Chapter 02: Night Mare

Chapter 2: Night Mare

The double-doors partitioning the corridors burst into smoking fragments as Twilight strode purposefully through the castle, the marble flagstones growing hot and cracking under her platinum-shod hooves. She hadn’t bothered changing out of the ceremonial regalia she’d worn to the conference, and most of the ponies in the castle had never seen her wearing it. Unlike the two older Princesses, Twilight famously shunned all royal finery, making her somewhat of a particularly-beloved Everypony. But not now. Now she was wearing her knee-high hoofguards, her star-shaped jewelled necklace, her glittering crown, and combined with the expression of white-hot fury on her face...

She was an angry god, an utterly terrifying image of approaching death and despair to the poor helpless mortals who saw her now. There’d been two hundred years of total peace. No living pony had ever seen an angry alicorn, but they were seeing one now. The guards and attendants were turning tail and fleeing, unable to stay in the same room as this furious spirit of magical vengeance.

She came to the top of the last staircase and scowled at the doors before her as the two pegasus guards cried out in fear and leaped through the tower windows. The doors exploded into dust and splinters. Without hesitating, she strode through the smoking arch for the first time in more than nine hundred years, the first time since that terrible week long ago, the week that Rainbow Dash had died.

The first of her friends to die. The death of a loved one was always hard, but she'd seen many, many deaths over the last ten centuries. Every creature dies. With death being as much a normal part of life as birth, even her Sisters and herself would die one day. At least, natural death was a normal part of life. All of her friends had died from old age - all of them except Spike.

Murder was never natural.

“Twilight!”

Celestia came galloping through the cracked archway as Twilight continued her march towards the doors at the far end of the hall, the doors that took the magic of all three Royal Princesses to open. “Twilight!” the eldest alicorn called again, sprinting past her lavender Sister and stopping right in Twilight’s path, hooves splayed, wings flared, a look of confusion and concern on her face. “What are you doing, Littlest Sister? The castle is in an uproar! What has -”

Twilight didn’t break her stride, smacking her Biggest Sister out of her way as she continued on towards the Vault. Celestia smashed into the ancient stone wall with an ear-splitting crack, shattering the intricate stone patterns for dozens of feet in all directions.

“LITTLE SISTER,” thundered a regal voice.

Princess Luna had materialised out of thin air directly in front of Twilight. The youngest alicorn didn't even blink. The Princess of the Night found herself colliding face-first with the thick stone wall of the chamber, right next to her gaping older sister.

With twin flashes of sunlight and moonlight, the two older Princesses vanished and reappeared together, side-by-side, in front of the Vault of Harmony’s magically-locked stone doors.

Their wings were raised. Their horns were glowing. Their eyes were surprised and confused.

“What’s wrong, Twilight?” Celestia asked, her face pleading. “What happened at the conference? Where’s Spike?”

“He’s dead.” Twilight’s voice was totally devoid of emotion. Both Celestia and Luna gasped as she halted before them, her horn blazing crimson-gold. “Please, get out of my way.”

Luna was the first to find her voice. “Tell us what has happened,” she managed to say.

“They attacked me. The dragons attacked me. Please get out of my way.”

“They ATTACKED...?!” Luna lowered her wings, her mouth agape. “Why?!”

“I believe that Fracture’s exact words were ‘And now we have a bargaining chip’,” Twilight said acidly. “Pathetic fool. He deserved to die. Please -”

“TWILIGHT!” Celestia gasped. “You killed a dragon?! You killed their ambassador?!”

“Spike killed him.” Her mouth twisted into a vindictive smile. “He killed them all.”

Both Celestia’s and Luna’s minds were spinning in shock. Spike... He wasn’t even a thousand years old. Barely two hundred feet long from snout to tail, he would be completely dwarfed by a fully-grown dragon. And he had killed... “How many?” Luna breathed, visibly wilting.

“Twenty three. Now, if you don’t mind, please get out of my way.”

“He...” Celestia sat down in shock. Twenty three dead dragons. No. No, no no, twenty four. “He killed them all?” she gasped, shaken to her core. “He... He died in the fight?”

“He survived the fight. He survived it. Barely. His wounds... His Dragonfire... He... I was... On the way back he... I...” Twilight’s voice broke. “I was trying to... I couldn’t get him back here in time,” she whispered, closing her eyes for a second or two. Then she scowled, and glared at the other two alicorns. “Please, just get out of my way,” she repeated again, no sign of weakness in her suddenly granite-hard voice.

Tears were trailing down Celestia’s face as she slowly stood up again. She’d been Spike’s first teacher before presenting him to Twilight. She loved the “little” dragon as if he’d been her own child, like she loved all of her little ponies. So old, but so young... And now he was dead, along with so many more of the magnificent magical creatures... “Why... How did this happen?”

Twilight lost her patience.

“He’s dead because they attacked me. They did this. They killed him. They attacked me in a foolish attempt to capture me, to force Our cooperation with their stupid plan to shorten the days. I held several at bay, and he did the same.” Twilight’s eyes lost focus for a moment as she remembered the destruction. Her voice grew softer. “They started the violence, they started it when they... They couldn’t get close to me so they attacked. One of them threw a boulder at me, a massive boulder. It was probably, I don’t know, it would have been either Sizzle or Rumble, they were the biggest I think. Rumble was more than a thousand feet long. It was probably Rumble, he could have lifted that boulder easily. And of course Spike intercepted it, just before I moved to whack it aside. It was bigger than he was... It exploded when it hit him. I thought it had killed him, but...”

Celestia and Luna both looked stricken as Twilight continued, not snapping and angry anymore but speaking hollowly, disconnectedly, as if she was telling a story that had happened to somepony else. “He went mad. His rage was... I’d never seen such rage. He killed two of them so fast, I don’t even know how he did it. He ripped their heads clean off, but I didn’t see how, then... The killing... All of them. When he lost his wings, he started levitating instead. And he never was very good at that spell. I’ve never seen anything move so quickly, it all happened so fast... He was snatching them out of the air in front of me where I was holding them, breaking their necks, ripping their heads and limbs off, using the dead as clubs against the living, even after he lost his eye he didn’t slow down or stop... He set one on fire, I thought dragons were completely fireproof but his breath was so hot and bright, brighter than any Dragonfire I’ve ever seen, he actually set a dragon on fire...”

“How long...” Luna whispered. “How long did this battle go on for? Could you not have done anything?”

