This Platinum Crown

by Capn_Chryssalid

Chapter Thirty Two : Reveal

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(32)

Reveal

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Poison.

Blueblood, Her Prince, had been poisoned.

It was disgusting. A low and vile blow if ever there was one. And the sickest thing was… that Rarity wasn’t even surprised by it anymore. These ‘ponies,’ if they could even call themselves that, were simply… simply…!

A true lady did not even have words to describe them.

“My Lady?” a voice snapped her out of her thoughts. “Are you alright?”

“My… my apologies, I fear a headache may be coming on. Please continue, Germoglio. Tell me what happened,” Rarity demanded, her head held high and her steely voice betraying none of the knot of worry and insecurity and genuine fear that churned within her.

Like a poison of her own, the unsettling feeling was fighting to the surface against the creeping post-battle exhaustion that demanded she lie down and sleep and forgo waking up for a small lifetime. Her once beautiful sea-shell lace and pearl dress was in stained tatters from the fighting, the alabaster smeared with streaks of brown dirt, green grass and dried, rust-red pollen. The gold and silver passements were still intact but in some places had been ripped loose to dangle around her body like slack vines from a tree branch.

Rarity wore her gown, regardless, like a beaten and ruined badge of honor.

“As my Lady commands,” Germoglio Bianco replied, head bowed. The handsome unicorn straightened up and reached a hoof up to stroke his dark, perfectly cut vandyck beard. He was still in the armor of his Free Company: white and red over polished steel cuirass and greaves.

“We have secured your prisoners in fetters and placed a magical restraint on the barrier user,” he began, first, reiterating what she already knew. “For now, we have kept them from His Grace’s royal guards in case you wish to interrogate them first.”

“Keep them confined and under guard,” Rarity ordered, but added a warning: “No harm is to come to them, you understand?”

“Of course.”

“Now, tell me about Yumi and my town.”

“A dozen floral golems emerged from the Everfree Forest, to the south and west of the town. Two were of the largest variety, one being the beast that broke through our lines to attack you here. The rest were kept from the town proper. As of several minutes ago, six have been destroyed, three fled and three more are being chased down and literally run to ground. We do not believe Ponyville to be in any further danger.”

Rarity nodded, the information helping to frame her own experience as the festival turned into a melee around her. Still, there were questions that needed answering. “And why, pray tell, were they giving chase in the first place and not defending my party guests?”

“My men,” the condottiero explained, “were following Sir Arrow Head and Sir Gale Force, under orders from His Grace and Sir Shining Armor.”

Rarity’s blue eyes narrowed reflexively. “The White Company is in my employ, not Blueblood’s and certainly not Sir Shining Armor’s.”

“As you say,” Germoglio admitted. “In their defense, Lady Yumi and Sir Rains would require a sizeable force to take down, and both were on the run. Privately, I must also admit that… when given an order from an esteemed knight, especially a Royal Guard like Sir Gale Force or Sir Arrow Head, most ponies will heed him and follow. I will have the sergeants disciplined and reminded of the chain of command.”

Wilting slightly, the newly appointed Baroness of Ponyville shook her head. “Please don’t. I am upset, this is true, but there really is no need to be harsh. Those ponies fearlessly protected Ponyville. I can ask no more of them and do not wish them to be punished. But… where are Sir Arrow Head and Sir Gale Force? And where, if so many gave chase, is Yumi?”

Germoglio lowered his eyes in deference to his employer. “I do not know, my Lady. They fled into the Everfree Forest.”

“Yumi?”

“All four,” Germoglio explained, and when he looked back up at her, the Bitalian stallion was scowling. “Sir Arrow Head and Sir Gale Force were quick to abandon the melee with the Timberwolves and to pursue Lady Yumi and Sir Rains. I have sent scouts to seek them out, but none have returned as yet.”

“I see,” Rarity replied, running over the facts in her head.

Yumi, she had been told, had poisoned Blueblood after the two had a private meeting on the third floor of the manor. Exactly how she had arranged it, nopony seemed to really know. In a stunning feat of incompetence, nopony seemed to know who, if anypony at all, was on guard with the Prince at the time! A scuffle may have broken out when Blueblood realized what was happening to him, at which point, Yumi and her bodyguard, Shigure, made their escape by rather rudely blasting open the wall to Blueblood’s study.

Before leaving the premises, however, the fiendish mare had used her magic to create a distraction: the hallucinogenic pollen that had blanketed the garden party and art festival. To make matters worse, she had also sent her retainers to cause chaos and prevent anypony from undoing the pollen attack. Then – then on top of all that – the mare had the nerve to summon up those awful Timberwolves to attack the town?! Rarity had to fight herself to bite back a rather un-ladylike curse.

Lady Yumi had better run and hope she was never caught!

“Did we…” Rarity hesitated a little to ask. “Was anypony hurt, Germoglio?”

“A few were wounded,” the Free Company Captain answered, a sound rumbling out of his throat, half snort and half growl. “One dead.”

“Dead?” Rarity asked, foalishly in retrospect. She felt her hoof raise to her mouth in shock. “Dead as in…?”

“Dead, my Lady,” the mercenary captain repeated.

“Who was it?” She felt she had to know.

“Her name was Timely March, my Lady. She was one of our flyers, proficient in the light lance.” Germoglio chewed his next few words for a moment, hesitating to say more. “Sir Cliff Chaser is also missing. He supposedly pursued Sir Arrow Head and Sir Gale Force once the tide turned in the fight with the Timberwolves.”

“I- I’m sorry,” Rarity said, her façade cracking at the news. A pony was dead because of all this. “I…”

“There is nothing to apologize for,” Germoglio interrupted before she could try and say more. “Timely March protected your town and your interests. It is why we are being paid. Her name will live forever in our rolls and in the lists of the Free Company of the Dove and Cross.”

Rarity opened her mouth, a half formed response on the tip of her tongue, but the words failed to take form as the enormity of it all sunk in. No pony had died when Nightmare Moon took the town. No pony had died when the parasprites swarmed the village. No pony had died when the Ursa Minor rampaged through. Now, a pony she had never even known, whose face she couldn’t remember, whose face she had likely never even seen, had died in her employ. Rarity hung her head and looked away in shame. Could she have done something to prevent this? Why – how – had the town gone from crisis to crisis, each time emerging without any real harm done, only for it to occur on her watch? Under her responsibility?

“My Lady,” Germoglio’s voice momentarily drew her out of her self-imposed shell.

“Yes, Germoglio?” Rarity asked, forcing her voice to remain composed and at least passably and superficially confident.

“Do you know what our Dove and Cross stand for?” he asked, but didn’t wait for her response. He gestured to the insignia on his cuirass: a red-on-white cross, emblazoned by a five pointed star in the center, and a white dove in the upper left corner.

“The Dove represents peace, as all ponies know, but the petals of the Floriated Cross represent faith, wisdom and chivalry, spread to all corners of Equestria. It is for these three values that any sworn pony must be ready to lay down his or her life. We uphold the principles of Equestria, we look after our brothers and sisters and lead them as best we can, and we put our faith in the Princesses and in our employers not to waste our lives or abuse our vows.”

He fixed Rarity with a calm and almost disarming stare.

“Timely March’s life was not wasted,” he assured her. “And the Dove and Cross have faith in you, Lady Rarity.” He smirked and leaned a little closer to fix her with a wink. “So long as you have the means to pay us, that is…”

“Duly noted, Sir,” Rarity replied, a small smile creeping up the corners of her mouth. “And what of the star, then? What does that represent?”

“Our star?” he asked, still smirking. “It is the mullet, the five pointed star. It represents the third child: the foal who never inherits and who must seek out adventure to prove him or herself. A pony doesn’t join a Free Company or dive into a battle without something to prove, now does she, Lady Rarity?”

Rarity shook her head, remembering her own battle not an hour before. “I suppose she does not.”

“I would also ask, my Lady, what of our newest arrivals?”

At his mention of her newest ‘guests,’ Rarity glanced past the unicorn stallion to where a cordon of armed and armored ponies loosely surrounded a milling group of teenage dragons. Her Free Company had been hired for their experience with dragons, and to their credit, none of the ponies seemed nervous around the flying lizards. The issue at hoof was primarily keeping them from the more delicate and excitable guests present. Already, the two Saddle Marabians were eyeing the dragon clique with undisguised fascination, as if they were an exotic new attraction to the festival. That would have to be her next stop, before somepony or somedragon created an incident.

“I will see to them,” Rarity promised, eyes returning to her sellsword.

“As my Lady wishes,” Germoglio replied with a flowery bow of his head. “And I shall continue to watch the town,” he assured her, stroking his short beard again, and adding before he left: “I shall watch your guests, as well.”

Then the condottiero vanished with a wink of light.

Her business with him done and her assurance that the festival and her guests were again safe, Rarity let out a breath just short of a sigh. Looking over the milling ponies in the front of the yard, mingling anew amidst the ruins of her art festival, Rarity felt her smile fade but then return, tentative, hopeful. Yes: the grounds were an absolute mess. One of the pavilions had collapsed entirely, another tent was half sagged, there were broken or uprooted trees all around, and globs of cake mixed with lingering smears of neutralized pollen. It was truly a disaster.

Yet, even in disaster, her guests were not cowering or even eager to leave. Circles of them were chatting animatedly about their experiences in and out of the battle and the haze of pollen. Pinkie, Fleur and Fancypants, she knew, were among them and no doubt playing a part in keeping spirits high. It was a sight, too, realizing how the ponies were mingling. She saw Pinkie Pie amid one group, retelling part of the fight with exaggerated movements of her legs, eliciting laughter… in and of itself it was nothing unusual, except that the group before her was composed of Canterlot nobles, Manehattan socialites, and common ponies from Ponyville.

It was as if… in so catastrophically and irreparably destroying her Art Festival, fate had also seen fit to make it succeed where she had most hoped it would: in bringing ponies together. They were not really appreciating beauty with shared eyes, as she had dreamed, but they were together, laughing and talking and interweaving. Many appeared to be treating the whole horrible incident as a wonderful spectacle of sorts! Quite a few had even found one of the pinecones that has caused the whole mess and held onto it as a souvenir or the like.

It was a silver lining, at least.

‘I survived Rarity’s debacle of an Art Festival, and all I got was this lousy pine cone,’ she thought of the headline and shook her head. As she mulled over her own state, a few ponies kindly approached to offer their thanks and appreciation. Rarity almost wanted to ask them what for. No matter how she and her friends had acquitted themselves and no matter how Rarity looked at it, this whole disaster had happened under her watch.

Trying to remain poised and composed, Rarity approached the group of dragons.

Before today, the group of brutes had only stuck out in her mind for what they had tried to do to Spike during the migration. Not having any brothers herself, or even very many friends who happened to be male, Rarity had only a vague idea of how stallions spent their time or formed their little cliques, and most of what she had initially observed with Rainbow Dash and Twilight had seemed harmless enough. The teenaged dragons at the migration had wrestled and fought over treasure, swam and rough-housed in lava, chatted endlessly about getting a horde and pined fervidly for the adult females overhead.

The females, naturally, overlooked the squabbling teenagers to find much larger mates for the migration. Rarity couldn’t recall seeing any young female dragons at all in the crater with the teenaged males, and for a moment she wondered how they acted amongst themselves. Was it anything like how mares were, at that age?

Taken as a whole, though, the dragon boys had seemed immature but harmless enough... until that mess with the phoenix eggs. Thank the Princesses that Spike had kept a cool head and talked them out of an altercation. Rarity had been prepared to jump to the defense of her sweet little Spikey-wikey, but she honestly did not fancy her chances against an angry dragon three or four times her weight. Even Twilight and Rainbow Dash had been inclined to run – or fly or teleport – away if it came down to a fight.

Now they were here, at her home…

As she drew closer to the group, Rarity noticed Spike nudge the large red fellow who seemed their de-facto leader, pointing him towards the approaching mare. Rarity was thankful for the unspoken re-introduction, pointing out to her which dragon she had to deal with. She was naturally thankful as well for the dragons swooping in to help in the melee with the Timberwolves and Yumi’s retainers. She tried to gauge the expression of the crimson drake, her ears twitching as she could almost overhear what he and Spike were saying to one another. Unfortunately, dragon’s faces were less expressive than those of ponies or even diamond dogs. The eyebrows were articulate, but once they grew older and larger, their jaws seemed to become too heavy and solid to reveal much of their mood beyond ‘roaring with rage’ and ‘may roar with rage at any moment.’

“Hiya, Rarity!” Spike waved to her, friendly as always.

She had honestly expected him to at least put on a few pounds or gain a few extra inches, running around with his new friends for so long and ‘learning to be a dragon.’ Aside from his new set of membranous wings – supposedly the dragon equivalent of a pony’s cutie mark – he was much the same.

“Sir Spike,” she replied, suspecting ‘Spikey-wikey’ wouldn’t go over that well in front of his new friends. “Now that we’ve all had a few moments to catch our breath, why don’t you introduce me to your lovely new compatriots? I recognize Garble and, I believe, Spear and… Chunk, was it?”

The circle of guards wordlessly parted for her as she trotted up to the four large drakes.

“You remembered!” Spike replied, still sounding chipper. Walking between them, though Rarity couldn’t help but feel he was purposefully putting himself protectively in front of her, he gestured to the other dragons.

“Yeah. This is Garble.” The red one with the orange frill.

“Fizzle.” The second largest, a white dragon with a pink frill and similarly tinted eyes. “You didn’t meet him before.”

“Chunk.” The largest of the bunch, a chubby brown fellow with a stubby knot of a tail.

“…And Spear,” Spike concluded, pointing to a lanky purple drake with a messy blond mane.

It was fascinating: hair, on a dragon! It reminded her of Stephen’s glorious moustache. She hated to be so gauche as to draw superficial comparisons between species, but the range of body types and appearances just among these four was rather remarkable. Compared to ponies, dragons were a diverse lot. She even recalled seeing one dragon at the migration with eight stubbly, little legs. That couldn’t possibly be normal, could it?

“Guys, this is Rarity,” Spike added, snapping his claws as he remembered to introduce her as well. “You met her before.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Garble spoke up, lifting a clawed finger to rudely pick at his ear, just behind the web-like red scales that stuck out behind his eyes. Plucking something free, he casually flicked it off to the side, earning a grimace from the refined seamstress.

“I would thank you again for your assistance this evening,” Rarity told them. “If there is anything I can do to repay you, you need only--”

“About that!” Garble approached her, quickly looming over the mare. Rarity heard her guards shuffle uneasily, but she raised a hoof to wave them off. No matter how she felt on the inside, she had to remain in charge on the outside. That meant not betraying any of the fear she felt as the dragon came to within grabbing range, leaning down to stare her in the eye.

“We want stuff like that!” he said, pointing to a jeweled broach hanging from her ruined dress.

“This?” Rarity asked, using a bit of magic to float the silver and sapphire jewelry off her chest and into the air. “It really doesn’t suit you, I’m afraid. A ruby would be much more--”

“I’m not gonna wear it!” Garble snapped and flicked the broach out of her telekinetic field with one scaled finger. It rested in his palm, and he grinned. “Spike here says you ponies think this stuff is valuable, right?”

“Well, yes.”

“And those dogs find it valuable, too?”

“Dogs?” He had to mean the diamond dogs. “The gems, yes…”

“Then this is the kinda stuff I want!” Garble declared, though as he looked at the broach in his palm, he looked more confused than appraising. “Doesn’t look that impressive to me, but if it’s valuable, we want it. Gold and gems and, uh, art…”

“Art?” Rarity inquired, trying and failing to imagine these brutes having much appreciation for subtlety or nuance. Just the idea of the four of them critiquing a piece of art like a group of scaled debutantes almost made her giggle.

“Yeah, art stuff is valuable, too, right?” Garble scratched his frill, as if not sure. “Oh, and statues and, like rugs and, uh… all that rare and valuable stuff!”

“They want stuff for their hoards,” Spike explained. “It doesn’t matter what you give, as long as it’s valuable to somepony. Umm, this is sort of hard to explain, but, basically, dragons don’t have a sense of taste.”

“Whatever do you mean?” Rarity asked, glancing around the assembled dragons. They all towered over her, all of them except the purple one. He appeared to be staring rather intently at one of the guards in a way Rarity didn’t necessarily find comforting.

“Give her some room, guys!” Spike yelled, and despite being just a fraction of the other dragons’ size, he bodily pushed the brown and white ones back a few steps.

“You explain it to her,” Garble declared, bopping Spike on the head.

“Yeah, yeah, I got it,” he grumbled and crossed his arms.

