Lucien

The sound of the ocean reached his ears, the first sensation to return to him.

Next he felt sand between his fingers and pressed up against his face. Wet sand, sticking to him uncomfortably.

The air smelled of sea brine and rot, it was off-putting, but somehow familiar, perhaps not in a good way.

He tasted blood.

His eyes shot open with the sudden remembrance of what had just happen. His fingers clenched hard, pulling the wet sand into his forceful grip. He struggled to straighten his arms and bring his knees up to sit on them. He managed it, shakily, and lifted his head to get a bearing on where exactly he was.

There was sand. A lot of it. In a short distance stood the remains of a lone lifeguard tower, and he could see a few mostly-destroyed houses forming a line away from the crashing waves of the ocean at his back. He spun around to sit on his rear. In the foggy distance he could just make out the faint outline of an island. He knew where he was.

Newport Beach. California. Earth.

He collapsed back into the sand. It occurred to him suddenly just how tired he was, and how he seemed to be having a difficult time placing his concern for what had just happened. He felt lazy in that moment, locked in a daze, his purpose momentarily lost.

But that moment was shattered when he heard a groan from beside him.

"No..."

His head rotated slowly, but there was no doubt in his mind as to who might be there next to him. A purple unicorn lay splayed out on the sand, a position similar to his before he regained consciousness.

"Twilight..."

He sat up and dragged himself over to her. He put a hand on her shoulder and rolled her over onto her back as delicately as possible in his energy-drained state. He rubbed her barrel lightly, coaxing her into consciousness. Her eyes fluttered open quickly, her pupils dilating in the sudden exposure to light.

"Luc—" she was cut off as she went into a coughing fit. When she had recovered, she tried to speak again. "Lucien," she croaked, "what happened?"

Lucien licked his cracked lips, rolling the metallic taste of blood around in his mouth. "We're on Earth," he said simply. "I thought... he'd only send me..." he started to say before he cut himself off, suddenly more acutely aware of just where they were. "We need to go. Now," he said, shaking off his sluggish feelings.

Twilight wasn't so quick. "What?" she managed to get out before Lucien stood and scooped her up in his arms. "Lucien, what's happening?" she asked, confused and dazed.

"Newport Beach was abandoned 3 years ago after draug rose from the sea and attacked the city. There's more than a fair chance that they're still roaming around, and we're in no condition to fight." He ran them towards the dilapidated house that lined the beach, choosing one that seemed especially sturdy and unbroken to go into.

He edged in through the shattered sliding glass door and jogged past the ruined kitchen full of decomposed food items. He paid the dried-out bloodstains on the walls no mind as he ran Twilight up the stairs near the back of the house and got them safely into a relatively-untouched bedroom at the end of the upstairs hallway.

He closed the door behind them with his heel, despite the top half of the door being destroyed completely, and sat down heavily on the bed, Twilight still cradled in his arms. He heaved out a sign of relief and looked down to see that Twilight was nuzzling into his chest, her eyes closed again.

In that moment his heart seized with terrible guilt. He compared her innocent-looking face to the bleak and gray surroundings that they were in and his eyes filled with horror at exactly what he had done.

He had brought Twilight Sparkle to the monster-infested nightmare that is Earth.

Twilight

Her head pounded. She analyzed the pain and gave it her categorizing attention for a few brief moments. It wasn't acute, it was more of a widespread, dull throbbing that had a focus at her medulla oblongata. Going over her various remembered illnesses concerning headaches, she quickly dismissed her greatest fear of internal hemorrhaging and settled on mana depletion, a much less severe condition.

Her eyes opened as she regained awareness of her surroundings. But she was puzzled as her gaze was filled up by only the color green, a color green that was particularly close to her face. She pushed her nose into it slightly and found it delightfully warm and soft. She let out a soft sigh as she relaxed into the embrace of whatever it was that held her.

"Wait..."

