Midnight looked out on a landscape completely alien to her. To her back were rocky cliffs which made a wall between where they were and whatever was beyond. They were jagged and looked to have sharp edges, perhaps the height of a three story building. She could probably fly over them if she weren't carrying Dove, even with her poor flying ability, but wouldn't risk such a flight while trying to carry her filly. She could make out that they had a red color to them, even in the dark.

The sight in front of her was water, just never ending water out in front of her. She didn't think there was so much water in the whole world. In the low light it looked like some massive constantly shifting black mass. It kept moving and that puzzled her slightly. Why was the water moving? Shouldn't it just be sitting still? She knew from her schooling that it moved all the time, but couldn't recall why. Seeing it do so was unnerving though. It seemed like some great undulating mass ready to swallow her up.

Beneath her hooves the ground was wet, and didn't feel completely solid. It was white, just slightly darker than Dove's fur. When she pushed down with her hooves they sank into it easily, displacing water as the strange wet soil separated in all directions and enveloped her hoof as the hoof went down into it. She pulled the hoof back up, feeling suction trying to hold it down for a brief moment, but it came back out easily. What was the word for this kind of soil? She thought back hard to her schooling and tried to recall. Stand? Stang? The word was something like that, but couldn't remember exactly. It wasn't ever considered important information, just some of the weird general information they taught you when trying to see your aptitudes. She hadn't had much aptitude for understanding things involving soil and geology. Crystal ponies tended to have better understanding of those kinds of things, not thestrals.

Looking up she saw a very different looking sky than what she had seen before. She had seen the sky clear and blue before with her mistress, and she had seen it grey and overcast as well, but she had never seen it like it was now. It was both pitch black and lit up at the same time. It was darker than the water in front of her, but scattered all over that darkness was thousands if tiny sparks of light, glowing dimly in the black. Some were slightly brighter than others, and there seemed to be no pattern in their disbursement in the sky. She knew these were the stars from Sunset. She remembered what she had been told about how far away they were from her. Why could she see them if they were so far away?

Another thing making anxious was that they were clearly well away from Ocid. There was no sign of the Dome in sight. That meant they were likely deep in the Dead Lands, which meant undead could be anywhere and everywhere around them. For the moment there were none in sight, but that could change at any time. She did a quick check to see if her weapons were still there and in good shape.

The first thing she had done on arrival, however, was check on Dove in her saddle bag. The little foal was looking around and giggling and cooing at what she was seeing. Midnight had breathed a sigh of relief that Dove was alright. She had been terrified than one of the guns would have hurt her daughter.

Since there didn't seem to be immediate danger she took a look around at her companions. Sunset was looking at the cliffs, no doubt trying to guess what kind of defense they might provide, and what lay beyond them. Water Shadow was sitting silently, just staring out at the water. There was no sign of Moon Fury and Cotton Tail, she wasn't sure or not if they had even made it through the door by the time it had closed. Water Shadow had pulled them into a teleport the second the doors had sealed again. The entire ordeal back in the mine chamber had been hard for her to follow in her terror.

Sweet Pea was currently in a state of panic, seemingly unsure what was the most terrifying thing around her. She looked frantically between the sky, the water, and the ground beneath her hooves. The unicorn had never been outside, and likely had not been educated at all about what lay beyond the Dome of Ocid. If this was alien to Midnight, this was beyond comprehensible for Sweet Pea.

Midnight walked over to her best friend, and wrapped a wing around her in what she hoped would be a calming gesture.

"It's okay, we are outside, somewhere on the coast. Undead don't come out to the coast much, or in great numbers when they do. We are safe for the second." Midnight hoped her words would calm her friend. The unicorn still seemed to be extremely scared, but she stopped looking around frantically in favor of facing Midnight.

"I'll try..I just need a few minutes to adjust." Sweet Pea glanced at the weapon still strapped to her foreleg, and shivered. "Midnight, do you think I killed any pony back there?"

It had been hard to tell much of anything in detail back in the large chamber. Midnight had been focused on just keeping Dove safe and out of the gunfire, she had been unable to focus on anything else. She did recall a heavy iron scent that had not been there when they first entered the room. Maybe it was a smell that had been produced by the gunfire, but her gut told her that it had been the scent of blood, and there had been a lot of it.

"I don't know," she answered. "Don't think too much about it. Those ponies were trying to kill us. You did what you had to in order to prevent that. I think they would have succeeded if you had not been as good a shot as you turned out to be. We owe you our lives. Just remember your unborn foal would be dead now if you hadn't done what you did."

