Crook very carefully opened the door of the room we were in, leading the way into the bar space beyond.
While it must have been a crowded place before the Tantabus took hold of Canterlot's residents, it was clear it had seen little patronage in recent days.
The chairs were upturned and placed on the few tables set around the room, but a small layer of dust had settled on them.
The bar likewise had a small layer of dust on the grime of spilled drinks which all bars tended to accumulate over time.
Crook led us through the space behind the bar, but paused at a space underneath it which was stocked with bottles of clear water.
He looked back at us and motioned for it, then took hold of a bottle with his magic and took it with him as he continued to the customer side of the bar.
I licked around my dry throat and followed his example, as did the rest of us.
We gathered in a small circle before the bar, just sitting on the wooden floorboards together, quietly sating our thirst.
Camellia's magic made sure none of the sounds of our popping corks and gulping our drinks made it out of the room, but it also prevented us from talking about what to do next.
I would have to make a note of the bar's name if we ventured out from here so I could send money over later to pay for these waters we took.
I looked around the faces of our little group as we each drank from our bottles.
Crook appeared to be thinking ahead to the next steps, his brow furrowed, his eyes focused on the empty space between us.
Burst was similarily lost in thought, the corners of her mouth pulled downward as if she was displeased with the whole situation.
Camellia peered up at the tip of her horn as if to make sure her magic was kept under control.
Tizzy was leaning into Meadowsweet's side again, half-burrowed into the Earthpony's soft fur as if needing it to console her.
For her part, Meadowsweet had truly been a champ; overcoming her longstanding fear of us in a relatively short amount of time, daring to jump in when Tizzy needed help to overcome her own fear of Ponies, and now seeming like the rock my sister needed to cling to to get through this.
I smiled to her and she gave me a helpless shrug in return.
Meadowsweet knew the fear which lingered between our races. She knew what Tizzy felt, even if it was from the other side of the proverbial fence. I considered that her moving in to help Tizzy was as much to try and prove that she was a worthy addition to our team as to prove to herself that she would no longer be controlled by her own fears.
Once we had all finished our drinks, Crook led us behind the bar again and through the small kitchen to the back entrance.
We stepped out into the back alleys behind the stores, the same ones Burst, Meadowsweet, and Camellia had gone through on our way to Applejack's cart.
Instead of heading to the cart storage, Crook led us in the opposite direction.
I saw Camellia cast a concerned glance in the direction I knew her house was in, but she followed our navigator's lead instead of daring to go off on her own.
She would be safe here, as a Pony in a city of Ponies, but she had a task to perform and we Changelings would be right back in jail if we lost the cover of her magic spell.
We followed the alleyways out of the commercial district, with Crook pausing to check whether the coast was clear before we crossed mainstreet to enter one of the richer of the residential districts.
As I followed I noticed a small group of guards patrolling the empty streets, far enough down the road that they wouldn't hear us even without Camellia's magic muffling our hooffalls, but it was the first sign that we weren't out of the woods yet.
Crook sent us through a gap in a bush, through a garden, and out behind the house into a service passage few ponies would have considered to exist between the house we passed on the city level we were on and the level slightly above it.
We followed this barely hidden wall which was clearly part of the city's foundation which kept it from sliding down the mountain it was built up against.
I considered for a moment what I knew of the megaprojects back home. How much work would it cost a construction crew on Earth to build a city like this without magic at their disposal?
It was amazing to consider this city housed so many Ponies while it could collapse in on itself from any one of the attacks Equestria had suffered over the years.
Discord could turn the city inside-out on a whim, those dogs Rarity came across in an episode or two could burrow under the city to undermine the foundation, we Changelings could even have considered that to be an option if we had been out to destroy Canterlot rather than take its citizens hostage to feed on them.
Crook stopped, his eyes trained on a light which was approaching us rapidly from the other side of the hedge to our right.
We Changelings were dark enough with our grey skin to blend in with the darkness of the night, but Camellia's yellow mane and purple coat might be more easy to spot even through the scrub. Meadowsweet's green mane and short green tail would blend in with the foliage, but her pink coat could just as easily get spotted as Camellia's.
Burst moved to pin Camellia between her Changeling form and the wall to our left, the Unicorn dousing her magic for a moment so the glow of her horn would not betray our presence.
