This Platinum Crown

by Capn_Chryssalid

Chapter Fifty Nine : Ascend

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Ascend

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“Why?” Twilight asked.

“Why...?” Antimony repeated the question, clearly not understanding. “Why what?”

Twilight’s whole body felt worn, exhausted, her magic stretched thin and threadbare. Such was Arsenic’s training. Yet she couldn’t imagine that her distant cousin and sort-of-friend was in much better shape. Antimony had been engulfed, possessed, her body literally stolen... and then when Arsenic was done, she had simply returned to the pool and let the body of Antimony of the Terre Rare emerge, exhausted but intact.

The two mares were in the antechamber to the Chapel Below, making use of the grill and sink to wash off. For Twilight, it was just sweat she needed to wash away. For Antimony it was... it was something else, a film of residual magic maybe? Exactly what, Twilight could hardly hazard a guess. She could still hardly believe what she had seen take place.

Just what kind of insane spellwork had the Bismuth line developed and how it fit into proper arcana? Twilight shuddered at the thought of it, though, she had to admit a secret part of her, a part of herself she usually indulged, was intensely curious to find out. She quashed it, this one time. For maybe the first time in her life, it was like Twilight could understand when Applejack just shook her head and muttered “who nelly” at some random unicorn spell-gone-wrong.

“Why do you let her take over your body like that?” Twilight asked, resting on her stomach and catching her breath. “Why would anypony let someone do that to them?”

“That you have to ask only proves you are not ready to bear the burden of being successor to this family,” Antimony replied, turning up her nose to let water cascade down her neck and shoulders, making a waterfall of her normally immaculate and well-styled mane.

Twilight frowned at her. “The ‘burden’ of being successor?” She snorted. “Now that I know what it is, that has to be a joke. That four-alliteration spell you used... that’s what animates Arsenic, isn’t it? She can’t take over your body unless you let her! Unless you give her that power!”

“This is true,” Antimony answered, closing her eyes against the water.

“Then why?” Twilight asked again, insistent. “Why do it at all? Don’t tell me you enjoy it!”

“The experience is... unpleasant,” the Prench Baroness admitted. Turning off the stream of water, she opened her smoldering red eyes, but only at half-tilt. Never more.

Twilight glared at her, but it wasn’t with anger. She was confused. The whole issue just left her exhausted and confused. The main branch of the Terre Rare were extended family. All her life, when she thought of them at all, she had just assumed they were like anypony else in the esteemed and noble house of the Rare Earths. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined something like this.

“Then why... why do it at all?” She met Antimony’s eyes for an instant, and in that instant, remembered the hollow burning pits in Arsenic’s face. The demonic gorgon’s eyes that Antimony claimed would kill if any looked into them. Antimony looked away first, breaking the brief contact between them.

“Tell me first,” she said, and floated a white towel out of an alcove. “What is a Princess?”

“A Princess?” Twilight asked, quirking an eyebrow at the strange shift in conversation. She watched for a few seconds as Antimony began to dry off. “A Princess is a pony elevated to the highest position in the nobility and entrusted with arcane and secular authority by the Council of Lords.”

“I did not ask the question for you to hide behind a veil of legalism,” Antimony said evenly.

“A Princess is an alicorn,” Twilight answered, growing snippy. “Better?”

“Princess Platinum was not an alicorn,” Antimony reminded her.

“An alicorn who ascended following the founding of Equestria then,” Twilight amended herself.

“And the Blueblood Princesses? The Bluebelles?”

“Special cases.”

“Is that your final answer then?” Antimony asked, and it was clear she was expecting more. At the least, she was probably expecting Twilight to take the question more seriously. But what kind of answer did she want? The legal one was the right one, the correct one, the accurate one!

As if seeing this, Antimony sighed.

“A Princess is the apex of the pyramid that is Equestria,” she explained, but her face darkened with a frown and a brief look of longing. “That is what I always thought, even as a filly. That was the dream I held on to. A Princess is the strongest pony, the pony that is most independant, that needs nopony else. All others are reliant on the Princess and the Princess gives them aid and leads them because she is strong. The duty of the strong is to carry the weak and the Princess embodied that ideal.”

“Even when I was a foal, these eyes of mine kept me apart.” Antimony reached a hoof up to her face and gingerly brushed her cheek. “The servants and staff were terrified of me. I cannot blame them. I did not learn control until I was almost six years old. I do not begrudge their fear of me or how they would whisper behind my back. Their reactions were only natural. In time, I even came to appreciate the solitude, to wear their fear as a mark of pride, and... the idea of a Princess being proud and alone, like I was... alone... was appealing.”

She lowered her leg and sighed.

“What about your family?” Twilight asked, remembering her own childhood. Her solitude had been largely by choice but her family had always been there, always been supportive, and she had always had Spike almost as far back as she could remember. “What about friends?”

“You know my family,” Antimony said and Twilight recalled Twinkling Star Light, brilliant but not exactly grounded in the present, disinterested in other ponies, and Cruciger, implacable and unforgiving, the only warmth in him reserved solely for his wife. It seemed Antimony was not blind to the personal shortcomings in her parents. Then there were her siblings...

“As for friends,” she mused, “I had Gewitter, my bodyguard. I think she might have been my only friend, though I didn’t think of her as one until recently.”

“By recently you mean...”

“Since losing to Rarity, I have often thought about my definition of Princess... my great ideal.” The admission elicited a cringe but the tall Baroness quickly shook her head. “I wonder now... maybe the base supports the apex as much as the apex gives the pyramid form? I don’t know. What is a Princess? What makes one a Princess?”

Twilight’s ears flattened as she listened and as she thought more about it. Maybe, just maybe, she did have an answer to the riddle. Though she had known three Princesses over the years, only one came to mind when she thought of the title and when she closed her eyes. Only one. Celestia.

“A Princess is the pony anypony can come to with their problems,” Twilight Sparkle answered, at last. “A Princess is the pony everyone looks up to because she can solve their problems. A Princess is a problem-solver. When everypony else is in a jam, a Princess is the one pony you can count on to save the day.”

“A... problem... solver?” Antimony murmured, resting the towel around her withers.

“A problem solver!” Twilight smiled brightly. “That’s what a Princess is to me! That’s what makes her so great! That’s my ideal!”

- - -

Cold.

It was so cold.

Twilight Sparkle huddled in as tight a ball as she could, weightless but not formless in the empty void. A sea of stars twinkled amid the darkness around her, stretching on into infinity. She tumbled quietly, eyes closed, her breath forming vapor clouds with every exhale.

There was little reason to keep her eyes open; there was nothing to see. For the first hour or longer, or at least what felt like hours, she had tried to get her bearing using the stars. But the stars here were not the stars of the night sky. Their orientation made no sense. They stretched tight like a band one way, with two other groupings directly above and directly below, and vast empty turbulent nebula-stained space between.

“Hello?” she had asked, at first. “Where am I? What is this place?”

Yet there were no answers.

It had been an hour or so before she started screaming, yelling for help. Predictably, nopony had come to her aid here, wherever here even was. So she turned to magic. Magic had gotten her here, she had reasoned, so magic could get her out. The only problem was that her magic didn’t seem to work. Her horn was like dead weight on her brow, the star field refusing to form, the magic unable to flow... like it wasn’t even there. She’d have been terrified by the realization if she hadn’t already been terrified by various other realizations. Magic was the lifeblood of any pony but especially a unicorn, and to have it stripped away and left numb...?

She’s screamed again, then, but all too soon, her voice had given out and she’d given up. Not given up on rescue or escape, but given up on yelling or any other quick fix. After that, she had focused on thinking. Other ponies over the millennia had done this, survived this. There had to be a way.

So she floated and thought and tried to stay warm.

“I really wish I could make a fire,” she murmured, suppressing another shiver. “N-nopony ever thought c-clearly while freezing her tail off...”

Still, she floated, aimless.

“Scratch that,” she growled, trying to press her hooves down on something. “I’d be happy j-just not floating!”

Imagine her surprise, then, when her right front hoof pressed up against something solid. A second later, so did her left front hoof, and her back legs, too, but all angled differently. Legs akimbo, Twilight grunted in sudden discomfort. Was she trapped in some funny shaped box?

“I need perspective!” she realized. “A flat plane...!”

Pushing against the strangly oriented but invisible ground, Twilight spun around in a dizzying circle as it oriented and flattened. A faint line formed on the horizon, giving her a much needed ‘up’ and ‘down.’ Smiling, feeling suddenly rather good about her chances, Twilight winced as a sharp pain lanced into her skull.

The creation of an ‘up’ and a ‘down’ quickly led to something murky forming beneath her hooves. It was indistinct, blurred like looking through thick and smoky glass, but huge, titanic. Looking down at it between her hooves, it took Twilight a moment to realize what it was.

It was Equius.

It was Equestria.

The whole planet stretched out before and beneath her, curving away and spinning slowly. Along with it, the reorientation scrambled the stars... though the constellations remained the same, and Twilight could just make out some of the night sky she was familiar with. With a spark of insight, she remembered the celestial globe Twinkling Star Light had owned.

“Hello?” she dared to ask again. No answer came, but she could make something out in the distance, like a pinprick of flickering light, and pinched and weaving through the stars, the turbulent nebulas began to assume eerie shapes and forms.

“Hello?” she asked again, trotting towards the light. “Anypony home? I’m not walking into the afterlife, am I? If I’m walking into ‘that’ light can somepony please put a warning sign down or something?”

Nothing.

Goading the universe into talking back wasn’t having much of an effect, so Twilight set her hooves and broke into a run. The light seemed miles away but Twilight found she didn’t care. It was all she had. So she ran. And ran. And ran. When she grew tired, she stopped, caught her breath, and then ran some more.

It wasn’t for nothing, either - the darkness seemed fainter here, the clouds thinner and whiter, almost like normal clouds. She tried not to think about the unsettling feeling the circling nebulas were giving her and focused on the little bit of fire up ahead. More exciting still was the fact that she could just make out shapes, silhouettes, against the flickering light.

There was something else, too. Beyond the clouds and nebula, she could see towering shapes, like buildings, all different shapes and sizes. At the apex of each one was a constellation. Yet as close as she came, they remained distant and indistinct, even when she realized that they surrounded her. It was like she was less running towards a point in space and more that she was moving closer to clarity, to revelation, to seeing the indistinct, charging headlong towards apotheosis. Looking down at her hooves and the blurred world beneath her, she wondered: had she even really been moving all this time?

“Where the heck am I?” she asked, and ran forward again. The silhouettes against the fire!

They were ponies!

“Hey!” she called to them. “Hey there!”

Coming into view, the first of the pair turned slightly. She was an earth pony with a lavender coat and an eerily similar mane-style and a very familiar magenta stripe in her bangs. Twilight slowed her trot as her mind struggled to process what her eyes were seeing. This pony...

The second also turned around, her wings flexing on her back. Just like the first, she was lavender with the same sort of mane style and colors. Twilight stole a look at the mare’s flank: an eight pointed star with five little stars surrounding it. The earth pony had the same mark, too.

