//------------------------------//
// Chapter 10 
// Story: Withdrawal 
// by Raugos 
//------------------------------//

 
“What… going… with her? We can’t—”

“Don’t… sure how…”

“… maybe we ca—wait, is… waking… oh darn.”

Twilight opened her eyes, but the world remained dark and empty. She reached out, hoping that the blackness was nothing more than a really thick curtain, but something restrained her foreleg. At the same time, she felt somepony hammering iron spikes straight into her bones.

Her scream died into whimpers and sobs as more spikes dug into her ribs and wings, splitting bone and flesh. She felt her muscles convulse, but that only made the agony spring up somewhere, everywhere else on her body.

“… still, Your Highness! I can’t… get her legs!”

“Can’t… just call…”

“Do it!”

Pressure clamped down on her limbs, and Twilight felt her bones bend and creak in ways that nopony should ever experience. The drive to scream warred with her incessant sobbing for control over her lungs, leaving half-shrieks and staggered sobs to escape from her mouth.

“Try… your… know, the thing!”

“But…”

“She’s too… can’t… her—augh, help!”

Twilight found enough strength to wrench a hind leg free and felt it strike something.

That something let loose a shrill yelp. Or maybe that was just her.

“Gah, close the… doing it now!”

All noise suddenly took on a thick, resonant quality, as if she had stepped into a cave. A yellow, or maybe greenish mist appeared at the corner of her vision, but no matter how she turned her eyes, they stubbornly remained outside of her focus. 

“Hey, can you hear me?”

Twilight froze at the sound of Shining Armour’s voice.

“You’re hurt pretty bad. Just chill and relax, okay?”

Okay, that’s not Shiny.

Close, but not him. Something about the voice helped to calm her down, though. He sounded confident and caring, and ready to help in any way possible. Just like Shiny. Or Spike. Or Celestia if she had been a stallion.

“You’re safe here. I think. No, wait. Yes, you definitely are very safe. Nopony’s going to hurt you. Just keep still and try to relax. We’re going to make things as comfortable as possible.”

Twilight had forgotten about the rods of agony in her flesh and bones, but the momentary lapse had allowed the pain to ebb away. She sighed and winced when her movement twisted them a little, so she slowly, ever so slowly allowed her tightly-strung muscles to ease up. She sank into something soft on her back, with her wings protesting a bit at the additional pressure. 

“That’s it. That’s it… You just get nice and comfy; we’ll take care of everything else…”

Good idea…

She sighed again and allowed her eyes to slide shut. Just before they closed properly, though, the mist in the corner of her vision flashed brightly like a green starburst firework, and the slumbering void within her chest stirred.


* * * * *


Twilight curled up tightly and shivered. A vile cramp in her belly refused to leave her in peace. Knives still dug into her flesh with every movement she made. Opening her eyelids turned out to be a mistake, crusted as they were with dried tears and other particles that stung her eyes. 

Cold air infiltrated her nostrils and bit their insides, creating a surge of ticklish pain that went up to her brain like a bolt of lightning. One sneeze later, she felt wet, cold snot dribbling down her mouth. 

Dull thumps echoed in the distance as she tried to wipe away the freezing stuff with a hoof. Something thick and heavy hampered her limb, though, and she only succeeded in clearing a little of it. Whatever it was, it had her all wrapped up.

“Bro, I think she’s waking up!”

Twilight winced and flattened her ears against the aural assault. The sheer high-pitched volume of the speaker’s voice sent flashes of white stars exploding in her vision despite her closed eyes. 

“Nngghh, not so loud…” she moaned through her teeth.

“Oh. Sorry!”

She gritted her teeth and tried to burrow deeper into the thick lining around her body, and then hissed when the knives in her flesh poked her again. The movement must have also disturbed something vital, because she immediately felt a twisting, gnawing sensation grow in her gut like a gnarled root.

“Shush—quit yelling in her ear!” a deeper voice, the one that sounded a bit like Shining Armour, said. “Sorry about that. He’s just a little excited. How do you feel?”

Twilight groaned.

“Right. Stupid question. Sorry.”

A thick pause followed by the sound of somepony rummaging around before the voice came back. “Anything I can get you?”

Ropes of drying mucus stretched between her tongue and the roof of her mouth as she croaked, “Wa—er… drik…”

“One second. Tack, kitchen. Now.” 

Two sets of hooves plodded on wood and grew muffled. Twilight flicked her ears back when a door slammed shut and tried to open her eyes again, but her tears had only turned the crusty stuff into sticky gunk that kept her eyeballs glued up and non-functional. She swallowed and winced when the parched wrinkles of flesh in her throat rubbed against one another. Saliva pooled under her tongue, and she had to work it extra hard to get some fluid in position for proper swallowing.

All the while, she heard their low voices, presumably in the kitchen, along with some clattering and tinkling. 

The thumping of hooves returned just as a too-tiny gulp of saliva triggered her gag reflex. Her stomach twisted and heaved, but only a foul smell came up. Unfortunately, the spasm twisted her muscles sufficiently to dig the knives deeper. 

Twilight shrieked and twitched about until a few unseen hooves of different sizes held her steady, and once the pain had subsided, she collapsed back into the warm depression in which she’d lain, breathing heavily.

“Got some water for you. We’ll need you to sit up a little straighter. I’ll say sorry in advance if it hurts to move. Are you ready?”

She had no choice but to nod, and winced when the two strangers helped to lift up her head and part of her torso so that she could lean her head and upper foreleg against something thick and soft – probably a couple of pillows. A second later, something cold touched her lips, and fluid trickled into her mouth.

She licked her lips and nosed forward to tip the glass’ contents into her mouth. Cold water dribbled in, and she gulped greedily.

“Steady, there. Don’t want you to choke.”

Twilight ignored the voice and kept at it. But all too soon, the flow of water ended, and she lashed her tongue at the trickle running down the side of her mouth before it could get away.

“More…” she murmured.

“Wow. That’s freaky,” the younger voice from earlier piped up. “Like the time I walked in on you and—”

“And just let me get you another glass!” the older voice hastily cut in. “Here.”

Twilight heard some sloshing, then felt the now-warm edge of the glass pressing against her lips again and eagerly repeated the process of replenishing her fluids. After licking off the last droplets, she relaxed her quivering muscles and leaned against the pillows. But something still felt very wrong. 

Despite the water inside, her gut clenched, and she cringed as the echoing emptiness rose out of the depths like an eldritch abomination…

Her stomach growled.

Silence followed, and Twilight would have blinked if she could. 

Oh. 

“Heh. I think I can help with that, too.”

She heard more sloshing water, and a moment later, the glass returned to her lips. Curious about his solution to her predicament, she sipped tentatively and tasted water flavoured with apples. Carrot. Celery, too. 

Then, some solids brushed against her tongue, and she instinctively bit down. She felt her eyebrows rise when the juicy, crunchy bits turned out to be chunks of finely diced fruit and vegies, and she mumbled her thanks as she chewed noisily. 

In spite of her best efforts to savour the tasty mouthful, her shrivelled stomach demanded an offering and forced her to swallow. The strangers continued feeding her like so for several minutes, chatting amongst themselves, but she mostly ignored their words in favour of the bursts of flavour between long gulps of soothing, fresh water.

A light belch escaped her some time later, after which she sighed gratefully and snuggled up against the pillows as closely as her abused and tormented hide allowed.


* * * * *


Light flickered in the darkness, and Twilight slowly eased her eyes open.

Two shadows sat a little ways off from where she lay, silent and unmoving. Squinting, she blinked several times to clear her vision, and each one sharpened the dark shapes bit by bit until she recognised the two alicorns in the room with her. They lay on the ground with their backs to her, and the only signs of life came from their manes billowing softly in the frigid air.

Twilight tried to get up and approach them, but her bones and muscles protested with each minor movement by sending jolts of pain up her nerves. The thick covers wrapped around her also didn’t allow for much mobility.

After licking her parched lips to get some saliva flowing, she managed to whisper, “Hello?” 

As one, Celestia and Luna turned to give her a sidelong glance. 

Twilight felt a cold drop of sweat trickle down her forehead as she waited for them to say something. Hours seemed to stretch between them as they stared at her in utter silence. 

Say something, please!

“Twilight…” Celestia began.

She leaned forward, straining against the smothering covers. 

“We are… disappointed,” Luna finished.