"It should make me feel better, but I can't help feeling like I did something evil," Sweet Pea said quietly. "I don't want to be a murderer."

"It isn't murder to defend yourself and your loved ones in a situation like that," Midnight insisted. She wished she had been able to be as much help as Sweet Pea had been in the chamber. Midnight had felt completely useless through the entire ordeal.

"I can agree with you in my head, but my heart isn't so easy to convince. I just hope I never have to do something like that ever again," Sweet Pea replied in the same quiet voice.

Sweet Pea's sad reflection on her actions seemed to at least caused her to stop panicking about her surroundings, Midnight was glad of that at least, even if her friend was still very upset. Hopefully she would not have it weigh on her too long. Midnight meant what she said. She didn't care about whether Sweet Pea had killed any of those guards or not; what was important was that Sweet Pea had kept them alive.

"Are we where I think we are, Shadow?" She heard Sunset ask the other alicorn.

"Yes," Water Shadow replied, still staring out at the water. "Where else would my safe house be at?"

"Where are we, Mistress?" Midnight asked Sunset.

"You no longer wear an acolyte suit, so I think we can dispense with the titles. We are all refugees now," Sunset replied with a wry smile. "But to answer your question we are near the site where Water Shadow lived when she was about your age. I spent many years here trying to help her with a difficult period of her life. We are on the far western coast of the continent now. The undead horde in full is between us and Ocid. I am actually shocked that she was able to teleport us this far."

"I have had a teleport anchor spot here for years. I can teleport here from anywhere I capable of teleportation at all, even if we lack the power we once had when Harmony stood," Water Shadow explained, finally turning away from the water and gazing down shore instead.

"Is it safe here? I don't see anything to protect us here. It feels so..exposed," Sweet Pea spoke up shakily.

"This is only near the place we will be safe. Teleports won't work where we need to be to be safe. The place has strange magic that interferes with teleportation," Water Shadow explained further.

"Where are Moon Fury, Night Mist, and Cotton Tail?" Midnight asked, fearing what the answer would turn out to be, but hoping that some other answer would come. Their current absence spoke volumes, but there was a chance they had just been teleported somewhere else.

"They..didn't make it through the door by the time it closed," Sunset said in a subdued voice. There were tears in her eyes. "I..I think I saw Night Mist get shot. I don't know what happened to the other two."

Midnight wept at this point. Night Mist had been the pony that had trained her in her duties as an acolyte. The older mare had been like a mother at times to her in those first days on the job. Moon Fury was Dove's father, and though he had never really been involved with the filly's life, he still asked about her regularly the last few months. It had made her hope she could form some sort of family, but that wasn't going to happen now. Cotton Tail she never knew well, but he was a familiar face to her from their shared profession.

Water Shadow had her head and ears lowered as she stared down at the wet ground. Midnight knew the other acolytes the blue alicorn had were likely to be arrested and sent to the Bakery as well. They hadn't been friends, but they were close acquaintances to Midnight. The alicorn was losing all her acolytes in one fell swoop today. Being an acolyte was more than just serving an alicorn, it was being a friend and confidant to them. Water Shadow was dealing with three of her best friends dying today. Sunset as well was losing a great number of hers as well. Midnight's heart went out to them in sympathy. The fact that they had lost so much for the sake of Dove made her all the more grateful for their actions.

"We can mourn later," Sunset said as she brought herself to her hooves. "Let's get to this safe house of your's so we can get out of the open. If we keep sitting around here too long some minion of the necromancer will notice us and report our presence to her."

"We can get to the gates of it for now, but we cannot enter it until daylight. If we try to get in before the sun rises we are better off facing the undead horde head-on. There is no surviving it at night," Water Shadow told them, as she rose to her hooves as well.

"You haven't told me much about this place of yours, Shadow. That doesn't sound like a promising place to stay safe," Sunset said evenly.Wait, Sunset didn't actually know where they were going or how it would keep them safe?

"It's complicated," Water Shadow replied back. "You'll understand when you see it."

Midnight wasn't one to question alicorns, but this didn't seem like it was going to be somewhere to keep them safe. If the place was so dangerous at night then what were they supposed to do at night? She wanted her filly to be able to live. If this place only kept them safe part of the time, and was supposedly less safe than fighting the undead horde the rest of the time, that seemed like Dove wasn't destined to make it through the week. Were they trading one certain doom for another? Was it all that hopeless?

