Taking a shaky breath, you rise to your feet, legs unsteady as you stretch to your full height. Every little micromovement of yours is now unbearably noticeable, down to what feels like individual strands of muscle sliding over each other in your hamstrings.

Every little thing - a rogue bead of sweat, a stray breeze - threatens to collapse you under the weight of sheer sensation. In the relative silence of the resplendent bedroom, you heave a sigh of relief, surprised at just how loud it is under the effects of… well, whatever was in your drink. You’re just thankful for the moment of peace. If anyone else had-

“Turn around and face me, prisoner.”

Holy shit, that was loud.

The little asshole, clearly a grating tenor, isn’t exactly trying to be pleasant in his intonation. You turn on your heel, facing him from across the loveseat.

His expression doesn’t exactly fit the “chipper, ignorant little inductee” image he gave off earlier. Try as he might to remain neutral, hints of a frown drag his brow downward, and his mouth ever-so-slightly curls in what looks like disgust. As good as he is at keeping a straight expression, though, one thing he can’t hide is his shame - his cheeks are alight with a rosy tint so intense that it forms a bridge over his snout.

You might not be able to get a read on the guy ordinarily, but thanks to his flush features, his behavior and scathing warning from earlier make so much more sense.

He’s got a thing for Ambrosia.

“Stand still, creature,” he orders, dropping his volume a fair degree to deliver his insult.

…Does he think you slept with her? In that short of a time?

Well, that’s a bit insulting.

He procures the same blindfold from earlier, wordlessly slipping it over your head a great deal rougher this time around. As it slides down over your eyes, you can just barely make out his expression deepening in intensity before the world fades to black once more.

The handcuff slips over your wrist and locks uncomfortably into place, metal digging into your wrist far deeper than before. The chain tugs to your left as Heavenly Virtue leads you around the loveseat and simultaneously opens the door leading out into the hall.

As you step through what sounds like the threshold, he shuts the door behind you, and your trek back to your prison cell begins in agonizing silence. Now that you know you’ve got some leverage, though, you might be able to push it and ascertain his relationship to Ambrosia for sure. He strikes you as the kind of guy who wouldn’t dare damage the goods if it’d bring down his leader’s ire.

“You’re not even going to ask how it was?”

There’s no verbal reply, but the chain grows tighter as you hear him quietly take a deep breath.

“I mean, you should be happy, right? Your religious leader’s apparently fated husband just strolled into town, that’s gotta be something to celebrate.”

Still nothing. As satisfying as it is to give this guy shit, you get the feeling that you should probably tread carefully with whatever you say next.

“Look, I’m just trying to get a better idea of what’s going on, okay? It’d probably be a bit easier to get along if I-”

A resoundingly solid pressure to the back of your leg buckles you. Your hands shoot out to catch your fall, but the left is yanked in that direction, leading you to fall hard onto your right hand and the inside of your left shoulder.

It’s all you can do to lift your head up just before it hits the ground - you can feel the cold marble inches from your face.

“Her concubine you may very well be,” he barks lowly, “but you will never be equal to us, you disgusting, ungrateful wretch. Get up.”

He loosens his grip on your chain, and your left arm falls slack, allowing you to support yourself again. Ordinarily, you’d say you have a pretty long fuse, courtesy of another life spent in an office with snide down-talkers around every cubicle. You’ve gotta have a little backbone to survive in an environment like that, you know?

Evidently, physicality shortens said fuse considerably. You’ve half a mind to rip the blindfold off and try to give him something right back, but reacting erratically isn’t going to get you anywhere. Swallowing your anger, you push off of the floor and stand once more, an ache now present in your shoulder and palm. You stand for a moment and rub said shoulder, scowl only hidden by the immense cloth around your head.

“What?” he asks, still measured and restrained in his fuming. “Nothing else to say?”

“Nothing you’d like.”

Wordlessly, the chain pulls tight once more, and again, you’re off down the path you’ve previously taken. At least you got your answer, if his near-assault of you was anything to go by. He’s definitely jaded over you being chosen by their god.

Or by Ambrosia, rather. You’re not sure you buy into her bull just yet. She could’ve just scoured your suitcase and put the pieces together - you did bring the letter from Flair with you, after all.

What the hell is her deal, anyway? Why the sudden interest in you? As you traipse from hall to stairway and back to hall, the only conclusion that you can really draw is that you’re extraordinarily exotic, even for this place, and she gets off on the thrill of having something like that all to herself. That, or she was genuinely telling you the truth, what with her emphasis on trust during her eloquent rambling.

Unfortunately for her, blind faith isn’t really something you give out, much less to someone like her.

She’s not really giving you much of an option, though. Whether you trust her or not, you’re set to leave with them tomorrow for who knows where.