Twilight’s head dropped slightly, her unfocused gaze seeming to go right through her Sisters as she continued speaking in that flat, hollow tone. She had started trembling. “It was all over in about five seconds. And I don’t think I could have stopped him, it was like he’d lost his mind... We weren’t very high, but the dead hadn’t even hit the ground before it was... It was too late. Most of them were in pieces, and he was such a mess, I couldn’t teleport him back here, I...” Her eyes snapped back into focus. “THEY KILLED HIM!” she suddenly screamed, screwing up her face as her faux-calm demeanour evaporated. “And I’m going to kill them in turn! All of them! Every last one! EVERY LAST ONE!”

Her Sisters backed up, their tails brushing the impassable doors to the Vault as Twilight glared at them, taking deep, violent breaths. Celestia was terrified, and she had absolutely no idea what she should do. Nearly two thousand years ago she’d seen another pony behave in almost exactly the same way as this, and that pony was standing beside her right now. She could almost feel the fear coming off Luna’s trembling form as her Little Sister relived the terrible moments of her own first uncontrolled transformation. That had been the result of centuries upon centuries of bitter jealousy, and the malicious intervention of an ancient spirit of chaos when Luna was at her weakest. What was this? Anger? Rage? Fury? Was this a sudden thing or had Twilight been brooding on this for years? What could she and Luna do? She knew that she only had moments to act - maybe she could remind Twilight of a few things...

Luna beat her to it.

“Twilight, you’re an alicorn. You’re an Eternal Sister. Please, you must calm down! You have to control your emotions! Remember what can happen if we let our stores of emotion run loose, they can overpower us, change who we really are, make us call upon unnatural dark powers that we would never normally be able -”

“EVERY SINGLE LIVING DRAGON IS MY HELPLESS PREY!” Twilight Sparkle roared in a voice that shook the entire castle.

Her eyes flashed pure, blank, blistering white as the two magically-protected stone doors behind her Sisters crumbled into dust in her fury. A small jewelled wooden chest sat on a low pedestal, waiting for her to claim and command the infinite magical power contained within. She and her Sisters had guessed what was happening with the Elements as their Bearers had passed away. She knew they had guessed correctly. She knew precisely what would be in there. Just one lone piece of magical jewellery...

Mine. All mine. The Element is MINE!

With this final greedy thought on top of the towers of vengeance, sorrow and fury that had driven her mad, the transformation began.

Twilight’s eyes flicked from blazing white to dangerous red as her flowing lavender mane and tail both exploded into roaring yellow flames. As the violent concussion from the sudden ignition shattered all of the tall stained-glass Legend Windows lining the walls of the ancient antechamber, the third Eternal Sister’s full suit of gleaming battle armour materialised upon her legs, flanks, neck, wings and head with a hot red flash. Flaring her enormous platinum-bladed wings wide, she narrowed her eyes and gazed with palpable murder at Celestia and Luna as her coat began to glow, to radiate blinding light and blistering heat, to turn from soft purple to the colour of the sun. As her Sisters’ eyes opened wide, she spoke in a voice that was not her own.

“MOVE ASIDE, OR DIE WHERE YOU STAND.”

The two older alicorns shared a mortified glance. Then, as if a murmur of understanding passed between them, from one mind to another and back through their stare, they both turned their heads in unison and gazed at their furious youngest Sister with nothing but deep sadness in their eyes.

“We won't stop you, Littlest Sister.” Celestia took a step to the side and sat down, as Luna mirrored the movement to Twilight’s right. “We wouldn’t be able to, even if we tried.” She took a deep breath, closing her eyes briefly. “Just remember what you swore to yourself after Rarity’s funeral. You vowed to never touch the Elements again.”

Rarity.

Her last pony friend. Spike’s beloved wife. The most generous soul in Equestrian history. The unicorn who had lived to see three centuries. The pony who had loved a dragon with all her heart until the day she’d died, looking far more like she was only aged twenty-one, rather than three-hundred-and-twenty-one, on that awful morning so many lifetimes ago when she’d breathed her last breath. When she’d gasped her last word.

She’d said “Spike,” and Spike had started wailing, and Twilight had joined in, and they'd held each other and cried together for hours after she'd stopped breathing, and then the mourners had come, thousands and thousands of them, some young, some old, but all of them were orphans, and Spike and Rarity had dedicated their lives to the service of so very many of the poor parentless souls...

Rarity.

Rarity.

The name that Spike had screamed through his agony as he’d burned away to nothing.

The memory of the only thing that could have stopped her from exterminating every single dragon in the world before moving on to potentially every other living creature...

Rarity wouldn’t want this. Spike wouldn’t want this.

She didn’t want this.

With a sudden whooshing sound as the fourth Night Mare died aborning, Princess Twilight collapsed into a sobbing heap of lavender feathers and clanking metal on the floor of the Antechamber of Harmony, aghast at what she’d almost become, devastated by what she’d very, very nearly done. Luna crouched down beside her, covering her shaking form with a protective wing as a very timid-looking pegasus guard slipped shakily into the room and sidled up to the very-relieved-looking Princess Celestia, his eyes wide, an expression of complete terror on his face.

“Your... Your Highness. A re-re-representative of the d-d-dragons is h-here, and he says that he n-needs to speak with y-you, P-Princess Luna, and Princess Tw-Twilight ur-ur-urgently,” he squeaked. “Th-they... They’re ter-ter-terrified. They - they want to sue for peace.”

Chapter 03: Aegis Invictus

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Chapter 3: Aegis Invictus

“Twilight, you’re driving everypony mad,” her older sister said quietly.

“I’m making everypony SAFE!” she shot back. “Equestria is the safest land in the world!” She flipped the pages of the book rapidly, slammed a hoof down on a passage and snorted in triumph. “Here! Right here! I knew it was this one! Listen: Of the three poor foals who unwisely climb this tree on this sad morning, not one shall live to see the evening sky. I saved three earth fillies from a tree in Trottingham this morning! I saw them as I flew over, they’d got stuck in amongst the highest boughs, and the branch they were clinging to broke just as I arrived! They would have fallen a hundred feet to their deaths!” She was grinning, her eyes slightly glazed, as she levitated her favourite quill and scrawled a small red X across the tiny passage. “Another one! That’s eight hundred and thirty down!” She blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear her sight.

“And how many more to go before you complete this quest of yours? Millions? You haven’t slept for nearly four years, Little Sister. There are limits to your endurance.”

Twilight whipped her head around and glared at Luna. “I can sleep when I’m dead.”

“Twilight!” Luna trotted forwards and sat down right next to her. “What a thing to say. What a terrible thing to say. We understand why you’re doing this, and I’m so grateful that those three little fillies are alive and unharmed. Please, don’t for a moment think that I’m not. But if you profess a desire to only sleep when you are dead, then sleep may be coming for you much faster than you know.” She stood up again as Twilight frowned. “It’s evening. I have a duty to prepare for. Expect similar words from Celestia, Little Sister. What you’re doing will kill you, drive you mad, or worse.”

