Daring Do pored over the ancient codex. It was a secondhoof copy of a thirdhoof account, but she'd worked with far worse and still uncovered more than one ancient treasure that could've spelled the end of the world. Compared to the Voyneigh Manuscript, this was foal's—

She winced. Okay, bad phrasing, but the point stood. She was so close to pinning down the properties of the Staff of the World she could almost taste it.

"Daring?"

She sighed as the voice broke her focus. "In the study." Moving to an actual settlement came with a lot of perks, but having to deal with other ponies on a regular basis wasn't one of them. Having to [i]live[/i] with one...

Well, it had its perks if she was being honest, but also its headaches.

"Oh, for... Really?" She looked up to see her husband scowling down at her. "You are really doing this."

She defiantly scowled up at Caballeron and shook off the deja vu. "Yes, I am. I have a deadline approaching like a perfectly preserved ancient death trap, and it may well come with another averted apocalypse."

He rolled his eyes as he walked about the study, stepping over piles of ancient documents and pulling open the window blinds. Light flooded the room, and Daring shaded her face with a wing. "That deadline got extended for a year," said Caballeron. "You know it. I know it. Your editor knows it, because she is the one who gave you the extension."

"Careful, some of these manuscripts don't do well in direct sunlight!" Daring moved to shade her current tome, wincing as she banged a shin on her desk.

"Point." Caballeron closed the blinds again and smirked at her. "However, I have gotten you to stand, which was my true intention."

Daring rolled her eyes. "Yes, Rico, you're very clever."

"And my point about the deadline extension stands as well."

"Velvet's still riding the emotional high of her daughter's accession." Daring glanced at what was by far the most recent document in the study, a week-old newspaper with the new reigning princess taking up the front page. "Once she comes down, so will the axe. It happened when Sparkle got wings, it'll happen now, mark my words."

Caballeron—even when calling him by his first name, it was hard to think of him as anything else—scowled and crossed his forelegs. "That is not the only factor and you know it."

"That's a minor inconven—" Daring winced at another internal blow.

"I do not call you being nearly ten months pregnant with my foal a 'minor inconvenience.'"

Daring snorted, not even glancing at her pronounced form. "Oh, I see how it is. When I made offerings to the porcelain altar, they were [i]my[/i] foal. But when I'm tracking down a potential museum piece—"

Caballeron flinched back. "Are you seriously accusing me of planning to hock something on the black market? After all we've been through?" Ears flat, shoulders slumped... He look more genuinely hurt than Daring had expected.

But then she thought about the specifics of what they'd been through. "Are you?"

He brought a hoof to his chin. Daring couldn't help but smirk. "I wasn't being—"

"Ah!" Caballeron held up the other forehoof, and she fell silent. After a lengthy pause, he said, "It is far too high-profile. With the average piece out of the Tenochitlan Basin, fewer than a hundred ponies would recognize it. But this is an iconic ancient pegasus artifact. I have known archeologists who got it for a cutie mark." He cleared his throat. "Besides, I burned those bridges when I divulged everything I knew to the authorities."

The smirk grew into a warm smile. "Best engagement present you could've gotten me."

"Well, I am glad you appreciated it. If I tried to negotiate a drop-off these days, I would be lucky to get out alive, much less rich. And between the hazards of acquiring items to sell and all the times you [i]thwarted my schemes[/i]..." Caballeron took a deep breath and smiled. "These days I make almost as much with book sales.

"But that is not the point," he said as his expression twisted into a scowl. "The point is that I cannot allow you to go out performing your usual nonsense in your condition!"

"'Allow' me?" Daring gave a humorless laugh. "You don't [i]allow[/i] me to do things, Rico, you try and fail to stop me."

"And our foal? If they even come to term, will you gallivant off to the four corners of the world while I have to explain that Mommy got crushed to death under ten tons of ancient stone, or antagonized another guardian beast? One that prefers direct elimination to slow-acting death traps?"

"Hey, guardians have become a key part of my research these days. I don't want to mess with them, and neither do my readers." Daring sighed. "At least Princess Twilight appreciated the meditations on the imperialist assumptions of archeology in [i]The Secret of Ahuizotl.[/i] Most ponies thought it was worse than the time I lived through a megaspell by hiding in an icebox."