There were hands holding her. Arms cradling her close. She just stuck her nose into the chest of Lucien LaChance.

Her cheeks grew a red tinge, but otherwise she didn't react. She didn't find her predicament to be all that bad, to say the very least. There were worse things to be pressed up against, anyway. So she tucked her nose back into him and got the best out of the nuzzle, thoughts about her headache or where she was were lost in the moment.

But sadly she knew she couldn't stay like that anymore, regardless of how nice it felt to be so close to him. She stirred and lifted her neck up, craning it to look at Lucien's face.

He was staring off at the wall, his eyes wide in some expression that Twilight couldn't quite place. His shirt was torn around the shoulders, she noticed, and his sword and backpack were askew. His face didn't hold the gentleness nor the edge that she had grown accustomed to it having. It just seemed blank now, and gray as her surroundings.

"Lucien..." she whispered.

After a moment's delay, he tilted his head and met her gaze, their faces only inches apart. They stayed like that for a few tense moments until she noticed pinpricks of water welling up in the man's eyes. He choked a sob back, then buried his face in her barrel softly. She didn't move, stunned by what he did. She felt her coat get wet from the tears that he shed, and the sensation brought her mind back from whatever processing had occupied. She shifted her weight and wrapped her arms around him awkwardly, but firmly, giving him whatever support she could at the moment.

Lucien was crying, and nothing else in the world mattered to her more at the moment than he did.

Lucien

He wept for his failures in the past. The past both far and near. For the mistakes and choices he made that led him to this moment. Going to Equestria was never his original intent that day, so long ago, when he had tried to summon a demon in his basement, but it was the result of the experiment nonetheless. He, at first, allowed himself to stay only for what he assumed would be a brief vacation. Earth needed him, and would always need him, fighting on the front lines on behalf of civilization as he and humanity knew it.

But that short vacation slowly became months, as he began to enjoy Equestria and notice eventually that it had problems of its own. The fiasco with Bronze Gear was what started it all. If she had never happened, then Lucien would've gone back to Earth and kept on fighting, doing his duty to keep the horrors and nightmares at bay.

But he just felt so tired.

Even though it was something he loved, fighting and surviving, and the adrenaline rush that accompanied just barely escaping the jaws of death, it took a toll on him. There were reasons for his actions years previous, back with Charlotte and the Company. After she disappeared, he managed it for a few months, watching over the recruits and keeping order in the system, but his relationship with the Trireme Council became strained.

He gave up control over the Company and moved on to do some mercenary work for The House of Life and the Tribune, but getting more and more risky with his actions with each passing assignment. After one too many brushes with death and one too many politician left pissed off, he retreated from the front lines to pursue singular study. He researched in his house for 2 years, trying to find something to help with the problems that humanity faced, trying to dream up any sort of solution, but nothing was of any avail.

Summoning that demon was more of an exercise in his capabilities than anything. He might've been able to glean some information off of it in terms of monsters that he had yet to face, but of course something had to go wrong with it. That just seemed to be his life, really. Things go well for a while, then suddenly something goes wrong. He was fine defending Cloudsdale one minute and then suddenly he was outmatched and sent back to Earth.

He pulled his face out of Twilight's fur and registered her hooves keeping her body close to him. "Maybe... this isn't too bad of a place to be right now..." He laid his face back down onto her side, this time turned sideways, and tried to relax. It wasn't too hard, considering how he was wrapped up by the pony he cared for so much...

Twilight

It was hard for panic to set in when they were in such a tranquil position. But however much she enjoyed giving Lucien comfort, she needed to know where they were and if they were in any danger. It was hard for her to see the man, whom she's looked up to for being so strong, break down like that. It wasn't that she doubted his ability to protect them if something were to attack suddenly, but she needed more information. Just in case.

"Lucien...?" she began, letting her hooves slip off his back as she loosened her grip.

"I'm sorry Twilight," came his voice, just barely a whisper above the soft creaks of the broken house.