“You’re me,” Twilight said, stopping in front of her earth pony and pegasus selves.

“You’re me, you mean,” Pegasus-Twilight corrected her with a cocky grin.

“Or we’re us,” Earth-Twilight speculated.

“I imagined unicorn-me having a bigger horn,” Pegasus-Twilight said with a dismissive sniff.

“Hey, come on, now, be nice,” Earth-Twilight said to her. She turned to Unicorn-Twilight who was only then realizing she was Unicorn-Twilight. “Hello. We’ve been waiting for you by the fire; come on over. There are bad things out in the darkness.”

“You’re both too thin skinned,” Pegasus-Twilight said with a chuckle. “I like the cold! Plus, what’s there to be afraid of as long as I’m around?”

“And ignore her,” Earth-Twilight added, pointing to her Pegasus counterpart. “She’s an ass.”

“I’m not an ass!” Pegasus-Twilight yelled, stamping her hoof like a petulant foal. “You mule!”

“Mule?” Earth-Twilight recoiled. “Who do you think you are?”

Unicorn-Twilight sat between them, by chance or design playing the role of intermediary and peacemaker between the other-hers. They glowered at each other, but made room for her to sit. “So, um... no offense but... this is kind of weird.”

“Yeah.”

“You’re telling me.”

- - -

“This is nuts,” Vinyl Scratch growled in her newly masculine body. “Nuttier than a squirrel turd, nuts.” Her jagged neon-blue mane was well concealed beneath a steel morion helmet, her trademark shades tucked away under her armored cuirass and most of her body hidden beneath a surcoat of blood-red Terre Rare crimson. To a casual observer, she was just one more mare-turned-stallion among many in the personal guard of Lord Alpha Brass. At least, that was the plan as Pinkie Pie had sold it to her.

Thank the Princess there was enough confusion going on due to that freaky gender-swap spell that, so far, no pony had questioned the addition to the guard of yet another alabaster-coated unicorn. Vinyl didn’t exactly like to imagine what would happen if she was found out, especially not after the freaky display that Euporie pony had put on last night. An unhinged pony was dangerous enough, but an unhinged pony with enough magic to smash a town? A good musician knew when to exit, stage left, hide and pride intact.

On top of all that was the fact that this was no picnic in the park - everypony was getting ready to go out and fight changelings. What would their first thoughts be if they found some unknowns dressed up in guard armor? They’d probably skip “hey, is that a famous and awesome DJ under there” and go right to “spear the changeling!” The latter of which would not do wonders for anyone’s music career. Then again... some artists didn’t become really famous until after they died tragically, so...

“What am I thinking?” Vinyl cried, holding her head in her hooves. “Argh!”

Really: this was all Pinkie Pie’s fault, that stupid goof ball and her stupid hair-brained ideas!

“Stop being so angry,” Pinkie Pie whispered, hoof bopping the side of Vinyl’s helmet.

“What?” Vinyl growled, but the hot blood did begin to ebb away. Pinkie was a friend, after all, a frustrating friend but she wasn’t stupid. Oblivious sometimes, but not stupid.

“She’s in your head,” Pinkie said, adjusting her own helmet to hide her bright blue eyes. It was rare enough to see Pinkie Pie bereft of a smile: instead, her expression was focused and determined. It was actually a little surreal.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vinyl said with a low whisper, the two mares-turned-stallions ducking their heads as a pair of genuine guards stomped by. “For that matter, I’m still not sure how you convinced me to get out of my nice comfortable bed and tag along on another crazy adventure.”

“Like you ever need much convincing,” Pinkie joked, a hint of a smile returning to her face. She licked her lips and puffed out her chest, trying to look very guard-like. “Come on. This way!”

“Wow. You’re actually trotting normally and not pronking for once.”

“I think bouncing would get us caught pretty quickly,” Pinkie explained. Lucky for her, she didn’t stand out, even as a bright pink stallion. All the other guards were mares, too, and there were a few rocking red and pink color schemes.

“What about Flutters?” Vinyl asked, saluting an important looking guard she’d seen others also salute. The mare nodded and busily waved the two recruits along.

“Fluttershy needs to stay here.” Pinkie’s answer was unusually cryptic.

“Really?” Vinyl asked, dubious. “And why’s that?” She didn’t know Fluttershy as well as she did Pinkie, but the leaving the timid pegasus behind seemed kind of wrong. Once she woke up, she’d probably be frightened out of her wits at being left alone, though Twilight Sparkle was still supposed to be around here somewhere...

“Trust in the Pinkie Sense,” her pink companion said with a grin.

“All praise for the crazy twitching precognition,” Vinyl scoffed. “I feel one hundred percent confident already. So where is your sixth sense leading us anyway?”

“Canterlot.”

“Canterlot?”

“Canterlot!” Pinkie chirped, and quickly threw a hoof over her mouth to contain her natural exuberance. “Canterlot,” she explained again, more quietly, “But to get down there, we need to use one of the teleportation unicorn thingies.” She turned to face Vinyl and waggled her extra-fake looking bushy eyebrows and moustache. “That’s why we have these super terrific disguises.”

Vinyl hung her head in despair. “We are so going to get caught! So long, world! Dungeon here I come!”

“Unit Seven! Form up!” a Terre rare guard in steel and crimson yelled up ahead, organizing the platoons to be sent down. “Unit Eight! Get in line!”

Up ahead was the main teleportation chamber that Vinyl remembered seeing when she’d first come to Brass’ Gardens. It was crowded with guardponies now. Twelve of them were stuffing into the perimeter of a circle with a white-robed unicorn mage. With all twelve of them being stallions now, it was more of a squeeze than anypony expected getting them all together.

“Listen up, girls!” A scarred stallion officer with a (real not fake) bushy beard trotted up to the still forming Unit Eight. Vinyl almost broke into chuckles when she remembered that this stallion was actually a mare. Princess, this gender swap spell was crazy! Crazy funny!

And suddenly Vinyl realized she just HAD to see what male-Octavia looked like before she died. If she’d been hit by this, too, she had to be totally freaking out.

“Unit Seven will be inserting into an ongoing combat zone!” the scarred pony barked. “The Emergence Zone will be hot with changelings and civilians. You all know your objectives. Arm the civilians. Get them into the fight. Make them fight if you have to! Half of you will distribute weapons, the other half will hold off the changelings. Lord Brass is watching us. Do him proud!”

In the teleportation chamber, the last group of guards winked out with a flash.

“This is what we’ve been waiting for! Training for!” the scarred guard raised a hoof to the air. “Death to changelings!”

“Death to changelings!” the whole pack cheered. “Death! Death!”

“Woo hoo!” Pinkie being the one exception. “Lots of fun! Can’t wait!”

“Unit Eight! Form up! Unit Nine! Get in line!”

Vinyl had managed a half-hearted cheer, herself, but as she and the others were herded into the teleportation circle, she could feel her blood start to boil again. Changelings. The damn changelings still had Octavia and so many others. Who knew what they were doing to them even right now? They were just animals. Stupid, evil, disgusting animals. Every one of them deserved to die! Maybe this was actually an opportunity in disguise! A chance to get revenge for--

Pinkie’s hoof bopped her on the helmet again and the thoughts receded.

“Damnit Pinkie! What was that for?” Vinyl grumbled, trying not to be overheard in the cramped quarters. “Why do you keep doing that?”

“I’ll explain when we’re on the ground,” Pinkie whispered back.

“You better. Next time I’ll bop back. You wait and see.”

“Everypony inside the circle?” a white robed unicorn mage asked, and a second nodded. “Alright! Clear!”

“Clear!” the second confirmed.

“Clear!” a third yelled, and the world dissolved into light. Vinyl closed her eyes and waited out the star field. Teleporting as a spell was pretty much outside her range but that didn’t mean she’d never blinked more than a few inches. Her stomach lurched at the disorientation. For an instant her body felt stretched thin like taffy only to snap back a heartbeat later.

The first thing Vinyl heard were screams of panic.

“Two o’clock! Two o’clock!” “Yellows sighted!” “Move move move!”

A push to the rear sent the musician tumbling ass over ears. Acting purely on instinct, Vinyl Scratch scrambled across the ground towards something large and inanimate, all the better to hide behind. Her cover of choice was a large cast iron bell on display. A plaque next to it identified it as the first Canterlot chapel bell, retired less than a hundred years AE - After Equestria’s Founding.

They were in a damn museum!

A roar like an enraged lion split the air and a heavy body hit the ground and skidded past the unicorn mare. It was one of those gold colored changelings, long and lean and predatory. Chittering in the upper rafters of the top floor was followed by pulses of green light that rained down on the ponies below.

Vinyl dared a quick look around. This wasn’t just a museum, it was the Royal Museum of History! Hanging overhead on the great hall adjacent to their exhibit was the iconic Leviathan: a giant whale-like monster that stretched the length of a hoofball field. The replica sea monster was tilting, half of its serrated tentacles and flipper-wings touching the floor due to snapped ropes overhead. Green blasts of light briefly lit up the features and the snarling maw as changelings and unicorns exchanged fire.

“Pony!”

Vinyl gasped and rolled away as another golden changeling pounced on the bell with a muffled gong, batting at her with a bladed hoof. Missing, it snarled in rage and quickly ducked away only to appear on the other side of the bell. Vinyl recoiled at the mixture of feline and insectoid features, especially the well-stocked mouth full of shark’s teeth.

“Pony,” it hissed in an inequine trill that sent a shiver down Vinyl’s back. “Miiiine.”

It was about to lunge again, and Vinyl about to try and blast it as best she could, when--

“Boing!” Pinkie landed right on the creature’s head, mashing its jaws together in a spray of broken teeth. “Five hundred points! I’ve been holding that bounce in for too long!”

“Holy Princesses, Pinks!”

Vinyl adjusted her aim and let fly a light blue blast, tagging a red changeling that appeared out of thin air behind the pink pony. The blast barely stunned the changeling, unfortunately, and it quickly slipped back into the shadows and confusion. Pinkie dropped back down onto all fours and looked around anxiously.

“Ohhh, Hide and Seek,” she muttered. “Actually, wait, that’s not good. ”

Vinyl also pulled herself back up onto all fours. “Can’t you use your Pinkie sense to find them?”

“Do I look like a spider to you?” Pinkie asked.

“Uh. No?”

“Then that answers your question!”

“How does that answer anything?!” Vinyl yelled, and yipped as a stray green blast ripped through the air. “Can we please get out of here?!”

“But I’ve always wanted to visit the museum!” Pinkie chirped, bouncing and bending in impossible shapes as she pronked through the crossfire. “OH! The History of the Party exhibit is in town! I didn’t know that! Oh my gosh! They have Cheery Cherry’s original wig! I love that guy!”

