Again, the raven took more than a moment to reply. Kaylee looked away, up to the ceiling, and saw metal pipes running along its length, parallel to the tunnel. Although she wasn’t quite sure, what with the whooshing and burbling lightly peppering the ambiance, she could almost swear she heard skittery clanking noises rushing by.

“Kaylee,” the bird finally said, returning the filly’s attention to it. “I am going to show you something important, but I need you to promise me that you won’t scream, or make any sort of loud noise that would alert other ponies to our presence. Is that clear?”

Confused, Kaylee nodded. “I’ll... try?”

In response, the raven merely looked up at her, and its eyes began to glow the hot red of superheated metal. Kaylee’s eyes grew wide as she watched the raven’s head and body begin to engorge, stretching out and reforming with that same red-hot glow. She took a step back as the thing protruded forward, extending out two larger extremities which appeared to be... hooves? As the former raven settled into its new form, the glowing red began to fade into a coat of semi-metallic golden fur—enough to be just barely shimmering in the dim light of the tunnel.

Kaylee’s eyes trawled the... stallion, glancing from his front hooves all the way back to his wings and back to his cutie mark, a curious sort of upward-facing triangle that was even more iridescent than his coat. Then, she looked at his face, and at the striking green eyes that seemed to almost stare straight through her. Fluffy locks of golden hair dipped in front of his eyes as he shifted his head, however, and Kaylee’s gaze was led upwards toward his... horn?

Kaylee blinked. “You’re... an alicorn?” She looked him over once more. “You’re... oh, Aureate above...”

The stallion gave a little nod. “Aureate I may be, but we’re actually pretty far down, so ‘above’ might not be appropriate.”

Kaylee had to resist the urge to facehoof. Especially in front of, well, royalty. “Prince Aureate...” she was able to get out. “I... what? You’ve been... you’ve been the prince this whole time?”

Prince Aureate nodded. “I have, though you may dispense with calling me ‘prince’. Really, the title is just a formality at this point; my damned brother Aeneus would strip me of the title if he could without inciting public outrage.”

“Oh, god...” Kaylee murmured. She was beginning to tremble. “But... I just don’t understand. You’re just... you’re just some stupid bird, following me around, being all annoying, and... oh jeez.” She looked up at the stallion. “You’re not going to, like, smite me because I said bad things about you, right?”

He laughed. “Of course not. I realise my methods were... unconventional, but I still think it’s the best way. If it bothered me, I wouldn’t be here; instead, I’d like to ask for your help.

“M-me?” Kaylee replied, her voice pitchy and wavering. “Help you?”

Prince Aureate nodded once more. “There’s a reason I’ve been following you around, and it’s not just to be pesky.” He started to trot around Kaylee, eyeing the filly with curiosity. Kaylee, on the other hoof, remained still. “Though I know you followed my advice and, all things considered, are going to be a lot happier for it.”

“It... um... wasn’t much to do with you,” Kaylee replied, scratching the back of her head with a hoof. Her eyes followed Aureate as he turned, and her head swivelled to match his pace. “I just... woke up one morning, and knew I couldn’t keep pretending.”

“Mm, well, good on you,” Aureate replied with a curt nod as he came back to the part of the tunnel where he had been standing before. “But I digress. Although important for you, that’s not why I came to you all those years ago; it’s because I knew I would need you to help me now.”

Kaylee raised an eyebrow. “But again... why me? How did you know that it was me who could help you?”

Aureate’s lips curved into almost a smirk. “I didn’t quite know it would be you, exactly, and perhaps it could have been somepony else in different circumstances. But... I saw you had potential.”

Kaylee was no less confused. “I don’t really see where you’re going with this. Like, what do you want me to do?”

“Be patient—I’m getting to that,” Aureate replied, a hint of caution in his tone. “You know about... me. Correct?”

“About how you... just up and vanished one day, right before Prince Argent did the same thing?” Kaylee said, though she sounded unsure. “Like, hundreds of years ago...”

Aureate tilted his head slightly, but nodded. “Honestly, I’m surprised that they haven’t written us out of the Asterismos by now, but I guess we’re too ingrained in the collective consciousness. But yes, that is what happened.” Aureate paused, looking down to the ground. “Well... that’s at least how Aeneus would twist it.” He looked back up at Kaylee, his face in an odd, hard-to-read expression. “But I didn’t disappear; I was disappeared.”

Kaylee blinked. “What?”

“It was my brother, Aeneus,” Aureate started. “We had ruled together for quite some time, sharing the responsibility of leading the planet between the three of us. And yet... Aeneus always felt a bit like he was our shadow, being the youngest of us three. Argent and I... we started to notice he was bothered, but it seems we underestimated the extent. We didn’t realise he’d go to such... drastic measures to get rid of us.”

“What did he do?” Kaylee asked.

Aureate gulped. “He faked a signal from the home—erm, from far away, somewhere very important to the three of us. A signal that... requested my presence, for something that indeed was extremely important. Off-planet. I made to leave at once, but... once I had bade my brothers farewell and begun flying away, something went wrong.” The stallion shuddered. I could feel myself become stripped of my magic—stripped of my energy. Before I could react... I blacked out.”

“Oh jeez...”

“When I awoke I was still out there—hundreds of millions of kilometres from any planet, and completely powerless, hardly a shell of my former self. Honestly, it’s a miracle I didn’t die out there.”