“So, it’s sort of like this,” he began anew. “Dragons don’t have clothes or marketplaces or banks or, you know, stuff. Like the sort of stuff ponies have. The sort of stuff that comes with a society, I guess? And they don’t really use their hoards to buy anything. You can eat the gems, if you want to, but mostly dragons just have stuff for the purpose of having stuff. The more stuff a dragon has, the bigger he gets. When he loses things, he gets small. I don’t really understand it myself, since how can anypony… or any dragon… know how valuable their hoard is? But that seems to be how it works.”

Rarity nodded slowly, recalling the rather extravagant treasury of a hoard that she and her friends had seen when that adult dragon had attempted to roost near Ponyville. There had been objects there of clearly minimal value to a giant dragon: pony-sized amulets and crowns and tiaras, piles of golden bits, expensive-looking tapestries, rugs and furs that did little to suit the cave’s natural ambiance, and at least one terribly tacky pile of clothes that were definitely not meant for a lady dragon’s svelte form and razor-scaled coiffure.

There was a project! What would a dragon look fabulous in?

“Let me see if I understand,” Rarity said, raising a hoof to her mouth to conceal a small grin. “Your friends here have no actual sense of what is or isn’t valuable, so what they want to do… is to just pile up a lot of what ponies and diamond dogs and other groups consider valuable?”

“Pretty much,” Spike answered with a shrug. “That’s what the other dragons do.”

“And the more you have, the bigger you grow?”

“The bigger you are, the bigger the girls you get!” Garble explained with a toothy grin full of mismatched but undoubtedly sharp teeth. “The biggest guys get the biggest girls with the sharpest spines!”

“Real sharp spines!” the big brown one, Chunk, provided that bit of insight.

So, sharp spines were akin to, what, a well-toned flank? Perhaps female dragons would have a use for some sort of make-up, even if clothes were out of question. These were teenage dragons, after all. If they were anything like teenagers of all species, they would have fairly one-track minds.

Princesses knew she certainly did at their age.

“Sharp spines are attractive?” Rarity asked, testing the waters of her hypothesis. “You boys like that sort of thing?”

Chunk nodded eagerly. “Oh yeah!”

“Long, sharp spines and shiny scales!” Fizzle elaborated a bit more, gesturing with his hands. “And... and long, pretty tails!”

“Like your tail, but with scales, not hair,” Garble said, tilting his head to glance at her frayed but thankfully mostly intact tail. “Hair is kind of gross.”

“Hey! Hair isn’t gross!” The purple one snapped, tearing his eyes away from whatever fascinated him on the guards’ armor and uniforms.

“Hair is totally gross!” Garble declared, and the other dragons all shared a laugh at the expense of the purple fellow. Spear, was it?

“Hairs and scales aren’t so different,” Rarity spoke up, regaining control of the conversation and forestalling what could have become a fight among the drakes. Or was this the ‘good natured ribbing’ she had heard stallions did so often? Her eyes skimmed over the teenage dragons, who seemed to still be nudging or even tousling the hair of the purple drake. He was frowning, she thought, but he didn’t seem truly hostile. Perhaps these boys weren’t quite as violent as they liked to appear?

More importantly, if female dragons had certain traits considered more attractive than others, then it was likely the males did as well. This presented certain creative opportunities… for another time.

“To step back a moment,” she continued to say, having the attention of the dragon boys. “I would be pleased to reward each one of you for your assistance today.”

“We want to stick around, too,” Garble said, hardly waiting for her to finish her sentence.

“Ponies have lots of stuff, right?” Fizzle explained their reasoning, in a fashion. “Lots of valuable stuff! We want it.”

That set off a few warning alarms in Rarity’s head. “You want it,” she stated.

“We can trade for it and crap like that,” Garble said, swatting the white dragon with the back of his clawed hand. “Spike here says that just taking stuff we want is no good.” He reared up to his full height and passed a critical eye over the numerous armed and armored guardponies around them. “So I guess we can try and get valuable stuff from ponies the way you ponies do. For now.”

Behind him, Spear snorted in disgust, a lance of orange and red fire blasting out of his nostrils. “Yeah. Fer now.”

Rarity put her hoof down, right there.

“Unless you’ve lost the use of your eyes, you gentledragons can see that this town is not defenseless,” she told them, and all more than a few of the boys narrowed their eyes at the perceived challenge. In fact, all of them did, all save Spike, who sighed. “I am more than willing to extend my welcome to all the civilized creatures in Equestria, dragons included, and I wish you well in building your hoards, but understand this: I will not stand by should you attempt to rob or accost any pony under my protection. If you want something in Ponyville, you must earn it.”

The big, brown fellow growled at that, but like the rest, he deferred to their leader.

Garble crossed his arms, staring down at the little white mare. “Some of you ponies have stones. Yeah. Okay. Like I said, we’ll play by your rules. Spike says you’re the leader of the ponies here, right?”

Rarity almost stammered at that statement. Her eyes sought out Spike for an explanation, but Garble was right. She was in charge, now. These dragons wouldn’t be Mayor Mare’s responsibility. They would be hers. As Baroness, she had to defend Ponyville and ensure that laws were enforced. It was just one more burden on her already trembling shoulders. Rarity sucked it up, betrayed nothing, and nodded.

“I am the leader of sorts, yes,” she replied.

“Are you the strongest pony here, then?” Garble pressed, and only a moment later, Rarity realized he sounded genuinely curious. “Like one of those prissy pony Princesses?” He gave her an appraising look that had nothing to do with her beauty. “You don’t look very tough.”

“There are other ponies here much stronger than I am,” she answered.

“Ehhh? Then why are you in charge?” he asked and rudely prodded her chest with a claw. “I thought da biggest pony would be da boss.”

“That isn’t how it works, darling,” Rarity replied with a smile and gestured with a hoof to Chunk, “and if the biggest rules, then wouldn’t I be talking to your friend there?”

Grable laughed, opening his toothy jaws wide and putting his rather wide array of mismatched dentition on display. Two of the other dragons gleefully mobbed the sullen and silent Chunk with a series of rude pushes and even a cuff to the back of the head. Rarity shook her head in dismay. How on Equestria did Spike get along with these ruffians?

It had to be a Y chromosome thing.

‘Actually, Rarity,’ her often-unwanted inner-Twilight appeared to remind her of a long-forgotten conversation, ‘from what I’ve read, dragons have Z and W chromosomes, not X and Y.’ Followed quickly by a tangential and one sided discussion of mammalian and dracopodomorphic anatomy. And now her head hurt, just having to recall that word.

Bad inner-Twilight. Bad.

“Maybe not the biggest,” Garble admitted, picking at his teeth with a rather sharp looking claw. “The one who wants it the most, I mean.”

“In that case, ponies aren’t any different,” Rarity replied, though it was partly a lie.

As far as she could tell, every other mare of her station fit his model: they wanted it, they wanted to rule, and they bent necks until they became the proverbial alpha mare. Antimony did it because she had no other way of giving her life value or meaning; Sand Dune did it because it was the pragmatic way to make herself and her family richer… but Rarity? Why was she the one staring down this brute with a false face, hoping nopony saw through her disguise?

“Then we’ll deal with you, Princess,” Garble decided and slowly reached to his side to pat Spike on the top of his head. “I’ve heard you’ve got diamond dogs around here, too. Can we take stuff from them for our hoards? Or are you protectin’ them, too?”

“Yeah, I told them about those guys,” Spike admitted, his question covering up the fact that Rarity was initially at a loss for words. The diamond dogs? “Sorry,” Spike apologized. “I figured you wouldn’t mind...?”

She remembered her conversation with Sand Dune and how her family in Bitaly did, in fact, control a faction or two of diamond dogs they used for mining. Rarity hadn’t given much thought to her own local dog population except to have her Free Company guards keep ponies away from their gem fields. But… if something could be worked out there, it could help alleviate her almost perpetual debt problems.

“I will consider it,” she deigned and fixed Spike with a warm and genuine smile. Floating off a string of pearls from her tattered dress, she reached out and held open Spike’s palm with her hoof. Settling the pearls there, she leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.

“A reward for a very brave and very diplomatic dragon,” she explained, but gasped as Spike’s eyes flashed a brilliant green and, more importantly, as his head shot up an inch, bumping her on the nose. “Ow! My word! What was that?”

“I think it was this,” Spike said, holding the pearls in his hand. “Or maybe it was…?” He grinned and gently touched the cheek she had just kissed. “I don’t suppose I could get another kiss to see which one worked?”

“Don’t push your luck, Sir Spike.” Rarity touched him lovingly on the head.

“Oh, hey, could I borrow a chest or something?” he asked with a boyish grin. “Now that I’m back, I need to start on my hoard! I gotta introduce the guys to Twilight, too, and find ‘em a place to stay and check on that egg I saved and…!”

“They can stay here for the time being,” Rarity promised him, promised them all, actually. It would keep them away from Ponyville until she was ready to cross that bridge. “And I’ll have a beautiful chest set aside for your hoard, and the egg is safe, I promise.”

“Hey. Pony. I want that spear!” Behind Garble, Spear, the lanky purple dragon, pointed at one of the weapons held by a Free Company pegasus. “That one with the red engraving on it, those red marks in the metal! And the wax seal. It’s got magic on it, and I want it.”

“I want gold!” Chunk jumped in, gleefully thumping his fists together in front of his belly. “I know you’ve got lots of gold!”

“I just want gems,” Fizzle added. “I don’t care what kind. Lots of gems!”

“I will make arrangements, gentledragons,” Rarity assured them, imperiously agreeing to their demands with a wave of her hoof in each of their directions.

A few more comforting, soothing words and she felt confident in leaving the dragons in the courtyard. They were still under watch, but Rarity was rather sure they wouldn’t cause undue trouble, even if the other guests approached them. Battles and melees with Neighponese retainers and psychedelic pine cones and now dragons…?

This art festival truly had gone places she had never would have imagined. Glancing back over her shoulder as she headed towards the villa, Rarity noticed the Emir Golden Star and his first wife Gentle Stream approaching the dragons, followed closely by the Emir’s first concubine, Swift Stroke. The curious Marabians were the only ponies present tall enough to meet the dragons eye to eye.

‘If something happens to them, I’ll have a diplomatic incident to add to the day’s activities,’ Rarity thought but continued on her way. ‘Then again, that would be treading trampled ground, wouldn’t it? Lady Yumi is heiress to all Neighpon, and if – when – I get my hooves on her… well, what will you do, Rarity? Do you even know?’

It was all just…

Away from prying eyes, finally, Rarity felt her heart flutter and clench in worry. She had to keep up appearances, but the closer she got to being indoors, the more she felt her façade crumble away. Passing by her guards, she walked down a marvelously gilded and adorned hallway and primly took a left turn into one of the side passages towards the pantry and kitchens. Head held high but her eyes closed, opening a door and trying to rush through, she nearly bumped into one of the household staff. The surprised maid, a tawny earth pony mare with a curly, red mane, gasped and quickly apologized for being so careless, even though she hadn’t been the one stumbling around the villa in a foalish daze.

“Find Sandy or Light Touch,” Rarity demanded. She couldn’t remember the filly’s name, not at the moment. “Bring them here, but knock before you enter.”

“Yes, my Lady!” the maid agreed and hurriedly left.

Finally, blissfully alone in the pantry, Rarity inhaled deeply to try and set to rights the maelstrom of emotions churning inside her chest: worry and shock and fear and the low of ebbing adrenalin. It was an effort only partly successful. Hanging her head, she felt tears on her cheeks, blurring her view of the shelves of expensive, imported silverware and fine china.

Behind closed eyes, she could remember a pegasus pony dragging her through the air, sneering as she dropped her into the cloud of toxic pollen. She recalled Antimony locking her in a panic, her illusionary disguise as Dewdrop Dazzle unraveling but only in her own mind. Rarity remembered the look of smug superiority that same mare had, the threats she had leveled – broken legs and broken minds – but more than that, the utter lack of understanding Antimony had for what it meant to simply love another pony. To be with them and fight for them, not for power, not for any gain, but just to be with them. She remembered Yumi, sitting on a hill and looking down at her defeated retainers, her face calm but her body radiating indignation and rage. She remembered Sand Dune, callously negotiating bloodlines and breeding rights, as if Blueblood – and even the mare herself – were just livestock on a farm, or pedigreed cats!

Eyes closed tight, Rarity could imagine one of those same mares slipping poison into a cup, smirking as Blueblood drank… the look of satisfaction and triumph as he collapsed…

Rushing over to one of the wash basins, Rarity felt a heave that – thankfully – didn’t grow into a full on bout of sickness. Instead, she shuddered as she hung her head over the basin, her breath slow and ragged. Sickness slowly turned to anger: anger towards the mares who called themselves noble, but who were anything but; anger towards all those foalish authors who fed the fantasies of young fillies with tales of gallant knights and fair, gentle ladies; anger towards herself for being so stupid as to believe what she had read and what she had wanted to see, not what actually was. Anger, as she slowly came to realize she couldn’t stand the company of the ponies she had – all her life – aspired to be around.

The shallow, self-serving sycophants that had so secretly disgusted her in Canterlot, the Upper Crusts and the Jet Sets, now looked refreshingly tame. Above them, a society of coiled serpents slithered in the upper echelons of power, fighting and scheming in the darkness where nopony could see them bite and choke one another. Worse: nopony would even care, even if they knew! So long as the country ran like clockwork, so long as the trains were on time and the harvests were bountiful and the festivals were bright and the sun and moon marched on, so long as they themselves were happy, they didn’t care what the ponies in the castles did to one another! What other choice was there? For them or… for her?

In her mind’s eye, Rarity imagined herself, one hoof planted firmly on the side of Yumi’s face as she triumphed over the upstart mare. Ripples of magic set her mane flowing as she laughed, beautiful and powerful and terrible to all those who stood in her way. Wasn’t this what they wanted from her? Wasn’t this what the others must already imagine her to be like? It was what Fleur had thought her to be! It was what they were, so maybe it was what she had to become!

Except…

“I can’t,” she groaned softly, hooves covering her face as her breathing slowed and calmed. “I refuse. I refuse to let them turn me into that.”

Fleur. She had won over Fleur with friendship and patience and understanding and forgiveness. Even Antimony – she reminded herself – even she wasn’t an enemy anymore, and that had been done without cruelty or animosity. Just as surely as they could change her, she could change them. Rarity believed that. She had to believe that, because if it wasn’t true, than… than she didn’t see how she could be a part of Blueblood’s world, no matter how much she wanted it.

‘She poisoned him,’ a thought betrayed her resolve. ‘She tried to kill you. How can you change ponies like that?’

“My Lady?” A gentle knock on the pantry door blessedly interrupted Rarity’s thoughts. “I have Miss Light Touch here. May I let her in?”

“Yes,” Rarity replied, “Please do.”

The door opened only briefly, followed by the gentle clip-clop of Light Touch’s hooves on the stone floor. Even before entering, the light blue unicorn mare must have sensed that something was amiss, and without a word of surprise or distress over the unusual circumstances or her mistress’ disheveled state, her horn lit up, and Rarity felt herself float bodily away from the basin she had very nearly lost her stomach to. Water ran, and a damp towel soon began to clean Rarity’s matted hair, magic removing her tattered dress and folding it aside.

There was something remarkably soothing about Light Touch’s ministrations. Rarity felt herself relax onto the floor, the cool embrace of it sending a chill up and away from her stomach. The towel and a scraper soon found her hooves, removing packed-in dirt and grime. It must have been her imagination, but just being a little cleaner and more presentable almost made her feel physically better. It wasn’t vanity, was it? Sometimes, she wondered.

Blueblood… she had wanted to see him, to be sure he was fine, to hold his hoof and hear his voice… but where was she? He had been poisoned, and where was she? Having a panic attack in the pantry? Refusing to leave without being cleaned and brushed down? Wasn’t that the very definition of being vain and callous, narcissistic and spoiled beyond belief?

“You must think me a terrible pony,” Rarity said, without having meant to give voice to her thoughts. “Oh. I mean--”

Light Touch ran a fine toothed brush down Rarity’s neck, smoothing over the hairs in her coat and sending a relaxing tingle down her spine. “Ponies deal with stress differently, my Lady.”

“Stress,” Rarity agreed, trying to convince herself that that was it.

“Does… does my Lady wish to speak of anything?” Light Touch asked, a little hesitance in her voice. Rarity glanced back at the mare, her short pink mane done up in a neat curl. She was a few years Rarity’s senior, and her green eyes were refreshingly honest and unguarded. At the moment, they watched her with a little hint of worry at having spoken out of turn, but just enough confidence and familiarity that she knew the offer would be accepted.