The last word hit her like a cart of bricks rolling downhill. A thousand reasons fought their way to her lips, clamouring for her to give voice to them. They knew nothing about what she endured daily. She had put all her effort into controlling her worst impulses. The world had stacked everything against her. Nopony had ever gone through such an experience. Who were they to judge her? But every excuse died off as soon as her elders averted their eyes and rose to leave. She had nothing. They trusted her to keep things under control, and she’d tricked everypony and lied to them. 

Twilight had failed.

She tried to crawl after them, but the weighty covers dragged her down, and pain gnawed at her limbs until they had whittled away the last of her resolve. A door slammed shut, and darkness flooded the already dim room.

Twilight twisted and turned, but nothing distinguished itself from the pervasive blackness. When the shadows themselves threatened to invade her through the eyes, she curled up and used her wings to hide herself from the world. Nopony had to look at her ever again.


* * * * *


Voices pierced the shadows. 

Twilight stirred and flattened her ears, but they refused to leave her alone. She took increasingly drastic measures to keep the voices at bay, starting with turning away and escalating all the way to growling in their general direction. They still proved ineffective. 

She didn’t care that they sounded urgent, but cracked an eye open just in case. Going by the dark blue saturating her surroundings, she placed the time somewhere between ‘lights out’ and ‘five minutes more’, which she took as full license for her next countermeasure. 

After fighting some nausea to build up a small charge in her horn, she unleashed a pulse of energy that would hopefully zap her tormentors into silence. A distinct yelp reached her ears, followed by scattered thuds and tinkles and the thumping of retreating hooves.

Twilight sighed and allowed the shadows to wash over her once more.

But after a while, something else saw fit to keep her from resting. She squirmed and shifted in place, grunting and wincing when pain nipped and poked all over her body, but that failed to alleviate the urgent discomfort somewhere between her legs. She forced herself to keep still, but the sensation grew and expanded until her belly felt tight and she had to cross her hind legs to—

Oh, poop.

She scrambled to get onto all fours, flailed when a heavy layer of something threw her coordination out of whack, and yelped when she lost her balance and felt gravity take full control of her movement.

A gasp reached her ears, followed by a whoosh, and she collided softly against a pair of bars – no, forelegs – just before hitting the ground. The stranger murmured to her in a soothing voice as it disentangled her, and this time she found it relatively tolerable. Vaguely musical, even. Just enough to put up with because she had bigger things to worry about.

Hurry, hurry, hurry!

Twilight shivered as she tottered about in the darkness with nothing but the voice and a dim light to guide her way. If she strayed too far from the narrow, winding path, something warm would gently but firmly correct her vector and keep her from toppling over. Her hooves occasionally struck something hard and immovable, at which point the voice grew concerned and apologetic before it nudged her in a slightly different direction.

It took longer than she liked, but a watery pit eventually yawned before her, and the voice had enough sense to keep a respectful distance.

She let out a long sigh of relief when the pressure fled and everything became so comfortably loose, and then fumbled her way back towards the voice. It muttered something indistinct when she tripped and bumped into it with her horn, but soon relented and shifted to her side to guide her back. 

When she reached her warm and safe spot in the darkness, she allowed it to wrap her up in warm safety. 

“Thanks, Spike…” she mumbled.


* * * * *


Twilight clenched her jaw and tightened her lips, ignoring the sour taste and scent. Her stomach had other plans, though. 

“Huuurggh!”

She had no idea whether she’d gotten the direction right this time, but the faint splattering noise and lack of mush running down her cheek suggested positive news for once.

“Yeah, let it out. You’ll feel better soon,” said the voice as a hoof patted her back gently.

‘Soon’ can’t come soon enough…

Even with her eyes closed, explosions of light and obnoxious colours kept popping up in her field of vision. The world rocked like a boat in rough water, and she had a throbbing ache stretching all the way from the tip of her horn to the base of her spine.

Why won’t it stop? Stars above, please make it stop…

Her magical sense kept probing her surroundings, searching for a spark of power to feed upon, but found only diffuse patches here and there that would barely sustain a mouse let alone a starving alicorn. No unicorns or magical trinkets within a thousand paces. The emptiness inside her chest writhed and wailed in anguish, sending a tidal wave of nausea up her throat.

“Huuurgg—ack—urrghh!”

She gasped for breath and spat out a glob of saliva that stuck to her chin and stretched down like a disgusting, elastic pendulum. 

“Yuck. Is that the corn she had?”

The older voice sighed. “You should go to your room.”

“Fine. You never let me do fun stuff.”

“Do you seriously think this is fun?”

The younger voice paused, and even Twilight’s stomach and the spinning room ceased torturing her for just a moment to wait for its response.

“Umm… no?”

“Then?”

“Whatever. I’m going. See?”

Light hoofsteps faded away, after which Twilight clutched her aching belly and moaned, “Ugh, kill me…”

“Umm, regicide’s a pretty major crime, Your Highness. I don’t think I should obey that command.”

“I’ll—nngh—I’ll give you… a royal pardon.”

The silence which followed lasted for nearly a minute before the voice sighed and patted her on the back. “Oh, all right. Promise to hold on until this blows over, and then if you still want to die, I’ll go get the harpoon. But until then, I’m helping you stay alive. Deal?”

Despite the headache and incessant pulsing in her belly, Twilight frowned. Harpoons were meant for hunting really big game. A knife would have sufficed for a pony. Unless… Was he making an indirect remark on her physique? Did he think she was… large? She considered pressing him for clarification, but decided that only Rarity would bring that up when its relevance to her situation was tangential at best. Probably. She didn’t think she would want to know the answer, anyway.

She snorted. “Deal. But if you don’t do it properly, I’ll snap your neck.”

“Uh, sure. Let me just get that for you.”

Twilight fought to keep a burp down as he used a wet rag to wipe her face clean. For all she knew, that bubble of air might well turn out to be another wave of her stomach’s contents. She only let loose once he’d finished, and to nopony’s surprise, a horrid, bubbly eruption of mush came up with the air. 

They spent what felt like another hour in silence, aside from her retching and the sympathetic noises her companion made every now and then. The nausea and headache eventually petered out to the point where she could finally lie down without fear of making a mess. The void still lurked down there, but after what she had gone through, its gnawing posed only a minor irritation. Sleepiness had overpowered it.

As her companion and nurse tucked her in, she mumbled, “Thanks.”

“Least I can do, Your Highness.”

She peered at him, but her eyes still couldn’t see very well and only made out a brownish figure with streaks of red standing by her bed. “I didn’t get your name.”

He seemed to hesitate for a moment before saying, “I’m Path Winder. Get some sleep first. We can chat more when you’re better.”

Twilight grunted. In spite of herself, she had to admit that she did feel a little better already.

He soon trotted off, leaving her to curl up and wait for sleep to take her. Her heart had an annoying habit of impeding her progress, though. Its incessant thumping sounded way too loud when she had her ears pressed into the pillow, and she could feel the pressure from each pulse travel the full length of her blood vessels even to the inside of her eyeballs. But just on the verge of sinking into sweet oblivion, she heard more hoofsteps coming back. Her ears flattened as she gritted her teeth at the disturbance.

“Umm. Hello?”

She bit back a grouchy response. She’d forgotten to ask for the younger one’s name. Probably a colt, or a filly with a lower-than-average voice. Strangely muffled, though.

“Yeah?” she mumbled without turning to face him or her.

“I’fe um… I’fe got somefing for you.”

Twilight slowly rolled over so she could get a look, but her weakened eyes still worked against her. She couldn’t see the youngster clearly, but could just make out the stuffed toy in his or her mouth, which explained the muffled voice. 

Smarty Pants?

She squinted an attempt to take in its details as the youngster set it on her bed, but gave up when she only managed to ascertain that it had a greyish coloration and six limbs. A dragon or griffon, maybe? Too angular for a pegasus.

“His name’s Gorbash. I thought if he stayed with you, maybe you won’t cry all the time when you’re sleeping.”

Under any other circumstance, Twilight might have smiled at the youngster’s offer and patted him or her on the head for being so nice and thoughtful. She knew that fillies and colts seldom named their toys unless they had a special place in their heart, so the thought of depriving them of a favourite toy didn’t sit very well with her. Come to think of it—

I wish I had Smarty Pants right now…

Twilight bit her lip as the youngster pushed the plush toy closer to her. 

