//------------------------------//
// Chapter 5 
// Story: Absent 
// by T6J2E5 
//------------------------------//


Nyx was terrified.  She kept her eyes tightly closed, her fear easily overcoming any desire to explore her surroundings for the dozenth time since she had arrived.  She’d felt fear before, many times.  Only once, however, had she felt a paralyzing terror such as now.  When she had awakened to the world for the first time on the edge of a clearing in the Everfree Forest unaware of who, what, or where she was, the same feeling had coursed through her.  At the time, it limited her activity to shallow, panicked breaths and gentle trembles within a nearby bush.  Here, there was no bush in which to hide.  Surrounding her on all sides were only the cold, grey stone of the cubical holding cell.


She hadn’t been mistreated, per se.  At least, she hadn’t been harmed by her captors.  They made sure she was uninjured, well fed, warm, and healthy.  The problem was that she had no idea who they were.  The room in which she had been kept since her arrival was quite dark, a few metres to each side with only a small torch by the door to provide the meagre light.  The door itself was obviously constructed to keep ponies from escaping the room.  It was heavy and wooden with a small, semicircular window near the ceiling and filled with thick, solid metal bars.  It opened inward, but bore no handle to pull it ajar.


Nyx had attempted escape shortly after she awakened here about two days ago.  Her flying skills had advanced to the point where she could efficiently glide a long distance, but she was as yet unable to launch herself skybound.  There was no way she could reach the window, given her short stature, even when standing on her hind hooves.  Her next attempt had been to remove the door by force using her magical ability.  Brute, magical power had proved completely ineffective.  She had trouble getting her spells to manifest in this place... wherever it was.  It was as if the magic here was different somehow.  The most she had been able to do was rattle the door slightly on its hinges.  Aside from that, it hadn’t budged.  She had even attempted to set the door on fire using the nearby torch.  Her magic failed her again, however, as she tried to levitate it from its anchor on the wall.  Instead of lifting itself out and down into her grasp, it instead burst into bright, violet flame and floated slowly to the floor as a small pile of ash.  This had left her in complete darkness until a guard, an earth pony, brought her next meal and secured a replacement torch on the wall.


She groaned as she opened her eyes.  It didn’t take them long to adjust to the minimal amount of light given by the torch on the other side of her cell.  Her head throbbed painfully, as it did every time she woke from the unnatural sleep her captors forced upon her.  Climbing to her hooves, she made her way to a nearby water bucket and drank greedily.  Her mouth had an awful, hollow taste in it, and the water did little to remove the flavour.  It sated her thirst, however, and that always seemed to help the headaches.  As far as she could tell, she had been here for two days.  Each time she attempted to escape, a guard had entered her cell shortly afterward to place a small container of something near the door.  Puffs of sweet-smelling smoke would rise from the top of the container every few seconds, quickly filling the small cell with its scent.  Two or three breaths of the perfumed air within her room was enough to force the filly into a dreamless unconsciousness.  She didn’t know how long she had slept each time, but the subsequent headaches lasted for nearly an hour after she drank a bucket of water.


Her first experience with the smoke’s scent had been her last experience before she had arrived in this place.  She could not remember much about what happened that day, almost as if the induced slumber had fogged her memory, allowing her to recall only partial images and bits of her other senses.  It happened after she left the schoolhouse that afternoon.  She had stayed late to ask Miss Cheerilee some extra questions about the day’s lesson material, telling her friends to go on without her.  She had left the school grounds and was nearly halfway to Ponyville Square when somepony grabbed her backpack from behind, roughly lifting her hooves from the ground.  Her assailant removed the bag and her glasses while another placed a heavy cloth over her muzzle.  She could breathe through the cloth easily and had been surprised to discover that it was imbued with a cool, sweet perfume.  She was forced to inhale deeply while struggling against the hooves restraining her.  Two breaths later, she was overcome by an intense dizziness as her vision faded to black.  When she next awoke, she had found herself in the cell terribly hungry and thirsty, with food and water waiting for her by the door.


That was, she thought, two days ago.  Since then, the only ponies she saw were the guards who brought her those little boxes of smoke.  Her food and water were brought only while she slept.  The guards were completely covered in dull, metal armour, except for their faces.  Their arrival was always accompanied by a bright light from the corridor, obfuscating their appearance to create pony-shaped silhouettes as she cowered in the farthest corner.  They said nothing, and fear had rendered her own voice useless.


She finished the water in the bucket, her tongue lapping at the bottom of the container to soak up any remaining drops.  Looking around the room, she realized that the guards had not yet replaced her... waste bucket.  Large amounts of water eventually required her to produce large amounts of... well, she didn’t like to think about that.  Miss Rarity told her such topics were unfillylike.  It was embarrassing enough having to relieve herself into a bucket in the corner of her cell.  The water bucket was now empty, serving as well as any other receptacle they might bring her.  She hoped they at least cleaned the buckets before they returned them with food or water inside.


Her embarrassment and less-than-proper thoughts were interrupted by a sound she had not heard in days: voices.  They were distant and echoed through the corridor, making their words unintelligible.  But the voices clearly belonged to at least three ponies, and they were getting slowly closer.  Two of the voices sounded rough while a third seemed softer and more refined but somehow also more commanding.  As the voices neared, the sound of hoofsteps on a stone floor gradually joined them.  The words were clearer now, but Nyx still couldn’t recognize any of them.  They sounded strange, like the gibberish of an infant foal, but more organized.  Whatever they were saying to one another, they weren’t saying it in any dialect of Equestrian she had ever heard.


As the voices and hoofsteps approached her cell, Nyx abandoned her bucket in favour of the corner opposite the door and the darkest space available.  Curled nearly into a ball, her head ducked close to her chest between her front hooves, she waited, hoping for the voices to pass by.  They didn’t.  She curled up even more tightly, shivering as her ears perked to the sound of a key being inserted into the door’s lock.  A sharp pang of terror shot through her as the locking mechanism was released.  What if it was more guards bringing another perfume box? she thought.  I just woke up from the last one!  I didn’t try to escape again!  Her breaths became short and accelerated, betraying her borderline panic.  What do they want?  Why are they doing this to me?  Mommy, help me!  Where are you?!  She sniffed and buried her muzzle deeper between her hooves, wiping the fresh tears into her black coat.


The door opened slowly.  The light from the corridor was incredibly brilliant relative to her own pathetic torchlight, causing her to divert her eyes toward the floor.  She waited to hear the guard lay another box onto the floor near the door, the soft pop which started the smoke.  When the sound didn’t come, she looked up to view her visitors.  Three large, male ponies stood just inside her cell, their features barely visible before the light from outside.  Oh no, she thought, cringing.  Three of them.  Please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt m--


“Please, do not be afraid,” said the nearest pony in the voice she heard as more refined.  His words were heavily accented, but he spoke in Equestrian.  “You are among friends here,” he added, his voice deep and soft.


Nyx’s eyes finally adjusted to the increase in light, allowing her to see the pony speaking.  Unlike the two guards behind him who wore the drab grey armour and helmet, this pony was even larger and garbed in a lighter armour made of what appeared to be gold.  It reminded her vaguely of the armour of Celestia’s Royal Guard.  The biggest difference was the seal he bore on his chestplate.  A large circle of blue sapphire surrounded the black silhouette of a unicorn’s head.  Black wings adorned either side of the head, spreading outward to reach the edge of the circle.  In each of the four quadrants created by the central figure was a small star of ruby.  What caught her attention most, however were two other features.  First, the unicorn head had not one, but three horns.  The last feature sent a shiver down her spine, increasing in intensity the longer she gazed into it.  Where the unicorn’s eye should be was a brilliant turquoise in the very familiar, elongated shape of a reptilian pupil.


The pony took a step away from the door, toward Nyx.  “Are you hungry?”  He looked to the side at the two nearby buckets, one of which contained fresh prairie grasses, the other now filled with the filly’s urine.  His brow furrowed as he turned back to the guards.  “Ĉu vi ne provizas vian reĝinon kun taŭga privata?!” he snapped angrily.  His next words made the guards glance at each other nervously.  “Kiaj kvaronoj estas tio? Ĉu vi observu fillies en malliberejon?!”  He closed his eyes and faced Nyx once again, lowering his head to bring his line-of-sight as level as possible with the alicorn’s.  “Please,” he said to Nyx gently, his anger evaporated, “I apologize for the treatment you have received here.  You are my guest.”


The larger pony’s gentle voice allowed Nyx to find a lifeboat of bravery in her sea of terror.  She glared at him, tears streaking her cheeks.  “Who are you?!” she yelled.  “Where is my mom?!”


Her second question seemed to take the pony by surprise.  He stepped back in a half-flinch.  “I am sorry, fraŭlino.  Your... your mother?”


The filly’s lifeboat grew under the hesitation of her captor.  She leaped to her hooves, her gaze a deadly poison.  “Yes, my mom!  Where is she?  Who are you?  I want to go home!” she blurted between her tears, her voice fueled by a burgeoning rage.  Her legs trembled terribly, betraying the fear still smothering her.


“But, fraŭlino,” the gold-clad pony said, his confusion evident, “you... we... you have a mother?”  He shook his head, bristling at the realization before collecting himself again.  “I am Lord Titus.  I will make sure you receive everything you desire here.  I have prepared a much...” he looked around the cell briefly with disdain, “... better living place for you, if you will please follow--”


“Where is ‘here?’  I want to go home.” Nyx interrupted with a growl.


Again, the pony looked taken aback.  “Mia juna princino, you are home.”





* * * * *





Two days.  It had been two days since she was moved into her new prison cell.  Admittedly, this one was far more comfortable and luxurious than the actual holding cell she had occupied in the basement of the enormous complex Lord Titus called the “La Granda Domo.”  The closest Equestrian analog, he told her, was probably “Federal Palace.”


It turned out that Nyx actually was being held in the palace’s incarceration facilities.  This didn’t particularly surprise her.  She couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to actually live or work in such a dark, lonely place.  Besides, when contrasted against the opulent accommodations of the palace’s above-ground floors, one could describe it as nothing except prison-like.


