As The Sun Sets

by Noobblue

It stings the toes and bites the nose

Cadence let out a muffled groan into the mud.

Flexing her wings against the shrubbery she had destroyed when she landed, she took stock. No aches, or injuries, but she could still feel the light pressures from where she had impacted on her side, about as bad as falling out of bed.

She felt her ruffled wing get poked

She lifted her muzzle, hoping that her neck wouldn't ache as she moved it for the first time, and peered up through the shrub she was currently inhabiting to see Silver standing just over the edge of her sight line. The smaller mare was similarly coated in mud from top to bottom, ruining her metallic coat glaze. She also bore a worrying toothy smile.

poke poke

"I'm okay." Cadance said beginning to stand

"Oh I know, I calculated the spell's trajectory myself after all."

"Don't." Cadance stood and pressed a hoof to her forehead. "Just don't."

Something about being nearly viscerally injured drove Cadance to a level of deep seated irritation with... Everything about this.

Quick Silver widened her smile, "Remember, you brought this on yourself."

"I-! You!" She turned towards Quick Silver with a snarl but caught herself. She clamped her eyes closed and took a deep inhale through her nose, which was a massive mistake, as she accidentally sucked a globule of mud that was stuck in her fur up into her nose.

Quick Silver laughed at her as she hacked and worked at spitting out the mud

Cadance simmered with barely controlled rage

I know how this works. You make me angry, and then manipulate me.

She took a more careful deep breath.

"You still could have warned me." She tried to say evenly

Silver flipped a hoof, and turned to the jungle, "Three minutes."

"Until?" She responded hotly

"No Little Princess, three minutes of travel time. You have a prior arrangement at seven, I wanna get you back in time for curfew." Silver quipped, and started walking.

Keep a level head Cadance

She took a series of shaking steps out of the shrub she was in, trying to shake as much mud off of herself as she could from her limbs and her wings. Her first step sunk a hoof deep into mud, so she didn't try too hard.

"You're lucky I'm not opposed to getting my hooves dirty."

"I wouldn't have you any other way Little Princess." Silver looked over her shoulder, and chuckled again and Cadance's state, "Now cmon! Adventure awaits!" Silver walked off around the corner of a tree

Cadance beat down on her frustration and followed quickly after, slowing down once she caught up. She looked out into the daytime jungle glades, vines and thick canopies blocking out most of the sun. Shrubs and large clumps of uneven turf and tall grass covered most of the ground. She saw a snake hanging in one of the trees, a big one. "Do you know where we're going?"

"Nope."

Cadance took another deep breath, "Are we just walking in a random direction?"

"Yup" Came Silver's quick response, in addition to Silver looking at Cadance with a Cheshire grin

"You're really trying to get under my fur." Cadance grumbled, and tried to trudge ahead of Silver.

Ponies talk about vacationing to warmer climates, but what they don't tell you is that jungles like this? Sure they're warm, but they're also wet, and wet heat sucks. Silver kept pace and they kept moving in their straight line.

"What, does that bother you? You don't like a little friendly ribbing?" Silver enunciated 'ribbing' as she poked Cadance in the ribs with a primary feather.

"I don't consider being thrown to the other side of the world as friendly ribbing."

"You've gotta scale up, remember?" Silver laughed, "Injuring you is practically my version of a bad pun."

"You know what?" Cadance rounded on the smaller mare, "I am scaling up with you! And I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt way more than I should! You keep pushing those bo- mrmph!"

Silver stuck a hoof in Cadance's mouth, which sucked, since it was covered in mud. As Cadance backed up, Silver pushed forwards and shushed her.

Cadance heard the trudging noises of something massive through her thrashing, and glared as she used her magic to pull Silver's hoof out of her mouth. "That conversation isn't over."

Silver just chuckled and turned away from her.

You know that feeling that rises up like a pressure in your head when you're entire brain practically screams that it's time to knock someone's block off? Cadance pushed that down and used her magic to banish whatever remnants of Silver's curse where nearby. There weren't any, but it didn't matter to Cadance.

I- am so going to...

To what? What are you gonna do Cadance?

