re easy to mistake for this other warband, we’ll just cause trouble if we stay here. Right?”

The orc nodded. “Right. Good luck in the pass.”

After a few minutes of walking, the fort was out of sight. Twilight glanced back at the column of smoke rising from the orcish capitol, which was thicker than ever. “We should go back to Rally.”

“No,” Applejack said. “No, we really shouldn’t. That’s just about the last darnfool thing we should do.”

“Somepony killed Skyflash –“

“Nuh uh,” Pinkie Pie said. “It was a suicide.”

“There’s no way it was a suicide!” Rainbow Dash said. “He didn’t nail himself to the door.”

“Well, of course not. He had to have a friend help,” Pinkie Pie said. “But if anypony wants to commit suicide nowadays they’ll need help, silly. Otherwise they just come back as an undead and that doesn’t solve anything.”

“If his problem was guilt, coming back as an undead would solve it handily,” Rarity said. “And no true friend would help him commit suicide so quickly. Foul play was undoubtedly involved.” She paused, and added, “That said, we should not return, unless we wish to be used as scapegoats for the thousands of civilian deaths caused by the bombardment.”

“That area was completely overrun,” Twilight said. “The residents would have fled long before we were ever on the scene.”

“Really?” Rarity said. “I seem to recall that the typical reaction to a smoke-plane incursion was for everyone to huddle inside the buildings, waiting for an all-clear.”

Twilight’s step faltered.

Rarity smiled. “Not only the residents of the area, but everyone passing by. I wonder how they managed to clean up the bodies before they started rising as undead?”

Twilight stopped, and turned around. “We need to go back!”

Applejack shook her head. “That’s not an option, sugarcube.”

“Yeah, I think maybe that would be a really bad idea,” Rainbow Dash said.

“We should use our strength elsewhere,” Fluttershy said. “Surrendering to the Empire would be a terrible waste.”

“I don’t know, Twilight seemed to really enjoy being mind controlled,” Pinkie Pie said.

Rarity shook her head. “They’d just order us to confess, dear, and cooperate with our execution.”

“That’s four to two,” Rainbow Dash said. “We win.”

Applejack set a paw on Twilight’s pauldron. “If you really want to go back… well, we can probably find somepony else to hit things with other things when we get to Bright Valley. I’d rather you stayed, though.”

Twilight closed her eyes and let out a deep breath, then turned and continued on down the trail. “Fine. We can still investigate the dimensional instability in Bright Valley. That’s where the book was published, right?”

“Indeed,” Rarity said. “We might even do more good, cutting this off at the source before it spreads too far.”

“Don’t oversell it, lilypad,” Applejack muttered.

> Song of Vengeance
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Travelling back through the pass was much faster without a caravan to escort. The party discussed various magical methods of speeding their travel, but they weren’t in any particular hurry to get anywhere, and if the orc from the fortress didn’t snitch, the pass was one of the last places that any pursuers would look. Assuming there were any pursuers in the first place.

The travel was also rather pleasant – the pass was still mostly clear of wildlife, even if the patrols had been recalled to Rally, and the intelligent threats had been vanquished. There were no monsters to harass them as they made their way through the mountains, and each night, even in the coldest heights and the worst weather, Fluttershy was able to summon up a zone of magical plant life that kept them warm and safe. It even had magic berries that kept them from needing to dip into any of their supplies.

Still, even without hurrying they were making good time. Midday on the second day they passed the deserted garrison – giving it a wide berth, since they had no reason to think there was anything worth stealing left inside – and as the sun started to set on the third day, they approached the eastern fort, where they’d been held up and asked to attack the changelings.

As they were about to climb up onto the surrounding slopes to sneak past this final obstacle, they noticed that something was amiss – a large caravan of gem ponies, their wagons loaded down with food and other supplies, was camped out outside the garrison walls, and Macintosh and Rainbow Dash could tell from their body language that they were arguing with each other.

“Ah don’t care if they’re holding a rodeo, this ain’t none of our business,” Applejack said.

“This could help us,” Twilight said. “The dragon skeletons are distinctive, but they could easily hide in those wagons, and with the hats of disguise we’ll have no trouble blending in.”

“I think they’d notice if half a dozen new ponies showed up,” Rainbow Dash said.

Twilight shook her head. “We don’t need to hide from them! They’re friends… of sorts. Or at least, they’ll probably be willing to help hide us in return for our protection in bandit territory. And the mine would be a safe place to hide out.”

“The mine is made of highly flammable coal, is under siege from an army of bandits, and has a lich hiding underneath. I’m not sure why you’d consider that ‘safe’,” Rarity said.

“Oooh, are we voting again?” Pinkie Pie asked. “I’m with Twilight. I want to see what’s going on!” She paused. “But I don’t want to hide out in the mine. It’s way too flammable.”

“I suppose there’s no harm in it, if we keep to our disguises,” Applejack said. “Leave the dragons here, hiding. You can whistle ‘em up if you need ‘em.”

As the party approached, disguised as a group of earth ponies and pegasi, with Macintosh an extremely large griffon with a gimpy wing, they could start to make out the argument.

“We can’t just break down the door! We’ll be arrested!”

“Like I’ve been telling you, there’s no one here to arrest us. Look at the walls! They’re deserted!” Sure enough, there was nopony manning the walls, which was definitely against procedure.

“So we camp out here. It’s crazy to go inside – what if whatever got them gets us too?”

“It’s a lot easier for it to get us if we’re sleeping out in the open like idiots!”

“Um, hey, want me to fly up and take a look over the wall?” Rainbow Dash asked.

The two stopped, joining the rest of the caravan gem ponies in staring at the newcomers. Finally, one of them shrugged. “It’s your funeral.”

“We’re not giving her a funeral, we’re burning her so she doesn’t come back as an undead,” the other gem pony said.

The first one scoffed. “There won’t even be a body! I bet it sucks her down out of the sky with tentacles. So we’ll just say a few words around the fire…”

Rainbow Dash flew straight up, on guard for any tentacles. A few seconds later, she flew back down, looking slightly ill. Everypony looked at her expectantly.

“They’re dead,” she said. “Just… lying there, dead. No blood, no sign of a fight. And they’re not up and walking around, so it happened recently.”

“Or they’re faking,” Rarity suggested.

“We’d better go in and look around,” Twilight said. “If something’s taking out the garrisons, we need to know what.”

“Don’t see how any of this is our bee’s wax,” Applejack grumbled.

“Then stay here,” Twilight said. “I’m going in.”

“Now hold your horses, I’m with you, Sugarcube. Let me check the door for traps.” Applejack moved up and inspected the door closely, then blinked. “Huh, what do you know.” She took a black crystal out of her thieves’ kit and carefully scraped it across a nondescript section of the door – then swore as it slipped from her teeth and landed in the dust. She picked it up and finished the job. “Eheh. Thought I was in trouble there, but it looks like it was just an Alarm spell. Should be safe to open now.”

Nevertheless, she stood back and let Twilight do the honors.

The dead did not rise to attack when the party entered the fortress, and a quick search of the keep and barracks revealed no sign of life. After Pinkie Pie poked at the bodies and determined that they had been poisoned, Fluttershy’s detect poison spell confirmed that the poison had been delivered in the same way that the changelings at the other garrison had tried to poison the party – the breakfast stew was contaminated with dozens of doses of poison, enough to overwhelm even an orcish soldier’s intestinal fortitude.

“Where are their weapons?” Rainbow Dash asked, as she approached one of the dead soldiers to search him for valuables. “This armor’s trash, but their weapons are just missing. I’m pretty sure the poison didn’t kill their axes.”

“Somepony must have taken them!” Pinkie Pie said. “But there’s no sign of tracks. They must have flown in!”

“Wait, look,” Fluttershy said, floating over to one of the soldiers who’d fallen near the outer wall. “A clawprint? Did griffons do this?”

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time we ran into a group that hired on with the wrong side.”

“What should we tell them?” Twilight asked, glancing back at the gem pony miners, who were gathered around the gate, but hadn’t gotten up the courage to come through.

“That this ain’t a safe place to sleep,” Applejack said. “There’s that forest off the side of the pass that we slogged through – it should have cover from the air, at least. We can help ‘em set up a hidden camp in there.”

”You want us to what?” one of the gem pony leaders exclaimed. “No way, no how. These wagons wouldn’t make it ten feet off the road, and if we did get into the trees, then what? The griffons come down and ambush us.” He glared at them suspiciously. “You’re with them, ain’tcha.”

“Oh, shut up, you rockhead,” the other one replied. “Do they look like griffons? I mean, ‘cept for the big one, who sure as sugar didn’t go flying around with that wing of his.” He turned to Applejack. “Still, we can’t take these wagons into the forest. We’ll lock ourselves in the barracks ‘till morning. I’m not worried about posion. We’ve got our own supplies.”

“So did they!” Pinkie Pie said.

The gem pony looked slightly taken aback. “We’ll be extra careful,” he said. “Now, you staying with us, or running off and hiding?”

The adventurers looked at each other. “If we stay here, we’re gonna be attacked. Ain’t no maybe about it,” Applejack said.

Twilight glanced to the side, at the cold corpse of the orcish soldier, and lifted her hammer in her magic, setting the butt end of it firmly into the ground at her side. “Good.”

To prepare for the expected ambush, Fluttershy desecrated the courtyard where they’d set out all the bodies. Some of them would likely retain their minds when they arose as undead, and the others would probably at least attempt to defend the keep from intruders. If nothing else, it would make the skeletal dragons more effective if they were fighting close enough to the desecration.

Rarity used her pearls of power to recover and re-cast the Mage Armor spells on herself and Rainbow Dash. Pinkie Pie mixed up extra doses of False Life, Ablative Barrier, and Communal Delay Poison, although the last would most likely expire before the attack. All of the party’s other defenses were too short in duration to keep active for long enough to matter.

Once that was done, the party found hiding places around the courtyard, and waited for the attack. Instead, just as darkness fell across the land, they heard a song, coming from up in the air, all around. The words were impossible to make out, but it was calming, captivating, and filled them with a sense of peace…

“Ugh,” Rainbow Dash said, focusing on her training and shaking herself out of the trance. “Oh, for pony’s sake! Leucrotta can fly now?” She flew up into the air, picked out one of the songs from the circling creatures, and flew in its direction. As she got closer, the faint moonlight picked out a familiar outline. “Harpies! Everypony, cover your ears!”

Unfortunately, it was too late for most of her friends, who had fallen under the spell of one harpy or another, and in many cases had fallen under half a dozen different harpies’ spells at once. So while several of her friends had taken to the air behind her, Rainbow was alone when several of the creatures focused their attacks on her. One attacked with her bare claws, but while Rainbow twisted out of the way of her strike, the others were able to strike her with their massive battle axes. They weren’t exceptional fighters, but one of them managed to leave a scratch. A small scratch. They were wielding large weapons, but the harpies weren’t really very strong.

Rarity, of course, was not affected by the song at all. Seeing Rainbow, Fluttershy, Pinkie, and Applejack fly off into the night – as it happened, mostly in the same general direction – she sent her dragons out to follow her friends, and kill the singing harpies as soon as they came into view. Not having any target for her offensive spells, she cast a mirror image on herself as she headed for the wall.

So Rainbow Dash wasn’t alone for long – the skeletal dragons swooped up next to her, and snapped at the harpies, drawing blood. The empty-clawed harpy almost managed to evade its teeth, and was obviously a far more skilled opponent, so Rainbow focused her attacks on that one, stunning her with her first swing and electrifying her with a second. 

But the axe-wielding harpies seemed to multiply, as the circle closed around Rainbow Dash and her friends, and five of them focused their attacks on Sparky II, hoping that a larger target would be easier to hit than Rainbow Dash. Several of them did hit with their axes, but the weapons were not terribly effective against the skeleton, and the harpies were not strong enough to power through the resistance.

Sparky’s claws and fangs, on the other hoof, proved perfectly capable of ripping two of its assailants to shreds. The others quickly fell to Garble, Crackle, and Opal, who’d all been drawn to the same location, following different harpies.

As the bird-women fell in pieces to the mountainside below, the song’s hold weakened, and Pinkie Pie woke, as if from a trance. “What’s – what’s going on?”

“Harpies, dear,” Rarity shouted back from the courtyard, as she channeled negative energy through her glare, trying to curse a harpy flying brazenly overhead. Unfortunately, it managed to shake off the effects, not even pausing in its song.

Rainbow Dash continued to beat up on her target, keeping her stunned and sending more electricity coursing through her chest. It was all she could manage to stay in the air before the griffon’s furious assault, and when Sparky joined in she dodged teeth, and horns, only to zig when she should have zagged, right into one of the skeleton’s claws, which swatted her out of the air. Her body hit the ground with a crunch.

The other skeletal dragons turned to follow the still-hypnotized adventurers, who were flying back towards the surviving harpies, back towards the fort. Garble, Crackle, and Opal shot past Fluttershy and Applejack and engaged the remaining harpies in the air, snapping at them with their fangs.

It was too much -- the harpies ran, flying off into the darkness with desperate speed. They didn’t get far… the skeletal sky dragons were far faster. Only by scattering did any of them escape, the dragons each picking one victim and chasing them down, snapping at them with vicious teeth until they fell.

With the fight apparently over, Rainbow Dash headed back to join her friends in midair. Twilight and Macintosh had also tried to follow, on the ground, but hadn’t been able to get close, since being hypnotized did not give them the ability to fly.

Suddenly, a voice came out of the darkness. “You will not escape my revenge that easily! HOLD!”

Most of the fliers managed to shake off the spell, but Applejack’s wings locked in place, and she dropped like a rock, even bouncing a few times as she rolled a few feet down the mountainside. Below, Macintosh and Twilight were both likewise locked into place.

“Where is he?” Rainbow Dash asked, looking around wildly. “Who did that?”

“Unnatural forces of invisibility, begone,” Fluttershy whispered, and a wave of blue energy flew out from her, washing over an invisible creature – a harpy, but a spellcaster judging by the mirror images surrounding her. She was swooping down towards Twilight Sparkle, a razor-sharp katana drawn and ready to end the unicorn’s life while she stood there, frozen and helpless.

“No way!” Rainbow Dash said, diving after her. “This is the end for you. DIE!” The last word turned into a horrific shriek, then a cone of distorted air emerging from Rainbow’s beak, shot through with lightning. 

Pinkie Pie, for her part, took out an infusion, tossed it into the air, and bucked it when it lined up with the target – and a lightning bolt shot out, crackling through the swarm of images.

It wasn’t enough to take the harpy down, and her images distracted Sparky, the only dragon close enough to respond immediately. Rarity climbed to the top of the wall to see what was happening, but was too late to intercede further.

As the party watched in horror – and Sparky snapped at another image – the harpy closed one clawed foot around Twilight’s helmet, and wrenched back her head, exposing her neck. The other foot drew the katana across her throat. Blood spurted into the air, spraying in a black arc across the moonlit rocks, and then Twilight’s body collapsed, neck still pumping, as the harpy hovered in place, holding the severed unicorn head in her free claw. “HA HA HA HA HA! VENGEANCE!”

Sparky bit and clawed at her, destroying her remaining images, and Macintosh, who’d broken free from his paralysis too late, charged and impaled the creature on his lance, sending her flying. Rainbow Dash flew at her, but she twisted aside contemptuously, dodging the griffon’s attack, then ducked under Fluttershy’s crossbow bolt and stepped aside to let Pinkie Pie’s firebomb explode against the mountainside.

Rainbow Dash was caught in the splash, but so was the harpy, and as the fire washed across her, she burst into green flames, and it was a charred and shattered changeling that fell to the ground, still laughing as it died.

“Well,” Rarity said, looking at the sad scene below. “At least that was the last of them, assuming the two drakes that terrorized the pass were the same two changelings that attacked the other outpost. We killed one there, and the other one here, which should tie up that loose end… rather messily, to tell the truth. The poor dear. I’m sure she would have rather died fighting.”

“Fluttershy – can you, I don’t know, put her head back on or something?” Rainbow Dash asked, holding the gruesome trophy in her claws, and offering it to her.

“Um…” Fluttershy said, casting a spell on Twilight’s body to preserve the corpse.

“I can do that, easily enough,” Rarity said. “Do you think I should infect her with Ghoul Fever, to ensure she returns as a… familiar and corporeal undead? We should take her into the fortress – it would be a shame for her to miss out on this Desecration.”

“I really think she’d rather be alive,” Fluttershy said.

“Oh, I’m quite sure she’d be perfectly happy to be undead,” Rarity replied. “Why spend thousands of gold returning her to such a fragile and temporary state?”

“We can ask,” Rainbow Dash said. “Speaking with the dead is easy, if they’re willing. Right?”

"I don't know that spell," Fluttershy said. "We'd have to take her all the way back to Crossroads.”

“Then we take her back to Crossroads. You know she’d rather be alive,” Rainbow Dash said.

“I know no such thing,” Rarity said. “Yes, yes, I’ll admit, she wouldn’t make a very good ghoul, but she does have quite the unique set of armor, no? Between that, and Fluttershy’s Desecration, she would have a reasonable chance of coming back as a Grave Knight.”

“A what?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“Oh, it’s a fearsome kind of undead warrior – like a lich that prefers to ‘hit things with other things’, as Applejack put it,” Rarity explained. “Highly resistant to damage, immune to cold, electricity, fire, and most magic… able to fling fireballs around, in fact. Even more difficult to permanently destroy than my dragons. And they radiate a permanent Desecration, at double strength! Mua ha ha ha ha, this is perfect, we must let her rise as a Grave Knight. We must!” 

“And if she comes back as a mindless zombie?” Applejack asked, having finally broken free from the paralysis. “It’ll cost twice as much to bring her back, if she doesn’t win the undead lottery.”

“Oh, fine, we can ask,” Rarity said, with a heavy sigh. “But I’m not going to be the one carrying her dead weight.”

A few hours later, the orcish soldiers started to rise from the dead. Rarity identified them as Wights, by their glowing red eyes, and theorized that it was the Desecration that created the appropriate conditions. Most of them retained their previous identities, and Fluttershy was able to help several of the others with her Threnodic Command. The four that she could not help were still intelligent undead, but had lost all their memories. They agreed to continue to serve the army – or at least, the stronger Wights – in any way they could, although without most of their previous skill with weapons that would probably be as cannon fodder.

“It’s a shame we never found what happened to your weapons,” Applejack said, carefully not glancing at the bundle of magical axes recovered from the harpies, warpped up in Macintosh’s bedroll and thoroughly hidden. “Maybe if you go find the local harpy’s nest, they’ll still have some of them?”

“It’s of little concern,” Rarity said. “As energy-draining undead, they’ll want new ‘Conductive’ weapons enchanted for their use. Their old axes would be less effective than just attacking with their bare hands.”

In the morning, the party headed onwards quickly. There was no cleric at Black River capable of Raising Twilight Sparkle, so accompanying the caravan was no longer an option – they needed to turn south, towards Crossroads. Around the midpoint of their journey, they came to the small inn.

“No dead bodies in my inn!” the young crystal pony insisted. “What are you doing, carrying her around? You should be burying her!”

“We’re bringing her back to life,” Rainbow Dash said. “She’s safe, our healer here keeps blessing her body to keep her from rising up.”

“I’m still not letting her inside,” the pony said, stomping a hoof on the porch.

“She can spend the night in the stables,” Fluttershy said. “Rarity can keep an eye on her.”

“Me?” Rarity said.

“You don’t want to leave somepony else in charge of your dragons, do you?” Fluttershy asked. “Besides, you’re the only one immune to the butterflies.”

“Hah, she’s got you there, Daisy Chain,” Applejack said. “Don’t eat too much hay!”

“Laugh while you can,” Rarity grumbled, as she retreated to the stables. “The entrail feast draws ever nearer!”

In the morning, the party headed towards Crossroads, the dry wastes making way for the greener fields of the south. Around midday, they came across a curious structure, that hadn’t been there before. Someone had built a bridge over a small, swampy dip. As the adventurers crossed the bridge –

“There’s no way I’m setting a paw on that thing,” Rainbow Dash said, as she flew over.

As the flying party members flew over the bridge, a troll emerged from the mud, wearing a mud-stained uniform. “Stop! You cross my bridge, you pay!”

Rarity glowered at the brutish creature. “RUN,” she said, eyes flashing.

The troll ran.

Applejack eyed it suspiciously. “Since when do swamp trolls lurk about in the middle of a dry prairie?”

“There’s a swamp,” Pinkie Pie said, peering under the bridge. “Ooh, and a framed certificate!”

Applejack landed, and looked underneath as well. “A what?”

The troll had a framed certificate, declaring ‘Troll’ to be the owner and operator of the ‘North Swamp Bridge’ and licensing him to collect a toll of one silver piece per head from any traveler. There was also a wooden barrel, with large letters on the side reading ‘Mark of Passage – give one to each paying customer’. Inside the barrel were dozens of shiny amulets, made out of a strange blue metal.

While they were investigating this, the troll returned.

Rarity glowered at it again. “Why did you come back? RUN!”

“No!” the troll said, lifting a claw threateningly. “You pay!”

“Here,” Applejack said, tossing a pawful of silver pieces at the troll’s feet before it could attack. “But what are you doing way out here? Who set you up here?”

The troll bent over to take the silver pieces. “Orc,” the troll said. “It say troll need bridge, and build bridge for troll.”

“Did you get a name?” Rarity asked. “Or a description?”

The troll stared at her for a bit. “Orc! Was orc.” He reached under the bridge, and took a bunch of amulets from the barrel, handing one over to each party member. “You wear to cross bridge.”

Applejack looked at the amulets suspiciously, and whispered, “they magical?”

“Yes,” Rarity whispered. “Faint enchantment.”

Applejack scowled. “Then nopony wear ‘em, just use the hat. Troll shouldn’t be hard to fool.”

Rarity carried the real amulets until they were out of sight of the troll, and then the party buried them for safety. “I can’t help but think that we’ve seen these somewhere before,” she said.

“I know! I get the same feeling,” Pinkie Pie said. “But I can’t quite put my hoof on it.”

“Think we should, you know,” Rainbow Dash said, drawing a claw across her throat. “Just so nopony else falls for it.”

“Not until we know what’s going on here,” Applejack said. “No sense alerting somepony we don’t even have a good lead on.”

A bit before nightfall, they reached Crossroads at last, and headed for its temple. The priests there were more than willing to sell all the appropriate services, although one of them recognized the dead unicorn.

“That’s Twilight Sparkle – we have a message for her, and her companions.” The cleric frowned. “What happened to her? Did you see any sign of the others?”

“Invisible assassin!” Pinkie Pie said. “It paralyzed her, and cut off her head!”

“She’d just joined up with us a little bit before,” Applejack said. “If she had friends, well, I guess she was the last.”

The orcish priest gave Applejack a look.

“I don’t think he’s fooled,” Fluttershy said quietly.

“Fine, we’re her friends,” Applejack said. “There really was an assassin, though.”

“The message said to report to the nearest guild hall for questioning about a murder,” the cleric said. “An assassin killed an army captain, and cut off his head. If the assassin is after you as well, that speaks well for your innocence.”

“Uh, yeah,” Applejack said. “You can understand why we don’t want our identity thrown around willy-nilly, though. Right?”

The cleric smiled. “My lips are sealed. For a price.”

Despite the obvious origin of the magical axes as orcish army issue, the party’s status as Adventurers allowed them to sell them to the temple without being questioned about how they came to be in their possession. Applejack volunteered that they’d been recovered from a pack of harpies working for the assassin, just to make sure there was no confusion, and that people didn’t start saying that they’d been fighting the army.

After securing funds, the next step was to cast Speak With Dead, a simple spell that would simulate Twilight’s personality and memories, to answer questions as she would have were she alive, and magically compelled to answer questions. One of the acolytes cast the spell on Twilight’s well-preserved corpse – Rarity had stitched her head back on – and her eyes opened, staring at nothing.

“Twilight? Is that you?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“Shh! You only get three questions!” The acolyte warned her, a bit too late.

“Yes…” Twilight croaked. “Oh, Pinkie, it’s so awful here. Please, bring me back. Everything is dark, and tainted. The blackness is trying to devour me… I can’t let it have me!”

