Sunset pocketed her keys, heading towards the only well-lit building in the vicinity. She wasn’t familiar with the area, but the first person she saw on entering - a perky woman with a t-shirt emblazoned with a St. Andrew’s cross and the phrase “The freaks shall inherit the Earth” - confirmed that she was in the right place.

“I’m Autumn Breeze!” the woman said. “Are you here for the rope workshop?”

Sunset nodded, a little nervous despite having gotten this far.

Autumn’s expression softened. “First time?”

“Second,” Sunset admitted.

“Just remember that people will be coming and going all night, so nobody will notice if you want to come out in the hall to cool off for a bit,” Autumn reassured her. “If you want pizza later, pony up five bucks for the envelope on the table inside. We’re set to start at nine, but it always takes a good fifteen minutes more than that.”

It took Sunset an embarrassingly long time to remember the other, much more common meaning of the phrase “pony up,” but once she did, she smiled and thanked the woman before heading into the indicated room.

About twenty people milled around a few tables, unpacking supplies and generally getting the room in order for the workshop. To Sunset’s surprise, she recognized about a quarter of them, and could even name a few. Vinyl Scratch and Octavia Melody seemed to be near the center of the commotion, and as Sunset lingered in the doorway, Vinyl saw her and waved her over.

“Oh, hello, Sunset,” Octavia said. “Would you mind holding this for a moment-?” This apparently meant a cloth backpack, out of which Octavia pulled several lengths of black rope along with what looked like arts-and-crafts supplies, including a weird-looking pair of scissors, a sheaf of paper, and some masking tape. “Thanks.”

“So...” Sunset said, fumbling a little. “I didn’t know you did... rope... stuff?” Stars, even to her own ears that sounded painfully awkward.

Octavia, thankfully, took it in stride. “For a few years, actually. We’re going to be lecturing a little and demonstrating some technique at....” She glanced at the clock in the corner. “Well, supposedly five minutes ago, but soon, at any rate.”

Vinyl looked at Octavia for a moment, reading her expression, then lifted her fingers to her mouth and whistled sharply. The room quieted down in a hurry, and Sunset joined the larger group of people sitting in folding chairs or on the floor, facing the two teens and the tables next to them.

“Unconventional, but thank you, Vi,” Octavia said, then to the room at large, “Good evening! To those of you who have met Vinyl and I before, it’s good to see you again, and to those who haven’t, it’s a pleasure to meet you! My name is Octavia, or Tavi, and this is Vinyl Scratch. Some of you are wondering why she doesn’t introduce herself, and I will indeed explain that in a bit. But first: safety.”

The majority of the gathering faked enthusiasm, intentionally badly.

Octavia laughed. “I know, I know, but there’s always someone who hasn’t heard it before! Now, there’s the basics - this club uses Safe, Sane, Consensual as a ground rule, though anyone who would like to hear my rant on that versus Risk-Aware Consensual Kink is perfectly welcome to stay later than is advised.”

There was general amusement, which Octavia let die down before continuing. “As this is a ‘102’ of sorts, the idea is that you’re already familiar with those principles. However, there are some safety rules that pertain to ropework in particular. The first and foremost is to always have a pair of EMT shears on hand.” She held up the strange scissors from earlier. “Rope can be replaced. Limbs, or a life, cannot. I got these for ten dollars and have used them twice. There is no excuse not to own a pair and keep them on hand.”

She set the scissors back down on the table. “Never leave a bound person alone, especially if sudden movement or panicking could result in injury. Never restrict circulation; you should be able to slip two fingers between the rope and your bottom’s skin, and check in frequently to make sure they aren’t losing feeling anywhere. We won’t be doing any suspension tonight, but if you plan on it, make sure their weight is borne mostly on their legs, hips, and torso. Wrists and shoulders aren’t designed to hold a person up; there’s a reason we don’t walk on them. And of course, circulation is even more of a key issue there.”