“Hey!” Twilight called as Luna strode to the chamber doors and opened them. “I have duties too! I have a duty to keep my subjects safe!”

Luna looked back and shook her head. “But you’re terrorizing them. They say that you’re scolding ponies for allowing their foals to trip over or bump their heads. We receive scrolls from mayors all over Equestria every single week, practically beseeching us to do something. Think of how important that is,” she said over Twilight’s attempts to object. “Our faithful subjects asking us to do something about one of their rulers. And you reduced the Governor of Hoofington to a gibbering wreck when he proudly told you they were building an enormous amusement park for foals.” She shook her head again as Twilight frowned. “A place of fun and enjoyment that would have brought happiness and delight to thousands, but you were too concerned about cuts and sprains. And you shouted at the poor stallion for mentioning it. I shudder to think what you’d have done had they actually built it! You’d have thrown him from office if Celestia didn’t convince you to leave the Court and calm down, wouldn’t you?”

Twilight nodded, unashamed. “The place would have been a deathtrap. I’d have had to monitor it day and night -”

“You’re already monitoring Equestria day and night, Little Sister. You’ve closed down playgrounds and sporting centres all across the land, and none of them were deathtraps. You’ve torn down childrens’ tree houses and boarded up wells. Important wells that small settlements need for their drinking water. You’re turning up to towns and stomping through the streets in your battle armour! That armour is designed to make you look terrifying to Equestria’s enemies, not to make our subjects fear their Princesses!”

“They feared you! After we saved you and you came to Ponyville -” Twilight blurted.

“Of course. I’d been locked away for a thousand years, and my battle with Big Sister had become the stuff of legend. The big bad boogey-pony of myth was suddenly real, right here in the flesh, come to bring eternal night. I was feared for what I had been, not for what I was.”

“I- I’m sorry,” Twilight said, her hard expression softening slightly. "I didn’t mean that. It was, what? Four months? You’d been back four months, recovering here in the castle. I remember all the royal decrees and announcements that you weren’t Night Mare Moon, you weren’t dangerous, and of course I knew you weren’t -”

“Of course you knew. You didn’t bow and scrape, I recall. That was heartwarming, and I’m glad things turned out as they did. I’m glad you’re my Little Sister. But as for the rest of the townsponies...” Luna looked briefly wistful. “The memories of a thousand years of legends don’t just disappear overnight, and I was a fool to forget this. I wonder if you’re not starting your own legend here.”

Twilight looked momentarily puzzled. “What do you mean? Starting a legend?”

"I think you missed the point of what I said, Little Sister. They feared me for something I had once been, but was no longer." Luna’s following words hit Twilight like a slap to the face. “Your efforts to wrap all of Equestria in cotton wool are fast transforming you into a figure as feared as Night Mare Moon."

There was a brief, stunned silence, then Luna turned back to the doors as Twilight started spluttering in shock. “We all have that same duty of care you spoke about. We think you’re going about it in exactly the wrong way.” Closing the doors behind her as she left, she heard her Little Sister’s response through them perfectly clearly.

“I HAVE TO KEEP THEM ALL SAFE!”

“No you don’t, Little Sister,” Luna murmured to herself as she walked sadly down the spiral staircase of the tower. “You just have to let them live their lives. I hope you learn this before it’s too late.”

Twilight sat back on her haunches, eyes wide, legs splayed awkwardly in shock and confusion as she thought about Luna’s words. Those words had badly shaken her. Quite literally. She was trembling, and she couldn’t stop.

Am I terrifying my subjects?

She thought about her grand plan. Her Invincible Shield, she called it. Her effort to protect every subject under her care - which meant every single living thing that resided inside Equestria’s vast boundaries. She’d thought she was up to the task, and, surprisingly, she’d found that she was.

Who needs sleep if I’m saving lives?

Be rational. Your Sisters are upset with you, so you must be doing something wrong.

Twilight knew that her methods were... unorthodox. She didn’t bother with food or drink. She never slept. She only returned here to her private chambers, the sanctuary of the oldest book in the world, when she was certain that she’d managed to avert one of Starshine’s prophecies. She’d nullified more than eight hundred of them in a little over four years. That was great, but then she did some quick mental arithmetic and arrived at a very gloomy conclusion.

Yeah, a prophecy averted every two or three days. And there’s two, three thousand predictions per page more-or-less, and there’s about seventy two thousand pages, so, um, that’s... two hundred and sixteen million, eight hundred thou...

She blinked.

So, at this rate... Maybe a million years before I actually manage to cross off every single prediction in this...

Her head snapped upright.

A million years. A MILLION YEARS.

Her horn ignited. “Big Sister, Biggest Sister,” she mouthed, her horn flickering in time with the movements of her lips as she sent her magic streaking across Canterlot to find and whisper in Celestia’s and Luna’s ears, “I need you. I need you both.”

A brilliant yellow-white burst of midday sun. A dazzling silver flash of brightest moonlight.

“I’m an idiot,” Twilight said, face to the floor as her Sisters stepped up to her shaking form. “I’ve been such an idiot.” She raised her face, and caught Celestia’s concerned eye. “What have I been doing? These colts and fillies need to bang their knees and graze their hooves. What have I been doing?!” She lowered her gaze as the tears started flowing in earnest. “My subjects... My subjects are terrified of me. They won’t dare to put their foal on a swing, in case I turn up and punish them for putting the child in danger... It’ll take me forever! I’ll never finish this task! Why did I even start?!”

“We know how wise you are, Littlest Sister,” Celestia said. “Far, far wiser than Luna or myself.”

The Princess of the Night continued, nodding as Twilight’s ears flicked at that strange statement. “We know that you have been doing what you thought was right. That is why we never directly interfered. You are a Princess of Equestria,” Luna said in an extremely proud and regal voice, “and far be it for us to contradict your decrees. Though you’ve made many decrees that we do not agree with, we knew this moment would come. Well,” she admitted, “we hoped it would come. We... We were beginning to doubt.”

Twilight Sparkle looked at the other two Supreme Rulers of All Equestria through her tears. “How...” She coughed. “How did I make such a stupid mistake?”

Celestia half-laughed, half-cried. “Luna and myself have made far worse mistakes than this.” She knelt down and nuzzled her youngest Sister, her best friend. “What’s important is that we...” Celestia’s voice caught in her throat.

“- that we learn from our mistakes,” Twilight said. Celestia nodded, sniffing, as Luna wiped her eyes.

“We thought we’d lost you,” the middle alicorn said.