The acolyte looked shocked. “That’s – that’s not how the spell is supposed to work.”

“Would you like to come back as a living unicorn,” Rarity asked, ignoring him. She leaned forwards towards her dead friend, grinning, “or would you prefer to save thousands of gold and come back as a fearsome Grave Knight? They’re quite powerful. Immune to cold and –“

“I want to be alive,” Twilight rasped. “If this darkness is the essence of undeath, I want no part of it.”

“Are you sure?” Rarity asked. “Fluttershy could make a nice Desecrated area – outside of town, of course – and you haven’t lived… or, well, died, I suppose… until you’ve experienced Desecration as an undead. It’s quite luxurious. Plus, you’ll feel no fear, or pain… it really is a superior form of existence.”

“No fear, no pain, no guilt, no shame,” Twilight intoned. “I am sure,” she added, answering the question.

With that, the spell ended, and her body became still once more.

“Well, I think it’s pretty clear that she wants to be raised from the dead,” Pinkie Pie said. “Sorry, Rarity.”

Rarity scowled. “Some ponies have no appreciation for the finer things in death.”

> Welcome Home
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight’s revival was put off until the next day, since the priests didn’t keep a Raise Dead spell prepared just in case somepony came in needing one. The party spent the night in town, catching up on local rumors.

The zebras, surprisingly, had been quiet. Since the incident at the mine, the priests had been using a Sending spell to keep in touch with the necromancer on guard at Ghastly Gorge, and he’d reported that things had quieted down. There was still the occasional suspicious patrol, but no zebras had tried to cross.

This was good, because it let him focus on the growing problem of wandering undead. So far, they’d stayed far from Crossroads, but the northern plains were becoming unsafe. One of the ponies at the inn was a farmer who’d moved his whole family back to Crossroads after ghouls – or something – had spent a night scratching at his door and mocking him with promises that they’d eat his children while he watched. He had enough savings that he wasn’t in immediate need, but unless he could reclaim his farm, he would eventually be forced to find another line of work.

Thanks to that, and the still-troublesome Unicorn Bandits, and the rumors of drake attacks in the pass, trade from Bright Valley had slowed to a trickle. The entire village of Crossroads was a trading town without any operating trade routes, at the moment. Their temple was still one of the more powerful (and mercenary) in the entire Bright Valley region, at least, so for now it was keeping the town economy going.

The one specific warning the party received was about Bright Valley’s recent surge in prejudice against the undead. “If you’re going to keep those skeletons of yours, you’d best keep them out of town.”

“I can’t just leave them behind,” Rarity said. “They’re vital to my work!”

"Maybe you could leave them with the Necromancer? Macintosh’s old boss?” Fluttershy suggested

“Kazakh Thul,” Macintosh supplied, since nopony else could remember his name.

“Ugh,” Rarity said. “The last thing I need is to owe him another favor.”

Applejack frowned. “Wouldn’t givin’ him four powerful flyin’ critters to hold off the zebra’s drakes be a favor you were doin’ for him?”

“Obviously, you’ve never tried to negotiate with him,” Rarity said, scowling. “The elven mafia has nothing on that old fool.”

“Your skeletons don’t need to breathe or anything, right?” Rainbow Dash said. “So why not just put them in a barrel or something.”

Pinkie Pie giggled. “With a giant lock and chains, and a warning label on the side --“

“Just a normal box would be better,” Applejack said. “We could walk right past the guards and they’d have no call to search us or anything.”

“But skeletons live in barrels!” Pinkie Pie said. “Everypony knows you hide skeletons in barrels. It’s tradition!”

While Twilight was being raised from the dead, Rarity and Applejack visited the local shops and managed to find four huge boxes which the dragon skeletons could squeeze into, and a mid-sized wagon to carry the boxes and any other equipment, for a few hundred gold. It was meant to be pulled by four ponies, but a large pony like Macintosh would be able to pull it by himself.

By the time they were done, the others were returning from the temple with Twilight in tow.

“Good to see you up and about again, sugar cube,” Applejack said. “Hope you didn’t get in too much trouble on the other side.”

“The last thing I remember is getting my head cut off,” Twilight said. “And although I knew I was about to die, the only thing I could think was that getting your head cut off really should hurt more.”

“You know this means I win, right?” Rainbow Dash said. “You died first!”

“Uh huh,” Twilight said, scowling. “I’m really not in the mood for banter. My head feels like somepony used it to play hoofball while I was dead.”

Pinkie Pie nodded. “You’ll feel better in a week! Or whenever you get your second Restoration cast. Until then it’ll kind of suck.”

“But you don’t remember anything?” Rarity asked, frowning.

“Not a thing,” Twilight said. “Sorry.” She paused. “Do you?”

“Oh yes,” Rarity said. “I remember everything. And I remember it being rather awful at the time, although for the life of me I can’t imagine why I was so revolted by it.”

“Care to describe it?” Twilight asked. “Maybe it’ll spark my memory.”

“Hmm, very well,” Rarity said. “It was like this – the world was still there, but everything was dark. The sky was a swirling vortex of green light that didn’t illuminate anything, and everything was covered in a thick layer of black mold, with a stench like rotting entrails. If I got too close to the mold, little tendrils would extend, reaching towards my spirit, and where they touched they would root inside me, slowly spreading through my soul and turning it cold and black and rotten.

“Despite all that, my body called to me, and I could not resist its pull, even though it meant plunging into the muck, and immersing myself in the squirming filth. I was devoured by the darkness, consumed by the wriggling tentacles of undeath, and bound to the rotting flesh of my corpse.”

Applejack stared at her. “And you can’t imagine why you found that awful.”

Rarity smiled. “Why, all of those sensations sound positively decadent to me now, Applejack.”

Twilight doubled over, looking sick to her stomach.

“Are you okay, dear?” Rarity asked.

“The darkness…” Twilight moaned. “The filth… it’s still inside me…” Her stomach heaved, but nothing came out. She collapsed to the ground, coughing and choking and trying to vomit. “I can’t… I can’t get it out.”

Pinkie Pie patted her on the head. “You’ll feel better in a week,” she said. “Really!”

Twilight felt nauseated enough to want to ride in the wagon, as the party set off for Bright Valley. As always, the road between Crossroads and the city was well-maintained and surrounded by small farms and villages. For some reason, however, despite their disguises as ordinary ponies wearing ordinary merchants’ clothing, the farmers and other villagers kept staring at them as they passed. Nopony said anything, they just paused in whatever work or conversation they were having, and stared intently at the party until they were out of sight.

“Did you notice?” Applejack asked, quietly.

“Yeah, they’ve all got those weird necklaces,” Rainbow Dash said. “Like the troll was handing out.”

“Let’s add them to our disguises, and see if that helps,” Rarity suggested.

With the fake amulets clearly visible, the party still attracted attention as they passed, but after a few seconds the villagers would look away, confused.

“Oh, great,” Twilight said. “They’ve all been charmed by the blue metal.”

“You know what this is?” Rainbow Dash asked. “We thought it looked kind of familiar but none of us could place it.”

“Um, yes?” Twilight said. “I spent a week under a loyalty spell while I waited for it to wear off, remember? Those amulets are made of the same blue metal as all those cursed weapons we recovered from the mine.”

“Oh. Oh, Kara take those fools!” Applejack snapped. “We turned them in for safe-keeping, and those hay-brained morons turned right round and sold them, didn’t they!”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Twilight said. “The zebras might have managed to infiltrate the countryside and seed it without our help.”

“Except the troll said that it was given the amulets by an orc,” Rarity said. “Not a zebra.”

“I just hope it hasn’t gotten to the city,” Applejack said. “The last thing we need is to have to deal with a whole city full o’ zombie slaves.”

“It was a light charm spell that compelled its victims to distribute the blue metal to new victims,” Twilight said. “Calling them ‘zombies’ is a huge exaggeration. Not that this isn’t something we need to deal with.”

“Yeah, I getcha. I just thought for a second that we might get a chance to go home and rest for a spell, without some world-shattering disaster dogging our tails,” Applejack said.

“You’re from Bright Valley, then?” Twilight asked.

“Among other places,” Applejack replied, with a smirk.

“Everyone’s from Bright Valley,” Rainbow Dash said. “I mean, like, it’s huge. There’s more griffons in Bright Valley than in the Griffon Mountains.”

“I’m from Bright Valley too!” Pinkie Pie said.

“I thought you grew up in the zebra lands, with Rarity?” Twilight asked.

“Nooo! I ran away to the zebras to study alchemy, but my family’s from Bright Valley,” Pinkie Pie said. “Oh! You can all stay at my house! It’s really big and we’ve got plenty of guest rooms, and my mom’s super-nice. You’ll love her!”

“Don’t see why not,” Applejack said. “No place better to lie low than on private property.”

A few hours before dark, the party approached Bright Valley. The rumors they’d heard in Rally were that most of the orcish military had been pulled out of the city as part of the general recall, but looking at the ranks of orcs and ponies standing guard on the walls, and the flights of griffons and pegasi circling proudly overhead, one would not imagine the city guard undermanned.

Or underequipped – without exception, every guard wore a gleaming breastplate or chain shirt of bright blue metal, and their spears and axes were also of the same make.

“Oh come on!” Rainbow Dash cried, spotting the glint of blue from the fliers, first.

“This is… impressive,” Twilight said. “It was only a week or two since we were here last, and they’ve already replaced the guards’ weapons and armor? That’s an almost unbelievable level of efficiency for a military bureaucracy.” 

“I disagree,” Applejack said. “That is a completely unbelievable basket of horseapples, right there.”

Rarity laughed. “Who would have guessed that the secret to effective government is to place the population under mental control?”

“Actually, mister headband says that it’s been tried before, a lot of times,” Pinkie Pie said. “But a Crown of Command Economy always goes bad. Really really bad. I hope we’re not too late!”

Judging from the amount of traffic going in and out of the city gates, the economy did not appear to have collapsed just yet. As they joined the line and approached the checkpoint, they could see that while most travelers were waved through without any trouble, anypony not wearing a blue amulet was stopped and searched thoroughly, while a group of ponies took them aside to talk. In most cases, they were given amulets, and the inspection was called off.

“We’ll be fine,” Applejack said. “We’ve got amulets, right? As far as any of them know, anyway.”

When the party reached the checkpoint, the guards looked at them strangely, seeming to be confused at the sight of their amulets, just like the villagers had been. Still, they were about to wave them through, when an earth pony guard in the back, who looked like she was dozing off instead of participating in the checkpoint, suddenly leapt to her hooves and pointed at Rarity. “Undead!”

The other guards drew their weapons. “I knew there was something off about them,” an orcish guard said, with a scowl. “I can’t get anything on them from Harmony.”

Around them, the crowd screamed and backed away, leaving them alone against five guards, with more on the way.

“Wait, please,” Fluttershy said. “There’s no need to fight. She’s not a bad undead!”

“Undead are unable to experience Harmony,” the orc said. “If any of you who are alive lay down your arms and surrender, we’ll allow you to take her body back to Crossroads for resurrection after we destroy her.”

Twilight stood up from her perch on the wagon, and stared down at the guards. “That is not acceptable. We are Adventurers, agents of the Empire, and you do not have the authority to tell us who or what we may associate with. She is with us, and she will not be molested!”

“Oh crap,” one of the guards in back whispered – quietly, but not too quietly for most of the party to make out. “What do we do? If any of them get away --”

“We’re not ready for this,” another responded. “Let them through, for now. We can deal with them later.”

As soon as they finished talking, the guard Twilight had threatened lowered his weapon, and stood aside. “You should know that undead are not allowed in Bright Valley, and we scan for them constantly. We’ll let you violate this rule for now, but you’re going to run into trouble every time you encounter a patrol. We recommend you finish whatever business that thing has in this city quickly, and remove her before she becomes even more of a problem.”

“Your recommendation is noted,” Twilight said. “Let’s go.”

“Ha!” Rainbow Dash said, once they were away. “That was crazy. I thought we were going to have to fight them.”

“Yeah, that would have been totally crazy,” Pinkie Pie said. “There’s like a million of them, and only seven of us, and they’ve got that creepy Harmony thing going on. You know what else is crazy? We are, to even be in this city. Ha ha ha ha ha, isn’t that crazy?”

“Come on, I think I know how we can lose the tail they’re tryin’ to pin on us,” Applejack said. “Would be easier without a pony-loving cart, though,” she grumbled.

Applejack led the party into the back alleys of the city, until they were thoroughly lost, but taking routes that took them through places where they couldn’t be seen from the air, and where any guards trying to follow them would stand out, badly. She also had them change disguises often. After about half an hour of that, she left them in a large covered alcove that was once an entryway to the city sewers, before it was bricked over. She took Rainbow Dash out on a quick shopping trip, and they came back with a tarp to cover the wagon, along with several large sheets of lead.

Rarity squeezed between the boxes as the rest of the party hurriedly wedged the lead sheets into place to block any further attempts to magically detect undead. It would have been better to have the lead lining inside the boxes, since anypony looking under the tarp would see the lead immediately, but that was for later. For the moment, this would serve.

Thus shielded, and with new disguises again, they made their way to the upper class district. The district was walled and gated, but Applejack’s calm assertion that they had a delivery for the Pie Manor got them through without incident.

Pinkie Pie perked up as they approached her childhood home. The others were not so confident, seeing the state that it was in – the lawn was unkempt, with what were once topiary wildly overgrown, and the grass almost knee high. The mansion itself was stone, and designed to look like a castle, with crumbling gargoyles looming from its stylized turrets and crenellations.

To Pinkie, none of that seemed unusual. “Oh, I can’t wait to see my family again! They were always really sensible folks so I’m sure they haven’t been taken in by this whole Harmony nonsense, and if they are we can just dispel it, right?”

“Maybe,” Twilight said. “The archmage who treated me didn’t think that was an option.”

“Or maybe he just wanted an excuse to put a loyalty spell on you,” Rainbow Dash said. “We can try anyway, right?”

Pinkie was already knocking on the door, excitedly. Before long, it swung open, and she leapt through and gave the pony opening it a huge hug. “Eeeee! I’m so happy to see you again –“

She stopped staring at the pretty young leatherwing in her arms. “You’re not my mommy. Or my sister.” Not letting go, she leaned forwards to give the stranger a glare. “Who are you?”

“I’m one of the maids?” the young girl said, smiling nervously. “Who should I tell the master is visiting?”

“Oh!” Pinkie Pie said, looking around, and letting her go. “Yeah, I guess this place could use some cleaning up. I’m Pinkie! Pinkie Pie. You can tell them Little Pinkie is here if you want, but Pinkie Pie is probably the proper pronouncement. I’m here with my friends to visit for a while, before we go back to stabbing people. Bad people, I mean. You know, monsters and things.”

The maid bowed. “I’ll inform the master immediately. It’ll be good to have family in the house again.”

“Well,” Twilight said after she left, as they walked into the foyer to wait. “I didn’t see any blue metal, at least. But how long has it been since you’ve visited, Pinkie? It sounded like only your father was here.”

“Yeah, weird,” Pinkie said. “I mean, sure, I’ve been gone for about ten years, but I’m sure it’s nothing bad. Maybe mom just went off to become a pirate or something. Or, you know, maybe the maid meant ‘more family’. Like, more than just my mother and father and all my sisters. Maybe?”

“As long as we’ve got somewhere safe to sleep,” Applejack said, stretching herself out to lounge on a long bench.

> Gather Information
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Macintosh took the cart to the stables, then he and Rarity joined the others inside Pie Manor’s massive foyer. Like the outside of the mansion, it was in poor repair, but was lavishly, if disturbingly, decorated. The windows were stained glass depicting devils and demons of all sorts, the couches were made of leather dyed in a patchwork of bright colors, and the bannisters were capped with pony skulls. Everything was coated in a thin layer of dust. Whatever the maids had been up to – the party spotted at least one more young female leatherwing passing by on the balcony – they evidently had not been doing much cleaning up.

It was also very quiet, although after an hour of running around through overcrowded streets trying to avoid attention that was more of a comfort than anything else.

After a few minutes, the original maid returned, to lead Pinkie Pie and her guests to the sitting room, to meet with Lord Pie. Igneous Pie turned out to be large brown and grey earth pony, who was sitting in a comfortable chair as they filed into the room. The bat-winged maid flew across the room to hover over him, and started rubbing his shoulders.

“Now now, Dreamy,” he said, gently pushing her aside. “Not in front of my daughter.”

“Daddy?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Is that really you?” She frowned. “You look old.”

“I’ve aged a decade in the last two weeks,” he replied. “It was hard enough with you and your sisters gone, scattered to the four winds. When your mother… when she left, I felt as if I would crumble to dust. If it wasn’t for Dreams and her sisters, I don’t know how I would have managed.”

“So are they, like,” Rainbow Dash stopped, mid-sentence, to look at Pinkie Pie. “Um…”

“What happened to mommy?” Pinkie asked.

Igneous scowled. “She got together with some of her old friends, and they set out to fight the cult. A few days later, most of them were wearing those damned amulets, and helping round up the other ‘dissidents’, but my Cloudy was nowhere to be found. They promised me I’d see her again if I joined them, but I am not one to be so easily manipulated!” He shouted the last words, then continued, in a low growl. “Besides, I know she’s dead.”

“A shame,” Rarity said. “Although nowadays, being dead need not be the end for her.”

“The cult has ways of ensuring its enemies stay dead,” Igneous replied. When Dreams started rubbing his shoulders again, he did not object.

"We could look into this,” Twilight Sparkle said. “Even if it wasn’t personal, something needs to be done about this cult.”

Igneous scowled. “That’s what my wife said. Don’t throw away your life on a fool’s errand. The world is dying, the Empire is failing, what does it matter if the city falls?”

“Aren’t you just a ray of sunshine,” Applejack said, with a smirk. “But this ‘cult’ is already after us, so we may as well try and hit back.”

“If you need a place to start,” Dreams volunteered, “their main recruitment center is on the corner of Maple and Carp, in the old Hall of Records.”

Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes at the maid. “And how do you know that?”

“It’s not a secret,” Dreams replied with a smile. “If you ask anyone on the street they could tell you as much.”

Pinkie Pie stayed a while longer to catch up on things with her father, while Dreams showed the rest of the party to the guest rooms. Turning in early, and leaving Rarity on guard duty since she didn’t need sleep, they were able to wake up well before dawn and still be fully rested. The Hall of Records would be too crowded during the day, so a night-time raid was called for.

Specifically, Applejack and Rarity would sneak inside, since they were the two stealthiest members of the adventuring party. The others would find somewhere to wait nearby in case they needed support.

The building itself was a sprawling two-story structure on the corner of two major streets in the middle of the Residential District. It had some security – the doors were reinforced and locked, and the windows had iron bars preventing entrance by anything larger than a cat – but it was a place where minor governmental functions happened: marriages, property title transfers, the payment of fines, and so on. Or at least, that’s what it had been, until the cult took over.

At night, most of the building was dark, although a few rooms near the front doors seemed to be occupied – some sort of business continued, even in the middle of the night.

“Guess we use the back door,” Applejack said quietly, to the invisible Rarity that she hoped was following her like she was supposed to. “Probably a better bet anyway, less people watching from the alley.”

Circling around to the back, there was no sign of life. Applejack and Rarity crept past piles of garbage and debris, until they reached the back door, which was locked securely but didn’t seem to be trapped. Applejack made short work of the lock, but as she opened the door a loud alarm went off.

“Oh, ponyfeathers,” she hissed, as she dove through the door. “Just go! We can lose them inside!”

A volley of flaming bolts streaked down from the roof towards Rarity as she headed for the door, and swerved in midair towards her. Two glanced harmlessly off her defensive spells, but the third sunk into her flank. Looking back for the source, she spotted a pale pegasus concealed beneath a dark cloak, hovering over the edge of a rooftop. Rarity’s eyes flashed with dark energy as she intoned, “RUN!” Then she ran inside, as her invisibility popped, and took cover next to Applejack, around a corner of a T-intersection, thirty feet from the door.

The white-winged Pegasus was right behind her, apparently impervious to fear. Applejack threw a dagger at her as she came in, but it went wide. Seeing two intruders, the Pegasus dove into one of the dark offices to hide. It did her no good, as the office was small enough for Rarity to fill the entire thing with a Glitterdust.

Applejack rushed forwards, drawing her rapier, and plunged it into the blinded pegasus’ chest. She wrenched herself off the blade, and spread her wings, flipping over Applejack’s head to get out of the office – but Applejack was able to track her clumsy, blinded movements, and stab her again as she fled back out the rear entrance.

She whispered into the air, just loud enough for Applejack to overhear, “Wildfire, I need your help! At least two adventurers!”

Rarity could no longer see the target, as she’d flown straight up to break line of sight, so she cast Haste instead, to speed herself and Applejack. Applejack shot out the back door, and leapt up to stab at the pegasus again, but this time her target could see, and managed to dodge the swing. She shot back with a volley of flaming bolts, but Applejack dodged them all.

Seeing the bolts crash against the alleyway, Rarity darted back to the rear entrance and fired a barrage of magic missiles at the glitter-coated assailant – and she fell from the sky, landing in a bloody heap.

A crow dropped out of the sky, and landed on top of her. There was a blue flash, and many of her wounds were healed. “Don’t die on me, Prize,” it squawked.

Applejack blinked to the ground behind it, and lashed out with her rapier and claws, but couldn’t land a hit on the bird as it hopped back and forth from foot to foot, then took to the air. The Pegasus, conscious once again, fired a volley of flaming bolts at Rarity, one of them hitting its mark, damaging her through all her magical defenses.

Rarity hissed, and flung out her hoof, tossing a ball of fire that engulfed the pair, and much of the alley, stopping just short of Applejack’s muzzle. Unfortunately, the pegasus was able to ride the updraft from the blast and shield herself with her wings, while the crow took the blast full on, but barely seemed hurt.

“Why the hay did you prepare a fireball spell for a stealth mission?” Applejack asked, staring at Rarity in dismay.

“I said that if we needed the others to come assist, I’d set off a flare,” Rarity replied. “What spell did you expect me to use?”

The crow laughed, and burped up a massive ball of flaming pitch, which bounced across the ground, flinging itself at Rarity and smacking her in the face. She shrieked, and the smell of burning, rotted flesh filled the air.

Applejack leapt at the bird, and managed to skewer its leg with her rapier, which bent for a second before sinking in, as if she’d stabbed a piece of rock. Rarity dodged another volley of flaming bolts from the glittering pegasus, then cast a spell to protect herself and Applejack from fire.

“That’s hardly fair,” the crow said, flinging the ball at Rarity again anyway, although this time she managed to dodge. “But I’m no one-trick pony.” Lightning shot down from the sky, striking the ghoulish wizard directly.

About that time, the rest of the party finally showed up, at the far end of the alleyway. Pinkie Pie tossed a bomb, which exploded in force against ‘Prize’, knocking her unconscious again. Fluttershy fired a bolt from her crossbow at the crow, but it bounced off his rocky skin. The others charged down the narrow space, closing the distance.

“Now that’s really not fair,” the crow said, glancing at the reinforcements.

Applejack ignored his quips, and managed to stab him again, and Rarity closed in to flank, clawing at him with her sharpened hooves, trying in vain to paralyze him. He flew up over the lip of the roof, tossing a fireball at the newcomers as he went.

He was a fast flier, in crow form, but Applejack was still hasted, and swooped after him, stabbing at him with her rapier as he healed himself, and again as he cast a curse on her that made her wings feel briefly like they were made of lead, before she shook it off. And again, as he called down a column of holy flame, which she dodged past to get in one more swing, before he dropped over the front edge of the building, and rushed through the front door into the lit area. None of her attacks hit.

“Blaze take you, stupid crow!” she shouted, before flying back to rejoin the others.

They were gathered around the downed pegasus, stripping her of her valuables. She seemed to still be breathing, although she was battered and had deep wounds, barely healed over.

“He got away,” Applejack said. “Y’all best skedaddle. I’ll try and sneak in and take a look around while they chase ya.”

“Are you nuts?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“Maybe, but it’s the last thing they’ll expect,” Applejack said.

“That’s because it’s crazy,” Twilight said. “But if you think you can pull it off – don’t try to be a hero. We’re just gathering information.”