Vinyl groaned in exaggerated boredom and let her head loll onto Octavia’s shoulder, to the latter’s suppressed giggles. “All right, all right! If nothing else, communicate often, tops and bottoms. Scoot.” She pushed Vinyl away from her, towards the center of the open space they’d created, and busied herself with one of the shorter ropes.

“I’ll show off a few ties tonight - some are intended to restrain, and some are just decorative. Most of the time, Vinyl and I combine the two, but we’ll be going through them one at a time tonight, so we can take breaks as needed. Vi, arms up in front of you. If anyone is having trouble seeing, feel free to move closer.”

She folded the rope in half, creating a loop on one end, and threaded the other end through it, so that Vinyl’s wrists were caught in the center, narrating as she went. “This is called a lark’s head knot, or sometimes a cow hitch or a slipknot. It can be dangerous if you use it on its own, since there’s no way to stop it from getting tighter, but I’m going to leave a little slack in the line for later. Now I can simply go back and forth-” She pulled the two ropes, as one, halfway around Vinyl’s arms, then reversed the line and brought it back around the other way, hooking her thumb in the new loop to keep it in place. “-and pull the rest of the rope through the bight each time. It’s safer and more secure, and if you keep the bights on the inward side, the rope looks continuous. You okay?”

Vinyl nodded and shifted her arms a little to show how much give she had. Octavia put a couple fingers between Vinyl’s wrists, then cinched the rope more snugly. “Two things it’s important to note here: one, you can see how I’m making sure the rope is loose around her wrists. You can also use... well, pretty much anything you have lying around to do this same thing, but using your own fingers means you can feel exactly how tight it is, so it’s good practice. Two, Vinyl doesn’t speak, of her own volition, which means I have to be more proactive in checking in with her. We also have alternate, nonverbal safewords set up, though for this demonstration, any major discomfort is a signal for me to back off. Once she hits subspace, which I don’t anticipate taking long-”

Vinyl grinned and shrugged, earning a playful smack on the shoulder from Octavia and laughter from the back of the room.

“I’ll be keeping a much closer eye on her when we get there. Now, the other reason for doing the knots like this is because it’s much easier to keep the rope where you want it when you’re done. For this demonstration, I’m going to bring the rest of the rope back up through the inside of this column we’ve created here, and then through the slack from that first lark’s head, to keep it from tightening any further. I usually arrange this tie so I end up with about a foot and a half of extra rope at the end, but you can adjust that by changing the number of loops.

“I think we’re going to break for now, so if anyone would like a closer look, feel free to come up and ask questions. Next I’m going to show a few knots and ties that can be used on their own or integrated into a more complex harness or rig, and then I think to finish off I’ll demonstrate a full-body tie. If you’d like to practice any of the knots, I have some yard-long ropes here as well.”

The audience dispersed, many of them wandering out into the hall or towards the duo at the front of the room. Sunset, for her part, stayed where she was. Something had been bugging her since the workshop had started, like a sound barely on the edge of her hearing, and it had surged briefly when Octavia had tightened the rope. In fact... if she let her eyes relax... so she was looking past the crowd instead of at it... there. Almost a fog, colors that weren’t colors, siphoning away at the edges in a specific direction.

As much as she wanted to stay, if this was magic, Sunset couldn’t just ignore it. She left the room quietly, then the building, making sure she could still see the miasma. It was easier outside, without the lights and colorful background to confuse her. It trailed off into the distance, past the road she’d taken to get there.

Sunset groaned and cast one last longing look back at the building. At least she’d gotten to stay for a while. She slung a leg over the seat of her motorcycle, checked the direction of the nascent magic, and set off.

Eventually, the trail fed into the park near Canterlot High. That was where Sunset found Twilight. Unfortunately, with her eyes unfocused, she’d found Twilight by slamming face-first into the other girl, unable to see her in the dark.

“Ow!”

Twilight recovered first. “Sunset? What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Sunset said wryly, rubbing her nose to make sure it wasn’t bleeding, and glad that her gloves had taken most of the impact. “And why are you in your pajamas?”