“Have you seen Blueblood yet?” Rarity asked her.

“No, my Lady. He has not called for me.”

Rarity sighed softly, deciding that – maybe – she did want to talk about a few things with somepony. “He was poisoned.”

Light Touch’s response was quick but revealed little. “I heard.”

Rarity felt her head tilt as Light Touch attended to her horn, cleaning it with tiny circular strokes.

“They say His Grace is recovering very quickly,” the maid continued. “We all pray for his good health.”

“But how could she do it?” Rarity asked, desperate for some sort of answer. “How could she poison him, Light Touch? What kind of mare would do that?”

“I do not know, my Lady,” Light Touch admitted. “A desperate and frightened one, I think.”

Before Rarity could say more, another knock sounded against the pantry door. This one was not the discrete tap of the tip of a hoof on the wood, but a whole-hoofed clamor. Even before a voice spoke up to give an identity to the pony, Rarity had a good guess as to who – of all the ponies in the manor – would knock in such a cloddish manner.

“Rarity? Ya’ll are in there, ain’t ya?” There was one last knock, and Applejack softened her voice slightly. “Ah dunno if’n yer decent or whatever in there, and – and I know this probably isn’t the best ah’times ta bring this up, but… I figured we should talk about a few things.”

Rarity adjusted her forelegs, crossing them from where she lay on the floor. Applejack. They did have things to discuss, of that there was no doubt. On the other hoof, she did not want her friend seeing her in such a sorry state: disheveled and unsure and needing to be brushed down to face her fears, like a little filly with stage fright. On the other hoof, this was Applejack. Of all ponies.

“Enter,” she said.

After all, this was ‘AJ.’ Though everything, and no matter how low she sank, Rarity believed in her friends, and for all their faults and disagreements, Applejack was one of the ponies she had known the longest, though they had not always been the friends they were now. There was no point hiding from her.

The portal opened a crack, and, with surprising discretion, Applejack slipped inside, closing the door behind her. Despite being in the thick of the fighting earlier, literally going hoof-to-hoof with Yumi’s retainers, her resilient friend appeared unharmed. Frazzled, perhaps, but not harmed. Rarity was so very thankful for that. All her friends had wonderfully and courageously stepped up today to support her and protect her guests. Applejack kept her eyes low, one hoof fidgeting anxiously with the rim of her Stetson. Rarity imagined her doing much the same for some time outside the door before finally mustering the courage to knock.

“Applejack,” Rarity said, taking in the appearance of the other mare. “Are you alright, darling?”

“Ah, yeah, just dandy,” Applejack replied, her snout crinkling up at her words, an expression that reminded Rarity of distaste, like she had picked up the smell of something foul. It was hardly an attractive look.

“They say the worst should be over,” Rarity assured her and tried to relax again as Light Touch continued her work. The brush was, by this point, making a repeat visit to the same few spots, working out knots and tension in muscle more than tangles in hair. “My ponies and I will see to the rest.”

“Is…!” The urgency in Applejack’s voice gave Rarity a moment’s pause and Applejack herself seemed both shocked and embarrassed by her tone of voice. She quickly covered her mouth with a hoof. “I mean, is, uh, Blueblood… he’s gonna be okay, won’t he?”

“I think so,” Rarity replied, a little too hastily for her tastes. “It did not sound dire before, and you know how thorough Twilight is. Nopony seems worried. Isn’t that something?” She gave Applejack a small smile, as if to explain her own absence from the stallion’s side. “A pony is poisoned, and things go on, business as usual. Doctor Pill is here, too. Blueblood is in good hooves.”

“That’s, well, that’s mighty good news…”

Rarity said no more on the subject, straightening her sitting posture as Light Touch went to work on her mane. She had torn up not only her own dress to fight but used her own mane and tail as haircloth. She had a way to return the haircloth back to her, restoring her luxurious tail and mane, but it damaged the hair and left it a tangle. Light Touch offered no complaints as she ran a comb through it, bit by bit working it out. No pony was better at her job. Except Sandy, perhaps, but she was likely still keeping herself hidden for the time being.

Applejack sat down nearby then lowered herself onto the floor to join her friend. Uncharacteristically, she kept silent, alternating between watching Rarity out of the corner of her eye and being lost in her own thoughts. Rarity suspected that it was simple reluctance on the farmer’s part in discussing their problems in front of Light Touch. That was the simplest and most likely explanation for her behavior, yet Rarity couldn’t help but think something else was amiss as well.

“Has Blueblood ever been poisoned before?” Rarity asked Light Touch after a particularly soothing bit of brushwork.

“No, my Lady.”

“Do you know of any other pony being poisoned?”

“No, my Lady.”

“Thank the heavens and Princesses for that, at least,” Rarity muttered. “This isn’t a common occurrence.”

“Yeah,” Applejack spoke up, her eyes resolutely fixed on a far wall. “Things weren’t so bad, right?”

“Such vile attacks may not be commonplace, but that does not excuse them!” Rarity told her, her brows drawing down into a clear and unmistakable scowl. “I – I’ve thought before of just how bad it could have been, and it is hard to think about how glad I should be or how relieved I should be that he is able to recover. What if Yumi had used a more deadly poison? What if Blueblood had died?”

Applejack lowered her eyes again, looking guilty, though Rarity couldn’t imagine why. Her old friend was being unusually reserved. She was much more the sort to say what was on her mind, be it good or bad, leaving the truth to stand on its own merits. Applejack wasn’t the sulking sort of pony.

A thought stole Rarity’s attention, just then.

“Light Touch,” she addressed the other unicorn mare. “What would have happened if…” Did she really have to say it? What if Blueblood had been murdered, while everypony blithely enjoyed themselves in the festival, fifty hoof lengths away? “What if things had been worse?”

“If Lord Blueblood passed on,” Light Touch answered, not skipping a beat, “then the Stable of Lords would elect a replacement from the extended Royal Family. Prince Leon is the most likely. His pedigree is impeccable. Lord Alpha Brass also has a claim; as the son of a Duke, he is not due to otherwise inherit. Lord Warmblood is also a strong possibility, despite his advanced years.”

“And you would serve him instead,” Rarity guessed.

“Or her,” Light Touch corrected the newly noble mare. “I serve the Prince or Princess, whoever that may be.”

“You’d just shuffle yerself around like that?” Applejack asked, sounding as appalled as Rarity rememebred her friend ever being. “Don’t it matter at all who you comb down?”

Rarity felt an almost indistinguishable tremor in the brush running down her back as Light Touch’s magic wavered in response to her emotional state. It was the same sort of minuscule mistake that could ruin a stitch with a needle and thread in her own business – her former business – Rarity corrected herself. Most ponies likely wouldn’t notice the difference, but she could and did.

“Miss Applejack,” Light Touch replied, regaining her poise as well as any noblemare. “Of twenty-eight applicants, I alone was chosen to apprentice under Miss Tanen Balm, who herself apprenticed under Miss Genteel, who learned from Miss Ways, who learned from Miss Comb, and so forth. I can name every pony in the line of my profession, and when my time comes, I pray I will mentor the mare who will serve and prepare Lord Blueblood’s foals and grandfoals. Make no mistake. I love this job, and I am proud to serve the Blueblood line.”

“Do I care who I serve?” she asked, rhetorically. “Of course I do. When I was very young, I helped my Lord’s father prepare for the duel that cost him his life. I cared for his mother on her deathbed, even when her mind… slipped. This has always been my dream, and I refuse to let a few dark moments tarnish it. It matters greatly to me who I serve, but it also matters little. That is the life I have chosen to lead, and I do not regret it.”

Applejack said nothing at first, slipping back into the strange mood Rarity had noticed before. There was definitely something wrong with her, something eating away at her. Was it the Sweet Apple Acres bailout? Had going behind her back really struck her so hard? Or was it something else?

Moreover, Light Touch’s words stuck a cord in Rarity’s own thoughts. ‘This has always been my dream, and I refuse to let a few dark moments tarnish it.’ Hadn’t she told herself as much before?’

It was just so hard to reconcile.

“If I may, my Lady,” Light Touch said, deftly twirling her paddle brush before it vanished in a sparkle. She swapped it for a magically heated, fine-toothed roller brush.

“His Grace the Prince has not always been as you know him to be,” she continued, for once not waiting for permission. “As I said, I have known him for much of his life and my own. He was never cruel, but he was at times unkind or… demanding, is a kind way of describing it. I did not mind that. However, until the Gala, just recently, I suspected that my Lord did not even know my name; he never once spoke it.”

The roller brush found the base of Rarity’s mane, inching teasingly up and along the natural curl, fixing and emphasizing it as it peaked and fell over the side of her face.

“I do not know what happened at the Gala, or if his meeting you prompted this change… or the other way around. All I can say for certain is that he is different now from how he was before, and I believe you to be part of the reason why. Around you, he smiles more, laughs more… he has someone to humble him and correct him, but also support him and encourage him. You bring out the best in him, my Lady. I have seen you do the same with Lady Fleur as well. You have opened hearts once closed.”

For a few strokes, Light Touch was silent.

“I believe you can change ponies, Lady Rarity; you can change them for the better and do much good,” she concluded, and the brush vanished again. “Know that many ponies admire you for that.”

Rarity took in a slow breath and realized her mind and thoughts were the most serene they had been since the end of the fight with Yumi’s retainers. Perhaps it was a selfish indulgence, but a little cleaning up had indeed left her feeling refreshed and ready to face the future, even a future that included venomous mares like Lady Yumi and her ilk. Her foalhood dream of being a beautiful Princess, married to a fair and chivalrous Prince, living in luxury in a great castle… it was gone. She was sure of that now.

In place of that dream, bit by bit at first, something else had come to take its place: something less fanciful, but no less idealistic. She would have her Prince, not so conventionally chivalrous, but with his own unique charms, and she would have her castle and wardrobe. She would share both with the mares who thought to crush her and make her into their shadow. They would meet and eat and drink and chat – and yes, they would scheme – but they would never again fight one another.

She’d make them into her friends or kill them trying…

And Lady Sand Dune would be the litmus test.

“It seems my work is done, my Lady,” Light Touch said, and Rarity heard Applejack give a startled yelp as the hoofmaiden started on the apple farmer’s tail. Applejack was quick to jump to her hooves and defensively clutch her tawny tail close to her chest, warding the beautician away with a glare and a flailing hoof.

“Hey now, wait just a second! Nopony said nothin’ about you messin’ with my tail!”

“But Miss Applejack, don’t you want me to smooth out your tail a little? Or add lift to your mane?”

“No! Stay back! Watch it!”

“Stay still, Miss Applejack. You must know there is no escape.”

For a few seconds, Rarity let the two jump and prance around the room, playing cat and also-cat. The sheer silliness of it all even brought a smile to her face. Standing up, Rarity lightly tapped her hoof on the tiled floor. Light Touch immediately ceased her pursuit of the apple farmer with the terribly maintained hair and spun around to face her mistress.

“Light Touch,” she said, still smiling. “Thank you for your assistance and discretion.”

“Of course, my Lady!” The other mare bowed her head respectfully, adding with a teasing grin, “Miss Applejack.”

“Ah-about what ah said before--” Applejack began to say, as Light Touch made to leave the pantry.

“No harm was intended,” the beautician agreed. Without further aplomb, she discretely opened the door and darted back outside, leaving the two friends in silence. For want of a mirror, Rarity took just a moment or two to check her reflection in the flat of a highly polished metal plate. She was bereft of makeup and the other products she preferred, but she was more than presentable. Seeing the pony smiling back at her, it really was as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

‘Light Touch. Germoglio. Spike. Thank you.’

“Now then!” she declared, a bit of spunk back in her tone. “Applejack, darling, whatever is on your mind?”

Her friend glanced down again and gave a small, labored sigh. “Rarity. Ya… ya ain’t gonna like what I gotta talk to ya about. But before ya go seeing yer beau, ya gotta know about it anyway…”

“Whatever do you mean?” Rarity asked, growing a little worried for the other mare. “What’s wrong?”

Applejack nibbled her lower lip, taking a deep breath and steeling herself as she looked up. “It’s about Yumi and… and me. Cause a lotta what happened here today is mah fault.”

- - -

“I can’t believe I missed all this fun! You’re so lucky!”

“I would not consider it fun, Euporie.”

“That’s because you don’t consider anything fun, Eunomie.”

The two sisters sat before a statue of a pony missing two of her four legs and half of her face. She had formerly been a triumphalist representation of the hard working farmer, a seedling in one hoof and a hoe in the other, raking it back with a motion from both leg and mouth. The fighting had seen somepony tumble into the statue, breaking off the two front legs. The pony was beggared, now, with no seedling in hoof, the thin pole of the hoe being all that seemed to keep her front from falling forward.

Not too far away was a statue of Princess Celestia, missing the front. It had been propped back up, but all that was left was the great alicorn’s luminescent rump. Surprisingly, it had suddenly attracted quite some interest from a multitude of ponies who found it much more evocative now than it had been before the battle. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t that surprising.

Euporie, though, found the amputated statue more interesting. She stared at the broken stumps where the farmer’s legs had been with naked fascination. It was, after all, rare to see a crippled pony. Three legs was a rare enough sight, in flesh or in stone, but two was almost unheard of. Even Eunomie found herself feeling some… sense of disquiet… at the sight.

“How frightful it would be,” Euporie mused, a ghost of a smile creeping up the corner of her mouth. “It is so… macabre. Yet everypony seems to shy away from it. Do you know why, Eunomie?”

The soft spoken mare did not. “Why?”

“Because it is in the nature of ponykind to pretend that what makes us uncomfortable does not exist.” Euporie reached up to brush a strand of bright blue mane away from her face, tucking it back around the base of her horn. “Ponies are such deluded creatures, and they become blinder the more of them experience the same thing. Herd mentalities. How sickening they are.”

She grinned fully, looking around to be sure they had no company.

“Yumi isn’t dead, is she?” Euporie asked, simply.

“I do not know,” Eunomie admitted, one eye closed and the other blinking, slowly. “Galen and my other eye followed her up to the rendezvous with Aunt Chalice. I saw Miss Fluttershy, but I could not follow her through the forest. I lost them.”

“They survived Auntie Pushover?” Euporie whispered with a little giggle. He. He. He! “I told Daddy. I told him. Didn’t I? Send me, I said. I would’ve killed her. Maybe I’d even have used this Fluttershy mare to do it.”

“Please mind your words, sister.”

“Plegh meh menemh!” Euporie mocked, garbling the words foalishly. “What does it matter? Nopony can understand what we’re saying outside this bubble.”

“Not unless you raise your voice. I’ve said this many times.”

“And I’ve never once forgotten it. Am I raising my voice now? Am I?”

“No.”

“Then, exactly when I do raise my voice loud enough for everypony to hear us conspiring, breaking your little ‘zone of silence’ spell, then you can remand me, Eunomie.”

“My apologies, Euporie. It is in my nature to worry.”

Eunomie remained as calm as she always did, and for a few seconds the twin sisters sat side by side in front of the hideous sculpture. Eunomie found herself wondering if her sister had been correct. Did ponies turn from what they found uncomfortable? Nopony else seemed to be giving the damaged statue even a cursory look. It was as if it was invisible to them. Not a one even took the time and effort to point or gawk.

She took a long look at the statue, and felt… only that little flutter of emotion. Eunomie didn’t like it. It was hard to tell what the feeling even was. Some thing. Some sense of… discomfort.

This was now an incomplete pony, without her legs, without half her face.

An incomplete pony…

“It is very likely that Yumi is still alive,” Eunomie explained, her voice emotionless, as if reading from a spreadsheet or a script. “From what I’ve uncovered, Miss Fluttershy is among the most adept of ponies in navigating and surviving the Everfree. Aunt Chalice did fail to kill her, but she did kill Master Shigure, and most important of all, she conveyed the message she was told to.”

“The one saying ‘Blueblood sent me?’” Euporie inquired, nodding to herself and crossing her front legs. “I have to give you props for that, Eunomie. It was pretty cunning.”

“It was only prudent.”

“Yeah, yeah. So, as long as that idiot keeps out of changeling hooves, she’ll bring home the news to Neighpon. They’ll be outraged. They’ll demand their ponies back.”

“And Canterlot will deny them, because Chrysalis will wish to fan the flames between the city she means to attack and that city’s only reliable ally. Again: as long as Yumi is not replaced by a changeling, we stand to benefit.”

“Daddy stands to benefit,” Euporie corrected her.

“Father’s benefit is ultimately ours. Our plans also require the Neighponese to remain on the sidelines.”