Cadance banished the line of thought and walked up behind Silver. She was peeking through some shrubbery, Cadance did the same; ahead of them through the trees, maybe twelve pony lengths was some large angry looking quadruped lizard creature, it was leaning on it's back legs and pulling leaves out of a tree to throw into the ground, it's tail was held out behind it for stabilization.

"S-" Cadance's surprise was cut off as she was telekinetically hefted into the clearing, where she promptly fell forwards trying to catch herself.

RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Her enraged half thought was cut off as the beast made an odd screeching/hissing/roaring noise, leapt from it's task, and ran at her. Cadance with her face still in the mud, backpedaled into a standing position and lit her horn. Before she could do anything an ambiguous aura of blue struck the lizard, and it stumbled for a second before twisting to the side and rushing past Cadance.

"Wha-" She said intelligently as she turned back towards Silver to see a lance of flame suddenly explode from over the rim of the vegetation and set a swath of the canopy on fire. Her eyes settled on the shrub she was just standing in, and it's currently 'disintegrated' state.

"Haha!" Silver's voice sounded out

Oh crap

Cadance lifted herself and put her hooves forward into a run back into the clearing.

Kirin!

She did a double take

Wait Kirin?

Silver was in the midst of unnaturally twisting around a lance of flame launched from the horn of one such pony. There were three others, one currently trying to deal with the massive Lizard that had thrown itself onto the Kirin's spear, the other two were chasing around Silver with floating knives.

Silver's twist ended with her hitting the ground and throwing a wave of force across the landscape, the fires were blown out, and Cadance lifted a wing over her face to stop the twigs and other improvised woodland projectiles from hitting her face.

"Cmon Little Princess! Get in on- OOF" Silver got halfway through her invitation as she was tackled and subsequently stabbed in the neck by one of the Kirin mare's wielding a knife.

Silver went down and the Kirin mare stood triumphant over the muddy pegasus right up until Silver began laughing. It started as a normal laugh, like someone had told a particularly funny story about a situation that went awry, and slowly transitioned into an 'oh god, oh please, oh no' kind of laugh that ended with an empty screaming that echoed through the trees like a banshee was being strangled

Uh oh.

The Kirin's last expression before being launched was: "Oh shit"

Cadance watched as the mare disappeared, with nothing but a hole in the tree canopy and a whoosh to commemorate her vacation from the battlefield. Silver then lifted herself up backwards from her spot on the ground, her eyes glowing blue. Her head snapped in the direction of the other knife wielding mare who was slowly backing away with wide eyes. Silver's head tilted instantaneously ever so slightly to the left.

"Fear"

Cadance felt the weaponized invisible lance of emotion twinge in her sense and she was forced into a cringe from the pain, The Kirin mare fell over, stiff and open mouthed.

The other two, the mare throwing the flames, and the mare with the pointy stick decided it was a good time to make a hasty retreat.

"Silver! Don't!" Cadance called out

Silver looked over at Cadance, her eyes no longer glowing, "Don't what?"

"Uh." She said, looking over to where the mares previously were, visually catching their tails as they disappeared into the underbrush.

Silver didn't make a move, just tilting her head to the side, waiting for Cadance to respond.

She just stared dumbly at the scene, at the mare who had some glowing black mist leaking from her eyes, and the now limp impaled Lizard creature, and then back to Silver. Who raised an eyebrow.

"Now Cadance." She smiled, and lowered her gaze, "Why would I kill the rats when they're going to lead us straight to the nest?"

"That!" Cadance pointed, "None of that! No killing!"

Silver rolled her eyes, "Nopony died Cadance" she spat out

Cadance looked up at the mare shaped hole in the canopy

"I'll catch her in a minute." Silver waved as she trotted over to the mare she'd collapsed onto the ground.

"Who... What just happened?"

"Tribe ponies. Remember, we're past the badlands, past changeling territory. The ponies down here are-" Silver used her wings to produce air quotes, "Uncivilized."

"Why did they attack us?"

Silver hefted the limp Kirin mare up off the ground, "Let's find out."

Cadance interposed herself between the two, having trotted up to the smaller mare. "Now hold on. What did you do to her?"

"I filled her mind with unimaginable terrors?" Silver said, somehow innocently

"Undo that." Cadance commanded

Silver rolled her eyes, but the mist stopped flowing from the mare, and she jerked awake.

Silver looked at Cadance, "Good cop, bad cop?"