"[i]I[/i] still cannot believe that actually happened, and I saw you get out of it." Caballeron shook his head. "But you distract me again. Is it so bad to have to hang up the pith helmet? And don't tell me you [i]need[/i] the adventures to come up with decent plots." He smirked. "I have seen all the ways you defamed me over the years; I know you have quite the creative spark. Is it just the adrenaline rush?"

"It's not about the thrill..." Daring trailed off under Caballeron's disbelieving gaze. "Okay, it's not [i]all[/i] about the thrill. Sure, Ahuizotl was trying to do the same as me, keep dangerous artifacts safe from those who misused them." She scowled, then winced at another kick. "You know, when he hadn't decided that the best way to do that was to eliminate any and all creatures [i]capable[/i] of misusing them."

"He is holding up his part of the bargain, I have to give him that much."

"But there are plenty of relics out there that [i]don't[/i] have an immortal guardian looking out for them already. Dynamic archeology is still a necessary discipline. Yeah, there'll be plenty of ponies looking through this latest fragment of Derecho. But if the Staff of Ages really is there, they'll need somepony who will know what to do when everything goes haywire."

Caballeron quirked an eyebrow. "When? Not if?"

"I remember when I was a grad student," said Daring. "Something [i]will[/i] go wrong."

"True. However..." Caballeron took a deep breath. "Dear, I mean this in the kindest, least offensive way I can, but I have heard that that fragment of the old cloud citadel is so delicate, they can't bring it lower than eight thousand feet. Can you even fly up there right now?"

Daring glared at him as hard and hatefully as the Snake-Haired Scepter of Queen Euryale.

He didn't even have the decency to look impressed, much less turn to stone. "That was not a yes."

That just made her glare harder.

"And do you not think it is just a touch egotistical to assume that no other creature in the world is capable of doing what you do?" Caballeron brought a hoof to his chest. "Not to brag, but I kept pace with you for years.

Eventually, Daring relented, but only because she had to blink. "I have heard about one upstart," she admitted. "Puts [i]way[/i] too much stock in bullwhips, if you ask me, but he shows promise." She kept going as she saw Caballeron's mouth open to respond. "But he doesn't have the experience I do!"

"And how will he get that experience if you do not step aside?"

Daring drooped, both ears and posture. "I just... I've spent my whole life studying history, tracking down the forgotten secrets of the ages and bringing them back into the light. But this?" She gestured to her belly. "This is... new. This foal... no one knows who they'll be. What they'll become. I can't read Herodonkus or Macavallo and piece together the secrets of how to be the right kind of mom for them. My parents were a rock farmer and a physical trainer; you think they had any idea what to do with a filly who wanted to spend all day inside reading about bygone empires?"

Caballeron gave a grim nod. "I understand. I never knew my parents. My mother, she ran away before I was born."

"Rico."

"I am practicing the, how you say, dad jokes," he said with a smirk. "In all seriousness, I fear for the foal myself. How can I not? One parent will be a blackhearted scoundrel with no sense of honor, and the other cannot follow them into the sky if they have wings."

Daring smiled despite herself. "I don't think you'll have to worry about that. They definitely kick like an earth pony."

"Regardless, every time a certain pegasus confounded me, I dusted myself off and tried again. I did my best. So too here." Caballeron offered a winning grin. "And I still have several honorary uncles on hoof should the aforementioned scoundrel ever need a chance to stretch her wings. Within reason."

"You can't honestly tell me your henchstallions will be okay with foalsitting." Daring tried to imagine those three doing anything delicate and failed.

"Rogue has five little sisters, Withers is already a uncle, and Biff has been looking to adopt since he heard we were expecting."

Daring boggled at that for a moment. "Huh." She tried again and shook her head. "Still can't picture it."

Caballeron tutted. "Perhaps I was wrong about that creative spark. They do have lives beyond us, you know."

"It's weird to think that." Daring shook her head. "It's going to be weirder if I ever have to tell the foals how many of their bones I've broken over the years. And vice versa."

"This entire experience will be strange, Daring." Caballeron moved to her side and leaned into her. She smiled and spread a wing over his back. "Think of it as our next great adventure together."