An explosion in the great hall heralded the partial collapse of the roof, burying a squad of changelings fortified in the upper floor. A few scattered survivors tried to take wing and fly away, but enraged pegasi and earth ponies rushed in to bring them down. Vinyl crawled forward, eyes alert. She didn’t have any magical beams or blasts, not really, but she could smack somepony silly with little mark-one TK. Seeing an opportunity present itself, she charged up her horn and picked off one of the red changelings as it tried to attack an earth pony from behind with bladed forelegs. The mantis-like creature hissed and screamed as other unicorns joined in, tagging it from afar with a riotous rainbow of magical spells.

“Die!” Vinyl growled, blasting the struggling changeling with a sonic pulse. “Die you son of a--”

Bonk!

“Ow! Pin-kieeee!” Vinyl whirled around, suddenly nose to nose with the pink one. “I am sick and tired of you hitting me!”

“I only do it to get rid of the red glow,” Pinkie explained with an earnest expression.

“Red glow?”

“Red.” Pinkie punctuated the words with a bop on the head. “Glow.”

“Repeating isn’t the same as explaining.”

“Repeating isn’t the same as explaining?”

Vinyl just narrowed her eyes as if to say, ‘Are you really going to be this annoying?’

“Okey dokey! I’ll explain!” Pinkie wrapped a hoof around Vinyl’s neck and started to lead her away. “First thingies first, though, we gotta sneak out and meet up with some new friends of mine.”

“Fine, fine!” Vinyl relented. She spared a glance back at the ongoing battle in the museum but followed Pinkie Pie to one of the exits. Past the exhibit on ‘tamed critters throughout the ages’ was a huge hole blasted in the wall. Pinkie bounced past it to open the door labeled “exit.”

Vinyl almost - almost - asked her why, but then just chalked it up to Pinkie being Pinkie.

“Okay,” Vinyl said after a momentary wince at the light of the morning hitting her face. Stretched out before them was a mostly open-air plaza that surrounded the museum. “Start explaining, Pinkie.”

Pinkie’s bounce faded into a springy trot. “Euporie is in your head.”

“Euporie Mosaic? In my head?”

“What did you just say about repeating...?”

“I know what I said. Come on. What the heck is going on?”

“You’ve got a feeling in you,” Pinkie replied and shook her head. “I knew she would do this. I just didn’t think it would be this big.”

Vinyl picked up her pace slightly. “Still waiting for you to make sense, here, Pinkie.”

Pinkie’s bright blue eyes were momentarily downcast as she tried her best to explain, “Euporie’s magic can make ponies feel things. She can make them happy, or sad, or angry, or scared, or... huggy.”

“Huggy?”

Pinkie glanced over at Vinyl with... was that embarrassment?

“Oh! Those kinds of hugs!” Vinyl realized and whistled in appreciation. “Wow. Just... wow. Really?”

Pinkie nodded. “Yep!”

“Did she... do that to you?”

“Yep!”

Vinyl felt a blush rise up on her cheeks, easy to see through her pearl-white coat. “So she’s a Party Pony... like you?”

“No!” Pinkie snapped, and it was so unlike her that Vinyl missed a step and stumbled. Pinkie winced. “Maybe,” she demurred, and clearly wasn’t too happy about it. “Actually, I guess she is. Like me but not like me.”

“You always say you love to make ponies happy...” Vinyl argued.

“I do! There’s nothing I love more!” Pinkie argued back. “But I don’t make ponies happy! I remind them of the happiness that is always inside them! No pony should make another pony happy like Euporie does! It... it just...” Pinkie started to frown and bopped herself on the head with her hoof. “It just isn’t right!”

She shook her head in a blur. “Darn it! I - I’m no good at explaining why!” She stomped a hoof for emphasis and fixed Vinyl with a serious look. “It just is! You’ll just have to trust me.”

Vinyl watched Pinkie closely. Her mood was so strange; the Pinkie Vinyl knew was always bubbly and scatter-brained, quick to crack a joke or start a party at the drop of a hat. In her normal body she was also super girly, which Vinyl had always thought of as one of her cuter features - she did have a soft spot for the girly mares, unfortunately. Octavia was like that, too, but a serious sort of feminine. More refined femme fatale. It was just her luck that Octy was straight as an arrow and Pinkie was a partysexual. But the point was that she was acting odd, and it wasn’t just because of that weird gender-swap spell.

Vinyl could see that Pinkie seemed to be struggling with being more serious. It did seem like she genuinely wanted to explain herself and her reasoning, or what passed for reason in Pinkie-land, and not being able to do so was just making her uncharacteristically frustrated and angry. Especially since Pinkie’s expressions always seemed to be exaggerated to some normally impossible degree: either super-happy or super-sad or super-scared or super-excited.

Watching her try to be serious... it was downright strange.

“Okay, so, Party Ponies are usually earth ponies, right?” Pinkie went on to say. Gritting her teeth, she concentrated hard and her helmet abruptly popped off, ejected by her poofy curly mane. “My friend Applejack - I don’t think you know her - she’s like most earth ponies, and she’s in touch with the natural world and living things and stuff. She’s so neat! I don’t know how she does it! And my sisters are like that, too, but with rocks and stuff. Right? Makes sense so far?”

Vinyl nodded slowly. “Yeah...”

“Okay! So! That earth pony nature stuff? I’m super bad at that,” Pinkie admitted with a bashful, embarrassed smile. “So super bad you have to see it to believe it! I can’t grow anything! I don’t like vegetables anyway, but when I do try and grow them, they come out all funny with pinstripes and whirly-bits! And my rocks are all funny colors and stuff. Totally useless!”

“But that’s okay!” She carelessly pronked over the wheel of a smashed carriage. “Because I’m in touch with other ponies instead! I’m bad with plants and rocks but I’m great at feeling other ponies. Donkeys and griffins are problems, sometimes, but ponies? Forgetaboutit!”

She bounced backwards without warning, coming nose-to-nose with Vinyl. “Point is: that’s the key to being a party pony! You need to listen and think about others, bring out their happiness, and then their happiness makes you happy, and soon everypony is happy all across town! See? See?”

“I thought you guys were just party maniacs?” Vinyl asked, walking around Pinkie and raising an inquisitive eyebrow. She loved a good rave party herself, but didn’t ever have a hoof in planning them. She just showed up to lend the world her skills on the turntable.

“It isn’t much of a party when you’re by yourself,” Pinkie replied with a shifting glance to her side “Trust me.”

“So Euporie is...”

“I think she’s a party pony, too, but something went wrong,” Pinkie speculated and reached into her newly freed mane, rummaging around for something. “She can definitely feel what other ponies feel like I do, but instead of listening, she tells them how to feel. Instead of bringing their feelings out from inside, she forces new feelings on them, like puppets and not ponies. Right now, she’s doing that to you, and me, and everypony in the city.”

“That’s... that’s impossible, Pinkie.” Vinyl slowed her trot when Pinkie came to a sudden stop. “No unicorn has that sort of power.”

“It isn’t as strong as when she used it on me before,” Pinkie explained. “Where is...?” She pulled a strange flag with stars and stripes out of her mane. “No, not this old thing.” Unceremoniously throwing the flag away, she pulled out a sword and tossed it, too. “Err... I know it's in here somewhere! Ah ha!”

Her hoof escaped the tangle of curls holding a pink-colored flare.

“Always pink,” Pinkie mused, narrowing her eyes at the flare. “I really need to stop putting pink things in there.” A second later and out came a pink post-it note and a pink pen. “Note to self,” Pinkie read as she wrote. “Pink things are hard to find. Good!” Back into her mane they went.

Vinyl’s hoof patted her own mane. “I don’t suppose you’d care to explain how you do that either...?”

“Anywhhhooo!” Pinkie ignored the question and cracked the flare open, throwing it to where it could smoke up and produce more smoke. Pink smoke, of course. “Euporie’s magic is spread much thinner than usual, but it is definitely there. I can see it, clear as cake! The really funny thing is that you guys don’t even notice it when your eyes start to glow.”

“That’s Euporie,” she said before Vinyl could ask anything more. “She’s making you angry. She’s making you want to fight. She’s inside everypony right now... even me.”

“Alright, let’s assume you’re right about this crazy story,” Vinyl finally got a word in again. “Euporie is somehow making everypony in Canterlot angry. So what? I was pissed off to begin with!” She turned around, gesturing at the destroyed and wrecked plaza and the facade of the battle-scarred museum they had just left behind. “Look at this! Those changelings did this! Why shouldn’t everypony be mad?”

Pinkie lowered her eyes for a moment, nodding in apparent agreement. “I don’t blame anypony for being angry. Everypony gets angry. Anger is as natural as laughter.”

“So...?”

“But angry ponies are stupid ponies,” Pinkie interrupted, fixing Vinyl with steely blue eyes. “Angry ponies don’t think. Angry ponies make dumb mistakes. Do you know what ten thousand angry ponies becomes? I’ll tell you: they become a mob.”

“An angry mob,” Vinyl realized, and in that instant, she could feel a strange pulse of rage beating inside her as well, just at the edge of her awareness. Pinkie’s ears twitched, perked up, and she turned towards something heading down the street.

Vinyl followed Pinkie’s eyes and saw some sort of... carriage... vehicle? Whatever it was, it smashed through a fallen carriage barricading the plaza, heading towards the pink smoke signal. Vinyl Scratch’s jaw slipped wide at the sight that greeted her. The vehicle was twice the height of a carriage and twice as wide, situated atop muscular steel-rimmed wheels that crushed anything in its path underhoof. The armored sides were slanted like the pilot at the front of a train, pushing larger obstacles bodily out of the way.

“Somepony pinch me...” Vinyl’s voice was hushed and soft. “I think I’m in love.”

Mounted proudly on top the mechanized monstrosity, Vinyl saw a pair of giant speakers. Nestled between them was a subwoofer large enough to crush a manticore. As it rumbled to a stop a pair of grills to either side belched smoke and flame. Vinyl began to swoon, but when she saw the rear section unfold and expand, revealing yet more jury-rigged speakers, flood lights, strobe lights, and even what looked like fireworks launchers? Hearts outright replaced her irises.

“So this is love?” she wondered with a husky sigh. “I never imagined...”

“Simple salesmen signed a contract,

A lucrative deal, an ironclad compact!

Use your genius to make them cider,

Ponyville’s financial problems will divide her!”

“What we didn’t know was that the deal was binding,

That it would lead to unexpected grinding!

Given a command we were told to make the Pink One smile,

She told us to make a party wagon, make one with style!”

A thin unicorn mare emerged from atop the armed and armored Party Wagon wearing a pinstripe vest over a white blouse. “Flim!”

An almost identical mare appeared on the opposite side, an extra lick of white highlighting her red bangs. “Flam!”

“The amazing and incomparable Flim Flam Brothers!” the duo declared in unison, fireworks bursting behind them. “Present to you both: The Super Smashy Party Crasher 10000!”

A turntable emerged from a rotating barrel between the two speaker towers. Vinyl’s eyes widened as she realized what this was. It wasn’t a display. It was an invitation!