“Lost me? Lost me?” Twilight said, getting to her hooves along with Celestia and grinning at the Princess of the Night. “Okay, yeah. I did go a bit crazy there. But...”

Twilight walked away from her fellow alicorns towards her chamber’s huge west-facing glass double-doors, the ones that used to be connected via a short walkway to an enormous covered balcony, demolished almost four years ago because there was no longer any use for it. “I still worry about them. I mean, right now, there’s colts and fillies and mares and stallions hurting themselves. There’s millions and millions of ponies out there,” she said, sweeping a hoof across the magnificent vista under the reddish sunset, “and I made the mistake of trying to mother them all. I... What a stupid thing to do.”

She felt her Sisters on her left and her right. A soft wing closed around her. “You know,” Luna said, “this is almost exactly what Big Sister tried to do almost five thousand years ago, when we first came to Equestria and offered to guide the three tribes. Trying to protect everypony, when such a task was beyond her. I was too young and foolish at the time to object.”

Twilight’s eyes opened wide. “Young and foolish?! But... You would both have been about two thousand years old!”

Celestia laughed. “Maturity is independent of age, Littlest Sister. I would’ve thought you should know this by now. Your thousandth birthday is next year, and Luna and myself are both fast-approaching seven thousand. In many ways, we are all still children. But in many others, you are, by a long way, our far more mature Eldest Sister.”

Twilight blushed. She didn’t feel like she deserved such praise. She opened her mouth to say so but all that came out was a yawn. Now that she’d abandoned her pointless quest, her magically-powered wakefulness and endurance was fading away rapidly. “You know,” she said, in an effort to cover her embarrassment, “I think I’ve earned a nap.” She trotted away from the doors and pulled down the sheets and comfortable duvet on her large royal bed. She kicked off her shoes and climbed in, not bothering to take off any of the rest of the regalia she’d started to wear on her foolish crusade. “It has been four years... And I am very tired. Don’t let me sleep for...”

She was out cold as soon as her head hit the pillows.

Celestia drew the bedclothes back over Twilight’s gently-snoring form as Luna closed the windows and balcony doors then magicked all the curtains closed. The two older alicorns left, shutting the two doors gently behind themselves. Luna spoke to the two pegasus guards outside the chamber. “Nopony enters, nopony disturbs her, please. Not for any reason.” Both guardsponies saluted proudly, nodding.

“How long, do you think?” Celestia asked as they walked together down the tower’s winding staircase and back to the castle’s upper halls. Luna thought for a moment, her horn starting to glow faintly as the setting sun dipped below the horizon.

“Probably two months, more likely three. Maybe longer. I slept for three months when she and her friends returned my sanity, but that was an entirely different situation. Four years with no food and no sleep... Maybe even half a year, Big Sister.”

Celestia nodded. “She needs it. And we need to start making some proclamations. It wouldn’t do if Twilight’s thousandth birthday celebrations were marred by everypony being terrified of the subject of their adoration.”

The glow from Luna’s horn had spread to cover her entire body. She halted on the stairs for a moment and closed her eyes as she finished spinning the magic that moved the sky all night. Opening her eyes again, she looked at Celestia and nodded. “We should start on that right away. It’s not much more than a year away. I’m afraid Little Sister is going to miss her nine hundred and ninety ninth birthday at any rate.”

As the two alicorns continued down the stairs, the third of their number quietly snored in her warm, comfortable bed as the first of the dreams started.

One more reason that she hadn’t slept since Spike had died.

Chapter 04: Nightmare

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Chapter 4: Nightmare

“Hey, Twi’, would ya pass me the eggbeater please?”

“Sure thing, AJ!” the small purple unicorn said, levitating the utensil off its hook on the wall and depositing it in her friend’s hooves. “I love baking! Thanks for letting me help!”

Applejack laughed. “Ah bet yer’ only helpin’ me because ya get ta eat the baking when we’re done!” Twilight joined in the laughter.

The earth pony poured the smooth mixture into the baking tray and carried it over to the oven. She popped it inside and removed the first batch they’d made, now baked to perfection, a piping hot set of six golden-brown cupcakes.

“Here y’are sugarcube, ya get first bite.” Applejack passed Twilight one of her eyeballs. It was frosted. Twilight screamed and dropped it. “What’s the matter, Twi’? Ya look like ya seen a ghost,” Applejack said, gazing at Twilight with empty sockets as she munched on her other eye.

Twilight tried to turn and run, but her hooves were stuck to the floor. “Oh, here, lemme help ya with that,” Applejack said as her skin ripped to shreds and she melted.

Twilight screamed again, then she realised that she must have been imagining things. She didn’t just help Applejack bake cupcakes... She couldn’t have. Because she was here in Rarity’s boutique, covered in pinned and folded fabric while the white unicorn measured and trimmed, humming distractedly. She’d been here for nearly an hour.

“Hey, thanks so much for making me this new dress, Rarity. I really appreciate it.”

“Oh, think nothing of it, Twilight,” Rarity said as she levitated a needle and thread. “Everything’s measured, I just need to mmmph mmm mmphhmmm mmmm.”

Twilight blinked and looked at her fellow unicorn. Rarity had somehow managed to sew her own eyelids and lips shut.

Twilight shrieked and tripped over, tangling herself in the half-finished dress. She started scrabbling backwards when the dress was yanked off her by Pinkie Pie. Only it wasn’t a dress, it was a tablecloth. What a silly mistake for her to make, thinking that a tablecloth was a dress. “Hey, thanks Pinkie! I, heh, kinda got a bit wrapped up there.”

“No prob, Twilight!” Pinkie Pie said, expertly flinging the red-and-white tablecloth over a small round table. Twilight levitated the last tiered tray of tasty treats that she and Pinkie had spent the whole morning baking and plopped it down neatly right in the middle of the table.

“We’re nearly finished! Okay, you get the punch, I’ll get Dashie!” Pinkie Pie giggled, streaking out the door. By the time Twilight had lifted the huge bowl of punch onto the last table and arranged the glasses, the poofy pink earth pony was back, a blindfolded Rainbow Dash in tow.

“Come ON, Pinkie Pie, can I take this thing off now?” she complained.

“Not yet, silly!” Pinkie said, winking at Twilight. The purple unicorn grinned and turned around to find that almost the entire population of Ponyville had arrived at Sugar Cube Corner when she wasn’t looking. She didn’t think that was strange. She turned back to Pinkie and returned the wink.

Pinkie Pie whipped the blindfold off the rainbow-maned pony as hundreds of voices shouted “SURPRISE!”