Although she still considered her current arrangements in terms of a prison, she felt relieved that she no longer had to sleep on the floor or eat from a bucket.  Most thankfully, her new living space included a lavish washroom area, featuring everything she could imagine would be needed for hygiene or... other purposes.  In fact, she didn’t even recognize one of the fixtures beside the flawless, white toileting area.  At first, she wondered if it was a strange type of drinking fountain or water faucet.  It had only one button, which caused it to emit a gentle stream of water into another porcelain bowl beneath it.  She eventually decided that it likely wasn’t for drinking, given its proximity to the toilet.


Indeed, Lord Titus had told her the truth two days ago before he led her to this new place.  She had everything she could possibly desire here.  Lush towels, window coverings, and bed dressings.  The bed itself was nearly as large as her bedroom back in the Ponyville Library, and she briefly wondered during her first night if she would become lost in the silk sheets while she slept.  It was unquestionably the most comfortable object on which she had ever sat, stood, laid, or slept.


Her current food situation was similarly lavish.  While in the holding cell several floors beneath her, two food and water buckets each day were placed near the door inside her cell.  She had quickly grown very tired of prairie grass and water.  Now, she needed only to inform the guards outside her doors of her hunger, and she would presently receive any confection she desired.  Pastas, salads, soups, and beverages of all kinds were available to her at any hour of the day or night.  She had asked for an enormous amount of her favourite foods late the previous night, long after she would have been in bed in Ponyville.  To her surprise, her request was fulfilled with surprising speed.  She hadn’t even been hungry; her aim was to test exactly for what she could acceptably ask.  Even more surprising to her, the food (as all the food served her in this new place) was elegantly plated on fine china with exquisitely carved, silver flatware.  She now drank her water (or, as she discovered was fantastically delicious, sparkling apple juice) from crystal stemware and goblets crafted from beautiful, jewel-encrusted gold.  More than once over the past couple days did she wonder if even Celestia herself ate so regally in Canterlot Castle.  Her conditions had gone from lowly prisoner to princess-tier literally overnight.  The situation was beginning to feel like a very expensive holiday, albeit an unexpected and unwelcome one.  The thought made her feel sullied in ways no amount of water could cleanse.


Nyx opened her eyes and raised her head, directing her attention to the light knocking sound coming from the adjacent room.  This was how Titus always announced his arrival since he brought her here.  She didn’t want to see him right now.  The only pony she wished to watch walk through her bedroom door was Twilight, newly arrived from Ponyville to rescue her.  She snorted and lowered her head back onto her front hooves, getting comfortable again atop the fresh linens placed there by a housekeeping pony that morning.  She was attempting to form a plan in her mind, and she didn’t want the disruption right now.


Several seconds of silence were followed by another series of raps her chambers’ main doors.  “Iom princino,” came the familiar, accented voice of Titus.  “May I come in?”  Titus had been the only pony to enter her new quarters with the purpose of seeing her.  Several servants brought her food on request or cleaned the rooms each day, but they always remained silent, just as the guards did while in her cell in the basement.  Soft hoofsteps on the carpet indicated Titus had allowed himself entry without Nyx’s permission.


“Go away,” Nyx said, her voice muffled by her hooves.  She didn’t bother to open her eyes or even dignify him with a nod of greeting as he quietly entered the bedroom and sat at her bedside.


	“Bonvolu, princino,” he said softly, his voice deep but completely unthreatening, “you have been lying on your bed all--”


	“Why do you keep calling me that?” Nyx interrupted, her muzzle still buried between her hooves.  She didn’t want to look at him.  “My name is Nyx,” she grumbled, almost inaudibly.


	Titus sighed softly, pausing a few seconds as if to collect his thoughts.  “I apologise, … Nyx.”  There was a slight rustling noise as he shifted his weight.  Nyx felt a large, but gentle hoof on her shoulder, and she shrugged it off immediately.  His very touch sickened her.  He withdrew his hoof, continuing.  “You have been lying here, on your bed, all day.  What is wrong?”


	Nyx hadn’t actually been lying there for the whole day, but she wasn’t about to reveal that to him.  Most of the afternoon, between his annoyingly frequent visits, had been spent pacing the various rooms of her chambers while deep in thought.  She’d constructed a detailed map in her head of all her rooms, the area immediately outside in the corridor, and her position relative to what she could see from her large balcony.  If he wanted to think she was acting like a foal, pouting in bed all day, that was fine by her.  She couldn’t decide if her dominant feeling was homesickness or anger, but she promised herself that he’d eventually regret any anger he garnered from her.


	His comment stoked the flames of that anger, forcing them to briefly rise to the surface.  “What is wrong?!” Nyx shouted, providing her best mockery of Titus’ accent before returning to her normal speech.  “What’s wrong?!” she repeated.  She raised her head to look at the pony before her, tears of anger and sadness already streaking down her cheeks.


	Titus remained at the end of the bed in front of Nyx.  He said nothing, but his expression had changed to betray both confusion and even a hint of surprise.  His raised eyebrow contrasted curiously against his flattened ears.


	Nyx huffed angrily, her tears dripping from her muzzle and onto the sheets beneath her.  “You take me away from my home and my mom, lock me in a dungeon and make me...” she blushed briefly remembering a specific condition she suffered in the holding cell, “... make me eat only dry grass from a bucket,” she quickly added in lieu of her thought.  “The guards outside my doors won’t let me go outside or even leave the room,” she continued, “and you keep lying to my questions!  What do you think is wrong?!”


	Titus flinched at her accusations.  “But, princi... but, Nyx,” he said, quickly correcting himself, “I have not told you any lies.  Nopony here would ever lie to you.”  He placed extra emphasis on the one word, looking surprised and somewhat mortified.  “Don’t you know that?”


	Nyx bolted to her hooves, her rage fully fueled by his contradiction.  “You’re lying right now!” she screamed, her tears flowing freely now.  “You lied about this being my home!  Now, you’re lying about... about lying!”


	“I am sorry, Nyx,” Titus said in a voice obviously meant to calm the enraged filly, “but I do not understand.  You are home.  We rescued you from those ponies in Equestria,” he pleaded, placing a hoof gingerly on the edge of the mattress.  “We are happy that you have returned to us, but we must keep you here, for now, for your own safety.”


	“I’ll show you who needs safety,” the alicorn growled venomously as her horn began to glow dimly.  Her tears had ceased, but her vision was still blurred, in part by the sheer volume of anger coursing through her.  She hoped that she could get her magic to work correctly, but it still didn’t feel right.


	Titus seemed to immediately realize what was occurring and ducked behind the edge of the bed only a fraction of a second before a bolt of dark blue energy blazed from the tip of Nyx’s horn.  He opened his eyes and looked upward a few seconds later when several small chunks of plaster fell onto his head.  Nyx’s attack had missed him completely, firing instead straight up and into the ceiling.  He gulped, looking at the ceiling’s new, small crater roughly the same size as his forehoof.


	Nyx stared at the ceiling in irritation as she felt Titus’ gaze return to her.  That wasn’t supposed to happen.  She had meant the attack to hit him, and maybe only burn a little.  She shuddered as she realized what the blast might have done to the pony in front of her if her aim had been true.  She was angry, very angry, but she didn’t want to hurt anypony, even Titus.  One thing Twilight had been certain to teach Nyx at an early stage was about the consequences of one’s actions.  As the magnitude of what might have happened began to sink in, the filly crumpled back onto the bed, sobbing pitifully.  “I’m sorry, Lord Titus,” she whispered into her hooves between sobs.  “I didn’t mean to.”


	The roan earth pony sighed, closed his eyes, and shook his head solemnly.  “Estas akceptebla, juna Nyx.”  He looked at her, a concerned smile adorning his face.


	Nyx sniffed and looked at him.  “W-what?”  She was lost.  Wherever these foreign-looking and foreign-speaking ponies had taken her, it had robbed her of her magic, her home, her mother and friends, and even her ability to communicate.  She lowered her muzzle back into the cranny between her forelegs and resumed her misery quietly.  “Please just go,” she said after hearing no response from her captor.


	Titus rose from his place at the end of the bed, slowly making his way out of the bedroom and into the adjoining great room.  He paused to look back at the trembling, emotionally wrecked filly, a relatively small, black lump on the expansive, regal comforter.  He opened the main doors and stepped out into the corridor.  Nyx heard the doors close behind him, and continued to cry until her eyes and lungs burned.


	When she raised her head, the sky outside was dark and several of the torches along her chamber walls were lit, indicating one of the servants had entered to provide the illumination.  Had she fallen asleep?  She couldn’t remember but a few minutes after Titus left, and it had been at least a couple hours before sundown when he did.  She rubbed her eyes, wiping away the dried salt left behind by her tears hours earlier.  The new pain in her abdomen informed her that she hadn’t eaten since early that morning.  At least food was something she no longer had to worry about.  After her experiment the previous night, she concluded that her culinary requests could include nearly anything imaginable and would be delivered without delay.  Right now, she could use the good feeling she often got after a hot meal.


	About to open the door to her chambers and inform her guards of her desire to eat, Nyx paused, staring at the floor.  A hot meal would be good, but it would bring other ponies to the room again.  It might even bring Titus back to check on her.  She turned away from the door and walked slowly to her balcony opposite the entrance.  It was beautifully constructed.  The back half of the semicircular structure lay behind a crystal-clear, glass wall, with double french doors leading to the outside.  She had discovered the previous day that the doors were unlocked, allowing her full access to the outdoor portion.  She pushed the doors open gently with her front hoof and walked to the far railing.  Beneath her lay the parade grounds of the complex in which she was interred.  Several burly guards, not unlike the ones she first encountered in the jail cell, patrolled  the inside of the perimeter wall.  They were all earth ponies, from what she could tell.  They might be hiding wings under their armour, but that’d be awfully uncomfortable, she thought.


	Past the walls in the three directions her position allowed her to see was the sprawling city that surrounded the complex.  The buildings were squat, none more than a few stories tall, and most looked to be in disrepair or at least very, very old.  During the daytime, she could see ponies going about their business in the streets.  She could easily see hundreds, no, thousands of them from her vantage point at least a dozen metres above the ground.  The perfectly flat terrain on which the city was built allowed her to see the borders of the urbanized area several kilometres away, and beyond that a vast empty space of green and brown prairie.  Now, after dark, the city appeared nearly deserted.  Very few of the dilapidated buildings bore torches on their façades, and not many more showed evidence of light or life from inside.


