The road to Unicornia was long. It was now late Summer, which boded ill if we couldn't take the City of Unicorns before Winter.

I didn't want to tire out the Army, but I most certainly didn't want to freeze in a tent all Winter long.

But for the size of my force, I think we made good time.

Puddinghead had finally gotten her act together, and had joined us with a few thousand Peasant volunteers soon after we left Pegasopolis. The Pegasi, who had been left behind when Captain Comet took Pegasopolis South, also had joined us. They were malnourished, but I made a point of making sure they were being well fed as we marched.

I didn't know exactly where their loyalty lay, but I did my best to buy it with good food.

Shockingly, we entered Unicornian territory unchallenged. There were a few meager villages of course. Barely more than 20 Ponies apiece. I tried to coax them away from their homes with the promise of food and a safe life down South, several of them even accepted and joined my Army. But a few refused and kept to their hovels.

One village even had the gall to chase me with a rake. I left that village alone, despite the hostility. I wasn't going to stoop so low as to be a marauding warlord.

To prove it, I even put a Pony in a stockade when they tried to burn another village down.

I wasn't going to be another tyrant.

But one day... We discovered something unexpected.

Tia and I were sitting in the lead cart. Watching the landscape roll by, looking for potential ambushes or villages to recruit.

"Stop the cart." Tia said suddenly to the stallion and mare who were currently pulling. The wordlessly rolled to a stop as Tia stood up and began looking around.

"Tia? What is it? What's wr-" I started to ask, but stopped half way through my sentence.

I had, by sheer happenstance, inhaled slightly through my nose.

It was barely a whiff. Hardly there at all. It even smelled so much like any other of the forests we had traveled through.

Yet... Something... Something about this forest awoke long forgotten memories.

Tia jumped out of the cart, her breastplate clattering as she hit the ground. Her nose was in the air, sniffing.

While the cart Ponies were watching her act strange, I understood what she was doing.

I even jumped out and joined her.

"Is that-" I started to ask.

"Yes." Tia responded, walking into the woods.

"W-Wait! We- Ugh!" I groaned. "Stay here." I told the Ponies pulling the cart.

"As you wish General..." The stallion muttered, watching the trees on either side of the path.

I dove into the brush after Tia.

She had rushed ahead, almost out of sight as she wandered past the trees.

Strangely, despite the rather rough terrain, my hooves found sturdy, and easy to reach stones to step on.

I knew this place.

I almost glided through the brush effortlessly, even as I passed by fallen branches and tangling ferns that surely would've sent me sprawling if I tripped over one.

In fact, a crash behind me informed me just that happened, as several of the soldiers decided to follow to guard their Mayor and General.

I stepped over a hidden root effortlessly.

Ahead of me, Tia had come to a stop at the edge of a clearing.

A clearing I was certain we both knew well.

I wordlessly came up behind her and stopped.

Ahead, lay the dilapidated ruins of Queensford.

The village had certainly seen better days. Over half the huts had collapsed in the seven years since I had seen it last. The paths, which I remembered to have been dirt well worn enough to keep the grass from regrowing, was now overgrown with the ferns and grasses of the local area. Despite that, the mud and wicker that the collapsed huts had been made of stuck up out of the knee high plants.

We passed by the still intact hut that had once belonged to Torchwood.

I was tempted to go inside, but doing so felt like I would've been disturbing a grave. So I walked past the hut without comment.

Tia continued ahead, but I found myself stopping in front of another ruin.

I looked over to see the collapsed hut that had once belonged to Hoarfrost.

I didn't even hesitate to spit on the slate that had once been the doorstep.

"Good riddance." I growled softly to myself as I continued my way through the former village.

My next stop was at something I didn't remember.

Somepony had piled a bunch of rocks in a sort of oblong shape outside the still standing home that had once belonged to Mrs. Amethyst. The door had been torn off its hinge, so I didn't feel bad about peering inside.

All I saw was the long abandoned shape of an old rocking chair.

I glanced back towards the pile of rocks, noticing for the first time that somepony had erected a sort of sun effigy at the end closest to the Mrs. Amethyst's hut.

I realized right then that it wasn't a pile of rocks.

It was a cairn.

While I suspected who had been buried there, I wasn't certain. So I moved on.

I found Tia standing outside of another collapsed hut.

I didn't need to wonder why she had stopped here, because I was going to as well.

This had once been the home of a disgraced Princess of the Realm, of a retired adventurer who had settled down, of one Nebula Glow.

It was the hut we had grown up in.

I resisted the urge to dig in the ruins. The one item I might've wanted to recover hadn't been lost here.

Sir Snuggles had been lost in the wild.

"Mom had to have stashed away some of her things from the Palace." Tia remarked. "Like a spellbook or some of her Warmage robes."

"If she did, I doubt it would've been inside the hut. One of us would've come across it at least once." I replied.

"Where else could she have put them? You don't just get rid of such things when you're one of the few who can use them."

"I don't know what to tell you Tia." I shook my head. "If you want to try and find anything I won't stop you. But we both spent so much time in there I doubt there's anything we could've missed. Especially since we were two curious fillies who got into everything." I turned and walked away, content to let the ghosts of the past rest in peace.

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