A/N: Guys, I like the reviews but please stop throwing story ideas my way. I try to write fast enough to stay several chapters ahead of my update schedule so a fair amount of the foreseeable plot has already been written. On that note, the plot is apparently predictable enough that you guys already know who's joining the group this chapter (well, technically next chapter). Enjoy.

Chapter 8

Surprise Guests

It was the night of the game and Roller was just closing up shop. He had just finished setting up the table and game board in the middle of his shop's main floor when he heard the sound of a hoof against his front door. The author nodded and walked over to the entrance, but when he opened it there was a pony that he was not expecting.

The pegasus in his doorway was gray and had a blonde mane. She smiled and tried to look friendly, but her crossed eyes just made her look silly. "Hey there, Mr. Roller!" she greeted, "I have a message for you."

Roller blinked a few times and tried to remember this pony's name. "You're Ditzy Doo the mail mare. Right?" he asked, "I'm not expecting any letters or anything, who's the message from?"

Ditzy's head tilted to one side. She squinted her eyes and strained to remember what she was supposed to say, but could only recall that she had it written on her leg. Lifting a hoof, she read from the smeared ink, "The. Rain. Ssssss-chu-edu-alled... Scheduled! For the... weakened? Oh! Weekend! Has been re-resch? Re-schedu... Ah, Rescheduled. For t... uh-oh..." she put her hoof down and looked back to Roller, "I ran out of room on my hoof when I was writing this."

Roller had a bored, unimpressed look on his face. He slowly started to close the door to his shop as he told Ditzy, "I'm kind of in the middle of something in here. It would be really nice if you could, um," he picked his words carefully before finishing, "You know, go away."

With that, the author finished closing the door and the mail mare flew off into the cloudy sky. Roller shook his head before he resumed setting up for that night's game and muttered, "It's a wonder she can even read, let alone write. I understand that it's offensive to call her Derpy, but she's basically the embodiment of..." his voice faded and he asked, "Who am I talking to?" before silencing himself and finishing his task quietly.

A few minutes passed and there was another knock on the door. This time it was two ponies that Roller didn't remember inviting; Rarity and Applejack. He rolled his eyes and flatly told them, "We're closed," but when he tried to shut the door, it was stopped by Applejack's hoof.

"Hold on there, Roller," said Applejack, "We wanna have a word with you," Her tone was a mix of suspicion and mild anger, "Just what in tarnation were you plannin' to do with our friends this evenin'?"

The author struggled a second to close the door, but quickly gave up. Sighing, he told his new guests, "We were going to continue our game of Horses and Heroes. You know, that role-playing game that comes in those big, fancy things called 'Books'?" His eyebrow arched, "You do know how to read, right? I mean, they taught you how to do that in between ambushing ponies in their own home and being a stereotype, right?"

Applejack didn't take kindly to that last comment. She forced the door the rest of the way open and stomped her way inside with Rarity close behind. "Now listen here," she ordered, "Whatever game ya'll are playin' has got Twilight actin' all funny and Rainbow Dash talkin' a whole heap of nonsense. You've got yourself some explainin' to do."

Rarity stepped between the other two and clarified, "What Applejack means is that just the other day, our friends weren't quite being themselves. Fluttershy seemed a bit more shaken then usual and Pinkie..."

"Isn't Pinkie the, er, 'random' pony?" Roller interrupted. The other two looked to each other, then back to the author and nodded. The stallion shook his head before asking, "Do you really think any eccentricities she's developed recently have anything to do with me? Or, really, anything?"

"Ecce-what?" Applejack asked with a clueless look on her face, "Stop talkin' funny. Nopony can understand you."

Roller mumbled, "Yeah, story of my life," before walking over to the door. He peeked outside, taking note of the gathering dark clouds and a cold wind. He asked, "It's not supposed to rain tonight, is it?"

Rarity ignored his question and instead opted to ask her own, "What kind of game have you been playing with our friends, Mr. Roller? What could have gotten Fluttershy so frightened?"

Roller was quick with a response as he closed the door, "Who? The yellow pegasus? If I had to hazard a guess then I'd say it was probably a dust bunny. Then again, I could always be wrong. She could have been frightened by a particularly vicious tree on her way home."

Before either of the other two could speak, there was another knock on the door. "Who is it now?" Roller muttered before opening the door and barking out, "We're closed!"

On the other side of the door was a somewhat surprised Rainbow Dash. She stared at Roller in confusion for a second before telling him, "Twilight said you wanted to meet up tonight. Are we doing this or what?"