“I guess,” her sister relented, scratching her chin. “And Daddy is probably happy. His little plan ferreted out all the rats in his larder. I wonder how many changelings that Bug Witch had among the teleportation unit?”

“Three or four is the most statistically likely, given known trends in infiltration.”

“Daddy probably burned them.”

“That is also likely.”

Eunomie did not feel any pity for the changelings. Put another way, she did not feel anything much towards them but certainly not pity or guilt for those Father burned. Their fate had been sealed by their Queen if not her step-father. Alpha Brass’s preferred form of plan was what Eunomie thought of as ‘baiting.’ He presented the illusion of choice, when, in fact, one or two of those choices were made so irresistible that it was impossible to ignore them. His skill was in determining how to present the lure and how to tailor the trap towards a given pony… or non-pony. Even if a pony where to be wary of any such opportunities, seeing them all as traps, then they would cripple themselves with anxiety and insecurity, allowing others to move against them and take advantage.

Both Lady Yumi and Queen Chrysalis had taken their respective bait.

Yumi, the poor mare, had so wanted to be the first earth pony to become Duchess of Canterlot. Her desires were well known. The moment Antimony had crushed her dreams by defeating her, years ago, Alpha Brass had kept an eye on her, waiting for when and if she could have use. The possibility of the winning the Duchy again had proven irresistible bait for her, and Brass had planted the seeds of their meeting years before. Yumi had readily agreed to “assist” him, assuming he wanted a modicum of control over Canterlot via favors she would owe him for his help. It was all a ruse, of course. Father had never really expected Yumi to win Blueblood’s hoof, by hook or by crook.

Yumi herself… she had been Chrysalis’ enticement.

This bait had proven irresistible to the changeling Queen. Chrysalis could not and would not resist being able to subvert the heiress to Neighpon, suddenly left exposed and vulnerable by leaving her nest. The changelings had very little to no presence in the often insular island Duchy. Yumi was also a tremendously powerful earth pony in her own right. Chrysalis would make a move to have her.

It was as Father had expected. Allowing changelings to infiltrate the teleportation unit had emboldened Chrysalis. She thought she knew all who came and went from the Hanging Gardens, but she did not know that there was a backdoor to the spell. It was her greatest flaw, indeed, likely the greatest flaw of all changelings: they did not expect to be, themselves, deceived.

Yet, to let changelings infiltrate the teleportation unit was a terrible risk.

One of them needed to be revealed, and the one that emerged was Pixie Dust. The moment she left with Yumi, she had been identified as a changeling. Now that same changeling had traded up, exchanging Pixie Dust for Yumi and then Yumi for Prince Blueblood himself. This had also been considered possible, as had the outright murder of the Prince to drive home the animosity between Neighpon and Canterlot. Both options, still, presented opportunities.

Father’s fear had, simply, been losing both Blueblood and Yumi to replacement. Losing Blueblood was not a problem. Losing Yumi was. That could not be allowed. Better she die. Chalice had chosen to kill her, or to try to. It was the simplest route, so it made sense Auntie would pick it. A dead heiress, accused of being a traitor but with little proof – together with a changeling-Blueblood who would only make more enemies in a misguided attempt to isolate Canterlot for invasion – would lead Neighpon, ring-in-nose, into the bosom of the Terre Rare faction in court.

It had been a bit touch-and-go, for a while, orchestrating things on the fly to follow Father’s rough outlines.

“Plans are delicate things, Eunomie. Like flowers, plucked from the vine. They wilt with time, and the merest touch can scatter them. I put less stock in flowers and plans than I do in intelligent ponies like yourself. I trust you to handle things on the surface for me. I trust you, implicitly.”

Eunomie reached a hoof up to her shoulder, where her father had touched gently her in passing back when he had told her how much he trusted her. He trusted and relied on her. He loved her, though he wasn’t really her father. Changelings had killed and replaced her true mother. There was no pony else.

“I wish I could truly love you back, father,” Eunomie whispered. “The way Euporie loves you. But my heart is…”

“What’s that, Eunomie?”

“Nothing, Euporie.”

Her sister sucked in a breath and pursed her lips. “Yeah, well, I’ve been thinking, and pretty much… things turned out okay, overall. Canterlot will be alone, and alone, Canterlot will crumble down the mountainside.” She lifted a hoof to pantomime the city’s destruction, coming apart and tumbling off the edge into oblivion. “And the changelings? He. He. He! Oh, that will be fun!”

“If our plan bears fruit. Bear in mind that Father’s plan will have a different outcome. So will Lady Cadenza’s.”

“Three different outcomes,” Euporie agreed, still chuckling darkly to herself. “The only one just following orders is Auntie.”

“Yes. Perhaps.”

“Perhaps?” Euporie asked, growing serious for once. “You would know, wouldn’t you?”

“I know the other plans because I am the only pony who can function as an intermediary,” Eunomie explained, though it was obvious. “Aunt Chalice does not have… I am told that Aunt Chalice does not have the personality type to pursue her own course of action, but she is in a position to do so, if she wished to. For that matter, Lady Twilight Sparkle is also certain to eventually develop some scheme of her own as an alternative to the one posed to her by Father. She will present us with a fourth and final outcome.”

“You don’t think she’ll be okay with just killing the changelings?”

“The one to best determine that is you, Euporie,” Eunomie reminded her fair sister. “You must have gotten a feel for her emotions.”

“She hasn’t killed any changelings yet, and I wasn’t there when you and Daddy made the sales pitch,” Euporie grumbled, taking a breath and licking her lips as she thought. “Probably… right now… she’s convinced herself it is a necessity. A bitter pill. That sort of thing. She’ll waver in her conviction, though. She’s the sort who thinks she knows more than anypony, but she’s also insecure about herself. She badly wants to be acknowledged by the ponies she respects… she’s a lot like you in that, Eunomie.”

Eunomie was unmoved by the remark. “And?”

“And I think she’ll start to think her ideas have new perspective. She won’t follow our plans for very long.”

“I see.”

“She might even come to the conclusion that you and I did, Eunomie!” Euporie said that with a savage grin. “Imagine that! Wouldn’t that be interesting!”

“It would potentially be catastrophic,” Eunomie replied, deadpan. “Both your outcome and Lady Cadenza’s rely on your unique skills. Lady Sparkle attempting them would be very dangerous for all involved.”

“I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what she does with Daddy’s spare torc, then.”

“Yes.”

“So all this time, Sirocco’s been alive, too?”

“Yes.”

“Geez! What a waste of money! All those assassins sent after her… all for nothing!”

“It is remarkable she yet lives,” Eunomie agreed, feeling a twinge of admiration for the pegasus bodyguard her brother had lost the service of.

Her defection was all that monster... that Discord’s fault. Even now, after being returned to stone, that one snap of his fingers continued to sow chaos where once there had been harmony. Of all the Star Keys to steal, too, Sirocco had chosen the broken one.

It was the gamma Key. The one on which so much turned.

The alpha and beta Keys couldn’t be shattered, not now, not so late in the game. They had exactly one spare to run the test on – the torc that would have been Polished Jewel’s – and Sirocco had stolen it. Eunomie doubted the bodyguard had even known exactly what it was or why it was so important. She had simply taken it, knowing it was important in some way, and fled. Eunomie had never seen Father in such a rage, or then so depressed, before or since. It was not just the torc, either. What had struck Father so hard had been losing Sirocco; the mare had served him since both were foals.

It was all because of that one horrible day.

“So,” Euporie summarized, lip rising into a sneer as she spoke, “we still have Sirocco trotting around somewhere. She may or may not be in contact or even working with Princess Celestia directly. We’re counting on an obsessive-compulsive unicorn librarian who may or may not turn against us at the worst possible time. We’ve lost track of Yumi and, I hate to remind you, Flim and Flam have found a loophole in your stupid contract, the one you refuse to just break. Oh! And on top of everything else, I’d bet chips to bits that Ritterkreuz is alive, too. That lunatic took the Wonderbolts out for us, but she was supposed to end up dead. What next? Shall we have Sand Dune breathing down our necks? Or Auntie Antimony showing up to try and kill us?”

Eunomie’s expression was serene and unconcerned.

“Our enemies are the changelings first, the rest of the world second,” she said, simply. “Remain poised, observe the situation, and only then make big moves.”

She lifted a hoof, almost touching the stump where the statue’s leg had been.

“Sirocco will reveal herself, and when she does, she will cease to be a problem. She has fled through five countries, but she is cornered here in Equestria. She knows the endgame is fast approaching. Princess Celestia will be handled by Chrysalis for us, or at least distracted by the invasion of her home. Twilight Sparkle is both asset and liability. I personally see her as more the former… I…”

She recalled Twilight, patiently studying with her. The other mare was methodical, but kind. She was reasoning, but she had feelings. Twilight Sparkle was… she was, in some ways, as Eunomie wished she herself could be. And she was so talented. So gifted. There was no denying that, or that she was the Element of Magic.

“I think I would like her and father to be together,” Eunomie told her sister, and Euporie rolled her eyes. “She is a good pony.”

“Yeah, maybe, but like I told you before, she’d hate you if she knew the real you,” the blue-maned mare reminded her, wrapping a leg around her sister’s shoulders. “You can’t count on her or anypony but me… and Daddy, of course.”

Eunomie felt the strangest impulse to knit her brows together into a frown.

“This is likely true,” she admitted, and continued. “The rest are minor players. Flim and Flam know nothing; keeping their contract ensures they remain silent whereas killing them presents problems. We will watch for Yumi, but I expect she will flee to Neighpon. Once there, her actions will determine whether she is real or a changeling. Ritterkreuz should be dead, you are correct in that, but without the Wonderbolts, Cloudsdale is toothless. Their common guard is useless. We have decapitated them. What is left will be removed as a threat. Father will see to it.”

“As for Sand Dune and Auntie Antimony,” she concluded with a snort. “The Quartz Clan is unlikely to stick their neck out, not without some profit to be made, and Auntie Antimony will be dealt with when Grandfather is. Father has pointed both Chrysalis and Twilight in their direction. We have nothing to fear from them.”

Euporie nodded, accepting that. “And the little dress maker?”

“I fail to see what difference Lady Rarity can make in the grand scheme of things.”

“I’m sure Auntie Antimony also thought that, too. Where is she now?”

“This is true.”

The two mares sat before the broken statue, their thoughts their own. Euporie was still grinning, though she didn’t say any more. Eventually, she muttered something about finding Pinkie Pie and Eunomie had to reiterate that she expected her to behave and play along, even if it meant making apologies or amends. Euporie grumbled and cursed but relented. Eunomie simply continued to study the statue. It evoked something in her, a faded, weak shadow of an emotion, but she couldn’t tell what. It was hard to tell how to feel, sometimes.

‘A broken pony,’ she thought to herself, one eye still closed, the other amber orb examining the sculpture. ‘She’s a broken pony. An incomplete pony. A pony like that… it shouldn’t exist, should it?’

It made her feel…

It felt like…

“Euporie?”

“Yeah?”

“How does this statue make you feel?”

“Disgusted… but also a little excited.”

“Ah. I see. Thank you, Euporie.”

“Anytime, Eunomie.”

- - -

“Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well!” Applejack repeated, glaring at Rarity’s hindquarters as the mare slowly trotted through the manor. “Ain’t ya upset? Ah just told ya that it’s all mah fault that yer beau nearly got killed! If I were in yer horseshoes I’d be madder than a red ant!”

“Hm.”

“Hm? That’s it?!” Applejack gritted her teeth and picked up her pace for a second so she could circle around in front of the former dressmaker. “Rares, ain’t ya gonna… yell or… anything? Ain’t ya gonna chew inta me?”

Applejack opened her forelegs wide, as if to embrace the incoming storm.

“Come on, ah deserve it! Go ahead!” Still, the mare did nothing. Searching desperately for a better way to get through to Rarity, Applejack bodily grabbed her by the withers, summing up her feelings in one simple question, “Ain’t ya mad? Say something! Come on! Ah can take it!”

“You want me to be upset with you,” Rarity stated, and Applejack nodded.

“Yer darn tootin!”

“You want me to yell and decry how one of my oldest friends could do this to me?”

“Basically,” the honest apple farmer admitted. “Ah mean… After what ah said, what ah told ya I did…!”

“Applejack,” Rarity interrupted, Applejack’s hooves still on her shoulders. Without prompting, the earth pony dropped her powerful hooves to the ground again. She hadn’t really meant to just grab her friend like that… but…

But she had admitted to helping Yumi. She had been party to attempted, what was it? Regicide? Something like that. Worse than that, she had turned against her friend and even against the promise she had made when Rarity had asked her to be a gendarme. Not that she had wanted any fancy titles or anything, but protecting Ponyville was already on her daily to-do list and a promise was a promise. Always.

It was her fault this had happened.

“Don’t ya get it? It’s mah fault!” Applejack blurted out, sniffing and hiding her face behind her right front hoof. “It’s all mah fault!”

Rarity parted her lips but closed them a second later and shook her head.

“Nunna this would’ve happened if not fer me being such a… such a stubborn, crab-apple of a pony! Ah’m the one who set up the meetin’ between Yumi and Blueblood,” Applejack admitted, quickly, her words coming out in a torrent as she tried to finish with them as quickly and painlessly as possible. “It wouldn’ta happened without me! I told ya she helped me out on the farm, and we made a deal. That’s how we came up with that new cider we’ve been sellin… we made a deal, and all she wanted was a chance ‘ta talk to yer beau. Ah didn’t really see much harm in it, ya know? What could she say ta him that’d make much’ova difference, right?”

Rarity stared at the other mare, the fellow daughter of Ponyville she had known longer than any other.

“Ah just – ah just didn’t think!” Applejack cried, reaching for and grabbing onto Rarity’s leg like a hoofhold or a lifeline. “Ya gotta believe me, sugarcube! Ah never imagined any’ah this would’ve happened! Ah just thought they were gonna talk and… and he’d tell her ta give up… cause we all know he’s head over tails in love with ya… and-and ah thought she deserved a chance. Ah mean... she came all this way and-and it just seemed fair, ya know? That he could let’er down, gentle-like.”

“Yes, and she poisoned him,” Rarity said it in a frigid tone of voice.

“Ah still can’t believe she’d do that,” Applejack repeated, shaking her head, her eyes still fixed on the floor. “Ah’m so sorry… Rarity, ah… ah’m just so – so sorry! Ah’ve never messed up this bad before. Ah’m just so sorry.”

“Applejack,” Rarity said and batted down the other mare’s hoof. In the same breath, she reached out to pull her friend into a tight embrace. “Applejack. I understand.”

“Ya do?” she sounded shocked and stiffened in the hug before relaxing and wrapping her forelegs around the other mare. “Or are ya just sayin’ that ta be diplomatic and stuff?”

“Alright, perhaps I don’t entirely understand,” Rarity conceded, holding the other pony at leg’s length but smiling, encouragingly. “But… you’re also wrong. The fault is not entirely your own, and all this is not all on your shoulders.”

“Tell me,” she prompted. “Even now, do you still think I was wrong to go behind your back to ‘bail-out’ Sweet Apple Acres?”

“Uh, well!” Applejack’s snout scrunched up as she resisted having to answer.

“Go on,” Rarity asked. “Please, tell me.”

“Ah… ah guess I do. Ah do still think so,” Applejack replied, guilty. “Sweet Apple Acres is mah farm, mah family’s farm, and fer better or fer worse, we do things the Apple Family Way.”

“Yes. I was looking at the Ponyville Barony crest the other day,” Rarity said, and Applejack was momentarily thrown by the slight veer in topic. “Do you recall what the crest looks like?”

“There’s… there’s a book and a star next ‘ta a tree,” she answered, recalling the insignia most vividly from when she had seen it during the pas d’arms outside town. It was all over the place outside, too, but mostly just blurred into the background. “The tree’s an apple tree, too. With three apples.”

“I picked that tree because earth ponies – and your family specifically – are interwoven with the past founding and continued good fortunes of Ponyville as a whole,” Rarity explained. “And in honor of your great-grandfather, who was however briefly, my predecessor as Baron. Put simply, Applejack, you would not have been in the position you were in if not for me.”

Applejack opened her mouth to protest, but Rarity held up a hoof for silence.

“Let me finish,” she asked, and seeing her friend close her mouth and nod, however grimly, Rarity continued. “I said very unkind and unladylike things to you. We may have said them to one another, but that does not excuse me. You and I will always have very different views of the world, Applejack, but I should not have so readily dismissed yours.”

“If we had just talked things out… worked out a compromise, like you ended up doing with Yumi, then none of this would have happened. Then you would not have needed her help or the help of anypony else who would think to abuse your trust.” Rarity gave a soft, ladylike sigh. “Even before all this… I had begun to come over to the thought that I should not have forced my solution on you against your will.”