“This is why you asked me to come along?” she asked, looking to Pinkie Pie. “You planned this?”

“A good party planner never forgets transportation!” Pinkie vaulted up into the air to be caught by the pair of unicorn stallions-turned-mares. Resting between them, she sported her best goofy grin. “So, Vinyl? What do ya say? Want to go for a ride with us?”

Vinyl was already jumping up to join them. “As if you even need to ask!”

It was time to crash the party of the year.

- - -

“Something troubles you, father.”

Alpha Brass glanced up from his breakfast, green eyes cool and unperturbed. “Eunomie,” he answered softly, calmly, deliberately despite the frantic activity of the Garden’s Shielding and Navigation Center. “What makes you think that?”

For all that he had overseen the planning and execution of this grand play, Brass knew he was not the pony most suited to managing it. That job, as always, rested in the unflinchingly capable hooves of Eunomie Mosaic. Only Eunomie could single-mindedly practice a spell a thousand times without error, hour after hour, day after day, making up for her ‘lack of talent’ with sheer single-minded dedication to perfection. Nopony Brass knew worked harder than Eunomie; nopony Brass knew had her attention to detail; nopony could accomplish more with less; and nopony was more fit to see or even alter his plans.

After all, it was an old unicorn truism that plans rarely survived an enemy intact, that everything was easier in theory than in practice. This was exactly why he cultivated capable subordinates, independent but loyal, and above all else like-minded. His own plans and efforts would have collapsed over the last few weeks without those capable ponies, those exceptional mares: Euporie, ever eager to prove herself, Twilight, brilliant and idealistic, Chalice, loyal Chalice, always underestimating herself yet still the one he knew he could rely on to handle the most difficult of tasks, and Eunomie... the one he had long since designated to take over if he fell, the one he trusted even more than he trusted himself.

Looking over at her, Brass noted how Eunomie had one eye conspicuously closed, the most common tell-tale sign that her familiar Galen had been ‘given’ that part of her body. It was not alone.

Eunomie was seated on a soft cushion overlooking the room, a height from which she could delegate or command the other mares operating the gardens activities. Her left front leg and right hind leg were both indistinct and ghostly. Those, too, she had given to her familiar... now familiars. Eunomie, like Luna apparently, could be in many places at once. He wondered for a moment what the Princess would think of Eunomie’s magic and her unorthodox origins.

‘The greatest gift of ponykind is to blur the line between what is a pony and what is not, to be both self and surroundings, until no line at all can be drawn,’ he mused, recalling the line from Starswirl’s treatises on magic. ‘Starswirl, I wish you could see what I will do with ponykind. How I will transform it... how I will save it from itself.’

“Father,” Eunomie answered after a second’s pause. “I have watched you eat many times. Your mannerisms are well known to me. There is a noticeable delay between bites, an above average heart beat, pauses in which you close your eyes...”

“You know me well,” Brass admitted, interrupting her before she could go on.

“I do know you well,” Eunomie agreed. “As I said previously.” She tilted her head a few degrees, clearly having more difficulty discerning why he was troubled. Motives were hard for her, sometimes, especially emotional ones.

“Twilight,” she guessed, blinking her one functional eye. “I believe that to be the most likely source of your unease. You are worried about her.”

Brass sighed and gently lowered his fork onto the napkin alongside his plate. His personal chef had prepared blueberry and raspberry pancakes as a tribute to the two Mosaic daughters: Eunomie red, Euporie blue. It was more of a brunch than a proper breakfast at this point, but Brass found he had little appetite, despite expending considerable magical power to enhance his two hundred-plus servants and subordinates. When they fell, when they died, he felt the loss personally, and to his surprise the hole in his magic where Twilight Sparkle had been... bothered him... more than most.

“Is there some news of them?” he asked. “Of Chalice? Of Twilight?”

“As far as I can tell, Twilight Sparkle remains within the Empyrean Vault.” Eunomie opened her left eye, and it was hollow, the ghostly impression of an eye left behind. “Even my Contract Magic cannot pierce that veil. Only Chalice has that power.”

“Antimony could interfere as well,” Alpha thought aloud, tapping his chin with his hoof. “The bridesmaids lack the experience, there is no worry there, but both Chalice and Antimony are closely bound to their celestial partner.”

“Do you love her?” Eunomie asked, suddenly.

For just a moment, the question threw him. It was very unlike Eunomie to ask about something like that. “Twilight?” he asked. It was a stupid, useless question, but it bought him a second or two to think.

“Yes, Twilight Sparkle.” Eunomie asked again, immune to most forms of nuance. “Do you love her?”

He recalled her asking a similar sort of question last night, too. “Did you use your influence on Twilight long before the duel?” It was strange. Eunomie did not ask questions like this. What was wrong with her all of a sudden?

“I believe she may be in love with you, or, also likely, she may be in the process of developing these feelings,” Eunomie went on to say, sparing him an explanation. “She is exhibiting the standard physiological responses typical of budding emotional attachment. Last night I believe she was showing signs of jealousy, particularly towards Siren Song. I’ve observed that ponies become possessive and protective towards those they love... or those whose love they covet.”

Brass smirked and thoughtfully tapped his chin with a manicured hoof. “You don’t say?”

Eunomie didn’t smile, but there was something strangely playful about her deadpan answer. “Indeed. I’ve read about it in detail in the ‘Mare’s Guide to Love and Courtship.’ It is also alluded to fifty four times in articles in other publications regarding advanced mating strategies and how to ‘win over’ the ‘special somepony of your dreams.’ The jealous nature of love is also frequently romanticized in poetry, plays, novels, artwork...”

“I get the idea, Eunomie,” Brass interrupted her with a chuckle. “But in this case, Twilight’s feelings are simply a side effect of my magic. Male or female, this is always the end result. Even when I tell them what they feel is just an echo, none seem to care.”

“Correct,” Eunomie agreed. “However, there is something different this time. I cannot quite put my hoof on it, but Euporie can. Your dalliances never concerned her before, never triggered a protective or possessive response, yet Twilight does...”

Eunomie hesitated to say more, staring forward blankly for a moment.

“Regardless,” she continued a second later, dissolving her left ear into another floating arcane familiar. It detached from her and shot off out through the oculus in the ceiling. “I am concerned. Twilight Sparkle will respond negatively when she discovers that you do not intend to restore Celestia and Luna their immortality. Celestia especially. She may react to the news in an irrational manner, one further exacerbated by her feelings towards you. She will see it as a betrayal... and as you know from the experience with Exuvia, Twilight does not handle perceived betrayal well.”

Brass glanced down at his largely untouched meal. Closing his eyes, he could imagine the look on Twilight’s face when she found out she was not being groomed to save the Princess but to replace her. He could imagine how she would turn to him, hoping he could explain it away like he explained every other discrepancy or problem. A carefully crafted lie would be necessary to keep her fooled, at least until it was too late for her to do anything about it. At the same time... he had to admit that a part of him did not want to lie to her.

Could nopony see that this was for the best? That this was how it had to be?

‘I don’t want to see Twilight’s face when she finds out,’ he realized, and his features darkened into a scowl. Eunomie was right: something was wrong, something was off. It could not be allowed to get in the way, not now.

They were all so close.

“Celestia and Luna are the past.” His voice rang with conviction, the sort of conviction that could only result in one sentence: death. “A new future requires new blood. New idols to worship. New gods to pray to and to ultimately surpass. The true war being fought today is not a physical battle between changeling and pony...”

“It is a war in here--” He reached up to tap the side of his head, turning with a glare towards the illusionary representation of Canterlot in the center of the room. “--between what we are and what we could become. And to win that war, sacrifices must be made.”

- - -

It seemed to take hours, but Chalice found her by the fire.

Rather: she found three of her by the fire.

“Oh, my! Look!” Earth-Twilight exclaimed, pointing with a hoof towards the apparition in the air. “Is that Chalice?”

“Oh, hey! It is her!” Pegasus-Twilight leaned forward on her haunches, wings flapping excitedly behind her. But she just as quickly narrowed her eyes. “Then again... maybe that isn’t Chalice at all! Maybe that’s one of the nebula monsters disguised as Chalice? I say we blast it to be sure.”

“Oh. My. Celestia. Could you be more paranoid?” Earth-Twilight glared at her winged counterpart.

“Could you be more gullible?” Pegasus-Twilight snapped back.

“Could the both of you stop fighting for ten seconds?” Unicorn-Twilight bodily pushed the two apart with her hooves and gave Chalice a quick look-over. “Chalice?” she asked, cautious, but obviously hopeful. “Is that really you?”

Chalice looked down at herself. She was a ghostly manifestation of her corporeal self with one significant addition: a coat of chains encircled her waist, withers and neck. The ethereal shackles bound her by digging into her immaterial flesh, bound eternally to her very soul. With control and steady focus, she faded in - her translucent form becoming more substantial. The chains, however, remained, fading away with distance until they disappeared, giving them the impression of tendril-like wings.

“Sorry,” she apologized to the three Twilights. “I know I do not look my best right now.”

“What’s with those chains anyway?” Pegasus asked, bluntly.

“Rude!” Earth objected, and turned from her pegasus version to Chalice’s floating form. “Please excuse her, unlike myself she was clearly raised in a tree by a crow.”

“A crow!”

“You heard me.”

“Girls!” Unicorn silenced them with a stern glower.

“I’m getting a little tired of you always taking her side, horn-head,” Pegasus-Twilight growled, batting away her unicorn-self’s hoof.

“She isn’t taking sides, you ass,” Earth-Twilight turned up her nose and looked down at the other her. “Though perhaps she should, for once.”

“You guys are both giving me a headache.”

“And your headache is giving me a headache!”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Chalice floated silently, now more uncertain than before just what to say or do. The three Twilight Sparkles were bickering around the dwindling fire. Pegasus-Twilight seemed to be the most aggressive and outspoken of the three, something Chalice didn’t particularly like. Loud ponies were intimidating. Earth-Twilight seemed more reserved, but there was something mean about her... especially the way she looked at her other selves. Unicorn-Twilight seemed to be the most quiet of the three, but was always trying to step in between the others and mediate.

But... that made sense, didn’t it? The unicorn-Twilight was the real one, wasn’t she?

Twilight Sparkle was a unicorn after all.

This was all very strange.

“So, like I said before, those chains,” Pegasus-Twilight was talking again, this time at their guest. “What’s up with that?”

“Haven’t you figured it out?” Earth-Twilight rolled her eyes. “She’s tied to something on this plane of existence. Probably a result of the torc-contracts we heard about.”

“Oh! That makes sense,” Unicorn-Twilight agreed, nodding eagerly. “Good thinking!”

“One of us has to be cerebral at least,” Earth-Twilight huffed. “And I am the Princess’ Number One student, after all.”

“Yeah? Well I’m the one with guts!” Pegasus-Twilight jumped up and flared her wings wide in challenge. “What good is brains without guts?”