“I... oh!” Twilight held up a pendant she had on a lanyard around her neck. Something within it glowed faintly in the dark.

“That’s... nice?”

Twilight fumbled around for her cell phone, turning on the flashlight feature. With the added illumination, Sunset could see that the pendant was little more than a painted ball bearing suspended in a plastic sphere of water. Contrary to gravity, the ball bearing was at a 45 degree angle up the side of the sphere, pointing somewhere to Sunset’s left.

“It detects magic,” Twilight explained, then hastily added, “Nothing else, I swear! I just wanted to avoid... well, what happened at camp.”

Sunset nodded. “I believe you, Twilight. It’s a good idea. You were going to tell the rest of us about it, right?”

Twilight nodded and dropped the pendant to let it hang against her abdomen. “This is actually the first time I’ve been able to get it working without using magic myself. I figured I should do a little investigating before bothering everyone else about it, just in case it was, I don’t know, the MRI at Canterlot General. I guess I got a little excited and... maybe kinda grabbed my shoes and snuck out the window.” She paused and blinked. “But wait - why are you here?”

Sunset was suddenly grateful the flashlight beam wasn’t directed at her, as the dark hid her blush quite nicely. At least, she hoped so. “I, um. I was at a... thing, nearby. I noticed the magic too, followed it here.” She slapped an awkward grin on her face. Smooth, Sunset.

To her relief, Twilight seemed to take the explanation at face value, and gave a nervous smile. “Then, I guess...?” She gestured in the direction the ball bearing was pointing.

As they walked, a small part of Sunset quietly panicked about what they were going to find. To some degree, she’d almost be relieved if it turned out to be some monster trying to take over the world. If it had something to do with the event she’d come from.... She shook her head to clear it of the distracting combination of Twilight and the ropework she’d seen on Vinyl. One thing at a time.

Lost in thought, she almost didn’t notice when Twilight stopped moving and redirected the flashlight at a tall rock next to them. No, not a rock. A stone pillar, inlaid with gold or brass in the shape of a stylized capital C.

“Is that a clock?” Twilight wondered out loud, peering at it.

Sunset looked closer. There did seem to be what looked like clock hands extending from the middle of the C. If it had been a real clock, it would have read... about 9:30. Weird.

The girls looked at each other, then down at the compass, which was solidly pointing straight at the symbol. After a few seconds, Sunset shrugged and took off one of her gloves. “Well, if this kills me, warn the others,” she joked, and pressed her hand to the flat metal.

Unexpectedly, she felt her ears shift to the top of her head, along with the added weight from her now twice-as-long hair. Confused, she snatched her hand back, and didn’t notice the change in the pillar until Twilight said, “Look!”

The rock was... Sunset didn’t have a better word for it than “unfolding,” revealing an archway that couldn’t possibly have fit into the pillar - but then again, it was magic, and that was par for the course. Just past the stone threshold, an enclosed staircase led down, likely hewn from the earth itself.

She put her glove back on, mostly so she wouldn’t have to hold it, and reached a hand up to feel her now equine ears. “I didn’t pony up on purpose,” she pointed out.

Twilight grinned at her. “Isn’t this exciting? It’s new magic! It’s-”

“Potentially lethal,” Sunset pointed out, but even as she did so, it sounded wrong. A set of granite stairs leading down into what could be the center of the earth, unlit and silent, should have seemed ominous and unwelcoming, especially in the dead of night, but for some reason, Sunset felt... safe. Protected.

Twilight seemed to pick up on it, too, because she leaned into the opening, shining her flashlight over the walls. “There are crystals. Maybe in place of torches? Whoever built this place was obviously civilized.”

Sunset took a couple steps forward, hesitantly at first, but then surer as she passed through the archway uneventfully. She held out a hand to Twilight. “It might be kind of weird, but something tells me we’re gonna be okay if we go exploring. Still, I don’t want to get separated in the dark, and my phone’s low on battery.”