Water Shadow began walking away down the shore. The rest of them with little other choice got to their hooves and followed the alicorn to whatever terrible place she was leading them.

She strained her senses trying to feel outside magic, the others likely did the same. The three of them hovered in the air,listening. The had sensed alicorn magic, but it had been in the wrong direction from where they had being sent. Now the waited where they were, waiting to sense any further occurrences.

They had been tasked, in fact created, by the Goddess to track down the alicorn Sunset Shimmer and the pegasus filly that she harbored. Their creator, their Goddess, had given them a direction to search. They had been given power to sense alicorn magic for their hunt, but now faced a conundrum. They had been ordered in one direction by their Goddess, but this magic was not in that direction. This confused her, she needed to obey the Goddess, but she must try to accomplish what the Goddess wanted. Her young mind struggled with the paradox put before her.

They kept waiting, hoping that there would be some further magic to sense. If there was more then they could feel that this was the course their creator would want them to take. No further bursts of magic seemed to be coming though. Her mind was tormented with indecision, she should not have to make such choices, she should simply be able to do as she was commanded and be happy that she did.

She looked to the others..her sisters. Sisters seemed the correct term. Weren't they all female and born together? Weren't they all creations of the Goddess? The Goddess was their mother. Yes, that seemed like the right term for that as well. They were sisters born of the same mother in blood and necromatic magic.

Her sisters looked much as she guessed she looked. They were molten blood and green necromatic magic constantly twisting and turning around the skeletal frame of some long dead alicorns. Their eyes blazed with green light. They looked much the same as one another, and she assumed that she looked the same too as a result. Were they thinking the same things as her? They must be, they felt the same things, and had experienced all the same few things in their very short life so far of a few hours.

If they were to investigate this flash of alicorn magic they would be flying far off course. Their mother had not granted them the knowledge of how to teleport themselves. She had only given them knowledge of spells to slay and subdue. Perhaps it was up to them to figure such things out themselves, or perhaps their mother did not wish for them to have this knowledge. This was another puzzle. There were far too many puzzles in her life so far. Why must life have so many questions? Realizing she had just come to another question she shook her head in frustration. Perhaps it was part of living to come up with questions and find answers to them.

"What do we do sisters?" She asked the other two. It seemed odd that they didn't all ask the question at once. If they were the same shouldn't they all find the need to voice the question at the same time. She also realized this was her first time speaking, the first time any of them had spoken. She was the first word..that had a nice ring to it..she was First Word. She claimed this name for herself.

"The Goddess commands us to go to the south and the east," one of her sisters replied. This they all knew, but this was not a suitable answer though.

"Our mother wishes us to find the alicorn. The magic is to the west," she replied back to her sisters. This was still not an answer to the question, but it felt like it was getting closer to one.

"There are three of us and three directions. Perhaps..our mother..wishes us to go west as well?" Her other sister seemed to be feeling out the term for their creator, thinking about whether it was right. Better, this felt like an answer. First Word felt joy in having found an answer to a question.

"Shall you be the one who goes west then..sister?" the other one said.

Another question? How many questions could be fit into a lifetime?

"I am First Word, sister, and I shall go west. If it displeases our mother then she shall only punish me and not you two," First Word said decisively.

"First Word..I shall go eastward. I shall be called East Ward as a result," the sister, now known as East Ward, told her.

"And I shall go south obedient to our mother's will. I shall be her Obedient Will and will be called that in honor of it," the last of them said.

First Word felt a swell of pride and..love for her sisters. Was love the word? It felt like the right word. They had resolved this problem, and they all knew who they were now. They were bonded in purpose and origin, so they were family, and families loved one another. Surely they would be able to figure out any future questions as well.

Without any further discussion the three sisters flew off in their decided directions. It was time to find the alicorn Sunset Shimmer and the pegasus filly. It was time to please their mother.

Night Mist awoke with a start. Her heart was racing even more than what her fear should have caused. Was she having a heart attack? Something wasn't right about how fast it was beating.

"You woke up quickly. I will have to compliment whoever designed that drug I injected you with, it is good work," the voice of the Ponymother came from nearby.

Night Mist tried to get to her hooves, but pain shot through one of her forelegs when she attempted it, causing her to collapse back down on the ground with a pained gasp.