	For the first time since she arrived in this place, she noticed the chill wind blowing in from the south.  Her tutelage in astronomy under Twilight the past two years had given her the knowledge that the sun in Equestria rose in the East and set in the West.  She didn’t think she was very far from Equestria, so that must mean her windows faced south.  When she last walked the streets of Ponyville, summer had just barely begun.  The afternoons were hot and sunny, while the evenings were pleasantly mild.  This wind, however, rivaled even the crisp morning air in Ponyville.  She shivered, unable to imagine anywhere that would be this cool in the summertime.


	A pair of voices beneath her roused her from her thoughts.  The plan she had formed in her mind that morning and afternoon was the only shot she had of finding her way out of this awful place and back home again.  How she longed to see Twilight, to snuggle into her mother’s warm side and read a book together in the library before bed.  She spread her wings and hopped onto the wide, stone railing.  Even despite the dark, she could clearly see the ground far beneath her from the balcony.  She could remember flying before, vividly.  But all of those memories were of her as an adult, as Nightmare Moon.  Since her return to fillyhood, her flying had been mostly on-par with other fillies her age.  That is, not very well.  She excelled, however, at gliding.  Given Twilight had no wings of her own, she managed to convince Rainbow Dash to give Nyx flying lessons.  The cyan mare had quickly realized that the alicorn could easily carry her own weight once in the air, and could glide on the wind like a pro.  Her ability to actually take off was sorely lacking, a feat most of her pegasus classmates were also unable to perform successfully.


	The pair of voices beneath her faded as their owners walked away toward one of the complex’s perimeter walls.  She looked behind her, the only light illuminating the balcony from two small torches, one on each side attached to the building façade.  Her black coat blended well with the ambient darkness over the parade grounds, just as she had hoped while scheming earlier in the day.  Checking again beneath and ahead of her, assuring herself that no guards were present in the immediate vicinity, she closed her eyes tightly and sucked in a breath, holding it as she reared up and used her hind legs to leap into the night sky.


	Her mind instantly filled with panic and dread as she felt herself drop like a stone from a cliff.  She flapped her wings furiously, desperate to generate the lift necessary not only to carry her on the air currents, but also now to save her young life.  Her determination yielded fruit after only a few beats of the feathery appendages, and her form lurched upward and forward as her remiges flared to allow the familiar sensation of boundless flight.  Nyx was forced to place a hoof over her muzzle in order to stifle her relieved giggle.  She faltered after letting slip her concentration, but quickly regained her stability, gliding on the wind as naturally as fish glide through the ocean’s waters.  Finally opening her eyes, she nearly revealed her position again when she saw the entire parade ground was free of sentries.  She looked ahead toward her goal: freedom.  The only obstacle between herself and the city was the air on which she now masterfully rode.


	From below, the only visible indication to her presence in the sky was the tiny, black silhouette drifting lazily away from the Federal Palace’s main building.  Between her coat and her hair, she was virtually invisible to any pony looking upward.  None of the guards on duty that night did.


	Her elation at successfully escaping the palace gradually ebbed and morphed into a hopeful determination as the outer wall of the government complex drew nearer.  She casually noted that her airspeed had increased slightly from when she first began her glide.  Her altitude had also diminished somewhat.  Nyx quickly calculated that her rate of descent would still allow her to clear the top of the perimeter wall with several metres to spare.  As she crossed the threshold of the palace grounds, her heart skipped a beat.  She did it!  Her mind raced as she watched the wall pass beneath her silently, her body hidden in the darkness of the largely unlit city beneath her.


	Using the tricks she learned from her sessions with Rainbow Dash, Nyx folded her wings back into what her flight mentor called a “delta formation.”  She wasn’t quite sure what this meant, but she had practiced the manoeuvre countless times over Ponyville.  She thrilled at the sudden rush of air through her mane and tail as she quickly gained speed and lost height.  As Rainbow Dash had taught her, the trick allowed a quick descent while maintaining the stability she needed to avoid crashing into the ground or nearby, tall objects like the ramshackle buildings which now flanked her.  She flared her wings to their fullest extent just before impact with the cobblestone street beneath her.  She winced as the air caught in her wings, pulling her to nearly a full stop and halt her descent.  She’d been going faster than she estimated.  The muscles in her wings ached as she landed gently, folding them back against her sides.


	Nyx had never felt such freedom before, even when she actually was free with her family and friends in Ponyville.  She’d used her physical abilities and her wits to slip the bonds of her captors, and she didn’t even have to use the magic which had eluded her in this foreign place.  Her heart raced as the realization of her status hit her.  She was a fugitive in a foreign land.  How exciting! she thought.  She assumed the pose and gait of the stereotypical spy.  Among all the “missions” in which she had participated in the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ quest to find their special talents, their “Cutie Mark Crusader Super Spies” mission had been her favourite.  It allowed her to use all the sneaky tricks she had learned during her self-studies in magic, and it also let her indulge the more devious corner of her personality.


	Quickly slipping into the darkness of an inset doorway, she filly surveyed her new environment.  From this close, the buildings appeared even more dilapidated and ill-maintained than they had from her stone-carved promontory.  The only ponies on the street were huddled together into small groups, talking amongst one another in hushed tones.  Nopony seemed to notice her arrival or presence.  If they did, they seemed not to care.  Most of them wore nothing but their coats, as Nyx herself currently did.  Those that had donned clothing wore jackets or blankets of a rough, woolen material.  Nyx could imagine Miss Rarity swooning and fainting at the mere sight of such unfashionable attire.  She was forced to stifle another giggle.


	She jumped and released a quiet squeal of surprise as a pony absently walked past her on the street very near by.  The auburn roan stopped and looked at her quizzically, then continued on his way.  Nyx heaved a sigh of relief, glad that the pony wasn’t a guard alerted to her escape.  She spent a few seconds willing her heart to slow down once again to a normal pace before she noticed the pony again, and her stomach dropped into her hooves.  The pony had stopped to stare at her again, apparently only now noticing her unicorn’s horn and the wings attached to her sides.  It was now Nyx realized her plan’s fatal oversight.  She was the only pony she’d seen since her arrival that was not an earth pony and who didn’t have a roan coat.  She stood out like a zap apple in Miss Applejack’s orchard!  The alicorn unconsciously backed as far away from the pony as possible into a corner, making herself as small as she could and wishing she could disappear into the door frame.


	The roan seemed to notice the sudden change in his subject’s demeanour.  “Saluton, junaj,” he said quietly, his voice low and soft and warm.  “Mi ne renkontis vin ĉi tie antaŭe,” he continued after a brief pause, taking a small step toward the trembling, black creature.


	He didn’t seem to be hostile.  Nyx’s already frayed nerves dulled enough for her to look into the pony’s brown eyes.  “I... I’m sorry.  I don’t know what you’re saying.”


	The roan took a step back in surprise.  He seemed to consider the strange language with which he was just addressed.  Presently, his brow furrowed into a look of concern.  “Ĉu vi bone, fraŭlino?” he asked.


	Nyx’s fear was slowly evaporating.  The earth pony examining her relatively strange appearance had a friendly air about him.  Judging by his voice and stance, she figured it was unlikely he would attempt to attack her, even with his distinct size advantage.  If anything, he appeared genial.  She looked into his eyes again, hoping he understood the meaning behind her words, though she knew he didn’t understand the words themselves.  “I don’t understand.  I can’t speak... your language.”  What language was that, exactly?  She still hadn’t been able to determine if it was a really, really remote dialect of Equestrian.  Whatever it was, it was a tongue not spoken by anypony she’d ever met in Ponyville or Canterlot.


	The native pony didn’t respond.  He blinked a few times when she spoke as if attempting to work out her words’ meaning despite the language barrier.


	Nyx tried something simpler.  “Do you speak Equestrian?” she asked.  “Do you know where Equestria is?”  He may not understand my language, she thought, but he might at least know the word Equestria.


	He did, and not with a reaction that encouraged the filly to further the disjointed conversation.  At the mention of her homeland, the roan backed into the street quickly, stumbling over his back hooves in the process.  He landed hard on his flank without losing his lock on her eyes.  He was... afraid.  “Eh... eh-quest...” he stammered, his stare quickly filling with a look of pure terror.  “Rajda!”  He quickly righted himself and stooped into a deep bow.  “La granda patrino!”


	Nyx screwed her face up in confusion.  “Huh?  What are you doing?”


	The pony flinched at the sound of her voice, rising and galloping away as fast as his hooves would carry him.  The sparse groups of nearby ponies watched him flee, then turned their attention to the reason of his flight.  They stared at her, whispering amongst themselves.


	One pony staring at her was too many.  The dozen now taking full note of the apparition in the doorway was unbearable.  The alicorn leaped to her hooves and galloped down the street, away from the palace and using her wings to augment her velocity.  None of the ponies in the street behind her made any attempt to pursue her, but they stared after her until she couldn’t see them any longer for the darkness.


	She ran until she couldn’t run any farther.  The buildings around her and the streets under-hoof had all become blurred together into a collage of too similar, nondescript features in the night.  Her legs threatening to rebel and screaming in pain, Nyx stumbled into a deep alley between two nearby large buildings.  She collapsed into a pile of hay at the end against a brick wall, shrouded in the darkness of the night.  She’d escaped.  She’d done it.  But she’d also nearly blown it and almost ruined her whole plan.  She buried herself under the hay against the damp, chill air settling over the city.  As her mind drifted off to sleep, she realized that her plan hadn’t matured enough to include her current situation.  She’d made it out of the palace, but where did she go now?


	The shroud of drowsiness numbing her brain coupled with her exhaustion convinced her to reconsider her plight in the morning.  For now, she needed rest.


	


	* * * * *


	


	“Nyx?  Nyx, can you hear me?”


	That voice...  It sounded really familiar, but she couldn’t place it.  Her mind felt so clouded and groggy.  It was so difficult to concentrate.


	A hoof gently nudged her flank, trying to wake her.  “Nyx?  Are you awake?”


	Mmm, so warm and soft.  I think I’ll just lay under these blankets forever.  The hoof moved to her shoulder, shaking her gently out of the haze still shrouding her mind.  That voice...  Wait, it was telling her to get up.  The only pony who would do that would be...  “Mom!”  Her eyes shot open to a blindingly bright light from the nearby window.  She blinked a few times, trying to accelerate her iris’ adjustment to the sudden change.  She attempted to sit up, but dizziness soon overtook her.  “Ugh, Twilight!  I had the worst dream!”