Roller smacked his hoof against his forehead before gesturing for the pegasus to come inside. His face turned a bit red from embarrassment and he let out a frustrated sigh before taking another look out the door. He saw three other ponies coming down the street and beckoned for them to hurry up. In only a moment, Fluttershy, Twilight and Pinkie were inside the Hobby Horse as well.

"Well, now that everypony is here, we can start," Roller announced, "If the two uninvited ponies want to stick around, just know that I only have enough snacks for five of us."

Rarity moved toward the door along with Applejack. The unicorn told him, "I'm afraid we're going to have to decline. I have no inclination to spend time with such a rude stallion."

Just as the door opened, the two were bombarded with wind and rain. Thunder sounded outside just as Applejack managed to get the door closed. Roller cracked a smiled and asked, "Would it be rude to invite you both to stay here until the rain stops? I could always make more snacks."

"Ooh!" Pinkie Pie had an idea, "How about they make up some characters and play with us! It wouldn't take that long if somepony helped them."

Twilight nodded, "That's a great idea, Pinkie," before turning to her other friends, "What does everypony else think?"

Fluttershy remained quiet, but Rainbow Dash made her opinion known immediately, "Two more ponies for me to out-adventure? Bring 'em on!"

Roller took a breath and was about to explain that wasn't how the game was supposed to work, but Applejack was too quick and spoke first, "Oh yeah? I'm the most adenturin'est pony this side of Equestria. I bet I could adventure circles around you!" She then grabbed a blank character sheet from the table, "all I need is to fill in these li'l boxes and lines. Right?"

Roller passed a book across the table and asked Pinkie, "Could you help her before she wastes one of my character sheets? I'm going to get more snacks out of the kitchen."

As the author left, Rarity approached the table. After looking aver the funny-shaped dice, the game board with small figurines on it and flipping through a few pages of one of the books she thought for a few seconds. As the host came back into the room with a bag of chips, she said, "These books make the game sound like those drama classes I took in school, but with more math. Is this game anything like that?"

"Yeah, you could imagine it that way," Roller informed her, "As I was trying to tell Rainbow Smash-every-baddie-that-enters-my-field-of-vision here..."

"Oh! Cause she's a barbarian! I get it!" Pinkie Pie cheered before going back to helping her farmer friend to create a character. The others at the table were distracted by their pink companion for only a moment before turning back to their host. The gray stallion seemed lost in though now but soon stated, "I completely lost my train of thought. Sorry."

Rarity spoke up, "Well, I suppose I'll play too if somepony would help be make a character," adding, "but only because I'm worried about Fluttershy. The poor filly could hardly stand still the other day."

Fluttershy blushed. She remembered the modeling she did for her friend earlier that week and how nervous she was. She tried to speak up, but was her usual quiet tone, "Oh, Rarity, I wasn't scared just because of the game. You don't have to..."

Roller cleared his throat before declaring...

"We're starting now."

Four ponies were inside of a dark mine with only the light of their friend's unicorn horn to illuminate their way. Lying on the floor near them were three diamond dogs, two of them frozen in blocks of ice and one of them simply unconscious. The sound of running water echoed from deep within the mines.

"Oh yeah, we fought off a bunch of diamond dogs last time," Pin Kay remembered. The bard looked to her friends and gave a smile, "We were awesome!"

Twin Star nodded as she produced a length of rope from under her cape. Using her magic she tied up the unconscious foe before walking further down the tunnel. She kept an eye on the ceiling, expecting another ambush.

Just then, Reyna cut in front of her. "I told you guys before," she reminded them, "I'm the biggest and the strongest. I'll go first," she then proceeded to walk in front of the spell caster, allowing the bard and the forest pony to follow from the rear.

The party traveled for a little more than a minute before they came to a large chamber. Along the edge of this room was a dry pathway with cart rails built on it, but the middle seemed to be a kind of underground lake. Through an opening high up on the the far wall came a waterfall. Along the edges of the pool were torches that seemed to be burnt out.

"Well, this explains the noise from before," Twin star stated, "but, where do we go now? Those dogs must have been protecting something down here."

The party searched along the walkways, but found no opening in the wall. The entire chamber seemed bare save for the lake, the burnt-out torches and the rails. Nothing of value could be found within this room.

Reyna soon grew impatient, telling the others, "This is stupid. Where's the treasure? Where are the bad guys? Where's the...?"

Just then, they heard something fall into the water. The barbarian became very quiet and flew over to the waterfall. Peering closely at the pool, she could see something shiny sinking to the bottom. "Hey! There' some treasure!" She gave an excited shout, "Anypony know how to swim?"

A pink light filled the room and Flute R'Shye vanished as another sound of something hitting the water echoed through the chamber. "Where'd she go?" asked Reyna in a concerned tone. The others looked around frantically before Twin Star's eyes went wide and her face turned pale.