“We’ll take Surprise with us,” Pinkie Pie said, indicating the unconscious rogue. “She was one of mom’s friends – maybe she knows something.”

“And you can keep ahead of the guards while carryin’ her?” Applejack asked.

“Ayup,” Macintosh said, taking hold of her in his teeth and tossing her onto his back.

To make her solo mission less of a suicide mission, Pinkie Pie and Rarity handed over the rest of the infusions they’d prepared for the caper – two doses of invisibility, along with gaseous form and burrow for emergencies, although that last one would leave a trail. Applejack drank one of the invisiblity infusions, then ran headlong through the darkened building, distancing herself from the scene of the crime, while the others fled through the city streets.

She did have to hide from a patrol sweeping the hallways, but invisible, they had no chance of finding her. Unfortunately, the interesting sections of the building – the stacks, the basement, and the front rooms – were guarded, and the guards were now alert. Most of the offices were full of boring, normal paperwork, at least at first glance.

The invisibility spell had worn off by the time she got her first break – one of the ponies on patrol said that they were going to go up and inform the Director. Applejack shadowed them like a ghost, until they reached a nondescript office on the second floor.

The pony opened the door, and said, “Sir? Sir, are you awake?” The office was dark, and there was no response. “We checked the building, and it looks clear. It looks like they all ran off.” There was another pause, and while she couldn’t hear anything being spoken, Applejack was sure she heard something moving around in the dark room. “Yes sir, I’m sure the guards can handle them. Goodnight, sir.”

Applejack waited by the closed door for several minutes, listening for any sign that whoever, or whatever, was in the room was still awake. Her bet was on ‘whatever’, since who ever heard of a pony sleeping in his office?

Once she was as sure as she could be that nothing inside was moving around, she slowly, slooowly opened the door. Once it had opened far enough, she carefully peeked through the gap.

The office was small and unremarkable – a desk, some chairs, a filing cabinet, a large wastebasket set next to the desk… and there, standing next to the desk, just behind the basket, was a pony.

At least, it looked like a pony. It wasn’t moving, and its mouth was… wrong. There was very little light, but eventually Applejack made out just what had stricken her as so unusual about it – its mouth was gaping open, impossibly far, as if the edges of the mouth extended down its muzzle and halfway down its neck. Inside was a dark, fleshy gap, with ridged, exposed flesh. Despite that, the thing was somehow breathing – but there was no sign of life in its eyes, and no sign that it had noticed Applejack.

Applejack figured that if it had seen her, it had seen her, and slipped into the room, quietly shutting the door behind her. Not wanting to get too close to the… thing, she first examined one of the filing cabinets. It was locked, but that was hardly a moment’s pause for a thief as skilled as her. She picked out what looked like the most heavily used folder, and spread it out on the floor to try to make out what was inside it.

It was hard to read, in the dark, but Applejack could tell that it was a list of names, pages and pages long, many of them crossed off. The crossed off names had one of several symbols next to them – usually a circle, but sometimes a spiral, or a pair of parallel vertical lines, or a squiggle. From the smell of the ink, this list was edited frequently.

The other folders in the cabinet were less interesting – just dossiers on various ponies, with pictures and not many details.

Applejack considered the cabinet. It was too large for her to carry quietly, but if she managed to unscrew the bars from the back window, maybe she could toss it into the backstreet and run off with it, less quietly. It had wheels, after all. For the moment, she shoved the list of names into her saddlebag, then hopped up onto the desk to check whatever documents might be laid out there.

Unfortunately, her paw slipped on a piece of paper, and knocked a jar of ink off the table, into the wastebasket, where it landed with a quiet ‘squelch’. Suddenly, tentacles exploded from the wastebasket, as the creature resting inside was awoken.

Applejack grabbed a bunch of random papers in her mouth, then leapt off the table, trying to hide behind the filing cabinet. The ooze flowed across the floor towards her, flailing a tentacle in her general direction, although it was aimed too high to hit her while she was flattened against the floor on all fours – apparently, it hadn’t gotten a good glimpse of her, and thought she was as tall as she’d been while standing on the table.

Applejack took the opportunity to open the door and run away. The creature didn’t follow immediately, letting her easily make good on her escape.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party made their own somewhat noisy escape through the city streets – they weren’t trying to make noise, but Twilight and Macintosh were never going to be able to move quietly, and there were no crowds to blend in with during the night.

So it shouldn’t have surprised them that they were intercepted by the city guard, as archers in the bright blue guard armor fired down at them from the rooftops.

Arrows shot at the two noisy plate-armored ponies in the front, missing Macintosh but striking Twilight a nasty blow. The orcish shooters were clearly visible – clearly not rogues of any sort, and not even trying to hide.

The archers were too spread out to catch more than one in an area attack, so Pinkie Pie picked one and tossed her bomb, which exploded in fire and poisonous smoke and grease. The orc slipped on the grease and fell to the street, prone and choking on the aftereffects from the fumes. Macintosh charged at him, skewering him with his lance and finishing him off.

One of the other orcs focused his attacks on Pinkie in retaliation, and without most of her defensive spells in place, the fiery arrows sank easily into her shoulder and belly, burning with both flames and acid. Fluttershy winced as she saw the arrows hit, but healed Twilight first, who was still hurt from the fireball as well as her arrow wound. She moved over towards Pinkie Pie to heal her next, though.

Rainbow Dash charged at the orc who’d shot Pinkie, but her target easily dodged her clumsy swing. 

Twilight stayed close to Rarity, tossing a pair of javelins at the rooftop archers and missing badly. “Allow me to assist,” Rarity said, and teleported both of them onto the roof, right next to one of the attackers. The orc dropped his bow, and pulled out a Lucerne hammer from its sheath – but he was obviously far more accustomed to archery, and Twilight parried his attack easily.

The remaining archer focused his fire on Pinkie Pie, sinking two more flaming arrows into her flesh. Her ablative barrier mitigated the shots a little, as they had the first two, but unlike Rarity she couldn’t ignore the painful feedback from the spell, and she fell to the ground, unconscious.

The orc that Rainbow Dash was menacing surprised her by sticking to his bow, even at close range, and put a painful fiery acid arrow into her stomach before she realized she had to dodge the next two shots. She replied with a flurry of blows, but couldn’t get a claw on the orc, who danced around the rooftop, grinning at her. His grin failed as a tanglefoot bag arced up over the edge of the roof and splattered against him, entangling him and gluing him in place.

Below, Fluttershy landed on Pinkie Pie and healed her, washing away her bruises as well as most of her arrow wounds.

“Thanks!” Pinkie said, launching herself into the air and throwing a bomb at the archer not currently engaged by one of her friends. He was engulfed in flames and smoke as well, but failed to fall to his death, although there was a ‘thunk’ and various scrambling noises on the rooftop, and he didn’t manage to escape the cloud.

Up on the roof, Twilight slammed her hammer into the archer trying to duel her, striking a solid blow to his armor, but failing to take him down. Rarity snuck around behind him, and planted a glowing hoof into the small of his back – it didn’t hurt, but the dark energies ran through the orc, unravelling his nerves. His attempt to counterattack was feeble and halfhearted, and Twilight’s next attack crushed his head, leaving him thoroughly dead. 

On the other roof, Rainbow Dash and the entangled guard continued to duel, although the advantage was on Rainbow’s side now, and she struck him twice, with bone-crushing force and a surge of electricity, while even his crazy tricks couldn’t let him get a clean shot at her.

Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy flew up to the cloud of smoke concealing a guard, and Pinkie cleared the cloud with a kick, letting Fluttershy follow up with an admonishing glare at the retching orc, which slammed into him with physical force and knocked him out.

Then, in the street below, Macintosh shouted, “Nope. NOPE!” as a blue ooze that had emerged from the corpse of the guard he’d skewered slithered up to him and swung at him with an oozy tentacle.

“What? What’s going on?” Rainbow Dash asked, sizzling the trapped guard with more electricity and continuing to dodge his counterattacks.

“The guard turned into an oozy thing!” Pinkie Pie said, swooping down and throwing a firebomb at it, scorching it. In the light of the flames, she could see it more clearly. “It’s made out of blue mud!”

“You already lost, stop fighting!” Fluttershy pleaded, shooting beams of force from her eyes, splattering the mud a little. It wasn’t clear whether it had helped or not. Macintosh stabbed at it with his lance, which was definitively unhelpful, as the creature split in two around the blow, and now two oozes squirmed around, flanking him. Their tentacles splatted against his armor, but while there was an acid sizzle, it kept him from being hurt.

“Is this one going to turn into an ooze?” Twilight asked Rarity.

Rarity examined the fallen guard, and spotted flecks of blue mud swimming in his blood, congealing into larger and larger bits. “Hmm, yes, most likely.”

“How do we stop it?” she asked.

“Try hitting it with your hammer, once it manifests,” Rarity suggested, trotting back behind Twilight to use her as cover. “Blunt force was used to turn the original blue mud to powder, so it may still work against these blue mud creatures.”

Sure enough, an ooze started to rise from the corpse, which dissolved around it, and when Twilight slammed her hammer into it, it reacted as if hurt, and didn’t split in two.

“Use blunt force!” Twilight shouted, to the others. “Rainbow Dash, your punches would be perfect!”

“Little busy here,” Rainbow replied, continuing to attack her entangled opponent with a flurry of blows, most of which were blocked or dodged, although one managed to break his nose. At the same time, another of his arrows finally hit her, sinking into her chest near her neck, narrowly missing a fatal strike as she twisted aside.

Macintosh, not knowing what else to do, stabbed at one of the oozes with his lance, and while it split again, both halves reeled back and collapsed into puddles – still cohesive, but apparently unconscious. Fluttershy used her glare on the other ooze, and it fell unconscious as well.

Pinkie Pie flew over to Rainbow’s roof, and smacked a firebomb into the middle of her opponent’s back, incinerating him in a shower of flaming fluid. “There. Can you go help Twilight now?”

“I’m actually doing fine,” Twilight said, continuing to pound her hammer into the ooze, while blocking its flailing attacks with her shield.

Rainbow streaked across the sky and slammed a lightning fist into the reeling ooze, knocking it unconscious. “You were saying?”

“I was saying I had it,” Twilight replied. “But this isn’t a contest, so…” she rolled her eyes. “Thank you Rainbow Dash, for finishing off the pathetic opponent that I was about to take down anyway.”

“Can we go now?” Fluttershy asked. “We need to find somewhere safe to heal, and there might be more guards coming any second!”

“Their bows are high quality, and there’s magic on their belt – it looks like potions,” Rarity noted. “As long as we have to fight off the guards, we might as well get something of value out of it.”

Fluttershy healed the party as they looted the downed guards – it was easy, since the bodies had dissolved. One of the guards was still alive, but unconscious, which would have made taking his armor more difficult if they wanted to take his armor at all. It was made of the blue metal, so they left it, contenting themselves with the bows and potions.

When they went to loot the stronger guard that Rainbow had been fighting, they found that he had much more magical equipment – a ring, a magic bow, a cloak of resistance, and magical boots. His body had dissolved, but there was little sign of the ooze that must have come out of it. Fluttershy was able to track its faint trail across the rooftop to a gutter, which drained into the sewer – it must have run away.

“That’s fine,” Twilight said. “We were in disguise, so it doesn’t matter if we leave witnesses. These people are being mind controlled, so killing them isn’t actually a good thing.”

“I didn’t see you pulling your punches,” Rarity noted, as they fled the scene of the crime.

Twilight frowned. “If they turn into ooze when they die… they might be too far gone to save.”

“Or we might just need a remove disease extract for each of them,” Pinkie Pie said. “Or maybe being an ooze isn’t so bad? They didn’t talk, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t talk, or think, or do stuff that doesn’t involve trying to kill ponies.”

“I hope you’re right,” Twilight replied.

> Smash and Grab
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Applejack and the others met up back at Pie Manor at dawn. Igneous Pie was not at all shocked to see the rogue Surprise tied up and beaten unconscious, and showed them to the dungeon where he had a torture room with a table they could chain her to securely.

“Torture won’t work on her,” he said. “Harmony won’t let them say anything it doesn’t want you to know.”

“I don’t think I’d want to torture her anyway,” Pinkie Pie said. “She was almost like one of my aunts growing up. We need to fix her!” Using her alchemy set, she took a sample of Surprise’s blood to check for blue mud contamination, like Rarity had seen with the guards before they transformed.

“What we need is a loyalty spell,” Twilight said. 

“I’m sorry, darling, but it’s not just that I don’t know any enchantment spells, it’s that I don’t cast enchantment spells,” Rarity said. “I control the dead, not the living.”

“You could,” Pinkie Pie said.

“But it’s so inefficient,” Rarity replied, with a frown.

“Loyalty spells last about a week,” Twilight said. “It doesn’t matter if they’re inefficient to cast if you cast them on a day where you wouldn’t have used those spells anyway.”

“So all I need to do is tell the future,” Rarity replied. “Child’s play.”

“We’ve got a place to hunker down,” Applejack said. “What says we have to go out and get into trouble every single day?”

“So, what, we’d just spend the whole day sitting around doing nothing?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Applejack gave Rainbow Dash a bemused look. “Forget I asked.”

”Actually,” purred the leatherwing maid currently attending Igneous – not Dreamy, today – “I know some techniques that are excellent at freeing people from mind control. They’re not spells, they’re… techniques.”

Igneous looked at her, frowning, but said nothing.

“So… are we talking that ki stuff that I could never get the hang of?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Are you actually a ninja?”

“Something like that?” she replied, with a smile and a shrug. “It’s a secret technique, so I’d need all of you to leave the room while I went to work.”

“That’s fine,” Twilight said. “We can look over the papers Applejack recovered. Let us know when she’s ready to talk.”

The list of names remained a list of names, with many crossed out with various symbols written next to them. Looking up specific names that the party recognized, they found:

Themselves, near the end of the list, not crossed out and with no symbols next to them.

Surprise and Wildfire, the flaming crow that Applejack had fought, crossed out with circles next to them.

Right next to them was Cloudy Quartz, Pinkie Pie’s mother, crossed out with a spiral.

Igneous Pie, crossed out with an infinity symbol. Scanning through the rest of the list, the infinity symbol was very rare. The only other name they could find with it was ‘House Rules’, which unlike Igneous had it inside a circle.

The vast majority of names on the list that were crossed off had circles or a pair of parallel vertical lines.

“Part of this is obvious,” Twilight said. “The crossed off names have been dealt with, most by forcing them to join the cult, marked with a circle. The other symbols must mean other methods of keeping people from interfering.”

“The vertical lines mean death,” Fluttershy said quietly. “They use them more often than anything else aside from the circles.”

“Wouldn’t it have to be the spirals?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Pie Lord said he was sure his wife was dead.”

“Maybe they all mean dead, but different things done with the bodies,” Rarity suggested.

“We can spend all day making wild-ass guesses, but we might as well wait and ask Surprise, assuming that maid isn’t just blowin’ smoke,” Applejack said. “In the meantime, I’ve got some other papers I grabbed off the desk. Haven’t had a chance to look at ‘em yet.”

The papers were somewhat disappointing, and somewhat difficult to read, being handwritten personal notes. They weren’t encrypted, but they left out a lot of details that the writer already knew well.

What they could make out from them was that they were part of the plans for the ongoing defense of the city. The ponies that used to live in Bright Valley knew that city was divided into nine districts: Government, Temple, Market, Residential, Slums, Docks, Mansions, Entertainment, and Industrial. Each district of the city had been assigned to a high-ranking cult member, and was essentially under their independent control. Each district leader had their own idea about how to protect their district from the Empire’s expected counterattack – Fizzik in the Industrial District was building something in his factory, for example, while the Government District was protected by converted city guards.

There were no specifics, other than to mention that the writer’s own district was falling behind, and that he had to step up recruitment.

While the adventurers were still digesting the information, the leatherwing maid emerged from the basement, along with Surprise – now out of her restraints.

“I just want to say how sorry I am, Pinkie,” the pale-coated pegasus said, rushing forwards and giving her a hug. “Oh, little Pinkie – you’re so big now!”

“I know!” Pinkie Pie said. “It’s so annoying! Everyone can shoot me and it’s so hard to dodge!”

Surprise giggled.

“What happened to mommy?” Pinkie asked. “Her name is crossed off, but she doesn’t have a circle.”

Surprise shook her head. “I don’t know. The last thing I remember was going to sleep after getting a really good deal on a mithril shirt. I hadn’t talked to your mother in years… we’d kind of drifted apart. In distance, you know. She wanted to settle down, but I wasn’t done with being a pirate.”

“So you don’t remember anything about being a part of the cult?” Twilight asked.

Surprise pouted. “I didn’t even know there was a cult until Squirrel broke me out.”

“Shade Tail,” said the maid. “Not ‘Squirrel’.”

“Well, I guess this is a dead end,” Twilight said.

“I’m not dead yet!” Surprise said. “And if I can’t answer all your questions, maybe I can still help you track down Cloudy. Anything I can do to help, just give the word.”

“That include fighting the cult with us?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Surprise grinned. “Sure! That’s the main thing I expected it to include, since you’ve already got another bandit on your team.”

“Scout,” Applejack said.

“Oooh, I like that one,” Surprise said. “So, who do you want me to kill?”

Fluttershy frowned at her, and quietly said, “Yourself.” When everyone turned to stare at her, she dropped her gaze to stare at the floor, and tried to hide behind Twilight. “She’s still charmed,” she said. “She’s just faking being on our side.”

Shade Tail stepped forward. “That’s expected. I’ve suppressed the cult’s hold on her, but I couldn’t break it. She’s… you can think of it as her being hypnotized into acting as if she wasn’t under their control.” She shrugged. “Actually breaking a magical spell would obviously take magic, and like I said, this isn’t a spell, just a technique.”

“Can we trust her?” Twilight asked.

Shade Tail smiled. “Oh, no, not at all. She’s a wonderfully unrepentant thief and murderer. But you can trust her not to revert to the cult’s control, as long as you don’t ask her to kill a close, personal friend.”

Surpise huffed at Shade Tail. “Silly squirrel. You say ‘murderer’, I say ‘pony who’s going to get paid’.” She turned back to the party. “So, seriously. Who are we after.”

“If you can’t give us the answers we need, then I reckon there’s only one other choice,” Applejack said. “We need to go back and oozenap the fake pony that wrote these here notes.”

During the day, it was easy to move around without being noticed, so long as everypony was in disguise – even Surprise, who was borrowing Rarity’s hat of disguise. Rarity herself was packed in a lead-lined barrel that Macintosh was carrying. She was essential to the plan, but they couldn’t afford to have her detected.

Surprise’s blood had shown the same blue-mud contamination that they’d seen in the guards before their transformation into ooze creatures, and Pinkie Pie wouldn’t be able to prepare a remove disease extract until the next day. Still, even if it wasn’t likely that the blue metal curse would wear off until she was purified, they figured it was best to keep the blue metal as far away from her as possible to keep any further damage from being done. That meant buying her a new suit of armor to wear, and some old-school alchemical fire bolts instead of using the cheap ones with blue-metal tips.

“I didn’t even know they made crossbows for pegasi,” Pinkie Pie said. “I’m going to buy one for myself!”

“It’s a long trip up to goblin country,” Surprise said. “But they have lots of neat stuff there! You should totally go get one.”

While they were shopping, they sold the rest of their loot. They didn’t dare claim adventurer status to move the items they’d taken from the guards, but Surprise still registered to the other cult members as being ‘one of them’, and the merchants didn’t even ask where she’d gotten the equipment she sold for them. It still only worked out to a few hundred gold per person, but every little bit counted.

Their plan didn’t really require any extra equipment (except for a customized iron bucket to hold the ooze, which Twilight spent a few hours making in Pie Manor’s small forge), so after that short stop in the Market District, they headed back to the Harmony Headquarters to look for a good place to enact their plan.

Applejack was able to think back to the route she’d taken that morning, and point out the window for the director’s office, which looked out onto a small park full of children playing various games.

“That’s not an alleyway,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Oh, for pony’s sake,” Applejack said. “I assumed it looked out on an alleyway just because nine out of ten of the windows in the building did, but of course the one we care about has dozens of ponies watching it at all hours of the day.”

“He probably picked the window with the best view because he was in charge,” Twilight said. “This doesn’t have to change the plan much. The strike team can go in invisibly, and while the ponies in the park might take note of the window bars’ removal, it’s unlikely to translate into a call to action until we’re done. We were always planning to dimension door away.”

“We can have any disguise we want… how about if we pretend we’re supposed to be there, fixing the window?” Applejack suggested. “No one looks twice at a workpony. After you’re in, we can put it back on, even.”

The strike team drank invisibility extracts, and were enchanted with shield and barkskin. Twilight and Rarity also drank potions of spider climb they’d taken from the rooftop-lurking guards. The two of them scuttled across the wall, with Rainbow Dash flying nearby, until they were near the window, where they waited for Applejack and Surprise to open it for them.

The two arrived, disguised as a pair of pale blue pegasi wearing thick protective clothing in matching drab colors. It took seconds for the two rogues to unscrew the bars, and then they lifted it up onto the roof for ‘inspection’.

Unfortunately, they did not go unnoticed. An ordinary looking earth pony on the ground shouted up at them, “Hey! Hey, what do you think you’re doing?”

After carefully setting down the bars, Applejack descended to talk to him. “We’re, uh, the bars need to be fixed. Someone tried to bend them. We’re bending them back, then we’ll put them back on.”

The guard frowned. “Who authorized this work? Why wasn’t I told?”

“Dunno,” Applejack said, touching the fake blue metal amulet at her chest. “Just seemed like something that needed to be done. Everypony’s got to pitch in, right?”

He sighed. “You’re new, aren’t you?”

Applejack frowned.

“Even if Harmony tells you what needs to be done, you still need to go through the proper channels, so that everyone else knows that it needs to be done, and that you’re not just some random burglar off the street trying to break into the building,” the guard explained, with a patronizing tone of voice. “Go to the front desk and get a work order before you do anything else.”

Applejack nodded. “I will! Thank you sir!”

“And have them check your indoctrination! I’m not getting anything for you,” the guard added, looking a bit confused.

“They said that’d clear up in a few days,” Applejack said. “If it still hasn’t at the end of the week, I’ll go back.”

“Oh, okay,” the guard said, shrugging. “Now scoot! Go get that work order! I want those bars back on that window within the hour!”

Meanwhile, inside the office, the three invisible adventurers had slipped in and taken position. The director was there, sitting at his desk scribbling notes with a quill held in his mouth. He’d looked up a bit as Twilight scraped her armor against the window frame, but there was enough noise from the children playing outside that he must have written it off as part of the background, and went back to work.

Then Rarity drank a potion of silence, which was the signal for Twilight and Rainbow Dash to attack. A fist and a hammer slammed into the pony from either side, breaking his back and his neck and killing him instantly -- by the time the invisibility broke an instant later, he was already dead.

Of course, his ruined body immediately split open, disgorging a creature made of blue mud. It happened faster than it had with the guards, but Rainbow Dash was waiting, and smacked it with a claw, crackling with lightning.

It responded immediately, lashing out with its tentacles at each of them, but couldn’t get a clean hit on either.

Twilight smashed it twice with her hammer, not holding back at all, and while it struggled to reform, Rainbow Dash smacked it around with more electricity – and the creature collapsed in a heap. It was no longer moving, but it still seemed cohesive – hopefully, that meant that it was still alive. The two of them scooped it into the bucket, and secured the lid tightly, then Rainbow took hold of one of Twilight’s hooves and nodded to the empty space where Rarity was supposed to be standing.

She didn’t appear, but the silence broke, and then Rainbow Dash and the bucket vanished, leaving Twilight Sparkle standing alone in the office.

“This was not part of the plan,” she hissed, as she stood perfectly still, knowing that any move she made in her heavy armor was likely to draw a lot of attention, now that neither silence nor invisibility was shielding her.

A couple hundred feet away, Rarity and Rainbow Dash appeared with the bucket, in an alleyway where Macintosh, Pinkie, and Fluttershy were waiting.

“Where’s Twilight?” Fluttershy asked.