…Which means that you’ll be leaving Pal, Blazing Hearth, and the others behind.

You really should have thought about that being a possibility when you were lying to get back to your cell. So much for careful planning.

Your thoughts wander like this for a solid amount of time, never once settling on something for more than a minute or two. It could be the drug in your system doing its thing, but you’re not sure you’d place all of the blame on it for your restlessness.

Before long, though, the path becomes familiarly dank and musty, marble giving way for concrete, concrete giving way for rough stone. A door opens in front of you, and the stagnant cold of the cell block greets you once more.

You both come to a halt in front of what must be your cell, where he removes your chained cuff with little care for how it scrapes against your still-sensitive skin. Your blindfold is unceremoniously ripped from your head, and you’re greeted by the sight of your miserable little hovel, empty and waiting for you to occupy it once more.

“In,” Virtue commands, patience nonexistent.

When you enter, you feel more at ease than you did at any point in Ambrosia’s bedchambers, despite the oppressive scenery. Curiously enough, the light from the glazed-over window is a deep, pale blue - you find it hard to believe, given how quick your meeting felt, but it looks like nighttime is crawling along.

You turn back around as the iron bars clink back into place, the barred door rattling against your confines. Virtue’s back to his usual neutral expression, but even so, he looks more than a little relieved that you’re out of his hair. He looks right at you, and behind his eyes, you see a barely-restrained anger bubbling just below the surface.

“We’ll be leaving quite early in the morning. Don’t expect a full night’s sleep, creature.”

You simply nod, biting back harsher words as he turns to leave.

…

Although, now that you’re behind these bars…

“I won’t. Ambrosia and I probably won’t get that much sleep anymore, anyways.”

He freezes in place, staring straight ahead. If not for the rapid clenching and unclenching of his jaw and a particularly wicked side eye, you might’ve mistaken him for a statue.

“Be thankful that her desire for you guarantees your wellbeing.”

Without waiting for a reply, he fixes his gaze forward and continues his heated march. Apart from the roaring wind outside, it’s dead silent until the telltale latch of the door closing.

“Sorry, do I got some crud in my ears, or did I jus’ hear that right?”

Pal’s Equestrian-adjacent Bostonian accent breaks the silence at last, which prompts Hearth to crawl forward and lean against her own door, her downtrodden eyes meeting yours.

“Didn’t I specifically tell ya not to buy into her garbage, ‘Non?” Pal chides heavy-handedly. “Maybe it’s you that’s got gunk in ya ears, not me…”

“I didn’t!”

“Then what was he talking about? What happened?” Hearth interjects, her expression somewhere between disappointment and confusion.

“She, uh…”

You sit down, back against the wall, and unfortunately realize that whatever she drugged you with is still going strong; you wince against the overwhelming touch of freezing brick, fabric doing little to stow the cold.

“Oh, God, I’m still fucked up…”

Your voice involuntarily comes out strained and shaky, just like before. How long is this shit going to take to run its course?

You look over to Hearth, whose eyes now betray a deepening concern as they pore over you.

“D-did she do something to you…?” she asks, voice just barely above a whisper.

“She, uh… s-she tried to. A lot happened pretty quickly.”

“Take it from the top, then,” Pal replies, tone a great deal more understanding than a few seconds ago. “We’re all ears, bud.”

You gently run your hands over your face a few times, letting the back of your head rest against the wall when you’re through. Where do you even begin…?

---

“I guess I’ll just start from the beginning.”

“Take your time, Twilight,” Fluttershy reassures, that warm smile of hers keeping you level-headed. “We’re all here for you.”

You shift a bit under the covers of your bed, silken sheets acting as an oven for your otherwise chilly barrel. On the floor in front of you, the girls are sprawled out on blankets of their own, sleeping bags tucked away behind them for whenever they become tired enough. Spike is up on the bed with you, laying on his back with his head resting against you as he stares up into the ceiling. You’d insisted on being down there with them, but they were extraordinarily stubborn about you being as comfortable as possible.

Thank Celestia they were here whenever you were done for the day. If they hadn’t been, you might have-

“Twilight?” Rainbow Dash’s raspy inquiry brings you out of your rumination, and you’re suddenly aware of five pairs of concerned eyes tearing a hole into your face. “You okay?”

You purse your lips for a moment before replying.

“…No. No, I’m not.”

None of them say anything; they’re waiting for you to continue. Thankfully, they’ve all been brought up to speed on what happened, so you can pick up from when the investigation started.

“Everything was alright when we all first arrived at the crash site. The initial team had already done their part of the job, so the sanitation workers had come through and… cleaned everything up beforehand.”

You’re not sure you would have been able to stay there if they hadn’t.