"What?"

Silver frowned, "Ugh, whatever-" Silver turned to the mare, "Irictua msth'als-um ti."

The mare shook her head and tried to make herself small, "Mithuam, mithuam, mithuam ec'ctchi, mithuam"

Silver rolled her eyes again and shouted, "Um ti! Ether ec'ctchi Um-TI!"

The mare just shook her head more, Silver stomped a hoof and let off a wave of magic, the mare squeaked and bolted off into the forest.

Cadance moved to speak, but was cut off.

"Shut up for a second." Silver began weaving a spell with her hoof. "Heavens, you really know how to ruin fun."

I do not!

Silver loosed her spell just as the Kirin mare hit the canopy again, hitting the bubble of cerulean magic next, which slowed her descent and roughly deposited her onto the ground.

"There, happy?"

Cadance snorted, "Happier, did you have-"

"Up bup bup!" Silver walked up to Cadance and pressed a muddy hoof into her chest fluff. She lifted her gaze and locked eyes with Cadance. "Bitch."

Cadance's expression twisted, but before she could express her outrage, Silver turned and trotted off in the direction the pair of Kirin mares ran off into.

Oh she's gonna get it.

Cadance stomped after the other mare, and tried to think of something, anything to say, or yell, at the smaller mare. They ended up just trudging through the mud and foliage in silence, with Cadance angrily glaring at the back of Silver's head, while the silver pony smirked all the while from her successful irritation of the Alicorn. In her haste, Cadance didn't notice that the Lizard was gone, or the fizzle of light it disappeared into.

---

Their walk through the jungle didn't help Cadance calm down.

It did help her stop feeling like ripping out her own mane, but all the stress being pushed into the back of her mind still wanted out. She knew she had to break the stiff air that she'd created between herself and Silver... but she didn't want to.

Except Silver will be content to just have me be silent for the rest of this little 'trip' so I have to say something

Cadance decided not to wait any longer, "Do you have a better idea of where we're going now?"

Silver side eyed Cadance, "I thought you weren't talking to me" followed by a smirk

"Do you?"

"Feisty. I like it." Silver snarked

"Silver" Cadance said threateningly

Silver shook her head, "If you can believe it, that was a serious compliment. 'Pissed off' looks very good on you."

Uhlgh, yuck

"Can you be serious, for a second, please?"

Silver looked straight ahead, "I just was."

Cadance huffed, "Please just answer my question."

Silver closed her eyes and kept walking after just the amount of time of which Cadance would have opened her mouth again, Silver opened her eyes and spoke, "No, but I have a good feeling about what we're looking for now"

Cadance tilted her nose in a 'go on' gesture

"It's probably some kind of hate or rage sink. Some magical device that can extract negative emotions."

"How'd'you figure that?"

Silver side eye'd Cadance again. "Care to guess?"

"No." She monotoned

"Notice how none of them went Nirik on us?"

Oh yeah...

Cadance pulled her pace up a little to get over an annoyingly spread patch of gnarled roots.

"You think they had their emotions pulled out?"

Silver bounced her head around, "The 'bad' ones, maybe."

"So... what are you going to do when we find them? Or it?"

"Probably going to blow up a temple, and make a daring escape just under the wire with the artefact in hoof." Silver joked, "And that's us, Little Bitch, you're in this too"

Cadance deeply frowned. Initially being about to smack the mare over the head quickly followed by the realization that 'Little Bitch' was actually just a twist on 'Little Princess'

I have no idea if being called Little Bitch is worse or better than being called a little bitch

She settled on, "I'm not going to help you wreak havoc and hurt ponies."

"Then go home."

"Excuse me?"

Silver stopped, and glared at the taller mare, "Nothing's keeping you here aside from your own responsibility, the same responsibility you're shirking by acting like a tiny prissy princess. I'm not sure you noticed, but that mare stabbed me in the neck and the other tried to ignite you." Silver took a step forwards and poked Cadance in the chest, "You're welcome by the way, for moving you and your filly out of the way of a Rupture Lance."

Cadance opened her mouth, Silver just poked her in the chest again, and kept going, "Furthermore, you can drop the suspicion, you told me not to kill, and I didn't, and wasn't going to. The high road your trying to take doesn't exist. So stop making a fool of yourself."