She looked at her forehoof and remembered that it had been shot. The hoof was was still a bloody mess, no pony had made any attempt to clean it up. She could tell that it was was broken and misshapen despite the coat of blood on it. It didn't even have a flat surface for her to stand upon anymore. Even if she weren't in line to go to the Bakery she would never be able to walk on this leg again.

"You are much more resilient for an old mare than I gave you credit for before. That kind of wound should have had you bleed out and die in a few minutes time, but you seem like you overcame that," the Ponymother chuckled.

"Who are you calling old mare, old mare?" Night Mist snapped back defiantly. In truth she didn't feel even a tenth as cocky as her words came out, but she was going to try to be as resistant to the Ponymother as she could for the sake of her mistress. What did she have to lose at this point for defiance? She was going to die before the day was out anyway.

"Well, a bit of a backbone as well. Hopefully that means your mind is clear enough to be of use to me," the large crystal pony said with a smile.

"I will tell you nothing," Night Mist insisted. She would not betray any information to this bitch. The only thing she had left to lose was her loyalty to her mistress, and Peridot would not take that from her.

"We shall see," Peridot said cooly. "You don't have to actually say anything out loud to tell me what I want to know. I have other ways of getting information out of you. We will try those first, and if they fail we will do this the hard way. I admit, I am actually hoping I have to do things the hard way. Because what all of you have done I have a strong desire to inflict some physical punishment."

"Well, that is to be expected. All you have every been is a brute, great grandmare," Night Mist hissed.

"Shut up," Peridot growled back menacingly. Night Mist seemed to have have struck a nerve with calling her a brute.

"But I don't blame you, really. You would have been an excellent soldier, the best, but you have no ability to lead. Just another brute for the brute squad," Night Mist continued. She didn't know what was driving her to taunt the Ponymother. Perhaps it was the certain knowledge that she was dead anyway, and hope that her taunts would enrage the Ponymother enough that she just killed her now without any hope of getting any information out of her.

"I said shut up!" Peridot shouted, taking a step towards her.

"Really you are as much a victim as the rest of us. You are forced to forever do a job you know you are not suited for or really want. It isn't your fault you are just a big dumb brute only suitable for wrecking havoc. Maybe you could have been a good pony if you just were put out on a battlefield to fight monsters, but as a leader you are the bloodiest damn monster of all," Night Mist pushed on, trying to think of every possible way she could enrage the Ponymother. In truth she had always had fantasies about doing this exact thing. Today was the day she finally got to tell the huge drunk off.

"I told you to shut up, and you will shut up!" Peridot screamed shrilly at her. The massive bulk of muscle charged forward towards her, picked her up, and threw her hard against the wall with lightning speed.

Surprisingly this seemed to cut off the pain, and Night Mist felt some relief. That was until she realized with horror why she wasn't feeling the pain. The Ponymother had broken Night Mist's spine with that lashing out. It wasn't just not feeling any pain throughout her body, she wasn't feeling anything at all beyond her neck. How was she still conscious right now? That should have knocked her out or killed her.

"Perhaps that will teach you a lesson for daring to speak to me like that," Peridot growled.

"Screw you, you're a rotten grandmare," Night Mist managed to get out. It took a lot more effort than it had just a moment ago to speak.

"Well, I suppose I can admire your determination at least," Peridot said with a grunt. The crystal pony walked over to her and placed a hoof down on Night Mist's head. Night Mist closed her eye's waiting for the hoof to press down and crush her skull.

The crush didn't come after a full minute though, and she felt the hoof remove itself from her head. Night Mist re-opened her eyes and looked at the pony that had just a moment before had snapped her back and seemed ready to finish her off. Peridot had her hoof now on Night Mist's back, something she couldn't feel. The crystal pony had her head tilted to the side, as if she were listening carefully to something. What in bloody Tartarus was the Ponymother doing?

After what seemed forever Peridot removed her hoof and shook her head in frustration.

"Blast you, I can't get anything of use out of you. Perhaps I will get some useful information out of Water Shadow's two remaining acolytes. Your fellow acolytes managed to escape me, for now anyway. They will get no gentler treatment when I find them and your alicorn," Peridot said, as she walked back towards the door.

Cotton Tail had gotten away? Night Mist wished she could make some sort of sign that she was happy, but her body was broken. She could barely move her head about. At least her son would get a chance to live.