I looked back to see Tizzy had taken to the example given by Burst and was covering Meadowsweet in a similar fashion.
The light continued to approach us for another moment, hooffalls nearing us on a surface which sounded like loose gravel on someone's lawn. The sound changed as their owner stepped on a wooden surface, and the light stopped moving.
I held my breath as I heard a quick rapping of a hoof against a wooden door.
Silence.
Another such rapping, and it was now followed by muffled stumbling about.
The hinges of a door creaked as it was drawn open, and a tired male voice called out "Who's there at this late hour?"
Another male voice returned the question, this voice obviously coming from the pony who had carried the light with them.
"Sunbeam, there's been a break-in at the shop. The guards are present, but it looks like a number of coats have gone missing," they spoke with some urgency to their voice.
"What do you mean break-in? Who would break in to a dry cleaner's?" the first voice wondered, the tiredness quickly disappearing from their voice. "Give me a second to grab something and I'll come with you."
There was another stumbling about, but then the door creaked as it was swung open further than before.
"Okay, I got my bag. Let's go," the first voice decided, and the light started to move again.
The door creaked and clicked shut, then their hooffalls moved from the wooden porch onto the gravel, leading away from us at a rushed pace.
Crook waited until the sound had gone a fair distance away from us, then turned to look back at the rest of us. "Sounds like one of our groups decided to go for disguises."
"Not too dissimilar from what Pearl and I did earlier," Burst remembered. "If more groups break into shops to get items to escape with, we might get the alarm raised soon."
"Yeah," Crook agreed. "I was thinking about that as well. Let's round this edge to the Eastern part of town. There should be a part of the outer wall there we could fly over without being detected."
"Meadowsweet and I can't fly, you know that right?" Camellia reminded Crook.
"We'll lift you up and over between us if needed," I suggested. "There's four of us and two of you; should be easy enough."
"Unless you ponies want to stay behind," Crook wondered.
"You might need my magic on the way down the mountainside," Camellia considered while shaking her head lightly. "And I want to see this through. We've gotten this far and I want to know how many of the groups made it."
"Same here," Meadowsweet agreed. "I can't abandon Tizzy now."
"We'll hoist you both over the wall when we get to it then," Crook decided. "We should hurry on. Use your magic again please, Camellia? We'll make a dash for the spot I mentioned, so we might have to make more noise than before."
"I'm not sure I can run any faster than we have already without losing control of the spell," Camellia warned. "It would be different if I had something to anchor the spell to, but it's difficult to keep track of where we all are at any given moment so I can extend the bubble accordingly."
"Something to anchor to?" I repeated. "Like the walls in the jail, you mean?"
"Yes, exactly," Camellia agreed. "The spell is embedded in them and all that is needed to keep it active is an infusion of mana every so often. It's a passive spell beyond that."
"Would my necklace work?" I wondered, using my left forehoof to lift the pearl away from my barrel to hold it up for her to look at.
Burst turned to face me, an accusing glare on her face. "See, this is what I was saying earlier, Pearl; you come up with the most bonkers of ideas."
"Yes she does, but it may just work," Camellia considered. "It depends on how brittle the material is, but if it's solid enough it will hold the spell for... let's see, it's not too big an item, so I would say five to ten minutes?"
"We can make it past the wall in under ten minutes," Crook calculated.
"This. This is what I mean," Burst complained. "Of course it will work; Pearl thought it up."
"Stop it," I sighed. "I'm just saying it may work."
"No, it will," Burst pressed. "I'm telling you it will."
"There's no other way to find out but to try," Camellia reasoned, her horn charging up again with her magic. "Hold still."
I stood as still as I could, continuing to hold the pearl up with my left forehoof, even as the Unicorn's magic launched from the tip of her horn and hit my self-made pendant like a bolt of lightning hitting a lightning rod.
The energy infused the pearl and slowly but surely I could start to hear the sounds withdraw from around us as if I was turning an analog volume knob.
I moved my jaw a bit as I slowly went deaf, noticing Burst doing the same a moment after.
Camellia didn't stop her magic until she was sure we were essentially deaf to the world around us, and tested this by raising her own left forehoof and hitting the ground on which she stood hard enough for her to wince lightly.
Nothing.
Burst opened her mouth to say something, but there was no sound.
I could tell from the accusatory, yet oddly victorious, expression that she was most likely pointing out that she had been right to claim it would work out.