	“Nyx, I think you should--”


	“Oh no!  It’s morning!  I’m late for school!”  She shook her head violently, eliminating most of the room’s spin.  Wait...  This isn’t my bedroom.  She looked to the source of the voice, twisting her neck quickly in the process.  The protest of several muscles caused her to immediately regret that action.


	The pony sitting at the end of the bed was not her mother.  “Mia princino,” Titus said quietly as he closed the book balanced between his hooves.  “We have much to discuss.”


	“Oh,” Nyx responded disdainfully, “it’s you.”  So it wasn’t a bad dream.  For a moment, one brief moment, she had been relieved to awaken in her own bed in her own bedroom in the Ponyville library.  Her ponynapping, the horrible nights alone in the bleak dungeon cell, her harrowing escape and the strange ponies she saw in the crumbling city, all were just parts of a dream from which she could rise and hopefully forget after a long day of school and Cutie Mark Crusader hijinks.  As the fog in her mind slowly released its grip, memories of the previous night began to solidify.  She escaped from the palace by gliding over the perimeter wall into the heart of the surrounding city.  She met a strange pony who was friendly, but became terrified of her when she mentioned Equestria.  But...  “How did I get here again?” she asked Titus, the bile in her voice clearly present.


	“I am very disappointed by you, young Nyx,” Titus said sadly.  “We find and rescue you from Equestria, and you repay us by running away.”  He made no movements toward her.  He simply stared at her from his chair at the foot of her bed.  “I thought you would be happy to have returned.”


	Nyx’s nostrils flared in sudden anger.  She tried to throw off her covers and stand on the mattress, but her muscles felt weak and her movements damped, a sensation similar to that which she experienced while learning to swim in Ponyville Pond over a year ago.  After a few failed attempts at righting herself, she resigned herself to the confines of the warm bed.  “Rescued me?  From what?” she huffed.  “From my family and friends?  From my home?”


	Titus sighed.  “Nyx, I have already told you, this is your home.  You have been returned to your true family and friends now.”


	“No!” Nyx screamed, bucking her covers violently toward the roan.  “You’re lying again!”


	“Princino--”


	“I told you to stop calling me that!” Nyx raged, adrenaline assisting her muscles in overcoming the lingering weakness.  She sat up with her back to the bed’s headboard, facing the confused-looking noblepony.  “My name is Nyx, and I’m from Ponyville in Equestria.  This... wherever this is, is not my home!”


	Titus appeared taken aback.  “You truly do not remember, Nyx?”


	“Huh?” the filly skewed her face, a mix of anger and confusion twisting her normally pleasant features.  “What are you talking about, Lord Titus?” she asked, placing special emphasis on his name with a tone dripping of mocked pompacity.  “And how did I get back here?  I escaped last night.  I was an hour’s gallop from here.”


	The roan seemed to appreciate the change in subject.  “I came to see you last night.  When I noticed you were not here, I summoned the guard and we began a search.  It did not take us long to realize you used your wings to fly away.”  He nodded to the balcony.  The glass doors were slightly ajar, allowing a mild breeze into the chambers’ main room.  “You were found sleeping in a pile of hay in a very bad neighbourhood of Liberty City.”


	“I don’t remember you finding me and waking me up,” Nyx interjected sullenly.


	“We did not wake you,” Titus answered.  “I thought it would be good for you to wake here, in your own bed.  The guards needed to...”  He paused, clearly hesitant to finish his explanation.  “The guards needed to give you sleeping drugs.”  He looked downward toward the floor.  “That is why you might feel weak and slow right now, Nyx,” he quickly added.


	Nyx remembered an incident a little over a year ago.  She and Apple Bloom had ventured into the Everfree Forest to visit Zecora.  Their aim had been to secure an herb they needed to create a lighter-than-air potion for Scootaloo, giving her the temporary ability to fly on her birthday.  What Nyx had unintentionally brought back from their trip, however, was a very nasty case of poison joke exposure.  The plant’s poison manifested in the alicorn as a terrible illness, making her unable to hold down water or food of any kind.  Eventually, Twilight had been forced to place Nyx under a sleeping spell while she recovered at the Ponyville hospital.  She’d slept for over a week.  “How long have I been...” she asked uncomfortably, looking to the stallion.


	“Not long,” he answered softly.  “It is afternoon now.  You slept through the morning.”


	Nyx took two deep breaths, releasing them as carefully and regularly as she could manage.  Who was it?  Who told the guards where to find me?  Was it that roan who was so scared of me?  But he seemed so nice, up until I mentioned Equestria anyway...  “You may go, Lord Titus,” she said, looking back down to her bed, not wanting to maintain eye contact with the current object of her despise.


	The adult pony started at her comment; he obviously was not expecting such an abrupt dismissal from the filly who, until now, acted very non-commanding.  “But, Nyx, we need to talk about--”


	“I said get out!” she yelled, interrupting him.  She bucked at her covers again, flinging them off the mattress and into the chest of her once-again captor.  When he simply caught the comforter instead of moving from his chair, she looked at him icily.  “Are you going to let me go home?”


	“Princino, I told you--”


	“Don’t call me that!” she screamed, her eyes briefly flashing with a deep violet magic, clearly visible to Titus but unfelt by Nyx.  She jumped from the bed and crossed the room quickly, cantering into the great room.


	Titus watched her leave the room before replacing the blankets on the bed in a pile and following her toward the balcony.  He stopped just inside the large chamber as the filly rounded on him, venom in her gaze.


	“Leave.  Now,” she said simply, her voice cold and deadly serious.


	The stallion stood his ground several metres away near the bedroom door.  He flinched slightly as the filly’s eyes began to glow dimly with the same violet colour as before.  The violet slowly blended with her turquoise eyes outward from her reptilian pupils, as if her irises were undergoing a sort of magical transformation.


	“I said leave,” she said.  Her words seemed to chill the air in the vicinity.  Her gaze started to acquire a maniacal quality to it, made more disturbing by the iciness which was already lying underneath.  “Before I do something we’ll both regret,” she hissed.  Irregular, errant sparks of magical energy began spurting from her horn randomly.  She noticed the sparks a few seconds later, surprising even herself at the scene transpiring between them.  Her eyes beginning to flood with tears, she turned and fled into the small study opposite the bedroom.  Titus began to follow, but stopped as the filly bucked the door closed hard behind her.


	Titus sighed, shaking his head.  “Mia juna princino,” he said in a low voice, too softly for his charge to overhear, “mi esperas ke vi baldaux memoras kiu vi estas, ĉiuj tiuj jarcentoj.”


	Nyx was curled up in an overstuffed easy chair in the corner of the small room when she heard the click of the door latch from the great room.  Titus had left.  She cried softly into the cushions, the act born as much from anger as from the sorrow of homesickness.  Who does this Titus think he is? she thought bitterly.  He looks like a noblepony, but I don’t care.  I hate him...  I hate him!  She growled as she finished the thought screaming through her brain.  The guttural sound was accompanied by a renewal of sparks from the tip of her horn, and her body trembled with rage, shaking the chair she occupied and causing the air around her to vibrate with a low hum.


	The unfortunate target of her overflowing emotions was the short coffee table immediately to her right, beside the chair.  She’d attempted to move the table before, physically, by pushing it.  Made of solid oak, it proved to be far too heavy for her small frame to budge.  In her anger, Nyx didn’t care what she had tried and failed before.  She just knew the table had to pay the price for her current state.  As the turquoise in her eyes slowly darkened into violet, this time, she could feel it.  It burned, and this angered her even further.  The sparks from her horn, no longer irregular or random, sprayed forth in a small fountain of magical energy, creating small spots of charred carpet where they landed beneath her.


	She concentrated on the table beside her, focusing her magic as Twilight had taught her over the past two years.  Really, a levitation spell would be fine.  She needed only to raise and smash it against something equally heavy, like the wall or the mahogany bookcase.  It began shaking in rhythm with her chair and the air around her, slowly wobbling from one leg onto another.  She concentrated harder, and the table was presently enveloped in a dim haze of violet magic.  She nearly broke her concentration and dropped it when she realized her magic was actually manifesting correctly.


	That realization was quickly forgotten when the large window behind her shattered inward, peppering the room with shards of glass.  Each tiny piece of transparent shrapnel was enveloped in a violet aura, just as the table was moments before.  They were also significantly lighter than the table, giving them a much higher velocity for the magical energy transferred to them.  Each shard of glass became a bullet, tearing through any object it intercepted.  Nyx screamed, dropping the table as hundreds of the sharp projectiles pierced completely through the thick back of the easy chair, lodging themselves in her side.  She covered her head with her hooves and pinched her eyes closed, waiting for the painful barrage to end.


	What was only a few seconds seemed to stretch out into hours for the alicorn curled into a ball in the chair.  She opened her eyes slowly after feeling no more incursions of glass for several long seconds.  The view which presented itself made her want to close them again.  Her left side, exposed and facing upward and toward the back of the chair was severely lacerated and bleeding profusely.  Several larger razors of glass protruded from her flesh, her blood flowing freely from the jagged wounds.  She noted with growing concern that she couldn’t feel the areas immediately surrounding the daggers.  As much as she was loathe to admit it, she needed help from the very pony for whom her hatred had caused this destruction.


	Half staggering, half falling from the chair onto the floor, she winced as she landed on the hundreds of smaller cuts in her side.  Her vision began to blur and darken along the edges, and she realized that she had only minutes at most to alert the guards.  She felt dizzy and her stomach heaved as she reached the doors to the study, grasping the handle in her mouth and falling against it, forcing the door open and leaving her heaving, bloodied form in full view of the guards who had obviously heard the commotion and had entered to investigate.  They looked irritated.


	Time seemed to accelerate and slow of its own accord and the seconds blurred together.  She lay on the floor trying desperately to stay awake while the guards audibly gasped and began yelling in their strange language.  She couldn’t tell if they were yelling at one another or some other, unseen pony.  She didn’t really care.  At least they sounded more worried, now, than they did angry.  Within minutes, two pairs of hooves hovered over her, administering first aid.  She didn’t understand what the medical ponies said to her, but their work proved to be very gentle, despite the sting of the antiseptic and bandages they applied to her mauled flesh.  She silently thanked Celestia that her fur was black.  She didn’t want to face the wrath of Ponyville’s fashionista when she discovered mottled blood stains all over the coat she had described as having “the most beautiful shine I’ve ever seen.”


