"You already found it?" Discord offered, just as shocked as I was. "Why, we could have been out of this rain hours ago then! Why didn't you mention that sooner?"
I had to chuckle at his exasperation. Obviously the red droplets sticking to his fur were just as bothersome to this chaotic being as they were to the rest of us.
"You didn't ask," Pinkie declared.
"No, he didn't," Patty Cannon agreed.
"I would have told you if you had asked, but you wanted us to look for Josey and the rest," Pinkie explained.
"And draw their attention with fireworks," Patty Cannon added as if they shared one mind. "So we did."
"They make a good point there," Cadance giggled, enjoying how the tables turned on Discord.
The Draconequus at least had the decency to look a little taken aback by it.
"I swear you have fallen into your role as a pony like none other," I breathed out toward Patty Cannon. "Teach me how to?"
"Just be yourself, duh!" Patty Cannon exclaimed as if I had asked a dumb question.
"Hey, that's what I'm trying to do as well," Turkey suggested as she walked up beside me, followed by Spritelight, April, and at last Rainbow Dash.
"What else can you do but be yourself?" asked April.
"What's the conversation about?" Spritelight wondered, sidling up against Turkey with a wet squish as their bodies impacting squeezed the rain out of their fur.
"Apparently there's a way down under that lake over there," I pointed out with a nod of my head.
"It's a curious thought to be so close to a mana well and not feel it," Cadance pondered. "The ground here must be a good isolator."
"Oh, hi princess," Rainbow interjected. "I didn't expect to see you here with us."
"It wasn't my idea, believe me," Cadance returned with a glance in Discord's direction. "But since I am present now, I might as well make the best of it. What dreary weather to meet up in again."
Cadance's attention moved from Rainbow Dash to Turkey and she offered a warm smile at seeing the affection between the pegasus and Spritelight.
I looked in their direction as well, noticing how Spritelight was half covered under Turkey's right wing while the unicorn's head lay across Turkey's withers in a clear sign of affection and protection.
"If we're all done with the introductions," Spritelight muttered as she was stared at by us two alicorns, "You said 'under' the lake? You don't mean for us to swim, do you?"
"Oh, no, there's a door over there, but it's buried under the sand," Patty Cannon explained, pointing off at a slight incline some distance away from us.
"Fortunately there's four of you magic users to dig it out, right?" Turkey wondered. "We did the flying and all."
"And you flew very well for a novice," Rainbow complimented the other pegasus.
"I can't deny that," I agreed. "Turkey is right; we should be able to dig it out even if Discord doesn't help out with it."
Discord chortled at the thought of helping out. "Oh, you wouldn't even allow me to had I offered."
I stared at him and gave a nod at his words. "Too true. How about you show us the way, Rho... Patty?"
"Okey-dokey-lokey," my Rhonda, now known as Patty Cannon, responded before bouncing off to the incline she had pointed at before.
"Wait for me!" Pinkie Pie called after her, joining her friend as they led the rest of us toward this hidden passage they apparently knew the location of.
I followed after them with Discord tagging onto my left side. He was holding onto a candy cane which led up to a fish bowl which was suspended over his head.
The water in this bowl used as an umbrella was quickly turning red as the blood rain fell down upon it.
"I can't wait to be out of this rain. You know I like the odd joke and all, but this is truly bothering me. You have no idea, Josephine," he complained.
"I can't imagine you get bothered by a lot of things," I threw his way. "And it's Josey."
"Josey, of course," he returned. "This is not so much a venture into lovely discordance as it is a dreary slide into extinction. I told you before I would rather have this place continue to exist."
"You're being oddly straightforward," I pointed out, giving him a sideglance.
His face had a solemn expression on it. He was clearly rattled by the events unfolding around us, much like everyone else in our group.
"We all would like to see Josey succeed to turn this around," Cadance spoke from directly behind us.
"Oh, put it all on my shoulders, why don't you," I half-joked.
"It can't be helped," Discord mumbled. "This is destruction on a scale even I wouldn't entertain. And entertaining this is not, mon pouliche."
"Is that you, Q?" I wondered, having seen my fair share of science fiction with Rhonda before this all started.
"Q, who?" Discord wondered, looking at me without a sign of recognition on his face.
"Never mind," I decided, noticing the two earthponies had stopped in front of a pair of trees growing up at an odd angle. "I think we're here."
"Yep," Pinkie Pie agreed, poking a hoof at the ground in the center between these two unique trees. "It's under here."
"And how, exactly, did you two figure that out?" Spritelight demanded, walking up beside me.
"It's simple," Patty Cannon started. "It was the only place with an echo."
"An echo?" I asked with some confusion.
"An echo?" Cadance wondered as well.
"What echo?" April added for good measure.
"Like that, yeah," Patty grinned. "When we set off the fireworks in our party cannon, this spot echoed the explosion."
"So this area resonated differently when you set off an explosion?" Spritelight translated for the rest of us.
"That's what we said. It was very clear for anypony paying attention," Pinkie Pie decided while marking a spot on the ground with her left forehoof. "Here."
I peered over at Discord. "You were too busy sunbathing to notice, weren't you?"
"Why, you don't honestly believe I can get this complexion without putting some work in?" Discord suggested, motioning at the red stains on himself. "Besides, we've been waiting so long I honestly got bored."