It was a lovely scene... until another kick broke the mood and made Daring cringe away. "I think I prefer [i]literary[/i] collaboration." She looked longingly at the codex. "Just... let me confirm the properties of the Staff?"

After a long look, Caballeron nodded. "I will check in in an hour. With a sandwich. I doubt you have eaten all day."

Daring scowled as she sat back down. "I had breakfast." 

"Breakfast, or merely coffee?"

Any inability to make eye contact came from needing to focus on the cramped, mouthwritten Middle Ponish. "At least one of those."

"Half an hour."

"Fine." Caballeron left and Daring turned another page. Her stomach chose that moment to grumble about her choice of priorities. She sighed and stood back up. "Fine, fine. If I wanted responsibility, I would've stayed at the university."

[hr]

A mustard-yellow filly burst through the doors of the Royal Canterlot Museum. Last Frontier galloped in circles, grey-streaked black mane and tail flying everywhere. "Come on! Come on! We're gonna miss it!"

A. K. Yearling smiled beneath her usual hat as she followed her daughter into the Royal Canterlot Museum. "The Staff of the World isn't going to get up and walk away, Elle."

"That depends," countered Groom Q. Q. Martingale. "Is Councillor Fluttershy in today? If Discord heard you, well..."

Last Frontier gasped at the thought. "We [i]gotta[/i] hurry! We gotta keep it safe from him!"

"Was that really necessary?" Yearling said with a glare.

Martingale shrugged. "She clearly gets it from you. You used to be that easy to provoke yourself."

"Keep it up and we'll see how easy I am to provoke now."

"GUYYYYS!" came a cry that flattened every ear in the lobby.

Yearling sighed despite her smile. "Duty calls."

"More terrible a taskmaster than Ahuizotl ever was," Martingale said with a chuckle.

Room after room went by, each filled with countless priceless treasures and relics of Equestria's past. But Last Frontier had only one room in sight. She may have been an earth filly, but right now she only had eyes for the history of her mother's tribe.

The Staff of the World hung suspended in a display case in the center of the exhibit hall, the glass enclosure allowing museum-goers to see it from all angles. It was fairly simple as far as Staves that got the capital letter went. The main body was gold-plated bronze, a little taller than the pre-Exodus pegasus who would've held it. That meant it came up to a better-fed modern pony's eye level, though it still towered over Last Frontier.

The head was the famous part, a map of the known world at the time of its creation, represented as a circle divided into three sections commonly known as the O-T Map. Within the golden frame, the top semicircle held a sapphire, representing the Pegaponessian League of pegasus city-states. Beneath it were quarter-circle chunks of topaz for the earth pony Girthshire Republic and amethyst for the unicorn kingdom of Monoceros.

"Coooool," cooed Last. "What's it do?"

"Do?" echoed Yearling.

"Well, yeah. Every time Daring Do finds something like this, it does [i]something[/i]. And if it's in a museum, she musta beaten all the baddies who wanted it for themselves." Last nodded at her own faultless logic.

Martingale cleared hist throat. "Some of those 'baddies' had entirely legitimate reasons for—"

Yearling cut off her husband with a nudge to his side. "It symbolized the Pegaponessian commander's rulership over all places and things. Though the unicorns and earth ponies disagreed, of course."

Last pouted up at her. "I coulda read the sign for that. What about the really cool stuff?"

"Hmm..." Yearling made a show of tapping her chin in thought. "You know, I'm not sure."

Last gasped. "B-but you know everything about everything!"

"Not quite. Never finished my research on this one. The story I had in mind fell flat. Besides, not every artifact has world-ending powers. Some really are just shiny things ponies carried around to make them feel important." Yearling smiled. "Besides, there's a much more valuable treasure in this room."

"Really?" Last's head whipped around from exhibit to exhibit. "Where? Where?"

Yearling knelt down and, when the moment was right, booped her daughter on the snoot. "Right here."

"Moooom." Last still giggled at that.

Yearling smiled, then turned and sighed. "Groom, I was talking about Elle."

Martingale cleared his throat and tried to act like he hadn't also been casing the room. "Old habits die hard, dear."

She grinned, then considered the Diadem of Pansy in one corner. Retrieving it had nearly made her miss Last's third birthday party. "Don't I know it."