“Rarity…”

“It was and it is my duty now, to protect and see to the well-being of Ponyville,” Rarity forged ahead, despite the momentary interruption. She shook her head, saying what she clearly felt had to be said. “This was even something Antimony told me about… back before our duel. I realized that what I did to you was just what she would have done: decide, by herself, what was best for everypony. Maybe it was the right decision, maybe it was the wrong one, but I made it because it was my call… my authority over you…”

Rarity shook her head, sensing she was starting to ramble and avoid the point.

“What I’m saying is that I was wrong, too. I was wrong to dismiss you and push ahead with what I felt was right. We should have talked – all day if we had to – to work this out.” Rarity now had her blue eyes downcast in regret.

Applejack found she was holding her breath. She had come here to admit her part in Yumi’s scheme, to ask for forgiveness, but now...? Rarity had turned everything over, and... and was it really that easy? Was it really that simple? Maybe the sad truth was that they were a pair of stubborn mules, cut from the same cloth and picked from the same tree. They had their ways, and they were stuck to them, like a particularly tenacious stem on an apple. Of all of Applejack’s close friends, she knew she was most likely to butt heads with Rarity, and that probably should have driven them apart more… in fact, it had for years… but now, ever since Twilight and that sleepover party, that difference of opinion was something she not just accepted, but something she cherished, in a strange sort of way.

‘We’re so different… but we’re the same in some ways, too, and we’re friends.’

“Ah shouldn’t’a stormed out like ah did,” Applejack admitted, and Rarity looked up with relief in her eyes. “We should’a talked about this.”

“You see, then, why I am not yelling at you or even all that upset with you?” Rarity asked, pointing to herself. “This is my fault as well.”

“I need you, Applejack,” she said, reaching out to gently brush the other mare’s foreleg. “Never hesitate tell me what is on your mind, and I swear to the Princess I will always listen. I need ponies, honest ponies, to keep me grounded and tell me what I do not want to hear. I need my friends.”

“Ya don’t even need ta ask!” Applejack replied with a grin, quickly wiping away a lingering tear from her earlier confession. She patted Rarity’s hoof with her own, nodding forcefully.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Rarity told her, and the two mares quickly shared another hug.

“And I’m glad all that feuding and confession-stuff is over with!” As they came apart, Applejack sighed in relief but also gave her friend a sidelong, suspicious look. “But really, ya ain’t mad? Not even a little?”

“Actually, I am positively furious,” Rarity stated, voice deceptively calm even with her blue eyes narrow and darkening. “But not with you.”

Applejack grimaced but quickly recovered from her shock and whistled. “That there’s one scary look, sugarcube.”

“I’m sadly becoming quite practiced in it,” Rarity explained, groaning as a stray lock of her mane came free to fall across her nose. She snorted at it and meticulously fixed her hair in the reflection of one of the hallway mirrors. “Now, what do you say we see how my great lummox of a Prince is doing?”

- - -

Rarity listened as she walked, the two mares making their way deeper into the manor house. Applejack described in greater detail – provided by divorcing her complicity from the raw facts Rarity was more interested in – including how she had met Yumi in the first place. She reiterated her run-in with Shigure before that and how she had won her hat back after losing it during Yumi’s pas d’arms.

She described her deal with the Neighponese mare: to have her magic enhance the flavor of the apples, to bring out their ‘best’ and basically cut out the quality selection process of cider making. If every apple was made as delicious as the best from an individual tree, as Applejack described the technique, not only would it be cheaper to make cider because there were no wasted or rejected apples, but the whole product improved. There, though, things took on a somewhat unexpected turn, though Rarity kept her concerns to herself.

As far as anypony knew or could tell, Yumi had at least been true to her word in her deal with Applejack.

She had healed and rejuvenated ailing trees on the farm and helped Sweet Apple Acres make barrel after barrel of their new cider. There was nothing the Flim Flam brothers could do to compete with it. They did use some second-hoof acquired local apples, but most of it was imported by train. Whatever production advantage they had was offset by the Apple family no longer needing to worry about sorting the quality apples from the chaff, and their imported apples couldn’t compare to the new local product. Yumi had single-hoofedly put the brothers out of business and saved the Apple family farm.

Rarity could see how her friend felt obliged to help the mare with a simple and seemingly harmless request.

As she listened more, Applejack describing how she thought she had a good sense of Yumi’s character, Rarity resisted the urge to shake her head in dismay. Unlike the apple farmer, she did not know this Yumi mare except for what little she had seen of her at the pas d’arms outside town that one time. She hadn’t left the best impression then, though notably, Blueblood had not singled her out as a particularly cruel or desperate mare. Certainly, he hadn’t suspected she would be a jilted lover or poisoner! It raised a concern that had started cropping up earlier in Applejack’s description of events.

Had everypony here misread Yumi so badly?

Rarity still listened to her friend, but her mind also drifted back to another mare she had met and come into conflict with. A mare who was now increasingly on her mind: Antimony. Antimony had also seemed like a fair and even-hooved pony, even moreso than Yumi, but Rarity had seen into her mind and her illusionary world. She had seen the dark side to Antimony that she kept deeply buried and hidden behind a well-maintained veneer of amiability. She had seen Antimony’s world, devoid of anypony but herself, born of her own sense of isolation and her twisted view of what it meant to be a strong and independent mare. And Antimony was no friend of the Bluebloods.

Rarity’s mood darkened considerably as she asked herself if she could imagine Antimony poisoning the Prince. It was sobering that, yes, she could imagine it. It was even likely that Antimony never intended Blueblood to be long for this world, had she become his wife. Poison would have been the gentlest means of carrying out such a black deed, and Antimony did seem to prefer to be gentle even when she was being cruel.

Rarity paused to brush a hoof across her cheek, where the magical barrier had once tingled against her skin, protecting her from Yumi’s pollen storm. Antimony. Antimony was a killer. Twilight had said she had killed ponies in duels before. Could a pony like that even have friends?

‘She could do it, I think, but she wouldn’t do it here, during a party. She wouldn’t do it where she could get caught, and she wouldn’t do it without something to gain. What did Yumi have to gain here?’ Rarity asked herself that again and just couldn’t see anything the mare had to gain at all from such an act.

She frowned at her inability to even grasp that sort of thinking.

Had Yumi simply been distraught by Blueblood’s rejection of her? Rarity had read many books about forbidden love and jilted lovers. She recalled how, in “Red Horseshoe Diaries” (volume four, ‘lost palace loves’) Desperate Measures had poisoned Prince Stalwart so she could keep nursing him to health and to prevent him from returning to his wife. Nopony suspected her to be anything more than his confidant and nurse, but Stalwart never bent on his commitment to his vows, and so Desperate Measures just kept poisoning his food or his tea or his water, until he finally wasted away in her forelegs. Naturally, when she realized what she had done, she poisoned herself as well, to complete the tragedy.

That was… just a story, of course.

A stupid romantic story, definitely nothing like real life, after all! Even a crazy, desperate mare wouldn’t poison a Prince just to keep him out of the embrace of another, right? Oh, Sweet Celestia! Of course she would! Who knew how many former lovers Blueblood had? That stupid playcolt must’ve had dozens! He was as good as dead at this rate!!

“Get away from him, you harlot!” Rarity yelled, pointing accusingly at the nurse by her Prince’s bed. For a long moment, everypony in the room Rarity and Applejack had just entered simply stared at her. The nurse still had a small, wet towel in her mouth, looking for all the world like she was about to break into tears.

“Uh, sugarcube?” Applejack asked, nudging her friend.

“Oh. Oh!” Rarity snapped out of her momentary drama-fueled daydream. “So sorry, darling!” she assured the nurse, who now watched her carefully and with the sort of wary expression one would direct at a crazy pony.

She carefully put the wet towel down into a basket and backed away.

Sitting on the guest bed, Blueblood raised an eyebrow at the spectacle. “Did I miss something?” he asked, glancing between the three mares.

Rarity blushed and waved a hoof at the retreating maid.

“Ah reckon she must’a zoned out for a second or two back there,” Applejack explained with a smile. “Ya look good, there, Yer Grace.”

“Yes, I’m rather more resilient than you may expect,” Blueblood answered with a cocksure smirk.

“Are you sure you’re alright?” Rarity asked, approaching the bed and reaching for one of his hooves. Grabbing hold of it to assure herself that he was still intact and unharmed, she reached her other front hoof over to brush past his forehead. He felt… warm... but not feverish.

“Snakeweed doesn’t affect core body temperature,” Twilight informed them as she entered the room, glancing quizzically at the fleeing nurse that rushed by her. Then she focused on her friends again, a magenta glow holding up a small vial of smoky liquid.

“Snakeweed?” Applejack asked. “That what Yumi used or somethin’?”

Twilight nodded somberly. “He has all the symptoms of snakeweed poisoning: elevated heart rate, burning or teary eyes, nausea, and painful breathing or shortness of breath. It works like this: the leaves of the plant, when dried and rendered into a fine powder and then ingested, cause constriction of the throat and spasms among the anterior thyrohyoid muscles and--”

“Twilight,” Rarity interrupted.

“Oh yeah! Sorry!” Twilight grinned and gave the vial held in her magical grip a little shake. “I was going to say, after a brief segue into the historical use of snakeroot and a short review of the chemistry involved… Uh, I mean: it makes you choke, but Blueblood didn’t drink enough of it to do any real damage.”

“Thank goodness,” Applejack said, and Rarity gave a sigh of relief at the news.

Blueblood himself seemed disinterested but nodded slowly. “The foalish mare put it in the liquor… as if I would not taste it.”

“The book says it is a little bitter, so putting it in something with a strong taste was probably pretty smart!” Twilight chuckled again and let Blueblood float the vial out of her hold and into his own. “I guess it doesn’t matter now. We’re all just glad you found out in time!”

“Yes,” Blueblood replied, his voice a little strained. “And this is the final counter-agent?”

“Mixed it up myself!” Twilight said with a wide smile. “Triple checked all the ingredients and volumes! You seem to have some resistance to snakeroot anyway, but it wouldn’t hurt to--”

“Safety first,” the Prince agreed, magically snagging a nearby glass of red wine and adding the potion in. He then downed the glass in one gulp.

“Because of the taste, I was… just about to suggest mixing it with something...” Twilight finished lamely and shrugged. Eyes darting from her clipboard to Rarity and Blueblood, she ‘hmm’ed and watched the Prince drink, licking her lips as she eagerly waited for something to happen.

After a few seconds, she couldn’t hold her silence any longer.

“So!” Twilight exclaimed with a wide smile. “Say something! Is it working? Huh? Is it? This is the first time I’ve gotten a chance to make a counter-poison, and I’m really curious how I did! I know Zecora is really good at this sort of thing, but I took a whole bunch of alchemy and chemistry classes back in school, so it’s great to get to use them! Not that it’s great that you’ve been poisoned, I mean! But it is great to put some of this stuff to use! If you get poisoned more often, I mean, then maybe--”

“I think we get the idea,” Blueblood grumbled.

“Thank you so very much, Twilight,” Rarity said, still holding Blueblood’s right hoof. “It was a real relief to know you were here and able to help.”

“You know me! I’m always happy to help!” The eager – some would say overeager – unicorn savant giggled and floated out a rolled up scroll to join her clipboard and quill pen. “So, uhm, if you get the chance… can you just fill out this form for me? Just in case I did make a mistake, you know, you can put a check next to ‘still choking to death’ or one for any symptoms you might have, like ‘pupil dilation’ and ‘sleep deprivation’ and ‘diarrhea.’ I don’t know why anything I put in the cure there would cause diarrhea, but since everything seems to cause it when it comes to medicine, I put it on the list anyway…”

Blueblood eyed the scroll like it was a snake.

“Yes, quite,” he muttered, floating it out of the way.

“Oh, and, about that thing we talked about?” Twilight asked as she headed back out to give Rarity and Blueblood some privacy. “The library thing. Do you want to do that tomorrow or…?”

“You have full access to the library, Miss Sparkle,” Blueblood stated, dismissively. “Go. Do whatever you wish.”

“But,” Twilight stammered, pausing in mid-step. “But, you…”

Twilight Sparkle turned, slowly, and examined the prone Prince with slowly narrowing eyes.

“I… what?” he asked, patting Rarity’s hoof on top of his own.

“You,” she began anew, eyes darting from Blueblood to Rarity and then to Applejack. “You said I’d be undisturbed while I did my research.”

“Yes, I recall,” Blueblood told her with a cordial smile. “Today is as good a time as any. I’ll leave you to it.”

“Thank you, Your Grace.” Twilight bowed respectfully, gave Rarity one last look, and left.

“What do’ya suppose that was about?” Applejack asked, scratching behind her mane.

“Some other appointment perhaps?” Rarity wondered. Twilight certainly had her moods from time to time, and they often struck when there was something book-related at stake. Whatever had she and Blueblood talked about before?

Something about her poking around the library downstairs, was it?

“More importantly,” Blueblood spoke up, putting the empty wine glass down on the table next to the bed. He sat up and shook out his long, blond mane. “Rarity, my dear.”

“Should you really be up, Blueblood?” Rarity asked with a delicate huff. She reached out to try and gently lower him back down to rest. “You--”

“I’ve rested enough, I think,” he told her, brushing past her hoof and standing on all fours on the floor. “We must pursue Lady Yumi. She must be caught and punished for this most egregious and perfidious attack on my Royal Self.”

“Sir Shining Armor is finishing up with the Timberwolves, but I have Germoglio’s scouts searching the Everfree Forest…” Rarity informed him, still frowning at his bull-headed insistence on being up and about.

“No need,” Blueblood cut her off, raising a hoof to further prove the point. “Recall your Companyponies. I have my Royal Guards on the case. They will find her and bring her to me.”

Rarity gaped for a second at him and at his dismissal.

“But--”

“There is no need for you to be involved in this affair,” he explained with a smirk that, to her shock, took on a cruel and condescending appearance and tone. “Sir Arrow Head and Sir Gale Force will not fail me.”

“Are they not Sir Shining Armor’s escorts?” Rarity asked, and Blueblood stiffened at the statement, as if uncomfortable. “Surely there are more appropriate--”

“My dear, do you wish to punish Yumi yourself?” he asked, abruptly. Bluntly. He was facing forward and only glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. “Is that it?”

“No!” Rarity objected. “Of course not! I merely wish to… I mean, she…”

Again, he dismissed her with the wave of his hoof.

“Leave this matter to me. You should not sully your hooves with it.”

He tried to soften the statement with a smile, but it seemed… insincere. Then again, he was much more accustomed to this sort of thing than she herself was. Perhaps he was right? She trusted his judgment in these matters, and though the thought of Yumi – that poisoning madmare – made her furious, there was something in the Princes’ tone of voice she didn’t like. It wasn’t even as if Blueblood was mad at the mare. He just wanted her in his hooves. It was too cold-blooded.

But, above all else, she trusted him.

“If you think that the best course of action,” she relented, finally. “I’ll contact Germoglio.”

“Good,” Blueblood stated with his smile unchanged, unwavering. “I’d like her conspirators as well. I think I know a pony or two who can loosen their tongues.”

Rarity just stared at him, hardly able to process what he had said.

“Loosen… their tongues?” she whispered the question, but he was already waving farewell to Applejack.

“No hard feelings, right, sugarcube?” the farmer asked, biting her lower lip. “Ah never meant ta put ya in any kinda danger…”

“No hard feelings at all, my dear,” Blueblood assured her, even placing a comforting and friendly hoof on her shoulder. “You were deceived by a true snake in the grass. Rest assured, Yumi will pay for deceiving us both.”

“If you say so, Yer Grace,” Applejack replied. “Ah wouldn’t mind givin’ her a piece of my mind, if the chance arises.”

He nodded, his smile growing just enough to notice, and then Prince Blueblood took his leave.

Rarity frowned as she watched him go.

- - -

“Here it is!” Twilight whispered to herself, finding the object of her search just where she had left it, in the bottom drawer of her bedroom dresser. To her eyes, it was a small, square, ostensibly plain looking book. The cover was treated black leather, the spine pinched by tiny metal studs. Yet, to any other pony, this book would be invisible to the eye.

This had been Prince Blueblood’s birthday present for her: Hiding in Plain Sight: The Art of Invisibility.

“Did you read between the lines?” she repeated the question he had asked her, not more than a few hours before, during the Art Festival. She hadn’t. She’d read the book, naturally, and found it fascinating! But she hadn’t expected there to be something hidden within the book.