Pinkie came bouncing out of the kitchen and right up to Rainbow Dash - how did she suddenly get into the kitchen, Twilight briefly wondered, then dismissed it - carrying a huge birthday cake. “Happy forty fourth birthday, Rainbow Dash!” the party pony shrieked at the wide-eyed pegasus as she seemed to age a century in a heartbeat, her face wrinkling along ancient laugh-lines, her mane somehow still staying bright pink though her coat greyed out slightly. The cake was magnificent, even if it did look a little bit like Applejack’s and Rarity’s severed heads.

“Wow! Wow, Pinkie! Thanks! Thanks so much, everypony!” Dash said, then fell over, suddenly black and rotting, because she’d died last year.

Spike stuck his enormous bleeding face in through the window and opened his gaping jaws. With a snapping crunch, he ate the white-maned Fluttershy that was crying bloody tears in the corner over the small gravestone with the picture of the rabbit on it.

He turned his huge, suddenly-uninjured head in her direction. “Come on, Twilight,” he rumbled, “We’re gonna be late. The conference is at five o’clock.”

Everything seemed to sharpen and brighten and straighten and come into focus - Twilight hadn’t even noticed that everything was fuzzy and wrong before. She started to think about this, but then realised what Spike had just said. It was already quarter to five. They really were going to be late, and that wouldn’t do at all.

The large, graceful alicorn - who, somehow, was sitting right where a small purple unicorn had just been cringing in horror - put a hoof to her forehead in embarrassment. “Hey, you’re right. What in Equestria would I do without you?” she smiled, getting up from her huge writing desk where she’d been researching ways of partially blocking the sun. She walked over to her closet and pulled the doors open. Her magical ties to the sun and moon made it impossible for her to not know exactly what time it was, but she could still get lost in her studies, even after so many, many years. She frowned with distaste at the physical trappings of her station. “I hate wearing this stuff. It makes me feel... just so fake.”

“Seriously, Twilight,” Spike said as she started putting on her shoes. “Everypony knows you’re just the same as them. You’re, like, popular because you’re normal. Well, except for, you know, the whole alicorn thing. But they’ll get over that.” She giggled at the private joke. He was good at cheering her up. His smile faded. “We want them to take us seriously. Maybe you should wear your armour too?”

“No way, Spike. I’ve never worn it yet and I’m sure as hay not going to start now.” Well, she’d worn it in bits and pieces at the fitting, about six hundred years ago during the Windigo Wars, but she’d never worn it completely, and certainly never in public. And she hoped that she never would. She despised that armour almost as much as she despised the reason why it had been made.

He looked dubious. “Well, alright, just remember how nasty dragons can be. Nasty and dangerous. They just live in the wild, they only get together every fifty years or so to breed. They’re not civilized, remember?”

“Yeah, I remember. But sending us a message and asking to meet could be called civilized, right?” She looked at the... big-necklace-chestplate-thingy. Well, at least it had her Cutie Mark on it, in the form of a large star-shaped magenta diamond. She didn’t even know diamonds came in magenta...

Oh yeah. Magic, you dummy. Diamonds come in any colour you want.

She rolled her eyes and slipped this pretentious necklace over her head. At least the smaller stars around the magenta stone were nice, normal, non-magically-hued diamonds. There was a very brief wistful smile as she remembered the five ponies those small white stones symbolised for a moment.

Spike brought her out of that moment. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about this meeting. This really fishy suspicious feeling. Dragons don’t do this, Twilight. They never do this. I mean, really, not ever! There’s no record of dragons ever willingly seeking out ponies for a nice little chat, now, is there?”

“No,” she admitted, “but there’s always a first time for everything. They’ll never get what they want, though.” Spike snorted in agreement with that. “What about you, Spike? I’ve never heard you complain about too much sunlight. The sun doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“Not one bit,” he said. “I’ve never had a problem with it at all. I mean, it’s the sun. It’s up during the day and down at night, end of story. There’s a lot of creatures that like the night better than the day, sure, but I didn’t think that dragons were nocturnal. At least, I’m not nocturnal!” he chuckled, Twilight joining in. “I spent a whole week with them after the message came. No, they sleep at night. And none of them seemed bothered by sunlight either.”

She propped her platinum crown behind her horn. “Alright, I’m wearing it. I don’t like it but I’m wearing it. Whattaya think?” she asked, turning on the spot. “Do I look like a Princess now?”

“Sure do. Shall we, Your Highness?”

“Spike...”

“Fine. Shall we make our departure and proceed to said prearranged locale for yon rendezvous” - Twilight started to smile as Spike carried on, now looking ridiculous as he tried to bow - “at your pleasure of course, your very esteemed Royal Highness the Princess Twilight Opacarna Paritus Matutinus of Eques-”

“SPIKE!” They both cringed. That had come out a little too Royal Canterlot-ish. “Sorry,” she said. “Sorry I, uh, yelled. That Voice thing just happens sometimes when I’m mad. You know I hate my full title, Spike. It’s ridiculous, I don’t like it, ‘Twilight’ is just fine please. ‘Twilight,’ ‘Twi,’ ‘Big Stupid Numbskull,’ anything. Just not that, not from you.” She frowned up at him, sorry that she’d shouted at him but also angry that he’d called her that. She really hated the formality of the thing, and especially from a friend -

Oh. OHHHHH. Spike, you big tease...

It took a lot of willpower to keep the stern expression firmly on her face. The corners of her mouth were desperately trying to spring up into a smile, probably followed by a laugh. Probably a big laugh.

Spike had only been caught off-guard by the sudden power of her shout. He was, as usual, completely and totally unabashed. He scowled down at Twilight from where he lay, curled up on the enormous covered balcony that had been built for him hundreds of years ago alongside her own private castle tower. He looked furious, as if he wanted to squash her like a bug right then and there. But Twilight saw the gleam of mirth in his eye - how could she miss it? She’d known him for almost a thousand years. She glared right back at him.

“If you try to pass a royal decree saying that I’m not allowed to tease the everloving crap out of you any more when you’re stressed,” he rumbled in a very creditable imitation of furious anger, “I swear, I’m leaving Equestria. Leaving and never coming back. And I’m taking this balcony with me. It’s my balcony and I’m taking it -”

They both dissolved into howls of laughter.

“It’s... It’s...” Spike choked. “It’s the o-only way to...” He was far too big to roll around in stitches on his balcony, but through her tears, Twilight could see that he wanted to. So she obliged. With a huge flash of reddish-purple light, the two best friends were suddenly lying on their backs and kicking their legs into the air in the middle of the large grassy plain just to the north of Canterlot Mountain’s foothills. Spike grabbed his shaking chest and rolled around, enormous joyous rumblings in his throat as Twilight did the same.

