Chapters
-
Blake would never be able to enjoy being underground the way Vesper could. He couldn't quite say what it was—maybe the stone ceilings overhead, maybe the distant sounds he couldn't quite place. Maybe it was the inability to easily flee, or having to trust to stone that might collapse and kill him. It was that same feeling of being unsafe that came from visiting an unfamiliar city. He was out of place, he didn't belong here.It didn't help that this particular trip was meant intentionally to break the law…-
194.6 K •
-
-
On some level, Ryan knew what would happen when Vesper and Blake returned. He didn't need the incredible power of changeling magic to know what two people did when they spent the night together in a romantic spot. Or somewhere he assumed was romantic, anyway. Bats liked caves, it made sense.Besides, he'd been entirely preoccupied with his own part of the plan, preparing to do the job of a changeling who'd been trained for this her entire life. When he thought about it like that, the weight of his stupidity…
-
194.6 K •
-
-
There was only so much Vesper could learn from making a few holes in the mountainside. Ultimately what they really needed to know was how their explosives would work underground. How close was too close? Would they bring down the ceiling?That was why they'd chosen this specific location to test, of all places. It had a perfect test cave, made of roughly the same materials as the place they'd soon be carrying out their rescue.Vesper did have one great advantage: her ignorance. Without any real-world…
-
194.6 K •
-
-
Blake didn't crash the Bright Hawk on their flight out of Canterlot. Of course he didn't tell anyone that the real challenge would come when he tried to land anywhere. Taking off was really just a matter of giving them enough lift to go up, then not going into any of the flight-lanes reserved for ponies instead of ships. His own personal expertise helped a little when choosing a destination. Just because he'd never done anything with demolitions didn't mean he couldn't give some advice. "We need somewhere…
-
194.6 K •
-
-
Kaelynn was making progress.Every morning she told herself that—or at least, she assumed they were mornings. Her prison had no windows, nothing more than the magical glow of crystals they could brighten or dim on command. But she could keep track of the days in other ways. The demands of Morningtide made that easy enough.Most of the time, she just wanted to show her off. Groups of well-dressed ponies visited their tank. They weren't what she imagined when she pictured a group of people willing to look at…
-
194.6 K •
-
-
Ryan walked with Aerial down the hall towards the exit. "Thank you," he said, and meant it. "You can't possibly know how much this means to me.""I know exactly how much it means to you," she said, poking him in the chest with one leg. "You radiate it like flames. That kind of love burns all it touches. It burned the queen, and it will burn you if you aren't careful. Like all flames, you must not let it master you."She fished around in a pocket, withdrawing something with her mouth and tossing it to him.…
-
194.6 K •
-
-
What could their little group do while they waited for information? Days passed, days spent in miserable friction. Even Vesper could only do so much to keep people focused—Ryan wanted to break into every house in the city if that was what it took to find Kaelynn. Blake, meanwhile, had to threaten to lock him up more than once.Vesper tried to mitigate the conflict between them. She begged and pleaded for wiser voices to prevail, and it mostly worked. But each day she kept people calm was harder than the…
-
194.6 K •
-
-
Kaelynn wasn't a person who could be idle. It didn't matter how much work she'd done before, or how justified her idleness would feel to anyone else. Kaelynn couldn't bear to sit still. She'd been caught before, and spent a few nights in lockup while waiting for the lawyers to do their work. But at least then she had a book to read, or some paper she could use to sketch things out. Anything was better than sitting around to wait.This time there would be no bribing the police to let her go, there were no…
-
194.6 K •
-
-
Ryan paced back and forth through the workshop, feeling as though he might be wearing a path down in the deck. It was dark outside, with the lights of Canterlot distant twinkles through the drawn shutters. But he didn’t need to sleep, and Aerial had made no objection to the hour either.He had known before he even got back to the Bright Hawk that somehow all the pressure would end up falling on him. Blake had reported the disappearance to the Canterlot police, but they could do no more than promise to…
-
194.6 K •
-
-
It was a strange thing that sleeping could count as work for Vesper. But after devoting hours to asking dockworkers and anypony she could find along the wharf about their ship, eventually she had to admit that she just wasn't very good at this. Convincing people to talk to her was simple enough—but there just didn't seem to be that much for witnesses to see.After asking for hours, all she could know for sure was that a few dockhands working across the wharf thought they saw someone walk onto the deck…
-
194.6 K •
-
- Previous 1 … 74 75 76 … 222 Next