"So, let's start digging," Spritelight decided. "April, help us out here?"
"But I last shot a hole into the sky," April protested. "You don't want me to do that here."
"Why not? It might get enough of the sand out of the way that we'll find the entrance that much quicker," Spritelight suggested. "You said you had trouble grabbing onto air, right? Sand is more dense. Shouldn't be the problem."
"I agree with Spritelight there, this should be easier than heating up air," I pointed out, my own horn starting to glow green. "With Cadance, Spritelight, me, and you working on this, we should find that entrance in no time."
"It's been a while since I've had to do menial work like this," Cadance chuckled. "And back then I wasn't even an alicorn yet."
"Pegasus, right?" I wondered, glancing back. "So we both used to be something else before becoming princesses."
Cadance looked at me with a questioning glance. "How do you know about that? Not even Twilight has brought that up and I've known her since she was a foal."
"We have comic books in this world which detail about yours. Remind me to fill you in about them if we get through this," I explained. "For what it's worth; you make a wonderful princess."
Cadance smiled at my compliment as her own horn started to glow. "From what I've seen from you so far Josey, so do you. You lead by example, which is what a lot of ponies need but don't dare to ask for."
"Can we get to digging yet?" Spritelight grumbled. "You princesses praising one another into the heavens is not going to improve our situation."
"Right you are," I agreed, starting to scoop sand away from where Pinkie had marked the ground.
With the four of us starting to dig at the ground, the area between the trees was slowly but surely dipping down.
It took a good few minutes of us moving dirt away, with the surrounding area falling back into the hole we were making once too many times, before a square structure started to become visible.
A row of brickwork laid horizontally under the sand, and we somewhat automatically started to dig around it to free it up.
Soon enough we ended up with two clear edges on either side of it and realised it was the top of the 'doorway' the pinkies had claimed to be under the dirt.
We focused on removing the sand from lower, in-between the two vertical columns of brickwork which were appearing as we continued.
"You know, I think I read an Indiana Jones fanfiction once which had a doorway like this," Turkey suggested.
"Who's Indiana Jones?" Rainbow wondered.
"Oh, he's an adventurer who found a temple of doom and fought nazis with a whip," Turkey answered.
I gave a glance back at the pair of them. "It's our world's equivalent to Daring Do, Dash."
"You know about Daring Do?" Rainbow Dash perked up.
"Who doesn't?" I posited, much to Rainbow Dash' excitement.
"Oh, I can't wait for A.K. Yearling to release the next book in the series," she exclaimed eagerly.
"Yearling?" Turkey wondered in turn.
"That sounds like she meant Rowling, you know from that wizard boy's books?" April suggested, taking a break from digging.
"Oh, right, you're young so you would have read those," Turkey realised like she was an aging mare.
"Actually, my parents thought they were the devil's books considering they were about magic," April explained. "I never read them but those movies were hyped so much that I know about them."
"I'm so lost right now," Rainbow gasped. "You have a Daring Do in your world?"
"Short answer; yes," I decided to make quick work of the conversation. "Long answer; it's not like how you know Daring Do."
I looked back down at our digging effort. "Cadance, Spritelight, can you stop digging for a moment please?"
The both of them did as I asked, with Spritelight looking back at me with some annoyance.
"Why?" the unicorn demanded.
"April, can you do that overcharging of your horn again? I think we've got enough sand out of the way that you might open the entrance with one quick blow," I asked of the unicorn mare.
She looked apprehensive at my request. "What if I cause a cave-in?"
"I'm sure it will be fine. Let's work together to direct your energy into it so it opens the way for us," I suggested calmly. "Trust in yourself."
April sighed but started to charge her magic regardless. "I'm going to try... don't blame me if it goes wrong."
I charged my own horn, using my magic to form a shape in front of April's which would guide the release of her energy like a shaped charge down into the dirt in front of us.
If there was a tunnel, like it appeared there was, the blast released from the unicorn should be enough to clear it of the years of dust and dirt which had accumulated in it.
Her magic was powerful, but less so than my own, Cadance, or even Spritelight.
Her inexperience helped us in this venture; if any wall collapsed from it, it would be better it did so without us being in the tunnel to suffer the resulting cave-in.
It was a long shot, but it would be quicker than continuing to dig as we had so far.
"Ready," April offered, straining to keep the magic in her horn.
"Then, by all means," I suggested, making ready to catch and direct the blast from her.
April's red magic exploded outward from the tip of her horn, met the cone shape of my own in front of it, and burst through the small tip I had left open and had aimed at the entryway.
The focused beam burst out like a red laser, disintegrating the remaining dirt in front of the opening, hitting the cover to the tunnel proper, and burning a sizeable hole through it as well.
I noticed in that moment that the entryway had once been two locked doors, one of which had fallen into the passageway to let the dirt in while the other had been supported by this very same dirt now heaped up behind it.
April's magic was burning away this obstruction like it was paper, digging deeper and deeper into the hallway beyond.
The unicorn's eyes closed as the last of her magic burst escaped her, and she wobbled on her legs. "Oof, that was all I've got in me... How did we do?"
I dropped my magic as soon as hers left my control and stared down into the darkness. "Amazing. This went better than expected."