	“Are you alright, Nyx?” said a familiar voice from behind her as the medical ponies applied a final bandage to her neck.  They’d already had to change several strips of gauze which were quickly saturated with the filly’s blood.  It was surprising how much she could bleed from what were, for the most part, superficial cuts.  The deeper wounds had been stitched with expert precision and had stopped bleeding, mostly.  The voice reiterated, “Nyx, are you alright?”


	Nyx looked up into the concerned face of Titus.  She frowned miserably.  “Does it look like it?” she asked, her voice flat and devoid of feeling.


	Titus ignored her response.  He waited for the medics to finish their work, then nodded to them.  They exited the room with the guards, leaving him alone with the filly.  “That was a very foolish thing to do.”


	Nyx snorted, turning her head away from his gaze and laying it on the floor.  The late afternoon sky was cloudy, a stark contrast to the brightness to which she had awakened earlier.  Its colour blended with the drab featurelessness of the city beneath it, making the view from her window appear almost monochrome.  It was depressing, which matched her current attitude.  “What do you want?”


	Titus shifted his weight and sat beside where she lay.  “I want only for you to remember, young Nyx,” he answered softly.


	Nyx felt the tears returning to her eyes, despite her will to remain outwardly angry at the roan.  Two teardrops on the floor later, she sniffed and responded.  “The only things I remember are the things you took away from me,” she cried.  “My friends, Twilight, my home, everything.”


	Titus sighed, apparently gathering his thoughts.  “In time, perhaps you can see all your friends again.”  He paused.  “You may even visit your old home again one day.  But until then, you need to tend to your responsibilities here.”


	Nyx felt drained of energy.  She continued the conversation only because he had ignited a spark of what sounded like surrender.  It wasn’t as if she was in any position to stop him now, anyway.  Had he just agreed to let her go home?  “What do you mean?  I’m just Nyx.  I live in Ponyville in Equestria.  What do you need me for here?  You have no idea who I am.  You just met me.”  I have responsibilities here?  That’s not even possible.  I don’t even know where I am!


	“Nyx,” Titus said, appearing to have difficulty finding the right words of explanation, “do you know why I call you ‘princino?’”


	“No.  But I don’t care.  It’s not my name.  You know that.”  Her tears had stopped, leaving her feeling sulky and foalish.


	“You...” he stammered, aghast, “you truly do not know who you are... do you?”  He squinted at her, as if to read the truth directly from her soul.


	Nyx raised her head toward him, confused and irritated.  “What?”


	Titus rose, looking down on the alicorn filly with fondness.  “Princino, Nyx, please rest.  We have much to discuss once you have healed properly.”  With those words, he performed a slight bow and quietly took his leave.


	Nyx lay on the floor for over an hour, attempting to decipher the odd conversation.  Nothing Titus ever said seemed to make sense.  Finally relenting to the sleep which tugged at her, she climbed painfully into her bed as the sun sank below the horizon.


	


	* * * * *


	


	Titus did not visit the next day when Nyx awoke.  He had, apparently, sent nurses in his stead to check on her frequently.  She had slept until nearly midday, and by late afternoon, she’d received no fewer than a dozen checkups or bandage changes from various medical ponies.  They spoke only when necessary, and always in their strange language.  She began to wonder if Titus was the only pony here who actually spoke Equestrian.  He did seem to be quite intelligent, and the way he carried himself spoke of nobility or at least something like the high society of the Canterlot sophisticates.  The only ponies in Equestria that spoke more than one language - that is, more than Equestrian - were either nobles, the extremely wealthy, or those highly intellectual like Twilight.  Even then, their second language was always either Prench or Germane, neither of which sounded like these roans’ language.


	Due to the timing of her argument with Titus and subsequent outburst, Nyx hadn’t eaten anything in nearly a full day.  Normally, she’d be starving to the point of being able to eat an entire apple orchard, trees included, but her body had other ideas.  She didn’t know enough about conventional pony medicine to be certain, but she suspected the antiseptic was the main cause of her several trips to the bathroom to empty the bile from her stomach.  She still hadn’t figured out what that extra basin and fountain beside the toilet was, but discovered that it did a very good job of cleaning the vomit out of her muzzle’s fur.


	The events of the previous afternoon hadn’t been completely counter-productive.  Nyx learned a valuable lesson from the experience.  Well, two valuable lessons.  First, never, ever stand in the way of moving glass.  Secondly, her magic wasn’t gone.  She had lifted the heavy table and shattered the window simultaneously, and by concentrating on only one of them.  Her magical ability hadn’t diminished at all.  Indeed, there was no way she could have intentionally done that back in Ponyville.  The problem was that she didn’t know how to use the magic here.  The magic here felt... strange, somehow.  Some Equestrian unicorns went to specialized schools for decades to learn how to use their magic properly.  She’d been on the precipice of learning to focus her magical energies into complex spells while under the tutelage of Twilight for only two years, and now none of that worked anymore.  She’d have to start from scratch if she wanted to use her magic to her advantage... or at the very least to not kill herself in the attempt.


	She sat up in her bed, leaning to bear most of her weight on her right side.  Her left foreleg throbbed painfully, preempting any thoughts of normal use.  The last nurse to visit applied an extra salve to a group of cuts about halfway up her leg, saying something in her own language and performing a much more thorough examination of the area than any of the filly’s other injuries.  Nyx wondered if it was infected.  From her years as the librarian’s daughter, she’d availed herself of more than one opportunity to peruse the varied medical texts contained within her home’s ground floor.


	Even while in Ponyville, Nyx had barely been able to keep up with the growth of her raw magical ability.  Both Twilight and Luna attributed this accelerated increase to her being an alicorn.  All of Nyx’s school classmates knew first-hand of how little control she wielded over her magic.  Spike had received more than a few bruises and welts over the past two years at the hands of Nyx’s magical accidents.  Her studious nature provided her with all the technical knowledge she needed to perform spells far more advanced than unicorns her age, a fact of which Twilight frequently reminded her and was more than a little proud.  What Nyx needed was practice in actually performing the spells.


	There’s no time like the present, she thought.  Especially since Titus isn’t coming in to stop me every ten seconds.  She gingerly climbed to her hooves and lowered herself to the floor.  She looked out the bedroom door and across the great room.  The door to her study was closed.  One of the nurses had locked it the night before, and Nyx didn’t have a key.  It was no matter, however, since she had no inclination to occupy that particular space for a long time.  The window hadn’t yet been replaced, either, which would only further serve to remind her of her lack of control, both magically and emotionally.


	She sat near the wall opposite the bed and sat, wincing as she placed a bit too much weight on her left flank.  Shifting into a less painful position, she looked at her bed, the sheets and comforter unkempt and thrown back over the foot of their mattress.  The first spell ever taught to her was a simple levitation spell from Miss Rarity, shortly after Twilight found her in the Everfree.  The pillow on the centre of the mattress looked like it would serve beautifully as a test subject.  After all, what harm could a pillow do if it exploded?  She silently resolved to not let that happen.


	Nyx closed her eyes and conjured a virtual image of the pillow in her mind.  She knew from her experience in the dungeon cell that the levitation spell she learned in Ponyville would not work here.  But, how else was a pony supposed to levitate something? she thought.  How does a pony learn a spell if they don’t have a teacher to show them?  She sighed.  What she was asking herself to do was, in effect, create a new spell.  Not only was that extremely difficult even by Ponyville standards with Equestrian magic, but it was also exceedingly rare for a unicorn to create a new spell.  Even Twilight, who was arguably one of the most magically talented unicorns in all Equestria, had never actually created a spell herself.  She’d modified a few to suit her individual purposes, but she’d always worked from an already existing spell framework.


	Eventually, Nyx decided to take the most scientific approach she could remember: trial and error.  Twilight would be proud, she mused.  She went through the Scientific Process in her mind.  Step one: identify the problem.  Well, that was easy.  She wanted to move the pillow.  Step two: hypothesize and predict.  This one was harder.  She knew what happened when she tried using a spell she learned in Ponyville, and attempting magic through raw emotion had turned out badly, to say the least.  She did move the table when she concentrated on it the night before, but she hadn’t attempted to limit how much magical energy she poured into it.  Maybe, she thought, if I only try kind of hard to do it, I won’t break anything and the pillow will still move.  She nodded at her own thought.  On to step three: test the hypothesis.


	She used the image in her mind to focus her energy and concentration on the pillow.  Her horn glowed dimly for a few seconds before anything happened.  The pillow rocked back and forth slightly, as if somepony was tapping it from either side at sporadically.  Just under a minute passed before Nyx opened her eyes to observe the results of her efforts.  She was glad to discover that the ceiling hadn’t come crashing down on her or that she hadn’t been squashed by the bed itself.  Disappointment quickly set in, however, when she noticed that the pillow was doing little more than twitching on the mattress.  It hadn’t moved an inch from where it started.


	Dropping her concentration and allowing the pillow to come to rest, she moved on to step four: analyze the result.  Well, she thought while looking at her hooves, I’m not in a billion pieces.  The building’s still here.  She looked upward and around her, feeling the necessity to validate this claim.  Satisfied, she returned her gaze to the feather-stuffed marshmallow on the bed.  It did move, just not in a way she had wanted.  Maybe she had backed off a little too much.  Repeating the process, as Twilight had taught her, she settled on a new hypothesis, essentially the same one except using a little more magical energy.


	The pillow responded differently to the slight increase... a lot differently.  Instead of simply twitching on the mattress as it did before, the pillow lept from the bed directly upward and plowed itself into the ceiling.  The seams along the pillows edges immediately burst, raining showers of white feathers on the surprised filly.  As the last feathers settled to the ground, Nyx spotted the horribly tattered remains of the pillow’s case.  It would not be used again as a pillow, that was certain.


	Several further attempts cost her three more pillows, and she could feel her irritation growing within her.  Each successive attempt used either a tiny bit more or less magic, depending on the results from the previous test.  The results of all the tests was the same, however.  They all ended in failure.  About to give up, and feeling hungry for the first time all day, Nyx stomped her hoof angrily.  “Ooh!” she said aloud to her last surviving pillow at the head of the bed, “Why won’t you work?”  She sighed, closing her eyes and lowering her head in defeat.  “I wish you would just float over to me.”  A soft object gently collided with her head, causing her to gasp in surprise.  She opened her eyes just in time to see the pillow drop onto the floor at her hooves, the haze of a midnight blue magical aura quickly fading around it.