So it’s a dragon. It’s not Smarty Pants, but…

She slid a foreleg out from her blanket and stroked the comfortably soft fabric, but she resisted on the grounds that her fellow princesses probably didn’t sleep with their toys, if they even had any. 

Just then, a ripple of nausea forced her to tighten her jaw and aching abdominal muscles, followed by a bout of dizziness as she tried to siphon non-existent magic from her surroundings. She grunted once the discomfort had passed and then decided that she didn’t care anymore. She’d had enough of feeling sick and hungry at the same time and she wanted nothing more than to curl up and go to sleep with someone to keep her safe.

Twilight wrapped her foreleg around the stuffed dragon and pulled him in under the covers to cuddle up against her chest. Its comfortable shape and plushness felt familiar, and she found herself nuzzling it before her consciousness sank beneath the waves.


* * * * *


Another empty room.

Twilight retreated to the corridor from which she’d come and traced her steps back. A long, dim corridor stretched into darkness in either direction from where she stood. It had no obvious sources of light, but shadows nevertheless lay over the hard flooring at odd angles. 

Her breathing and hoofsteps echoed as she crept through the labyrinth, unable to find a way out. Something followed her; she could hear it whispering as it drew nearer like a noxious cloud, listening for her beating heart and heavy breathing. Her every step produced a resonant clop that it could surely hear from a mile away. 

She picked a turning at random and found it blocked by a door. It had no visible means for opening it, but she distinctly heard somepony’s voice coming through. Rainbow Dash’s voice. 

The whispers grew louder, as did her pounding heart. She knocked on the door, but Rainbow didn’t answer. Striking harder did not yield any results, either. Twilight’s whispers soon turned into panicked gibberish, but Rainbow didn’t even seem to notice. Her voice still filtered through the door, ignorant of her plight. Glancing back to find the corridor darker than before, she resolved to break through and slammed her hooves into the door, but failed to produce even a scratch. She dared not scream.

All the while, the whispers grew louder.

She pounded on the door one last time before giving up and breaking into a full gallop back to the last turning. If her luck held out, she’d reach it before the whispering thing cut off her only exit. 

Almost there…

The whispering turned into a scream of triumph as she skidded round the corner to see a smoky cloud vaguely in the shape of a pony floating towards her. Purple light leaked out of Twilight’s horn as black, wispy tendrils snaked out of every orifice it had and reached out towards her, eager to devour.

A scream stuck in her throat as she tripped over her own hooves, stumbled backwards and fell onto her rump. She then rolled over and scrambled up just as the cold seeped through her coat and into her bones. Luckily, she’d managed to redirect enough of her momentum to break out of its chilling grasp and bolted down the hallway to relative safety. Its triumphant scream turned into a howl of frustration as the distance between them grew.

More empty rooms awaited her, with the occasional door that barred her way. Some were silent dead-ends; some had her friends’ voices drifting through from the other side. And every single one of them ignored her, refused to grant her shelter.

Twilight slammed her hoof against Spike’s door and bit back a cry when pain lanced up her foreleg. She turned tail and fled before the whispering thing could catch her round a corner again. Her laboured breathing lost its rhythm as tears welled up in her eyes. Sobs wracked her even she barrelled through the labyrinthine palace like a madmare.

Her friends and family couldn’t hear her. Why would they? She was useless. Weak. Alone.

Hungry.

Twilight’s legs felt like concrete blocks moving through sticky mud. Slow. So, so slow and heavy. She gasped for breath as each successive step took more effort than the last. Without any source of power nearby, she had no hope of outrunning the shadow. It would consume her. Running would only delay the inevitable. No matter how far she went, the endless corridor held only emptiness and closed doors. Nopony would help her. Nopony even knew she existed anymore.

The whispers slithered into her ears as she stumbled and fell.

She whimpered and huddled against the wall, trying to make herself as small as possible. That was it. She had nowhere else to go. No point in trying anymore. She tucked her head under a wing and waited for the cold shadow to take her.

“Don’t give up, Twilight,” said a voice just behind her head.

She blinked, and then slowly twisted to look over her back.

A winged dragon with grey scales, purple underbelly and green eyes looked back at her, similar to Spike in size that it could comfortably sit on her back. The juvenile characteristics ended there, though. He had the proportions of an adult and the gravelly voice of a deep-chested, middle-aged stallion.

“Gorbash?”

The miniature dragon nodded. “That’s right. I suggest we leave before that thing finds us.”

“How?” She gestured towards the dark corridor. “It never ends. No matter what I do, it keeps going on and on and on…”

Her words trailed off as she turned her head to find that a doorway had opened up right at the dead end. The corridor stretched beyond, looking a little brighter than the one containing the shadow. She could hear its whispers twisting into slavering breaths as it drew closer to its prey.

“There’s an end to all of this. You’ll eventually find it,” Gorbash said. “It would be a shame to surrender after coming so far.”

Twilight shook her head. “I’ve tried for so long. All empirical evidence leans towards the conclusion that there is no end.”

Gorbash narrowed his eyes. “Did you just try to prove a negative?”

“I don’t… well—ugh, never mind! What about you?” she snapped back, feathers bristling. “What proof do you have that I’ll ever get out?”

He opened his maw to retort, then closed it. After a moment of silence, he said, “Fair point; I have no proof. But weighed against the chance that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, isn’t that worth fighting for?”

Twilight averted her eyes and slumped. “I… no. I can’t feel it anymore. I’m tired of fighting, running, hiding… everything. I can’t go on.”

“And what about your friends? They surely haven’t given up on you.”

She snorted. “Easy for everypony else to say. They don’t know… I failed so badly. I wouldn’t be surprised if they stopped bothering with me. I know I wouldn’t.”

Gorbash hopped off her back and slinked into view to frown at her. “Good thing they aren’t you, then. I think you might want to put a little more trust in the friendship that holds all of you together.”

Are you pinning this on me?

Her hoof trembled as she considered making her point very physically clear to him, but she relented when a chill seeped into her bones. It didn’t matter anymore.

“I’ve done all I can. Everypony will have to settle for that.” So saying, she lay flat on the floor, closed her eyes and simply waited for the shadow to claim her. Talking with him had done one good thing at least; she no longer felt afraid.

Gorbash sighed. “So be it. Nopony can ask more from you. That is, nopony but yourself, I suppose.”

She felt a warm weight press against her side, and she snapped her eyes open to find him sitting on his haunches right next to her, watching the darkness approach.

“What are you doing?”

“My job. Keeping you company.”

Despite herself, she felt a sense of urgency welling up from within. She glanced at the corridor and saw the shadowy figure shrouded in black smoke surging towards them like a tidal wave. Turning back to him, she sputtered, “Are you crazy? Do you even know what it’ll do to you?”

“A being composed of shadow and dark magic? I can imagine.”

“Then… why?”

He shrugged. “I think you’re a good pony who doesn’t deserve to face her demons alone.”

She tried to push him away, to get him to flee, but he stubbornly remained in place despite his stature. Failing that, she felt tears welling up as she said, “You—you don’t even know what I’ve done. I’ve lied, cheated and fai—”

Gorbash cut her off with a stern glare. “Don’t insult me, Twilight. You’ve made your choice. This one’s mine.”

And then the shadow’s piercing howls of victory filled her ears as it wrapped its black tendrils around them. She gritted her teeth as they ripped her purple aura away and stretched her like taffy. It didn’t physically hurt, but the emptiness returned in full force, and she longed to fill it by any means necessary. She wanted more. She needed more.

A grunt from Gorbash drew her attention for a moment, and she glimpsed the silhouette of his scaly figure squirming in the air as black tendrils held him fast. She cringed when they began tearing blue streams of energy from him; he bared his teeth and roared in defiance, but all too soon his voice grew strained with agony.

Twilight reached out with a hoof to pull him out of the inky blackness, but the floor beneath her suddenly fell away, and her heart leapt into her throat as she went into freefall. 


* * * * *


A shallow cough accompanied a spasm in her chest, and she gasped for breath when she felt as if the insides of her lungs had stuck together. Her mane felt damp with sweat as she squirmed around to find a warmer, dryer spot on the bed.

No such luck. Twilight opened her eyes and then blinked slowly to clear the sticky haze clouding her vision. 

Once. A dark shape popped up in front of her.

Twice. The fuzzy shape sharpened at the edges, and she managed to distinguish grey, purple and green amongst the black.

Thrice. The blobs of colours sharpened further and melted together.