"You don't need to be sorry for anything," she said, feeling defensive of him.

"But I dragged you into all of this," he insisted, "if it weren't for me you wouldn't be here."

"It's not so bad." She brought her hooves back up, tracing up and down his back idly. "We're here together, and we can get back, I'm sure of it," she said with clear resolve.

"Yeah..." Lucien didn't comment further.

After waiting a few more moments in his grasp, she spoke up again. "Where are we? I know you said—"

"—Newport Beach. A city on the west coast of what used the be the United States of America." He pulled away from her and she shifted onto the bed so they could look at each other while they spoke. "I was called here when the first draug appeared out of the ocean. I couldn't do enough to keep the city safe, neither could the resident magicians, so we evacuated the city before things became... well, this." He gestured to the room around them, with its broken door, torn and soggy wallpaper and giant hole where the ceiling and two walls were supposed to connect.

"Draug?" Twilight asked. She needed to know more still about what they were up against.

"Yeah," he pulled his notebook out of his backpack and flipped through the pages. When he hit the right one, he turned it around so Twilight could see. "The draug are the reanimated bodies or physical manifestations of sea spirits that aren't at rest. Most aren't particularly dangerous by themselves, but they are found in large groups, usually. We had to abandon the city because there were just too many to hold back."

Twilight studied the sketches on the paper. They were disturbing, to say the least. She always had to wonder how he was able to get such detail in his drawings when these things were supposedly so dangerous. A small yellow sticky note stuck to the page gave a "kill count," with tally marks taking up the entire paper. Apparently this was an enemy he had fought and won against many times in the past. So how much did she need to worry about?

"How do we fight them?" was her next question.

"We don't," answered Lucien.

Twilight looked up at him curiously as he tucked the notebook back into his bag. "We're going to make no noise, attract no attention, and get the hell out of this city. We need to get back to my house as fast as possible so we can get back to Equestria."

"That's a plan. That's a good plan. That's thinking ahead. I should really get back to planning more." She stood up. "Where is your house?" she asked.

Lucien rose as well, now slightly towering over her. "Far away. On the east coast. We need to cross the entire country to get back, and we need to do it quickly."

"Okay, that's a good place to start. How far away is the east coast?"

"Far. Very far. Too far to walk, at least. Too far to drive. No planes either, that's gone..." Lucien seemed to have lapsed into his thoughts considering his options.

He snapped. "We'll have to take the Labyrinth."

She hated when he did things like that. Just say something as if it's the most obvious thing in the world and "forget" that she has no idea what he's talking about. So she took her usual course of action in such times, and gave him a very, very serious deadpan expression.

Which he noticed, to her secret delight. "Eheh, um, the Labyrinth is a series of underground tunnels spanning the entire world. Of course, it started the size of a city, back when it was the pet project of this really old mage, but it got out of hand when he died and then it just grew. So, I guess around twenty years ago now, the Trireme Council had the idea to cordon off some of the areas in the Labyrinth to use as sparring arenas for faction trainees and mark off other sections for use of magicians as a whole. It's quick transport, but a little risky."

Twilight looked at him in fascination. She would never tire of hearing about the magical wonders of his world, no matter how much he insisted it was horrible. And now this Labyrinth! Such a creation in Equestria could revolutionize transport and create so much room for cities to expand underground! Only... "Risky?" she had to question.

"Well, we're pretty sure that the mage that created the Labyrinth was so good that he gave it a mind of its own. We're still not entirely sure on how that works."

'Oh. Well. That changes things.' She blinked. "So what does that mean for the Labyrinth then? Why does that make it dangerous?" As the question left her mouth she was pretty sure she could guess the answer.

"Because it changes a lot. And makes people go insane when they roam around for too long. Not to mention that distance and time in the Labyrinth are a little fuzzy. Of course, going down and walking for ten minutes isn't that big of a deal, but going for longer is pushing it for most people," he answered, true to Twilight's guess.

