"...and sworn duty to the Council to avenge the Goddess at all costs! I don't care how many of the Blight's infidelic bastards stand in my way! You shall taste the wrath of Verlaxion with..."
"Thattttttt's fifty-seven!" Flynn said, still rubbing his head in mid-trot.
"Oh come on." Ariel frowned aside at the stallion. Their march had turned into a subtle slant, descending slowly towards a darker pocket of the landscape ahead of them. "That doesn't count!"
"Sure it does!"
"She said infidelic. That's not even a word!"
"Yes it is!"
"At least count it as 'fifty-six-and-a-half.'"
Flynn hollered back over the sound of Seraphimus' bellowing. "It's all in the meaning of the expression! I'm counting it as fifty-seven!"
"Horse hockey!"
"As much as I hate to take sides, my frriends," Kepler muttered, smiling tiredly back at the two. "But I do believe ourr brrotherr Flynn has a point."
"Really?" Logan huffed, sweating as he tugged and tugged the supply sled over a cleft of rock. The smooth earth below was being slowly replaced with a jagged, craggy texture. "She's spent hours barfing up homicidal nonsense and now you're grading the turkey buzzard on grammar?"
"What else are we going to do?" Flynn shrugged. "We can't judge her skill at billiards."
Ariel and Kepler laughed. It was a squeaky, wheezing expression at best. Soon, the sheer exhaustion of the migraine-inducing moment weighed down on them, and they sighed into the twilight. In the ensuing silence, Seraphimus' words echoed ever-explosively across the diminishing plateau.
"...meant for the Spring Havens! Not the bottomless abyss to which you've dispensed so many innocent, Goddess-fearing souls! In the name of the Queen of Frost I shall..."
"She's got the lungs of an endurance flier, that's for sure," Flynn muttered. "I just wonder if she'll keep yelling in her dreams once she finally passes out."
"If the bitch passes out," Logan grunted.
Ariel bit her lip. "I just feel bad for Wildcard this whole time. He's been in the direct line of sight of her hollering since she began."
Logan shouted over the noise. "Yo! Double-yoo! Enjoying the performance?"
A haggard, exhausted Desperado looked back from a distance. A middle-claw glinted in the twilight, and then he resumed his hobbling march.
Logan and Flynn chuckled.
Kepler cleared his throat. "Perrhaps... one of us should rrelieve him."
"Pffft. I'm not playing shotgun to Miss Shits-a-Lot," Flynn muttered.
"Why not?" Logan smirked, looking ahead and marching. "You've got a streamlined skull cap. Her sound waves will bounce right off you."
"Well, don't look at me!" Ariel's voice cracked. "What if she gets loose and bites my larynx off?"
"She won't get loose," Flynn snarled. "We tied that shit super tight."
"Yeah, but still—"
"Frriends!" Kepler frowned. "Arre we the Herrald orr arre we horrrible?" He turned completely around. "I shall take Wildcarrd's place!"
"No, Kepler..." Ariel sighed, holding the wyvern back. "I'll do it—"
"The task must fall upon me—"
SWOOOSH! Rainbow Dash touched down in a blue blur. "I'll take Wildcard's place."
Logan did a double-take. "Huh?"
"You heard me." Rainbow Dash frowned, marching back towards Wildcard. "Since you're all so determined to not give a crap."
"Kepler gives a crap!" Flynn said.
"Indeed, I—" The wyvern did a double take. "What?"
"Rainbow, don't." Ariel held the mare back. "That... that will just make things worse."
"It's my fault she's still with us, right?" Rainbow winced from the noise. She flattened her ears and hissed aside: "It's only fitting."
"What's fitting is that you not stay close enough to her to exacerbate what's already a skull-splitting nightmare," Ariel said.
"She's got a point there, Rainbow," Logan said. "Unless... your plan is to make her pass out faster."
"I think we can rrule that out at this juncturre."
"Hey... guys... whatever..." Flynn held his hooves up, smirking. "So long as the unlucky sap isn't me... ... ..."
"...and you! Yes, you!" Seraphimus spat and sputtered at the stallion pulling her sled. "You are a shame to unicorns everywhere! What promises did the traitors at Wyvern Point make to you?! Did they claim they would protect your family? Ferry you faster to the Spring Havens?!?"
An hour later, Flynn sighed heavily. He sweated and grunted as he struggled to pull the sled evenly over steeper and steeper embankments.
The Herald had left the perpetual flatness far behind them. It was as though giant plows had raked up entire swaths of dull, dark earth. All of it was stone or gravel or vulcanized dust at best. No sign of soil or sand or sediment—but an increasingly uneven slide into miasmic darkness. The bent horizon loomed higher and higher—or so it seemed—as the group continued their zig-zagging descent, all the while attempting to maintain the contents and the structural integrity of their sleds.