Four blinks. The blurry edges finally resolved into sharp outlines, and she found herself snout to snout with Gorbash. 

Twilight frowned at the stuffed dragon, wondering. His green, embroidered eyes and stitched-on smile didn’t have quite the same piercing quality as before, and she had a hard time imagining that gravelly voice coming from such a whimsically happy dragon.

She still had one foreleg hugging him, though.

Yawning widely, she peeled off the thick blanket over them and carefully placed Gorbash on the bedside table. Once she had him safely out of the way, she lay flat on her belly and stretched. Her muscles protested at first, but she eventually got her limbs to spread to their full lengths. A little pain here and there where movement tightened her skin, but it felt so good to work away the stiffness that she didn’t want to stop. She even arched her back and then bent backwards as far as she could go for good measure, groaning whenever her joints popped. 

Twilight considered using magic to dry off the remains of her sweat, but a jarring ache in her horn dissuaded her the instant she tried to channel it. 

Never mind. I’ll dry up soon, anyway.

She sat on her haunches atop the bed and took stock of the room. Its walls consisted of horizontal, unpainted beams of wood whilst its floor had polished planks. Warm light poured in from the single glass window and onto the bed, in stark contrast to the tall pines and mounds of snow outside. The room had some pretty good insulation; she only felt a minor chill when the weather indicated that she should’ve been freezing. 

Aside from the bedside table and a really worn dresser with a cracked mirror, the room had no furniture or decorations to speak of. She leered at the bucket next to the bed and sniffed the air, expecting something foul to assault her nose, and then sighed when she only got the scent of pinewood. Somepony must’ve cleaned up after her last donation. 

Something nipped her in the back, and she fluttered her wings to dislodge the biting insect. However, doing so triggered a few more pricks. She twisted around to look.

“Huh.”

Twilight extended her right wing and ran a hoof over her dorsal feathers. Somepony had clipped her primaries down to half their length; the exposed ends of the shafts had caused discomfort whenever they poked her. She also had a couple of bare patches on the leading edge of her wing, either through plucking or shearing forces upon impact, whilst the rest of her secondaries bore signs of recent preening. She didn’t quite know how to feel about a stranger preening her wings, but she guessed she could let it slide if it had spared some feathers from further damage. 

Folding her wing, she moved on to inspecting the patches of gauze plastered all over her body. Most had gone brownish in the middle from dried blood, but she noticed some yellowish-green at the peripheries of the blotches as well. Probably from healing salves or anaesthetics, since stretching only caused her a little pain. 

A voice drifted in from outside the room, and Twilight whipped her head around to the door in anticipation of a visitor. After a moment or two, though, she surmised that her host – Pathfinder, was it? – hadn’t realised that she’d woken up. 

However, moving her head had alerted her to the fact that it felt like it had remarkably less inertia that usual. She froze when she ran a hoof through her mane and nearly planted her face into the floor as she tottered over to the dresser’s cracked mirror.

Well… that’s something.

It looked like somepony had taken a pair of blunt scissors to her mane in conjunction with a fork instead of a proper brush. Part of the mess atop her skull she could attribute to bed-mane, but on the whole, her new hairdo resembled an extra-short version of Rainbow Dash’s messy, windswept look. The longest hairs couldn’t have exceeded a couple of inches in length, maybe three at the back of her neck. Her tail had more or less suffered the same fate.

Twilight bit her lip as she turned and twisted this way and that to take in the absurdity of sporting the archetypal mane and tail of a street punk. She remembered seeing a few of them outside the nightclubs she’d passed by. Throw in some rings, studs and maybe a spiked collar and she could fit right in. The streaks of hard, brownish-black scabs around her hairline, forehead and cheek only added to the effect.

Thankfully, her horn looked relatively intact, barring some scratches at the tip that would easily fade with time. 

No cracks. Good.

She stared at her reflection, wondering why somepony had seen fit to do that to her mane, and the answer came all too easily. Thorns. Fire. Dizzying speed. Impact. Ice. 

On second thought, maybe I should be happy I’m even able to worry about how I look.

As the snatches of her airborne trip into the middle of nowhere faded away, the reason for her flight sank in like a bag of rocks. She slumped until she sat on her haunches and stared at the drawers before her, unseeing. 

Piece by piece, she went through the series of events leading up to her present situation. A thousand variables presented themselves; a thousand alternate decisions leading to a thousand different scenarios that each had their own permutations down the series of possible actions she could have taken. Exponential alternate events. So many ways she could’ve prevented the catastrophe; so many ways she could’ve avoided hurting everyone…

“You there?”

“Gah!” 

Twilight flailed backwards when a brown foreleg waved in front of her muzzle and tried to steady herself with backdrafts from her wings before she toppled. Unfortunately, her wings didn’t quite have the same surface area as before, so the uneven thrust only sped up her trip to the floor. 

“Wow, you’re really jumpy. Why’re you staring at it?” His eyes flicked over to the dresser before turning back to her. “It’s not even that pretty.”

Twilight ignored the question in favour of examining the colt that had just entered the room. He looked about the same age as the CMC – maybe a little older – and had a light brown coat, lime-green eyes and a short mane and tail coloured like peanut butter and grape jelly. He had no cutie mark yet, but he did have a rather friendly smile – one that she didn’t feel like returning. 

“Is this your home?” she asked.

“Uh huh.” He rubbed one hoof on his other foreleg a little bashfully and added, “My name’s Tacky Hutch.”

Twilight raised an eyebrow but decided not to comment. She knew ponies with odder names. In any case, she had more relevant details to pursue. After casting a glance out the window, she turned back to him and forced out a weary smile. 

But before she could say anything, Tacky went ahead and said, “You’re Princess Twilight, right?”

“Ye—”

The words stuck in her throat for a moment as she envisioned Celestia, Luna and a whole host of guards descending upon the area to escort her back to Canterlot for a lengthy session of lecturing. Her muscles tensed for a moment, but she quickly got them back under control. 

No use trying to hide. If they’ve called for help, there’s nothing I can do about it now. Just need to leave as soon as possible.

“Yes, just call me Twilight.”

“Okay, Twilight!”

His adoring grin gave her flashbacks of the Twilight Time incident, and she shivered internally before putting her smile back on. “Yes. Right… Where is this home located? I think I’m a little lost.”

“Oh, we’re in Tassel Woods. It’s a nice place.”

Twilight blinked.

“Near River Springs?” he supplied further with raised eyebrows.

She bit her lip as she racked her brain for obscure places to attach the names to.

“And big bro says my geography’s bad,” Tacky murmured with a roll of his eyes. “We’re a little further up from Vanhoover. I think. Hang on, lemme check the map.”

“It’s okay. You’ve told me enough. I’ll just be going now, if you’ll show me out.”

Tacky’s face fell. “What? You’re leaving already?”

So I can get a head start on the authorities.

Twilight nodded as she trotted to the door. “I’m in a hurry. I just want to thank your parents and be on my way.” 

“But I don’t have—”

She didn’t pick up on the rest of Tacky’s words because the door suddenly swung open just as she reached out to open it. It struck her foreleg and sent a jolt of pain shooting straight up to her brain. The door hadn’t opened very forcefully, but her tender state served to make it feel like a load of bricks anyway. She shrieked and nearly toppled over as she hopped on the spot, then glared at the pegasus stallion in the doorway as she nursed her throbbing hoof.

The stallion stared at her in shock for a moment before he flattened his ears and dipped his head, saying “Oh, rats, I’m so sorry, Your Highness! I wasn’t expecting you up and running.” 

“It’s… okay,” Twilight groused. “I should’ve been more careful, too.”

He nodded and gave her a reconciliatory smile. “Don’t know if you remember, but I’m Path Winder, by the way.”

Twilight vaguely recalled the disembodied voice that she’d mistaken for Shining Armour during her fevered half-dreams. Now that she’d had a chance to listen while lucid, she concluded that Path Winder only sounded a little like her brother. He had eyes of the same colour and unshorn fetlocks, but the similarities ended there with his mossy-brown coat, freckles, yellow hair streaked with red and a cutie mark consisting of a compass sprouting leaves on either side. If she’d judged correctly, he was about her age.

She nodded. “Nice to meet you. I’m sorry to have bothered you, but I really should go. Others are… waiting for me and—umm, would you mind moving, please?”

