When it comes to traps, Daring Do has seen it all. Spikes. Pitfalls. Dart launchers. Pendulums. Sawblades. Crushing walls. Even a boulder or two. There are only so many ways ancient civilizations could kill a pony.

Triggers are another matter. Pressure plates are a classic, as are tripwires. But they're far more versatile, limited only by the crafter's craftiness. Sometimes, they get incredibly arcane and esoteric, watching for ponies in ways most wouldn't even think possible. And in her latest ruin, Daring faces a trigger the likes of which she's never heard before.

For in these halls, "dead silence" is literal. And enforced with great prejudice.

Written for the No Dialogue Contest.

Coins quietly pass from pony to pony and business to business everywhere in Equestria. They've been in service for centuries, used for everything from basic fruit sales to bribing pirates, but no one thinks about them twice. Even the most basic coin has the most fantastical stories to tell.

As she keeps running into the same coin across the country and throughout the centuries, Celestia wishes she knew what that story was.

Inspired by a discussion in Estee's Discord server.

Garble enjoys Smolder relaying the tales of Daring Do to him, but he's skeptical of their veracity. Surely there can't be that many mystical ruins around the land, can there? Smolder knows they can be. In fact, she can prove it to him. There's just such a ruin in the Dragonlands, untouched over the ages. She can show him exactly the sort of adventure Daring Do has, right in person!

The sort of adventure Daring Do has doesn't exactly play nice with those persons being dragons, though.

Written for the 2024 Non-Pony Writing Contest.

When Sombra returned once again, most crystal ponies panicked, as was their wont. The most feared pony in their entire history, once the subjugator of their entire race, refused to stay down. Panic was inevitable.

Cadance surrendered to him almost immediately, with but one request. If Sombra wanted to claim his throne back, he needed to do so through the proper channels. He would have obtained rulership not through coup or conquest, but through entirely legitimate means. The other princesses would have no answer. All he would have to do was navigate the Empire’s bureaucracy.

This would go down as the most cunning plan in all of Cadance’s reign.

Warning: this story contains gratuitous amounts of bureaucracy. Reader discretion advised.

The eastern grasslands of Zebrabwe are vast, beautiful, and a pain to cross. If you want to move your cargo quickly, you use a train. And this far from the cities, a payroll train is a very a tempting target for potential thieves.

Nyama Mpya is a guard, hired as part of a team to protect this particular train. She's never been in this part of the country before, but that doesn't matter. She has experience. She has skill. She has grit. She has determination.

And tonight, she's going to need every last ounce of it all. Bandits are on the prowl.

Written for the 2024 Non-Pony Writing Contest.

There are some things Celestia must never forget.

Written for the A Thousand Words Contest III. Cover art by Vinylshadow.

"Zecora? As the Mayor of Ponyville, I owe you an apology."

A double entry in the May 2024 Pairings Contest and the Dialogue-Only Contest.

This story is a sequel to Urban Wilds

Amanita. Quiet. Awkwardly self-conscious. Necromancer. Reformed. Newly hired by the Royal Guard and the apple of its eye. How could she not be? She’s a peerless expert when it comes to necromancy. But only because she’s the only pony with any knowledge of necromancy beyond the basics, she tells herself. She needs to be more than just a static source of knowledge; she also needs to apply that knowledge, to expand her mind. She can’t live her whole life in a lab. She needs experience out in the field.

Which is how she finds herself assigned to a ley purification team. There’s something wrong with a ley line. It’s not immediately dangerous, but if left alone, it could corrupt the land, killing crops and creating monsters. Amanita is part of a small crew that will head to the line’s source, the small mining town of Tratonmane, to identify and correct the problem. Fortunately, ley purification is a well-known science. It’ll be easy.

At least, that’s the idea. Far to the north, swathed in frost and snow, walled in by vertiginous mountains, Tratonmane is as isolated as can be. Miners and subsistence farmers eke out a living in what little land they have. Ravenous wolves stalk the forest at its border. Whispers abound at the team’s arrival. Tratonmane has existed outside the Crown’s influence for centuries and many of the townsfolk don’t appreciate it sticking its nose in now. Especially since no town lasts for that long without getting a few skeletons in its closets. Amanita and her team will have to navigate hostile environments — personal and terrestrial alike — if they want to get to the bottom of this.

For if they don’t, heads will roll. Perhaps literally.

Nothing a necromancer can’t fix.

Now with a TV Tropes page. Reading earlier stories will provide some context for this, but isn't required. Other entries in this series:

• Hinterlands
• Urban Wilds
• Death Valley

Lives are controlled. Communication is monitored. Anything deemed improper is censored. If you want to send messages in private, you need to do it physically, with couriers known as Runners.

Rainbow Dash is a Runner. It's not the greatest job, but it's for a good cause.

The government is hunting Runners. If they think you're carrying information they don't want you carrying, they'll come after you with everything they've got. They have nigh-limitless resources at their disposal: enforcers, vehicles, surveillance. Your life will be on the line until you submit. They will find you and they will hunt you down, and your only defense will be your wits and your ability to run.

Now it's the greatest job.

An experiment in atmosphere, entered in the Science Fiction Contest II because it inspired me to finish it. A thematic crossover with Mirror's Edge; no non-pony knowledge required.

Trains are the fastest way to move something across Equestria, no matter how big. A heavy stone sarcophagus, for instance, one brimming with dark magic. The Royal Guard just launched a raid to retrieve it from the hooves of sinister cultists.

Now, the survivors of that raid are stuffed in a train crossing the wilderness. Just them, the skeleton crew, and the sarcophagus. Guarding it until they can get reinforcements at the next station ought to be easy. After all, there’s nothing else alive for miles. Right?

Wrong. There’s something on board with them. Something after the sarcophagus. Something that doesn’t care what stands in its way.