Silver's eyes narrowed, "You asked for this. I don't live smoothly. You wanna back out? Better for me, I'll even send you home, but believe it or not; I need this mental health break, and having you snarling down the back of my neck while I'm trying to wrestle the poison out of my bloodstream is enough of my patience down the drain that I may as well abort this whole exercise with you."

Cadance stomped and leaned forward into Silver's muzzle, "I'm only snarling down your neck because you're taking every opportunity to make me!"

"Oh? So you're nine years old?" Silver leaned in closer too, till they were basically touching noses, "Wah wah! The big bad Silver bully makes me angy! Whaaa wah!" Silver laughed in her face just before she leaned her weight forward and shoved Cadance, “Where’ve I heard that one before!”

"Why are you doing this!?" Cadance yelled, half in desperation

"Why not!?" Silver screamed with a crazed smile

Cadance smashed Silver's face with a blast of magic, the silver mare went tumbling backwards into a tree, which she slammed into with a loud crack, like Cadance had actually thrown a two ton chunk of iron at the tree instead of a flesh and blood pony. It felt good, and an unbidden smile came to Cadance's face.

Silver fired a beam back at her, which curved through the air around the foliage to hit her from the side, Cadance forwent lifting a shield, and simply obliterated the beam with unrelenting arcane might. The second beam she didn't see hit her in the side of the head like a slap.

"RRAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHH!" Cadance's head snapped to Silver's stupid smug face as she released a rage filled scream at being punched in the nose, she fired another blast of magic at Silver, this one was wider, it couldn't miss, it could be blocked, which is exactly what Silver did. An invisible shield absorbed the blast like it was nothing, Shining's shield, the shield that got her husband his cutie mark, the perverted version of it that that...

I'm going to kill her!

but Silver was gone, the wave of magic had obscured her for long enough that Silver had seemingly turned invisible, so Cadance let off a blast wave focused everywhere, and Silver went tumbling out of the air and into a series of branches nearby as her shadowy illusion was blown away in the wind of Cadance's magic.

Another blast, and another, and another. Cadance kept firing blast after blast of raw magic at Silver, who blocked or dodged them all until Cadance scored a lucky hit, sending Silver into the ground, several hooves into the ground.

Then she fired again.

"BLOCK THAT!"

and again

"AND THIS!"

The hole Silver was embedded in widened and deepened as Cadance filled it with arcane death. Cadance fired and screamed until she was out of breath, until she was out of magic.

Heaving with exertion, irritation, she peaked into the hole she'd dug as the now dried out dirt and dust settled in the air. Expecting a trap, or some sort of body double or trick, Cadance tensely peeked over the rim with her horn lit and her wings spread, regardless of the protesting ache of mana exhaustion at the base of her horn.

What she did not expect was a crumpled body. Twisted from the arcane forces, Silver lay in the hole completely still

Cadance's eyes widened as her horn winked out along with her already petering rage, and she gasped.

The body in the hole weakly lifted a hoof and pointed it at Cadance

...

"Nice."

Cadance let out a tentative, "Silver?"

Silver let out a groan from underneath the light rubble on top of her. "I'm okay."

Liar

"I-"

"Just. Give me a second" Silver said tersely.

Cadance stepped away from the hole and sat back hard.

You lost it Cadance, you genuinely lost it and nearly killed Quick Silver

She looked around at the destruction she'd wrought

You also made a new clearing

Silver's hoof gripped the edge of the hole, and she rolled herself out of the hole and onto her side. "whoo." She let out tiredly, waving a hoof around, "I didn't think I'd ever get you to pop your lid." Silver smiled at Cadance

Cadance just looked at her, dumbfounded, as Silver's body stitched itself back together, her nose setting into the direction it should be facing, and her teeth reappearing before Cadance's eyes.

"How do you feel?"

"How do I-"

Her own thought interrupted her before she could finish her reflexive question

How do I feel?

Cadance's hooves ached. Her mane was covered in dirt. Her horn burned like she'd just stuck it in the oven, her throat was dry and raspy. Her whole body sang the song of exhaustion.

Except it felt good. It felt like she'd just run and won a marathon.

She felt relaxed. Sitting in the mud, in the wet air, in the jungle, miles and miles from home.