Kaylee sat down on her haunches, still gazing up at the stallion. “The prince... he did all that?”

“Yes, my dear,” Aureate said, his tone sombre. “It took me decades to even get back to the system, slowly drifting and using what magic I could. But... it took a long time to come back to me. By the time I got back to the planet, I found myself able to use my shapeshifting magic, so I went back into hiding. Biding my time.”

“And what happened to Prince Argent?” Kaylee asked.

“I found out while I was here that, after a year or so with no communication from me, he went after me. I can... only guess he shared a similar fate, though I’m not sure if he survived.” Aureate sighed a long, drawn-out sigh. “I haven’t seen him since I left.”

Kaylee rubbed her temple with a hoof, and then looked up as one of the pipes above hissed with an outburst of steam. Looking back to Aureate, she said, “This is... a lot to take in. And I still don’t get what you want me to do. Don’t you, like, have your powers back? What would you need me for?”

“Mmmm...” Aureate hummed. “I do... and yet, not quite. A long time has passed, but my powers are still returning. The show with the birds back when you first landed... that was the first time in a long time I was able to do something like that. I am still weakened, and I alone do not have the power to overthrow my brother.”

“So that’s what you’re trying to do?” Kaylee asked. “Take over the planet?”

Aureate took a deep breath. “My brother is not a just pony, Kaylee. He... keeps up a strong façade, sure, and ponies have grown to respect him, especially without anypony else to turn to. But he really doesn’t know how to run a government, and he focuses all his time on making the ‘important’ places look showy and beautiful, leaving anywhere smaller to the dust. Remember Esprit?”

Kaylee shuddered. “Pretty hard to forget how it was down there.”

“Yeah,” Aureate agreed, “and you know the Southern Territory isn’t all that great outside of Umberlight, either. And the northern provinces have it pretty bad, too. Everything’s being funneled into a few central cities.”

“Okay...”

“And what I need is your help, Kaylee,” Aureate went on. “The issue is... while I can now use transformation magic, and some uniquely alicorn powers...” He scratched the back of his head with a hoof, looking almost... sheepish? “I can’t do plain old unicorn magic yet. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how... but I need a unicorn to help me. And I’ve chosen you.”

Kaylee blinked. Then the words poured out, so quickly: “Th-that’s it? Seriously? You did all this harassing me, for all these years, just ’cause I’m a unicorn? That’s... that’s... that’s just so stupid!” Closing her eyes, the filly took a deep breath. “Why... couldn’t you have picked anyone else? Like, literally, anypony else.”

Aureate looked slightly surprised at this reaction, but he quickly pulled himself together. “Kaylee... I’m very sorry for any of the grief I have caused you. But I needed to find somepony I could trust—somepony I knew wouldn’t immediately go to the authorities with this.” He paused. “And, in return, I was hoping to help you.”

“W-with Flight?” Kaylee stammered immediately.

Aureate nodded. “I promise that if you come with me, and do what I tell you to do, I can convince Flight to accept you for who you are, and we will find safe places for you, for her, and for your companion, Scootaloo. I will just need your help in winning them over to my—to our side. You just need to... do me a few favours.”

Kaylee took a breath, and diverted her gave for a moment, glancing over to the wall at the tangled web of pipes, twisting and turning every which way. She picked one of them and tried to follow along its path with her eyes, and initially it was easy; that part of the pipe was fairly visible. Yet once she got along, she found that she could follow it for a few weaves between the other pipes before it was lost completely to the mess, indistinguishable from the others. Sighing, she looked back to Aureate.

“I’m going to be honest, Prince; there’s a lot of what you’re saying that I still don’t get,” Kaylee started. “I still don’t understand why you chose me, and it still seems bizarre to me that Prince Aeneus could be so... corrupted, without ponies rising against him.”

Aureate lifted a hoof and opened his mouth as if to speak, but Kaylee gestured with her hoof, silencing him. “However...” she continued, “I do believe you. You’re the prince, for… well, for Aureate’s sake—and I don’t think you would have been following me for all that time if you didn’t actually need my help, even if you haven’t been... super straightforward about any of it.” She paused as Aureate nodded. “And... I really just want to do what’s going to be safest. For Scootaloo, for me... and for Flight.”

A moment passed, as Aureate waited with bated breath. Then…

“Yeah, I’ll come with you.”

As soon as the words had left Kaylee’s mouth, the body of the tunnel began to fill with a buzzing, cicadian hum. Aureate’s coat was shimmering, glowing an iridescent gold even stronger than before that seemed to emanate outward from his body and onto the walls. Kaylee stood very still where she was.

“Take my hoof,” Aureate said calmly, reaching out from the mist.

Kaylee looked over at the proffered hoof. “Are we... leaving?”

“Yes. We’re escaping the city, at least for now. I require your assistance south of here.”

Kaylee bit her lip. “Are my friends going to be okay?”

Aureate smiled warmly. “They’re going to be fine, and you’ll see them again soon enough. Now come on.”

With a gulp, Kaylee extended her hoof. As soon as it made contact with Aureate’s, with a soft click, the two of them vanished from the chamber. All that was left behind was a thin, foggy cloud with a golden tint, and once that dissipated, with it went any trace that Kaylee or Aureate had ever been in the tunnel.