The Lost Castle of Aberdovy
Prompt: Deep Castle

The woodcut had teased her imagination since she was a little filly.

Sure, she knew about castles, everypony did. They were gleaming edifices of marble and white limestone and gold-capped spires. Their crenelated walkways carried brave stallions back and forth on their patrols. They were surrounded by green gardens and technicolor flowerbeds.

Princesses lived in castles.

And then there was the other kind of castle, the kind spoken of when it was dark out, when the lantern was turned down low or when the Filly Scouts were around a fire, and those were the forgotten castles, former home of some noble or another. Just the time-darkened skeleton of stones, their neat-cut edges weathered and crumbly. Bats and vines lived in those castles and maybe they were haunted, it was possible.

Especially to a young filly on her first Filly Scouts trip.

By the light of day, such a thing seemed silly; who would build a castle--or at least live in one--and then leave it to crumble? Her Mom and Dad always fixed things at home, or hired somepony to do it.

Neither type of castle was lost, though. And as she went through school and learned pony history, she kept coming back to that woodcut, the Lost Castle of Aberdovy.

It was a simple enough thing, drawn like a castle--there was no single feature of it that stood out, at least in the book. Gently sloping walls of the valley surrounded it, covered in what she imagined was lush greenery.

She’d colored in the woodcuts in some of her books when she was a foal, but never this one. She didn’t have to; she could see it that clearly in her mind, from the simple rutted dirt path leading up to the drawbridge, to the glint of light off the armor of the stallions who patrolled the parapet.

She could see, in her mind’s eye, the patches of farmland around it, ponies working their fields and maybe looking up at it themselves.

Or in the autumn, the trees all yellow and orange around it, descending down the valley on either side like curtains framing a stage play. In the winter, alight with candles and lanterns in all the windows, full of holiday cheer . . .

How did it get lost?

That question stayed with her as she grew up. Unless somepony had made up that woodcut--which was possible--at least one somepony had known where that castle was.

She didn’t think it was a made-up castle; she thought it really existed. Or had existed: sometimes as Equestria had modernized old structures got torn down to make way for new ones. Nopony really needed a castle anymore, except the Princesses.

And some of her unicorn classmates, to hear them tell it.

But even if it had been disassembled for parts, wouldn’t somepony know that? Even if the site was nothing more now than a few foundation stones, or age-darkened crumbling walls, it would still be there in the valley.



“You want to do what? for your senior project?”

“I want to look for a castle,” Sea Swirl said calmly.

“You’re not even an archelogy major,” the professor protested.

“I know. But the rules say I have to do a senior project to graduate, they don’t say that it has to be in my major. I just need your blessing, because it’s your department.”

“Other students have looked.”

“I know.” She lit her horn and pulled a ream of paper out of her saddlebags, copies of former students’ theses, ancient maps, and notebooks filled with her own theories on where the Lost Castle of Aberdovy was located.

The professor glanced over the theses--he’d seen most of them before--and then slid over Sea Swirl’s notebook. He skimmed through the pages, getting at least the gist of her notes. As he reached the end, his eyebrow raised. “This is very unusual.”

“The request, or my theory?”

He chuckled, a deep noise that came from his chest. “Both. I approve of your senior project.”

And thus, Sea Swirl found herself getting off a train in the hinterlands of Equestria, in the company of a taciturn stallion named Coco Crusoe.

Besides being the muscle for the trip, he was also her stallionfriend. Just the same, as he surveyed the road leading to the train station--and then the dirt path leading away from it, which was where they would be going--he frowned.

“Gonna be a lot of walking.”

“I know.” Sea Swirl picked up a supply pack and slid it on over her saddlebags, making sure it was securely fastened. She’d absolutely minimized what she was carrying and what he was carrying, she’d made some concessions which maybe weren’t so smart but she’d find out.

“We couldn’t have done it a couple years ago,” she said. “Before they built this train station, we’d have been on hoof for a few more days.”



The peak offered a pegasus-eye view of the ridges stretching out around them, and was a fine place to camp for the first night. Coco set up the tent while Sea Swirl got a small fire started, just enough to give them some light and warmth, and to warm a tea kettle.

When he’d finished setting up the tent, Coco reached into his saddlebags and pulled out a rice cake. They’d been supplementing their food supply with foraged food; the hills offered a plentiful bounty.

“Careful near the edge,” Coco said. “Lot of this rock isn’t very strong.” He stomped the ground to illustrate his point, and they both listened to the rattle of rocks off the edge--despite the two of them being four or five ponylengths away from it.

“Do you want to move our camp further down?”

He shook his head. “If’n this breaks loose, I’d rather ride atop it, than have it come down on us. You can use your magic to pull us out, can’t you?”

Sea Swirl thought about that. “Yeah, sure I can.”



The next morning, she helped Coco pack up the tent, and then the two of them had some coffee. Neither felt like starting a fire, so the gnawed some beans and washed it down with water.

“That’s the worst way to have coffee ever,” Sea Swirl grumbled.

“Daring Do did it in one of her books.”

“Daring Do isn’t real.”

“She is, I met her once.”

“No you didn’t.”

“Swear to Celestia I did,” Coco said, and put his hoof against his breast. “She was wearing a poncho and a rain hat and had on glasses, but I could tell it was her, she looked exactly like the Daring Do on the cover of all the books.”

“That doesn’t mean--”

Coco shook his head. “I know what I saw. Same as you know what you saw in your book, where you think your lost castle is.”