“Eh heh heh heh,” Rarity said, “Apparently I forgot to take into account that the person we were kidnapping would count against the limit of my dimension door spell. But she’s a clever pony, I’m sure she’ll find her own way out.”

Back in the office, Twilight’s plan to stand perfectly still until somepony came to rescue her failed almost immediately, when someone knocked on the door. The voice was familiar.

“Director?” Wildfire asked. “May I come in?”

Twilight stayed quiet.

“Are you in there?” he asked, opening the door to peek. He and Twilight stared at each other. He was a large flaming wolf, at the moment, not having seen the need to wild shape to visit his boss.

“Hi. I’m the new secretary?” Twilight said.

Wildfire turned into a bird, and flew down the hallway, shouting, “Intruders! The intruders from last night are back!”

“That’s completely unfair!” Twilight shouted as she chased after him. “I’m wearing an entirely different disguise!” She couldn’t quite reach him with her hammer, so she flung a tanglefoot bag at him, but it went wide and splattered against the wall.

Most of the office workers hid in their offices – or in any office nearby – pulling the doors shut after them. Some of them started screaming.

Wildfire burst into flame, and flicked a bit of it back at her before diving into the stairwell. The bolt smacked directly into Twilight’s chestplate, but the fire flowed around her armor to burn her, filling the hall with the scent of burning meat. She ignored it, and continued chasing the elusive bird, barreling down the staircase.

Focusing entirely on running allowed her to catch up, and his attempt to set her on fire by smacking her in the face with his wings failed badly. She caught him with her hammer as he tried to put some distance between them, and kept right on his heels, smacking him again as the two wound their way through the building, leaving chaos in their wake.

Battered and bleeding, the crow wobbled in midair, keeping his guard up as he cast a spell, then dropped to the floor and through the floor – or rather, through the tiny hole he’d shaped in the floor, too small for Twilight to follow.

It took her about ten seconds to widen the hole with her hammer, using its spike to splinter the stone floor. She dropped into the basement, and picked herself up. The crow was nowhere to be seen, lost somewhere among the boxes and printing presses, and ponies working the presses, pouring blue mud instead of ink and printing small metal amulets, instead of newsletters.

The ponies turned to stare at her, and at the hole she’d smashed in their ceiling. She ignored them.

Then she heard it, the unmistakable sound of a spell being cast. Twilight shimmered, and disguised herself as one of the print ponies, vanishing into a group of them. “Act natural,” she hissed at them, as they started to back away.

“Interesting,” Wildfire said, flying out into the middle of the room, most of his wounds healed. “Harmony says that stopping you is worth killing any number of the ponies in this room.” There was a streak of green light, and then a burning explosion of acid splashed over Twilight and the ponies around her, who screamed as they fell to the ground, dying, leaving her standing there, alive but badly burned.

She growled as she charged, shouting, “Harmony is a lie!” Her hammer slammed into the crow, crushing him to the floor with bone-splintering force. She lifted her hammer for a finishing blow. “In the name of the Moon Princess, I will end you!”

“I surrender!” Wildfire said, shielding himself with his wings.

Twilight’s horn glowed brightly, a matching glow forming around the crow as she squeezed. He struggled, and thrashed, and then stopped moving. She squeezed him for another few seconds, just in case he was faking.

When he turned back into a wolf, she lifted him and draped him over her back. “You’re lucky Surprise is on our side now. I’m letting you live for her sake,” Twilight said to the unconscious druid. She turned and pointed to one of the surviving bystanders. “Now, you! How do I get out of here?”

The terrified press pony pointed to the stairs. At the top, a gaggle of ponies and griffons and an orc waited, clutching various weapons. At the sight of Wildfire unconscious, they took a step back.

“Don’t get in my way,” Twilight said, shimmering into something approximating her true form, armor and all, although she did keep the colors different. “I haven’t killed anypony today, and I’m not in the mood to start, but I’m not letting you stop me.”

“L-l-let her through,” said the earth pony in front, dropping the two-handed mace he’d been holding in his jaws.

“But Harmony says –“ one of the others objected.

“You felt all those people die down there, if we try to stop her we’ll be next!”

Nopony stopped her as she walked out the front door, where she found herself facing a semicircle of city guards with lucerne hammers, more guards with bows lining the rooftops, and half a dozen pegasi hovering overhead.

The doors behind her slammed shut.

“Stand down!” said a Macintosh-sized earth pony from the center of the guard formation. “Surrender, and you won’t be harmed.”

Twilight looked at them, and frowned. “It’s days like this that make me wish I was an orc.”

Suddenly, a thirty foot tornado swooped over the edge of the roof, scattering the pegasus formation as they dove to the side to avoid being sucked into the whirlwind. It dipped down to lift Twilight up off her feet, then shot back up onto the roof, whisking her away.

> Smuggler's Run
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After Twilight’s dramatic rescue, the party fled the scene and regrouped back at Pie Manor. Although the enemy was already on high alert, when they’d planned for having a little more time before the kidnapping was noticed, the mission was more or less a success. They had the leader of the Residential District as a prisoner, in a sealed bucket.

They did not have the druid Wildfire. He hadn’t survived the rescue by Air Elemental, and the ooze that had spawned from his corpse had immediately fled for the sewers.

“It’s been a while since he moved,” Rainbow Dash said, poking at the bucket. “You did remember to leave air holes, right?”

“If there were air holes, he’d escape through them,” Twilight said, while Fluttershy worked on healing her fire and acid burns. “So no, no air holes.”

“This is obviously an attack from the plane of elemental mud,” Rarity said. “Just like what’s happening in Rally is an attack from the plane of elemental smoke. No doubt the Drow’s problems are another para-elemental incursion.”

Rainbow Dash looked at her askance. “Uh… what?”

“Elementals don’t breathe,” Rarity explained. “Really, darling, everypony knows that.”

The griffon rolled her eyes. “Yeah, but what about oozes? Do they breathe?”

“They aren’t really oozes, they’re mud elementals. Or a sort of mud elemental,” Twilight said. “At least, that’s Rarity’s theory. If we open the bucket and the ooze inside has kicked it, we’ll know she was wrong.”

“So what’s the plan?” Applejack asked. “We let it out into a bathtub, and threaten to whoop its butt some more unless it spills the beans?”

“I was thinking of something more traditional,” Rarity said. “We trap it in a magic circle, and bind it like any other extraplanar creature. If it came through one of Rendrax’s portals – and since the smoke creatures in Rally were using them, I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to guess that the mud creatures here might be – then placing it inside an inward-facing circle should trap it as if it was called. Then, we negotiate.” She smiled.

“You’ve got some mighty leaps o’ logic goin’ on there,” Applejack said.

“I agree,” Twilight said. “So we need to be ready to keep it from escaping in case the circle is ineffective. The oozes can squeeze through small openings, but they can’t fly – a deep, watertight pit should be sufficient to hold one.”

“I also need to learn the Magic Circle spell,” Rarity added. “I don’t dare do it here in the city – I’ll need hours in a magical library to scribe it into my book, and the risk of discovery is too great. I’m afraid that we’ll need to visit,” she gave a dramatic sigh, “Kazakh Thul.”

“Who?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“The necromancer,” Rarity replied. “I was hoping to avoid seeing him, since I still need to pay him back for Sparky. We had an… arrangement, but perhaps he’ll take gold instead, considering the current situation.”

“You mean, being a rotting corpse?” Rainbow asked. “I don’t know, you know what they say – you can’t spell ‘Necromancy’ without ‘Romance’.”

“No, Rainbow Dash, that is not what I meant, and that was not our arrangement,” Rarity hissed.

Applejack rolled her eyes, “Maybe you should just say what the darnfool arrangement was, instead of dancing all around it and encouraging her?”

“Well…” Rarity said, hesitating, then began, “he was lonely…”

Rainbow Dash sniggered.

“I promised to spend some time with him after we investigated the mine, to keep him company. We would study magic together, and I would help him defend the Gorge.”

“You indentured yourself,” Twilight said.

“Nothing so formal,” Rarity replied.

Twilight was quiet for a bit. “We could try to recruit his help against the cult. They’re anti-undead, so he’ll be on their hit-list sooner or later. Or,” she said, “we could buy a scroll for you to scribe from, right here in the city. Wasting a few hundred gold might be worth it just to avoid the hassle.”

“I kinda like the idea of being out of the city,” Applejack said. “Taking one of their leaders? That’s a sorta big deal. They might not stop sniffin’ around until they get wind of us.”

“If we keep running away every time the guards are after us, we’re going to run out of cities,” Pinkie Pie said.

“We’ll be back,” Applejack said. “I’m not givin’ up on Bright Valley or nothing, I just think maybe it’s time to lie low.”

“We’re already lying low,” Twilight said.

“We are? Because we just attacked the cult’s headquarters in broad daylight,” Pinkie Pie pointed out. “Maybe we’re doing it wrong.”

After the brutal attack on the Hall of Records that left more than 20 innocent civil servants dead, the city of Bright Valley was on lock-down until the anarchists responsible could be found. That meant a curfew, of course, and that the gate was closed to outgoing traffic.

Applejack knew of a secret-ish way out of the city – a smuggling tunnel that she’d used before. It was large enough for the cart, and far enough from anything important that the guards wouldn’t be able to reinforce it quickly, if it turned out to be guarded.

“Still, we should put up our spells and stuff before we go in. Maybe let out the dragons, too,” Applejack said. “Depends on where they set up the guards if we’ll have a chance, though.”

“Maybe we can just, I don’t know, steal a boat?” Rainbow Dash suggested. “This seems like it’s only a little bit better than attacking the gate.”

“Maybe, but I never did much with the water-smuggler-types,” Applejack said.

“Well, I used to work the docks,” Rainbow Dash said.

“Do you think you could find us a boat? That we could sail off with without anypony noticing?” Twilight asked.

Rainbow Dash opened her mouth, and closed it, then grinned. “Yeah, suuuure. It’ll be easy.”

Twilight stared at her.

Rainbow Dash started to twitch a bit. “You just need to, um, go to the dock… thing… and find the –“

“She’s lying,” Fluttershy said. “And she’s not very good at it.”

“Hey, I’m a great liar!” Rainbow said. “I mean, normally. Let me try again!”

“So. Smuggling tunnel,” Twilight said, turning back to Applejack.

“Just follow along close,” Applejack said. “There’s one not far from here.”

“I really could find us a boat,” Rainbow Dash said. “I know some guys who did it a few times, and they used to tell stories. Really detailed stories.”

“That’s a bit better,” Fluttershy said, smiling at her. “If you keep practicing, I’m sure you’ll manage it someday.”

The smuggling tunnel Applejack led them to was inside the Mansion district, which meant they didn’t need to pass any guard checkpoints to get to it, and that there weren’t many passersby to notice them sneaking into a small alcove seemingly created by accident between the city wall and the wall of one of the estates. As promised, it was just barely large enough to fit a wagon, and after passing through an illusionary wall, and heading down a spiraling ramp, they found themselves in a wide underground tunnel that seemed to have begun life as a natural cavern.

That would have been a good place to cast defensive spells, if anypony in the party had any left. Pinkie Pie and Rarity were completely out, aside from an extract of Beast Shape for Rainbow Dash. Rarity did unpack her dragons to give them a bit more muscle, so to speak. Fluttershy had a single Barkskin left to cast – although she could have sacrificed more powerful spells to cast a few more – and she gave it to Twilight.

Fluttershy also spent a few minutes talking to some rats. Aside from the occasional fey or humanoid using the tunnel, they’d also seen some large oozes moving through the area, and had hidden to avoid being devoured.

Fluttershy glanced around at the many dark corners and crevices of the walls, shadowed from the party’s faint light sources. “I think that means that giant oozes are going to come out of the walls and try to eat us,” she said.

“It seems likely,” Twilight said. “But we’ve beaten them before. Let’s go.”

They hadn’t gotten far before, just as expected, a pair of huge blue ooze monsters emerged from the walls. Somehow, it still came as a surprise to everypony but Surprise, Applejack and Rainbow Dash. The rogues flung ranged attacks at the creatures, but didn’t score any solid hits. Rainbow Dash set her feet and roared, sound and lightning crackling from her beak to wash over the pair.

In return, the monstrous creatures splashed oozy tentacles of blue mud at Twilight and Rainbow Dash, battering both and trying to stick them to the ground. Both were able to pull themselves free before the mud hardened, but it was no easy task.

Rainbow Dash hopped a little closer, and roared at them again, spreading her wings in an intimidating display of noise and lightning. It seemed to have some effect on the creatures, although their fluid bodies made doing physical damage a daunting task.

While Macintosh unhooked himself from the cart, Fluttershy glowered angrily at one of the oozes, which staggered back a bit from the impact. Applejack sprung forwards, trying to poke it in a vulnerable place, only to find that it didn’t actually have any vulnerable places. “Oh, for pony’s sake.” She fluttered back towards Pinkie Pie. “I’m gonna need some fire.”

Pinkie Pie tossed a bomb, which showered flaming liquid over the attacking creatures, then opened a flap on her bandolier and passed a vial of alchemist’s fire. “It’s gonna take a lot of fire to bring down something that big. But that’s okay, I’ve got lots of fire!”

The oozes rolled towards Twilight and Rainbow Dash, slamming at them with multiple tentacles. Twilight managed to dodge one, and splash the other to the side with her shield, but Rainbow Dash was hit, although again she managed to pull herself loose, somewhat worse for wear.

Rarity’s eyes flashed black as she glowered at the less wounded ooze, and it writhed as the black energy engulfed it. She cackled as she continued to hold her gaze. “Yes, be cursed, fool!”

Meanwhile, her dragons flowed forwards to attack, positioning themselves above the oozes. Garble was swatted out of the sky and glued to a wall, out of reach of the ooze, and started to chew itself free. The others moved in and attacked, mostly ineffectually, their skeletal teeth slipping uselessly through the oozy material.

Twilight didn’t fare much better, unable to find a spot firm enough to hit with her hammer.

Rainbow Dash screeched loudly, figuring out how to deal with the creatures’ liquid form. She dove right at the one she’d been advancing on, twisting around in midair into a confusing spiral. The ooze dodged her claws, but each of her wings swept through the mud, scooping out large chunks of its substance and splattering them against the ground. The creature did not seem amused.

Applejack and Pinkie Pie showered the other ooze with flames, while Fluttershy gave it another concussive stare, and it slumped to the ground, unmoving. Rainbow’s ooze slipped on the greasy residue the bomb left on the ground underneath it, but managed to re-stabilize itself enough to fling a tentacle her way, although it was easily dodged.

Rarity’s dragons focused on the remaining conscious ooze, following Rainbow’s example and flinging away pieces of its substance, and Twilight managed to get a solid hit with her hammer, grinning as the creature reeled. The fight hadn’t quite gone out of it, but it was getting close.

Then a black-furred purrsian emerged from the shadows, and planted a dagger in Pinkie Pie’s spine. Pinkie’s eyes went wide in shock, as her heart momentarily stopped – then she twisted away from the strike to face her attacker, still clinging to life.

“A shame,” the assassin said, flicking her tongue out to lick up a bit of the blood on her blade. “That should have killed you.”

While Rainbow Dash finished off the second ooze, Fluttershy and Macintosh turned to face them. “Stop!” Fluttershy ordered her, and the assassin’s eyes widened as she found herself momentarily unable to move, as Macintosh’s lance shattered her shoulder and left a wide gash down her ribcage. Applejack tried to take advantage of her lapse as well, but the assassin cat wasn’t helpless, and twisted just right to keep her from hitting anything vital.

Pinkie Pie took a bomb in her teeth, and smashed it over the assassin’s head. “No. Bad kitty!” she said, as the purrsian’s fur started to burn, while she just stood there. With the oozes down, Rarity ordered her dragons to join in as well, and Sparky II bit down on one of the assassin’s wings, lifting her up off the ground just in time for Twilight to smash her hammer into her belly, hard enough to burst through her abdomen and shatter her spine.

The bottom half of the would-be assassin slumped to the ground in a messy pile of organs, while the top half twitched for a few seconds, before going still, at which point the skeletal dragon dropped it back onto the heap.

“Assassins are so stupid,” Surprise said. “If she hadn’t spent so long trying to get one kill, she could have been picking away at us the whole time.”

“Wouldn’t’a made any difference,” Applejack said. “Where was she gonna stand to flank, in the middle of the whole party? Gettin’ one hit in and turning tail was the right choice, ‘though she really needed to do it before her oozy friends went down.”

The party started healing up with wands, while Applejack and Rarity liberated the assassin of her equipment, when Pinkie Pie asked, “Shouldn’t she be getting up by now?”

“Huh,” Applejack said. “You’re right, she should be. But look at this armor – it’s real mithril, not that blue metal. Maybe she wasn’t one of them?”

“Mm,” Rarity said. “She’s wearing one of their amulets.”

“But not transforming,” Twilight said. “This is good. It must take more exposure than just one of their mass-produced amulets to actually transform their victim.”

“Or she’s just a really new recruit,” Pinkie Pie said.

“Or that,” Twilight said. “At any rate, it gives us hope for the rest of the city. Giving a Remove Disease to everypony would take years.”

The two giant mud creatures, and their assassin, appeared to be the only guards on the smuggler’s tunnel, and the party was able to return to the surface in a small copse of trees a half mile from the city walls. The sun was setting, and there were still many miles to go to get to Crossroads.

“We need to move on,” Twilight said. “Harmony has to know where this tunnel lets out.”

“Push on all night?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight shook her head, tiredly. “No, just until we can find someplace secluded for Fluttershy to set up a grove. There’s little bits of forest all over the place, and I doubt they’ll search them all.”

“Right,” Pinkie Pie said. “They only have a few hundred guards, maybe a thousand or two, and we only kidnapped one of the ten most important people in the city. We’ve got nothing to worry about!”

“Fine!” Twilight said. “We can push on until Macintosh passes out.”

“It’s not that bad. We spent most of the day sitting around,” Rarity said. “Not that bad for you living creatures, I mean. The undead are tireless, of course.”

“I’ll manage,” Twilight growled.

“It’s still not too late to join us,” Rarity said, trotting along cheerfully. “It’s never too late to join us. Sooner or later, everypony will join us. Why fight so hard to put off the inevitable?”

“Because you’ve become an insane, malicious creature, who only just barely manages to keep control of herself enough not to feast on our entrails,” Twilight replied. “Because knowing that giving in to corruption and filth would make me enjoy being corrupted and filthy does not stop me from being horrified at the thought of losing myself that way. Because I want to live through this, and go back to a world that isn’t sinking into darkness, where death means being embraced by your goddess, perhaps to one day live again.”

Rarity laughed. “In other words, darling, you’re afraid of change.”

“She’s afraid of changing into a monster,” Fluttershy said. “You should be afraid of that, too.”

“Mmm, sorry, dear,” Rarity said. “Fear isn’t part of my repertoire anymore.”

> Power of Prayer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since they hadn’t been on the march all day, hustling for four hours to get to Crossroads before midnight was well within the party’s capabilities. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy ended up pulling the empty (but still lead-lined) cart, since both of them were as tireless as Rarity, for different reasons.

The gates were closed and locked, and the walls heavily guarded by orcish guards, but the adventurers were let inside immediately, since the people of the town recognized them. The guards on the walls suggested that they go talk with the priests as soon as possible.

The temple was, of course, visible from anywhere in town, so it was a short trot down the main street to get to the temple’s front door, which opened as they approached. One of the high priests was there, and ushered them inside.

Most of them passed through the doorway without incident, but Surprise stopped on the threshold, jumping back after lifting a hoof to cross, her eyes wide and the hoof still held off the ground, as if it had been injured. “I’ll just wait out here,” she said.

“No, my dear, come inside. I insist,” the priest said, grinning maliciously.

“What’s wrong?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“It burned!” Surprise whimpered.

“Oh!” She turned to the priest. “I think you need to let her wait until tomorrow morning. She’s infected and I haven’t tried remove disease.”

The priest smiled. “That isn’t necessary. If she steps over the threshold, she will be purged.”

Surprise shook her head, and turned to run. “You’ll never take me alive!“

“HOLD,” said the priest, and she froze in place, dropping to the ground like a statue. He walked over to her, picked her up and cradled her in his arms, then walked her into the temple.

The party stared at him, confused, but none of them saw fit to intervene.

Surprise screamed, as her skin roiled and bubbled, and a putrid steam started to flow from her flesh – but she was still paralyzed, and soon the party realized that it wasn’t a scream so much as the sound of hot gas escaping from her body, like a teakettle boiling over.

Fluttershy flew over and poured healing magic into the tortured pegasus, but it was hard to say if it had any effect. At any rate, the painful process soon ran its course, and Surpise lay still, still paralyzed that is, but conscious and breathing peacefully.

“Fascinating,” said the priest. “I’ve never seen anypony survive such a dramatic reaction.”

Twilight stared at him. “What was that? Forbiddance?”

The priest smiled ruefully. “Protection from Evil. Since the rise in undead, we had this place Hallowed. Yesterday, a group of pilgrims from a cult of ‘Harmony’ attempted to proselytize in town, and we invited them into the temple to register their religion properly. This is a temple of all gods, after all.” He frowned. “The first to cross the threshold screamed and boiled like this one, but did not survive. The others understandably refused to come inside. The townsfolk insisted. One of the others screamed and died as well, but the rest were simply confused, and complained that their link to ‘Harmony’ had been broken. We have them in the dungeon.

“It was odd. Usually, when a charmed person is freed from their compulsion, they don’t seek to escape back to where they can once again be controlled, but these ones did. And we have never seen such a simple, harmless spell kill.”

“But she’s free now, right? Right?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Surprise… do you remember anything now?”

Surprise shook her head. “Nothing! I don’t feel any different.”

“Stop lying to us,” Fluttershy said. “We’re not going to hurt you, you know that.”

“Nnng,” Surprise said. “I don’t know anything! Stop acting like you can read my mind!”

“I’m not reading your mind,” Fluttershy said. “I’m reading your facial expressions, and your other mannerisms. You’re still charmed, and you’re still lying to us.”

Pinkie Pie threw a bomb at Surprise’s face, and she sputtered and squirmed out from under Fluttershy. “What was that?” she asked, spreading her wings and looking at Pinkie incredulously.

“Nothing harmful,” Pinkie Pie said. “Here, let me try again!”

Surprise tried to dodge out of the way, but still got showered in the thin liquid from Pinkie’s bomb. “Stop! You can stop! It worked!” she said, taking a defensive posture.

“So you’ll tell the truth now?” Fluttershy asked.

“Yeah, fine, whatever,” Surprise said. “Squirrel told me to pretend I didn’t remember anything, but she can go jump in a volcano for all I care.” She paused. “For all I care now that you broke her charm. I hope you actually broke Harmony’s hold over me, though, or things are going to get messy when I leave this place.”

“I hope so too,” Pinkie Pie said. “But tell us everything! What happened to my mom?”

“Perhaps we should take this discussion to someplace more appropriate,” the high priest suggested. “Some secrets do not need to be shouted in the doorway for the entire town to hear.”

The high priest led them all to a comfortable meeting room, and had acolytes bring refreshments while Surprise told her tale.

The night after she and Wildfire had bought their new armor – which didn’t count as being made out of metal, since the ‘blue metal’ was actually a type of ceramic, and could therefore be worn by druids – the two of them had been thoroughly taken by Harmony. The influence was subtle – they knew what they needed to do, but it felt like they were deciding to do it of their own free will. In this case, they knew that Igneous Pie and his wife Cloudy were causing trouble for Harmony and refusing to join, so since they were old friends they went to approach her and lead her into a trap.

The trap went badly, and she was killed. The two of them wanted to raise her from the dead – Wildfire could have cast a Reincarnation spell himself, if needed – but Harmony had another use for her, and she was sent off to ‘serve the cult’ in some unknown fashion. They knew she was shipped off to the Industrial District, but that was all.

They’d been preparing for a mission to take care of Igneous, when they got word that the demons from the Entertainment District had him under control.

“No one trusts the demons, but if the districts start fighting each other it’ll be chaos, and we’re not strong enough. I mean, they’re not strong enough. I’m not one of them anymore.” She paused. “I hope I’m not, anyway.”