"I will be sending in some guards to take you off to the Bakery. They will make sure to administer more of that drug to keep you awake before you are sent through the Bakery's mechanisms. I am actually sorry I broke you spine because you won't be able to feel every second of it before you are dead. I will have to be content with knowing you will get to have the sight of your fur being stripped off you, your magic forcefully extracted, and the meat picked off your bones. I hope you carry that horror with you into whatever afterlife there is. Goodbye traitor." And with that Peridot slammed the door to the small cell behind her.

The old thestral just laid there, unable to do anything else. She was likely bleeding internally, perhaps she would die before they had a chance to even put her into the Bakery. Life seemed to keep on giving her more time, and at this point she really didn't want any more time. The death Peridot had planned for her was the stuff of nightmares. Normally a pony was already dead when they put them through the Bakery, mercifully killed just moments before in a quick painless way. This wouldn't be painless. Yes, she couldn't feel anything from the neck down, but her neck and head had flesh and fur to be stripped as well.

At least Cotton Tail had gotten away. It gave her some small peace of mind that he was with her mistress. She said a silent prayer like the ponies of old did for their alicorns that she would keep him safe wherever they had fled to.

The door opened yet again and four guards with a stretcher entered into the room. Peridot wasn't wasting any time it seemed. The time to go to the Bakery was now. She would die with no regrets.

Being back here hurt. This was such an old wound, but being here tore it wide open again for Water Shadow. A pony would think that after over seven thousand years this place wouldn't twist the hook that was in her heart, but it still did.

When she had returned here, soon after the fall of Harmony, and made a sanctuary here, she had been sorely tempted to just stay. She had just wanted to seal herself, and her ship, in the tomb she had carved out. Instead she had left her ship here and commuted herself to being what she was. She was an alicorn and her little ponies needed her. She may have failed them here so long ago, but she would not fail them going forward. It was time to stop pretending she was still an earth pony and do her duty. She wondered now if she had failed in that duty as she thought of the state Ocid was in.

This place was greatly changed since the last time she was here. Just as it had been greatly changed when she returned last time. The area now had a small grove of sickly trees growing about it, barely holding onto life, and small patches of grass hanging on amongst the largely dead soil. It gave her some small feeling of gladness that even though it looked bleak, there was still some life here deep in the Dead Lands, and that life clung near this particular place.

Her companions looked around the area with confusion, not understanding why she had brought them to this place. It definitely didn't look like much. When she looked around the area she could almost imagine the village that had been here so long ago, before the Time of Madness. The village where she had found her cutie mark, married, and had her foal. The place she had ascended to Alicornhood. The village that she had failed to defend from the mad alicorn Flame Star.

"I know that this place is important to you, Shadow, but I don't see anything that looks like any type of shelter here. I hope you didn't come here just to spend your time crying here again until the Mare of Shadows comes and takes you," Sunset said sternly.

"No, there is a sanctuary here. I made it soon after the fall of Harmony. Do you notice something missing from this place, old friend?" She answered her fellow alicorn.

Sunset gave her a considering look, and then looked around the area again. Then turned back to her with comprehension in her eyes.

"Where is the monument stone? You carved that thing and enchanted it so nothing could wear it away or break it," Sunset glanced around again. The two young mares looked around the area with confusion. Not that they would even know what they were looking for.

"It hasn't gone anywhere. It is simply now the first door to the sanctuary. One that we can safely pass through once we uncover it from the sediment. The second door is the one that we must wait to pass through," she explained.

She walked over to a large clearing in the trees and dug at the ground with a hoof for just a minute. Very quickly her hoof came in contact with hard stone and made a grinding sound as she ran it over the stone.

"Will you help me clear away the dirt, Sunset? My magic might be a bit shaky. My emotions are hard to keep in check with this," Water Shadow said quietly. Shaky was putting it lightly. What she was doing now felt like sacrilege.

Sunset nodded and lit her horn up. The dirt on the ground quickly separated and was shoved into piles to the left and right of the large stone slab. Water Shadow and the rest walked up to the stone slab and looked down at it. Even after all these millennia the writing she had carved into it was still clearly visible.

"Who was Sea Star?" Sweet Pea asked. It was an innocent enough question, but it made Water Shadow break out in a sob. The unicorn stepped back looking ashamed of herself for asking the question.

"Sea Star was Water Shadow's daughter. She was the only body Water Shadow was able to find when the village that was once in this location was destroyed in the Time of Madness," Sunset explained to the two young mares. She turned back to Water Shadow. "Shadow, I know being here is very upsetting to you, but time is of the essence that we get out of the open."