	That’s weird, she thought.  I wasn’t even trying to make it move.  She studied the pillow for several long moments, not touching it as if it would bite her hoof.  And what was up with that magic?  Mine’s never been blue before.  Something wasn’t right.  Her magic wasn’t blue, and there were no other unicorns in this place, as far as she’d seen.  She walked to the bedroom door and poked her head out into the main room.  It was empty, just as expected.  Nopony was there except for herself.  She returned to where the pillow fell and picked it up carefully in her teeth, replacing it on the corner of the mattress some three metres away from where she sat.


	She concentrated on the pillow one more time, making certain to put little or no magical energy behind it.  Nothing happened.  Nyx skewed her face in frustration.  “What gives?” she said to the air.  “I don’t get it.”  Again, she stared at the pillow for a long time.  What did she do last time that made it move to her will?  The realization hit her hard enough to cause her to momentarily lose her breath.  It moved to my will!  Her jaw hung agape as she considered the implications.  Could it really be that simple?  Was the connection between her horn and the magic in this place really just a matter of willing something to happen?


	Nyx chuckled audibly to herself at the madness of this idea.  That... that would mean I can do anything I want with magic, as long as I have enough energy.  That can’t be!  Ponies in Equestria need to learn complicated spells to make their magic work.  Here, all she needs only to think about what she wants?  The thought’s direction was making her dizzy.  Pillow, she thought absently, get over here.  The filly started as two flashes of bright light accompanied the appearance of a pillow at her hooves and the disappearance of the one on the bed simultaneously.  Nyx’s curiosity once again, as it had so often before, got the best of her.  The testing had begun.


	By the time the sun set, Nyx had forgotten about the hunger she had felt earlier.  Now, however, her stomach had changed its opinion from absolute rejection of food to needing food immediately.  She looked around the main room where she sat.  The guards couldn’t see this.  Broken pieces of a couch were strewn across the floor.  The smashed vase in the corner bore evidence of her further magical self-training over the past few hours.  There was no hiding the welt on her forehead, though.  She cursed the chair leg which had detached itself from its host and joined her skull in one location a little over an hour ago.  In her irritation, she had allowed a fragment of emotion into her will, resulting in the immediate and complete incineration of the wooden stub.  It’s small pile of ashes lay roughly in the centre of the large room.


	She pushed open the large doors leading into the corridor.  The guards flanking the doors looked inward to see the alicorn slowly walking out to address them.  One rolled his eyes, but said nothing.  Nyx spoke to the other guard.  “I would like dinner now... please.”  The guard nodded to both her and the other guard before cantering down the corridor and out-of-sight.  The remaining guard eyed her with a look of irritation.


	“What’s your problem?” Nyx asked, incensed.  She snorted at him.  “Fine, whatever.  Just be a big meanie.  See if I care.”  She returned to her chambers, making sure to shake her mane at him as dismissively as possible as she passed.  The roan closed the door behind her, remaining silent.


	


	* * * * *


	


	“Lord Titus, look what I can do!” cried the filly excitedly as her caretaker entered the room.  The sun was barely above the horizon, but Nyx felt refreshed and alive.  Even the dull throbbing of her wounds weren’t bothering her enough to ruin the morning.  She had use of her magic again, and a full night’s rest with a full belly had done wonders for her state-of-mind.


	“Well, you are certainly in good spirits this morning!” Titus responded, smiling.  “Now, what is it you were say...” he paused, now noticing the broken furniture scattered around the main room.  “...ing?  Nyx, what happened here?”


	The alicorn blushed.  “Erm... yeah.  About that...”


	“Did we have another outburst again last night, princino?”


	She allowed herself a brief, icy look at the roan, both for the accusation and for using the name she had learned to despise.  “No!” she said defensively and a little too loudly.  “I was learning how my magic works here.”


	Titus raised an eyebrow curiously.


	“They were accidents... I swear!” Nyx continued, attempting to avoid his gaze.  “I wasn’t trying to break them.  They just... did.”


	Titus chuckled lightly.  “Do not worry, juna Nyx.  These things can be replaced.  I wish you would be more careful with your practice, though.  We do not want to see you hurt again.”  He nodded toward her left side.  Her wounds were mostly healed, but the larger cuts were still bandaged and itched terribly.  The last several nurses had applied an anti-itch salve to her skin, but it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.  “Now then, you wanted to show me something.”


	Nyx’s expression brightened as she returned her gaze to Titus’s smile.  “Oh yeah!  Watch this,” she said excitedly, turning around to face away from the roan.  The adult pony took a seat and watched her carefully.  For reasons she couldn’t explain, she suddenly felt intensely nervous.  She took a few deep breaths and shook off the growing intimidation.  I suppose it doesn’t matter who’s watching, she thought.  I’m still afraid I’ll screw something up.  She made a mental note to work on that later, another habit she’d picked up from her librarian mother over the years.


	She forced her concentration back to the present as she heard Titus clear his throat behind her.  How long had she been sitting here like this?  She looked around the room, trying to find something she could pass to Titus with her magic.  The signature grin of Cutie Mark Crusader mischievousness grew across her muzzle as a new idea formed in her mind.  She closed her eyes and concentrated, focusing only a small fraction of her energy on her target.  She had to stifle her giggles with a hoof as she thought about her goal.  She willed the object to comply with her wishes, and it was done.


	“What is... GAHmmf!” Titus cried suddenly, his voice muffled as the sheets and comforter from Nyx’s bed landed atop his head.  He quickly stood and shook the bedclothes off from himself, looking both irritated and amused.  He started to say something to his charge, but stopped as it became clear the filly wasn’t likely to hear anything he said.


	Nyx rolled on the floor laughing loudly and without restraint.  Tears streamed from her eyes, and she gasped for breath as she righted herself and banged her hoof on the floor repeatedly.  “You should have seen the look on your face!  Ha ha ha ha!”  He rolled onto her uninjured side again, surrendering herself to another fit of laughter.  She wanted this moment to last forever.  This kind of pleasure had been kept from her since she was taken from Ponyville, and it felt... good.  It struck her that even if she was being held captive here, she could still try to have a bit of fun now and then.


	Titus tried to look at her sternly as if ready to scold her.  “Ahem!”  He cleared his throat loudly to catch the filly’s attention.  Getting no response other than more laughter, he tried again.  “Ahem!  Hem heh heh...  Ha ha!”  The absurdity of the moment caught up with him, and he began to laugh aloud with the small alicorn.  The shared moment of joviality lasted for many minutes.  At several points, Titus had to consciously calm himself to avoid falling over in his own bouts of laughter.


	By the time their laughter subsided, Nyx was unable to stand.  She lie on her side, heaving for breath and using her front hooves to wipe the excess moisture from her eyes.  She didn’t understand her own feelings.  She felt... happy.  But, she was still being held here.  She still missed her home, her friends, her mother.  She’d felt nothing but miserable for nearly two weeks.  Was this her mind’s way of coping with the situation?  She forced the subject from her thoughts.  She felt great right now, and she didn’t want to ruin that while it lasted.


	Titus was again sitting calmly before the alicorn, the bedclothes piled haphazardly to his side.  He cleared his throat again, this time out of necessity.  “Ahem...”  His voice had acquired a husky quality from the minutes of sustained laughter.  Like Nyx, his muzzle bore a smile that beamed the moment’s joy readily.  “Nyx, I have something to show you, as well.”


	Nyx coughed quietly a few times, her throat slightly sore from laughing so loudly and so hard.  Her belly hurt, her lungs burned, and her legs wobbled as she sat upright.  She looked to the adult pony curiously.  “You... you brought something for me?”


	“No,” Titus chuckled, rising.  “This which I will show you was yours all along.”


	Nyx’s curiosity was piqued, displayed outwardly by her puzzled expression.  “Uh...  Okay?”


	Titus smiled and turned toward the door.  “Please, Princino Nyx.  Follow me.”  He strode slowly toward the door, allowing the filly to find her balance and catch up to him.


	Nyx shivered as she walked casually across the parade grounds of the huge complex.  Ponyville was not immune to chilly mornings in the summertime, but the wind which blew through this city was downright cold.  She fluffed her wings briefly, attempting to cover more of her sides with the large feathers as she watched the warm clouds of her breath dissipate.  Even her wings’ extra protection from the air did little to warm her.


	The golden-clad roan who walked beside her paid the action no attention.  Titus wore nothing more than she did, save for his golden armour which didn’t look substantially warm on its own.  He didn’t seem to mind the low temperature, though.  The pony didn’t shiver or show any other sign of discomfort.


	The pair stopped at the edge of one of the huge rectangles of perfectly-groomed grass as a regiment of uniformed military ponies marched past in formation.  They looked like Celestia’s Royal Guard practicing drill, Nyx thought as she watched.  None of them broke formation by turning their head to look at her, despite her status as the only alicorn in the vicinity.  She was forced to admit to herself that these soldiers were highly disciplined, able to suppress even their curiosity.  Thinking of the past two years in Twilight’s library, she couldn’t begin to imagine what it might be like to ignore her curious nature.  The notion that ponies could be trained to do just that was impressive to her.


	“Nyx,” Titus said as the last row of soldiers marched past, leaving the flat expanse of grass open before them, “Do you trust me?”


	Well, that’s a dumb question, Nyx thought sardonically.  She looked up to face him.  “No.”


	Titus chuckled.  “I probably deserved that,” he mused.


	“Well, duh...” the filly said under her breath, rolling her eyes.  This was killing her good mood.  What was Lord Titus doing?  After her escape and recapture, she’d all but given up trying to leave again... for now.  The guard had been increased significantly around her chambers, and now that she walked quasi-freely with Titus on the complex grounds, no fewer than two followed them at all times.  She wondered if they were there to protect her or to catch her again should she choose to flee.


	“What I mean,” Titus continued, “is that I want to know if you believe the things I say to you.  But if you do not trust me, then my question is answered, no?”


	Nyx was reminded of his statement from two nights earlier.  He claimed that he had never lied to her.  As far as she could tell, after much thought, was that he told her what he believed to be the truth.  He hadn’t intentionally told her anything false.  She could use this.  “I don’t trust you,” she said, looking straight ahead across the field as they stood there.  “You ponynapped me, and you’re keeping me here against my will.  Do you really expect me to trust you?”