“You wanted to know about the chains, right?” Unicorn-Twilight asked her pegasus-self, calming her and motioning for her to sit back down. “Let’s find out.”

“Yeah...” Pegasus-Twilight snorted, but fell back onto her haunches with a grunt. “Yeah, okay.”

“Chalice?” Unicorn-Twilight asked.

“Oh. Yes. These.” Chalice floated down to the ground, little more than a featureless transparent plane, but it was flush with the fading ethereal fire the four mares were huddled around. She touched one of the wing-like streams of chains with her hoof.

“My throne is some distance that way,” she explained, or tried to. “That is to say: Sagittarius’ Throne. I can’t normally leave it when he is in my body, but we’ve been together long enough that he trusts me to wander a bit...” she shrunk down slightly at the three Twilights staring at her. “Even though I don’t usually like to,” she murmured.

Unicorn-Twilight pointed past her. “What about--”

“The chains are for my protection!” Chalice blurted out, almost forgetting to mention that. “None of the others will bother me as long as I have the chains around me. They’re for my protection.”

Pegasus-Twilight snorted again. “What are you, a pet dog?”

“That. Is. It!” Earth-Twilight stood up this time. “It is well past time somepony teaches you how to behave!”

“Yeah? Yeah? Is that so?” Pegasus-Twilight jumped up again, always up for a challenge. She gestured to herself with her hooves. “Come on then, book smarts! Daddy’s Girl! Princess’ Pet! Show me what you’ve got!”

“Oh, I intend to!” Earth-Twilight began to advance on her and the flames that sputtered between them.

“Enough!” Unicorn-Twilight also stood up, bodily pushing them apart. “How did you two even survive this long before I showed up?”

“Ehhh?” Pegasus-Twilight sneered. “Weren’t you always here, horn-head?”

Unicorn-Twilight narrowed her eyes at the suggestion. “No. I... I don’t think so...”

“You’ll have to excuse her,” Earth-Twilight said to Chalice, gesturing imperiously to the befuddled Unicorn-Twilight. “She’s experiencing a metaphysical disconnect between her memories of arriving here and her subconscious always existing here alongside us.”

“What?” Two Twilights and one Chalice all asked at the same time.

Earth-Twilight sighed, as if exhausted by having to explain something obvious. “The three of us have always existed here but without memory or true form... because this is a spiritual realm, you see? Or a purely magical one, depending on how much of a religious interpretation you choose to make.”

“That’s right,” Chalice said, softly. “Your body vanished after the five-alliteration spell, Twilight. You only exist on this plane, at least for now...”

“So when I ‘vanished’ from the material plane, my memories migrated here, where my subconscious already existed?” Unicorn-Twilight reasoned.

“See?” Earth-Twilight quipped with a smug smile. “Somepony who can understand basic applied metaphysics.” She pointed proudly to herself and her immaculate coat. “As you must be on the verge of realizing, we - meaning that oaf over there and myself - took on aspects familiar to you when your memories gave us bodies. My form is loosely modeled after a lovely unicorn mare named Rarity who we admire for her decorum, intelligence, refinement and poise.”

She then pointed to Pegasus-Twilight. “She, on the other hoof, is modeled after an uncouth barbarian named Rainbow Dash who we nonetheless admire for her tenacity, esprit de corps, and... uggh.” Earth-Twilight made a sour face. “Guts...”

“I’m not really sure I understand any of that mumbo jumbo,” Pegasus-Twilight grumbled after a quiet second or two. “But I guess it kinda makes sense. ...Maybe.”

“That explains what we three are doing here, but why are you here?” Unicorn-Twilight asked Chalice. The little mare was the only one still seated before the failing fire.

Chalice looked nervously from one Twilight to the next. “My brother sent me to help you...”

“I knew it!” Pegasus-Twilight declared triumphantly.

“He always did think ahead,” Earth-Twilight said with an appreciative nod.

“All right! This is good news!” Unicorn-Twilight happily clopped her hooves together, smiling eagerly like her two counterparts. “How do we get out then?”

“Umm.”

“Go on.” “Yes, please share.” “Out with it!”

“Umm.”

The three Twilights leaned in closer, waiting for an answer. Chalice shrunk down a little more in response.

“I uh,” she stammered and took a deep breath before telling them the truth. “I’m not sure.”

“What?!” “Oh dear.” “You’re not sure?!”

“I wasn’t expecting there to be three of you like this,” Chalice explained, sitting a little straighter and taller. The chains that wafted away from her back chimed like distant funeral bells. “But I’ve only ever seen others bound to thrones by a contract... never anypony who was, how to put it? Unattached?”

“ARRGHHH!” Pegasus-Twilight snarled, burying her hooves in her mane. “I can’t believe this! How useless can you be?!”

“Now, now,” Earth-Twilight chided her with a wagging hoof. “Let’s just think this through, shall we? What would the Princess do in this situation? She’d use her head.”

“There has to be something we’re overlooking,” Unicorn-Twilight reasoned.

“The fire.”

Three sets of identical eyes quickly zeroed in on Chalice, eliciting an uncomfortable grimace from the unicorn noblemare. “The fire,” she said again. “I can feel energy from it; I think it represents your life force. Look.”

The three Twilights turned to examine the fire they had all huddled around against the cold. The flame was an unremarkable orange-red, like any other bonfire... but it had no source. There was no wood or coal or embers within it that they could see. It just seemed to be burning by itself. Aside from being warm, though, it had also filled the three mares with an inexplicable sense of safety. They were drawn to it, though once around it, quickly forgot it.

“Ah! It’s gotten smaller!” Pegasus-Twilight realized first, her face pulling back into a shocked grimace. “That’s not good. I’d bet anything that isn’t good at all!”

“It has gotten smaller,” Earth-Twilight considered with a thoughtful ‘hmmm.’

Unicorn-Twilight narrowed her eyes. “There’s something in it...”

“Oh! Really? What?” Pegasus-Twilight bumped her unicorn-self aside and tried to peer into the flames. “I call dibs!”

“Let’s see,” Earth-Twilight saw it next. “Ah ha! Yes! I see it as well. I dare say it looks like the crown manifested by our Element of Harmony. You remember that, don’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah!” Pegasus-Twilight giggled and started to reach into the fire. “I’ll get it!”

“No, you idiot!”

“Wait!”

Pegasus-Twilight hissed and recoiled, her hooves smoking. She hadn’t even come close to reaching into the fire before she got burned. “Okay! Ouch. Maybe not the best idea.”

“Impulsive Idiot!” Earth-Twilight berated her other self, pointing an accusing hoof at her pegasus counterpart. “You’re the reason Princess Celestia won’t let us near noodles anymore!”

“Hey!” was Pegasus-Twilight’s biting retort. “Was not! Spike was the one who called the royal guards! We would’ve gotten away with it if he didn’t panic and run for help.”

“Don’t you blame Spike! He did the right and responsible thing calling the guards.”

“You would say that, little Miss Never-Found-A-Rule-Book-You-Didn’t-Like!”

“Rules exist for a good reason!”

“If you love ‘em so much, why don’t you marry ‘em?”

“Stop being so childish!” Unicorn-Twilight growled and snapped at her pegasus-self. “And you,” she said to her earth-self. “Stop baiting her.”

The two other-Twilights glared at their unicorn-self, but said nothing.

“Now,” Unicorn-Twilight went on to say, facing the fire that was, apparently, her life-force. “My magic doesn’t work in here, but the world does seem to respond to our thoughts and desires. I’d suggest we all think about getting it out and maybe it will float out.”

“I was about to suggest just that.”

“Yeah right you were.”

“Girls.”

“Fine.” “Yes, fine.” The three Twilights stood side by side without another word, all facing the flames. Unicorn-Twilight nodded to each of them. “Alright. Let’s start!”

Chalice watched them closely, not sure what she could do to help. All of this was so unexpected. When she had been told to look for Twilight in the Empyrean Vault, she had expected the hard part to be convincing Saggitarius to let her off the throne for a time. Once she was free to float around the vault, she had checked the other thrones first.

The shade of her sister, Antimony, was where Chalice had expected it to be. It also revealed that, as always, she was keeping a tight rein on her celestial partner. They clearly had a very different relationship than Chalice did with Sagittarius. Lyra Heartstrings, Minuette and Twinkleshine were all tethered to their thrones as well, but also insubstantial. They were simply not advanced enough into understanding their contract to enter the Vault, though Lyra was very close in her current state.

Chalice had also checked the Thrones of Sun and Moon.

Why she’d bothered... she wasn’t sure. Maybe it was morbid curiosity to see the damage she and her partner had done. To see what her brother had commanded done.

The Great Twin Thrones of Sun and Moon were still there, but the chains on them were sundered and flailing in the cold void, missing the ponies they had been bound to for so long. Before, on the rare occasions she had dared to look around the Empyrean Vault, Chalice had seen both Celestia and a darkened shade of Luna sitting regally on their thrones. They were both so strong and so perfect. Neither of them looked afraid. Neither of them cringed or shied away from the cold and the scary nightmares in the aether. They sat their thrones like they belonged on them, like they were born for them... and maybe they had been.

Chalice shook her head, trying not to think about that.

Brother’s orders were brother’s orders. He knew what he was doing, he always did. Anyway, Twilight hadn’t been in the great circle of thrones. She’d been somewhere in the middle. Even now, Chalice could see the distant silhouetted towers of the other celestial thrones, all empty, encircling them.

The binding chains jingled as Chalice sighed and set her mind to the problem at hoof. The image of Twilight Sparkle’s crown was tantalizingly close in the fire but frustratingly out of reach. The three Twilights were all trying to will it to leave the flames, but the pegasus-her was constantly losing patience and the earth-her was grumbling how the others lacked focus or mental discipline and thus messing it up for all of them. It was all up to the unicorn-Twilight to keep them both on track.

‘Are these three really aspects of the same pony?’ Chalice privately wondered. ‘And why is one an earth-pony and the other a pegasus-pony? Why aren’t all three unicorns? The earth-one said that their appearances reflected ponies that the real Twilight knew, but Lady Rarity is a unicorn. Why is the Rarity-inspired Twilight an earth pony?’

“Yes!” Twilight’s voice caught Chalice’s attention. “A little more! Almost there!”

They were close. The crown was almost entirely out of the fire and floating towards them. Chalice just sat where she was and kept watching. It was probably best not to get in the way, anyway.

“Al~l~lmost!” Unicorn-Twilight urged her other selves on. “Almost!”

“Good enough!” Pegasus-Twilight declared and snatched up the crown with a lightning quick grab. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” She gleefully hopped around in circles, a huge grin on her face. “I knew I could do it!”

“I think you mean we,” Earth-Twilight corrected her with an exhausted sigh. She held out a hoof. “Now hoof it over, if you please.”

“Ha! HA!” Pegasus-Twilight didn’t even laugh. She just stated ‘ha’ in a mocking parody of a real laugh. “Yeah right! This crown is all mine, bitches!”