She picked up on the implications of his last sentence. Smirking a bit, she continued the conversation. "But you're not 'most people', are you?"

He gave a quick laugh. "No, I'm not. Longest I spent down there was around twenty-five minutes. Would've gone longer but the hallucinations got to be a little bit too much..." His face fell suddenly, and Twilight could tell he was reliving those memories.

"Okay, so we go in little hops then? You said it warps distance, right? So how many hops would it take to get us to the east coast?" Twilight asked, pulling him out of his reverie and back into their conversation.

"Well..." he rubbed his chin, causing Twilight's ears to twitch at the soft scratching sound of his fingers going over his stubble. "Four or five, maybe. It all depends on how much has changed since I left, and how you react to the Labyrinth." He looked her in the eyes. "No two people ever react the same. Some have a higher tolerance for being down under there, others are weaker. And we never could figure out why, either. The strongest-willed men would break down in the middle of a short journey with no warning. It's... unpredictable."

She hated that word. "Unpredictable." It went against everything she stood for when she was making plans. Of course, she had gotten much better at dealing with "unpredictable" in the years following her final departure from her studies in Canterlot, mostly thanks to a certain mischief-making pink pony, but it didn't change her dislike for not having some idea of future events. And there was no way she was ever going to mess with time again in an attempt to give her past self a warning about the immediate future.

"We need to get going. I can sense the marker indicating where the closest entrance to the Labyrinth is. It's not too far away, but we'll have to pass by a denser area of the city. Do you know any spells for invisibility or something to help us get around without being seen?" Lucien broke her out of her thoughts.

Twilight thought for a moment. "Nothing for invisibility, but I know a spell that'll make us seem less noticeable, the Background Pony spell." She felt around inside herself for a moment and did a quick calculation. "I can cast it on us and maintain it for about 20 minutes, given how much mana I have left. Is that long enough?"

"Should be. As long as it does what you say it will and keep us under the radar. Let's go." He turned and led her out of the room, opening the half-destroyed door and walking down the soggy, mulchy staircase. He stopped before what she presumed to be the front door and held up a hand. Cautiously, he forced the stuck door open just a crack and peered outside. "Okay, coast's clear. Cast it and we'll get going."

"Alright." She lit up her horn, channeling energy, mentally visualizing the arrays of formulas that will form the spell. But... something was off. It didn't feel quite right to her, and the glow her horn was giving off was too... intense. It lit up the walls surrounding them in a harsh flicker, not the soft light that she was used to. She chose to ignore it for the immediate moment and focus on casting the spell, that was much more important.

The proper array formed, she released the spell—

Poof!

She fell backward in surprise at the odd sensation on her horn. Surprise that quickly turned to fear. She started breathing harder, a shiver working its way up her spine. "Why didn't it work? What's wrong with my magic?!" She tried to reach up and feel at her horn, but something stopped her hooves on their journey. A soft pair of hands. She looked up in her panic and saw Lucien was kneeling next to her, saying something but she didn't catch the words.

"What?" she exclaimed in concern.

"Just relax, forget about the spell. You haven't adjusted to Earth's magic field yet," he said, his voice steady and even.

"That... makes sense." She took deep breaths, trying to force herself to calm down. Nothing was wrong with her magic that was permanent. She was just fine. She could still feel her magic, just not cast spells with it. It's not like what happened before, with Bronze Gear...

"Remember back at the library, you analyzed my magic?" Lucien went on in a soothing voice. "That was a version of what Earth's field felt like, just slightly modified by Equestria's field. The sensation should be roughly the same as you felt before." She relaxed more, keeping close attention to his words. "Now, your mana is going to take a little time to adjust to Earth's field, but your spellcasting and the way you use your magic should stay the same. Also, keep in mind that magic manifests itself differently here, compared to Equestria."