“Demons?” Rarity asked. “Succubi?”

“Probably,” Surprise said. “Squirrel had me mess around with her for a bit after she charmed me.”

“What else did she tell you to do?” Twilight asked.

“She told me to act as if I’d been freed from Harmony’s control,” Surprise said. “But not to give away any secrets – I was supposed to pretend I had amnesia. She also told me to go along with whatever you lot wanted, even if you were trying to free me from Harmony. She told me to come back in ten days to get the charm spell refreshed. And she told me to fight on her side if you guys tried to attack her.”

“Do you know anything else about the cult?” Twilight asked.

“Just little bits and pieces,” Surprise said. “I’ll tell you if anything comes to mind.”

“It’s clear that this cult is an expansionist threat,” the high priest said. “I’d like to say that the full backing of our temple is behind you in opposing it, but unfortunately we have a far more pressing problem. The undead in the north have gathered into a massive army of wights and shadows, far too many for our necromancer ally to control. Every night, their leucrotta scouts attempt to lure guards from the wall and add them to their numbers. It’s only a matter of time until they assault the town.”

“That’s great and all,” Applejack said, “but I think it’s long past time that we did a number on ol’ bucket-head here.” She set a paw on the metal bucket they’d trapped the district leader in. “I know Rarity had her heart or something set on visiting Kazakh Thul, but it seems to me that a church like this would be able to do a circle against evil to trap a critter from another plane.”

“After the undead are dealt with –“ the priest began.

“We’re not going to be dealing with anything until we’ve rested for the night,” Twilight interrupted. “We might as well interrogate this creature now.”

The priest paused. “If all you need is a magic circle,” he said. “I suppose I could show you to the summoning chamber.”

The summoning chamber was located in a poorly-lit sub-basement two levels below the temple’s main floor, but was well maintained and spotlessly clean. Green and blue torches lit as they entered, casting the room in a shadowy pall. The summoning circle in the center was twenty feet across, large enough to contain almost any angel or devil that one might want to deal with.

The priest showed them inside, cast the spell to activate the circle, and then hurried out of the room. “When you need to leave, calmly knock on the door and ask to be let out in an even, unhurried tone,” he told them. “If you need to be let out urgently, then I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

With that, the door closed behind them, sealing shut as if it had never existed.

“This isn’t ideal,” Twilight said, looking at the circle. “I wanted to put the circle in a pit for a reason. If it doesn’t hold him, he’ll have free run of the room.”

“So what?” Rainbow Dash said. “We beat him up before, no problem. He’s not any sort of warrior, just a civil servant. Like, a nerd-ooze.”

“True. But everyone be ready – even a nerd ooze could cause some damage, and none of us are fighting at our best.” With that, she held the bucket over the edge of the circle in her magic and unfastened the lid, then tossed it into the center.

The bucket landed with a clang, and rolled around, spilling out a gout of blue mud, that pooled on the floor with no sign of life.

“So… next time, air holes?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“He might be faking,” Rarity said. “Or the Hallow above might have killed him, like it almost killed Surprise.”

“The bucket was thick enough to shield him from common magic,” Twilight said. “Pinkie, try tossing some alchemist’s fire at him, and see if that wakes him up.”

Pinkie ducked her nose into her bandolier, but before she could throw, the mud gathered into a pony-like form, with an oozing head and tail, but no legs on its vague blob of a body. “Wait,” it said, in a quiet, burbling voice. “Whatever you hope to get from me, you will not get it by killing me.”

“Maybe I just want you dead, for killing my mommy,” Pinkie Pie said, around the neck of the fire vial clenched in her teeth.

“We want information,” Twilight said. “Everything you know on the cult of Harmony.”

The elemental laughed. “That would take a very long time, and I doubt it would serve my cause. How about this – there is information I am willing to give to you, freely, and afterwards you will allow me to return to my post before the other Leaders divide up my territory like a meat pie.”

“No,” Twilight said. “We will ask questions, and you will respond.”

“Feel free to stop me from talking,” the creature said. “But this is the only information you’ll get from me. I would prefer to continue my work, but death means only that I return to Lord Smooze. That is the primary benefit of Harmony – we still have a link to the plane where our god resides. Undeath will not take us.”

“There are worse fates,” Rarity scoffed.

“No, there are not,” the creature replied. “Undeath is a slow oblivion, the destruction of the soul. It may take centuries, but in the end you will be nothing. Even those damned to the Abyss have a brighter future.”

Rarity sighed. “Can we kill him yet, Twilight? All he’s trying to accomplish is to unsettle us.”

“That’s two votes,” Twilight said. “Maybe you should start saying something useful. Some of us aren’t known for our patience.”

“Then I’ll make my plea quickly. I am a good man. I am the only good man among those who fought their way to a leadership position. Everyone else has their own agenda, but only I care for the well-being of the ponies who join us. To the others they are expendable tools, where they should be brothers and sisters. In the end, all will be one in Lord Smooze, but under my leadership those who still live in this world will be happy. Free me, or Harmony will only get worse, from your point of view.”

“Yer a no-good twist-talkin’ rattlesnake,” Applejack said. “No good pony would keep a hit list and check off the people he’d ruined or killed one by one like he was out collectin’ groceries.”

“You had Wildfire kill two dozen innocents just to flush me out of hiding,” Twilight said.

“You killed my mommy,” Pinkie Pie added.

“You’re a smug little piece of filth and you annoy me,” Rainbow Dash said. “Can we just kill him already?”

“Wait,” Twilight said, holding up a hoof to wave the others back, as she kept her gaze on the elemental. “You say that the other leaders are worse. Tell us who they are, and how to destroy them. Start with whoever you hate the most.”

The elemental laughed. “You expect me to fall for that? I won’t be tricked into betraying Harmony that easily.”

Fluttershy fluttered forwards to the edge of the circle. “You’re not really betraying Harmony. You’re letting us help you make it stronger, by eliminating the weak-minded traitors who just want to use it for their own agenda. Please, let us help you!” 

“Join me. Join Harmony. All of you join me in Harmony, and I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

“No deal,” Twilight said. “Pinkie?”

With hardly a sound, the creature slid from the center of the circle and threw itself at Twilight, knocking her back and attempting to engulf her – but she broke free and brought her hammer to bear, splattering the creature into little blue gobbets of mud.

They weren’t moving, but Pinkie Pie set them on fire, just in case.

> Field of Battle
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

In the morning – late in the morning, after the party had had time for a good night’s rest, even after their late-night shenanigans – several acolytes led the party of fey adventurers to the War Room the priesthood had set up in a back room of the temple.

“Ah,” said the high priest they’d worked with the night before – one of four priests of similar rank in the room – “You’re just in time. We have a rare opportunity to end the undead threat once and for all, and you can help us!”

He showed them the map of the area that they’d been working with, with Crossroads at the south end of the map and the Black River Mine at the far north. The plains were scattered with tiny figurines of undead, but the vast majority were concentrated in one spot, half a day’s travel from Crossroads.

“They’ve massed here in this grove, preparing to attack us, but our scouts discovered their location in time. If we move today, with all our forces, we can crush them once and for all!” He pointed to a row of miniature orcs, most dressed as warriors, but a few holding holy symbols instead. “We have a hundred orcs and humans, and twenty acolytes of sufficient skill. We’ll form a line of battle, and when they emerge to face us we’ll outfight them with the power of the gods!”

“So what do you need us for?” Applejack asked.

“They need us to kill off the entire enemy army, plus the extra hundred wights and shadows that arise when their forces are slaughtered,” Twilight said. “If they could Death Ward their entire force somehow it could work, but lacking that…”

The high priest smiled. “As you may have guessed, yes. Our forces are bait. The acolytes should be able to mitigate some of the strength and energy drain for a while, and the living forces will then retreat behind a reserve line of disguised skeletons, complements of our local necromancer. This will let us pin down the undead far longer than their commander will expect. While they’re occupied, you can slip past the lines, attack the enemy camp, and take out whoever or whatever is controlling them.”

“The shadows will fly right through your lines,” Rarity said. “How do you plan to stop them?”

The priest shrugged. “We’re attacking in the middle of the day. Shadows hate sunlight. We’re hoping they’ll stay in the trees. If they don’t, the acolytes will drive them away with positive energy. This is less than ideal because it means they’ll escape, but with the leader dead, they’ll find their way back to the woods and haunt them until we can deal with them separately – shadows rarely wander far of their own accord.”

“So our job is just to go in and take out this leader,” Rainbow Dash said. “That sounds easy enough.”

“As long as we get Death Wards,” Twilight said. “We’ll be wading through a sea of shadows, if this goes according to plan.”

Two of the high priests went with the small army of orcish guards and acolytes. They made it clear that they would not be participating in the battle – their own survival was more important than saving Crossroads, and they could hole up in the temple indefinitely if the battle went south, along with the town’s civilian population. That didn’t mean they wouldn’t support the fight – between them, they’d be able to cast Death Ward on the entire party several times, if one casting wasn’t enough.

The orcish morale was grim. Most of them expected to die, but death in glorious combat was every true orc’s goal in life. Rumors that if they died, they’d rise as hideous undead and start to kill their friends threw a bit of water on that fire… but they were orcs and they would fight. Or at least, that’s what they said when asked.

The acolytes knew exactly what they were facing, but they were faithful and disciplined, and knew that the priests had a plan, and were confident that that plan didn’t involve them being sacrificed in vain.

They formed into ranks a mile from the forest, and were joined by Kazakh Thul with his small horde of armored skeletons, that fell into line with them. The necromancer himself was riding on a zombified flame drake, and took his place well behind the line.

“So this is where one of us should give an inspiring speech, to improve morale,” Twilight said. “I never got very good grades on my ‘inspiring speech before battle’ classes. Does anypony else want to give it a try?” There was silence. “Fluttershy?”

“Um...” she said, shrinking back from the question. “I don’t think they would… hear me.”

“I’ll do it!” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing up and down.

Twilight looked around. “Applejack?”

“Not really my style,” Applejack said. “I’d probably just end up getting a fit of honesty and telling them they should turn tail and run to save their own skin.”

Pinkie Pie waved her hooves. “Me me me!”

“Let her have her moment, dear,” Rarity said, as Twilight turned to her next.

Pinkie Pie flew up in front of the army. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said. “Bright Valley is in the grip of an elemental cult, the Sleeping Forest is overrun with bandits, the Zebras have somehow gone insane and want to attack us, and Rally can’t help because it’s slowly being devoured by the Plane of Smoke. Not even the gods can help us because we’ve been cut off from the outer planes, leaving the souls of the dead to wander until undeath gets a grip on them and brings them back to plague the living. It’s hopeless! The whole world is dying, and there’s nothing we can do!”

Twilight rubbed her forehead with a hoof. It would have worked better if she hadn’t had her helmet on.

“Well, there’s one thing we can do,” Pinkie Pie said. “We can fight! Just because the situation’s hopeless doesn’t mean we can’t get really really mad! We’re going to take those lemons that life is throwing at us and extract the phosphorus and oils and other flammable compounds and turn them into giant bombs which we’ll use to burn down everything!”

The orcs gave a slightly confused cheer.

“No, wait, that’s what I’m going to do. What you’re going to do is easier. You just need to take your axe, and put the sharp edge into the enemy’s face!”

That got a larger cheer.

“And every time you do, just say to yourself, ‘the world is ending? Not on my watch!’”

Another cheer.

“Now, chaaaarge!”

The orcs roared, and charged towards the forest. Since this was not part of the actual plan, the rest of the army had to scramble to keep up.

“Sorry,” Pinkie Pie said as she flew down to join the others. “I was in the zone.”

Fortunately for the plan – and the orcs – the undead in the forest charged out to meet the screaming horde. The two small armies met about a hundred yards from the forest, and the undead – who outnumbered the orcs three to one – would have surrounded the smaller force if Rarity hadn’t dispatched her sky dragons to hold the flanks. But soon, Kazakh Thul’s skeletons and the acolytes arrived in support, and started shouting at the more wounded orcs to retreat behind the lines for healing.

They also channeled energy to turn the few shadows who’d ventured out into the sunlight, before they could drain anyone to death.

The party were given their Death Wards, and slipped past the mass of undead to enter the forest. As expected, it was riddled with shadows, but most of the shadows were sticking near the edge to watch the battle, and once they’d established that nopony in the party could be drained, they ignored them, leaving them to make their way into the depths unhindered.

It did not take much searching to find the leaders of the undead horde – in a clearing near the center of the stand of trees, a shadowy figure rode on the back of a large, sleek dragon, with dusky scales and glowing red eyes.

“Kara’s twisted little wings,” Applejack said, fading into the shadows. “That has got to be some sort of illusion. Where would they get a dragon?”

“Well, I see it too,” Twilight said. “Unfortunately.”

“Do you think it sees us?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Oh, right, stupid question. It’s a dragon. You can’t sneak up on a dragon.”

“Indeed,” the dragon said, turning to face them, and grinning. “I told you it had to be a trap. And now here we are, just the two of us, against a gaggle of adventurers. Should we leave them here to the shadows and go destroy their pathetic little army?”

The shadowy figure on the dragon’s back pointed to Rainbow Dash, and croaked, “Kiiiillll.”

The dragon chuckled. “Mmm, yes. I do love the taste of arrogance.”

“How do you like the taste of arrows?” Surprise asked, unleashing a barrage of flaming bolts from a hiding place up in a tree.

The dragon swept a wing and knocked the arrows away, contemptuously. “They taste like poison,” it said, not even flinching as Rainbow Dash – in eagle form – charged at its face and smacked into an invisible shield.

“Oh, this is a really bad idea,” Applejack muttered, as she dashed through the bushes to get around behind the dragon and flank.

“Indeed,” Rarity said. “Be a dear and don’t get caught in the flames, mmm?” She flicked her hoof, the air to the right of the dragon exploded in flames, catching both it and its rider, while Applejack just barely managed to duck and cover.

Fluttershy hovered up off Macintosh’s back as he charged, and blessed him and all her friends – but it wasn’t enough to let his lance penetrate the dragon’s thick scales, further reinforced by magic. Pinkie Pie followed up with a bomb, which washed some of the magic away. 

“Now that you’ve seen that your efforts are futile,” the dragon said, “I think it’s time I had a little snack.” Its teeth lunged forwards at Rainbow Dash, who nimbly dodged to the side, then did a barrel roll to avoid the dragon’s claws, and ducked back under its chin to avoid its wings. As she did a little victory twirl before beginning her own attack sequence, however, the dragons tail whipped around and smacked into her side.

“Dodgy little –“ the dragon started, before being blindsided by Twilight’s hammer, which crushed its jaw and ruined one of its eyes, nearly killing it on the spot.

“Paaaaain,” croaked the rider, whipping his hand to the side to uncover a glowing symbol on a nearby tree. Waves of wracking agony flooded the party. Most were able to shake it off, but Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie felt it sink into their bones, wracking them with agony with every move.

Then, the gloomwings arrived. Four shadows of gloomwings, whose negative energy aura could be ignored thanks to the wards, but who still threatened to confuse the party with their flickering wings. Somehow, Twilight and most of the others managed to keep their heads, but Pinkie and Surprise were mesmerized by the hypnotic patterns.

Surprise acted on instinct, shooting a volley of bolts at the nearest gloomwing, piercing its wings and tearing huge holes, but failing to destroy it. Pinkie Pie screamed in rage, and slammed her spiked hooves into Macintosh’s butt. Or rather, into the armor coating his flanks, which absorbed her attack effortlessly.

Rainbow Dash screamed in pain, unleashing a cone of lightning and noise to engulf the dragon and its rider, but the dragon was unfazed by the sound and the rider was incorporeal, so it had a minimal effect. This was still better than Applejack and Macintosh, who couldn’t manage to get their weapons to strike hard enough to penetrate the scales.

Rarity shot a volley of magic missiles at the wounded gloomwing, finishing it off, while Fluttershy backed off a ways into the woods, and started summoning.

The dragon turned its remaining eye on Twilight, who was shaken by its aura and wracked with pain from the symbol. “That hurt,” it said out of the good side of its mouth, and lunged at her. She managed to fend off its claws with her shield, but was badly bitten, and battered by its wings and tail… but was still standing.

“Daaarkness,” intoned the shadowy rider, and black tentacles emerged from the ground underneath Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy, wrapping the three of them up and squeezing.

Twilight ignored their cries, and focused through the pain and fear, and for once made careful swings instead of trying to hit as hard as she possibly could – and with Fluttershy’s blessing guiding her, managed to smack her hammer into the dragon’s head two more times, crushing its skull and ending its life.

But as its scaly bulk settled to the ground, the gloomwings’ hypnotic patterns once again flickered in her eyes, and her grip on reality dissolved.

Rainbow Dash and Applejack both managed to keep enough of their senses to converge on the mage, and while Rainbow Dash’s attacks mostly phased through it, Applejack’s ghost-touch rapier stabbed it right in the heart, and the creature shrieked and slowly dissolved.

Its tentacle spell remained, however – Pinkie Pie tried to dispel it with one of her bombs, but the magic was too strong. Fluttershy was confused and gnawed uselessly on the tentacles, while Rarity made a futile struggle to escape.

But the battle was over – it took a few more confused swings, with Macintosh managing to somehow hit himself, and Surprise thoroughly missing Rarity, but the gloomwings didn’t last long with nothing else to support them, and they didn’t have any effective attacks of their own aside from the confusion.

Pinkie Pie kept failing to dispel the black tentacles, however, and Fluttershy and Rarity were helpless to do anything. Eventually, on her seventh try, she managed to dissolve the spell – and just in time, as Fluttershy had nearly been squeezed to death and Pinkie herself was almost passed out from the feedback of her ablative barrier.

Fluttershy did some quick healing, and the others checked around for treasure, but found nothing – the dragon’s lair was not here, and the shadow wizard’s gear was lying wherever he’d originally died.

So they quickly left the forest to see how the army was faring.

The answer was, quite well. As they reported to the priests to confirm that the masters were dead, they heard the story.

Shortly after they entered the forest, a shock-team consisting of an undead minotaur supported by several griffons came rushing at the orcish line, and several orcs were quickly killed before Kazakh Thul took control of the minotaur and added it to their own forces. Suddenly, the center of their line was a strong point, to match the two strong points at either flank where Rarity’s dragons were laying waste. The orcs were stronger in battle than the wights, and being able to withdraw behind the lines before they were completely drained kept the wights from getting any more ‘recruits’. The skeletons were not as good as the orcs, but could hold the wights in place long enough for the minotaur and the dragons to slowly roll up the line, taking them all down.

After the explanation, the party members that still had some fight in them were able to charge into battle and help take down the last few of the weak undead, leaving only the shadows in the forest. But between Rarity and Kazakh Thul, they had many skeletons and other undead – naturally immune to the shadows’ attacks – to send into the forest, and the acolytes were able to bless many weapons with enough magic to at least slightly damage the shadows. So it was only a matter of time before the vast majority of the forest was shadow-free.

At least, for the moment. The destroyed shadows would undoubtedly rise again as shadows – but free shadows, not organized into a massive army, and therefore little threat. Free shadows would probably never leave the wood of their own accord, especially after the acolytes Consecrated the entire perimeter.

The wights were buried by the surviving orcs, most of whom were badly energy-drained. There was some hope that most of them would be able to recover on their own… but for the others, it would take a while for the priests to get around to restoring everybody.

As for the undead leader, the high priests and the party ventured back into the clearing where he’d been destroyed, and not only Consecrated the area, but shaped a large dome of stone over the spot where he’d fallen. Not only would that, in theory, keep him from rising as an undead again, but if he arose as a shadow, the dome would keep him trapped.

Applejack frowned. “Except that he’s a wizard, and probably has more ways of blasting a hole in solid rock than a dire badger dipped in a barrel of magma.”

“The Consecration should keep him in a state of constant torment,” Rarity replied. “I doubt he’ll be able to prepare any spells.”

“Well, that’s just peachy, I guess,” Applejack said.

“We do what we can,” one of the priests replied. “We’ll keep an eye on this forest, just in case.”

With the undead taken care of to the best of their ability, the army headed back for Crossroads, well before sundown. Just in case.

On the way back, Kazakh Thul approached Rarity as she worked on adding the umbral dragon’s skull to her skull swarm. “I see you’ve been busy,” he said.

“Dreadfully so,” Rarity replied. “I wasn’t intending to skip out on our deal, but I was… deceased on the way back from the attack on the mine, and none of my companions knew that I’d intended to return. After that, it was just one thing after another. You heard Pinkie Pie’s speech – the world is positively disintegrating!”

“And now?” he asked.

Rarity lifted her muzzle to the sky, and her hoof to her head, and sighed. “The blue-metal cult of Smooze is taking over Bright Valley as we speak. I would be incredibly remiss if I chose now as the time to sit around and study magic with you. Truly, there is no rest for the wicked, not even in death.”

The elderly orc reached out a grizzled hand to stroke along the back of Rarity’s cloak. “Perhaps we can come to some other arrangement to clear your debt. I’ve been known to pay for the opportunity to study truly unique undead specimens in great depth.” His hand lingered at the base of her tail. “I think you know what I’m suggesting.”

Rarity shivered, and flicked his hand away with her tail as she shifted positions to be out of his reach. “You want me to transfer control of my skull swarm, so that you can figure out how to replicate it?” she suggested, narrowing her eyes.

Kazakh Thul smiled, showing his fangs. “That would be acceptable, yes.”

> Reserve Force
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Even though she’d made other arrangements to settle her debt, Rarity did spend a full day in Crossroads trading spells with Kazakh Thul and Pinkie Pie. The rest of the party spent the time training, and helping man the depleted defenses while the priests attended to the guards’ wounds, just in case any of the remaining undead tried to attack. For the most part, however, it was a day of rest.

During lunch, Surprise tapped Pinkie Pie on the shoulder, and asked her if they could talk privately.

“Sure!” Pinkie Pie said, and led the other pegasus outside and up onto the roof of the inn. She broke off a bit of smoke from the chimney, and shaped it into a nice cushy campfire-scented cloud for the two of them to rest on, pushing it up into the open sky, far out of earshot.

Surprise flew up and joined her on it, plopping down and wiggling to get herself comfortable.

“So what’d you want to talk about?” Pinkie asked. “Is this the part where you kill me?”

Surprise laughed. “I’m pretty sure they’d figure out who did it,” she said, waving a wing to indicate the guards on the walls below them, along with everyone out on the streets. “No, I just wanted to let you know that I was taking off, so you didn’t waste time looking for me. I’m not charmed by the cult anymore, and I don’t want anything else to do with Bright Valley, ever. Seriously, buck that town into the bay already.”

“What?!” Pinkie Pie said. “But… what about your friend? And mommy?”

“They’re dead, or close enough,” Surprise said. “I’m not going to throw my life away for nothing. Besides, I heard about an opportunity up north. Something more my speed.”

Pinkie narrowed her eyes. “More treasure, less fighting?”

Surprise grinned, and punched Pinkie in the shoulder with a forehoof. “Exactly! I hear these guys are just throwing money at their recruits, if they can show they’ve got any skill, and that sounds like my kind of gig.”

“But you can’t go!” Pinkie Pie said. “I’ll miss you! And what if they turn out to be evil cultists for some other cult? What if it turns out they’ve already been taken over by the blue metal cult?” She gasped, and set her hooves on Surprise’s shoulders. “What if we end up fighting each other?”

“If we do, I’ll miss you too,” Surprise said, sitting Pinkie back down. “No promises about your friends though!”

With that, she launched into the air, and headed off to the north.

“And you just let her go?!” Rainbow Dash said, when Pinkie rejoined the rest of the party.

“What was she going to do? It’s not like we own her,” Applejack said.

“Technically, we do,” Twilight replied. “We took her as a prize in battle. As adventurers, we’re allowed to keep anything we find.”

“We’re better off without her,” Fluttershy said. “She wasn’t actually very good at fighting the kind of things we fight. I think I’m a better shot with a crossbow than she is, and I’m hardly an archer.”

“She uses techniques to increase her rate of fire and make sure her bolts hit hard, at the expense of accuracy,” Twilight said. “I’m not sure she really should be using them all the time, especially with the expensive custom bolts she likes to use.” She paused, and shrugged. “If she wants to leave, we should let her. We certainly don’t need her.”