Even though, in retrospect, the title alone was a dead giveaway.

There was something in the book… something ‘between the lines.’

“I am rather new at this,” he had gone on to tell her, “but yes, I suppose I should just as well explain it. There is a spell hidden within the book to give you access to the - shall we say - sensitive archives under my family’s care.”

“Invisible books in the library?” she had guessed.

“No. Not in the library,” he had answered, stressing the ‘in.’ “Though you could say through it. I won’t ask that you go look up the spell now, of course. I’ll retrieve the books when I have some time. You don’t need them this moment, do you?”

And now, just a few hours later, he had forgotten their conversation. It was probably nothing. Exhaustion, maybe. He had just been poisoned. Or… if a pony were suspicious… if a pony knew there were shape shifting monsters living among ponykind, for example… that pony might be careful what she said and did. That pony might start to wonder.

It was probably nothing.

But it could be something.

“Hey, Twilight! Boy, look at this place!” Spike’s voice prompted the librarian to slip the invisible book into her saddlebags, among other more visible papers and scrolls.

“Is there some problem, young sir?”

“A problem! Usually this place is a mess! I thought Twilight would be living in total chaos without me around. You know, for such a crazy organized pony, she forgets to put books back a lot!”

“I’ve noticed this.”

“And call me Spike. ‘Young sir’ sounds weird.”

Closing her door behind her, Twilight smiled down at Spike and Eunomie. She had brought the two back to the library from the festival to work out sleeping and working arrangements. That had been her excuse, anyway. She also wanted to retrieve her invisible present. Though, while they were here, it would be convenient to work a few things out.

“It looks like you two are getting along without me,” she said, trotting down the steps.

“I see no reason why we would not,” Eunomie answered, as she always did, with a dry tone of voice.

“Actually...!” Spike was much more animated, something Twilight had missed. He scratched the scales atop his head and glanced upwards in the direction of her room. He had one arm resting against a large treasure chest: a gift from Rarity.

Treasure chest was something of a misnomer, but it did fit the part out of fantasy. The exquisite steamer trunk was walnut and cedar, decorated with leather and brass fittings and rings. A reinforced metal band built into the frame bore a large combination double-lock on either side. The chest itself had to be worth quite a few bits, never mind what Spike put inside!

“So,” Spike continued, “if Eunomie here and her sister… if they’re sleeping downstairs, do you still want me to sleep in my basket upstairs with you? We only have the one room up there, but if I do get bigger by building up a hoard, then I’ll probably need a new bed or something, right? I guess there’s the guest bed, and we used to have a futon… but you’re probably using that downstairs...”

“That should work for now,” Twilight agreed, joining them on the ground floor by the time Spike finished speaking. “But what about your friends?”

“They don’t sleep on beds,” Spike explained with a shrug. “They wouldn’t want to, even if you gave ‘em one. They’re used to hard, hot surfaces.”

“Curious,” Eunomie observed. “Dragons aren’t cold blooded. Why would you need a heated surface to sleep on?”

“We don’t. I don’t!” Spike remarked, throwing up his hands. “That’s just what they’re used to, I think. Plus, they’re too big for pony-sized beds anyway, so I wouldn’t bother. They’ll find a nice spot somewhere, scorch it, and that’ll be where they sleep.”

A thought crossed Twilight’s mind at Spike’s description. Alpha Brass had made the same observation.

“Spike,” she asked, “did you and your friends… did you stay at the red dragon’s cave, near the Everfree?”

“Yeah, we did!” he confirmed with a smile. “We hung out there for two nights. How’d you know?”

“Just an educated guess,” Twilight assured him. Eunomie, as always, listened silently but intently. “Anyway, I need to get back to the mansion and keep an eye on Blueblood and Rarity.” She frowned for a moment, not liking the secrecy behind her real reasons for the trip, but it didn’t deter her from the job at hoof. “Spike, will you be okay setting up here with Eunomie and Euporie? Eunomie’s done some rearranging of the library…”

“I shall fill young Spike in on the details of my methodology,” Eunomie offered.

“I guess I’ve got some catching up to do,” Spike admitted and Twilight – before she headed back out – pulled him into a quick hug.

“I am glad you’re back, Spike!” she said, giving him one parting squeeze. “This place wasn’t home without you! My number one assistant is back!”

“See, to my ears, that translates to: ‘I’ve got a lot of work for you to catch up on, Spike.’”

“That, too.”

Trotting back outside, confident that things would be handled back at the library, Twilight’s thought sobered as she headed back to the outskirts of town and the Blueblood manor that could be seen peeking out from behind a thickly wooded veil to the north. She had been among the first ponies on the scene to check on the Prince after the fight. But, at the same time, that didn’t really make her the first one on the scene by any means.

How much time had passed between the initial incident with Yumi and then?

Thinking about it, no pony she knew had actually been in contact with the Prince until after the fight had died down outside. Had Blueblood gone untreated all that time? Doctor Blue Pill was on call, but he hadn’t been there until after she had showed up. Blueblood had ordered his Royal Guards to pursue Yumi and then… what? Had he just fallen into bed?

It was strange, especially in light of his symptoms. He did have all the textbook symptoms of snakeweed poisoning. At the same time, he had been fortunate that the dose he had ingested had been minor enough not to leave any lingering side effects. He should not have been completely impaired while everypony else was fighting with Yumi’s retainers. Twilight had also taken the liberty of testing some of the alcohol spilled in the Prince’s study. The snakeweed was highly concentrated. Blueblood must’ve taken only a small sip… or been very, very lucky…

Or, maybe, he wasn’t a pony at all. Maybe he was something pretending to be a pony.

Could changelings do that? Could they fake being sick? Did they have that much control, not just over their body, but their physiology? Was Rarity – at this moment – worried over the health of a changeling? And if it was one, then what had happened to the real Prince Blueblood?

‘I need more than just a bad feeling, more than just a hunch,’ Twilight thought to herself as she came to the outer gates of the manor. The guards let her in without fuss. She eyed them with what she hoped was less than naked suspicion. They saw through her in a second, she was sure. Twilight Sparkle was not the most subtle pony, and she was not particularly skilled at guarding her expressions.

‘Great. I’ll stick out like a sore hoof!’ She passed by some of the remaining guests, a broad smile plastered to on her face, one so fake that more than a few stared her way. ‘I need to get to the library. Clear my head!’

She broke into a run and soon, mercifully, the staring ponies were replaced by nice, safe, wonderful, non-judgmental books. Books that would never point and laugh, or snigger behind a pony’s back, or give that sort of scrunchy-face look while leaning back, as if to say, ‘that’s a crazy pony right there, I tell you what.’ Books were terrible conversationalists, but good listeners.

“I really am going a little crazy,” Twilight realized, shaking the silly thoughts out of her head. She clopped her hooves together, took a good look around to make sure she was alone in the lavish athenaeum, and started unpacking. A comfortable pillow and a lectern invited her to sit down and read, and she gladly took up the offer with a contented sigh.

This was her element, magic aside.

The Element of Study!

Keeping two regular – visible – books open nearby, including one on the lectern itself, Twilight then put her invisible book on top of it. Just to be safe. She then proceeded to skim through the book to look for any obvious clues. There wasn’t anything obviously strange that she recalled reading, like mixed up words or other obviously coded gibberish. Eight chapters long, it read like a treatise on invisibility magic, starting with the history and theory, then the various schools of study and applications of magic, then an overview and summary of the thaumatological principles, and some charts and other reference materials at the very end.

There was nothing that stuck out as being some sort of secret code. Not off the bat, anyway. What had Blueblood asked? ‘Did you read between the lines?’ Twilight rather vividly recalled how Princess Celestia, who Blueblood had admitted to trying to mimic, had told her to make some friends in Ponyville and not worry about Nightmare Moon, because according to her plan, if Twilight made those friends in Ponyville than the Nightmare Moon situation would end up resolved anyway. One was already the answer to the other, even if it wasn’t what it seemed at first glance.

“Skipping letters doesn’t do anything,” Twilight mumbled to herself as she stealthily re-read the book, “and I don’t see a pattern in the corners or the beginning or the end of pages…”

Checking the beginning and ends of the chapters, jotting down notes on the side…

“Nothing,” she grumbled, allowing herself a brief breather. “I can’t find anything unusual.”

Or any clue to…

Twilight Sparkle blinked, just then, her thoughts half-formed as her eyes fell on a large stone plaque that hung from one of the walls. “That… what is that?”

Shifting in her seat, she looked around, and saw more plaques hung around the library.

Blueblood’s Manor Athenaeum was a large structure: larger in fact than her own Golden Oaks Public Library in town. Two stories high, the room had a great vaulted ceiling and a circular design, all reminiscent of pegasus styled architecture. It was a stark divergence, now that she thought about it, from the rest of the building. Everything else was very much unicorn centric, from the statues to the art to the stairways to the basic architectural layout, with upper and lower sun and moon rooms for viewing the stars and the setting or rising of the sun.

Why was the library, alone, done in a different style?

The ceiling was imitating an open sky, clouds and rainbow fountains matched up with white pillars that receded into the ground. The room wasn’t perfectly circular, though. It was an octagon. Eight sides, to go with eight of the unusual stone plaques that hung – clearly visible – against the walls covered with books and artwork. The spaces had been explicitly cut out from the walls to house the circular disks. It was a stylistic choice. There were lower clear crystal cases and wooden shelves of books all radiating around the center of the room, recessed into the floor, as if all the knowledge in the world were erupting out of a splitting cloudbank. But these eight stuck out.

“Eight sides… and eight chapters…” Twilight realized, staring down at the book for a moment and then back at the walls. “Is it a coincidence, or…?”

Trotting up closer to one of the stone disks, set in the wall just above eye level, Twilight examined it personally. Touching it with a hoof, she found it set firmly in place. It was pietra dura, a beautiful form of decorative stonework that involved inlaying a surface with carefully cut and finished glass, stones or gems to create images. The base material was usually marble, white or green or black. This particular one…

It was an eye, surrounded by an escarbuncle, a symbol representing supremacy.

It was also a symbol she had seen on the cover page of the first chapter. Could it be that simple? Twilight brought open the book, flipping to the chapter cover pages and scanning the room. There! The eye and the escarbuncle: the motif for the first chapter on illusionary history. It made sense! The combination of the eye, for sight simply, and the escarbuncle, for power, was that “perception was power” and the chapter discussed how illusionary magic helped to shape history.

There, across the room, she saw the Fret, an interlacing design of a bendlet and a bendlet sinister passing over and through a diamond shaped mascle. The intersection of the saltire, or diagonal cross, and the voided lozenge, the diamond, implied “Persuasion.” It also adorned the cover page of chapter two.

Twilight soon saw the motif of the third chapter as well: three inkhorns in chief with a quill below, in an orle or border. The inkhorn represented the art of writing and the mark of the educated. Repeated in triplicate, the meaning was enhanced. It represented great education of the third rank. In unicorns, that would go from basic schooling, to an apprenticeship, to a mastery of the arcane.

Near the door where she had entered she saw the mark of chapter four, the Gorged Goat. To most ponies, goats were synonymous with Minotaurs, but in unicorn symbology, they represented victory through politics rather than war. The collar represented dignity, curiously enough.

“These are all unicorn symbols… the only unicorn symbols on the entire room,” Twilight realized, as it all came together. “They stick out if you know what to look for! And the whole room is built in a pegasus style to make sure they stand out…!”

There. The Holly and the Horseshoe, representing good luck and a safeguard against evil spirits, combined with Truth. Chapter five!

There. The Ladder and Keys: fearlessness in the face of great odds, along with dominion and leadership. That was the symbol for the last of the ‘applications’ chapters in the book, chapter six.

There: a moon within an ornate lozenge, representing mysterious power and constancy. That was chapter seven, the overview of the book.

Finally, set between a ticking grandfather clock and a bookcase, was the last chapter’s motif. It was a golden harp imposed over a shield with flaunches, symbolizing tempered judgment and continued contemplation.

Eight chapters and eight symbols on the wall, arrayed in a seemingly random order! This was it, but… what to do with them? Examining the harp and the shield, she saw it was expensive and finely worked pietra dura, just like all the others. It was set firmly in the wall. Pressing it or trying to move it didn’t have any affect, and Twilight was extremely reluctant to risk breaking the delicate stonework. The clues were there, matching up, but she couldn’t quite grasp what to do next.

Trotting backwards, she slowly shook her head.

“Hiding in Plain Sight,” she quietly repeated the title of the book, a smile slowly growing on her face. “So that’s it?”

Magenta lit up her horn as Twilight Sparkle realized what she had to do.

Turning to the first stone disk, she cast a basic invisibility spell at it. It shimmered, but didn’t disappear. Twilight turned to the next, cast the spell again, and noticed it shimmer, too. The third followed, the inkhorns, and then the goat, then the holly and the horseshoe, then the ladder and keys, then the moon, then finally the harp and the shield. Casting the spell that eighth and ultimate time, she felt a surge of excitement and accomplishment pass through her body. She didn’t even need to wait and see if she would be proven correct. This had to be it.

This had to be it!

Her spell hit the final disk and it shimmered. For a moment, it appeared as if nothing changed. For just a moment, it seemed she might even be wrong. Her heart skipped a beat.

Twilight Sparkle collapsed, slumping bonelessly to the floor.

- -

Twilight Sparkle opened her eyes.

One thought immediately dominated all others. ‘This isn’t the Athenaeum.’

The second thought, when it struck, almost caused her to scream.

‘This doesn’t feel right! This… this isn’t my body!!’

“Hello, Twilight Sparkle,” a familiar voice interrupted her moment of panic. The source of it was a gramophone, and to her complete lack of surprise, it was as ornate as anything Blueblood would insist on using. Tiny swirls and designs were lovingly carved and engraved into the mahogany wood and polished bronze surface of the machine.

“Knowing you,” the recording continued, “you’ve probably noticed this gramophone and, together with the voice, realized that I set this whole thing up. Which I did. You’re probably also feeling a little strange, while at the same time trying to figure out just what spell you triggered in my little home library.”

Twilight felt a frown coming on. “I’m not that predictable, am I?”

“First, let me explain your situation,” the recording said. “You’re in a room. This recording is set to play automatically whenever anyone uses the library. That includes me. In the future, you can just turn this off. I wasn’t sure when you’d work out the little secret in the library, so I just have this play by default, every time. Rather annoying for me, you see, to be greeted by myself, assuming I’m speaking to you! Anyway…”

The Blueblood on record coughed, realizing how sidetracked he was getting. Then again, the Prince did like the sound of his own voice. ‘Melodic’ he called it, ‘and enchanting.’ Usually that was around the time Rarity told him to get over himself or pointed out somepony Twilight had never heard of with a much better voice.

“The magic you triggered was a consciousness transference spell. Your mind has basically been shifted across the duchy of Canterlot to a little known location beneath Hocksford University, founded, funded and managed by… you guessed it! My family. That body you’re in, that you’re probably exploring now…”

Even as the recording ran on, Twilight was already looking down at her pale white legs and slim, androgynous body. It was with some rising panic and embarrassment that she realized a few things were lacking in the otherwise functional form she now occupied. There was nothing of note between the legs! It was like the molded rear end of a foal’s toy! This wasn’t somepony’s body!

“That body is far from normal. It is what most scholars would call a homunculus or artificial pony,” Blueblood’s recording explained with a little chuckle. “Now, you’re probably about to say…”

“That’s impossible!” Twilight objected. “No pony can--”

“Make an artificial pony, because the spells required were banned eight hundred years ago,” the recording raised its voice to cut her off, and the timing of it made Twilight pout. Stupid recording. It was just lucky. She was sorely tempted to say something totally random just to... fool the recording... Okay, maybe that would be going a little overboard...

“In fact,” Blueblood went on to say, “if you find this within the year I recorded it, the spells were banned and the last artificial pony was created exactly eight hundred and twenty six years ago. That body you’re in now, by the way? Give those legs a little kick! That body exactly is eight hundred and twenty six years young. How does it feel to be almost as old as my dear Aunties?”

Twilight gawked at the fanciful gramophone. “Eight hundred years… this body is… eight hundred years old?!”

“I know! It doesn’t feel a year over four hundred!” the recording joked, but Twilight only huffed in annoyance. “Alright, jokes aside, when all the other homunculus pony constructs were ordered destroyed, my family created this one. I hate to admit it, but that’s sort of how we are. The knowledge was entrusted to us to guard, for all time, and the first thing my ancestors do is use it so that they have the only one in existence. Regardless, the body you are in, Twilight Sparkle, is indeed over eight hundred years old.”