	“I did, yes.”  He looked down at the filly who kept staring straight ahead.  “But if you truly do not know who you are, then I understand why I have not earned your trust.”  He paused.  “But will you listen anyway?”


	Nyx didn’t answer right away.  Every time he opened his mouth, more questions seemed to arise in her mind.  She wasn’t sure if she wanted to listen.  She might learn something about where she was, but she might also be left even more lost and confused than she already was.  “Yes,” she said finally.


	Titus began to walk slowly into the grass, and his filly companion shivered again while keeping pace with him.  “What do you remember about your life before Ponyville?” he asked.


	“Nothing.  I was born in Ponyville, or near it... I think...  I’ve lived there my whole life,” she said, wondering herself if that was entirely accurate.


	Titus nodded as if Nyx confirmed something he already knew.  “I see.  How did you come to live as the assistant to the librarian of a small town?”


	Nyx nickered, her good mood dulled by an emerging irritation.  “I already told you.  I wasn’t her assistant.  I’m her daughter.  She adopted me after she found me alone in the forest.”


	“Yes.  You mentioned your mother when we first met.  I failed to realize they were one and the same.”


	“Yeah, in that awful dungeon,” the alicorn grumbled quietly.


	Titus raised an eyebrow, continued walking slowly.  “The guards responsible for placing you in that cell have been... reprimanded.”  He cleared his throat before continuing.  “How old are you, Nyx?”


	That’s a weird question.  “Twilight says I’m about twelve, maybe fourteen.  Why?”


	“Your own mother does not know how old you are?  How old were you when she found you in the forest?”  He was asking questions, but the tone of his voice betrayed his knowledge of the subject.


	Is he testing me?  Maybe this was all a big mistake.  Maybe I’m not who he thinks I am.  The thought excited the filly.  Maybe if I just tell them the truth, they’ll see I’m the wrong pony and take me home!  Her voice lightened significantly as she answered, rising a major third.  “No, no.  I’m only actually two and-a-half.  Twilight says I look older, because I was born from a magic spell.  I’m almost a young mare,” she added proudly.


	Titus laughed at the display of juvenile innocence beside him.  “Indeed you are, Miss Nyx!  My little fraŭlino.”


	“There!” she said pointedly, cutting short his laughter.  “That word.  “‘Frow-leen-oh.’  That’s not an Equestrian word, is it?”


	“Correct again,” countered the roan.  “That is because we are not in Equestria.”


	“I kinda figured that out already, Lord Titus,” Nyx said, rolling her eyes again.  “That pony in the city seemed pretty freaked out when I mentioned it.”  She fell silent for several seconds.  “So where am I?  It gets awfully cold here at night.  It was the beginning of summer break when you took... when I was in Ponyville last.  Are we in Prance?”


	This elicited a single, sharp laugh from Titus.  “Ha!  Goodness, no!  The journey to Prance from here is long and very dangerous.”  He seemed to anticipate her next question.  “No, neither are we in Germaneigh.”


	Nyx looked at Titus expectantly.  He’d told her where she wasn’t, but he still hadn’t answered her original question.  The pair was nearly across the field now.  A tall building that looked much like the Royal Observatory in Canterlot rose ahead of them, stretching into the sky.


	“This is the independent city of Liberty,” he stated.


	Nyx shook her head.  “Liberty?” she said suspiciously, “I don’t remember seeing that on any map.”


	Titus stopped and looked at the filly.  “No, you would not have.”  He resumed his slow pace toward the spire ahead.  Reaching the broad, wooden door at the base, he slipped a hoof through the bronze handle and pulled it open, allowing Nyx entry and following her.  He closed the door behind him and smiled at the alicorn.


	Nyx stared in wonder at the room in which she now stood.  The rough, plain exterior was in stark contrast to the smooth, polished marble within.  The room was easily twice the size of the library in Ponyville, and was immaculately clean.  Her hooves tapped on the black marble floor with even her lightest step, echoing off the cavernous walls.  Circular in shape, a helix of granite steps slowly climbed along the outer wall of the tower, its railings carved from a fine wood and gilded with gold trim.  “What is this place?” she asked to no one in particular, her voice nearly breathless.  “It’s beautiful.”


	“This is the... observatorio, of course,” Titus said hesitantly.  “I am sorry.  I do not know the proper word in Equestrian.”


	“I think I have a good idea,” Nyx retorted snidely.  Her eyes received another rolling workout.


	“Please, princino.  Follow me.”  Titus broke from Nyx’s side and began to climb the stairs.  He climbed several steps before Nyx fell into stride behind him.  The stairs led upward through the ceiling at least a dozen metres above them.  Despite the wideness of the staircase, nothing could be seen above this entrance chamber.


	Nyx followed her guide for a long time until they climbed past several more floors, each successively smaller and shorter than the one beneath it.  Through the windows in the outer wall, she could see they had climbed well above the altitude of her chambers in the main building.  As she looked out across the city visible to her, she couldn’t find any structures that rose higher than her current position.  Her legs were beginning to complain about the exertion of the climb, but as she and Titus crossed the ceiling of this floor, they emerged into a tall, domed room which encompassed the whole of the top level.  In the centre stood a magnificent golden telescope which stretched outward to the sky through a narrow slit in the roof.  It was at least a dozen metres long with a lens of over a metre in diameter.  Nyx felt a pang of homesickness as she thought of Twilight back in Ponyville.  She’d give her horn to look through this thing, the filly thought.


	Titus led her to a small balcony overlooking the palace grounds and Liberty City.  “This,” he said, his hoof tracing the horizon, “is what I wished to show you.”  He looked down at the filly who was still absorbing the breathtaking view.  “What are you thinking?”


	The alicorn filly shook off her awe.  “Huh?  What do you mean? I thought you had something to give to me.”


	Titus looked away from her and downward toward the thousands of decaying buildings surrounding them.  The ponies below were indistinguishable from one another from this height, slowly moving brown, black, and white dots.  Hundreds of smoke tendrils rose from chimneys all over the city, eventually joining with one another to form a thin, brown cloud carried away to the east by the stiff breeze.  “I talk about this city, princino.  This city and more than twenty others like it.  They and all their ponies are yours.  They always were.  You need only to claim your rightful place over them.”


	Nyx shivered again as a gust of cool wind whipped her mane.  It was even colder up here than it was on the ground.  She looked out over the city with her keeper.  The city stretched nearly to the horizon, even from this lofty point-of-view.  “You mean,” she said slowly, “kind of like Princess Celestia and Princess Luna?”


	“Yes and no,” Titus answered.  He sighed deeply.  “Like Princess Luna, in a sense.  You are born of her, no?”  He didn’t wait for a response.  “As for Celestia, here we do not recognize her right to rule over any land.”  He spat the last words bitterly, blatant hatred in his voice.


	His tone frightened Nyx.  “Wh-what’s wrong with Princess Celestia?”  She paused.  “And what do you mean ‘born of her?’”  She looked at him, raised an eyebrow suspiciously.


	“Celestia is a tyrant.  Only Princess Luna was ever fit to rule over Equestria.  Only she had the qualities of a true and noble queen.  Celestia was weak, impulsive.”  Titus’ voice had acquired a flatness indicative of one trying to hide their anger.  “When we finally had gathered enough support for Luna’s solo reign, Celestia was already watching us.  She did everything she could, terrible things, just to hold her rule.”  He looked to Nyx, the filly’s mouth hanging open slightly in shock of what she was hearing.  “Celestia banished her sister to the moon and slaughtered the ponies who stood with Luna in solidarity.”


	Nyx spent nearly a minute trying to recover her senses.  Was she really hearing this?  It couldn’t possibly be true!  Princess Celestia is the best princess ever!  “Wait...” she said finally, trying to piece together the information in her mind.  “Princess Celestia banished Nightmare Moon.  She tried to make the night eternal!”


	Titus looked at her with a look of disbelief.  “You do not actually believe those foals’ stories, do you?”


	“Foals’ stories?  That’s Equestrian history.  We learned it in school... in Ponyville,” she quickly added pointedly.


	“Princess Luna took the form of who you call ‘Nightmare Moon’ in order to prevent Celestia from raising the sun.  That was the only way to cull Celestia’s immeasurable power.  She is weakest when the sun is absent.  It was the only way our queen had a chance to remove her sister from the throne.”


	Nyx quoted from her school text.  “‘Nightmare moon came from all the anger and jealousy in Princess Luna’s heart.’  She... took over... er...” she stammered.  She couldn’t find the right words to express what she was thinking.  “Princess Luna became Nightmare Moon.  When Princess Celestia banished her, Luna... kinda had to go with her, too.”


	Titus shook his head sadly.  “That is only partly true.  Princess Luna did become your ‘Nightmare Moon,’ but she was not filled with hate and jealousy.  She cared for her subjects deeply.  Her goal was to free Equestria of Celestia’s rule.”  He turned to face her, placed a hoof on her shoulder.  “When our queen was banished, we did not know what had happened to her.  We searched for her in secret for centuries.  When we heard news of Luna’s return and how Celestia had her brainwashed through magic, we nearly lost hope.  Now we have finally found you, Luna’s progeny, and Her Majesty’s ponies are still faithful to her...”  He locked eyes with the confused filly.  “... to you, in this land.”


	Nyx shook her head and backed away from the roan, her eyes wide with shock.  “I don’t get it.  I’m not a princess, and I’m only really two years-old!  You... you have the wrong pony!  I’m just Nyx!”  She continued her backward pace until her flank bumped into the doors behind her.  This isn’t right! her mind screamed.  This... this is wrong!  It’s not true!


	Titus looked at her sadly.  “Princino, the spell which created you used the fragments of Princess Luna from when she was truly the most powerful and noble pony in Equestria.  You are Luna’s daughter.”


	“I... but...” Nyx stammered, looking desperately for a logical contradiction in her elder’s argument.  Everything he said about her so far was true to what Twilight had told her over the past two years.  Tears stained her cheeks for the second time that morning, these from conflicted sorrow rather than glee.  She turned and ran into the relative warmth of the observatory, refusing to show her intellectual defeat in front of this horrible ponynapper.


	Titus watched her go.  “In time, you will learn who you are, Young Majesty,” he said softly, out of the filly’s earshot.  “Luna’s royal spirit lives within you now.  You will see this.”


