Princess Cadance has a problem only Agent Sweetie Drops can solve. But Agent Sweetie Drops—now known to almost everypony as Bon-Bon—would rather tear her own legs off than work for a princess again.

This was originally going to be my entry in the 2024 May Pairings Contest, but I didn't get it finished in time.

All at once, I lost everything in my life, and was swept away to a new world in the body of this small... horse... thing. What now? Will I be able to find new meaning in this new world? Will I be able to get over the loss I've experienced? Will I ever confront that deep dark secret that I keep even from myself?

...and will I ever get used to not having hands?

Wooo my first fic ever! Always been a big fan of HiE fics so decided to give it a shot myself. Hopefully it isn't too depressing at the start, I have some cute ideas for some wholesome moments later on.

Note: Tags may update as I continue the story. I’ll add tags as I introduce important characters.
Also, do note that this fic will contain transgender themes. If that bothers you, please leave.

Edit 4/16/24: 250 LIKES!!! I'm running out of ways to say thank you!! But THANK YOU!!!

Edit 3/17/24: 100 LIKES WOWWWW
THIS GENUINELY BLEW UP!!! I HAVE NO IDEA WHATS HAPPENING!!!!! BUT THANK YOU ALL!!!!!!!

Edit 3/15/24: FEATURED?! WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS
Thank you all so much for all the support so far!! I wouldn't have ever thought that a little story I made on a whim would grow so large this quickly! I'll be trying my hardest to get new chapters out for you all >:3

Inspired by Greenhorne's Trust Once Lost and Boopy Doopy's Beyond Me, along with a whole lot of other HiE fics that would take forever to list lol

Cover by Fireglow!

When Sam opened his eyes, ready to start his first morning as a college student, the last thing he expected was to find himself in an unfamiliar bedroom, in the equally unfamiliar form of Princess Celestia.

Now trapped in a body teeming with an enormous amount of power and an equally enormous set of responsibilities and worries, Sam needs to get to the bottom of things before Equestria's enemies realize Celestia is not herself and take the advantage.

Cover art is by Nauyaco

Everyone always asked Tank where he was going.

He never knew how to answer them. How could one say that when time eroded everything else away, there became less and less meaning in a purpose.

All he knew is that the time passed him by, the more he always seemed to be leaving.

That's when Philomena showed up.

Written for the third Quills and Sofas Expanding Universe contest. A sequel to Novelle Tale's Growing Together .

Art by Shaslan!

The problem with being an explorer in this day and age is that unexplored lands are few and far between. Almost everything's been charted, catalogued, analyzed, and what have you. But that's an almost; there are still those rare, blank spots in the maps, inexplicable, untouched by hooves, unsurveyed. One of those corners is Needle Vale in the far north. Supposedly cursed, yet everyone who's gone in has come back out. It has more stories about it than Celestia herself, yet every single adventuring group that's gone in has found nothing. Thanks to a nonstop snowstorm that's been blowing for centuries, no one's even been able to map it out.

Daring Do thinks there are too many stories about it to be a coincidence. Something is inside there. The source of the legends and of the snowstorm. And no one has a will quite as strong as Daring's (or so she tells herself). With a small team at her back, Daring makes a decision: she will go into Needle Vale, she will withstand the storm, and she will discover what’s going on in there.

But, as Daring is about to find out, there's a reason no one’s been able to pin down what's going on in that valley. Not everything that lies in the dark corners of the earth should be studied.

Loosely inspired by Annihilation. Has a dramatic reading done by Quinch.

Show and tell, over the years Cheerilee had learned to be prepared for anything that could happen during this weekly event in her classroom. However, when one of Applebloom's potion experiments goes horribly wrong, she wakes up to find herself in an unfamiliar version of her classroom, in the body of a foal she has never met.

Quickly she discovers she isn't just in the wrong body, but in the wrong time.

Cover art by Cosmic Eclipse.
Thanks to Lawra, Alias_the_J, and Cosmic Eclipse for prereading and editing.

Trains are the fastest way to move something across Equestria, no matter how big. A heavy stone sarcophagus, for instance, one brimming with dark magic. The Royal Guard just launched a raid to retrieve it from the hooves of sinister cultists.

Now, the survivors of that raid are stuffed in a train crossing the wilderness. Just them, the skeleton crew, and the sarcophagus. Guarding it until they can get reinforcements at the next station ought to be easy. After all, there’s nothing else alive for miles. Right?

Wrong. There’s something on board with them. Something after the sarcophagus. Something that doesn’t care what stands in its way.

Delta. A logging town in Equestria’s far west. With its pleasant (if insular) locals and slow, quiet atmosphere, every inch the small town you’d expect. Except that every few weeks, a predator is found dead and and covered in brutal injuries.

Ranger and single mother Swan Dive is sent to Delta to make sense of it all. But the more she uncovers, the less sense it all makes. The monster leaves no trace except for its own killings. The deaths don’t seem to serve any purpose. And the murders are all clustered around Delta. Swan’s going to have to keep her wits about her if she hopes to make any sense of these strange incidents.

Because there’s something in the forest. Something stalking Delta’s animals. Something deadly. Something bloodthirsty. Something the likes of which Swan has never seen before…

I read the Twilight series to learn from it. Long story short: it really sucks. But more than that, it has many, many ideas that are quite good, but very underutilized. This is my rewriting of Twilight, aiming to utilize those ideas and throw out the ideas that don’t work while still following the same basic plotline. Because even I can do better than that tripe.

Special thanks to Bugsydor for the title.

A mailmare. A treasure hunter. A botanist. A historian. A rambler. A retired guard.

Six travelers in a frozen forest in the middle of nowhere. None of them knows any of the others. These six people find themselves driven together into the only lodge for miles when a freak storm descends upon the land. But all they have to do is wait out the blizzard, and they can be on their way. Simple, right?

If only. As the storm rages with no sign of stopping, they gradually get to know each other more and more. They don't always like what they learn. And when your world has been reduced to a small common room, the tiniest of annoyances can simmer, fester, and boil over...

This story is a sequel to Urban Wilds

Amanita. Quiet. Awkwardly self-conscious. Necromancer. Reformed. Newly hired by the Royal Guard and the apple of its eye. How could she not be? She’s a peerless expert when it comes to necromancy. But only because she’s the only pony with any knowledge of necromancy beyond the basics, she tells herself. She needs to be more than just a static source of knowledge; she also needs to apply that knowledge, to expand her mind. She can’t live her whole life in a lab. She needs experience out in the field.

Which is how she finds herself assigned to a ley purification team. There’s something wrong with a ley line. It’s not immediately dangerous, but if left alone, it could corrupt the land, killing crops and creating monsters. Amanita is part of a small crew that will head to the line’s source, the small mining town of Tratonmane, to identify and correct the problem. Fortunately, ley purification is a well-known science. It’ll be easy.

At least, that’s the idea. Far to the north, swathed in frost and snow, walled in by vertiginous mountains, Tratonmane is as isolated as can be. Miners and subsistence farmers eke out a living in what little land they have. Ravenous wolves stalk the forest at its border. Whispers abound at the team’s arrival. Tratonmane has existed outside the Crown’s influence for centuries and many of the townsfolk don’t appreciate it sticking its nose in now. Especially since no town lasts for that long without getting a few skeletons in its closets. Amanita and her team will have to navigate hostile environments — personal and terrestrial alike — if they want to get to the bottom of this.

For if they don’t, heads will roll. Perhaps literally.

Nothing a necromancer can’t fix.

Updates TuThS. Reading earlier stories will provide some context for this, but isn't required. Other entries in this series:

• Hinterlands
• Urban Wilds
• Death Valley