Twilight’s curious expression melted into a soft, almost shy smile as she took Sunset’s hand. It was hard to see with the light pointed down the hall, but Sunset thought she could see Twilight blush a little bit.

Well, it wasn’t anything she wasn’t doing herself.

Most of the walk down the stairs was... a walk down the stairs. They went slowly, just in case, and the most interesting thing that happened was the crystals on the walls flickering a few times, trying to provide light but failing.

“Maybe there’ll be some kind of generator we can turn on,” Twilight suggested.

Sunset’s only response was to shrug. Internally, she scolded herself for taking Twilight’s innocuous phrasing straight to the gutter. There was a time and a place for inappropriate fantasies about her friend, and Sunset had a hard time believing this was it.

After several wide landings, the stairs finally ended, opening up to a room large enough that the flashlight beam didn’t reach the other side. In the distance, Sunset saw what she thought at first to be an afterimage, but which stubbornly refused to fade, until she realized it was a light source, a dull purple coal some ten feet off the ground.

“Maybe that’s your generator,” she said, pointing.

They made their way carefully over to the purple dot, keeping the light on the ground in front of them.

“Hmm.”

“What?”

Twilight shrugged. “Does it strike you as odd that this place is so clean?”

Sunset opened her mouth, then stopped to think about it. “Well, now it does. The wear on the steps means it has to be at least a couple hundred years old.”

“Exactly. So where’s the dust? The cobwebs? Even if we are the first people to get in here in all that time, it can’t be airtight.”

They drew to a stop next to a low, circular wall, reminiscent of a fire pit, if the fire had been magically fed and thirty feet across. Along the top of the wall, the same brassy gold spelled out words in an archaic script.

“What does it say?” Twilight asked. “It’s not in any language I recognize.”

Sunset frowned and turned on her own phone’s flashlight, the better to read by. “This looks like... some kind of pidgin between Old Equestrian and Early Modern English. I think I can read it, sort of... hang on....” She squinted and traced one of the letters with her finger. “I think this says ‘freedom,’ but it’s spelled kinda funny....”

“Does it have extra E’s?” Twilight asked dryly.

Sunset snorted. “This looks like the middle of whatever it says. If we go that way we should find the start.”

Twilight pointed her own flashlight up at the purple ember. “Maybe it’s instructions for that. It’s gotta do something, it looks too important to be decorative.”

“Yeah,” Sunset agreed absently. “Here, look - I think... ‘Belonging. Devotion. Love.’ Oh, there isn’t a middle, it’s just single words that go all the way around. ‘Confidence. Responsibility. Care. Strength.’ I think it’s all attributes. There’s a pictogram of a heart in between all of them, but it doesn’t look like any letter I know.”

“This might have been some kind of ritual site for an ancient religion,” Twilight said. “And those were the virtues they practiced.”

“Here’s a sentence. ‘Your....’”

“Sunset?” Twilight asked, after a pause.

Sunset tried in vain to calm her pounding heart. Still, it wasn’t in her to lie to Twilight. Besides, it was unlikely Twilight knew what it would mean, and she could downplay the less than savory parts. “...It says, ‘Your safe word is law.’”

She looked up to find Twilight staring at her, both of them blushing furiously.

“Um,” Twilight said. “So that’s. I guess.” She cleared her throat. “It must have been one of the nice ancient religions?”

“It, uh,” Sunset said. Brilliant rejoinder! Now try an ‘ah’ or even an ‘oh.’ That’ll just stun her with your intellect! “You, uh, you know what that means?”

Twilight fiddled with a lock of her hair and finally nodded. “So... that means you do, too?”

Sunset’s mouth was dry and she was sure her cheeks were on their way to matching her hair. “That’s... actually what led me here. I was at a... a workshop, and I felt some kind of magic almost evaporating off the people there, and going somewhere else, and... well, then I ran into you.”

