With the pearl now used as an anchor for Camellia's spell, its effect was strangely stronger than when she had sent it out from her horn.
The sound dampening effect of the spell made me feel dizzy, as if my inner ear had need of sound to help stabilize it.
I had to let go of my necklace and spread my legs out a bit more than usual to make sure I wouldn't fall sideways until I could get my bearings back.
The rest of our little group were handling the situation with different levels of discomfort; Burst seemed absolutely fine or was not showing her discomfort outwardly.
Crook had a light twitch to his right eye but was otherwise fine. Camellia just smiled as if she was glad the pearl did not explode from her magic seeping into it, not showing any signs of discomfort either.
I looked back to Tizzy and Meadowsweet and found my Changeling sister supporting the Earthpony for once.
Meadowsweet might have been feeling more dizzy than I was, I realised.
There was a sudden tap to my right shoulder and I brought my attention forward again.
Burst motioned for Crook, who had already wandered off a little to show which direction he wanted us to go in, and Camellia was in the process of following after him.
I gave a nod to Burst to signal that I understood, then turned back to motion to the other two that we were going to move again.
Meadowsweet took a careful step forward, with Tizzy making sure she wouldn't fall sideways, and I reconsidered going up ahead of them.
I instead took a step or two closer to the wall and motioned for the pair of them to pass me by, expressly staying on the side of Meadowsweet which didn't have a Tizzy connected to it by the hip.
As they moved by, I detached from the wall and instead pressed my right side into the Earthpony's left, wedging her between Tizzy and me.
Meadowsweet gave me a concerned sideglance, but I just gave a quick nod forward to the three others waiting for us.
Whether by Tizzy pushing into her from the right or her own understanding that I was effectively holding her upright as well, she did not pull away as much as I had expected.
We quickly joined the others and Crook resumed leading the way.
Without Camellia's horn shining a soft ambient glow around us as it had before, we were soon running by the light of Luna's moon high above us in the sky and the few lights of the homes surrounding us.
There were moments where Crook almost disappeared against the backdrop and the three of us connected at the hip had to rely on following Camellia instead as she was the only one standing out in the darker areas we passed through.
Crook soon steered us away from the service corridor we had been using, out through another pony's garden, and onto the proper street again.
We followed it down to another level of the city, then used a side street to go between a number of houses smaller than the ones on the level above.
These homes were closer to the one Camellia had invited us to; they connected to the side street we were passing through and their gardens, if they had one, were on the more private side of the building.
I noticed in a glimpse as we passed by it that there were small alleyways leading into these small courtyards between structures, but it was too dark to see much detail beyond.
Crook did his usual zig-zagging from one street to the next, and I soon forgot from where we had started this mad dash.
It was not like I could ask, what with the pony magic radiating out from my necklace, so I just focused on keeping Meadowsweet up between Tizzy and myself and keep pace with the other three.
We finally ended up behind one of the homes, in one of the small private gardens on this level, next to a tree which did its best to grow out above the large city wall it had been planted beside.
I finally detached from Meadowsweet at this point, giving the Earthpony a moment to find her own balance, and walked up to Crook.
I nudged his shoulder and then motioned at the wall.
He gave me a nod and made an arching motion with his right forehoof as if to suggest this was the place he intended for us to fly over.
I looked around to get my bearing; the tree was doing a good job of hiding this part of the wall from the nearest guard tower, which was only visible against the night's sky because the guards had a lamp on in it.
We would be nigh impossible to spot as long as we didn't carry a light on us.
I had to give it to Crook; it was a perfect blind spot in Canterlot's defense.
I gave a decisive nod in Crook's direction, then motioned between Burst, Camellia, and him.
He looked the Unicorn over, then gave me a nod in return and moved to explain to Burst that the two of them would focus on Camellia using similar gestures.
I returned to Meadowsweet and Tizzy, and explained in a similar fashion that Tizzy and I would lift Meadowsweet over the wall.
The poor Earthpony looked hesitant.
I spread my insectoid wings out from under my back plate and flew up a little in front of her.