	


	* * * * *


	


	The brief moment of happiness, that golden and fleeting span of time when she didn’t feel weighed down by her loss, her homesickness, her captivity had not returned since that morning five days ago.  She had found no occasion to smile, or even to speak to anypony since her conversation with Titus at the top of the observatory.  Nyx felt as miserable as ever.


	Titus visited her regularly, several times each day.  He attempted conversation each time, at first, but then simply spent time with her in silence as he realized she was not going to respond verbally.  The roan personally brought her meals from the kitchens, even though he explained to her that she was free to eat in any dining room she wished within the building.  He made it clear that she could go anywhere she wanted - she was no longer to be confined to her chambers - as long as she didn’t go outside.  He told her it was for her own safety that she stay indoors.


	Despite the new, relative freedom given to her, Nyx stayed in her chambers, venturing out onto her balcony only once or twice per day, usually during the darkest hours of the night when clear skies offered an unobstructed view of the stars and moon.  Her self-imposed silent confinement gave her plenty of time for introspection.  Was she really Princess Luna’s daughter, as Titus claimed?  From what Twilight had explained two years ago, the spell which created her did involve pieces of the Nightmare Moon that Twilight and her friends had defeated at the Castle of Two Sisters in the Everfree Forest.  But Twilight had also said that her physical body came from a drop of the unicorn’s blood, taken by the cultists who crafted the spell.  Biologically, she was Twilight’s daughter.  She sighed, her conflicted mind unable to piece together the myriad information.  She missed Twilight dearly.  She would gladly give up Ponyville forever if it meant she could be with her mother again.


	That thought of Twilight was eventually what helped her overcome the fear of recapture again.  The last two days had been spent deep in contemplation and planning.  Another escape attempt would be made, and this time she wouldn’t fail.  The only problem was, how could she go about it?  She’d tried flying off the balcony into the city, and that hadn’t ended well.  She blushed as she remembered how embarrassing it was to reawaken in the Federal Palace the day after she was certain her freedom was secured.  Because of that botched attempt, escape via her balcony under the cover of night was no longer an option.  Unless she was inside her chambers, she was never out of the sight of at least two guards.  Even from her balcony, she could spot at least a dozen guards below at all times.  If this palace was her jail, it certainly felt like one now, more than ever.


	As the days progressed slowly, her magic also grew both in complexity and strength.  Nyx could lift and displace the heaviest of objects in her chambers with little effort.  Her teleportation skills had also advanced.  She surprised herself when she had accidentally teleported herself to a chair instead of the other way around.  At home in Ponyville, Twilight had just barely scratched the surface of the theory behind teleportation magic.  Now that she had found the ability, it seemed so easy here.  She wondered if Twilight found it similarly easy, since she actually had to concentrate on a spell to use the magic in Equestria.


	One other thing that she noticed was that she had no more magical accidents since she realized the nature of magic in this place.  Once she willed something, it happened, as long as she could picture it in her mind with precision.  The prior evening, Nyx had taken this idea to its extreme.  If she could make something happen just by thinking about it and wanting it, then what if she thought about and wanted to return to the library in Ponyville?  She wasn’t sure if her magic lacked the required strength or if she hadn’t quite grasped the concepts firmly enough, but nothing happened when she tried, no matter how hard she tried.


	Until a few minutes ago, Titus had been sitting before her, reading another book.  He didn’t attempt to engage her in conversation, because he knew that was useless unless Nyx’s mood allowed her to participate.  He jumped when he suddenly found himself sitting outside her chamber doors between the two guards posted there.  Nyx had wished to herself that he would “just go away,” and he did, her wish magically realized by teleporting Titus out of her sight.  So far, he didn’t try to come back in.


	She was alone again.  Judging by the timing of Titus’ previous visits over the past five days, she had about three hours before he would return for another visit.  She still had no idea how she could get out of the palace and into the city again.  The element of surprise given by her unique skills as a pony with wings was no longer an advantage.  The guards were on the alert for such behaviour now.  She could leave her chambers, claiming to go explore the enormous palace, but then how would she lose her ever-present guard?  They wouldn’t let her leave the building.  If only there was a way I could get out without them seeing me, she thought.  She snickered at herself.  That’s stupid, Nyx.  The only way that could happen is if you were invisible.


	Thirst led her to the small bar in her study.  The window had been repaired a few days ago, and she could entre the room now without reliving those long seconds, feeling the glass cut through her again.  She used her magic to pour herself a large glass of water from the carafe chilling in a bowl of ice.  She wondered if the citizens of Liberty City had access to water like this, she thought as the cold liquid soothed her throat.  The water given to her here was pristine and delicious, crisp and fresh by even the most stringent of Ponyville standards.  She looked into the mirror behind the bar absently and nearly choked on the swallow of water still in her mouth.  The image reflected back to her showed her glass suspended in a dark blue aura of her magic.  But behind the glass was... nothing, just the room.  She turned her head back and forth, watching the mirror for any change.  Surely the looking glass was faulty!  It took over a minute for her to see the vague shimmer of light where her reflection should be.  When she moved, it was as if the air rippled around where her form should appear.  She wouldn’t have seen this effect herself had she not been staring at the reflection so intently.  When she held still, however, the ripples disappeared, leaving no trace of her figure.  She was invisible.


	She didn’t look invisible.  She could still see her hoof as she brought it before her eyes.  In the mirror was the slight ripple, but no hoof.  This is really weird, she thought, setting her glass on the bar, lest she drop or spill it.  This had to be tested.  But, how did she even get this way?  She hadn’t wished to be invisible... kind of... did she?  No sooner did the question pass through her mind than her reflection reappeared in the mirror.  What...?  How...?  Nyx contorted her face in puzzlement as she tried to understand.


	Her scientific curiosity getting the better of her, she cantered to the chamber doors and pulled them open with her magic.  She strolled into the corridor and to the right, a direction she’d never before taken.  The guards kept pace, never letting her out of their sight as she trotted onward for several minutes, passing many rooms, halls, and adjoining corridors.  Now was the time.  She turned to the guards behind her, attempting to produce the most pleading look on her face.  “I really have to use the little fillies’ room.  Is there one around here?”  She reinforced her words with a dance recognizable in any language.


	The guards looked at one another and nodded.  One of them cantered past her, leading the other two down one of the adjoining hallways and stopping in front of a plain, wooden door.  The armoured roans took positions flanking the entry.


	Nyx smiled to herself as she entered the small lavatory.  All she had to do was stay in here long enough, and the guards would eventually be forced to come in to check on her.  She moved to the far end of the small room and sat, waiting.  Watching her reflection in the mirror on the wall, she thought about herself as she saw earlier, visible to herself but without a reflection.  Nothing happened.  She thought about it again.  Once again, nothing.  Her reflection was still perfectly visible and sharp in the smooth glass.


	The guards’ patience proved to be short-lived.  One of them knocked on the door after only ten minutes.  “Mosxto, ĉu vi bonfartas tie?” he called, his deep voice muffled by the heavy wood.  When she didn’t answer, he tried again more loudly.  “Reala Damo, vi povas aŭdi min?”  Nyx didn’t answer.  After a third attempt, the guard cautiously pushed open the door and poked his head around the frame to look into the room.  “Mosxto?”  The room was empty.


	Nyx remained as still as she could as she sat in her place at the end of the room.  She was in clear line-of-sight of the guard as he peered into the lavatory, but she wasn’t seen by him.  She turned her head slowly until she could glimpse the mirror beside her, away from the door.  The room around her appeared normal.  Her reflection was gone.  She glanced down to her hooves.  She was still completely visible, as far as she could tell, but the guard looked frantic as he whipped his head back and forth trying to find her.


	“Ŝi estas for!” the guard yelled to his compatriot waiting just outside.  The first guard jumped to the side and into the small room as the other pony shoved him aside to confirm the alert.


	“Fekaĵo!” the second guard yelled, pushing his partner aside.  “Kiel ŝi eliri el tie?!”


	“Mi ne scias!  Sed ne bezonas trovi sxin antaux Sinjoro Titon lernas de ĉi.”


	Nyx sat as quietly and as still as she could during the guards’ frenzied search of the room.  As they left to search the nearby areas of the palace, she finally let go the breath she didn’t realize she had been holding.  So, they really can’t see me, then.  She smiled at her new found ability, although it worried her that she still hadn’t any idea how to control it.


	The filly quickly exited the lavatory and galloped down the corridor toward the safe familiarity of her chambers.  She was nearly half the way back before she allowed her gaze to wander downward, revealing the reflection of a black alicorn in the perfectly waxed floor stones.  Wait, that means...  “Oh, Celestia’s flank!” she cursed aloud, then realizing she just revealed her position to anypony in the vicinity.  She fell face-first into the floor as she tried to cover her muzzle with one of her hooves before she was completely stopped.  Her reflection stared back at her, dagger-like pupils narrowed, panicked slits.  The sound of hooves in the distance behind here were closing quickly.


	“Mi kredas ke mi aŭdis ŝin!  Tiel!”


	Her pursuers unwittingly reignited Nyx’s urgency.  She leaped back to her hooves and into a gallop in one swift motion, reaching her chamber doors within just under a minute.  She slammed the doors closed with her magic just moments before the two guards arrived.  Out of breath, she stopped to gulp air greedily in the centre of her great room.


	The momentary quiet was interrupted by a harsh banging on the heavy, wooden doors.  “Princino!  Ĉu vi tie?”


	Nyx took a few seconds to steady herself before walking to the doors and opening them, revealing two very harried ponies.  “Yes, gentlemen?” she asked using the sweetest, most innocent voice she could produce.  “What ever is the matter?”  She flinched inwardly at her own words.  She’d spent enough time around Rarity to pick up her linguistic style, but it only ever emerged when she was trying to hide her guilt.  The idiosyncrasy annoyed Twilight to no end.


	The guards looked at one another, then back to the filly.  “Mosxto,” the first said, “ni maltrankviligas vin!”


	The second continued as the first caught his breath.  “Bonvolu resti tie, princino.  Ni alvoku Sinjoro Titon.”  He withdrew, closing the door as his partner followed.  Nyx was again alone in her chambers.


	Her mouth slowly curled into a grin, her muzzle displaying a visage of excited impishness.  It took three weeks, but she’d finally found her way out of here.  “Mom,” she said into the air, “I’m coming home.”