“It has been used for body transference by dozens of Bluebloods, myself included. Though it really is more of a mare’s body… the Blue Belles always did have better representation in the family… but that’s getting off track. It is a soulless and mindless magical construct. But it feels quite real, doesn’t it! Right now, it is housing your mind while the real you takes a nap in the library back in my manor. In the future, you may want to pick a cozy spot before you body swap. Nothing worse than returning to your body and getting cramps in your legs, am I right?”

“Mind transference magic into a blank body,” Twilight summed up things, mostly for her own benefit since she was also the only pony present. She tested the legs of her pale white form and felt the ghostly white mane and tail it came with. Oddly, her cutie mark was in color and adorned the flanks of the artificial body!

“The canvas you now inhabit has been called a few things according to family records. ‘The Doll’ or ‘The Blank’ or ‘The Curator.’ One called it ‘The Dummy’ which I thought rather amusing. The Dummy! You probably want to know how to jump back to your real body, though. So let me get to that. There is a small blue crystal in the chest. Do you see it?”

Twilight looked down and saw it just between her front legs. It looked like a tiny sapphire.

“That is basically a reset switch. Focus some magic into the gem to activate it and poof! You’ll be ejected from The Dummy and zip back through time and space into your home body. Ideally, no one will think twice about you power napping in my library, so when you get back, I’d recommend yawning and stretching and remarking to anypony present that you had a lovely nap, and that you definitely didn’t end up in the Secret Blueblood Family Archives. Because right now, you’re in the Blueblood Family Archives, home to all of our secret lore and forbidden knowledge. Huzzah.”

Twilight stared at the door, the only door, to the tiny room where ‘The Dummy’ body had been kept stored. There was little else here except the gramophone. There was a small metal alcove of gilded iron and brass and a select few amenities on an unnecessarily luxurious table nearby, things like brushes and even a small wardrobe. Clearly, some of the Bluebloods insisted in dressing up even when in another body, far from anypony who could or would even see them. At least none of them seemed to have bothered bringing jewelry down here.

“The family archives,” she muttered, gulping.

All the forbidden spells, all the dark magic, all the arts hidden from ponykind… it was all here. No pony was supposed to be here except the Bluebloods. Unicorn families guarded their magical legacies like earth ponies guarded their family recipes, and no family in Equestria had more to hide than the Dukes and Duchesses of Canterlot, the heirs to Princess Platinum herself.

“Why are you here?” the recording asked, after a long, pregnant silence. “If you aren’t asking yourself that, you seriously should be right now. Why are you here, Twilight Sparkle?”

Her eyes darted over to the gramophone for the answer. She had figured out the spellwork in the library, she had found what was ‘hidden in plain sight,’ but this was something only Blueblood could answer. Why was she here?

Why wasn’t Rarity here?

“…This…” The recording paused again, as Blueblood must have paused when he made it. “This will all be Rarity’s one day. It will be hers because I intend to marry her. Because I love her. Because when I was hopeless and afraid, when I didn’t know how to pull myself out of a bad place, she cared about me and she saved me. I know I can tell her the truth about what happened to me. I know I can give her the keys to this place and not once worry that she will abuse the power that is within… and be assured, Twilight Sparkle, there is power in the room you are about to enter. So many… too many… would abuse it if they had just a glimpse of it. Even I…”

There was another pause, shorter than before, but still noticeable.

“Even I abused the power of this place once. I abused it to terrible effect.”

The admission was troubling, but Twilight had to wrack her brain to try and figure what Blueblood meant. It sounded like he had done something major, like destroy Canterlot or something, but that was silly. As far as she had known, Prince Blueblood hadn’t done much of anything… ever. Maybe he was just being over dramatic? He and Rarity sort of shared that quirk.

“But,” the recording went on, and Blueblood found his voice again. “Rarity, as wonderful a mare as she is, is not and will not ever be a magical powerhouse. She will never master or even research any of the spells in the Archives. I doubt she will ever be proficient in a five-alliteration spell, an act my ancestors took as an old rite of passage. She’d probably have trouble with the fours. This is not a bad thing, really, as virtually all of the magic here is not meant to be used, ever, by anypony. But... troubling times may be ahead.”

Another pause.

“I met somepony not too long ago… a filly… Let me describe her here as an oracle of sorts. She said things to me, told me about things… things I would not see come to pass in Equestria. I thought about much of it and on what it meant to have the Elements of Harmony return to the world. The six of you are united in friendship, and you are all heroes of Equestria. I’ve met you, Twilight, and I like you. I trust you. Rarity trusts you. Auntie Celestia trusts you. So that is why you are here.”

“You are here, Twilight Sparkle, because you may need to save Equestria with the knowledge in these walls.” At Blueblood’s words, Twilight lowered her head and closed her eyes in thanks, though the stallion was not present. He must have recorded this before she had tried to foalnap him and all that other craziness. Yet, even after that, he had trusted her.

“I believe in you, and I have faith in you,” the record concluded. “Twilight Sparkle. I will only ask you this: use the knowledge here sparingly. Seek what you need to know and no more. Now, if you have not already, open the door. The Archives are waiting for you.”

The record ran and ran, but there was no more.

“Blueblood,” Twilight said, bowing to the skipping gramophone. She removed the needle and turned it off. “Thank you.”

‘Princess Celestia trusts me. Blueblood trusts me. Rarity trusts me.’

She reached for the door, and it yielded, opening wide.

‘I won’t let you down. I won’t let anypony down!’

It was hours before Twilight Sparkle returned to her body. Hours that changed her life forever.

Author's Note:

--
Oh snap, using the actual author notes section!

I really have to give props to "q97randomguy" for some great work helping me proof this chapter! Thanks man!

Comments

[Capn_Chryssalid]

2460162

Getting chap 32 in, but let me go back and - if this isn't too late - bounce back on this comment. It is funny in a way, because I think the scene you're referring to, is actually mostly a setting scene for the Terre Rare family. It does lay plain that their ambition is to remove and root out the Bluebloods from Canterlot, and the depths of their grievance, and that there is more than just Antimony's own ambition at hand. I guess it is sort of an villain speech, too... at the time, one of the criticisms of the story was that the villains were not particularly villainous! So I wrote in how an entire angry, ambitious family can become a sort of echo chamber, and how Cruciger is passing on the family ire to the next generation, whether they want it or not. That sort of thing. Been a while since I thought about that... almost a year, maybe...

[Capn_Chryssalid]

2461382
2469425

The rhyming can be brutal... though, oddly enough, I had no problems with entire paragraphs of rhyming dialogue with Zecora in the scene with Brass and Twilight... but then I find I need like 4 lines in the scenes with Fluttershy, and I agonize over getting the lines sounding right! LOL! What's up with that? Rhyming!

2487778
I think, at this point in the story, many readers can imagine Brass trotting along slowly behind his dogs, seeming perfectly relaxed and at ease... only to then cut to the dogs mauling some changeling they'd been chasing through the woods for an hour. All while Brass peels an orange or something.

[Neon Beat]

“Even I abused the power of this place once. I abuse it to terrible effect.”

abused not abuse

[q97randomguy]

I love it when an author can make you care for not only a minor character, in this case Light Touch, but also a "villain", in this case Eunomie.

2491851
Dang. Well, I'm only human.

[vader10001]

This filly oracle wouldn't happen to be Sweetie Belle would it?

[greenwar1991]

great chapter , I am really looking forwards for unleashed twilight.

and for curiosity , did you read the idw comic the rarity micro series?

[Obsidian]

It may well be time for the Mane 6 to finally get together and compare notes. Once Fluttershy is back from the forest with Yumi, things are going to be moving, quickly.

Blueblood will probably be revealed to be a changeling in quick order, as is, Twilight obviously suspects that's already the case, and once they talk to Yumi, they will find Brass is playing his own game above and beyond the plans vs the changeling invasion.

More and more, I'm wondering what the hell he wants with Canterlot, and it's more the city itself than Blueblood's legacy, something to do with the torcs possibly? Some leftover unicorn heritage that he's unlocked? Either way, it's going to have to be a major game changer, as he's working against the 'ref' of the nobles little game of houses Celestia.

[redsquirrel456]

A chapter called Reveal that ends in a cliffhanger?

You sick, sick monster!

[Neon Beat]

2491909

All good just trying to help

[Shantara]

Twilight Sparkle with the knowledge of five alliteration spells? This is going to be glorious!

Wouldn't it be Blueblood's obligation to record truth about Gala loops in his family archives? Never encountered before magic is a worthy subject to record, even if it's currently unexplained.

Yay for all callbacks and references in this chapter!

[DaProphet]

Soooooo am I the only one that thinks Alpha Brass kind of shot himself in the hoof by telling Twilight about the changelings? It sounds like he wants Chrysalis's plans regarding Yumi to succeed, but if that's the case why would he give Twilight a reason to be suspicious of an out of character Blueblood? As soon as Blueblood's shown to be a changeling, Yumi will be exonerated, and any tensions between Neighpon and Equestria will be nonexistent. Not exactly according to plan unless there's something deeper I'm missing.

[Winter-filly]

Man, it blows my mind how complex the world you've created is The only bad part about this story is waiting for the next great chapter

[Ono-Matopoeia]

Gonna make a crazy mad wild guess here. Eunomie and Euporie are actually the same pony, split in two with some sort of crazy magic.

That Changeling pretending to be Blueblood sucks at his job. Three tells within mere hours.

Very clever what you did there with the library.

Hehe, Blueblood predicted what Twilight would say.

I know what he's talkin' about. Not like he destroyed Canterlot right? If only you knew Twilight.

Twilight's gonna get some crazy stuff. What kind of crazy magic does she now possess?!?!

You my friend are the bee's knees.

[Skyeheart]

I met somepony not too long ago… a filly… Let me describe her here as an oracle of sorts. She said things to me, told me about things… things I would not see come to pass in Equestria.

Did you just reference your universe's arc in The Sweetie Chronicles? If so, props to you!

[Always Breakfast]

Okay, so the crossover with Sweetie Chronicles resulted in Blueblood rigging his library to let Twilight in, hoping she'd be more responsible with the earth-shattering power in it than anypony else he knew, and hopefully prevent Fallout.

[lonewolf23k]

Well, I'm glad to see Twilight connect the dots. If anypony could've deduced that Blueblood had been switched by a Changeling, it'd be her.

[Lordlyhour]

2459825
Unless you want to be riddled by Bullets of Copper,
Run! Go! Get to Da Choppa!

[djthomp]

Hmn, those rules about dragon and their hordes. Sounds nicely exploitable with the right amount of cleverness. It would also be a good plan to reconnect with the diamond dog clan and work out something profitable with them.

“I believe you can change ponies, Lady Rarity; you can change them for the better and do much good,” she concluded, and the brush vanished again. “Know that many ponies admire you for that.”

Ooooo, I like Light Touch.

She’d make them into her friends or kill them trying…

Oh hell yeah. Friendship those ponies right in the face, Rarity.

What a great heart to heart between Rarity and AJ.

“You have full access to the library, Miss Sparkle,” Blueblood stated, dismissively. “Go. Do whatever you wish.”
“But,” Twilight stammered, pausing in mid-step. “But, you…”
Twilight Sparkle turned, slowly, and examined the prone Prince with slowly narrowing eyes.

Oh that was a mistake.

“Good,” Blueblood stated with his smile unchanged, unwavering. “I’d like her conspirators as well. I think I know a pony or two who can loosen their tongues.”
Rarity just stared at him, hardly able to process what he had said.

As was that.

The Blueblood family archives! Yes! Oh my, that means Twilight potentially has access to the alliteration spells...

Those just might come in handy for the coming fight.

“I met somepony not too long ago… a filly… Let me describe her here as an oracle of sorts. She said things to me, told me about things… things I would not see come to pass in Equestria. I thought about much of it and on what it meant to have the Elements of Harmony return to the world. The six of you are united in friendship, and you are all heroes of Equestria. I’ve met you, Twilight, and I like you. I trust you. Rarity trusts you. Auntie Celestia trusts you. So that is why you are here.”

Gooooo Sweetie Belle!

It was hours before Twilight Sparkle returned to her body. Hours that changed her life forever.

Oh my. Yeah, there's not much chance that this is being planned for by anypony out there plotting and scheming. The idea of giving access to your family's forbidden spells to a non-family member? Youch, nobody is going to see this knowledge coming.

[Racheakt]

Is... is...

Is that a refference to the Sweetie Chronicles?!

No way. Might be a two-way in-joke, tho. Baybe just a general reffference to the looping, but... anyway.

Very good job.

I think it's become clear at this point that it's stopped being Origional Flavor the way The Best Night Ever was, but... be careful. It's gotten horrifically dark from time to time...

[Shigawan]

As so many have pointed out, I really appreciate the allusion to the Sweetie Chronicles. I'm really happy that part of the story is cannon.

All in all, it feels like this chapter was a little slow. I still loved it, as I always do, and can't wait to read more. I'm going to be devastated when This Platinum Crown reaches it's conclusion and you announce the end of this Blueblood's story. I don't care if this story is supposed to focus less on him and more on Rarity, Blueblood is my favorite character.

Cheers!

[nemryn]

‘Actually, Rarity,’ her often-unwanted inner-Twilight appeared to remind her of a long-forgotten conversation, ‘from what I’ve read, dragons have Z and W chromosomes, not X and Y.’ Followed quickly by a tangential and one sided discussion of mammalian and dracopodomorphic anatomy. And now her head hurt, just having to recall that word.

Bad inner-Twilight. Bad.

And ooh, looks like Twilight is finally going to start breaking things! I can't wait!

[Rocketknightgeek]

If TSCF is now cannon for this universe, does that mean that there's a massive spell nexus in the palace maze that leads to a death course?

Let's hope that Twilight never inspects those engravings, because I doubt she could resist it.

[SIGWolf]

2493041
Only way it would have been better would be if the recording rattled off the same "random" thing as Twilight.

[Couch]

2494346
I would imagine that to prevent time paradox creating a second shard of Twilight, once it was extracted by Sweetie the shard ceased to exist in future loops, making it the only thing that changed during a loop besides Blueblood and Sweetie. Without the shard to serve as a focal point the spell nexus would collapse. I think.

[Brizzles]

452,255 Words...

Welp, I got time to kill

img.pandawhale.com/post-15826-Dis-gon-b-gud-gif-This-is-gonn-kb4y.gif

[GBscientist]

Very good chapter. I liked the reference back to The Sweetie Chronicles and the Loops and Twilight getting access to the ridiculously powerful spells in the Blueblood Archives. Will this speed her ascention to Alicornhood?

[RevelRomp]

I'm now certain that Twilight Sparkle, Prince Blueblood, and our little oracle are three of my top four favorite characters from this particular fanfiction/universe.

[RevelRomp]

2494408 Without the shard, would all of that have even been constructed? I mean with no imprisoned soul to obsess over, there's no drive for Bluebelle to begin that chain of events to begin with, right?

[Hoof of Approval]

Twilight Sparkle...

RISE. Rarity needs you. And please root out that Blueblood impostor if Rarity hasn't already by next chapter.

[Capn_Chryssalid]

2491851
Thanks for catching that. I made the correction yesterday, asap, thanks to you.

2491909
Don't sweat it man! One little mistake got through!

2492021
It would indeed!
Though, at least right off the bat, Blueblood is as reluctant to reveal that as he is information about the Gala loops. He states here his intention to eventually tell Rarity about them, at the least, but he has yet to do so. Mostly out of some worry that he'll be labeled nutso. But the "oracle" is TSC Sweetie Belle.

2492192
That's actually part of the problem for me in the next chapter. By which I mean, organization-problems. There's a lot going on from a lot of angles, including the manes various states, and I also have to juggle how much to reveal to the reader and how much to keep behind the scenes. Chap 33 and the advance to the Wedding climax are gonna be annoying.
You are right, though: the manes do need to "compare some notes" and Brass is, alone among all the nasty nobles, the only one who doesn't claim to ultimately be working for Celestia's benefit (even Antimony gushed about how she wanted to serve the Princesses and how replacing the Bluebloods would be the best way to serve her). There's an element of worship among the nobility in TPC that is actually even more fanatic than those of the common pony for the Princess. Brass, however...?

2492372
Haha. Yes. But I revealed a bunch of stuff along the way, I think. The crux of this chapter was largly getting characters refocused and able to forge ahead with this or that. Get the emotional stuff out of the way.