“There’s a workshop near here? What kind?” Twilight asked, forgetting to be embarrassed in her curiosity. Before Sunset could answer, she remembered what they were here for. “Wait, that’s not the important part.”

Sunset’s hormones begged to differ, but the rest of her could stay on track more easily. “My question is, if it’s some kind of dead religion or something, then why were they familiar with the Equestrian alphabet? And we still don’t know what that is, or does.” She waved a hand at the purple thing.

“Or why it’s so clean in here.”

“Or that. Well, I mean, that one is probably magic. And powerful magic, to last for so long.”

There was a brief lull in their discussion, and Twilight turned her phone to the side and started taking pictures of the fire pit thing. At something of a loss, Sunset continued around the outer edge of the circle, muttering under her breath as she went.

Once she was about halfway around, she set her phone upside-down on the wall and straightened up. “Here’s something. It goes on with attributes for a while, and a few short sentences, but this is longer. I think it takes up the whole rest of the space. Um... ‘The Fire-’ That’s capitalized, weird. ‘The Fire above you burns strong and bright; Devotion will fuel its eternal light. Though rapture comes from without and within, we give of ourselves and let harmony in. Kept and Keeper, no bond more high, the Earth to the Moon and the Sun to the very Sky.’ They really liked their important capital letters, I guess.”

Twilight looked over Sunset’s shoulder at what was to her complete gibberish. “It rhymes and everything?”

“Well, I took a little poetic license. This... Equestr-ish? Early Modern Equestrian? seems to have gone short on the syllables.”

“Ye Olde Pony Englishe,” Twilight suggested playfully. Sunset burst into giggles.

When she recovered, Twilight had set her own phone down and gone back to frowning up at the ember. “I’m not sure why, but whenever I think about leaving here without fixing whatever this is, I just feel awful. Like I’ve forgotten an assignment that’s due soon. It just feels bad.”

Sunset ignored the opportunity to take a jab at Twilight’s love of academics, much to the dismay of her inner Rainbow Dash. Instead she said, “If the writing on the base is related, it looks like that’s the Fire and ‘Devotion will fuel’ it.”

“You think I should call the others?” Twilight asked. “It might be more friendship magic.”

Sunset was silent. Finally she stood in front of Twilight, gaze steady, gloved hands on Twilight’s shoulders. She made sure her voice and face were gentle when she asked, “Do you trust me?”

Twilight’s eyes widened slightly. “Yes,” she whispered.

Sunset kissed her.

Twilight made a muffled, shocked noise, but responded eagerly, even if she’d clearly never kissed anyone before. To her credit, she was a quick study. Sunset could almost hear the gears in her brain whirring.

“?” Twilight said, and pulled away to look behind Sunset. Sunset turned to look, too, and saw that the faintly glowing ember from before had burst into pink and purple flame, in the shape of... a heart? And a familiar heart, at that.

“You know, I’m not even surprised anymore,” Sunset deadpanned. “You know how humans celebrate Christmas and stick candy canes and snowmen on everything for it?”

“Uh, I guess so?”

“Yeah. Ponies have Hearth’s Warming Eve and Day. Basically the same thing, but that heart is kind of the official symbol.”

Twilight gave her a strange look. “You have a holiday for kinky sex?”

Sunset smacked her own forehead with her open palm. “No. It’s supposed to celebrate, like, friendship and stuff. I don’t know, the last time I went to see a Hearth’s Warming play I was ten. Something something founding of Equestria, something something don’t be a jerk, something something Fire of Friendship. There’s songs and whatever. And wait, who said anything about kinky sex?”

Twilight froze. “Um.”

Sunset started to grin. “Because, you know, if a certain person is willing....” She let her hands drift down to Twilight’s waist. “That could be arranged.”

Twilight hesitated, biting her lip. “As much as I want to say yes... and I do really want to say yes....”

“What is it?”

“I’m wearing a t-shirt and pajama pants, and we’re underground in a giant cave in the middle of the night. I’m freezing down here.”