“What?” Unicorn-Twilight gasped, ears flat against her head in dismay. “You can’t mean that!”

“Backstabber!” Earth-Twilight hissed. “Traitor! Turncoat! Jude Ass! I always knew you were a rotten apple!”

“Boo to you both!” Pegasus-Twilight hopped away, wings flapping as Earth-Twilight lunged for her. She evaded her counterpart with effortless ease and pointed to herself.

“Lemme tell you chumps something I bet even you don’t know, smarty pants!” Pegasus-Twilight laughed for real this time as her Earth-self fumed and her Unicorn-self looked crushed by the double-cross. “I’m the Real Twilight Sparkle! The original one!”

She pointed accusingly at them both.

“I remember when I was big and you two barely existed at all!” She proudly thumped her chest. “And you know what? Those were great times! Great times! I was free to do whatever I wanted, and everypony listened to me because I was just that awesome!”

“They listened to you because you were an infant back then, you... you infant!” Earth-Twilight yelled, jumping and clumsily missing her pegasus-self a second time. “Curse you! Stop zipping around!” She landed flat on her face and quickly jumped back up, trying to regain her dignity and poise. “I am the responsible one! I am the mature one! Mom and Dad and the Princess made me to keep you under control!”

Pegasus-Twilight stuck out her tongue and blew her other-self a raspberry. “That was then, this is now! Nyah!”

“I hate you so much!”

“Not as much as I hate you!”

“Stop it both of you!” Unicorn-Twilight seemed to snap out of her funk. “We’re all the same pony!”

“Maybe so, maybe not,” Pegasus-Twilight snickered, still holding onto the warm golden crown. The fire between them sputtered and shrunk. “I tell you what, though, I’m willing to be the bigger mare and let you girls have a slice of the pie... as long as I’m in charge again!”

“Never! Never! I would sooner die than become a big, impulsive, vicious... baby like you!” Earth-Twilight’s answer was instant and uncompromising. “All you ever think about is what you want!”

“And all you ever think about is what Mom would do, or what Dad would do, or what the Princess what do!” Pegasus-Twilight gagged. “I’m so sick of all that. I do what I wanna do! Who cares about those other ponies?”

“Blasphemy!”

“Nyah! Freedom!”

“I’ll kill you!”

“Gotta catch me first!”

Earth chased Pegasus around the dying fire, and Chalice had to duck to avoid being trampled by the two angry Twilight Sparkles. While it was hard to tell exactly what was going on, this was clearly not good. Perhaps it was time to speak up or even to do something.

“Excuse me--”

“Shut up, you!” “If you won’t help, please keep out of the way!”

Chalice slowly lowered her hoof. Hmm. Maybe this would be harder than she thought. If only brother or Saggitarius were here. They would know what to say and do.

“That is... IT!” Unicorn-Twilight suddenly yelled, grabbing hold of both of her other selves, pegasus by the wing and earth by her mane. Both crashed to the ground in a heap.

“Hey!” Pegasus-her clutched onto her stolen crown. “You wanna fight or something?”

“Yes, give her a good thrashing!” Earth-her shook a clenched hoof. “I’ll help!”

“No and NO!” Unicorn-Twilight stood over her fallen selves. She shook her head in disapproval and disappointment. “Haven’t you two learned anything?” She let go of Earth’s mane and Pegasus’ wing. “All you do is fight and all I do is try and keep you from tearing each other apart.”

“So?” “Yes, so what?”

“So... you’re Twilight Sparkle.” Unicorn-Twilight pointed to her Earth self. Then to her Pegasus self. “And so are you.” And then to herself. “And so am I.”

She reached out to her Pegasus-self, and the latter flinched, wary of being punished for her behavior, but Unicorn-Twilight gently ran a hoof along her cheek. “You’re my pride and humility, my reasoning and my instincts, everything I’ve learned and everything I was born with...”

She turned to her Earth self with pleading eyes. “You’re my good and my bad, everything I want to be and everything I once was... all of me is all of you! Both of you! It isn’t perfect, but it’s me! And the only way we’re getting out of this is together.”

“Together?” both Twilights said at the same time and with the same look, like they’d smelled something spoiled.

“That’s right: together.” Unicorn-Twilight smiled and laughed. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last two years is that we’re all stronger together than we are apart.”

Pegasus Twilight looked down at her stolen crown and frowned. Earth Twilight just looked away, also scowling guiltily. Sensing opportunity, Unicorn-Twilight extended her forelegs and wrapped them both in a hug. It didn’t happen right away, but slowly, Earth and Pegasus glanced back at one another. Pegasus gave in first, closing her eyes and sighing, nuzzling her other self and letting go of the crown. Earth quickly glanced over at the crown, now ripe for the taking, and started to reach for it...

“Ohhhh... oh fine,” she grumbled, and let it go. Smiling, she gave in to the hug. “I guess this is okay, too.”

“Yeah,” Pegasus-Twilight muttered with a contented sigh. “This isn’t so bad.”

“No,” Unicorn-Twilight said, closing her eyes as well. “It isn’t that bad at all.”

“That light?” Chalice gasped, squinting her eyes as the three lavender mares vanished in a swirling vortex of scintillating flame. It was coming from the fire... the fire that had been dying but that was now roaring with renewed life. Wisps of white-hot light lifted the three mares into the air together and as they ascended they became increasingly indistinct. More than that: they began to meld together.

‘This is it!’ Chalice realized, shielding her eyes with her leg. ‘This has to be...!’

The whirlpool of light burst like a splitting cocoon, and a new being emerged.

A horn extended proudly from its brow.

Wings spread behind its back.

Its body radiated power.

‘Brother! You were right!’

Twilight landed on her hooves and took her first breath with her new body, her corporeal body. Chalice could feel the difference between them. A little bit taller and a little bit leggier, this Twilight Sparkle had no chains binding her; her body was flesh and blood but also pure magic, unified. In this state she could exist within the Empyrean Vault without assistance or restraint. If anything, she was more radiant here, in her element, untarnished by existing in a simply material world.

A glittering crown, her element of harmony given form, stood proudly on her brow.

“Alicorn,” Chalice whispered the word, taking in the new Twilight. “You’re an alicorn!”

“What?” Twilight asked, the glow in her eyes fading away to reveal the same purple orbs she had always had. “No! No, I’m just... me.” She did, however, look down at her slightly longer legs and then back at her slowly spreading wings and wince. “All... of me.”

- - -

Eunomie’s one remaining eye opened wide.

Brass noticed it right away. Felt it in his star field. They were back: Twilight and Chalice both, though the latter was still shrouded by her celestial partner. It was a relief to know they were still alive, back from the dark and forbidden realm only Chalice had ever seen with living eyes. But--

Still, he needed to hear it to be sure. “Eunomie. Twilight and Chalice...?”

“They have returned,” she confirmed, a ghostly wisp of smoke leaking out from her closed right eye. “I am re-establishing my connection. Interesting. As you predicted, Twilight Sparkle has ascended.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Alpha Brass nodded in approval. “Good,” he summed his feelings up in a single curt response. “And the contracts?”

“Intact.”

“Very good,” he amended his earlier words, now heavily laden with anticipation of what was to come. It was all for this moment. All the pain. All the suffering. All the sacrifices. All of it, all waiting for this, building to this.

“Send a familiar down to the Effulgent Forge,” he ordered, and Eunomie was already underway, a new familiar darting through the room’s oculus. Brass’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “We need to act while Euporie’s spell is still in full effect across the city. After so many years... we are finally ready to sign our new contract... we are finally ready to create the Fourth Tribe.”

Comments

[Capn_Chryssalid]

6327340
Thanks. I applied both corrections, btw.

6328722
It is clear at this point that - in keeping with a major theme in the story - that Arsenic became both something more and something less than a pony in her lifelong quest to prove herself 'worthy.' Though she pre-dated EQG, I guess she's a lot like Sunset Shimmer in that respect - I think a lot of her motivation, too, was a feeling of rejection. This is also why Arsenic never ascended, even though there are spells cast that are 'Arsenic's' this or that. She lacked harmony, and that's not something that can be taught, only drawn from experience.

More ascending and super-villainy to come in this next chapter, as you'll see!

6340136
It is brutally tough coming back after a year, no doubt about it. But things are what they are. Just gotta make the best of it. Every chapter brings me closer to the end, so you'll be able to read it before too long.

6348429
Totally ripped it up.
Everything after this point in Equestria is going to be very different than canon.

[SoNotBobby]

I can't believe I got here this early. Awesome chapter, like always!

[Cereal-Killer]

We are finally ready to create the Fourth Tribe.

Dun Dun DUN

[Von Voctavia]

After all this time I just noticed it's called "This Platinum Crown" and not "The Platinum Crown"

[RadicalDishonesty]

6395508
Your avatar has been waiting for this day a long time, hasn't it?

[Capn_Chryssalid]

6352756
I love Guyra, but Mister Harper is ALSO the Illusive Man.
I just couldn't resist. Lyra's always so much fun.

6362336
What Arsenic is... eldrich is really the best description.
I had a talk with some readers during Bronycon, and they found it funny how Equestria (canon and especially in TPC) is sort of full of these eldrich things and probably like half of them were ponies ones. Arsenic is mostly different in the fact that she isn't buried and locked up in her chamber to wait there a 1000 years for some unsuspecting adventurer or something.

6380375
An awesome comment, if only because it reminds me of how exhausting it can be trying to cram SO MUCH into one giant story. lol
I think if I had to give people advice on writing this sort of story is to tell them to be careful about getting in over their head. In my case, I figured: I've written lots of epic fics before, this is going to be my one epic pony fic, so I might as well take the opportunity to do ALL the stuff I wanted to do in Equestria.

But I'm here to stay, or rather, to finish. I'm just a stone's throw from the end I've had in mind for more than two years.

6382051
Balls to all those punctuation problems. I've found that after the first 500,000 words you start to care less and less about minutiae of proper grammar and more about gettin' it done. Not a good habit to have, really, hahaha. I remember in the first dozen chapters how I would pore over the document to pick out the tiniest error. Now I spent a lot more time trying to keep all the crazy stuff going on in the story flowing in the right direction downstream.

Anyway, that's why editors get paid.

You're right, though, that in the earlier uses of the gender-swap spell the voices remained the same (Sand Dune even noted that she knew a spell to fix that). Twilight's mega-spell, though, changed voices along with the appearance of all those hit by it. Meta-answer is I forgot that, but in-verse you can just chalk it up to this spell being much more powerful. There are gradations and different versions of gender-swapping spells, too, so I think it works that way well enough.

As for Euporie, yes, she's pretty screwed up, and it'll be up to the next chapter (chapter 60) to show everyone why she is the way she is, and how Pinkie's going to take her down. Finally, in the canon Canterlot Wedding, I always thought that what happened was that Cadance and Shining's love power-up (a thing in TPC, too) just sent out a renewed version of his shield-spell. This pushed all the changelings out, repelling them as it expanded. As for what'll happen here? Who knows...? As for my updates, they'll be coming. I can't commit and say they'll be an update every week, but there should be one or two a month until I'm done.