“Also, she’s cloud-colored, good at being sneaky, and has like a fifteen minute head start by now,” Pinkie Pie said, pouting.

“Indeed,” Rarity said. “Even if we’d want to keep her with us, she’s hardly worth the effort to chase down.”

That night, the adventurers set up camp in the large field behind the inn, with all the other refugees from the undead-infested farms and other temporary residents. Normally it was used as a training area and sports field, but for now it was more important that people had somewhere to stay inside the walls. A lot of people were taking advantage of that opportunity – there wasn’t even room to set up a Grove of Respite without asking people to move their tents temporarily while the trees grew in, and since they were in town with food and water readily available, it didn’t seem worth the effort.

The temple would have given them rooms, but spending time inside a Hallowed area was unpleasant for Rarity, as an undead, and the rest of the party wanted to stick together. Of course, Rarity then proceeded to not show up at their camp, as she hadn’t yet finished copying spells out of Kazakh Thul’s spellbook. His tent was within line of sight of the party’s, if they flew up about fifteen feet to see over all the other tents, so with a bit of grumbling they decided that that was close enough. It did mean that they had to post a real watch, since they didn’t have a sleepless undead to cover for them.

Applejack was on fourth watch, just before dawn, when she spotted some of the stars wobbling and blurring and winking out, in several different places in the sky.

She crept over and quietly woke up Rainbow Dash. “Shh. Dash, I think something mighty strange is flying up there, any idea what –“

Dash had barely opened her eyes when the creatures attacked. Great balls of fire rained down on Crossroads from above, splashing onto the roofs of buildings and into the mass of tents, setting fire to wood and canvas and flesh alike! Elsewhere, sticky masses of webbing gummed up tents and doorways, holding the citizens of Crossroads in place like bugs awaiting a giant flying spider made out of fire!

The adventurers’ campsite was in the splash from one of the fireballs, waking everypony up quite efficiently, as the screams of pain and panic filled the air. Applejack and Rainbow Dash nimbly dodged out of the way of the spreading flames.

A slightly singed Twilight leapt up from her bedroll, and narrowed her eyes. “Flame drakes!” she said. “They’re trying to hover up out of range. Let’s just see about that!” Her horn glowed brightly, and a similar aura appeared around one of the blurry flying creatures’ tails, freezing it in place in midair. It frantically flapped its wings to stay aloft.

Applejack nosed into her pack and took out her wand of faerie fire. She waved it around until the magic activated, and a trail of sparkles shot up to outline and illuminate one of the other flyers. With the blur eliminated, it was indeed clearly a flame drake, with a diamond gnoll riding on its back. The drake was armored, but the rider was not.

Pinkie Pie glanced at her bombs sadly, but the drakes were far out of range. “Raaaaarity!” she shouted, “We neeed you!”

“I’m coming!” came Rarity’s reply, barely audible through the din. “But this crowd is… oh, Nightmare take them!” In a flash, she appeared among the others. “What is it you needed, dear? Hopefully not a dimension door.”

“I want some speed so I can get close enough to those drakes and knock them out of the sky!” Pinkie said.

Rarity smirked. “I’m not sure that’ll be necessary. We do have dragons of our own, after all.”

The four skeletal sky dragons converged on the drake Applejack had lit up, surrounding it and savaging it badly. Fluttershy glowered at it angrily, and its eyes rolled back up into its head as it plummeted to the ground, landing on top of the stables with a wet crunch. The rider was flung from his saddle, and from the shape of his neck and spine, didn’t survive the landing.

Rainbow Dash hovered just off the ground, looking between the splattered drake and the others flying more than a hundred feet overhead. “By the time I get up there, will there even be any left?”

“That’s why we neeeeeed speeeeed!” Pinkie Pie said. “Drink the pink potion, Dashie. It’s a better beast shape. Think ‘big bird’!”

Rainbow grabbed the indicated infusion off Pinkie Pie’s belt, and belted it down… and her skin shifted and squirmed and then expanded outwards massively, leaving her in the shape of a giant, rainbow-feathered falcon. She gave a triumphant cry, getting the attention of all the nearby drakes.

The drake Twilight was trying to grapple telekinetically managed to break free of her hold, and dove down to slam into the ground on top of a family of earth pony farmers, who scrambled away from its claws – but it ignored them, snapping viciously at Twilight instead, scratching her side with its teeth, the heat from its jaws cauterizing the wounds. The rider tossed an all-too-familiar cloud of green dust at the party, catching half of them in the glittering explosion that followed. Everyone but Twilight managed to close their eyes in time, but she cursed as her vision was obscured by sparkles.

The glitter seemed to act as a magnet, and two more drakes converged on the party, charging at Fluttershy and Macintosh, and leaving the party half-surrounded by grounded enemies. One of the riders glittered the other half of the party, while the third gummed up the whole area in a web, entangling Macintosh and Rarity.

There were more loud THUMPS elsewhere, as other drakes landed in other parts of the camp, to pick on weaker targets.

Twilight gave up on her telekinesis, and grabbed her hammer, swinging at the drake and its rider blindly. After all the times she’d been facing mirror-imaged, displaced, or invisible opponents, she’d been practicing fighting without using sight, but she still managed to miss the drake entirely. She did hit the diamond gnoll on its back, cracking several of his ribs. 

Applejack lit up another drake with her faerie fire wand, since they were still blurred and she was useless against targets she couldn’t see clearly. Pinkie Pie splashed fluid from one of her bomb vials all around, dispelling the web. Rarity, freed from her bonds, cast the requested haste spell, and a flash of energy washed over them and sped up the party’s movements. It also sped up her skeletons, who’d come back to assist, one each flanking with Twilight and Macintosh while the other two focused on the drake that was menacing Fluttershy. Split up like that, they were less dramatically effective, but two of them did manage to draw blood, and the one on Macintosh’s drake distracted it enough for the giant pony to ram his lance into its scaly chest.

Rainbow Dash shoved Fluttershy aside, and rammed her giant beak into the face of the drake that had attacked the flutterpony, shattering its skull. As the nearly headless corpse collapsed at her feet, she plucked the rider off its back and shook him back and forth, lightning coursing through his body, until his back snapped and his lower half flew off into the crowd.

Pinkie Pie cackled maniacally. “Yes, my minion, destroy them all!”

The rider Twilight had mangled clutched at his chest, and shot up a firework, which exploded overhead. There was a rush of wings, and another fireball splashed across the party, tossed laterally by one of the other drakes, who had given up on savaging the civilians and were now closing in on the real threat. The other rider shot magic missiles at Rainbow Dash, the bolts slamming painfully into her feathers but doing nothing to slow her down.

Twilight suffered another painful bite from the drake in front of her, but still couldn’t see. Hasted by Rarity’s magic, her blind flailing was faster than ever, and while it did manage to hit the drake it wasn’t a hard enough hit to take it down. Pinkie Pie tossed a bomb to help her, and while it exploded in a ‘whump’ of force that knocked the drake off its feet, both the drake and rider survived the blast. It was up to Sparky II to finish the job – he leapt onto the downed drake and tore out its throat with his teeth, while rending the rider with his claws.

“That’s enough fire from you ruffians,” Rarity said, and cast a spell to protect the party. “You should really know better than to focus all your energy on a single element.”

“It’s been working just dandy for ‘em so far,” Applejack noted.

Opal leapt onto the drake Macintosh was fighting, and dragged it down, tearing out its abdomen and sinking a claw into the rider, holding him in place for Macintosh to impale with his lance. The diamond gnoll convulsed, then slid off the bloody tip to slump lifelessly in the saddle of his dying mount.

For the moment, the party was free of enemies, but the moment was unlikely to last long with more flame drakes closing in. Fluttershy used the brief respite to cast a spell to spread healing magic over the party.

“Garble, Crackle, grapple the riders!” Rarity said, and her other two sky dragons flew off to intercept the incoming second wave, easy grabbing hold of the riders, as instructed. 

The two drakes whose riders weren’t grappled turned tail and ran, leaving a blast of wind as they shot off into the night at incredible speed. Not fast enough to outpace the sky dragons, but fast enough to vanish thoroughly into the darkness.

The other two stayed to try to save their riders, but had little luck. The riders were torn apart by the skeletons almost immediately, and Rainbow Dash flew up to help finish off the drakes.

The party found, unsurprisingly, that the armor the drakes were wearing was made of the blue metal, and thus a curse to be buried or destroyed. The drakes and riders did have some other magical equipment for them to claim – rings of minor cold resistance, and weak cloaks of resistance and rings of protection, as well as a few scrolls and some coin.

Meanwhile, Crossroads was on fire. While the attack had seemed focused on the refugee camp, the drakes had first made sure to set fire to every building in town in the initial assault. The acolytes and apprentice priests who could have summoned enough water to put out the dozen or so fires were focusing on getting people under shelter, in case this wasn’t the only attack – the temple itself was made of stone, and not flammable, so it remained a safe haven.

“I suppose we’ve learned our lesson,” Rarity said, watching the buildings burn. 

“Don’t ignore collateral damage?” Twilight asked.

“Nope,” Pinkie Pie said. “Next time, steal the fire extinguishers!”

Fluttershy finished a summoning, and half a dozen water elementals appeared. Unfortunately, most of the fires were on the buildings’ roofs, since the attack had come from far overhead. “Twilight, can you lift them up onto the buildings? I don’t think they’ve been burning long enough for the fire to get inside yet.”

“Reckon she’s not the only one who can help with that,” Applejack said, wrapping her arms around one of the watery creatures, and taking to the air. Rainbow Dash swooped down and picked up another pair in her talons, carrying them towards the more distant flames.

The elementals didn’t last long, but they extinguished the fires instantly on touch – and as Fluttershy had said, it had been less than a minute since the buildings were ignited. Working together, Applejack, Twilight, and Rainbow Dash managed to get them in place before the summoning spell expired, and that dealt with the bulk of the flames.

Unfortunately, one of the buildings that didn’t get put out completely was the town mill, and the flour dust inside ignited explosively, destroying the building. No one was injured, but it was a total loss.

The refugees also lost many of their possessions to the smaller fires in the camp… and despite the party’s quick response and the efforts of the priests, there were scores of dead, including many of the worst-drained guards who’d been resting in an outdoor hospital tent that had been targeted deliberately. When the sun rose, it shone down on a town where orcs and ponies went about the grim business of disposing of the dead with little hope for the future.

“Wait just one cotton-picking second,” Applejack shouted at the priest who was directing the workers to bury the dead in a mass grave. “Aren’t you gonna give these folk a chance to come back with a thought in their head?”

The priest frowned. “Even if they do remember what they think is their past life, the evil spirit which animates an undead is no longer a person we can trust. We could animate them as skeletons or zombies, and put them to work watching the walls, but we feel they deserve better than to be used as tools.”

“They deserve a chance to un-live the rest of their un-lives,” Applejack said. “You’ve got plenty of dungeons to store ‘em in in case they come back wrong. I saw ‘em.”

“The dungeons are Hallowed. They won’t rise there,” the priest replied.

“Then put them there after, or just put ‘em down again. Give them a chance!”

The priest placed a hand on Applejack’s forehead, and said in a calming tone, “Please, adventurer…” He winced, as Applejack’s teeth sank into his palm. “Please let go of my hand.”

Applejack spat, then whirled and whipped her tail at him as she stalked off down the street. She soon ran into Rarity and Kazakh Thul, with their skeletons arrayed in formation. Thul was riding on his zombie drake – one of six, now – while Rarity hovered in midair with her dark cloak hanging down her sides, hiding her legs and making her look like some sort of wraith.

Rarity turned, and a fanged smile shone beneath her hood. “Ah, Applejack, excellent. I was just about to gather everypony. We must move quickly, if we’re to strike before the zebra forces are ready for our assault.”

“Zebra forces?” Applejack asked, flattening her ears.

“The priests’ scouts spotted a small force heading this way,” Kazakh Thul growled. “The drakes’ strike was to soften us up for the real attack, but they couldn’t have expected to lose so many. We must take the initiative, and drive them before us!”

It didn’t take long to find the others – they were all out in the field behind the inn. Twilight was wearing a blindfold and sparring with Rainbow Dash, while Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie cheered them on, using Sergeant Macintosh as a couch.

“I don’t like it,” Applejack said. “If there’s an army after us, I’d rather be a treed squirrel than a groundhog.”

“A strike could work to our advantage,” Twilight said. “Since we’re dictating the time of the attack, we can have all our spells cast ahead of time, and we can do a lot of damage before they can really respond. As long as Rarity prepared another Haste, we should be able to disengage easily. Plus, fighting away from the town lets us throw around fireballs and bombs without worrying about collateral damage.”

“Taking down an entire army sounds kind of awesome,” Rainbow Dash said. “I’m in.”

“I don’t know…” Applejack said. “It sounds like you’re describing a sneak attack, but with that army of undead there… we’re about as sneaky as a mariachi band. And you’re no sleek weasel yourself, sugarcube. No offense.”

“I can mix up invisibility potions for everypony,” Pinkie Pie said eagerly. She frowned. “Well, not for the skeletons. They don’t drink.”

“So you’re saying we should leave Kazakh Thul behind?” Twilight said. “Or just his undead.”

Kazakh Thul frowned. “I go nowhere without my undead. I’m far too old to stand on the front lines.”

Twilight nodded. “Then wait here, ancient one, and let us take care of everything.”

The party set out a few hours after dawn, heading into the rising sun in search of the small army the priests’ scout had spotted. Applejack was the forward scout, slinking through the grass like a ghost until she peered over the top of the ridge and spotted the enemy force.

It was a small army – about a hundred diamond gnoll archers, and a hundred zebra hoof-soldiers with lances and heavy armor. There were also a dozen armored leucrotta with diamond gnolls riding on their backs, and of course the two remaining fire drakes.

Strangely, Applejack didn’t see any sign of officers or non-combat personnel. The latter might be explained by the relatively short trip back to their home territory – it was only about a day’s march, so they could conceivably do without a baggage train – but there was no obvious explanation for the lack of leadership.

Regardless, the army seemed to be marching in close formation, as disciplined a force as she’d ever seen.

Applejack considered the formation, then carefully positioned herself atop the ridge, so as to be visible but not that visible. Then, she lowered her goggles over her eyes, and tilted her head to reflect the light from the sun onto the face of one of the leucrotta.

The beast whipped its head towards her immediately, and she could see it say something quietly to its rider, who pulled out a horn. Faster than she’d expected, the army wheeled and charged towards her as one.

She ran.

She was faster than the archers and the armored zebras, but slower than the leucrotta and of course much slower than the drakes. Still, she had a good head start, and aside from dodging a pair of fireballs from the drakes – which she evaded easily – she made it back to the party with dozens of seconds to spare.

“Get ready,” she said. “I drew off their scouts, they should be on us any second.”

Sure enough, a dozen leucrotta burst from the smoke and flames where the fire drakes had set the grass on fire, and charged towards the party.

“Yeah, we kind of noticed,” Rainbow Dash said, as Pinkie Pie passed around a communal fire resistance infusion, and Rarity sprinkled diamond dust over everypony while she tried out one of her own new spells. “What with the drakes setting everything on fire and all.”

As if they were listening in, the two drakes bathed the party in flames, to no effect, then swooped down to attack the party from behind. Pinkie Pie was ready for them, and hit one of the diving drakes with an explosion of force that knocked it out of the air, and turned the last fifty feet of its dive into an uncontrolled crash. As it struggled to get to its feet, Applejack’s dagger flew out of nowhere and embedded itself into the drake’s eye, then pulled free and returned to her mouth. The drake collapsed.

The other drake sank its fangs into Pinkie Pie’s barrier as it landed, and she flinched from the feedback. Both riders fired magic missiles at her – to no effect, as her invisible shield intercepted the attacks.

Twilight stepped towards the surviving drake and and slammed her hammer into the side of its head, following up with a blow to the rider’s chin. Macintosh tried to finish it off with a quick lance charge, but his weapon skidded off its armor.

“Rarity, have your dragons form a wall!” Twilight shouted, as Rainbow Dash joined in against the drakes, letting loose a lightning-wracked scream that knocked out the surviving drake’s rider.

“Of course, dear,” Rarity said, directing her dragons to stand between the party and the oncoming leucrotta, while she cast a mirror image spell to make herself less of an easy target.

The leucrotta cavalry crashed into the line of sky dragons, which held, although in Crackle’s case it was a close thing as one of the leucrotta managed to dislodge a good chunk of his rib cage, and all three lances found their mark. Pinkie Pie turned and tossed a bomb at Crackle’s attackers, engulfing them in thick green smoke.

Applejack charged at the surviving drake-rider, her rapier stabbing unerringly towards his kidney – only to embed itself in his saddle. Before she could pull back, the rider threw a cloud of glitter in her face, blinding her and ending any hopes she had of hiding in the near future. But before he could properly gloat, Sergeant Macintosh skewered him on the end of his lance, showering the blinded rogue with bits of shredded lung as the tip emerged from the unfortunate gnoll’s chest. 

Meanwhile, Twilight brutally executed the remaining drake, and threaded her way between two of the sky dragons to engage the leucrotta. Dash joined her, letting loose another ear-piercing screech that engulfed three leucrotta and their riders. Rarity sent a small ball of fire rolling past her, which bounced off a reeling leucrotta’s face.

The gnolls and leucrotta weren’t sitting idle, but between their regeneration, resilience, and Rarity’s stone skin spell, the four sky dragons stood up to the dozen leucrotta and their riders, and it was a leucrotta that was first to fall. It didn’t help that the grass was on fire near the middle of the line where Rarity’s bouncing fire ball had ignited it, and near the south end where Pinkie’s bomb had gone off.

Pinkie threw another bomb at the north end of the line, to let those leucrotta join in the fun, while Macintosh headed around to the south where the cloud had lost its poisonous properties, and attacked from the side. Fluttershy, figuring that the sky dragons were the weakest link in the line, hovered behind Crackle and healed him with negative energy.

In the center of the line, Rainbow Dash’s efforts were starting to have some effect – three leucrotta were down, along with one of the riders.

“We need to back off, and let the army handle this!” one of the panicked gnolls said, in his own bestial language. He’d lost his mount, and looked much less confident facing gigantic skeletal sky dragons without it.

“No, you fool, we have them pinned down. If we can just hold on for another minute or two, they’ll be trapped!”

Rarity chuckled at the exchange, which they probably hadn’t expected anypony to understand, and sent a volley of magic missiles (and one flaming sphere) at the most wounded leucrotta near Twilight, finishing it off. “You won’t last a minute, darling,” she said quietly, as her sky dragons tore into the enemies, taking down several more of the leucrotta.

The enemy stood to fight, but was getting increasingly less effective as their numbers dwindled. Pinkie Pie threw another bomb into their line, while Twilight, Rainbow, Macintosh, and the sky dragons continued to fight them hoof to hoof to lance to claw…

And the line broke, or perhaps ‘collapsed’ would be a better way to put it. The last surviving leucrotta tried to run, but didn’t get far before Pinkie’s sticky fire finished it off. One of the gnolls suffered the same fate, while another had the back of his head bashed in by Twilight’s hammer. Only two diamond gnoll riders managed to break away from the party and go running back towards the army to warn their friends, and Twilight and Macintosh ran them down before they even got to the next line of smoke.

“How long have we got until the rest get here?” Twilight asked, wheeling back to rejoin the others.

“I can’t see past the smoke,” Rainbow Dash complained, after flying up to take a look and still not being able to see anything.

“They seemed to think it would be a minute or two,” Rarity said.

Pinkie Pie washed off Applejack’s glitter with one of her dispelling bombs. “Enough time to go with plan A?” she asked, glancing at the row of invisibility infusions she’d prepared.

“They’re already alert, so it won’t be a true sneak attack, but we can use the dragons as bait,” Twilight said. “Everypony else, get invisible and off to the side. When we attack, hit the archers. Otherwise it’ll be too easy for them to focus fire.”

They could hear the rumble of the zebras’ hooves before they could see them, but soon enough five ranks of twenty zebra each emerged from the smouldering grass fire where the drakes had tried to burn down Applejack, fixed their lances at the dimly-seen sky drakes half-concealed in the smoke where the party had fought the leucrotta, and charged, spreading out their lines so as to be able to curve around both flanks and surround them. Behind them, a hundred archers started firing volleys of long-range flaming arrows, a few of which found their marks but did no visible damage to the skeletons.

The zebras continued their charge towards the waiting sky dragons, who stared them down implacably. After several more volleys from the archers, they were just on the verge of finally reaching their targets when the sky dragons lifted up into the air out of reach, as one.

As the archers adjusted their aim, a massive whirlwind appeared at one end of their line, and quickly swept down it, sucking more than a dozen hapless gnolls into the air. Farther down their line, a unicorn, a griffon, a purrsian, and a massive earth pony appeared out of nowhere, slaughtering everyone within reach.

Their return fire was scattered and ineffective, especially with most of the targets protected by stoneskin and resistant to fire. The whirlwind scooped up almost half the remaining archers, and dumped them all in a huge pile of tangled limbs, which suddenly exploded in fire and poisonous smoke, as a giggling pink pegasus appeared nearby.

The remaining archers – maybe a quarter of the original number – tried to run for the line of zebras, who’d turned back around when the archers were attacked, and were already running back across the field. Before the archers got halfway, they were scooped right back up by the whirlwind, lifted high into the air and dropped to their deaths. Four out of the hundred survived to take cover behind the zebra line.

The whirlwind didn’t shy from scooping up zebras, and picked up several dozen before flying up into the air again – this proved to be fatal for it, since unlike the archers, the zebras were strong melee attackers and were able to burst the elemental from inside. Unfortunately, their victory was somewhat hollow, since falling more than a hundred feet proved to be equally fatal for them.

The survivors spread out into a line, charging at the laughably small force which was charging back towards them. Twilight, Macintosh, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack were each completely surrounded by zebras, two ranks deep, and Twilight grunted as one of the charging lances hit its mark, piercing her armor and breaking through the stony covering of her skin to scratch along her coat. She lay about with her hammer, and then everything exploded in fire, which barely hurt her but badly wounded the zebras pushing close on every side, leaving them too weak to stand up to her blows. A few seconds later, more explosions hit near Applejack and Rainbow Dash.

Then Pinkie Pie joined in with her bombs, and before half a minute had passed, there were no more zebras to fight – just five piles of smoldering corpses, and four rather winded fighters.

“So, the haste spell is almost gone,” Pinkie Pie said. “Is it time to run away?”

> Seize the Initiative
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

After the temple’s scouts confirmed that there were no other large enemy forces nearby, the still-recovering Crossroads Guard, along with a detachment of civilian volunteers, marched out to the site of the massacre to bury the enemy dead. The last thing they needed was another ready-made undead army on their doorstep.

The adventurers had already stripped the zebras and diamond gnolls of anything of value, of course, and the temple gave them a reasonable price for the hundreds of masterwork weapons that the enemies had been wielding. There were several dozen pony farmers who might be convinced to volunteer and wear the lances, and plenty of human and orcish refugees who could use the bows. It was a shame that all the armor was cursed.

“You need to seize the initiative,” Twilight told the high priests, as the party met with them for another war council. “There are hundreds of small farming villages between here and Bright Valley whose inhabitants are charmed by the blue metal amulets. That charm fades in less than a week if you can keep them away from more of the cursed metal.”

The priests looked uncertain. “Won’t that bring the cult down on us? We can’t stand up to Bright Valley’s forces.”

“Obviously, if they mounted a serious attack, you’d need to run away…” Twilight started, only to be interrupted as she paused to gather her thoughts.

“They won’t attack,” Fluttershy said. “They say they stand for Harmony, but all the different leaders in Bright Valley are fighting each other as much as they’re fighting you. Whoever’s in charge of dealing with the cult outside the city just lost two armies, and they can’t be very strong. The other leaders will turn on them, and they won’t care if you free a few villages from them, because they don’t really care about anypony.”

The priests looked at each other, and one of them nodded. A second shrugged, a third scowled, but reluctantly gave his assent. “Okay,” the fourth said. “We’ll do it. Besides, if they do attack, you’ve shown you can take down any army they send.”