It was strange to be flying without hearing the buzz of my wings cutting through the air. Stranger still to look around and realise both Crook and Burst were also in the air.
Not having heard their wings buzz, I had been unaware of them having taken flight as well.
The pair of them took hold of Camellia's forelegs, Crook taking her left, and Burst then swooping in to hold onto her right, then easily pulled the Unicorn up in the air with them.
Camellia struggled a little as the ground disappeared from under her hooves, her ears flattening and her back legs kicking to seek support, but my siblings quickly flew up and over the wall without waiting for her to calm down.
I turned back to Meadowsweet and raised my eyebrow at her, holding my forelegs up to her as Tizzy took flight as well.
The Earthpony sighed without sound, then carefully offered me her left foreleg.
I hooked my forelegs around her limb and waited for Tizzy to do the same on the pony's right side.
Meadowsweet's weight settled on me as she leaned into our hold, and I had to increase the speed at which I was moving my wings in order to stay in the air.
I looked past Meadowsweet at Tizzy to see if she was ready to take flight, and she gave a cautious nod in my direction.
I increased my wingspeed more and up we went, pulling the Pony between us off the ground for possibly the first time in her Pony life.
I had to adjust a little to fly at the same speed as Tizzy, and then again as Meadowsweet struggled against her need to have something solid under her hooves, but then we stabilized.
Forward, to the wall. Stay near the tree so as to not get spotted by the Pony guards.
Up and over, I thought, but the wall was thicker than I had anticipated it would be.
The three of us could have easily walked side-by-side on top of it, and this meant we had a brief moment where we could be seen.
I felt pressured to speed up, but Tizzy had trouble keeping up with it and I had to slow down again.
We moved past the wall only to find a waterfall just past it. I had not heard the rushing water because of the bubble of silence around us, but it was very clearly visible in the light of Luna's moon shining down upon it.
I felt the water spraying against my skin as I continued onward, forward, trying to figure out where the other three had gone.
They were there, just up ahead, just past the raging waters, on a small rocky outcrop jutting out from the Southeastern side of the mountain.
We continued toward them and made sure there was solid ground, not raging water, below us before we then quickly dropped down to join them on this outcropping.
The drop was a little too quick as we feared being discovered, my stomach responding from the sudden negative G's, but then we could lower Meadowsweet onto the ground again and let go of her.
She instantly fell down onto the ground as if it was the most precious thing ever, and I shook my head at the comical display while landing a few paces beside her.
I needed a moment to think about what we just did; we were outside of Canterlot's walls, on the steep slope of the Southeastern face of the mountain, which the Ponies had not built on. Not yet, at least.
I looked into the distance, seeing the dark landscape spread out for miles and miles. A welcome sight after having spent a few days cooped up in Camellia's house and the palace jail.
Even in the dim light I could see a forest not too far away from the base of the mountain. It would be a good place to hide away in, and most likely the place the rest of our family had sought to go to as well, but we would first need to get down the steep slope from where we now sat before we could reach it.
And that might be a problem considering we could barely see a hoof in front of our eyes.
If we were to run down the mountain without lighting our way, we could trip on any loose rock or slightly more sturdy plant in our way, causing us to roll down and potentially break something on the way.
If we wanted to see where we were going we could always use magic, but that would draw attention from the nearby Pony guards.
Had it been just us four Changelings, we could have flown off in any direction away from the city and give any Pony guards trying to chase us a run for their money.
But with Camellia and Meadowsweet with us we would have to plan around taking them with us.
I considered just how badly Meadowsweet had been traumatized by our recent flight over the wall; flying down would probably not be an option.
The sound of the nearby water rushing by hit my ears and I had to look around a moment to figure out what it was and where it was coming from.
Slowly but surely the sound increased as the magic infused in my necklace lost power, until the sound was nearly deafening.
I sat down and reached my forehooves up to press against my ears to keep them from getting overwhelmed by the noise.
"You didn't say there would be a waterfall here," I called out a bit louder than I may have wanted to while we were still this close to Canterlot.