[Capn_Chryssalid]

6355943

The training wheels are/were basically used to flex the wings and move them in a circle, training up the muscles. Like holding out your arms and doing revolutions with them while holding a deadweight. By pegasus standards it is like training with a medicine ball, very old fashioned stuff.

6374601
Let me also say I am so glad some people got that. I spent quite a while re-reading my old Jane's Aircraft books and other aviation stuff and reading up on WW1 dogfighting for those parts of the story. Just to get my mental mood right.
Suzukaze's cutie mark is actually related to that. It was a logo I saw on a WW2 fighter.
6375165
Just because I'm a sociopath doesn't mean we can't get along.
6380076
You know, there's been jokes about those garden statues being petrified ponies basically ever since Discord got blasted. I won't say yes and I won't say no.
As for Arsenic's mane... in that scene, it was moving for different reasons.

[garfan]

do you ever read something and think it should be good, but it just isn't? I think this stuff just couldn't happen in the Equestria in my head

[Moongaze14]

OK, this chapter was amazing. Euporie's plan to control the crowd is devious and Pinkie's resistance and foresight...in the form of the Flim Flam brothers making a DJ wagon that stole Vinyl's heart... was an interesting twist. Twilight being divided into three different versions if herself that represent her superego (Earth), ego (unicorn), and I'd (Pegasus) was a brilliant idea. The fact that those three accepted each other and led to Twilight's ascension was brilliant. Once again, I have mixed feelings about Brass. On one hand, we're reminded that he wants to betray Celestia and Luna, all in an attempt of destroying the current status quo and make a new world, even if it means that he has to manipulate Twilight to do the dirty job. On the other hand, his contact with Twilight has slowly allowed him to regain part of his emotions and is possibly falling in love with her to the point that he fears of Twilight's betrayed face when she discovers that he is manipulating her. Not going to lie a part of me hopes he gets redemption but with all of his crimes he'd probably get killed or banished. All in all, Brass reminds me of Stannis Baratheon with people skills as he's willing to do cruel things for the sake of his version of Equestria. Still, I wonder what are Brass' plans for that Fourth Tribe and what would happen now that Twilight is back. Thanks for the exciting chapter. I hope to see the next one soon.

[Obsidian]

And plot pieces, carefully crafted and chekoved into existence are starting to fall into place. The world building is close to becoming complete.

It seems like Brass is planning on creating the 4th tribe, Alicorns as a actual tribe, not just an evolution of normal pony who's surpassed boundries.

I'm curious about the Vault and it's occupants, the throne of sun and moon and how/if Cadence falls into this. She too ascended, but she doesn't seem to be bound to a celestial entity.

[Municipal Engines]

I can't remember where or when it was mentioned how Princess Cadence ascended. She used a five-alliteration spell too, right?

[SomeRandomMinion]

Pinkie's hinted moral outrage at Europie's mind control was brilliant--wonder if she and Vinyl will try and avert the genocide...

And Twi's alicorn already?! It is about to hit the fan!

[KeePony]

Twilight is going to be harder to control than Brass thinks. She has no chains binding her to the contract. She'll probaly make friends with it

[RoboRed]

After so many years... we are finally ready to sign our new contract... we are finally ready to create the Fourth Tribe.”

Idon'ttrusthimIdon'ttrusthimIdon'ttrusthimIdon'ttrusthimIdon'ttrusthimIdon'ttrusthimIdon'ttrusthimIdon'ttrusthim...

[Capn_Chryssalid]

6395851

The exact details were left somewhat vague, but were based on the semi-canon IDW comic that covered her background. She was originally a pegasus and, as a filly, used her love magic to redeem/save a pony who was threatening the town where she lived. Comparatively mundane, really, when contrasted with what Twilight did here. Similarly, Arsenic is clearly capable of 5-allit spells, and inventing new spells, but never ascended to alicorn-hood. Neither did Bluebelle in the TSC-TBNE crossover bits.

[Municipal Engines]

6395914

Wait, so if a 5-Allit spell isn't the key to ascending, what is? What's the thing that let's Cadence ascend without a 5-Allit triggering it and what made Twilight ascend when she did a 5-Allit? What made Arsenic not ascend? (I'm assuming her poisonous, despicable personality not meshing with the EoH).

[Ytak]

I have a suspicion that Alpha Brass will discover that his plan (which I'm now starting to properly understand) never would have worked in the first place.

[Bugsydor]

Fourth tribe...

So, is he planning to create a new line of alicorns to rule Equestria (unlikely)? Or is he going to try to make everypony ascend?

Also, while I dislike Freudian psychology, it was kinda cool seeing Twilight ascending via becoming one with herself.

[vader10001]

Each update is just building the anticipation more and more. I can't wait for the climax to truly arrive.

Also, the one thing I am hoping for more than anything else: Alpha Brass's death. He should not be redeemed, he should not decide that he actually is in love with Twilight, he needs to die. After everything that he has done, I don't think there is any other way to end his character arc.

[Fox]

6395999 The key to ascension is new magic, which is likely (in this universe, at least) only achievable by accessing one's latent magic. For Cadance, that required teaching someone to love - for Twilight, that required using a spell that tested the limits of her power.

As for Arsenic.. I know Capn said she didn't, but I'm holding onto my headcanon that she did ascend, but in an unprecedented way as a result of her "unique" dabblings in magic; perhaps there's more than one Vault, and that's where she is now? Maybe an artificial one of her own device? Hence her similar mechanic to the Celestials, taking on a host to interact with the physical world.

6396139 I kind of hope he does succeed, though insight into the future doesn't make it seem that way.. I'm pretty tired of villains/quasi-villains masterfully orchestrating their plots to fruition, only to have it bungled at the end by the protagonists or a cosmic bitch slap. Given how brilliant he's been so far, I can't imagine how a continuation of the obviously-deficient status quo could be any better than his intricate plans for Equinity.. and even if it is, I'd still like to see it happen.

[rosebug]

Nice, so Twilight was able to take the final step in becoming an alicorn through harmony and becoming one with herself. I can see how somepony like Arsenic who lacks that, but has the raw power to perform a 5 alliteration spell, wouldn't be able to ascend.

I wonder how well Alpha Brass' plan will actually work once Twilight finds out what his plans really are.

[Indalecio]

6396769

Possible its also because neither Twilight nor Cadence were trying to ascend, but were trying to accomplish a goal that was outside there own benefit. The goals that they were trying to accomplish were selfless, while Aresnic's only goal was to prove that she was the one who deserved to wear the Platinum Crown, and not her sister. I think this twisted her Ascension into what we see her as currently.

[Majk]

6396648 Sadly, i agree. There is too much sacrifice this and that in his head to suddenly turn a new leaf. But we'll see how it goes.

[GBscientist]

The new Doof Wagon that Flim and Flam built for Pinkie and Vinyl needs more big ass drums. And a flame-thrower guitar.

I also liked the Guy-ra joke, but like one of the previous posters said, 'Mr. Harper' brought to mind my not-so-dear Prime Minister more than TIM.

[Lithl]

6395914
That wasn't in the IDW comics, that's from the novel Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell by G. M. Berrow.

[Forderz]

Hmm. It looks like Brass fundamentally misunderstands what an alicorn is. I can't recall if it was Luna or Celestia that said it, but one of them stated that alicorns were not the sum of the three tribes, instead, the pony tribes are the component parts of alicorns. The three tribes aren't tribes at all, just the singular facets of equinity expressed on the material realm, while the other two thirds chill out in metaphysical land.

Instead of whatever exactly his plan is, I think he might end up sundering the firmament that separates the Vault from the material world, or something equally bad. Brass, Euporie, and Eunomie all have incomplete/flat out wrong ideas of the fundamental nature of ponies and the world they inhabit; considering that they are the primary architects of this endeavour, something is going to blow up in their face in a bad, bad way.

Antimony's shade being in the Vault came as a surprise, until I recalled a line about her cutie mark not always having the faint stars superimposed on it in a flashback. Is her having a full contract supposed to be news? I don't remember it being explicitly stated she was also a signed to a otherworldly being. Do we even know which one? Chalice didn't reveal it in the chapter so I think it is a mystery.

Regardless, I predict something up there in the Vault is going to require either Antimony or Chalice to do something to it at some point. Either the reforging of the crown will go tits up or the diarchs will try and cheat getting their thrones back without the crown, and it will be because Antimony and Chalice have had introductions to real friendship (Rarity and Fluttershy) that she/they will succeed.

Of course Vinyl and Pinkie will combat Euporie's mind-murder ministrations by just drowning it out with phat beats. Can't murderously rage about if you're too busy getting low on the dancefloor!

Cadence, I can say with confidence, will succumb to Euporie's hate, as she really hates changelings right now. If Shining recovers, she'll fight it off instantly. Celestia will probably be level-headed enough to restrain herself, unless she meets Chrysalis. I can see her losing control if she meets the architect of this disaster. Unless, of course, Chrysalis is truly beaten and humbled. Twilight is probably still pissed.

Luna, riding high on the love and acceptance of the ponies of Canterlot, is likely in the best headspace to resist out of the Princesses.

You know what isn't fabulous? Genocide. You know who will be the staunchest bulwark against Euporie aside from Pinkie? Rarity.

When will Rarity get a chance to wear that crown, anyways?

And what the heck happened to Sand Dune? Last we saw of her, she was supporting Rarity in the moments directly after the wedding.

[Elsaack]

“I thought you guys were just party maniacs?” Vinyl asked

pinkie.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw3586-1331527046626.gif
But seriously, just when Alpha's plan is starting to be illuminated, he drops a line like that and makes us realize that we're only seeing Step 1: Depose the Princesses. There are a few more things incoming before we get to the end.
Step @: Emplace new Sun and Moon
Step *: Wipe out Changelings
Step &: Create Fourth Tribe
And quite a few others I'm sure.

I think that he'll be surprised that the Princesses haven't been curled up somewhere since being disconnected from their thrones. How will he stop the population from continuing to follow the old Sun and Moon, or stop them from just breaking This New Platinum Crown and retaking their celestial thrones? I suspect there is another step for that.

[Walabio]

The fighting of the Earthen and the Pegasus of Miss Twilight Sparkle reminds me of Aria Blaze and Sonata Dusk fighting in MLP:FiM:EG#2: Rainbow Rocks.

[The Great Derpsby]

6396749
It's possible that Brass will stumble due to a common villain mistake, particularly one of the Well-intentioned Extremist type.

I think he know his plans require sacrifice. But I also think he wants the sacrifice to be carried mainly by other ponies—those unwilling and unasked.

And I think he believes he's sacrificing enough/has sacrificed enough himself to justify every horrible thing he's about to do.

[psychicscubadiver]

Still one of my favorite stories ever. Shine on you crazy diamond.