"ha." her lax face let out a tiny laugh. "Ha. Ha?" and then two more, a little harder, as a smile worked its way onto her face. She let out a huff that scraped at her throat, and the next breath carried a real series of rib angering heaves of amusement as Cadance let it all out.

"I put you in a hole!" She said in-between her laughter, which only served to intensify it, "And you wanted it!"

What is my life!?

Silver watched on in amusement herself, a sparkle dashing across her blue eyes.

Cadance carefully wiped a tear from her eye with a wing tip, trying not to push mud into her eye as she stood at the tail end of her laughing fit. She trotted up to Silver and scooped her up into a hug, "I'm so glad you're okay. I'm sorry for losing it like that."

"Felt good though, didn't it." Silver smiled and said as she leaned away from Cadance's side hug

Cadance rubbed the back of her neck, "Yeah..."

"Don't go backwards on me Bitch, you did great!"

Cadence wasn't sure how one could say 'bitch' in an endearing way, but Silver certainly did it

"It wasn't great for my pride getting slammed like a stress doll, but you sure showed me huh?"

Cadance flapped her mouth

"Cmon, did you? Huh?"

"I- I did!"

"Yeah that's right!"

"I did show you!" Cadance laughed again, "That'll teach you to piss me off!"

Silver kept up her smile, "It sure will, and next time, warm me before you blow off all that steam."

Cadance stopped her joke at the way Silver said 'next time', "Next time?"

"Tartarus yes! Are you kidding? Look at all this jazz you were keeping bottled up!" Silver gestured around the clearing. "Seems like you needed a good fight just like I do."

"I try to be more constructive with m-"

"How's this not constructive?"

Cadance sarcastically gestured everywhere around herself.

Silver shook her head and smiled warmly. "You see destruction, I see change. All those little seeds that couldn't sprout in the sun because of the trees get a chance to take the stage light now, this hole may turn into a pond in ten years, so what? Nature doesn't care how hard you hit it."

Silver took one of Cadance's hooves and looked her in the eye, "I'm not a little filly like you Cadance, I can take a hit, and you can actually talk to me." Silver said, tilting her head towards the 'destruction'. "No more going 'princess' on me, and I won't try to get under your fur to bring it out of you."

Cadance shook Silver's hooves, "Deal." She shook her head, "You know, you could have just talked to me."

"Heh, what'd be the fun in that?" Silver quipped as she stood

Something about the seemingly normal phrase from Silver stuck in Cadance's mind

She doesn't believe me

"No really... You could have." Cadance tried

Silver smiled again, "I'll keep that in mind next time."

She... Does... well I just nearly turned her into pony pudding in a fit of rage, of course she doesn't think I-

"I'm sorry." Cadance said slowly.

"I already sai-"

"No." Cadance interrupted, "For treating you like a noble, instead of my friend."

Silver didn't have a response for that, but her ear flicked to the side. "We aren't friends, Little Princess."

Cadance smiled softly, "Maybe not, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't do my best anyways."

Silver's ear flicked again as she stared blankly at Cadance. Somewhere off in the distance of the jungle, a bird tweeted. Silver stared harder. Cadance leaned back as Silver scrutinized the mare, suddenly the tone in Silver's blank expression changed from neutral to something alien to Cadance.

"Uh" Cadance said intelligently

Silver spoke roughly, her jaw shifted mechanically and her expression didn't shift. Like she was fighting herself. "I... Like... Boats..." Silver lifted an eyebrow ever so slightly, waiting for Cadance's reply.

What is happening???

"You do?"

"Yeah"

...

Silver's look intensified

"What kind?" Cadance said, verbally standing against the tidal wave that was Quick Silver at the moment.

Silver made no change to her expression, but Cadance could see, feel her eyes sparkling with hope

"Sailing ships... small ones, with only one or two main masts."

"Have you ever sailed one" She asked back

"Yeah." Silver's ear flicked again

"You'll have to take me sailing sometime."

Silver's ear flicked again, and then the far off look broke away, "Shall we finish finding a dangerous artefact?" Silver held out a hoof to the sitting princess

Cadance pushed her mind away from the strange interaction and let Silver change the subject

"Let's." Cadance took her hoof

Author's Note:

It Could Have Been Me
by, The Struts