He removed one hand from her hooves and held it up, away from her face. She understood why as it lit up in a muted flash of dark green. To her surprise and shock, instead of the soft, malleable aura she was used to seeing magic manifest as, his hand was wreathed in low-reaching flames. They licked upward off of his hand but never managed to get more than an inch away from his fingertips.

He closed his hand and the flames extinguished. She felt it come to rest back on her hooves, reunited with its companion. "Now, Twilight, are you alright?" he asked, his voice touched with concern.

She nodded, still not able to find the right words to express how she felt about the flurry of different emotions she experienced in the last minute.

"Good, because we need to go, now. Especially since we can't use your Background Pony spell anymore," he stood from his kneeling position and helped her back onto her hooves as well.

"Why the sudden urgency?" Twilight asked, fearing the answer wouldn't help her feel any better.

Lucien looked outside the door again, then back at her. "Because I think it's getting darker."

Lucien

If he was right about the time, then there wasn't even time to explain why he didn't have time to explain why he was able to start using magic almost instantly after arriving on Equestria. The truth of that matter was simple, yes, just Earth's mana being more adaptable than Equestria's, but the Labyrinth entrance wasn't exactly close, and he didn't want to encounter any Draug at night. That wouldn't bode well for the two of them.

He pushed the door the rest of the way open, then looked back to Twilight and motioned for her to follow. He unsheathed his sword slowly, feeling its slow slide across the fabric of his shirt. When it had cleared his backpack straps, he whipped it down suddenly, cutting the air itself in its arc towards the ground. He turned to Twilight once more after they had taken their first few steps out, put a single finger to his lips, and then kept going.

They were on a street. Houses, claimed by the sea in all aspects but flooding, lined either side. Remnants of their previous owners still crowded the open area. Flags, party cups, luggage, clothing, all sorts of old items littered the ground, giving the foggy street a somber and desolate feeling. And that went without mentioning the destruction caused by the Draug. Craters, both small and large, pocked the street everywhere. Some lingering scorch marks, clearly made by magical detonations, added to the decorations both on the street and on some of the houses. It definitely looked like the battlefield of a magical war.

Lucien heard the sound of broken glass crunching under Twilight's hooves as they continued walking down the street, the only sound above the moaning of the wind and the creaking of the abandoned homes. While he felt concerned for Twilight harming her hooves, he wasn't going to sacrifice any time or make any unnecessary noise trying to make sure she was alright. They were both still pretty battered and bruised, but that wouldn't compare to how they would be if they didn't make it to the Labyrinth in time.

His eyes darted left and right, probing the depths of the darkness that lurked in the alleyways between houses. Knowing full well that the city was abandoned by all living things after the Draug invaded gave him the safety of knowing that any motion he noticed would be hostile motion. They would undoubtedly encounter the saltwater-riddled beasts, but as long as Lucien saw them first, and they numbered less than five or so, there wouldn't be any issues.

With a thought, Balance flashed out of existence in his right hand and was replaced by Harmony, the chakrams clutched in both hands. Draugs weren't known for being very fast or very armored, so the quick ranged weapon would be most effective in eliminating them. His mind eased a bit with the knowledge that he wouldn't have to get close in any fight.

But they still had a long way to go, and who knows what might lurk in the depths of the abandoned beach city.

Twilight

Walking over broken glass wasn't ever a fun experience, but a plethora of laboratory accidents had taught Twilight good procedures to get around shards of glass on the ground. Of course, not having her magic to just pick up or sweep aside all the pointy little things was a bit of an inconvenience, but she learned how to navigate without her magic as well.

Lucien looked ready for a flight, Twilight noticed. A few minutes ago he had switched to his chakrams, and they cleared the first street a ways back. Now they were on a main street, she guessed, judging by the openness of it, and the abundance of those metal machines, cars. Lucien had told her about them, taught her what he knew about the internal combustion engine, and gave her a few sketches of designs he liked. It still was something else to see them first-hoof. Even if they were ransacked and ravaged by time and the corrosion of the sea air.