Logan managed well. Flynn—not so much. The unicorn had to pause every once and a while to steady the contents of his makeshift wagon—and prisoner—with expert telekinesis.
"Hurry up, slowpoke!" Logan growled from up ahead. "Not all of us are on a luxury tour, y'know!"
"...will bury you in the earth along with the bones of the unrighteous...!" Seraphimus wailed into Flynn's ears.
"Grnnnghhhh..." Flynn sweated and sweated, fumbling to keep up a swift pace as the occupied sled rattled behind him. "Real glitz and glamour..." His one natural eye darted up.
Wildcard flew at an easy glide. His wings easily flapped on either side of him and he relished in the cool kiss of the twilight winds at his headcrest. Despite the relief he was obviously experiencing, he kept close to Rainbow Dash—flying alongside her at all times while he rested his lower limbs.
Rainbow Dash stared dead ahead. In the sheen of the stars above, she made out the hint of rising rockfaces. At first, she thought that she was staring at the other side of a canyon. But then, as the group continued their descent, she spotted narrow plumes of rock rising sharper and sharper from the sloping earth underneath. They resembled stalagmites—with the absence of a cave. Their sharp tips were bent ever-so-slightly forward, so that Rainbow imagined that she was a blue dust mite threading her way through a microscopic patch of hairy skin.
This—among other, noisier things—distracted her, so that she had to snap her head in Rarity's direction to realize that she was being addressed.
"Rainbow! Are you paying attention?"
Rainbow pondered whether or not to answer that honestly. Exhaustion weighed heavily on her brow. "Mrff?"
Rarity pouted. "I sense something!"
Twilight floated up in a lavender blur. "Rarity senses something!"
"I just said that, darling!"
"But I wanted to make sure that Rainbow knew—"
"Well, she's hearing it from the fabulous source, is she not?!"
"Girls, just—" Rainbow held a hoof up, sighing. "Get to the point. Rarity, what are you sensing?"
Wildcard looked over, goggles rattling.
"Grfff... sorry, Rainbow..." Rarity rubbed her temple. "The shouting is... g-getting to me. Ahem." She floated upright, proudly. "But never mind that! You must see this!"
"See what?"
"Come!" Pinkie shouted cheerfully from a distance. "Come gander with us ganderoos!"
Rainbow simply... fell. She allowed gravity to carry her after her descending companions.
Slightly alarmed, Wildcard drifted speedily after her. Followed by a curious Ariel.
"Uhm... what are we plummeting for?" the pegasus mare droned.
After half-a-minute, Rainbow joined her friends where they had formed a ghostly circle around a rusted object leaning against one of the many jagged stalagmites.
"Whew-wee...!" Applejack was scratching her blonde head. "If that sure doesn't stand out!"
"I wonder how long it's been resting here," Fluttershy murmured.
"Probably a super-duper-ultra long time!" Pinkie exclaimed.
"Poor little thing..."
Twilight muttered, "It's made of metal, Fluttershy. It's not alive. It never was."
"Sorry. Just..." Fluttershy shuddered. "This landscape has been so dead and desolate since we arrived at the edge. I guess I'm getting desperate for a critter or two to sense..."
"Uh, Rainbow?" Ariel landed behind along with Wildcard. "What are we looking at?"
"That's a... very good question." Rainbow Dash trotted towards the object. Seraphimus' shouts echoed in the distance, and they caused a slight ringing sound to emanate from the hollow of a fallen sphere. The two rounded edges yawned open, spilling out metal wires and filaments that had partially-disentegrated over time.
Wildcard cocked his head from side to side with avian scrutiny. His goggles reflected loops of copper fitted into an iron stalk.
"Can't say it's the prettiest doodad I ever laid eyes on," Applejack said. She turned to face Rainbow with a smug grin. "What do you suppose it could be?"
"Better yet..." Twilight squinted. "Who left it here?" She tilted her head up. "Maybe it's a remnant of the Darkreach expedition?"
"That seems rather obvious," Rainbow spoke in a low tone, pacing slowly around the object. "But... I can't shake the feeling that I've... seen this sort of a thing before."
"We both did, darling," Rarity said. She winced slightly from Seraphimus' screams but continued: "Back on the plateau. By the lookout tower."
"Oh yes!" Fluttershy nodded. "There were pieces of similar spheres lying around! Remember?"
"No... that's not the reason," Rainbow said. "I've seen these machines zipping around before."
"What, Rainbow?" Ariel trotted up, leaning over her shoulder. "What is this thing?"
Rainbow exhaled, her tail flicking. "It's Darkstinian."