“We… won’t be with you,” Twilight said. “We need to cut off this infestation at the source.”

“We’re going to blow up their mine,” Pinkie Pie said, grinning.

“Which should keep any zebras and gnolls off your back,” Applejack pointed out, before they could object.

“And it means we get to blow up a mine,” Pinkie Pie added, bouncing a bit in place.

“We have a good relationship with the gem ponies in Black River,” Twilight said. “We’ll head up there and get some explosives and maybe some demolitions experts, then march down Ghastly Gorge and take out the source of the blue metal.”

“Actually,” Rarity said, lifting herself from the corner where she’d been enduring the Hallow. “I have a better idea. We can hire explosive experts in Rally, and also go shopping. We have a bit of cash to spend, after all, and it would be a shame to let it sit idle.”

“It’s a long walk to Rally,” Twilight said.

“It’s a short teleport,” Rarity countered, with a tight-lipped smile. “And guess what spell I just finished scribing into my book?”

Since they wanted to leave room to bring back a possible passenger, only Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle accompanied Rarity to Rally, while the others stayed in Crossroads, sending along lists of items they were interested in buying with their share of the proceeds from defeating the zebra army.

The teleport went off without a hitch, transporting them to the alleyway behind the inn just inside the city walls. There was no sign that they’d set off any sort of alarm. It would have been ridiculously expensive to ward the city against teleportation, especially with a large and ever-changing set of legitimate teleporters travelling in and out constantly on Guild or Empire business.

As they made their way further in to find a market that might deal in magic items, it was clear that the city’s condition had deteriorated. The air was thick with smoke – not as thick in most places as the smoke incursions had been on their last visit, but thick enough to be uncomfortable for the living party members to breathe. Accordingly, the streets were mostly deserted, with the few pedestrians travelling under heavy cloaks and hurrying furtively to whatever destinations were important enough to risk leaving their homes.

“We should head to the Guild,” Twilight said. “The ordinary markets aren’t going to give us good prices with conditions like this, even if they’re still open.”

“Aren’t you worried about getting arrested?” Rarity asked.

“They’ll use their truth candles, and the truth is that it isn’t our fault that Skyflash got his head cut off,” Twilight replied. “Applejack was the one who was terrified that we’d be railroaded into prison. Well, she isn’t here, so if she’s right, she’ll be free to say ‘I told you so’ when she breaks us out.”

“I don’t think the Guild would just arrest us anyway,” Pinkie Pie said. “They’re on our side, right? It’s the military that might want to pin something nasty on us.”

“I suppose it’s worth the risk,” Rarity said. “But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth reducing the risk as much as possible. Only one of us should go, at least until we know whether they intend to punish us. And unfortunately, it can’t be me, since as an undead I’m immune to their zone of truth.”

“I’ll go,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes. “I never wanted to run away in the first place.”

Surprisingly, and perhaps disturbingly, there was almost no wait when Twilight took a number from the reception desk. In less than a minute, her number was called.

“There’s a flag on your file,” the clerk told her. “I’m going to need to ask you a few questions. Please don’t resist the candle.”

Twilight did not resist the truth candle. “Ask away.”

“Are you or anyone you know responsible for the death of Captain Skyflash?”

“No one in my adventuring party was responsible for his death,” Twilight said.

“Is there a reason you didn’t answer that with a simple ‘no’?” the clerk asked next.

Twilight smiled. “I can only vouch for myself and my fellow party members. I know other people who might conceivably have been responsible, although I have no reason to think that any of them were, except maybe for the changeling assassin.”

“This would go faster if you didn’t volunteer information,” the clerk said, scowling and shuffling through some papers to find another part of the script.

“I’m sorry, I keep making blanket statements and then thinking of possible exceptions which I have to add in order for my words to be truthful,” Twilight replied.

The clerk seemed to find the page she’d been looking for. “Right. What is the name or designation of the changeling assassin you just referred to?”

“I don’t know,” Twilight replied.

“Does this person have any identifying characteristics?”

“It was a changeling?” Twilight said, scrunching up her nose. “It turned into a big black bug-pony thing when we killed it.”

“Do you have any information that would allow us to contact him or her?”

“Rarity cut off its head and added it to a mindless skull swarm to keep it from coming back from the dead. She traded the swarm to the necromancer Kazakh Thul in return for a skeletal flame drake. He’ll probably either have it at Crossroads or at his tower on the edge of Ghastly Gorge.”

“What evidence do you have that this person is involved with the murder of Captain Skyflash?”

“None,” Twilight said. “We speculated that it might have killed him in order to cause trouble for us, since it killed me in a similar fashion when we met with it later.”

The clerk raised an eyebrow, and Twilight lifted a hoof to rub at her neck. “I got better.”

“Right. Let’s move on,” the clerk said. “Are you or anyone you know responsible for the destruction of the Bleak Din neighborhood?”

“That was Skyflash,” Twilight said. “He called in an artillery strike since he wasn’t willing to risk his soldiers in an assault.”

“Did you advise him to do so?”

“No!” Twilight said. “We were horrified --”

“Stop!” the clerk said.

Twilight shut her mouth.

“Don’t volunteer information,” she reminded her.

Twilight, with an apparently herculean effort, managed to continue to keep her mouth shut.

“We’re done,” the clerk said, snuffing the candle. “That should satisfy the investigation. So, what business brings you here today?”

Twilight smiled. “Shopping!” She paused. “I should also report the situation in Bright Valley and Crossroads, if you aren’t already aware of it?”

The clerk was more than happy to get Twilight’s point of view on the Cult of Harmony. They did have couriers still making regular runs to the Guild Hall in Bright Valley and to the temple in Crossroads, so they weren’t entirely ignorant of the situation.

Before sending her to the back to meet with the salesorc, the clerk peered at Twilight through a set of lenses, and informed her that she had become powerful enough to qualify for a special incentive to remain in Orcish territory.

“Fifty thousand gold?!” Pinkie Pie squeaked. “Each?”

“Surely this comes with strings attached,” Rarity remarked.

“We need to accept a Geas to operate in Orcish territory for the next year,” Twilight explained, “Or until the Guild releases us. And it’s only open to living Adventurers who show up as ‘moderately’ powerful on a detect alignment spell. As an undead you’d need to register as having a ‘strong’ aura, and of course they’ll use a Threnodic Geas for all of us, just in case we try to evade it by dying.”

“Oh,” Pinkie Pie said, frowning. She poked a hoof at the cobblestones. “Maybe it’s not worth it then.”

Twilight nodded. “We’d be committing ourselves to going down with the ship. Apparently, most of the powerful Adventurers who normally operate in this area already left. A bunch of them headed north to Goblin territory. Given the situation with Bright Valley and the zebras, they’re getting desperate.”

“Please tell me you didn’t already take the Geas yourself,” Rarity said.

“I – no, I didn’t,” Twilight said. “Obviously, I think we should, but if I took it and the rest of you decided not to, that would be... awkward.” She took a deep breath. “But ninety percent of the fey races live in Orcish territory. We can’t just abandon them!” She stomped her hoof. “Which means that this is getting paid for something that we were going to do anyway.”

“But what if we have to go somewhere else to save everypony?” Pinkie Pie asked. “What if the only way to keep ponies from going extinct is to load them all on a really really really big boat and sail to the Jade Empire? Then we’d have to stay behind in some sort of heroic last stand holding back the forces of whatever while they ran away, and that’s not how I want to die.”

“How do you want to die?” Rarity asked.

“Big explosion,” Pinkie Pie said.

“It’s traditional to end a heroic last stand with a big explosion,” Twilight noted. “We could make this work.”

“Do you really think Applejack would ever agree to something like this? Or Rainbow Dash?” Rarity asked.

Twilight winced. “Maybe?”

Rarity snorted. “I think we had better ask them before we decide anything, don’t you agree? Meanwhile, let us purchase what equipment we can without selling our souls.”

The shopping, at least, went smoothly, except that Rainbow Dash didn’t actually have enough money for the upgrade she wanted. Twilight agreed to cover her, since she was very close. Pinkie Pie, similarly, bought several thousand gold worth of diamond dust for use with Rarity’s stoneskin spell so that Rarity could afford a rod of empower to boost her fireballs.

They attempted to renegotiate the Geas, since the conditions would clearly be unacceptable to the others, but the Guild wouldn’t move on the key disagreement. They did manage to get the Guild to classify the situation in Bright Valley as an official mission, although nopony would get paid until the city was actually saved.

Afterwards, they attempted to find Rarity’s black market contacts, to buy more dragon bones, since not only was Rarity now powerful enough to control more skeletal dragons, but Fluttershy had learned the Animate Dead spell and could have several of her own. Unfortunately, the sewers where Applejack had told them to look were uninhabitable, and Rarity admitted that it had been a pure stroke of luck that she’d gotten in touch with them the last time she was in the city.

They spent the rest of the day scribing a few new spells, while Twilight attempted without much luck to gather information about the current state of Rally and the Empire at large. In the morning they tracked down the gem ponies and asked about purchasing equipment to collapse a mine.

“Which mine are you looking to collapse?” asked the pony who seemed to be in charge of the warehouse. He’d introduced himself as Lockbox.

“Um, I’m not really sure how to describe it,” Twilight said. “It’s south of here?”

“And west! Mostly west,” Pinkie Pie said.

“It’s at the end of Ghastly Gorge,” Rarity volunteered.

“And near a big forest?” Lockbox asked.

“Yes!” Twilight said. “You know it, then?”

“Of course I know it. It’s our mine!”

“No it’s not! It belongs to the Diamond Gnolls!” Pinkie Pie said.

Lockbox scowled. “They’re putting in a claim on it too? I shouldn’t be surprised. Every time we just barely make our quota the Unspoken Emporer decides to raise it by 20% and threaten to give the mine away to somepony or other. Last time it was the unicorns.”

“No –“ Twilight said, but Lockbox was past listening.

“I’ve seen too many of my friends march off to support Black River only to never come back. Killed by kobolds, or harpies, or unicorns like you! And you have the nerve to come here and ask me to help blow it up?”

“Well, maybe if you did collapse it, you could stop losing friends?” Pinkie Pie suggested. “I’m not sure this whole mining thing is really working out for you.”

“So that’s it? You think you’re doing us a favor?” Lockbox snarled. “Get out!”

Twilight drew her hammer, and slammed it into the floor right next to Lockbox’s forehooves, shattering the wooden planks. “Stop. Talking. We’re going to blow up the Diamond Gnolls’ mine. You’re going to help us, or we’ll use your skeleton for a porter.”

“I – I can’t –“ Lockbox stammered. “The Emperor will hear about this!”

“Explosives. Now.”

Lockbox backed away, and pointed a hoof at a shelf of glass jars full of a clear liquid, set well away from any other supplies and surrounded by bright yellow and orange warning signs. “Take those. Even an idiot could set those off, and they’ll collapse a mine all right.”

“They’re not dangerous, are they?” Rarity asked, walking over and poking at one of the jars with a hoof. Pinkie Pie and Lockbox both cringed and covered their heads for a few seconds.

“He’s trying to kill us, isn’t he,” Twilight said.

Pinkie Pie giggled. “Yep! You’d have to be crazy to try to carry that stuff through a battlefield. But the jokes on him, because I’m completely insane. Mwahahahaha!”

Pinkie Pie spent the rest of the day in a rented alchemy lab, stabilizing the explosives by mixing in sawdust and paper until they were safe-ish to carry.

“I’ve already got several hundred explosive vials stuffed in my bandolier, so I might as well put the dynamite there too,” she said. “It’s not like I’d survive if the stuff inside somehow got detonated.”

“Should we maintain some sort of minimum safe distance?” Twilight asked, eyeing the innocent looking sash full of extradimensional pouches, which were apparently full of explosives.

“Um…” Pinkie Pie seemed to be thinking it over. “Fifty feet? A hundred feet? Something like that.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it, dear,” Rarity said. “It’s extremely rare for a bag of holding to spontaneously expose its contents. Normally they’d simply be dumped onto the astral plane if something destroyed the bag. She’d have to leave one of the compartments open and then get hit by a fireball or the like. Ah ha ha.”

“That sounds disturbingly plausible,” Twilight said.

“I’ll be careful!” Pinkie Pie said. “I can handle explosives responsibly, Twilight. It’s almost like it’s one of the cornerstones of my profession or something.”

“Right,” Twilight said, smirking. “Not to mention your middle name. Pinkie Responsibility Pie.”

“Actually, it’s Diane,” Rarity said.

“Diane means responsibility,” Pinkie Pie said.

Twilight narrowed her eyes. “I’m no linguist, but I’m pretty sure that’s not true.”

“Well, it will,” Pinkie Pie said. “After I use this dynamite to blow the blue mud mine into a million billion pieces!”

Once the dynamite was safe to transport, Rarity wasted no more time in teleporting back to Crossroads. Unfortunately, the spell went slightly awry and they found themselves in a small farming village that none of them recognized.

“Disguises!” Twilight hissed, and the three of them shimmered into different pony forms, wearing fake blue-metal amulets. One of the nearby townsfolk had been looking in their direction, but merely shook his head and rubbed his eyes, then shrugged.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” asked a young filly, approaching them. “We don’t get adventurers here often, and Harmony isn’t saying anything about what you’re up to, which means it’s probably a secret and oh I’m so sorry I probably shouldn’t be event talking to you –“

“No, it’s fine,” Twilight said. “We just want to –“

“I’ll get out of your way!” she squeaked, and ran off at top speed.

“Hey! What did you do to Sweet Heart?” asked a stallion who hadn’t really seen the entire exchange. A couple of his friends stepped towards them with him. “I don’t care who you are, you can’t just barge in here and start terrorizing the good folk of our town!”

Rarity tried to intervene. “Please, darling, calm yourself. This is simply a misunderstanding –“

“Nightmare’s teat! Look at her face!” hissed one of the stallions.

“Shut up,” Twilight snapped, lifting the leader in her magical aura and holding him struggling in midair. “All we need to know is where we are so that we can leave. You are going to tell me – either willingly, or after my associate here traps your soul in a gem and subjects you to all the torments of Tartarus!”

The show of force was enough to get directions, and luckily for them the teleport had only been slightly off target. It was after sundown by the time they arrived in Crossroads, but everypony was still awake. They met up with the others in the inn to pass out the new or upgraded equipment they’d bought, and discuss the Guild’s offer.

“Uh… nope,” Applejack said. “A Geas is a nasty thing. You don’t use it on your friends, no matter how you lawyer up the terms.”

“How hard would it be to take the money and then ditch the Geas?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Pinkie could just dispel it, right?”

“It’s unlikely,” Rarity said. “In fact, it’s impossible that she could dispel it now. Maybe if we became much more powerful, and they decided to cut corners and apply the weakest Geas possible…”

“They were going to apply a Threnodic Geas,” Twilight noted.

Rarity pouted. “Ah. In that case, it would take a Miracle, or a Wish, or a Remove Curse from someone who could cast Miracle or Wish.”

“Uh huh,” Rainbow Dash said. “And would that cost less than fifty grand?”

“It would cost almost nothing according to the usual formula,” Twilight said. “I just don’t think we know anyone outside the Guild who could do it.”

Applejack opened her mouth, then closed it and shook her head. “I know a couple folks who cast spells under the table, but none of them are anything like that.”

“The Emperor could do it!” Pinkie Pie said. “Or the ancient king of the unicorns.”

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Twilight said. “If we were going into this in bad faith they’d detect it with their truth candles.”

“Then no,” Applejack said.

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s worth the risk,” Rainbow said.

“I’d do it if everypony else was doing it, but I’m not super excited about the idea,” Pinkie Pie said.

“Fine, fine,” Twilight said. “We’re not doing a majority vote. Unless we were all willing it would be a terrible idea.”

“It’d be a terrible idea anyway,” Rainbow Dash said. “We’d just be stupid.”

That night, a blink dog messenger appeared and dropped off a scroll of Earthquake, which he claimed was a gift from the Guild in support of their efforts to save Bright Valley. There was a cover letter included with it, which said only ‘safer than dynamite’.

Fluttershy took the scroll, and looked it over. “I can probably use this,” she said. “It doesn’t look too hard.”

“But we’ll use the dynamite too, right?” Pinkie Pie asked, making puppy dog eyes at Twilight.

“Are you sure you can use the dynamite without blowing yourself up?” Twilight asked. “If you think it’s safe, I can probably tell you where to set the charges. My training included an engineering track – you’d be surprised how many buildings you can collapse just by knocking down a few load-bearing pillars.”

“And mines are just like buildings underground?” Applejack asked.

“Mines are deathtraps,” Twilight said. “The hard part is not collapsing the part that you’re standing in.”

“It’s totally safe,” Pinkie Pie said. “Watch!” She took out three sticks of dynamite and started juggling them in the middle of the crowded inn. The party immediately launched themselves backwards off their chairs and pushed some of the other patrons aside – who looked annoyed until they saw what they were backing away from.

There were screams, and panic, and people getting shoved and trampled as everypony left the room through the nearest door or window.

“Hey! What do you think you’re doing!” the innkeep shouted, running over and grabbing at one of the sticks. He managed to fumble badly enough to send all three falling to the ground, where they failed to explode or react in any way.

Pinkie Pie scooped them up with a wing and hid them away in her bandolier, giggling.

> Assault on the Mine... Again
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

While the party was too large for Rarity to teleport them all directly to the mine, they had enough flight and carrying capacity between them that it made more sense to attack from the forest, instead of threading the gauntlet of diamond gnoll checkpoints in Ghastly Gorge. As such, after finishing up their business in town – chiefly, getting the second Restoration spell for Twilight since it had finally been a week since she was Raised – they headed southeast, trying to avoid the cult-ridden towns as much as possible.

Unfortunately, their efforts to evade the cult did not meet with complete success. While travelling along a dry stream-bed that Pinkie Pie was ‘pretty sure’ would lead them all the way to the Gorge, Applejack spotted a shadowy humanoid figure wearing the distinctive blue metal armor, up on the bank. They were several hundred feet away, but she could tell that they’d been seen.

Rarity was the first to react, and cast a haste spell to help her companions close the distance, while ordering her dragons to charge. Only two of them could do a proper charge, although the others kept pace, surrounding the enemy. Applejack and Rainbow Dash ran all out to try to keep up. Pinkie and Twilight followed a bit more slowly, lagging behind by about sixty feet, while Macintosh, more encumbered by his heavy armor, only made it about halfway. Fluttershy clung to his back and tried to cast a spell, but wasn’t able to concentrate while being jostled around so much.

Applejack and Rainbow stopped short at the edge of the bank, just as they crested the slope. Applejack threw herself to the ground in a clumsy roll, the camouflage effect from her ring helping her vanish into the dust cloud kicked up.

“There’s a whole army of them!” Rainbow Dash shouted, “City guards!”

As she spoke, a volley of flaming arrows arced towards her and Applejack, and while only one found the stealthy rogue, Rainbow Dash was skewered by half a dozen – including one that struck right in her chest – and collapsed to the ground. More arrows peppered the dragons, shattering Sparky and heavily damaging Opal, just before a fireball exploded on the cluster, finishing off Opal and badly burning the remaining two. The scout that they’d surrounded was gone, vanishing after drinking a potion and scurrying off just ahead of the fireball.

Applejack crept over to Rainbow Dash and quickly fed her a potion, hoping that she hadn’t been actually killed. To her relief, the wounded griffon took a ragged breath as the magic flowed through her, only for Applejack to cover her mouth, and whisper, “Stay down. Leastwise until Fluttershy gets here to heal ya.”

Fortunately for them, the archers were distracted by the remaining skeletal sky dragons charging directly at their ranks. Pinkie Pie took cover behind the bank and added one of her bombs, engulfing five of the archers in flame and poisonous green smoke.

…but then a volley of flaming arrows from a few of the archers who hadn’t been distracted peppered the pink pegasus, and neither the bank nor her ablative barrier was enough to save her. Her unconscious body rolled down the hill, leaving a trail of blood.

Twilight grimaced and lit her horn brightly – she grabbed Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash in her aura, and flung them into the forest on the far side of the stream, where they crashed through branches and underbrush, and landed roughly. She was right behind them, trying to put as much forest as possible between herself and the archers. “We need to run! It’s too much for us!”

Macintosh and Fluttershy angled to join her, Fluttershy casting an area healing spell around where Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash had landed. Applejack followed soon after, cursing up a storm at the glittering green sparkles the enemy’s sorcerer had covered her with.

Rainbow Dash, wobbly but somehow still conscious, snatched up Pinkie Pie’s limp body, and joined the general retreat. 

The archers sent volley after volley of flaming arrows into the forest after the party, but it was more of a deterrent against a counterattack than a real attempt to hit the targets that they could no longer see. The flames set the forest on fire behind them, and the flames and smoke only aided in their escape. After running for a mile or two, they were confident that the guards hadn’t even tried to follow. Fluttershy found a good place for them to hide and regroup, and they went to work healing their wounds.

“What just happened?” Rainbow Dash asked, as Fluttershy repeatedly poked at her injuries with the healing wand. “There were only twenty of them and they totally kicked our tails. We just fought off two hundred a few days ago!”

“They must have been better,” Twilight said. “And we weren’t as well prepared. We didn’t have many of our defensive spells up, which made us easy targets.”

“Speaking of missin’ magic – anypony have any idea what happened to Rarity?” Applejack asked.

“She didn’t charge at the enemies, so she wasn’t with us when we started to run,” Fluttershy said. “I’m sure she’ll be okay – she can just burrow underground if they get close.”

“But how is she going to find us?” Pinkie Pie asked. “It’s still a party with only six of us, but she had one of the Fly spells we were going to use to get down into the Gorge.”

“I don’t think we’re going to make it today,” Twilight said. “It’s almost dusk and we’ve still got a long way to go.”

“I’ll ask the songbirds to keep an eye out for her,” Fluttershy said. “She’ll probably be heading in the same direction.”

Twilight nodded. “If nothing else, we can meet up at the mine.”

Meanwhile, Rarity watched from her burrow as the detachment of Bright Valley guards discussed what to do with her skeletons. It was the second burrow she’d tried to watch from. The first had been a little more obvious than she’d planned – it was hard to judge that sort of thing from below the surface – and she’d had to quickly abandon it before the archer that spotted her put an arrow in her face.

But this burrow was well hidden, and the enemies hadn’t seen it yet.

There was an explosion of lightning as the enemy mage tried to destroy the slowly-regenerating skeletons with an elementally-substituted fireball, but just like the previous try when he’d used fire, there was no effect. Physical force seemed equally useless.

“Does anyone here know how to permanently end these bloody skeletons?” he asked, but most of the other guards just shrugged.

“We could take them back to the city, and toss them to the creeps in the Temple District,” one of them suggested. “They know how to handle undead.”

“Except that they’re going to finish regenerating before we get there, and I don’t feel like getting my head bitten off on the road,” the sorcerer said.

“Just bury them, then. I hear that’s what the rebels are doing,” one of the other guards suggested.

“Right. Fine. Anyone got a shovel?” There was silence in response. “Fine, I’ll get one from the wagon team.”

There was only the one shovel, so it took more than an hour to dig a pit deep enough to bury even a single skeletal sky dragon. The sorcerer kept a close watch on the progress of the skeletons’ regeneration, and when there were only a few minutes left, he ordered everyone to retreat to the wagons and just leave them. Soon, all four of Rarity’s dragons were hovering in place, doing nothing because they lacked targets and orders.

Rarity waited for another hour with the tireless patience of the undead. In that time, she saw no sign that any of the guards had stayed behind to watch the skeletons, so she quickly ordered them to fly two miles east, then burrowed underground and tried to go meet them.

She was a bit off on her orienteering. It took her two hours to eventually track down her minions, but luckily nothing in the forest was stupid enough to bother a quartet of powerful skeletons. She climbed into Sparky’s ribcage, and affectionately stroked the slimy substance coating his bones.

“Ahh, my darlings, I’m so glad to have you back,” she said. “Now let’s fly! I saw the others run off, but it shouldn’t be hard to catch up.”