Suddenly, Lucien's left hand snapped out to the side, his whole body leaning with the motion. Harmony left his hand in a ethereal blue blur, shooting out over the tops of the cars, out of Twilight's view. Twilight froze, and Lucien held his pose, not moving. A split second later, the gurgling groan of something dying moaned out over the sound of the wind. Another chakram flashed into existence in Lucien's hand (or was it the same one?) and Lucien returned to a normal pose.

His head swiveled on his shoulders as he looked around, searching for anything else that might do them harm. As he looked to Twilight's right, his eyes widened a bit, and he dropped to a crouch, effectively taking cover between the many cars that they were traversing through. He scooted closer to Twilight, then spoke to her in a harsh whisper.

"That was a Draug over there," he said, nodding to his now right, "and I think there's another one over there," he nodded to his now left, "that heard me killing it. So we need to gun it and get away from here quickly, before it decides to investigate more."

"Why can't you just kill that one too?" Twilight asked, thinking that was the most logical solution.

"Because then another one might hear that one dying, and then it just becomes a cycle of me killing Draug to not get noticed, and then we run out of time, which we're already short on. So we need to move, now." He stood up, took one more look over to where he thought he saw the other Draug, then spun on his heels and took off at a slow run.

"Shoot!" exclaimed Twilight quietly, as she took off following him.

They ran for a few minutes, until both starting becoming a bit short of breath. By unspoken agreement, they switched to a jog, and kept moving. Twilight wasn't able to take in much of the scenery as they were moving, but it mostly seemed the same, the street they were on would lead off onto other smaller streets that were lined with houses. Every few intersections they passed would yield some sort of rest stop or a cluster of broken-down stores.

After many minutes of jogging, they returned to walking. No Draug were encountered after the one Lucien had killed, but they were still on full alert for any signs of movement. Lucien turned his head around to Twilight to speak to her.

"We're reaching the city limits. About half-a-mile outside of the city is a pathway into some rocks and cliffs, and in there is a gateway leading down to the Labyrinth, and our way out of here. We're almost out." He said that last bit in a quieter voice, like it was more for his benefit to hear than hers.

In truth, Twilight wasn't too scared. Yes she was in an unfamiliar place, with unfamiliar monsters looking for her, but there was a very familiar person with her, to make sure she was fine. Not to mention, that unfamiliar place had been of great interest to her since she had met Lucien, and she had since dreamed of visiting one day. So it was hard for her to balance fascination with fear.

But that changed as something went wrong.

As Lucien started to looked back ahead after talking to Twilight, his foot hit something on the ground. He stumbled a bit, but that bit was just enough for him to need to catch his fall on a car. A car, whose battery had survived against time and nature itself to stay active, and keep the alarm ready to blare it's awful siren call to any nearby.

The alarm went off.

Twilight collapsed to the ground and covered her ears with her hooves, but still managed to look up at Lucien to see what he would do.

Lucien looked panicked. It was written on his face, but he still seemed to know what he was doing. His hand lit up in a flash and he put it on the door of the car. The fiery glow got brighter and seemed to flow across the surface of the door, and then the metal suddenly imploded with a rush of force.

Twilight was stunned. He just collapsed that heavy-looking metal door like it was made of aluminum!

He withdrew his hand, letting the crumpled hunk of metal crash to the street. He leaned inside, out of Twilight's view, and then the alarm stopped.

But in its place came something even more alarming.

As Twilight removed her hooves from her ears, they swiveled around her head, picking up the cries and moans of what she could only assume were the Draug, echoing from all over the city. Panic began to set in as she realized just how much they were about to be up against, if they didn't get out in time.

"Come on, let's go!" roared Lucien as he stepped back out of the car.