He’d barred her way by spreading his wings and held his ground even when she tried to push past him. His eyes shifted down to her hooves and then back up to her face before he put on a sceptical frown and said, “You’re just only recovering from a fever, fractured bones, blood loss and magic depletion, not to mention bashing a hole through my roof with your skull, and now you want to muck around for hours in the snow and ice? No offence, but are you nuts?”

Oh, you have no idea…

He did have a point, though. Now that he’d mentioned it, she did feel like she’d gotten on the losing end of a battle with a dragon.

“How long was I out for?”

“Four days, since you decided to drop by.” He paused for a moment, looking at her expectantly, before his good-natured grin got just a little strained at the edges. 

“Wow. That’s lame, even for you,” Tacky deadpanned.

Twilight barely registered the fact that Winder had made a feeble attempt to inject humour into the conversation and focused on filtering out the rest of their words as she reassessed her situation with newfound information. Between the dull ache at the base of her horn, the nausea and the weakness in her bones, she clearly hadn’t given much rational thought to her options. Too much fear had taken part in her plans – way too much irrationality. She took in a deep breath and exhaled slowly to calm her nerves. If her friends and elders had seen fit to give her time and space alone, she’d make good use of it instead of jumping head-first into trouble with more half-baked plans. 

She kneaded her forehead and sighed. “I guess breakfast wouldn’t hurt.”


* * * * *


Breakfast started out pretty awkwardly at the table. From her seat, she had a clear view of the living room, where Path Winder had done a roughshod job of patching up the Twilight-sized hole in the roof with wooden planks and slats. A few splinters curved downward around the edges, slowly dripping water from the snow above into the bucket sitting in the crater-like depression in the floor beneath them. Farther back, she could see the collapsed remains of the couch she’d flattened on impact. 

“I know it hurt, but the way you totalled the couch was kind of awesome,” Tacky pointed out through a mouthful of cereal. “You ever plan to be a Wonderbolt? I bet you’d get to do all kinds of crazy stunts like that!”

“Not if I have any say in it.” Twilight cringed at the damage and turned to Path Winder. “I’ll pay you back for whatever I broke. And thanks for taking care of me, too.”

He grinned sheepishly. “Eh heh. Just taking my responsibilities seriously. Anypony else would’ve done the same for you.”

“You still deserve thanks for that.” Twilight glanced out a window and frowned. “Especially considering how long it’s taking the professionals to get here. It’s been four days, right?”

“Yeah, about that…” Winder averted his eyes and poked at his bowl of sliced fruit with a fork. “I actually haven’t told anypony about your, uh, unexpected visit.”

Twilight’s frown deepened. A princess literally dropping half-dead into your house would’ve been sufficient cause for just about anypony to call for help immediately, let alone four days. 

“Why?”

Winder spread his hooves out in a gesture of helplessness. “Well, between patching you up, feeding ourselves and keeping the house above freezing in the middle of a blizzard with a giant hole in the roof, I didn’t have much time for anything else. River Springs is a half-hour flight away, and there’s no way I’m sending this little joker out on hoof in the middle of heavy weather like this. Not even for you. Sorry.” 

“Hey, I can make it there and back just fine!” Tacky protested. “I know where the mayor’s house is.”

Winder snorted. “You mean like that time I had to pick you up from a ravine?”

“It was just one wrong turn…”

Twilight decided to jump in before the conversation could deviate further. “It’s okay, I can understand that.” 

The world can get by without me a little longer.

She paused to pop a chunk of fruit into her mouth and made a show of chewing contemplatively. Despite Path Winder’s friendly outlook, something about him didn’t sit quite well with her. His reasons for keeping her whereabouts under wraps seemed reasonable enough and she couldn’t complain about the relative solitude, but her deep-seated hunger periodically stirred whenever she laid her eyes on him despite the lack of consumable magic in her environment. 

I wonder…

After swallowing, she put on a smile and said, “Tell me about yourselves.”

Winder and Tacky shared a look before the older stallion shrugged and gestured for the eager colt to go ahead. 

Twilight ate quietly as Tacky launched into a lengthy narrative about how Path Winder and his parents had found him in Hardy Hills Lodge, one of the bigger orphanages in Vanhoover. Of all the colts and fillies in there, they’d liked him the best because of course they did and adopted him the very next day without a single doubt that they would be a happy family forever and ever. He liked going to school, even though he sometimes missed his brothers and sisters at the orphanage. He didn’t miss the teasing and bullying there, though he still sometimes got that in school but at least he didn’t have to stay in there all the time and could go home to his big bro who only made fun of him in a way that he didn’t mind because he could do the same without hard feelings. When he grew up, he wanted to become a ranger like his big bro. 

At some point, Winder took his turn. He apparently earned most of his keep as a tour guide for ponies looking to spend a holiday in the many chalets scattered throughout Tassel Woods, specialising in taking them through rough terrain to see the best sights the place had to offer. He also had a little experience in search and rescue. When not at work, he stayed at home looking after Tacky, since their parents had to work way off in Vanhoover for extended periods of time. In fact, he had just gotten him home from school when she’d crashed on their couch. They’d then had to spend the rest of their weekend looking after her, and—

“Just a moment,” Twilight interrupted.

Winder blinked. “Yeah?”

“Did you get any official medical training in your line of work?”

He tilted his head. “Well, that depends on what you consider official. My friends taught me how to set splints, dress wounds and treat most local poisons and diseases.” He grinned. “Never been to med school, though. Can’t afford it, and Mom and Dad aren’t paying.”

Hmm…

She leaned forward and watched him carefully. “Then how did you know I was suffering from magical depletion? Only trained medical staff are usually able to distinguish its symptoms from regular fatigue, and even then, it’s mostly unicorns who can confirm it. And yet, you seemed very sure that I’d burned myself out.” 

She might’ve imagined it, but she thought she saw Winder stiffen a little before his confident smile returned.

“Lucky guess, I guess. Heh heh. If you had your magic, I imagine you would’ve used it to avoid crashing in the first place. Or fixing yourself up right off the bat after waking up; alicorns can do that, right?”

“I suppose...” She inspected one of the bandages on her foreleg and raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re really good at what you do, though. I can’t believe I’m feeling this much better in just four days.”

He shrugged. “You’re an alicorn. And, hey, I can’t take all the credit.” Winder pulled a protesting Tacky over and grinned as he tousled his mane, adding, “This guy probably sped things up with all the adoration he’s been giving you. He watched you sleep and sometimes sang to you. At least, I think that was supposed to be singing…”

“Ugh, I thought you weren’t going to bring that up!” Tacky whined.

Twilight blinked.

Path Winder glanced at the clock and turned to Tacky. “Anyway, look at the time. We’ve got to get a move on if we’re going to get you to school before the bell hits eight. Otherwise, Miss Protractor’s going to hit me instead.”

“Aww, do I have to?”

Winder frowned. “Tack, we’ve talked about this. The blizzard’s given you a long weekend, but it’s time for school again.”

Tacky flicked his eyes over to Twilight, back to his elder brother, then back to Twilight as he gestured to her with both forelegs and said, ‘But, but… Princess!”

Despite the unwanted diversion from grilling Winder for information, Twilight chuckled at Tacky’s attempt to imitate the CMC’s trademark pout. “Sorry, my little pony. As Equestria’s newest princess, I hereby decree that royal visits are no excuse for skipping out on education. I’ll still be around by the time you get back, anyway.”

Tacky’s eyes widened. “Really?”

She nodded.

“Huh. Thought you had plans to leave,” Winder quipped.

Twilight yawned and flexed her tattered wings experimentally. “I guess I could use a little more rest over here. If you wouldn’t mind, that is.”

“Oh, not at all. C’mon, Tack. Let’s get ready.”

Twilight continued munching in silence as colt and stallion cleaned up the table and prepared for the flight to River Springs. Just before shutting the door, Winder, with Tacky riding on his back, waved her goodbye and promised to be back in an hour or so and to tell her that she could help herself to whatever she needed. 

What I need are answers, she thought as the door creaked shut.

She took a few moments to finish her breakfast before racing to a window to confirm that Winder and Tacky had gone. Once in the clear, she went straight for the trapdoor she’d spotted from the kitchen, hidden behind a couple of barrels. 

Her heart pounded as she descended the steps into darkness, and she froze when a memory of thorny vines lashed out towards her. Sweat dampened her mane as she fumbled for a minor light spell, and she sighed in relief when purple light forced back the darkness, revealing a disappointingly normal cellar. It was nearly bare, save for some firewood, old furniture and several crates filled with old toys and other trinkets. 