Water Shadow took a breath and wiped away her tears with the side of her foreleg, then nodded quietly back to the other alicorn. Sunset was right, she could let herself cry again once they were inside. She had living ponies to concern herself with right now, not ones so long dead that only she remembered them. Her daughter's body wasn't even a body anymore, time has reduced it to dust.

She wrapped her magic around the stone and gently pulled it from its place and to the side. Revealed underneath was a stone ramp descending deep underneath the ground. Down below the entire complex was one massive piece of marble that she had hollowed and out and smoothed barleycorn by barleycorn*. It had taken her years to do it, even with magic.

She lit her horn in a simple light spell, one that Sunset quickly followed up with her own. She took a deep breath and then walked purposely into her daughter's tomb with the two young mares following, and Sunset bringing up the rear.

"You can shut us in. There are several of the old oxygen producing crystals embedded in the walls throughout here, and the second gateway leaks in oxygen when it is clear as well. There are light crystals deeper inside that can be activated once we get to them so we don't have to rely completely on our horns for illumination," she explained to her fellow alicorn. Sunset nodded back and briefly released her light spell so she could close them in. The stone above them slid back into place and shut out the majority of the light.

They walked on after that, descending inside for about three furlongs**. Once they reached the bottom of the ramp into the inner chamber she sent out her magic to find the crystals to bring full light to the place. As the room came into full light her companions gasped.

The chamber was large, but there was very little in it. There was the stone sarcophagus that she had placed her daughter's remains in, which was simple and unadorned. She didn't let her eyes linger on it too long, lest she fall into further depression. Also in the room was her entire ship, the Sea Lion. It was a great mass of metal with both engines and sails, and despite it only being able to carry a small crew comfortably had been her mobile home on the sea for many a year when she had disguised herself as a simple earth pony. It would have been an impressive sight even today when much more advanced vessels could be made, but neither her daughter's final resting place nor the ship was what likely caused her companions to gasp.

Taking up the entire far wall was the source of their shock. Rimmed in silver and rippling like the dark ocean at night was the second gate. It was perhaps the last of its kind, with the exception of wherever the Elder Gods touched this world through. It was also the largest of its kind as far as she knew.

"Is that what I think it is?" Sunset said in a hushed tone as she stared at the otherworldly artifact.

"It is exactly what you think it is, old friend," she answered.

"How..how did you find this? I thought they were all destroyed. Why did you keep this secret? We could have saved so many ponies by moving them to safety beyond it," Sunset's voice was shaky. She seemed to be barely containing her emotions.

"I didn't find it, Paleo did. She found it in her searches for her reflection after the fall of Harmony. It was no use in helping her find Patina, so she abandoned it. I claimed it, and brought it here, after I learned of it from her," Water Shadow explained as she watched the dark surface ripple. "As to the rest, I have to tell you that it is not a long term solution for any pony. When it is night the surface of it is this black you see now, and when it is black it is far more dangerous than anything you could imagine. When the sun shines outside with daylight this will protect all within perfectly from all evil."

"If it is only good for the daylight hours that doesn't make for much of a sanctuary," Sunset growled.

"It is complicated," she answered back. "Time doesn't behave the same way with it as you would expect. The flow is completely different, but predictable. If we enter in at dawn we only have twelve hours of light here to stay in, but within that twelve hours here it will seem twelve years there, twelve years of unending day. We both have time, and we don't, at the same time. Twelve years to think and consider what to do, contained in twelve hours."

"Um..excuse me, but what exactly is it you are sending my daughter through?" Midnight Glow spoke up. The young thestral was sitting down with her filly in her forelegs, her wings wrapped protectively around the little pegasus as both she and the filly gazed at the far wall.

"It is a mirror, a gateway to another universe," Sunset answered her.

No pony spoke up again after that. They all just sat gazing at the mirror. Dawn would be coming soon, and then they could make their way through. Then for what might seem twelve years nothing of the Elder Gods' could do them any harm.

Water Shadow didn't know if that would make a difference or not, but as she looked at glanced at Midnight Glow and Sweet Pea she silently vowed to herself that she would do everything to make that time count for them. No mother should ever be forced lose their foal to death before that foal could even reach adulthood.

Sea Star, I do this in memory of you, my precious daughter. I won't see another foal lost to mad ponies.

Author's Notes:

*Barleycorn is a unit of measurement. It is about 3 centimeters long.

**Furlong is about 1/8 of a mile or 1/5 of a kilometer.