“I-i-it’s th-the o-only way to g-get you t-to l-l-loosen up!” he bellowed. Twilight laughed louder along with him, rolling around and around in the luscious green grass like a foal.

I feel so young. I have to remember to laugh more.

“Ah hah. Ahem. Okay,” she managed after a few minutes. She got to her hooves and magically brushed the grass off her coat and out of her mane, then gave Spike a quick dusting as well as he lumbered back upright, still chuckling. “We should go. It’s twenty-eight seconds to five.”

Spike’s fading chuckles died instantly as he assumed his ‘Official Royal Business’ expression. “Sure thing. Hold on a sec though. Shale Gully’s nearly a thousand miles away.” His eyes became fixed and he seemed to strain slightly, concentrating hard on something that was far away, beyond sight, beyond what mortal eyes could see... He glowed faintly green for the briefest instant.

“Okay, translocation protection’s done. It’ll be more impressive to them if we arrive airborne as well.” His large spiky wings unfurled and with a series of slow, powerful beats, he flapped slowly up into the air until he was bobbing up and down at around five hundred feet. Twilight stayed on the ground for a moment, her horn glowing faintly as she tweaked and tuned her teleportation spell so they’d both arrive in exactly the right place - teleporting a thousand miles with someone as big as Spike along for the ride was almost as hard as going to the moon alone - then she crouched, sprang from the ground, and shot rapidly upwards to join him.

“Ready, partner?”

“Remember, Twilight, follow my lead. They’re probably gonna be ticked at me but that’s not important. Let’s go show those dragons why they don’t mess with ponies,” Spike said, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards despite the stern expression on his face. He despised dragons. As he’d been raised by ponies and didn’t act at all like a wild dragon - he had a conscience, for one thing - he preferred to think of himself as a pony. A fifty-ton fireproof pony. With a two-hundred-foot wingspan. And three-foot-long teeth. And diamond-hard scales. And blistering Dragonfire. And a life expectancy of maybe four or five thousand years.

Yeah, that’s Spike. Just your ordinary, everyday, run-of-the-mill pony.

The glow surrounding Twilight’s horn expanded in an instant, enclosing both herself and Spike in a giant bubble of reddish magic. The bubble, and its contents, vanished with a flash that briefly illuminated the entire tall north face of Canterlot Mountain.

They arrived at precisely five o’clock in a burst of light and thunder, five hundred feet above the shattered ground. They were in the very centre of a moving, circling ring of enormous flying dragons.

“Good afternoon,” Twilight began, not using her magical Voice. She didn’t want to seem rude. “I am Princess Twilight of Equestria. You requested a meeting?”

There were a lot of dragons. There must have been a dozen in the air around them, and another dozen on the ground below, but those too were now leaping into the air and joining the swirling circle of enormous beasts that surrounded her and Spike. She recognised a few of them from the detailed descriptions he'd provided after his intelligence mission. That was Magma, and that one hanging back over there had to be Rumble. He was huge. He was beyond huge. He was almost as big as Canterlot.

“Spike? Why are you here? And why did you arrive with this pony?” came a deep voice. She couldn’t tell which one had spoken.

“I’m here because I’m not a dragon,” he replied. “Oh sure,” he said over the confused mutters and occasional chuckle the crowd was now making, “I’m a dragon, alright. But I’m not a dragon at heart. Princess Twilight here is my boss. Sorta.”

“You... you work for ponies?” hissed a new voice. Twilight saw who was speaking now, and from the black-and-gold cracked spines, she knew this was Fracture, the dragon the message had said would be their ambassador. He was nearly a thousand feet long... Almost as long as Rumble, though nowhere near as bulky. “You work for ponies? You stoop so low as to do menial tasks for your inferiors? Tasks such as spying?”

“We needed information on you,” Spike responded calmly. “And of course I work for ponies. I work for them and with them every day. I was raised by them.”

There were rumbles and growls.

“You did come to spy on us! You... Aha! You showed up after we sent the note, you showed up to get information -”

“We don’t even know why you want shorter days and longer nights,” Spike said, cutting Fracture off. “There’s no reason for it. We can’t see what possible benefit it would do you, and it would cause much harm to the rest of the land -”

It was Spike’s turn to be cut off. “That is the point. We don’t need light and warmth from the sun. We’re tired of the dominion of ponies. Such weak creatures don’t deserve their standing. We wish to be the rulers of this land, and removing most of the sunlight will kill so many, many plants and creatures, the ponies will be so busy tending to the dying -”

“IF YOU HAVE QUITE FINISHED,” Twilight thundered, far louder than any dragon’s roar. Several of the dragons gasped. They’d forgotten that she was there, it seemed, and the power of her Voice had taken all of them by surprise. She’d completely discarded politeness after hearing this. She was livid.

“Twilight,” Spike said quietly.

She ignored him and glared at Fracture. Any pony caught in that glare would have quailed, but the dragon didn’t flinch. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You called me here so that you can somehow convince me to change the lengths of the days. You’re going to convince me to willingly inflict death and destruction on Equestria. And your argument to convince me of this” - she took a breath - “IS THAT IT WILL MAKE IT EASY FOR YOU TO TAKE EQUESTRIA FROM US?” Her final shout echoed back from the ridges and peaks surrounding the blasted gully floor below.

For a moment, the only sound came from the slow flapping of dozens of enormous wings. Then, Fracture started laughing, a deep, grinding, malicious laugh that was picked up by the other dragons, one by one, until the noise was deafening.

“Twilight,” Spike said again.

She ignored him again. She was absolutely furious, though she wanted to laugh in their faces for hatching such a pathetically stupid plan of conquest, a plan that would fail before it began. She shouted above the hubbub.

“I THINK WE’RE DONE HERE. GO BACK TO YOUR CAVES AND DON’T BOTHER US AGAIN.”

The earsplitting laughter increased.

“BIG STUPID NUMBSKULL!” Spike hissed urgently.

That got her attention. She turned to look at him, flapping about a hundred feet away to her left. There was terror in his wide eyes. He’d obviously come to some conclusion about what was going on. She instantly swooped over to him and stopped right next to the corner of his enormous mouth. “What?” she whispered. “What’s going on, Spike? Why are they still laughing?”

“They’re going to try to capture you to force Celestia and Luna to cooperate,” he murmured.

Twilight felt like laughing herself. Capture her? How? Then, a niggling thought occurred to her. What if they didn’t know...

“Spike! What do they know about magic? About alicorn magic?”