The sorceress rushed to the water's edge. "Do you think she might have fallen in?" she seemed to be panicking a little. Pin Kay dunked her head underwater as quickly as she could and looked around, only to see something rushing up from the darkness at the bottom of the lake.

Withdrawing from the water, Pin Kay told her party, "Something's coming!" and prepared her guitar. Twin Star's horn began to shine a bit brighter as she focused on what spell she may need to cast and Reyna flew to her friends to better defend them "just in case". The three gritted their teeth as something broke the water's surface.

It was Flute R'Shye! The others let down their guard and gave sighs of relief. Twin Star asked, "Flute, what are you doing in the water?" She then saw a glint of something metal, "Also, what's in your mouth?"

The other two looked up and surely enough, there was a silver necklace adorned with a brilliant, blue gem in the forest pony's mouth. She swam to the edge and spat out the trinket before pointing up the waterfall and saying, "Sorry for not telling you about what I was doing, but I think this is the shiny thing that Reyna saw. It probably came from up there."

"Well, how do we get up there?" asked Twin Star. Reyna stepped in front of her friend and spread her wings. "Oh," the unicorn blushed, "Well, take some rope with you so you can pull the rest of us up."

Reyna did just that, quickly reaching the top of the waterfall and lowering the rope for her companions to grab on. Once all three of them had done so, she gave the rope a pull and soon, the sorceress, the bard and a pony with a fish tail were all at the top of the waterfall.

"Whoa, wait. Fish tail?" Reyna was confused by Flute's new appearance. She watched in awe as the pony changed back to normal right before her eyes. With her jaw still hanging open, she could only stand in disbelief as she walked right past her.

"Forest pony," she reminded them as she continued upstream. The stream was shallow enough to stand in if you didn't mind getting your knees wet and was about as wide as the tunnels they had walked through previously. Soon the group came to a fork in the stream, but either path was too narrow to travel down. "Now what?" asked Flute R'shye.

Twin Star was quick with an answer, "Search for hidden doors. There has to be something up here that we're not seeing," before doing just that. The four ponies looked all over for a few minutes to no avail, but the sorceress eventually found a flat piece of the wall that didn't seem to match the rest of it. It was too smooth and a dull, black gem sat at the top. "I found something!" Cheered the sorceress.

Upon further inspection, she could read something printed on the wall here and did so aloud, "It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, cannot be heard, cannot be smelt. It lies behind stars and under hills and empty holes it fills. It comes first and follows after. Ends life, kills laughter. What is it?"

"K-k-k-k-kills laughter?" Flute was terrified. She ducked under the water and covered her head with her hooves, trembling as she did so. Whatever the answer was, she didn't want to hear it.

The four adventurers stood in the stream, pondering the riddle. A long time seemed to pass with only the sound of running water and Flute R'shye eventually coming up for air to keep the place from being completely silent. Reyna and Twin Star eventually turned to Pin Kay, who didn't seem to notice.

Reyna cleared her throat. Pin Kay didn't pay her any mind. Reyna did it again, and again she was ignored. Reyna cleared her throat a third time, noticeably louder and the bard just suggested, "You should really see a doctor about that."

"Pin!" Reyna ordered, "Use the Bardic Knowledge thing to get the answer." She then tapped her hoof under the water impatiently as her ally did just that.

Pin looked triumphant and walked right up to the wall. She grinned from ear to ear and confidently stated, "The answer is Dirt," to which the black stone on the wall began to glow with purple light. Pin turned around and explained to the others, "Think about it; dirt fills up hole and there's lots of it under hills. If there other planets out there, then there should be lots of dirt out in space, you know, 'behind stars'? What else could it be?"

Twin Star was confused, "But how does dirt end life or kill laughter? Can't you also see, feel and smell dirt?" She waited for an answer, but Pin Kay couldn't find one. The gem then stopped glowing and the sorceress asked, "What happens when we get the answer wrong?"

A beam of purple light shot from the gem and struck Pin Kay in the back of the head. She acted as though she had just been hit by a brick and stumbled around for a second before falling over, eyes closed. Reyna lifted her fallen friend onto her back to keep her head above water and answered, "That's what. I think we better figure out a better answer then just 'dirt'."

The gem began to glow again and the three remaining party members felt their hearts racing in panic as their minds raced to find an answer. Reyna corrected her previous statement, "We'd better find a better answer FAST!"

A/N: So, what do you guys think of these long chapters (2900 words up there. Dang)? I usually don't like to make them too long because I think that makes them a chore to read, but I want to know what you have to say about it. Leave a review and we'll see each other again in a week.