Unfortunately, once the sun set it was all Rarity could do to keep heading in vaguely the right direction. While both she and the skeletons could see in the dark, none of them had any skill at tracking. She spent the night crisscrossing the forest at high speed, and getting very, very lost. Eventually she decided to cut her losses and head for the gorge, where she waited near the edge of the forest. Surely she’d be able to spot her companions when they finally arrived.

In the morning, her spell preparations were interrupted by the urgent chirping of a flock of songbirds, who flew uncharacteristically close to the five dangerous undead, and circled while squeaking and squawking as if they wanted to tell her something.

“Are you trying to tell me something?” Rarity asked, in sylvan.

The songbirds’ volume doubled for a few seconds, and they flew off into the woods. Rarity climbed back into Sparky’s rib cage, and followed.

After half an hour of flight, the songbirds led Rarity to the hidden camp where the rest of the party was making breakfast. They circled around Fluttershy, who took out some bird seed and offered it to them in thanks, then dispersed back into the woods.

“I can’t believe that actually worked,” Rainbow Dash said, staring after the birds. “Hey, Rarity. Where ya been?”

“I stayed behind to collect my expensive and apparently irreplaceable minions,” she replied. “Next time I’ll have to take into account that my living companions are cowards who’ll run at the first sign of danger.”

“I’m pretty sure the first sign of danger was when Rainbow Dash went down,” Pinkie Pie said. “Twilight didn’t tell everypony to run until after I went down, which was the third or fourth sign of danger, depending on if you count the fireballs separately from the way your skeletons were totally smashed to pieces in seconds.”

“And yet she rescued you two, and abandoned them to the whim of our enemies,” Rarity hissed.

“There’s a weight limit,” Twilight said. “It was Sparky or Rainbow Dash.”

“I’m not blaming you,” Rarity said, giving a fang-filled smile. “I’m simply revising my future plans to take your past actions into account. Now that you’ve made your priorities clear, I have to decide on how that affects my own.”

“Uh huh,” Rainbow said. “Because you totally didn’t know that we’d abandon your skeletons at the drop of the hat from day one.”

“To be fair, she was dead the first time we did that,” Pinkie Pie said.

Reunited and refreshed, the party continued on to Ghastly Gorge. It wasn’t hard to find the mine – not with the pair of armored flame drakes orbiting in the air overhead. Getting to the mine without being seen was a trickier proposition: there were several hundred feet of bare, increasingly rocky terrain between the edge of the forest and the edge of the Gorge, and then a two-hundred foot drop to the mine entrance below.

“I have an idea,” Pinkie Pie said, bouncing up and down a bit in midair. “Rarity, you still memorize Obscuring Mist, right?”

“Ah don’t think a patch o’ mist creeping along the ground is gonna be any less suspicious than the pack of us doing the same,” Applejack said.

“Well, yeah,” Pinkie Pie said. “But a harmless fluffy cloud? Who would suspect that?”

After casting their various defensive spells, an Obscuring Mist, and Fly spells for Twilight and Macintosh (Rarity was already flying using a longer-duration flight spell that she could only cast on herself), the party hid inside the mist and kept pace with Pinkie Pie as she pushed it towards the gorge.

“Just fly casual,” she whispered. “Nothing to see here, just an innocent fluffy cloud…”

Unfortunately, there were very few clouds that flew as low as Pinkie’s, and the pair of drakes peeled off to investigate immediately.

“They’re not buyin’ it,” Applejack said, peeking out of the front of the cloud, her magic ring helping her blend in with the white mist. “They’re moseyin’ on over our way… and now they’re blurred. Ain’t that just perfect.”

Fluttershy settled onto Macintosh’s back, and started casting a summoning spell. Before she could finish it, one of the drakes got close enough to use its fire breath, and flames exploded over the party, doing no damage whatsoever to any of them, since they were all protected from fire, but burning away the mist instantly.

A second later, a pair of large birds made out of lightning appeared between the party and the attackers, and like bolts of lightning shot towards the flame drakes and raked at them with electric claws. Fluttershy followed up with a flaming crossbow bolt that stuck in the shoulder of one of the riders, fluttering up off Macintosh’s back as he flew towards the enemy.

The rider who’d been hit pointed his good arm in the air, and shot off a volley of fireworks. The other shot magic missiles at Macintosh. Their mounts dueled with the lightning elementals, the drakes getting the worst of the exchange as their metal barding left them especially vulnerable to the electric attacks.

Then the skeletal dragons attacked, the rest of the party left behind in their wake, struggling to keep up. Most of the skeletons’ attacks were wasted due to the drakes’ blurriness, but Crackle got in a solid hit. Rarity, riding in Sparky’s rib cage, managed to lay a hoof on the drake he was fighting, sending terrifying chills through its body.

The other drake was overwhelmed by the lightning elemental it was fighting, and plummeted from the sky. They weren’t flying high enough for the fall to be instantly fatal, and its rider unhooked himself from the saddle, and screamed in anger as he shot magic missiles at one of the skeletons. Fluttershy shot a crossbow bolt at him, but it deflected off an invisible shield.

The shield failed to deflect Macintosh’s gravity-fueled charge, which pinned the twitching body of the rider to the corpse of his drake.

Rainbow Dash swooped up above the other half of the melee, and shrieked a lightning-filled shout at the remaining drake and rider. As they reeled from that, the skeletal dragons closed in around them and tore the drake to pieces, letting the rider fall to his death.

“Well…” Applejack said, as they landed to quickly strip the easily portable valuables from the enemies. “I think they know we’re comin’.”

“I’ll call up some more mist regardless,” Rarity said. “No sense giving their archers targets.”

Pinkie Pie pushed the mist over the edge of the canyon, and Applejack, on scouting duty again, was able to see the massive array of diamond gnoll archery assembled against them – at least a hundred archers, on roofs, makeshift walls, and some sort of stadium seating, all aimed at the entrance to the mine. It was obvious that they knew they were coming, and had for some time.

Seeing the cloud, they fired… but the cloud was much larger than any of the ponies in it, and most of the arrows never even came close. Out of the three volleys they had time to fire before the party reached the mine entrance, only two arrows found a mark, and Rainbow Dash and Macintosh weren’t even scratched as the Stoneskin spell absorbed the damage.

There were more gnolls waiting in the mine, of course – a solid phalanx of canine muscle, armored in blue metal and wielding longspears and javelins, under a low enough overhang that the party wouldn’t be able to just fly past, even if they were willing to get stabbed. The cloud still blocked the archers’ view, but the party would have to fight their way through while arrows rained down on their backs.

Applejack stayed hidden inside the mist, and flung her returning dagger at one of the gnolls blocking their way, the blade sinking into a weak spot in the armor and drawing a slight grunt. She threw it again as it flew back to her, slitting his throat, and a cascade of blood poured down the front of his armor – but that only seemed to make him angrier.

Twilight stepped out of the cloud and slammed her lucerne hammer into the chest of the gnoll next to Applejack’s victim… once, twice, three times, rocking him back and leaving huge dents in the armor, but failing to drop him, either. “These guys are pretty tough.”

Macintosh stepped up beside her and slammed his lance into one of the dents, piercing the breastplate and impaling the gnoll… but his eyes burned with rage and he still didn’t go down.

“All of you, stop!” Fluttershy ordered the gnolls, and most of them suddenly stood stock still.

Another volley of blindly-fired arrows rained down on the party, one of them bouncing off the back of Fluttershy’s head, slightly chipping the Stoneskin. “Oh, I wish they would stop too!”

“I think that can be arranged,” Rarity said, and turned, tossing a hooffull of powder in a ragged line behind them. Although most of them couldn’t see, thanks to the mist, they could tell that it had just gotten much darker, as her wall of stone blocked off most of the mine entrance behind them, stretching to reach the overhang since the entrance was wider and higher-ceilinged farther out. “That wouldn’t hold these brutes, but it should stop the arrows.”

“Then we’ll just have to make sure we take them all out!” Rainbow Dash said, hovering over Twilight’s back and letting out a loud screech. Lightning crackled from her beak in a wide cone, engulfing most of the gnolls trying to block them. Pinkie Pie followed up with a fire-bomb, which exploded in the usual poisonous green smoke.

There were screams of rage from inside the cloud, but only from the two gnolls who hadn’t fallen prey to Fluttershy’s command. None of them emerged on the party’s side of the poisonous mist – not that there was room – or attacked anypony at all.

“For pony’s sake, Pinkie!” Applejack complained as she stared at the thick green mist. “I can’t fight worth beans if you give the varmints their own cloud to hide in!”

Twilight couldn’t see her targets either, but all her practice blindfolded meant that she could still hear where they were. In particular, she could hear the one Applejack had wounded struggling to stand up in the grease patch Pinkie’s bomb had left, while gagging on the noxious mist, and pounded him until he stopped moving. Macintosh followed her lead, stabbing his lance at a different gnoll, and was rewarded with a grunt of pain.

“Once again, it’s up to me,” Rarity said, and tossed a fireball into the cloud to clear the air with a massive explosion of flame, leaving the gnolls visible once more. Three were dead, one had slipped and was sitting on his tail, one was retching, his grip on his spear loose, and one was both prone and nauseous. One had apparently backed out of the cloud of poison mist, and was the only one not standing in the patch of fire where Pinkie Pie’s grease had just been set alight.

Rainbow Dash gave another lightning-filled screech, washing over most of the survivors, and Pinkie Pie threw a bomb that engulfed a pair of them in flames, but only in flames this time. Fluttershy swept her gaze across the gnolls who were still moving and not retching up their guts, and one of them collapsed, unconscious… but since he was on fire, he would probably never wake.

Applejack leapt into the air, soared over the flaming grease patch, and skewered the gnoll who’d backed off in the gut, slipping her rapier under his breastplate and opening his belly, coils of intestines starting to leak out the bottom of his armor. That only made him angry, and he took a vicious bite at her wing with his fangs, then stepped back and stabbed at her twice with his longspear – but she was too slippery for him to hit, and easily dodged the attacks.

Only one of the other gnolls was in any shape to fight. He roared ‘for the Smooze!’ and stepped forwards over the battered bodies of two of his comrades to stab at Twilight. She couldn’t get her shield around in time, and grunted as the powerful strike broke through the Stoneskin and sank into her chest.

“Is that the best you can do?” Twilight asked, wrenching herself off his weapon and swinging her own to take him under the chin. As he staggered back, she swung it around to crunch into his crotch with bone-shattering force… and as he collapsed at her hooves, finished him off with a third blow to the back of his neck.

Applejack vanished, reappearing behind the gnoll she was fighting and stabbing him in the back of his neck. As he sank to the ground, Macintosh and Rainbow Dash finished off the last two gnolls, who were still too sick to resist.

While the gnolls’ armor was made out of the blue metal and therefore useless to the party, the rest of their equipment – including their flaming longspears – was made out of conventional materials, and would be safe to sell or use.

Behind the spot where the gnolls had tried to block the party’s passage, the mine continued on as a twenty-foot wide, low-ceilinged passage, with rails for the mine carts they’d seen on their previous visit. There was a solidly built wooden wall blocking off the entrance, with a gate that was shut and barred.

Fluttershy flew over and touched the stone next to the wall, and cast a spell to shape away the anchor points holding it up. Macintosh gave it a solid push, and it collapsed to the floor, gate and all.

The mine continued on as far as the party could see in the faint ambient light from the cracks where Rarity’s wall of stone hadn’t quite blocked off the entire entrance. There were doors to either side, where rooms had been carved into the stone, but the main route into the mine was clear – if nothing else, they could follow the tracks, which didn’t appear to branch, yet.

“Let’s go, there’s no time to waste,” Twilight said, lighting the tip of her horn and trotting along the tracks. “Some of our spells only have a few minutes left, and that wall won’t hold the gnolls out forever. We need to find the source of this blue mud and close the portal, once and for all.”

“Hopefully it’s not a natural portal, or it won’t have anchor points for us to smash like the others,” Rarity said. “Still, collapsing the roof onto it with the Earthquake scroll should keep anypony from using it, at least for a while.”

“And the dynamite?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“We’ll use it on the tunnel behind us on our way out,” Twilight said. “It should break up the stone and make it suicidal to try to re-open the existing mine – they’ll have to dig a new one. Even for diamond gnolls, that’ll take some time. They can’t burrow through solid rock.”

> Muddy Waters
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The party rushed into the mine at full speed, ignoring the rooms near the entrance, and the occasional side-passage deeper in the mine, in favor of following the obvious single path to the portal, marked by the rails. A few times they heard signs of enemies ahead of them, but none of them were prepared to face the party – they ran off as soon as they heard them coming, leaving their passage unopposed.

However, the mine was very deep, and after five minutes of trotting they still hadn’t reached the furthest depths. Instead, they came to a place where the mine started to flood – a few inches at first, but progressively deeper as they continued to advance. The water was opaque, and tinted blue like the mud that the diamond gnolls dredged from the mine.

“Nopony step in that,” Twilight said, looking at the water suspiciously. “We’re all still flying, right?”

“For another five minutes, anyway,” Pinkie Pie said. “After that we’ll have to ride. Or I could spend a couple of minutes mixing up some spares?”

“Any sign of anyone on our tails?” she asked, looking to the rest of the party.

The adventurers stood still and listened carefully, but heard no sign of pursuit. Just the quiet lapping of the contaminated water against the slime-coated walls of the mine.

As everyone shook their heads, Twilight turned back to Pinkie Pie. “Do it.”

Two minutes later, backup Fly infusions in hoof, the party continued on their way, soon coming to a wooden dock set at the intersection of two passageways, at right angles to each other. All three were filled with deep water – the tracks ran up to the end of the dock and ended, an empty cart sitting there, waiting for a boat of some sort to arrive with another load of mud.

“Exploratory tunnels,” Twilight said, looking at them. “The mithril seam must have ended here, so they started digging in every direction to find it again.”

“So that means we’re close?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“I hope we’re close, because it means there’s no way to tell which of these tunnels ran into the portal,” Twilight said with a scowl.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” Pinkie Pie said, closing her eyes and spinning around in midair. “Eenie Meenie Miney Moe, catch a tiger by the – this one!” She opened her eyes, pointing back at the party. “Er, I mean, this one,” she said, pointing straight ahead instead.

Applejack gave her a look, then rolled her eyes. “Guess it don’t matter much which one we check first.”

“She’s not guessing,” Fluttershy said quietly, as the party followed Pinkie Pie’s hoof. “She saw the scratch marks where they were pushing off against the walls with their poles.”

“Fluttershy!” Pinkie Pie whined. “You never let me have any fun!”

They found the raft, abandoned, a few hundred feet on, and started to see flickers of light from up ahead. Before much longer they found themselves at what must be the portal – a sluggish vortex of blue mud spiraling lethargically in the center of a large cavern, lit by decorative lanterns and torches hung from the wooden buildings around the perimeter and the railing of the boardwalk connecting them.

Dozens of gnolls lined the boardwalk, one of them dressed in a fancy ceremonial breastplate of blue metal, wielding a decorative staff, with other similar jewelry and adornment – obviously, some sort of high priest. He sat perched on the back of a large black dragon, with blue metal barding, wallowing in the mud near the far end of the cavern.

“Who dares to disturb Lord Smooze?” the priest shouted, as the party arrived at the cavern entrance.

Not wanting to be the first to rush into the cavern, and not having a real ranged attack that could reach to the far side, Applejack whipped out her wand of faerie fire and sent a burst of flame at the dragon and its rider. The rider was outlined in flickering flames, but they failed to stick to the dragon’s magic-resistant scales.

“Fluttershy, go!” Twilight said, standing with her shield ready to defend Fluttershy as she took out the scroll of Earthquake.

The spidery syllables of the magic spell seemed to resound throughout the cavern, louder and louder until it was less of a noise, and more of raw vibration. With a deafening series of cracks, the ceiling started to collapse, large chunks of stone falling onto the hapless gnolls, who were already struggling in vain to keep their footing on the shaking wooden boardwalk as it shook itself to pieces. Some were crushed by rocks, and the rest fell into the mud which quivered from its slow spiral into a thin pool of quicksand, sucking them underneath. The dragon struggled and tried to spread its wings, but it was too slow and was sucked underneath as well, along with the priest on its back.

Everypony was briefly blinded by the spatter of gravel and clouds of stone dust, and when it settled, nothing was left of the cavern but a wall of shattered rocks.

“And that’s that,” Rarity said, with a laugh. “Black dragons can’t burrow, and I doubt anything else survived that collapse.”

“Oh for pony’s sake!” Rainbow Dash complained. “We finally find a dragon and you just bury it in rocks before I can fight it? What’s wrong with you!”

“I, for one, appreciate the ruthless efficiency,” came a voice behind them, and they turned to see a leatherwing pony hovering over the water, behind them. Or, rather, a succubus – Dreamy, in fact. “I’ve come to give you a warning, and an apology, and an invitation.”

“Dreamy? What are you doing – no, wait, you already answered that,” Pinkie Pie said. “Did daddy send you to watch out for me?”

“I’m afraid I’ve been sent by a higher power,” the demon replied, with a chuckle. “The warning is this – you will be attacked by demons before you can leave this place. Our assistance was formally requested, we cannot refuse. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

“Why would you tell us this?” Twilight asked, gripping her hammer tightly in her magic.

“So that you know that it’s nothing personal,” the succubus replied. “As for the invitation: once you’ve escaped from this trap, come to the Starry Night Casino in the Entertainment District, and my master – my true master – will have a proposition for you. One that I think will be to your liking.” She licked her lips. “Until then, stay safe.”

With that, the succubus vanished, teleporting away in an instant. She was replaced almost immediately by a pair of pony-sized rancid blobs, one of which splashed into the water while the other clung to the wall like a huge blob of snot. They stood between the party and Rarity’s skeletons, which had originally been taking up the rear.

Behind the party, the wall of collapsed rocks rippled and shifted like liquid, and the front half the dragon emerged from it, the priest still on its back. The priest chanted a spell, and a thick wall of stone appeared, blocking the party off from any assistance from Sparky and the others – and from any escape. The dragon inhaled, and breathed a line of acid down half the tunnel.

The acidic breath washed over Twilight, Pinkie, and Macintosh, burning them badly, but Applejack managed to flutter up near the ceiling and dodge, and then in a flash blinked through the air to land on the dragon’s back, right next to the priest, and attacked her with a whirlwind of rapier and claws – to little effect, only one swing even scratching the stony coating protecting her.

Twilight swung her hammer at the dragon’s head, but between the metal barding and the thick dragon scales, her swings rebounded harmlessly, even with the distraction of a rogue clinging to the dragon’s back.

“I call on the light of the blazing sun… let us strike back at these unnatural creatures!” Fluttershy chanted, and the party’s weapons started to glow. “Rainbow, it won’t help you – focus on the dragon!”

Thus blessed, Macintosh splashed into the water to get underneath Pinkie and Rarity, and lunged at the snot demon clinging to the wall, impaling it with his lance and burning away parts of its essence.

Pinkie backed away from the demons, and narrowed her eyes at the priest, holding a fire bomb in her hoof, while Rarity, beside her, cast a spell to protect the party from acid.

And it was just in time to save Macintosh, as the pair of demons assaulted him, slapping at him with pseudopods dripping with acid. There was force behind them as well, although not enough to get through the Stoneskin. Unfortunately, one of them managed to latch onto the large pony’s face, clogging his mouth and nose with slime, and using that foothold to slide itself around him, clinging to his face and neck.

Rainbow Dash punched the dragon in the face, stunning it – and then followed up with a flurry of blows, slamming its head against one wall and then the other, as it struggled to regain its senses. Applejack took advantage of the distraction to stab the dragon in the back of the neck – but its armor and scales were tough to crack, and she managed only a single bleeding wound up the side of its neck with one of her claws.

The priest on its back started to cast a spell, only to have Pinkie Pie’s readied bomb land directly in her mouth, the explosion of fire completely ruining whatever she was trying to cast, some of it spilling out to burn the dragon, as well.

Twilight backed away from the distracted dragon, and hovered over Macintosh to help him with the demons, a wide swing of her hammer slamming into both of them. Fluttershy’s blessing let it have its full impact – but the demons were tough, and seemed little the worse for wear. Macintosh, for his part, could do little but struggle to break free from the demon clinging to him, and wasn’t able to pry it loose.

“Stop hurting him! You monster!” Fluttershy said to the demon clinging to her companion’s face, and it screamed and starting pounding at its own substance, leaving it unable to keep its hold on Macintosh… but the other demon latched on in its place, a pair of pseudopods glomming onto the hapless pony.

Rarity scowled. The dragon had spell resistance, judging by the ineffectiveness of Applejack’s Faerie Fire, and the demons would too. She cast a spell to hasten the party instead. Rainbow Dash used it to unleash an even faster flurry of blows on the dragon – but she missed with her stun, and with its wits about it the dragon was a harder target, catching every blow on the metal plates of its helmet.

“My turn,” the dragon said, and snapped at the pesky griffon. Dash managed to dodge the teeth, but was surprised by the claws and tail that emerged from the wall like it was mist. Fortunately for her, most of the impact was caught by the Stoneskin.

The diamond gnoll, her face horrifically burned by Pinkie’s bomb, attempted to heal herself, only to be interrupted by another bomb to the face… which removed most of her head. Her flaming corpse slumped in her saddle.

Suddenly, the dragon was no longer gliding through the collapsed rocks as if they were water. Instead, it found its back half pinned underneath a hundred tons of suddenly solid rubble. It screamed in agony – and Applejack buried her rapier in the base of its skull, while her claws dug bloody furrows down the sides of its neck. Its eyes closed as it collapsed into the water.

“You stole my kill!” Rainbow Dash complained.

“It might have been your kill, if you were able to hit the broad side of a barn,” Applejack snapped back at the angry griffon.

Twilight smacked the demons again with her hammer, while Macintosh stuggled ineffectually to free himself. Fluttershy touched him on the rump, careful not to get too close to the demon, and healed most of his wounds.

Rarity mentally catalogued her remaining spells, and her eyes glowed black as she cast a minor fear spell at the demon clinging to Macintosh. As expected, it had no effect, and the demon continued to flow around the large red pony, slowly crushing the life out of him.

Rainbow dashed past Rarity to try to stun the demon with a punch, but didn’t manage to connect. Pinkie pegged it with a force bomb, that did some damage but failed to knock it loose. Applejack managed to duck out of sight behind the dead dragon’s wing and fling a dagger at one of the ooze-like demons from an angle it didn’t expect, but there were no vital points on the creature to hit, so it had little effect, despite its blessing.

“Just die already!” Twilight cried, swinging her hammer once more. The remorseful demon, still busy fighting itself, took a solid hit, and screamed in agony as it tore itself apart, the putrid remains dissolving into the water.

“You should not have done that,” the other demon hissed. “My master may wish you to live through this day, but the time will come when I will avenge the death of my brother.”

With that, it vanished, teleporting away. Macintosh coughed and choked, but managed to catch his breath. “Gonna taste that for a while,” he groaned, spitting.

Fluttershy flew over to the wall of stone, and shaped a hole in it for the party to make their escape.

The diamond gnoll priest had some useful treasure on her body – a minor cloak and ring to sell, a magical shield slightly better than the one Twilight was already using, which she’d be able to modify for pony use with a few hours work at a forge, and about a thousand gold worth of diamond dust for Stoneskin spells. If the dragon had any possessions besides its armor, they were buried beneath the rocks. Pinkie Pie extracted its eyes and teeth as possible spell components, or at least as trophies.

Setting the explosive charges took long enough that the Fly spells wore off, along with a few of the other short-duration spells, including the communal spells like Resist Energy and Stoneskin.

When they reached the exit, they found Rarity’s wall broken to pieces, and the barricade the gnoll barbarians had hidden behind to await the party repaired and turned around to face them as they emerged – but there was no sign of any enemy forces. The mine was deserted and abandoned, and momentarily – as the loud explosion echoed from the shaft behind them – collapsed.

“I guess they knew what would happen if they tried to stand up to us,” Twilight said. “Their best warriors failed, even with the aid of the demons.”

“But they were going to fight us,” Pinkie Pie said, landing on the barricade. “Then something changed their mind. Do you think that maybe we closed the portal? Cut them off from Lord Smooze for good?”

Twilight shook her head. “I doubt we’d be that lucky.”