“I wasn’t on any particular team, so I just followed the princesses around, assisting everypony however I could. The initial plan was to recreate the teleportation circle in its entirety by using what we already had - the basic rune structure - to find out what we didn’t have, that being the directional components. We thought that maybe there would be clues hidden in the runic equation they had written.”

You check each of their expressions to make sure they’re following along, and so far, they are.

“The issue is, the circle is massive, and instead of using larger runes for a simpler weaving process, they used thousands of smaller ones, meaning the flow of magic was ridiculously difficult to trace from beginning to end. It took four hours to map the entirety of it. Just to figure out what path the magic was taking! And it could still be wrong, because we had to use guesswork for the directionals.”

Your voice is rising in volume, but in all honesty, you care little for whom it may bother at this hour.

“Did y'all learn anything from it?” Applejack interjects.

You heave a sigh into the air, frustration tangibly exiting your lungs; if you were a dragon, you might have breathed fire. Not really, because they don’t just do it whenever they’re upset, but… you know what, that’s unimportant right now.

“Things anypony could’ve guessed, sure. It would have been a lot easier for them to use larger runes, since they draw a lot more mana from the surrounding aether, but they didn’t. They deliberately chose to use smaller runes made with less-than-stellar materials so that most of their work would be burned away before anypony could glean anything useful from it… we’re lucky that the mana output was so large that it left imprints behind for most of the circle. Speaking of which, we were also able to determine from the residue left behind that, even with its size and intricacy, the circle still only used just enough mana to complete the teleportation of the train cars.”

“Meaning?” Rarity asks.

“Wherever they went,” Spike morosely interjects, “it was far away. Some of the mages were thinking they might have left Equestria’s borders entirely.”

“So…”

Your gaze shifts to Pinkie, whose visible dejection and demure tone catch most of the other girls slightly off guard.

“Nonny’s… not gonna be home for a while?”

You nod, each word from her twisting the knife.

“We spent the rest of the day trying to recreate the portions that had burned away completely, but we weren’t able to make much headway, maybe one or two runes at most. The average number of runes used in an equation in that circle was three hundred.”

Your lungs suck in the air you had been missing all on their own. A dreadful silence hangs over everypony as your eyes fixate on nothing in particular.

What time is it, anyways? You lost track during your jaunt back to the castle. Everything’s just…

…

“I’m scared.”

You pause to let the wavering in your throat die out, but nopony speaks up.

“Scared that we’re not going to be able to get to them before something happens to all of the victims… to Anon. We can only work so fast, and every second that passes, our chances of finding them keep getting lower and lower. I’d still be down there if Celestia hadn’t ordered a majority of us to get some rest for the night. Luna’s leading the remaining officials right now.”

“Perhaps sleep might do you some good, darling,” Rarity replies, her own exhaustion presenting itself in the form of an onset yawn. “I’m sure Princess Luna and her team will have made meaningful progress come tomorrow.”

As much as your sense of reason points you in the direction of hopelessness, you can’t help but feel that if anypony deserves your blind faith, it’s the princesses.

“I hope so.”

You force a grin for all but half a second, before deciding that it’s not fooling anypony.

“I really do think you should try to get some sleep, though, Twilight,” Fluttershy offers, shuffling to her hooves. “I brewed some chamomile before I left, just in case we needed it.”

She procures a small picnic basket from the confines of her bunched-up sleeping bag and peels back its lid. Seven cups of tea sit bunched together in the tight confines of the thatch container, all room temperature after sitting undisturbed for the majority of the day. Hushed expressions of gratitude pass back and forth as the girls shuffle over and procure their cups.

You’re more than happy to slide down from your bed and grab some yourself; you’re not at all sure how you would’ve gotten to sleep otherwise. Before you do, though, Fluttershy brings her basket along and stops you with an outstretched hoof - one carrying your tea.

“Just relax, Twilight. We know how stressed you are, and it may seem bad now, but everything is going to be okay.”

Your smile comes out crooked, and your throat constricts - it’s all you can do to stop a tear or two from running down your cheeks.

“Thank you, Fluttershy.”

You envelop the cup in your aura and swiftly bring it to your lips. Spike’s refusal of his cup is muddied against your enjoyment of the drink.

For the first time since morning, you allow yourself this opportunity to finally relax. As your muscles slowly lose their tension, the full weight of your exhaustion hits you all at once. Though the more troublesome part of your mind still fights to rouse you, you feel much more inclined to rest your head on your pillow, which you do.

Normally, you’d go through the motions of saying goodnight to everypony, but your eyelids are already threatening to close on you. Your wayward, steadily-hazier gaze finds its way out of your window, focusing finally on Luna’s full moon, set high in the Equestrian sky.

As you deign to let your thoughts drift into nothing, you find peace in the possibility that Anon might be doing the same thing right now.

Next Chapter: 14 - A Stranger Estimated time remaining: 40 Minutes