[StalwartHeart]

I've been reading this fic for a long time, and I kinda hate to say this but.... didn't this used to be a story about Rarity and Blueblood? I know stories grow and evolve, but there's a fine line between that and completely forgetting the established main character and the premise tied into their story (which is the story that attracted to me this fic in the first place; a dramatic and action packed, Rarity focused fic) in favor of excessive world-building with other characters. Heck, even in the new cover art she's pushed off to the bottom corner looking scared.

[Leftover of Saikano]

Behold, Princess Twilight coming!
Also, behold! Doof Wagon coming too!
vignette4.wikia.nocookie.net/roadwarrior/images/1/1b/Fury_Road_Doof_Wagon_002.jpg
The fourth race won't sing shoobedoo shoo shoobedoo, right?

[Couch]

6403012
I have to admit, while I do enjoy reading every chapter, I was personally much more invested in the story when it was about Rarity and Blueblood than now when it's essentially Twilight's show. I like Twilight, but she already has a show where she gets to be the star in every major episode. Rarity, and especially Blueblood, don't get to be the focus characters of adventure fics all that often.

That Twilight spends most of her pagecount being cluelessly manipulated by the master villain doesn't help.

[Capn_Chryssalid]

6406032
6403012

I can certainly see what you both mean, and it is something I've thought about, too. After Rarity's fight with Antimony and her later political maneuvering to secure Sand Dune and the other nobles behind her when the Black Wedding hit, after that and in-between there was a lot of Twilight, to the point where Twilight did kind of take over a lot of the story, though not so much the agency behind the story.

There was always supposed to be some of that, since all the mane six were getting an opposite number to confront, but Twilight's story arc definitely ended up on the receiving end of some narrative bloat. A lot of it was also necessary, I think, leading me to believe I just poorly and sharply underestimated what I could tell with how many words when it came to her part of the story. But... there was always a reason why I put so much focus on Twilight in what is and was a Rarity-protagonist-centered story.

[Couch]

6406626

I mean, part of the problem is that Twilight has sucked up so much of the pagecount while having close to zero agency. Nearly everything she does thus far is dancing to Brass's tune, so everything written about her is really written about him. At the same time, all that pagecount devoted to Twilight and the changelings has made the first part, with Rarity trying to secure legitimacy and work her way through the politics of nobility, essentially meaningless because in the face of the changeling threat, Euporie's Psychic Dominator scheme, and then the cosmic-level disaster being presented by Alpha Brass's plotting, everything else has to be put on hold. It's a threat that eclipses the original plot entirely because even the most insane characters aren't trying to have duels or jockey for superiority while Canterlot is burning and the sun and moon are unmoored from the only beings keeping them in check.

I have faith that there will eventually be a reason that this all ties back to Rarity and Blueblood being the ones who save the day, but it does feel like the changelings and Alpha Brass more or less devoured an entirely different story to tell their much more grandiose one. And it's not a bad story by any means, but I kind of wanted to see where that first story was going.

[Glazius]

And so, our wandering weirdo and his scrappy companions hurtle toward their confrontation with the darkness that lurks in parties. Some might call him... awesome?

Yes, that's right, Jack McBrayer is now voicing Pinkie Pie and NOTHING YOU SAY CAN STOP ME.

[DragonMaus]

The pink party pony prepares to perplex her primary opponent, the party predator.

Incoming Twilight Sparkle freakout in 3...
2...
1...

[MustacheMerlin]

Holy DragonBalls! 830,000 words?! Looks like I won't be catching up with Sweetie Chronicles anytime soon.

On the flip side, this means that I won't be running out of good pony words anytime soon either.

[Capn_Chryssalid]

6421880

The Bluebelle in the TSC cross, the one who designed the garden maze, was indeed a genius... though of the somewhat "mad genius" variety. History records her eccentricity more than her brilliance, however, as Blueblood recounts. At least part of the blame for her mental state is likely due to the Twilight Fragment she discovered, adopted, and became enamored with (and obsessed with protecting). I recall TSC Sweetie thought as much, too, in that her actions likely ruined Bluebelle's life. It isn't 100% true but it isn't 100% false either.

6422034
It'll be back... though the results of it won't really begin factor into the story until the arc after the one you're currently reading.

[Ita-Ita]

6406914

This is way valid, and is a fair and fitting critique of the structure of the whole fic, and its narrative focuses. Foci? But for all that TPC expands beyond its original, sparser cast at the cost of being able to draw out much more that's still meaningful from that core story*, I think it's going to be fun rereading this fic like it's describing something like WW1. A thread of Get That Crown conflict that turns out to be part of a whole fabric of ponies transforming Equestria in the cause(s) of sometimes-ancient family legacies, vendettas, hungers, etceteras. A whole tapestry. That was a very #Rarity metaphor (I'm looking forward to reading about her in this story again too).

*Rarity could have an ENTIRE wedding in which ponies had a duel AT that wedding and it'd feel like a much more minor scene, now.

(Still loving this fic though.)

[djthomp]

Unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony Twilight? Fun.

“But angry ponies are stupid ponies,” Pinkie interrupted, fixing Vinyl with steely blue eyes. “Angry ponies don’t think. Angry ponies make dumb mistakes. Do you know what ten thousand angry ponies becomes? I’ll tell you: they become a mob.”

Yeah, that's a pretty big problem with the Euporie spell plan, so much potential for civilian casualties who shouldn't be anywhere near an assault.

A thin unicorn mare emerged from atop the armed and armored Party Wagon wearing a pinstripe vest over a white blouse. “Flim!”
An almost identical mare appeared on the opposite side, an extra lick of white highlighting her red bangs. “Flam!”
“The amazing and incomparable Flim Flam Brothers!” the duo declared in unison, fireworks bursting behind them. “Present to you both: The Super Smashy Party Crasher 10000!”

Awesome.

Pinkie is the best party planner of all time. Watch out, Euporie!

“I get the idea, Eunomie,” Brass interrupted her with a chuckle. “But in this case, Twilight’s feelings are simply a side effect of my magic. Male or female, this is always the end result. Even when I tell them what they feel is just an echo, none seem to care.”

Ahhhh, dang. I'm going to have to tear up this TwiBrass! banner, aren't I?

On the other hand, it does sound like Brass is having some doubts about his plans on account of some feelings of his own towards Twilight, but I still can't really approve of a relationship that based on some form of mind control.

Thrones? Others who would bother Chalice if she didn't have the chains stretching back to Sagittarius? Interesting. Makes me wonder how many thrones total, Sun, Moon, and then one each for the zodiac signs?

I find it particularly interesting who Twilight's other mental constructs are based on. Seems reasonable, of the mane six, Rarity and Rainbow are particularly more larger than life even compared to the others.

She then pointed to Pegasus-Twilight. “She, on the other hoof, is modeled after an uncouth barbarian named Rainbow Dash who we nonetheless admire for her tenacity, esprit de corps, and... uggh.” Earth-Twilight made a sour face. “Guts...”

That is pretty fair, pegasi really are only about three quarters civilized.

The fire is getting smaller? That seems bad.

“Impulsive Idiot!” Earth-Twilight berated her other self, pointing an accusing hoof at her pegasus counterpart. “You’re the reason Princess Celestia won’t let us near noodles anymore!”

Hahahahaha! That said, man would it suck to not be allowed around noodles on account of some past noodle incident. Life would be just a bit sadder without the possibility of Italian food.

The whirlpool of light burst like a splitting cocoon, and a new being emerged.
A horn extended proudly from its brow.
Wings spread behind its back.
Its body radiated power.
‘Brother! You were right!’
Twilight landed on her hooves and took her first breath with her new body, her corporeal body. Chalice could feel the difference between them. A little bit taller and a little bit leggier, this Twilight Sparkle had no chains binding her; her body was flesh and blood but also pure magic, unified. In this state she could exist within the Empyrean Vault without assistance or restraint. If anything, she was more radiant here, in her element, untarnished by existing in a simply material world.

Ahh, yeah!

“Send a familiar down to the Effulgent Forge,” he ordered, and Eunomie was already underway, a new familiar darting through the room’s oculus. Brass’s eyes narrowed in concentration. “We need to act while Euporie’s spell is still in full effect across the city. After so many years... we are finally ready to sign our new contract... we are finally ready to create the Fourth Tribe.”

Wait, what!?

Hmnn. Is the overall Brass plan to ascend more than just Twilight to alicornhood? With that mention of Euporie’s spell, possibly the entire affected populace of the city? Or maybe something more sinister regarding them, does non-Cadance/Twilight style ascension require fuel of some sort? (That may be darker than intended, but that's where my mind went.) Maybe the goal is Terre Rare as alicorns to establish them as the dominant house more or less for all time, without even the Princesses for competition?

[Snowdrifter]

“All praise for the crazy twitching precognition,” Vinyl scoffed. “I feel one hundred percent confident already. So where is your sixth sense leading us anyway?”
“Canterlot.”
“Canterlot?”
“Canterlot!”

It's only a model...
Shhhhh!

[FOXTrot2]

“What are you, a pet dog?”

This is literally exactly what I was thinking as I read it.

Chalices tale truly is a sad and mundane one.

To her brother, she is the most "reliable", but thats mostly because she has little sense of sekf, and very little personal power.

And now, in the Empyrean Vault, she is chained to Sagitarrius throne.
Like a pet being leashed to home.
In can just imagine it: "don't wander too far from home! The dog catcher May come after you!"

Which is why she wears the leash if chains. The Dog Catchers would basically be the other god-like beings just milling about out there, ready to snatch up any mortal foolish enough to loiter around their realm and home.

So, technically, she has less power and freedom then anypony.
But yet at the same time she has a 'freind' with godly powers and an alien mindset and feelings.

...everything is so weird.

But not as weird as the other Twilights.

Congrats Twi! You are finally whole!
And now your spark shines brighter in the blackest abyss then Celestias Sun on the brightest of days!

I wonder if she also has that "I can see here and there" deals?
It would be cool.

Like if Eunomie had one of her...ghost Things in the Vault and on Equus, seeing through both simultaneously.

[Arkonfleight]

Many years in the future, at the Multiversal Twilight Convention.
"So how did you ascend, then?"
"Casting an incredibly powerful spell that covered the entire country."
"So what did it do?"
"... Oh, you know... magic... stuff."

[heynow]

eight pointed star with five little stars surrounding it.

You've been getting Twilight's cutie mark wrong this whole time. It's a 6 pointed star on top of another 6 pointed star. Not an 8 pointed star.

“You’re the reason Princess Celestia won’t let us near noodles anymore!”

A true noodle incident.

“I need perspective!” she realized. “A flat plane...!”

Very Evangelion.

I feel like pre-Equestrian ponies would have had a harder time with the whole merging the three tribes thing. I wonder if a lot of ascensions have failed at that stage.

[lazyreader19]

“This is crazy,” Dash declared, landing amid their party with a huff. “What do you think, Applejack?”

“Eyup.”

“Not even funny.”

“It was ah little funny.”

I agree, it was pretty funny