2492152
I've seen some of it, but not all. I wouldn't mind getting a digital copy sometime, though. It might give me inspiration for more

2492447
Glorious or disastrous...
As BB said in the TSC cross, nopony has used 5-allit spells in hundreds of years. Specifically, not since the Arsenic-Blueblood split, where a single 5-allit spell was used to basically de-wing an army of griffins (and supposedly, quite a few pegasi as well who didn't land in time). As Blueblood warned, these are spells not to use, and then he asks what is probably the hardest thing to ask of Twilight: that she only look for what she needs in the Archives and nothing more.

And yes: Blueblood would be obligated to record the strangeness of his Gala loops for the family records, along with his meeting the dimension-hopping Sweetie Belle...

2492487
Brass's "outcome" is in the simplest sense nothing more than destroying the changeling threat. To whit, he would consider the canon outcome of the changelings being blasted off to be unacceptable: they need to be destroyed. At this time, it doesn't seem he cares whether that destruction occurs at his hooves, or Euporie's, or Cadance's or Twilight's. As I said: this is how it seems at least, given Eunomie's actions as middle-mare between all the various groups allied to Brass.

Eunomie goes on to note that Blueblood being replaced was acceptable, but Yumi being replaced was not. Hence why the order was given before that she was better dead than replaced by a changeling. Revealing the Blueblood changeling is also tricky... recall how Brass convinced Twilight that is the changelings were revealed how they would then scatter and become harder, not easier, to uproot and remove. "False confidence" being the weapon to use against them. Of course, it is hard to say when Brass is lying or telling the truth... but it seems to make sense...

2492576
This is probably the most convoluted fanfic I've ever outlined and written. lol
I'll keep at it, though! This won't be an unfinished fic. Thanks to everyone for being patient while I work on the chapters!

2493041
Euporie actually told a "funny story" about just that... though I'd take anything she says with a big grain of salt. As seen, though, the sisters are definitely abnormal. Whose to say if it was nature or nurture?
I've been waiting to do the library magic and the archive reveal and that Twilight stuff for months! Glad you liked it! And yeah, Pixie Dust isn't the best Blueblood... post-Gala Blueblood anyway. She's also got other problems she feels she has to handle that make the impersonation job even harder. It ain't easy impersonating an eccentric.

2493207
2493310
Indeed! Actually, his original plan was that, in a crisis of some sort, Twilight would conveniently put together the "hiding in plain sight" thing and access the archives for a convenient power boost. He was trying to pull a but it didn't quite come out that well and he ended up having to explain what should have been a epiphany.
That little mess-up aside, back during the loops, Sweetie was careful not to spill "future" information but she did speak pretty freely of the other worlds she visited where things like Fallout Equestria occurred. Afterwards, Blueblood began to think that, if the Elements of Harmony were back, there could and would be more Equestrian crisis events. Hence his unlocking the archives for Twilight to help with any hypothetical emergency.

[Ponibius]

Another great chapter! Lots of great stuff going on. I feel almost bad about not being able to come up with any criticisms like I usually do, but I what can I say? I love this story.

I always wondered what exactly would happen if dragons even figured out the long term profitability of becoming civil servants. A couple centuries of picking 1% of the tax base every year would have to add up over a century…

“I thought da biggest pony would be da boss.”

Obviously dragons operate on 40K orc logic.

Then it looks like Alpha Brass’s plan is starting to hit some snags in the final lead up. With the lack of simplicity catching up with him. If I had to guess, Murphy is going to have a gay old time dancing all over Brass’s plan before we are done in the form of the Mane 6 and Blueblood. Looks like its only a matter of time before the Mane 6 put together their notes, and then things get ugly. It is certainly ominous how Alpha seems willing to bring Canterlot crashing down for his plan to work. What exactly is that pony’s endgame…

And oh dear. Bet Twilight can do quite a bit of damage in the Blueblood archive. That like putting a kid in a candy store and telling him to only take what he needs. Twilight might become quite the terror here soon.

[Capn_Chryssalid]

2493353
She does have the advantage of knowing about changelings, but Twilight can be insightful when she isn't being oblivious!

2493497
That... is actually pretty good!

2493544
One thing I've noticed in other fictions and such is that the dragon's "hoarding" impulse is generally shown in a negative light, but from what we've seen, adult dragons hoard. It is in their nature. It may very well be a part of their natural life cycle and maturity. Bit by bit, they accumulate more of a hoard, and bit by bit, they grow. The largest are considered the most successful and, of course, get the most mates, male or female. Losing their hoard results in them shrinking, reducing the chance of reproductive success.

Actually, it made me think of certain species of birds... where, instead of plumage or a bird call, the male attracts the female with a well constructed nest. It was one of the few other circumstances in nature I could think of where "material accumulation and presentation" had an effect on a species' reproductive success and evolution.

The dragons in TPC are sort of like magpies or other birds, and their having ZW sex-determination (males are ZZ, females ZW) sort of reflects my "dragons as birds" mindset.

I had fun writing Light Tough in this chapter. She's a nice, reliable supporting character, especially for silly ponies like Rarity and Blueblood. Now I just need to get back to Sandy (and Sand Dune, who she's been hiding from for the last few chaps)

The Rarity-AJ stuff was a large part of the heart of this chapter. Writing emotional scenes can be tough, so I usually just hope I did okay. Luckily, they're both mature individuals, despite their stubborn streaks, so in the end all they really needed was just to talk things out.

It was a very big mistake (the changeling not getting Twilight's reference).

And that was very much another (making Rarity suspicious)

2493714
Oh no, it was a direct callback to the TSC cross.
As for the new, darker flavor that crops up from time to time? Well, I can't say it will be sunshine from here on out. Most everything centered around the changelings is pretty dark by comparison to the norm, what with them being murderous, manipulative, emotional vampires. And we still have to get to Cadance who Chrysalis is explicitly intending to (continue to) emotionally torment.

2493744
This was a slow chapter, though... it sort of had to be, after the fighting before, the chase, and now the aftermath of this or that. It was characters winding down and preparing for what was to come in a variety of ways.
Blueblood fans unite! The gentleman troll will not be forgotten! (here's hoping for a season 4 role or at least a cameo)

2494138
Breaking things or fixing things?

2494346
2494408
A good point... I can answer some without spoilage, I think. The shard IS gone. It melded with Sweetie and it left with Sweetie. Blue Belle's nexus, however, was not tied to the shard, it was a container for the shard (passively funneling magic into the pocket dimension). The magical mechanisms within the maze... may still be intact, unless somepony altered them somehow.

2495030
"Alicorns, how do they work?"
Still rather mysterious! But we know there have been some very powerful unicorns who never underwent the physical transformation to alicorn. There's no guarantee that Twilight will ascend prematurely or early... but I wouldn't rule it out either. In a meta sense, none of the Twicorn stuff had happened when I planned out TPC, so I don't know yet. I've adapted things on the fly in the story before, I may do so again. Can't say for sure.

2495184
Oh? Who would the fourth be, I wonder?
Twi, BB, and WD's Sweetie... a fine trio, capable of much mischief!

[RevelRomp]

2495685
The fourth is Pierce, thus far. In this story, I relate to him. Sometimes. Outside of the story, there's a lack of him. I latch to instances of him that aren't awful when I see 'em.

Though it's a close race for Pinkie's internal Pinkie that clearly knows things she shouldn't know and simply won't tell.

All five make me laugh.

EDIT: Do you follow the IDW MLP comics? TPC Post-Antimony reminds of the first three issues in tone.

[Spectrumancer]

Deliciously OP Twilight is the best Twilight. Although with the multiplex layered scheming going on, we're going to desperately need it.

[nemryn]

2495685
Both! Can't make an omelet, after all.

Seriously, though: the relevant trope I'm imagining here is, we've got this intricate, carefully-crafted web of intrigue here, with plans and counter-plans and counter-counter plans and so forth; and then Twilight decides the whole thing is stupid and she's not going to play along, and she just ignores all the machinations and starts blasting everypony involved with Sparkle's Scintillating Sorcerous Sledgehammer until they give up. That's probably not what you've actually got planned, but I can dream, can't I?

[Racheakt]

And yes: Blueblood would be obligated to record the strangeness of his Gala loops for the family records, along with his meeting the dimension-hopping Sweetie Belle...

That... is going to be a very interesting developement. Please, allow us, your humble worshipers stalkers readers to see her reaction and subsequent interrogation with RealBlood, we beg you!

It'll be, like...

Ya know?

[vader10001]

2495566

And yes: Blueblood would be obligated to record the strangeness of his Gala loops for the family records, along with his meeting the dimension-hopping Sweetie Belle...

Does that mean that The Best Night Ever is said recording of the Gala Loops?

[Radmelon]

What is the TSC crossover? Lots of people are referring to it, but I don't remember it being mentioned earlier. Is it an additional fic that I will have to read to understand?

[Forderz]

I think the greatest irony of all in this chapter is that giving Twilight access to the archives could very well be the event that allows Fallout Equestria to occur. Megaspells had to have been based off something, and forbidden banned magic certainly fits the bill.

Both Blueblood and Sweetie Belle, obviously, have no idea that the apocalyptic future was crafted entirely by equine hooves, which makes that all the sweeter.

Speaking to the actual events of the chapter:

AJ and Rarity making up was wonderful. It conveniently fits into my personal philosophy that most conflicts can be resolved through honest discourse, and having Light Touch add her light touch to the scene was wonderful.

!Blueblood giving away the goat so quickly, to two different ponies, means to me that the days of that particular changelings are numbered. All it would take is for Rarity to stop making excuses for his (more expected? less eccentric? Pre-tBNE) behavior and force the issue, or for Twilight to bring up a single question about the archives the next time Blueblood and Twilight meet privately, and he's instantly vapourized.

What IS the true nature of Euphorie and Eunomie's existence? It seems to me that one twin is not entirely satisfied with her existence, especially when compared to Twilight. It will be a damn shame to see Euphorie go. I think she's your finest villain. The perfect sociopath that believes she has everypony's basic nature figured out. I hope we get a scene with her and Pinkie again, and Pinkie Pie tears down her worldview brick by brick.

Question: can changelings impersonate anything other than ponies? Say, bipeds like Minotaurs or nonmammilian species like dragons?

[elmagnifico]

She’d make them into her friends or kill them trying…

Reminds me of the old meme about "loving and tolerating the **** out of somebody" as a replacement for threats of violence in this community. Props for making it believably canon!

Glad to see the Sweetie Chronicles finally referenced, I was beginning to wonder if I'd missed it in all the subtleties and plottings and such.

Seems all these machinations are about to be on the receiving end of some much-deserved and hopefully well-aimed blunt force trauma via a spell known to posterity as Sparkle's Accelerated, Precisely-Applicated and Appropriately Overpowered Monkey-Wrench.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

oh wow, theres so much intrigue, no wonder this is taking you so long to dole out! I love this story. You then go and mention The Sweetie Chronicles in a very obscure manner. I am looking forward to more of the story coming up. I would point out it is Because of The Sweetie Chronicles i started reading This Platinum Crown. I needed to be prepared fof if she ended up back in that world. Anyway, thank you for your dedication and I eagerly await your next chapter. Your story has ben able to keep me from actively predicting the entire outcome of the story thus far. Good work.

[Admiral Stoic Rum]

2499101

It means the Sweetie Chronicles, please type that into the search bar on the page or here:

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/2593/the-sweetie-chronicles-fragments

This is an awesome story of truly epic proportions. Also it crosses over with everything, eventually.

[Luminary]

Rarity wore her gown, regardless, like a beaten and ruined badge of honor.

*sighs dreamily*
I love Rarity.

One of my favorite things about her is that, I swear, there's a bloody action hero sitting just under the surface with her. Even in the show she looks so utterly satisfied after drop-kicking or hoof-punching a bad guy, for all her talk about being above fighting and getting dirty.

Ahem.

their jaws seemed to become too heavy and solid to reveal much of their mood beyond ‘roaring with rage’ and ‘may roar with rage at any moment.’

Sometimes I just need to point out lines that tickle my fancy. And it was well and truly tickled. So dry. This and inner-Twilight.

So. Dragons get bigger when they gain things other species see as valuable.
I wonder when Spike's revelation will come that, at least for the ponies he knows, friends are about the most valuable thing. And he has 'em.
Personally, I think that would be a pretty fitting way to godzilla-ize Spike, rather than giving him a bunch of gems. It would show him to be the 'better' dragon.

Honestly, I want to be able to criticize, just so I'm being useful instead of gushing. It's just so very hard with This Platinum Crown. It's the fic currently being written that's perfectly balanced for my rarified tastes.

So, alas, I shall just say nice things. This is a very welcome chapter for us to take a 'breath' in, after all the high action. And honestly, I feel like it's returning to where you're at your strongest. The entire grooming scene strikes me as the highest point, for me. It was incredibly heartfelt, introspective without being plodding, and it was entirely believable. It was a distinctly great recharge-the-hero moment. One of the best I've seen. I'm very much pumped about the idea of Rarity as the reformer of the disgusting nobility. Not that Twilight's pep-talk by Blueblood's amusingly apt recording was any slouch on the reinvigoration-front, either.

I'm distinctly hoping that Rarity is the one that unmasks Changeling!Blueblood. If for no other reason than I personally think Rarity would be a bloodhound for such things, when dealing with people she knows. No changeling is going to get all the aesthetic details right, but Rarity sure as hell is the one to notice such 'tiny' things. If the changeling screws up on Blueblood's manestyle, his favored cologne, his little quirks of body language, or botches one of the hilarious back-and-forths between the couple, he's so very, very screwed.

When it comes down to it, this fic is the personification of why Rarity is my favorite pony, once fandom is included. It's also one of the reasons for that, of course. She may get the short end of the stick in canon, but you couldn't tell a story like this with anyone else. She's got a depth and maturity that the others lack. She's got real flaws to explore, and, while she's still good, she isn't perfect or saintly. Why do I mention all that? One tiny little exchange. Her wondering if retreating to vanity while things are falling apart makes her a terrible person, and being terrified of the thought of someone seeing her like that, is such a perfect Rarity moment. It isn't huge, but I think it rather sums up her key conflict in such a wonderful, poignant little package that it deserved to be singled out.

Anyway, eagerly awaiting the next chapter, as always!

[Ghosted Note]

One thing that I must wonder about: It seems a little foolish to include any of the mane 6 any more than strictly necessary in anypony's plans. I mean, it doesn't really seem like the elements are fully understood, and in the event that things went sour, the elements could be needed but unavailable due to all of this political scheming. What good is a platinum crown when the next Discord incident happens and there is no counter standing ready? By putting the mane 6 at risk, these politicians are risking the very land they seek to rule.

[Couch]

2501530
To be fair, if I recall correctly Discord has not escaped his prison in this continuity. What are the odds of that happening, much less only a year after Nightmare Moon's return?

Plus, well, it's a game where nopony is actually playing fair, at best they only pretend they have scruples. "The common pony isn't supposed to get hurt", but I assure you that Applejack would disagree that the use of the Flimflam Brothers didn't hurt her family just because nopony bucked her in the face. And while the typical noble is nothing like the storybook nobility Rarity longed for, caught in archaic trappings that are in some cases outright vile by modern sensibilities, the Terra Rares are a step beyond even them. Nothing is sacred to the Terra Rares. Not the Elements, not their own family, not even the Princesses themselves.

[Ghosted Note]

2507123

Well, what i meant is that when you have magic as powerful as the elements, and it's been shown to be a boon of protection to Equestria, and you're trying to gain power in the very same...What good would it do to risk an asset that could prevent that land from coming to harm? What good is being the leader of a kingdom of ashes?

[Couch]

2507783
It's not about power for the Terra Rares, it's about vengeance, and vengeance does terrible things to your priorities. It doesn't matter if the Duchy of Canterlot turns to ash as long as they can say it's theirs.

To a lesser extent, the abilities of the Elements aren't well-known, even to the audience, and it's unclear what if any future use they might have. Many of the nobles in this story are extremely accomplished unicorns and no doubt confident that their magic can demolish any threat that might arise. There's also probably some heavy unicorn master race thought going on there. Who needs some unreliable group of mares with unknown powers when you have the kinds of might Antimony or Chalice have on your side, when taking the Duchy would grant you access to forbidden spells of world-destroying power?

Now how true is that? I don't know. Certainly most of them far exceed anything the Elements have ever actually been shown doing. But when you're used to being powerful enough that the only things you have to fear are each other, it's easy to see how one would come to view the Elements as just another set of chess pieces.

[Chojomeka]

2507123
Actually you're recalling incorrectly, Both Anitmony and Alpha Brass both mention Discord's escape and resealment in story.

[Couch]

2517997
Really? Huh, oh well then. Still, what are the odds of something bad happening and requiring the Elements again?

[Chojomeka]

2519024
.....