“It’s over there,” Sea Swirl said, pointing a hoof at a distant ridge. “It has to be.”

He nodded, and locked his eyes on the ridge. To him, it was nothing special; it was just the same as all the others. Covered in trees, mostly, with some bare scars where rockslides had happened over the years. “We ain’t making it tonight, not with going down and back up again. You shoulda hired an airship.”

Sea Swirl stuck her tongue out at him, and then proceeded over the edge, watching where each hoof landed. The ground was treacherous, and this was nominally a path. Tomorrow they’d have to do some serious bushwhacking.

It would hardly be a lost castle if there was a path going up to it.



The two of them relaxed in the small hamlet at the bottom of the next valley.

Coco looked over at Sea Swirl, who was happily munching on a rice cake held in her field. He wanted to ask her if she wanted to call it early today and spend the night in town--by his estimation, they wouldn’t have enough time to make it to the ridge by nightfall, which would mean setting up camp on the slope.

But he saw the intense focus in her eyes, so he kept his muzzle shut and regarded the path that wound back up the side of the next ridge, eyeballing what he figured would be the least difficult route to get where they were going.

There really was no need; they were going to be bushwhacking regardless, and it would be easier to do that along the ridge then on an upslope. Probably.

He shifted around on his hooves, arching his back to re-settle the weight of the pack. He was sweating under all the gear and there wasn’t much he could do about that.

“You ready?”

“Drink some water,” he advised. “Those cakes are fulla nutrition, but they’ll dry you out.”

She nodded, and took a sip of water out of her canteen, then levitated it into the stream to refill it.



The sun went down quicker in the mountains. The sky was still light, but the land blocked it from reaching them.

They were close to the top, so Coco didn’t suggest stopping for the night. They could push on--he’d rather set up camp at night on flatish ground than search for somewhere here.

Unless they camped in the middle of the path, which was a possibility; they hadn’t seen anypony hoofing their way down the trail all day.



The moon was high in the sky when they stopped for the night. Coco set up camp while Sea Swirl surveyed the moonlit land around them, studying what she could see of the walls of the next ridge over.

For the first time, he saw a small frown play across her face.

“It looks different in moonlight,” he told her. “Come on, get some sleep, you’re going to be busy tomorrow.”

She nodded and followed him into the tent, and once he’d settled down onto his bedroll, she nestled up against him and pulled the blanket up.

Sea Swirl closed her eyes but sleep didn’t come. It wasn’t that she was eager--eagerness had propelled her up the path and let her ignore her aching back and sore hooves, the tautness in her muscles that was only now starting to ease.

What if I’m wrong? She’d read lots of papers, done plenty of studying, and all the ponies who’d actually gone searching for the Lost Castle of Aberdovy had surely been confident that they knew where it was: they wouldn’t have gone looking if they weren’t.

And they hadn’t found it.



“Right here,” Sea Swirl said. “It’s gotta be.”

The two of them were still on the ridge, since it was easier to bushwhack their way along that.

She stood up on her hind hooves and took a look at the valley below. “It’s not the right perspective, but--” She turned her head, scanning east and west on the opposite slope. “I feel it in my bones.” She pointed down the slope. “There’s a rocky outcropping there, if we can get down there, then I’ll make my way to the bottom.”

He nodded and set off, while Sea Swirl followed.



For a moment, she saw the castle just as she always had in her mind. It towered over the valley floor, defending the entrance to the village that used to exist behind it. Sunlight illuminated the crenelations on the towers, and shone through the empty window frames.

It was more intact than she’d had any reason to hope and as she walked towards the inviting main gate of it, it was as if she were a filly again.

Sadly, the portcullis was down and even though the iron bars were so rusted she could have easily kicked her way through, she didn’t want to. In fact, she could turn around now; she’d accomplished her mission and found the Lost Castle of Aberdovy, but of course she had to explore it.

She frowned as a brief glint of reflected light came from the parapet; she hadn’t expected the castle to still be guarded.



Coco ignored the rocking of the coracle as he pumped the bellows up and down, a nice steady beat. It was automatic, practically: once he got in a rhythm, he could let his mind wander.

He cast his eyes out around the lake, then the lush greenery flanking it.

He’d seen the woodcut, Coco had showed him more than once, and he had no idea how she’d come to the conclusion that the castle was down there underwater--oh sure, she’d explained her theory of how a rockslide had blocked the river and everything had flooded and that all made sense, but the castle could have been anyplace else. Seemed like somepony would have moved the rocks and let the river get back out before the castle flooded.

But she was confident, and so here he was in the coracle, pumping the bellows that kept air flowing to her suit.



Sea Swirl dropped a few of the rocks she’d been carrying to give herself some positive buoyancy, and she hopped through a window frame, being careful not to snag her hose. She didn’t want to go far--it would be dangerous to go far--but she wanted to know what the inside looked like, at least, so she walked around the keep, trying her best to keep from kicking up silt and always aware that her air hose, her lifeline was stretched through a window.

And when she was done with her exploration of the keep, she jumped back through the window, then dropped another rock and started drifting slowly up, along the smooth stone walls that had so often appeared in her dreams, up to the crenellated parapet and then the very top of one of the watchtowers.

She reached out with her magic and caught hold of one of the stoned and pulled herself in, bracing on the rotten wooden flooring.

Her magic reached out and she let some air out of her suit, just enough that she could rest all four hooves on the rough-hewn planks and she turned and surveyed what she could see of the valley floor. She had found the Lost Castle of Aberdovy.