The void within rumbled its disapproval. 

Twilight hesitated for a moment, paralysed by indecision. But then the memories of emptiness threatened to flood her mind, and with a groan she allowed her magical sense to radiate from her position, searching for the source of her agitation. As before, nothing especially magical leapt out at her, but she did pick up on some tiny signatures really close to her position. So close, that they lay right on… her body.

Opening her eyes, Twilight eyed the patches of gauze on her wounds, wondering if Winder had applied any medicinal plants with magical properties. She peeled one off and gasped when greenish strands of sticky material stretched between the gauze and the clotted blood on her pinkish skin. 

Looks like no poultice I’ve ever seen…

She hurried back upstairs to the bathroom and wasted no time in stripping off every last patch of gauze and bandages. Most of them had similarly sticky green stuff, and she had to spend nearly half an hour washing everything off. Thankfully, her wounds didn’t bleed despite their raw appearance, and she soon felt clean once more.

After guiltily dumping the dirty towel aside, she picked up a patch of gauze to inspect the resinous green stuff more closely. It had no distinct smell, but she did get a lingering urge to eat it, much to her disgust. She tossed it aside and marched out to wait in the living room for Path Winder to return. Whatever his intentions, she needed to find out what he knew about the stuff he’d applied to her wounds. For what purpose, she hadn’t yet decided.

For knowledge. Yes.

Twilight ground her teeth.

And I still can’t stop lying to myself…

She found a comfortable spot on the ruined couch and lay there in wait. 

The minutes ticked by, punctuated by the hypnotic tick-tock of the clock hanging on the wall. Twilight shook her head and rubbed her temples as her eyes grew heavier by the second, muttering to herself about the importance of her new objective, but for some reason she couldn’t remember why. She blinked once. Her eyes took a couple of seconds to reopen on the second blink. And then they refused altogether on the third.

Wait, why am I snoring?


* * * * *


The room had grown considerably dimmer when Twilight laboriously opened her eyes. Lying with her back on the crumpled couch, she had a clear angled view of the greying sky outside, and she wondered if Tassel Woods was really as isolated as Winder had claimed, given how quickly the weather had changed. Achieving that kind of one-eighty required a lot of pegasi working together. At least, until she glanced at the ticking clock. 

Her jaw hung loose for a few seconds before her mental faculties re-established themselves sufficiently for an annoyed groan. Over five hours lost to an accidental nap. Five. 

First things first, though...

She dashed to the bathroom, nearly knocking over a stool and a vase on the way. However, relief came at the price of her hunger gaining prominence. Her horn ached, and she felt hollow inside. A tingling sensation had worked its way into her extremities; they also trembled slightly when she tried to hold them out for inspection. 

A long sigh escaped her. Even after all she’d been through, it still haunted her like a hungry shadow, unravelling her thread by thread…

Twilight started somepony rapped on the door.

“Everything all right in there? You’ve been a while.”

The void stirred at the sound of Path Winder’s voice, and then she remembered the covert task she’d set for herself just before falling asleep. 

She found Winder waiting patiently for her when she finally exited the bathroom. 

“Need anything? I’m already a little late picking Tack from school. You’ll be on your own until then.”

“I’ll be fine.” Twilight then smiled at him when she recalled something from her childhood. “You’re a great brother, you know that? I can imagine how much work it is to take care of a kid.”

Winder grinned and shrugged. “Ah well, the things I do for love.”

Twilight blinked.

It started with a trickle. She remembered sensing wisps of unusual magic about the house that seemed to linger around Winder, for some reason. She remembered his voice in her fevered state, tending to her as she fought her nightmares and withdrawal symptoms. The trickle gradually turned into a tidal wave. He seemed to know an awful lot about anatomy and magic for a non-unicorn with no training. Green light. Lots of green. Green in her dreams, green in her wounds.

Love.

“You sure you’re okay? You kind of spaced out for a moment.”

Twilight breathed slowly to still her heart and keep from trembling as she peered into his blue eyes. Nothing unusual struck her, and she averted her gaze before it could get awkward and faked a wince. “Actually, I’m sorry about the timing. I’m not feeling too great right now, but some food and hot water would be nice.”

Winder glanced at the clock and hesitated, and for a moment Twilight thought that he would say no. But then his smile returned with a nod. “Yeah, I can do that.”

Delay him. Figure something out. Whether your insane idea is correct would be a good starting point.

Twilight plodded back to the living room and sat on the thick rug as Winder went about his business in the kitchen. Hundreds of ideas came to her in the meantime, but none of them fit as well as what she had already guessed. Even if she was mistaken, she could not afford to wait to be proven wrong.

When he came back with her food and water, she took care to move very slowly, swaying about a little as if suffering from nausea and dizziness. The ploy worked, and though she could sense a little exasperation in the way he kept glancing at the clock, he remained close to help her eat and drink. Halfway through the meal, she decided to stall further by making small talk in between mouthfuls. Tacky’s wellbeing could depend on how much time she could buy. 

A tenuous field of arcane perception allowed her to keep an eye out for any fluctuation in ambient magic throughout the conversation. 

“Have you ever been to Canterlot?”

He shook his head. “Nah. Wish I could, though. I hear there’s lots of cool stuff there. Open wide.”

Twilight accepted mouthful of diced fruit he held out on the spoon and chewed slowly. 

She’d not detected any reaction to the question. After swallowing, she continued, “Like the royal wedding?”

Winder brightened up. “Exactly! We don’t ever get that much excitement this far north.”

“You mean like the changeling invasion?”

“Well, I can’t say I would’ve liked that part of the wedding, specifically.” He scratched the back of his neck. “Was it very bad?”

Twilight flicked her eyes over to the empty bowl in his grip and then averted her eyes, making a show of recalling nasty details to buy some time. She still hadn’t picked up on any unusual activity beyond the faint attraction she had to him. Could she risk a more direct approach? After a moment, she decided to go ahead; she couldn’t think of any other way to stall him further without raising suspicion and giving him time to prepare. She felt well enough to defend herself if necessary. 

So she locked eyes with him and said, “I was hoping you could tell me, actually.”

Path Winder blinked and tilted his head. “Huh?”

He looked genuinely confused by her question, and for a moment, she felt a little embarrassed for putting him in the spotlight like that. But then she detected a faint pulse of magical activity in him, like a spring slowly being compressed to store up kinetic energy. The signature originated from the vicinity of his forehead, where a horn should be, and felt nothing like a unicorn’s magic. It stirred her hunger all the same, though.

“Sorry in advance,” she whispered.

“Twilight, wha—”

Before he could finish, she charged up a spell and sent the bolt zigzagging his way. If he really was a changeling, it would strip way his disguise just like it had on the invaders in Canterlot. If not, it would just sting a little. And maybe burn a bit. 

Winder’s question turned into an incoherent gurgle as the spell collided with and traversed the full extent of his body. He toppled off his seat and convulsed on the floor as the purple energy gave way to green fire that seared away his brown coat to reveal grey, mildly iridescent chitin. A curved horn sprouted on his forehead just as his gritted teeth turned into fangs. 

When the flames vanished, she had a full-grown changeling curled up on the floor, holding its head with its eyes scrunched tight.

“Grwargh…” groaned ‘Path Winder’, blinking rapidly as he sat up on his haunches. When his pure-blue eyes regained focus, he stared at her and sputtered, “Wha—what the hay was that for? You ju—” 

He stopped when he looked down and then stared at the holes in his forelegs. Some silence passed between them before he said, “Oh, grub. Uh, I can explain.”

Twilight narrowed her eyes. “Please do.”

“Well…”

Crash!

Twilight jumped into the air at the noise and whirled around to find a thousand pieces of shattered vase on the floor—a diversion. She whipped back around, powering up a protective shield as she did so, and felt some satisfaction when it deflected a storm of loose paper scraps, stationery and other odds and ends that had been lying about the house before then. Reflexively, converted the bubble into a radiating shockwave with just enough force to repulse everything and clear the air, and then saw the changeling coiling back to leap through the open window.

Oh, no you don’t!

She wrapped him in a field of magic and negated his forward momentum, wincing a little at the horn ache from the expense of magic, then dragged him back in and pressed him down onto the broken couch. 

