Escape from the Wedding

Elegance rubbed the side of her face, "Ow...probably going to leave a mark...you alright? They did much more to you..."

As she spoke, the door automatically sealed itself shut again. After staring at it for a moment, she said, "Their mimicry was good enough to fool the identification seals on the door. That makes me worried. Extremely worried. I ah-am I bleeding?"

She looked at her hoof, the red liquid on it confirming that, yes, she was indeed bleeding. "Oh. That really, really hurts." She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. "But I am alright," she stated calmly when she opened her eyes, "It's just a minor cut."

She glared at the insect like pegasi sprawling around. "Well, I'm not sure if I want to leave them lying about in here, but there is hardly anything that I can see that we can do. Ejecting them will only mean drawing more to this place, but others can deal with it."

She looked at Sarinas strangely. "You weren't jesting when you said you had a powerful kick. Are you really alright? That last stunt must have done a lot of damage."

The zebra also had a fierce temper, she thought, but it was best not to bring that up.

Sarinas smiled and nodded lightly to Elegance as she walked slowly back over to her. "Zebras are well known for their physical prowess," Sarinas told her, "I believe we might rival some of Equestria's best Earth Ponies in the matter," she boasted.

Sarinas looked about to the unconscious creatres before looking back to Elegance, "I am glad yah are okay," Sarias said to her, "I would not dare let these creatures hurt one of my friends." she said with a serious tone.

"Do yah think we should proceed with trying to get to the princess?" She asked, walking a little bit away from the door, gingerly, as she was nursing a bit of her pain.

Elegance picked up the book and replaced it on the shelf, eyebrows rising at the mention of 'friends'. "Well, it was rather unsettling to see oneself act so barbaric," she commented, "I shudder think of copies of those I know and love attacking me."

After slotting the book back, she cantered deeper into the library. "Indeed, we must make haste. But stay close. Here, the place gets unsettling..."

And indeed it did. As the pair ventured deeper, it got darker, and the whispering texts got louder, getting to the point where you could recogise some of the words. It wasn't helped by the immense size of the shelves, towering over them, like giants over ants. It was extremely dim when Elegance's path started winding, left and right. She stopped every so often to stare at the ceiling and floor, trying to figure out where they were. There were no candles here, the risk of fire was too great. Instead, some runes on the floor and shelves emitted an eerie blue light to guide the way. One would not read standing here.

Then Elegance stopped. She stared up, and down, for a long, long while. The whispering from the texts stopped.

Sarinas nodded to Elegance and proceeded to keep up wit the unicorn, breathing a little harder than she had before, every now and then breathing out with a little bit of pain. She was avoiding limping so not to worry her companion, but the pressure she was putting on her back right leg was causing her to wince as she ran with Elegance.

She knew she was not in good shape, but she was needed to help make sure Elegance stayed safe. And she needed Elegance to find her way through these passages. They both needed each other at this point and she wasn't going to let Elegance down.

Sarinas let out a breath as Elegance stopped again, before noticing the sudden silence. She began looking around to questioningly. "What is this place...?" she asked the smaller pony.

Elegance trembled. It was well known to all Designs that Abstract Design built the library so that it could handle warping of time and space from the huge amount of magical texts. Knowledge equaled power equaled energy equaled magic, after all. She did not feel at ease in a place where one can equal two, depending on how you looked at it.

"The most magical place in all of Equestria," Elegance whispered, "It is said that all the magical energy in this building is as much as a hundred times the elements of harmony." She paused. "good luck getting it to do what you want, though."

She closed her eyes, trying to put the drawings of her anscestor in mind. The image behind her eyes started off fuzzy, and full of blanks, but then the whispering started again. However, instead of many whispering at once, it was one whispering. As it told its secrets to the open air, the image in Elegance's mind grew clearer, and the blanks started to be filled in by an unseen hand. Unnoticed by the young noblepony, her mouth started to move along with the whispering, as if she was doing the talking.

Suddenly, her eyes opened, but in place of the normal iris and pupil was a glowing dark blue light. She blinked, and her eyes were back to normal, as if nothing had changed.

"Right. I know where to go."

This time, Elegance didn't stop to look at the floor and ceiling, but just walked in a confident path until arriving at a strange little room with no books.

But it had a trapdoor.

"That is where we descend into the sewers," Elegance whispered, "Is this going to be alright for you?"

Sarinas watched Elegance as she tried to figure out their next move. She nearly jumped back when her eyes suddenly beamed blue for a second. She opened her mouth to ask about it but Elegance quickly spoke with confidence about where to go.

Sarinas followed Elegance the next room and looked over the trap door, "I am not an up tight royal like a lot of the others in Canterlot..." Sarinas explained as she opened the trap door with her hoof, "Our home is in danger and I will do everything I can to help people." She said with a sturdy tone.

"We're not all like that," Elegance muttered under her breath, then she said a bit louder, "I meant that you were lagging behind me considerably back there despite the fact you kept up with me easily before. Are you sure you want to go crawling around in the waste of the city in that state?"

She took off her cloak when she was saying this, not wanting to get it ruined by a walk in the sewers. She was soooo having a long shower after all this. She was so very thankful of the sewer's construction. It meant that all the disgusting stuff was down there, instead of up here.

"I am sorry" Sarinas apologized for her comment about the upper class of Canterlot.

"I do not have a choice but to follow yah into the sewers," Sarinas said as she went ahead and started climbing down first into the sewer, "It is our only way out," she pointed out.

Elegance took a deep breath, and followed Sarinas down the trapdoor. She lasted about two minutes until she had to breath again, and almost choked the air out.

When was being constructed, the sewers were called the 'undertaking' and nopony outside of the project completely knew what it was. When it was finished, all ponies working in the cesspits had to change profession, or be left obsolete. The designer, Civil Design was never really rewarded for increasing the health standards of Canterlot tenfold, which was always a bit of a sore point with the Design family.

Elegance couldn't exactly see why, but she could certainly smell why. Canterlot had only grown since the undertaking, and more ponies meant more waste. After all, consider how many times did one relieve themself per day and multiply it to get a rather alarming figure. There had to be incredible amounts of enchantments to make working down here even possible, and it still stank, especially to a pony's sensitive nose.

Elegance opened her mouth to complain, but closed it almost immediately, turning a bit green. Conceivably, one could get to any place in the city through the sewers, but Elegance now considered why anypony would do it, knowing the stink. Even fighting their way through the bug things seemed reasonable, if it weren't for the fact that there were so many.

Like the deepest tomes in the library, the only light was from magical runes on the walls, illuminating the tunnel with a pale green light. Down the centre was a river of waste, where the smell was the strongest. At each corner, there were signposts directing where the pipes led.

Sarinas cringed a little bit with the smell that was coming from the tunnels, she didn't quite expect it to be this bad. She tried not to let it show on her face as a strong confident companion she felt was the thing Elegance needed most right now to keep her going strong. And the stronger they went along, the quicker they'd be out of here.

"How far..." she said quickly before closing her mouth tight again, "is it to the castle in here...?" she choked out the rest of her sentence.

Elegance answered with a shrug, before pointing at a signpost which read VIA ROYALE. They walked in silence, not really wanting to waste breath.

After far too long a time without incident, they had arrived at their destination. Climbing up the ladder as fast as they could, they arrived in the basement of the castle. It was now going to be a stealth based mission.

"We are going to have to be very qu-" Elegance began, before being interrupted by a large commotion upstairs. The sound of panicking ponies and hissing insect things blended together in one loud cacophony.