“Nothing, I’d imagine,” he murmured back. “Nobody does, except you and your Sisters and me. We kinda keep it quiet, right? You’re all just supposed to be important winged unicorns who happen to live a long time and can control the sky, not... Nobody knows what “alicorn” really means, Twilight. There’s gonna be a fight, and it’s gonna be nasty. They’re getting ready, I can feel it -”

“Things have gone well!” Fracture bellowed above the cacophony of laughing dragons. “I already believed our forces were strong, and our position strong as well. And now we have a bargaining chip!”

She could see Spike moving out of the corner of her eye. He was getting behind her, into a defensive position to cover her back.

What can he do? He’s practically still a teenager...

“Spike, I’ll buy us time, you just get away. I’ll keep them occupied for a minute or two then I’ll follow you and teleport us back to -”

As Fracture’s circling brought him back into her field of view, the huge black-and-gold dragon suddenly lunged towards her, claws outstretched, an expression of greedy victory on his face.

Twilight grabbed him around the neck in a powerful psychokinetic hold. He screamed. She squeezed. He squeaked. She shook him.

“YOUR POSITION IS STRONG? YOUR FORCES ARE STRONG? I AM JUST ONE ALICORN AND I COULD DESTROY ALL OF YOU IN A HEARTBEAT! THERE ARE TWO MORE BESIDES ME!” That she would do no such thing, under any circumstances, was something she'd decided not to mention.

More dragons were coming at her, swiping and trying to grab her. She just batted those ones away, not causing any injuries, just keeping them away from her and Spike. She glanced rapidly over her shoulder and saw Spike with his claws out and spines raised, slow tongues of green fire curling from his nostrils as he snarled venomously at the dragons that were approaching him.

His sudden viciousness shocked her. She’d never imagined that Spike could look so damned dangerous. Incredibly, they backed off. Then an absolutely enormous roar came from her right. She glanced that way and saw one of the truly gargantuan dragons - either Rumble or Sizzle, she couldn’t tell which - hurl something straight at her at tremendous speed. It was a boulder...

That’s not a boulder, that’s practically a mountain...

She dropped Fracture and fired off a huge psychokinetic shove all around her, pushing the nearest dragons away, disorienting them for a moment while she focused on the incoming wall of rock. She prepared a blast of magic that would shove it straight back towards Rumble -

Spike swooped into her view, moving very fast, cutting off the line of sight she needed with the -

He smashed straight into it at full speed, it exploded with a tremendous crash that sent house-sized splinters of rock in every which -

Screaming in pain and rage, blood streaming from his muzzle and his eyes, he launched himself at the two dragons who were closing in on Twilight from above and below -

They were suddenly sailing away from her through the air, headless -

More of them were coming straight at her, she grabbed them with her magic and held them in mid-air while they snarled and thrashed -

As if he thought she was holding them for him, Spike smashed into the immobile dragons, tearing a leg off one, smashing another’s face in with it, biting the head of another clean off -

He was sent spinning and howling towards the ground as one of the larger ones she was holding clubbed him viciously with its enormous spiked tail -

She blasted the dragons she was holding, both alive and dead, straight up into the air above her to buy time, she looked wildly around for Spike -

He was glowing bright flaming green as he threw one of the two biggest dragons at the other -

She whipped around and around, mouth open in shock and horror, trying to follow Spike’s impossibly-fast movements as he broke neck after neck -

That one had gashed him across the chest, she almost felt it herself as her heart clenched -

She had to squint as Spike blasted a huge orange dragon with the brightest Dragonfire she’d ever seen, leaving it screaming and... on fire -

He had set a dragon on fire -

Gaping, she flitted numbly to the side to avoid Fracture’s head. It sailed straight past her as Spike spun the twitching body of the ambassador around and into the last remaining dragon, that one was the smallest, still far larger than Spike but it was trying to flee and Spike had just crushed it -

The green flicker around him died, he was falling through the air, screaming, trailing blood, he was going to hit the ground -

She came out of her shock. Teleporting to the ground, she caught him before he hit, casting a bright-red protective spell around them as multi-ton chunks of lizardmeat started thudding to earth all around the gully. His wings were gone, she hadn’t even seen it happen, but then she remembered when he’d starting using magic to levitate. It must have happened right after that big one she was holding had got him with its tail.

He was screaming and thrashing in agony as she cradled him in her softest magic. She didn’t know what to do. She had to get him medical aid, and quickly. “Spike! Can you do your shock protection spell? Spike? Spike! Spike!”

He didn’t answer, just screamed and screamed and screamed. She took to the air and started to work on her own, quickly, magically cauterising the worst of the bleeding wounds until she found herself staring with horror into the deep gash across his chest.

Through the torrents of dark dragon blood, she could see right down past his scales and muscles and smashed reddish ribcage, right into his chest cavity, right to his fast-beating heart and spasming lungs. There was a tiny bloody nick in the corner of his right lung at the deepest point that his dead foe’s claw had penetrated to. Small tongues of green fire were flickering around the edges of the nick.

His magical Dragonfire was leaking. The only thing that could contain raw Dragonfire was a dragon’s lungs, it was part of the magic that made Dragonfire work, if it escaped...

Spike screeched as he was wrenched into the air behind her. She rocketed skywards, horn blazing her way as she blasted through the sound barrier in a quarter of a second. She needed the Element. The Element could stop this and to get the Element she needed to unlock the Vault and to do that she needed her Sisters -

Everything got oddly dark and bent and vague as someone tapped her on the shoulder. She turned to see who it was. It was Spike. His arms were crossed. He was tapping his foot. He was twelve years old and three feet tall and frowning at her with disappointment.

“Why didn’t you go and get the Element, Twilight? Left me here, teleported to Canterlot, come back to save me, you know?” he said in an accusatory tone. “If you’d done that, I wouldn’t be dead.”

Twilight’s left eye flicked open. She was lying on her side in her soft four-poster bed in Canterlot, her smoke-like mane plastered to her pillows. The hangings were closed and it was dark outside, just a few minutes before midnight according to where she sensed the moon to be. She was completely drenched in cold sticky sweat.

She was also far too tired to care. She closed her eye and fell asleep again instantly.

The next dream started instantly too.

At least it really was a dream, and not a diamond-sharp flawless recollection of a real and tragic memory that she’d been trying to forget for four horrible years. The dream was all silly and crazy and nothing made sense, and it began in a shower of blood and death.

Chapter 05: Old Haunts, New Beginnings

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Chapter 5: Old Haunts, New Beginnings

A lot of memories wrapped up in this tree.

Twilight sat on the untidy grass and looked sadly at her old home. She wasn’t totally sure how old it really was. She’d magically aged it by seven or eight centuries when it was planted, so that it was large enough to serve as both her home and the town library. It had continued to grow slowly in the eighteen hundred years since. The window frames and balcony doorways were all warped and twisted now, with not a hint of glass or paint anywhere to be seen. Nothing artificial at all.