Unfortunately, the ache in her horn interfered with her grip, and the changeling’s counterspell easily broke through. The feedback blinded her momentarily, and she couldn’t dodge in time as he leaped forward and bowled her over onto her back. He swung a foreleg at her and then, as if on cue, her training with Luna kicked in. 

Twilight deflected the blow with a foreleg, then rolled left and right to avoid his repeated attempts to stomp her flat. Once he’d slowed down to catch his breath, she kicked him in the belly, sending him flying. He created a real ruckus smashing into things. She tried to get up and go after him before he could recover, but for some reason she snapped back to her former position like a released rubber band, thumping her head on the floorboards. 

What is tha—eww!

Wads of green goo clung to her coat around her belly, and she could feel more of them sticking to her back, mane, wings and legs, effectively likening her to a bug stuck on flypaper. She gritted her teeth and strained, but the gooey stuff was quickly stiffening. Worse still, she couldn’t risk using magic to burn them away when she couldn’t see them clearly. 

“Oh… ouch...” The changeling stumbled into her field of vision and gave her an apologetic look. “Hey, um… we kind of started out on the wrong hoof, so if you could please sit still and—”

Twilight couldn’t hear him. The world seemed to darken and shrink around her, blotting out all light and sound. The stiffening resin tightened around her, crushing the air out of her lungs like the plunder vines had done. She couldn’t move.

No!

She screamed and bent forward, straining her abdominal muscles. The sticky resin ripped her mane, tugged feathers loose and pulled her coat, but she powered through the pain. Loud creaks gave way to splintering noises as the resistance vanished and she wrenched herself free to fix her eyes on the changeling furiously backpedalling towards a corner with flattened ears, wide eyes and panicked breaths. He looked like he’d wet himself.

Twilight snarled as she took a step towards him, mentally flipping through her arsenal of spells to find one appropriate for a changeling who had replaced an orphan’s adoptive brother. 

“Where is the real Path Winder?” she growled.

The changeling gulped and scratched at the floor with a hoof, oozing green slime from the holes in his foreleg. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

The sound of somepony scraping hooves on a mat made both of them glance at the door, which swung open soon after to admit Tacky Hutch. He dumped his schoolbag by the side of the door and shook snow out of his mane as he entered, and then froze when he saw her and the changeling facing off. His eyes flicked between them several times in complete silence before he finally uttered, “Uh…”

“Tch’aik—ch’krrrk.”

Twilight barely had time to frown at the changeling for his outburst of cricket-like gibberish before Tacky suddenly clutched his chest and toppled to the floor, groaning. Without thinking, she dashed over to him, ignoring the sound of shattering glass that signalled the changeling’s escape through the window.

“Tacky, can you hear me? What did he do?” she cried as she examined his limp body for signs of injury. 

His tongue lolled out.

Had he been hit with paralysing magic? She couldn’t remember seeing any aura. Biting her lip, Twilight charged up a spell to scan him for magically induced trauma.

The moment the beam of energy touched his barrel, Tacky flailed in place and yelped, “Nggh-hahaha-haa-ha! That tickles!” And immediately after, a look of horror crossed his face as he clapped both hooves over his mouth, as if he’d been caught saying something rude.

Twilight gaped for a moment before it dawned upon her. 

“Wait—you were faking it?” she screeched. He’s getting away!

Tacky gasped and curled up as if expecting a blow, but she didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she dashed out the door, scanning the snowy woodlands for tracks. Flat snow spread out in all directions, interspersed with thick, bristly pines. Thick, grey clouds hovered low over the land as well, and any one of them could provide him with a safe hiding spot, especially since her tattered wings couldn’t get her airborne. 

Twilight snorted and pounded a hoof into the dirt as she turned this way and that, searching again for the slightest physical evidence of his passage. As she lost precious seconds to the lack of information, her breaths grew hot and heavy, and with a final growl, she closed her eyes and turned to her magical sense. The void rumbled in approval as she traced his residual magic, leading skyward to a thick but surprisingly close formation of clouds. Probably within shouting distance.

Why’s he sticking around? Hoping I’ll overshoot?

Opening her eyes, she feigned attention at a different patch of clouds and quickly went through some calculations. Her horn still throbbed, but she figured she could push it far enough for a couple of well-placed spells. No second chances, though.

She took a deep breath to steady herself and whispered, “Three… two… one.”

Whirling around, she shot a bolt of energy at his cluster of clouds and felt a smile tug at her lips when he flailed in mid-air from the sudden loss of support. He dropped a short distance before his wings took over, and he quickly made a beeline for the nearest cloud.

He was too far for a telekinetic grab and probably too agile for a stunning blast, but she did have a surprise for him. It would hurt, but the reward felt proportionate to the risk. Her insides were already twisting in anticipation.

Here goes…

Cold, hard pain split down the middle of her horn as she teleported straight into the sky, and she popped back into physical space some twenty paces above him and proceeded to drop like a stone. He yelped when she collided with his back and bear-hugged him with every available appendage, effectively crumpling his wings between them. 

“Wait, no-no-no—aaaagh!” he yelled as they plummeted towards the ground.

Twilight instinctively spread her wings to slow their fall, but they could only do so much against the acceleration. Still, they did help her aim for the thickest patch of snow she could see. He scored a few hits on her cheek and belly with his bucking and flailing, but she ground her teeth and held him tight as the wind roared in her ears. 

At the last second, she shifted her wings and rotated so they’d hit the snow parallel to the ground and side by side; she didn’t want to risk crushing him underneath, and she had no intention of letting him use her as a cushion. With some luck, they wouldn’t find bedrock hiding beneath the snow or something similarly brutal, and hopefully they wouldn’t break anything completely vital. 

A dull explosion abruptly cut off the roaring in her ears as darkness swallowed her. Muffled noises nudged at the edge of her consciousness before she inhaled a mouthful of pure cold and exploded to the surface, coughing up snow and dirt. Her right shoulder and hip ached abominably and her right legs refused to support her weight, so she favoured her left side as she dug the changeling out. 

Finding no blood or cracks in his chitin, she proceeded to drag him by the tail to a spot with less snow. He sputtered and clawed feebly at the ground as they went.

“T’chaak! Have I… mentioned just how… insane you are?” he wheezed between breaths, no longer sounding like Path Winder. His voice had gone all husky and coarse. 

We’re just getting started.

Twilight spat out his tail and turned around with the intention of rolling him onto his back and pinning him to the ground. 

But just as she set her eyes on him, he muttered, “Sorry in advance.” 

The snow beneath her exploded, and the world spun in earnest as she stumbled around like a drunken mare. Pain shot up her jaw and into her brain as she tasted blood, and then she saw the changeling scrambling onto his hooves to make a run for it.

Twilight had no intention of letting him get away with spin-kicking her square in the jaw like that. She lunged and caught his hind legs, forcing him to crash face-first into the snow. He attempted to buck her loose, but she had already risen to all fours. Next, she jumped to avoid his low sweep and blocked a foreleg strike as he spun and buzzed his wings to get back onto his hooves in a flurry of snow and dead leaves.

So he knows a thing or two about fighting. A soldier, maybe? Do changeling colonies have specialised social groups like ants or bee—

She discarded the thought to duck under a swipe at her head and lunged inside his defence to ram his chest with her good shoulder. A smile tugged at her lips when she heard his breath whoosh out, and she followed up with a punch to his belly. But her weakened right foreleg didn’t deliver enough force to stun him; she only got a pained grunt and a retaliatory clap to both temples for her trouble.

Rubbing her head with one hoof, she forced one eye open and squinted through the flashing stars in her vision to see him charging up a spell. She had no time to throw up a barrier, so she angled herself to take the green bolt to her shoulder where it would hopefully hurt the least. 

A stunning spell. The current surged through her nerves when it made contact, throwing her coordination out of whack and sending her to the ground. 

No. Failure is not an option!

And then the void surfaced. Even with her face pressed into the chilling snow, heat flowed through her veins as dark magic crackled from her horn. Green, purple and black lights danced beneath her eyelids as her heart pounded and her breaths grew heavy. Changeling magic – wispy, like fire and smoke intertwined with embers; not as unruly as chaos but a whole lot more nebulous than pony magic – it tasted of the will to live. 

