I can honestly say I love him.

Uh… I wouldn’t know.

Might want to let them come down first.

Lot of drugs leave a pretty potent smell.

The same way you’d kiss a pony.

Princess has a point. You apologize and tell them your real name, along with a background.

You were born on a farm in a quiet town and had a simple youth. Your siblings made certain you remained in school and studied a vast number of subjects. You tried a number of things growing up, but found your special talent in metallurgy, explaining your cutie mark. Your family was supportive but sad by your decision to move off the apple farm and begin your training as a blacksmith. You still visit your brother and sister, but your grandmother has since passed on.

Your name is Applebloom. Your cutie mark is a hammer hovering over a red anvil with a leaf hanging off of the step, making up the anvil’s horn.

You finish up by telling them they don’t have to give you their names. They can consider this information part of the apology.

The only information they offer so far is that they were also born in Ponyville.

The three of you are warmed up enough to try something else.

No.

You ask Princess if she can redraw the map with a little more detail, but she says what’s there already should serve it’s purpose well enough. Food is short, so time is of the essence here. Namy seems a little sad by your implied critique of her work.

After you suggest checking out the little face drawing, the three of you set out through the snow. It’s cold on your hoofsies and the snow coming down chills you further with each passing second.

You activate your super secret special talent and shapeshift into a jet fighter! Taking off at the blink of an eye you quickly pick up speed and gain altitude. Before long, you’re high enough to begin your strike! Bombs rain down in a fantastic fashion and obliterate the surrounding area! Then you turn your attention to the cursed sun and speed toward it through space! It’ll never see you coming!

…

Not really. In fact, none of that happened. You just started galloping around in circles making engine and explosion noises. When your pseudonym partners ask you what you’re doing, you just tell them you’re keeping warm.

The three of you start to look though the wreckage of what appears to have at one point been a house. But every time you wipe snow off of something, more comes down to replace it. You continuously get colder and colder and eventually Princess requests the three of you head back to the awning. Being that there’s no way you’ll get any work done like this, you can’t help but agree.

Back where you began, and trying to warm up with more fighter jet noises, you pause and ask for your companion’s real names. Princess, hooves on her hips, looks offended, saying you’re the one that started the name-lying game. She and Namy already know each other’s names, and would have told you if you’d been straightforward at the start. But now even if you told them yours, they’d have to think about it.

Namy says she doesn’t mind being called Namy because it’s sort of like Amy, and that’s kind of a cool name.

Hug me when I’m awake again later today. Was out this morning helping Bon-Bon with yard work and I didn’t get enough sleep.

Certainly, plenty of times.

Not so much anymore, though. It always turns into a back and forth and I invariably escalate things too far.

You’re just a chicken.

Ah-cheep cheep cheep cheep cheep!

A few minutes pass and Namy abruptly lands in front of the two of you and back under the awning. After shaking the snow off, she pulls out a piece of paper to show the both of you. She says she’s sorry it’s not very good, she tried her best but the cold was starting to get to her.

It looks like a map of the area. The three of you are in the northwestern corner. Namy says the small boxes are the destroyed buildings. She couldn’t be sure what the other three were.

Surely there’s some locks to try picking out there somewhere.

You leap to Princess and start spouting all manner of mysticism-fearing sentiments. Going so far as grabbing her horn and swatting at the light, though without striking her. Enraged, she shoves you off of her. Evidently walking down the dark corridor is serious time. You’re always the last pony to find out these things.

Princess begins to slowly lead, having taken your nonsense to mean you aren’t going to help. But you decide better and head on in front. You glance back a few times to make sure Princess and Namy are still behind you, and the pace is much quicker this way.

You begin to softly hum a little tune, though you can’t remember where you first heard it. Princess and Namy recognize it, but they can’t remember it’s origin either. The three of you spend the next minute or so humming various tunes, some you recognize and some you don’t. For the first time, the three of you seem to all be getting along.

As you near the stairway, you start to wish you had brought the spear along. It’s not that you couldn’t have carried all of the weapons and then some; they certainly weren’t that heavy. But this isn’t a video game and the actual act of carrying them would have proven difficult. You already have a bow slung over your back, a quiver with twenty arrows on your side, your saddlebags with a little food, and the clawed gauntlet on your right forehoof. The staff and spear are still back in the armory, if you ever need them.

The stairs emerge into what amounts to little more than a stone awning; much smaller than the hall you first entered. Pillars support the roof, but there are no walls. From here you see snow on the ground, and more falling from the sky. It’s certainly much colder out here than where you entered! In the distance are a few structures, but some of them look destroyed.

Stepping toward the edge of the roof and looking up reveals this area to be a boxed canyon. The cliff sides go up quite a ways, and even curve slightly inward. The cloud producing the snow is actually resting inside the crown, obscuring the sky.

Namy sounds perplexed. She says she’s flown over and around every inch of this mountain a thousand times and never seen an opening like this. Before anything else can be said, she puts her knives away and takes to the skies.

She disappears from view.

You follow behind Princess, which seems to be turning into a pattern. You’re still getting used to walking on three hooves because of the gauntlet, but it isn’t so bad. Much easier if you brace yourself against a wall while moving.

At the bottom of the stairs is what appears to be a long hallway. You see a faint light coming from another set of stairs leading back upward at the end, but in between it’s too dark to see. Namy’s sense of direction is telling her that you’re heading further into the mountain. It’s a little warmer here than it was outside and in the hall, but not as warm as the armory was.

Princess activates a minor light spell, but seems reluctant to lead.