“Oh. Right.” Sunset chuckled a little, irrationally relieved that the answer hadn’t been Because you’re weird and gross.

“That, and, well...” Twilight turned her head, unable to meet Sunset’s eyes. “I kinda wanted my first time to be special,” she mumbled.

Sunset took a moment to parse the jumble of syllables, then wrapped Twilight in a hug. “Hey, it’s okay. I won’t do anything you don’t want me to do, I promise.”

She felt Twilight nod. “Okay. I... I liked kissing you, though. Do you think we could do more of that?”

Sunset tilted her head so her lips were pressed to Twilight’s neck. “We better test that hypothesis.”

“Mm - what kind of researchers would - ohhh - would be we if we didn’t collect all the data we could?”

The experiment turned out to require multiple trial runs (including one false start at introducing new data points - “Cold hands! Cold cold cold!”), at least until Sunset’s phone died, cutting the light in the room nearly in half.

“Dammit,” Sunset grumbled.

“It’s a sign,” Twilight proclaimed, a little drunk on endorphins.

“Yeah, it’s a sign I need to charge my phone more often. At least the Fire heart is brighter.”

This was true; as they’d indulged in each other, the flame had gradually brightened, so that the immediate area was suffused with pinkish-purple light. Not quite enough to comfortably see by, but better than the previous pitch blackness.

Twilight looked up at it. “I think if we leave it’ll be okay. It lasted this long.”

“I think you’re right,” Sunset said. “And I should really write to the other Twilight about this. If it’s Equestrian, she might know more than we do.”

They collected their phones from where they’d left them. Twilight took a few more pictures of the writing, so they could reference them somewhere warmer.

As they trudged back up what felt like way more stairs than they’d walked down, Sunset took notice of the crystals lining the walls. Many of them were now glowing faintly but steadily, turning on and off a set distance ahead of and behind them as they walked. “Huh. I guess it does power the lights. I wonder how much of this place just runs off your ‘generator’ down there.”

“Who needs this many stairs,” Twilight grumped. “Gonna put an elevator in this thing, I swear to-”

Sunset smothered a laugh. “Do you have your necklace? You could try to levitate us out.”

Twilight stopped in her tracks and gave Sunset a flat look. “You could’ve said something at the bottom.” Regardless of her annoyance, a purple glow enveloped both of them and pulled them at a neat clip through the air.

Twilight looked at her hands once they were at the top and back on solid ground. “You know, all the fantasy I’ve read taught me to expect a significant energy cost for doing something like that, but I feel fine.” She took a step forward and staggered a little. “Okay, mostly fine. I got it, I’m good.” She straightened, then glanced at Sunset. “Wait, where’s your necklace?”

Sunset winced. “The mind-reading thing... isn’t as voluntary as I’d like it to be. And to be honest, it kind of creeps me out a little. I need more practice before it’s a good idea to wander around a crowded high school with it.”

Twilight grimaced as she caught Sunset’s meaning. “Right, yeah. So... should we meet back here tomorrow?”

“Sure,” Sunset said. “Let’s pick a time when I can see my hand in front of my face.”

Twilight giggled. “Text me when you get an answer from the other Twilight? We can figure out what to do then.”

Sunset nodded, and they said their goodbyes. Twilight, luckily, didn’t live far, so she didn’t need a ride home. It was two in the morning before Sunset collapsed into bed, grateful that tomorrow was Sunday. Vaguely, she thought about writing something in the magic journal, but before she could do any more than that, sleep claimed her.

Author's Notes:

The information Octavia gives out is all, to my knowledge, as correct as I could make it. The tie she demonstrates on Vinyl is called a ladder tie, and you can learn how to do it and many other ties with Fetish Weekly's tutorial series (SFW, no nudity). You can see the specific tie in this story modelled on yours truly: here and here.

The "Devotional Hymn" that Sunset reads off is meant to fit the tune of the Hearth's Warming Carol, the one that starts, "The fire of friendship lives in our hearts...."