“Look, I don’t want to hur—”

Twilight snarled and lunged at him. He swung out at her in a panic, but she deflected the blow and reached out to lock her foreleg with his. He tried using his other foreleg, but she blocked that move as well. His wings twitched as they faced off with forelegs locked up between them. When she felt him shift his weight to deliver a kick, she threw her weight in the opposite direction to weaken his leverage.

“Stop fighting! He’s my—”

What?

Twilight ignored Tacky’s voice when the changeling suddenly gritted his teeth, threw back his head and slammed his forehead into hers at a slight angle to avoid damaging his horn. Stars exploded in her vision as she reeled from the blow, and then she growled and threw him a dirty glare. His eyes grew to the size of dinner plates when she snorted and retaliated with similar head butt.

The resounding crack and pain that followed pleased her immensely.

Though she found it hard to tell with his lack of obvious pupils, he seemed to go cross-eyed before he sagged and collapsed with a groan. She then pinned him on his back and inched closer to his horn, panting heavily as black tendrils laced with green and purple light writhed from hers. 

She could hear Tacky shouting something again, but the words sounded indistinct when she had so much magical stimuli right in her face.

A thin line of blue blood ran down from the fracture on his forehead. Wincing, he murmured, “Please… look after Tacky. He’s got… no one else.”

Twilight unleashed her hunger and greedily inhaled the wispy stream of green fire that leaked from his horn. It burned on the way down before melting into a hot stream of energy in her lungs, racing through her veins and nerves. She shivered as the energy coursed through her body, driving away her pain.

And then, she froze when her consciousness latched onto a completely new set of stimuli. Similar to magic, she could sense them in three-dimensional space without the need for eyes or ears. One source appeared directly beneath her, radiating tantalising waves of yellow that urged her to give chase, whilst another approached some distance from behind, splashing out waves of red and yellow that made her mane hairs stand on end.

“Bro!” 

The scream knocked Twilight out of her euphoria, and she barely had enough time to leap aside to avoid the brown and purple blur that cannonballed towards the changeling.

“Leave him alone!”

“Tack, no—get out of the way.”

Twilight reeled from the blast. For a moment, she thought that the changeling had thrown another spell at her, but her other senses could not confirm it. Tacky stood between her and the changeling, poised low and wide as if expecting an attack. 

She hungered at the sight. Not the kind that plagued her belly or the hollow emptiness in her middle, but a third kind that gripped her heart and filled it with endless yearning for something more than her paltry existence. She longed to feed on the energy that flowed between them; the changeling’s concern for Tacky’s safety, and Tacky’s blind, unfettered affection. Love. Brotherly love. A sweet, pinkish aura tinged with sour-yellow fear and hot, reddish anger.

Oh, you can’t be serious. You have got to be kidding me!

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut and pressed two hooves to her ears to shut out the stimuli, but her new sense needed neither to function. She could still feel their roiling emotions nearby, so easily within reach and so, so utterly nourishing to her parched heart. A groan escaped her as she tried to wall off all thoughts of harvesting the bounty before her, and digging into the changeling’s magic on the side, but her body refused to obey for long. Her front hooves went back onto the ground and she began stalking towards them, visually blind but guided by the blazing aura flowing between them. She could feel the changeling taking some of it in, growing stronger, and she itched for her turn.

No, I am not picking up another habit. I am not hurting a child. Never-never-never!

She unleased a bolt of purple lightning into the sky, screaming at the unfairness of being doomed to feel and taste so much power without the right to consume it. 

As the last echo faded into the distance, she collapsed onto the ground, wet with melted snow, sobbing as she hid her face with her forelegs. She made no attempt to stop the cold seeping into her bones; perhaps it could dull the immense longing within and make it just a bit more bearable. 

Hooves crunched into the snow near her, and she trembled when a hoof rested on her shoulder.

“Hey, um…” he began hesitantly.

“I’m sorry,” she whimpered.

The hoof lifted away for a moment, and then she felt him lie on the ground beside her.

“It’s okay. It’s a pretty normal reaction, actually.” He paused for a moment, then added, “Uh, minus the crazy moves and magic-eating part, of course.”

“I’m sorry.”

Twilight could taste his concern for her. Tinged with a little fear, but mostly sincere pity and care. She gasped when she felt it flow into her without any action on her part, and fresh tears welled up when she felt the warmth blooming in her heart. The hunger gradually eased off until she could ignore it. Trembling, she leaned on his shoulder and cried, feeling wholly undeserving of his empathy. He recoiled at first, but soon steadied himself and patted her gently on the back as she poured her sorrows away.

“Let’s get back inside,” he eventually said. “It’ll be dark soon, and this isn’t the best weather to chill out in. Heh. Chill out.”

Twilight heard a groan from Tacky, and she could practically feel his eye-rolling.

“You should’ve waited at school,” Winder quipped.

“Millstone’s uncle walked us to his place because you were late. I got home from there,” came the mumbled reply.

“He knows, doesn’t he?” she whispered as Winder helped her up.

“Eh?”

“He loves you even in this form. I feel it.”

His eyes widened. “You can? Oh, wow. Um, that’s right. I’ve got a lot of explaining to do, I think.”

Twilight cringed when his shoulder pressed into her tender ribs. “So do I. Just… hold off using any magic around me and I shouldn’t lose control.” 

Though cold and windy, the walk back to the house proved relatively uneventful, save for the constant swirling of emotions around Tacky. When not under duress, Winder apparently could mask his emotions down to a barely perceptible, grey hum. On the other hoof, Tacky’s aura contained a mix of yellow-sour apprehension and silvery-sweet awe with a smattering of bitter-orange disapproval.

Stars above, I can literally feel him judging me…

“Wow. You’re a mess,” said Winder when they sat around the fireplace. 

Twilight let out a hollow laugh. She still had a lot of his dried resin on her coat together with a whole mess of floorboard splinters, shredded paper, dirt and leaves stuck to her. Also, she couldn’t believe she hadn’t noticed the broken mug and a whole book plastered to her flank. No wonder her balance had felt a little wonky. 

She tried pulling a stick off her coat, but it stuck fast and threatened to take some hairs along with it.

“I need a shower,” she muttered. “I look ridiculous.”

“That won’t work.”

Twilight turned to Winder and waited. He looked away and rubbed the back of his neck for a moment before sheepishly saying, “Uh, you’re probably not going to like it.”


* * * * *


“You’re right. I don’t like this.”

Winder shrugged and gave his hoof another slobbery lick. “Desperate measures. Sorry.”

Twilight forced herself to keep still as he pressed the cold wetness into the sticky mess in her mane. It slowly loosened up, and bits of floorboard and dirt rained to the floor as cool liquid ran down her back. Fascinating; changelings could produce natural, adhesive resin from their leg pores that could be dissolved by their saliva; she just wished she didn’t have to experience it in such a disgusting way. At least he’d applied it by hoof instead of licking her directly. She shuddered at the thought.

“Okay, all done.” Winder finally said after nearly ten minutes of plucking detritus off of her and tossing them into a bucket.

He slumped by her side on the rug, and then peered at her back before gingerly tapping his hooves together and saying, “You’ve opened up some of your wounds again. Um, I can help with those. Same thing I did for you while you were… unconscious.”

She narrowed her eyes. “You actually put bodily secretions on my wounds?”

A hint of purple-spicy embarrassment made it through his emotional mask as he grinned sheepishly. “It speeds up healing and prevents infection. Don’t worry; it’s quite safe. It’s what we use to keep ponies alive in pods—”

“Pass,” Twilight deadpanned. She could deal with a little bleeding.

“Right. I’ll, uh… just go get us all something hot to drink, maybe fix something light for dinner.” He rose to all fours, then asked, “Tea or coffee?” 

She stared at him.

His smile grew a little forced. “You look like a coffee kind of pony. Coffee it is. Yup!”

After he’d hastily trotted off to the kitchen, Twilight shook her head and turned her attention to Tacky. She found him watching her quietly from his spot on the rug. He hadn’t moved or said a word at all since coming in, and though her ability to sense emotions had diminished substantially since feeding on Winder’s magic, she could still detect a roiling sea of mixed feelings beneath his impassive expression. He apparently couldn’t decide whether to shun or idolise her anymore.

“Tacky,” she began uncertainly, “I’m sorry I hurt your brother. I… I didn’t mean it.”

He continued to stare at her for a moment or two, and then finally shrugged and turned away. He still watched her from the corner of his eye, though. 

Twilight sighed and stared at the crackling fire.

This is going to be one heck of an awkward evening…