Crook shrugged while plugging his own ears with his hooves. "Everyone knows there's a waterfall on this side of Canterlot."
Oval shook her head at that. "I know you don't like explaining yourself little brother, but Pearl is from a different world than ours. Of course she wouldn't have known."
"It was enough that the wall was thicker than I expected, but that bubble of silence prevented me from hearing the waterfall until we were right over it. We nearly dropped Meadowsweet right in it," I complained.
"I'm so glad you didn't," Meadowsweet exhumed. "I'm never flying again."
I slowly let my hooves drop away from my ears as they got used to sound being a part of the world we were in again.
"On that note; it looks like we still have a way to go before we're out of reach of the Canterlot guards. If we're to run down this sharp slope, we may trip and fall," I pointed out in a softer voice now our ears were used to hearing sounds again.
I motioned past Meadowsweet at the dark slope directly underneath the outcrop, extending down to the dark silhouette of the forest a ways below us.
"It would be faster and safer to fly down," I continued. "We can stay closer to the ground since we don't have to go over a wall, but flying is still the better option if you ask me."
Meadowsweet looked at me as if I had slapped her in the face with my hoof. After what she had just said, my words were an almost instant betrayal of her feelings.
"I just said I don't want to fly again," she hissed. "Is there no other path we can take?"
"No," admitted Crook, making me believe he had fully expected our Pony escorts to have stayed behind in Canterlot.
"We're exposed here in any case," Crook suggested, looking past Meadowsweet, Tizzy and myself at the wall we had flown over. "We're still within the bubble of anti-transformation magic surrounding the city, so it's not like we can wait for sunrise."
I considered the shape of the city as it sat wedged up against the side of the mountain, the size of it and the palace, and the size of the magic bubble if it had to surround all of it. It was more than likely that the entire mountain, from the base of it up to the very tip, was covered in the spell.
"I second the idea of flying down," Crook added. "We'll do as Pearl said and stay close to the ground so we can land if needed, but it's a better option than running down, tripping, and then rolling the rest of the way."
"Well, of course we're doing it according to Pearl's plan," Burst decried while staring at me accusingly. "She's never wrong about these things."
"I'm not so sure why you're so annoyed by that," I wondered with a frown at my sister's outburst. "I'm getting bothered by it myself, to be honest. I don't feel like I should have this central of a role in any of this."
"Just accept it, Pearl," Camellia spoke with a grin. "I think you're going to go places before you know it."
"Hoofton," Burst stated immediately. "If we're going places, our first stop after this is Hoofton."
"That's not what I meant," Camellia sighed to Burst being willfully obtuse. "I'm going to vote for flying down as well. That was a rush just now and I'd love to experience again. Do we need to use the spell to hide our movements?"
"Our wings do make a noise while in flight," I pondered.
"The silence was getting to me in that last part, actually," Tizzy spoke up. "It was so absolute that I couldn't even hear my own wings while we flew over here."
I turned to face her as she moved her wings to illustrate her point, that familiar buzz of insectoid wings which I had first become familiar with in the Hive mixing in with the continued sound of water rushing down the nearby waterfall.
"I usually use the tone they make as an indicator for how fast I fly, so I struggled to keep up with Pearl," Tizzy explained before folding her wings under her back plate again.
"That's why I have such trouble with Pegasi forms," Oval considered. "Flying with those feathered wings doesn't make sense to me."
"Training, big brother," Crook chuckled. "I think that's four of us agreeing to fly down. Would it help you if we took it slow, Meadowsweet?"
The Royal Gardener flattened her ears in defeat. "I guess..."
"No time like the present," Camellia suggested eagerly, clearly wanting to experience the rush of being flown about once more.
"We could wait until Meadowsweet is ready for it? You three could scout ahead and find out if any of our family made it down there yet?" I suggested, trying to give the Earthpony some more time to gather her wits about her.
Meadowsweet stood up with sudden determination, shaking her head. "No, no... Camellia is right. If we're going to do it, we should do it now. If we wait any longer I might never be ready for it."