They took off at a breakneck speed, dodging and weaving between the cars as the sound of the Draug got louder and closer to them. Included now in the screams and moans was the sound and feeling of something very heavy, and much faster than a Draug headed in their direction.

As they passed by another cluster of stores, this one seemingly the last one in the city limits, there was a loud crash, and a behemoth of a creature smashed through one of the storefronts. At first glance, it wasn't like a Draug; it didn't even look like it belonged in the ocean. It was golem of sorts, cobbled together haphazardly with pieces of scrap metal and electronic devices, and held together by thick, heavy chains. It was bipedal, and its main joints, shoulders, hips, etc. were glowing red-hot, like they were still welding together. One of its arms ended in a round saw-toothed blade, and the other in something that looked like it would be used for digging.

It leaned its head back and roared, a screeching, metallic sound.

"It's a Junker Golem!" Lucien shouted from in front of her.

"What?" asked Twilight back, wanting a better explanation.

"A golem that someone built and left behind here! The alarm must have triggered its security measures!" he said without breaking pace.

"Is it coming after us?!" Twilight asked, now slightly more panicked.

"It doesn't matter, we're already gone!" he shouted over his shoulder.

And he was right, the golem was now falling behind them, not that it was making any attempt to follow them as they dodged through the cars. It was more focused on fighting off the first wave of Draug that had reached the car whose alarm Lucien had set off. Twilight didn't have to look to feel the impact of the golem's heavy weaponry devastating both the cars and any Draug that were unfortunate enough to be in the way.

"We're almost there!" Lucien yelled to Twilight.

"I can see that!" Twilight yelled back, her eyes reading the half-rusted sign that displayed the Newport Beach city limits as they passed by it.

But they weren't there just yet. And to prove that point, or so Twilight thought, one last obstacle passed into their view. Another bipedal behemoth, this one bigger than the Junker Golem that broke through the stores behind them, stomped its way into their path. This creature was clearly like the Draug, judging by the massive crab claws, the water endlessly dripping off of it, the blue-ish tint to its carapace, and the tentacle-looking things that writhed around its small head. Twilight was disgusted.

It roared, waving its massive crab claws around in fury.

"Shit!" she heard Lucien exclaim. He spun around to face her. "Okay, okay, not much time here. It's getting hard to see now, and there's a large thing in our way, but that's no big deal." He whipped his backpack off, setting his sword on the ground. Rapidly, he unzipped it and stuck his hand in, felt around for a second, then withdrew what looked like a large sketch pad, the type engineers would use for planning. Before Twilight could ask what he was doing, he zipped his bag back up, and went for a pouch on the front. From that one, he withdrew what appeared to be just a simple, unmarked canister of spray-paint.

"Lucien?!"

The monster drew closer, picking up speed as it stomped and smashed its way through the cars. Lucien set down the spray-paint and quickly flipped through the pages of the sketch pad. After a few flips of pages, he settled on one and ripped it out of the book. He threw the pad back into his backpack and rolled up the paper.

"Lucien!" Twilight yelled. The behemoth was practically on top of them.

"I got it!" he roared back, his arms flaring up in blasts of green fire. He slammed his palms into the ground, and the two cars next to them shuddered suddenly, then launched into the air at a steep angle, aimed right at the creature. It tried in vain to raise its claws to block the projectiles, but instead was hit by several thousands of pounds of metal. It staggered, hard, but managed to stay up as the cars fell to the side.

She made quick note of the glowing cracks in the carapace that made up its front, then returned her attention to Lucien, who was now standing and facing the monster. Looking left and right, she noticed that the cars were not launched directly by Lucien's magic, but instead by large spires of earth that had burst through the surface of the street.

Putting his arms straight out to his sides, his sword and backpack now back on his back, his hands lit up again, and the chunks of earth were severed at the base. They lifted into the air slowly but securely. With what seemed like a great effort on his part, Lucien brought his hands back to his body, then thrust them forward as fists. The rocks he was levitating followed suit, and they launched at the monster in front of them.

Both hit their marks, and the creature went down, crushing several cars and destroying the street where it fell. The threat momentarily taken care of, Lucien turned back to Twilight, picking up the canister and the roll of paper he had left on the ground.

"Twilight, take these, then fly up and move ahead. Keep following the road for another minute or so, keep an eye out for a break in the rocks that make up the cliffs on the right side of the street. Go in there and follow the path until you find an old-looking elevator. Once you're there, spread this paper out on the ground and spray over it completely." He gave her the items and she grabbed them with her hooves, unsure of his plan.

"But what's it supposed to do, and how are you going to catch up?" she asked, completely confused and concerned that he might try to play hero and not escape with her.

"It's a spell, the paper. For teleportation." It was all the explanation he could give before he had to turn around to face the now-standing behemoth. "Go!" he said, before hurling his hammer overhead at the monster. With a burst of energy and speed, he followed suit, impacting the creature and wrenching free his weapon.

Twilight's wings kicked into motion seemingly of her own accord as she realized she needed to move. She took to the air swiftly, overtaking Lucien in a matter of seconds. She shot a look around her shoulder to see that the thing was knocked prone, and Lucien was hammering away at its shell, flecks of the chitinous substance and its blue blood flying everywhere and liberally coating him.

There was a time where she would shy away from the gore, or be repulsed by it somehow, but her past experiences combined with her current drive to escape allowed her to continue unabated. The sounds of the fray faded away into the darkened fog behind her, and her eyes combed the rock face, looking for the entrance Lucien had described.

She bit her lip as she realized quickly that it was too dark for her to make out anything specific. She hovered in the air for a moment, stunned by indecision on the course of action she could take. But only one leapt out at her as being viable.

She gathered up energy hesitantly, remembering what had happened when she tried using magic earlier. Lucien had said it would take some time for her mana pool to adjust to Earth's leyline signature, but she had to do something to produce light. She steeled her resolve, and let the energy flow.

Her horn lit up in a brilliant flash of purple energy, magical flames licking upward into the clouded sky. The rock face was instantly bathed in her light, allowing her to inspect it, and the area around her, in much greater detail. "Yes!" she exclaimed triumphantly as she continued searching for the entrance.

And it wasn't much longer until she found it, a small outcropping between two large boulders that had just enough room for an average human to slip through. Not wasting any time, she dashed in, checked to make sure she wouldn't be ambushed, and spread the paper out on the ground.

The scroll caught her interest, it being a sort of ritual circle, with holes cut out in the shape of runes and lines all across the page. She pinned it down with a thought and another burst of energy, then grabbed the canister, shook it, and sprayed it across the ritual page. When she thought she had covered it enough, she removed the now-white paper and remarked that the sheet had been a perfect stencil. A teleportation ritual circle was sprayed onto the ground before her.

And it didn't take long before the white lines of paint blazed to life in a green glow, heralding the arrival of none other than Lucien.

He gave a quick look-around at his surroundings, then looked down at Twilight. "Good save there, I was beginning to get worried."

Twilight gave him a once-over, noting that he was covered in bits of shell and blue blood, to a greater degree than when she had last looked back at him. "You need a bath," she said succinctly.

He glared at her for a moment, but was unable to hold it as they both burst out into laughter, blowing off the extra adrenaline that engagement had given the two of them.

"Alright, alright, I guess you're right," Lucien said as they broke apart their hug— wait, when did they start hugging? She filed the question away for more examination later, and returned her attention to the man.

"So what's next?" she asked, feeling she knew the answer concerned the old-looking, rusted elevator that they shared the cavern with.

He followed her gaze to the mechanical device. "That leads down into the Labyrinth. We take it, get out, walk for maybe 10 minutes, and then we'll have completed the first leg of our journey," he said with a small lingering smile.

"Then let's get to it," Twilight said, following suit.