She stood up and trotted slowly forwards, craning her head to look in through one of the many small holes that had once been windows into the ground floor reading room. Memory came flooding back. She moved around the tree to her right and found the old front doorway hidden behind a tall matting of grass. The door itself was long-gone, the frame splintered. She moved the grass gently to the side and stepped in.

Memories. Memories. The nooks that had once held bookshelves were bent and twisted from centuries upon centuries of growth. That made her happy, somehow. She looked around the large room. There was greenery everywhere, vines, creepers, grass growing up through the cracks in the uneven floor. Enough light must get in through the many holes and openings in the tree to enable all this wonderful life to thrive in here.

Walking cautiously up the wonky carved staircase to the second floor, she paused by the doorway to Spike’s old bedroom. She remembered the day he’d moved out. She was starting to grow up a bit herself by then, of course - she was a little bit taller than the average pony, but it took her a whole century to grow into the tall alicorn she’d become - though he was starting to scrape the ceilings at seven feet. That day... That magical day. He was thirty, and Rarity was thirty-nine. It was a beautiful wedding, absolutely flawless and perfect.

She smiled, sniffling, as she remembered Rarity’s thrice-weekly makeovers at the old spa. She’d ended up wasting so much time and money - alright, not really wasted, those massages had been good... But neither her nor her husband had seemed to age a second, from the time they'd been married to almost the moment their marriage died. Nopony really knew how or why, but Twilight was certain that Spike’s unconscious magic had been responsible. Spike had certainly never known himself. No dragon had ever been taught magic before, and look at how powerfully adept Spike had become at it. No dragon had ever been in love before, either. There really was no way to tell what a besotted magically-trained dragon could truly do, so in her mind it was simple - Spike wanted to spend a long time with Rarity, and somehow exactly that had happened. And he’d managed to stay small enough for comfort.

But mortal life is mortal life, and magic, if that’s what it was, can only go so far. The beautiful unicorn had aged centuries in her final hours. Twilight found herself forgetting and re-remembering things all the time, but she’d never get the memories of that day out of her head, or the day when Spike himself...

She stopped smiling. Nothing had changed in the eight hundred years since he’d died. Eight hundred years of nightmares. Eight hundred years of blame. She shouldered it, almost cheerfully.

She mentally scolded herself. She wasn’t to think about that. She was a Princess, and she was supposed to act like one, damnit. She crushed the memories deep down into her soul and continued up the stairs to her old study.

She looked at the place where her bed had been, eighteen centuries before. She sat down on the rough wooden floor, looking out the vine-grown lopsided hole that had once been her bedside window, and remembered seeing four faint stars come to life in the predawn sky of the morning that had had no dawn, to approach the shadowed moon, to almost touch it...

It was here. It was right here, in this very place, where all of this began. Not this tree, but one exactly like it, exactly here. Where she’d seen Luna’s four secretly-charmed stars begin their assault on the prison of so long ago, starting Twilight on her first adventure, the adventure that had left her as keystone to the Elements of Harmony, forever sealing her fate as the Master of Magic. It was here, too, on this exact spot, where her Element-driven ever-expanding magical powers had become too great for her unicorn body to contain. Her magic had remade her overnight into what looked like a winged unicorn - rare, but not unheard of. But not just a winged unicorn. An alicorn. Not a truly physical creature any longer, her magical body was capable of containing and controlling her enormous powers safely. Only the third to ever exist, though the other two had been born, not subconsciously changed themselves into something they should probably never have been...

If I wasn’t supposed to be the third Eternal Sister, then I’d be dead and gone and remembered by nopony. Even Celestia and Luna would have probably forgotten about me by now. There’d have been hundreds of new Bearers of the Elements, or perhaps the Elements would have died forever with my friends and me. If I’d died, would the Element of Magic have died with me? Would the Elements vanish, their task complete? Or would they have returned to the earth to await new Bearers in another time of need?

This is very depressing stuff. You’re supposed to be scouting locations, not trying to make yourself glum. Stop it, you silly filly.

She stood up and turned away from the ancient gnarled hole without another glance. Walking back down to her old study floor, she could almost see her desk, cushions, bookshelves, telescopes... She hadn’t thought about this place in so many years that she was quite surprised at the clarity of her memories. She looked out the eight-foot knot in the trunk to where a carved and painted balcony had been, so long ago that the language she spoke now was totally different to what was spoken then. She could practically see the balcony. She could remember studying on it on warm summer days, learning to paint the sky with Luna on cold and clear winter nights...

So long ago...

She leaped lightly through the hole and glided down to a soft landing near the base of the enormous tree. It was still recognisable as her old home. It just looked more... comfortable now, she thought. It had been allowed to stretch its boughs. There was nothing else around it, no structures, very few other trees, just rough grassy fields all the way to the distant edge of the Everfree Forest. A few slightly thicker clumps of grass showed where ancient foundations might still lie buried, but other than that, nothing. No evidence that a town had ever stood here.

Here?

There were plans, a decade in the making, to build an enormous city. All they needed to do was find where to build it, and Twilight had taken on the task. She’d been all over Equestria, surveying every square inch of ground for the perfect place, accompanied everywhere she went with about fifty draftsponies to do the measuring and surveying. Not here, though. This was her last stop, and she’d come alone. After her private visit, the teams would come in and measure and calculate... But not right now.

The proposed city was like nothing the world had ever seen. No tall high-rises like Manehattan. No terraced houses like Fillydelphia. They were going to build an enormous, beautiful, perfect city, a city so connected to nature that it would be as much a part of the landscape as a forest or a mountain range. Housing and entertainment and shops and stalls as far as you could see. Equestria’s shining achievement, the jewel in Her crown as it were. A place of peace and prosperity for all who would come.

And millions would come.

The population had exploded over the last few hundred years. Equestria had almost made the long-expected move to a real post-scarcity society. They’d never become a total one, of course, but they were almost as close as could be achieved without dipping into the realms of fantasy. Prosperity and ease, of course, had its drawbacks. Some of them minor, no big deal really, but others were pretty damned serious indeed.

There was almost no space left in the towns and cities. Parts of the ancient capital of Canterlot were now little more than slums. Apartment prices in the other large cities were skyrocketing. There were so few country villages left any more, and those that did exist were bigger than any place that could be comfortably called a village. Modern life had brought the ponies to the cities and away from the countryside, though there was plenty of that - Equestria was certainly not short of wide-open spaces, it’s just that hardly anypony wanted to live in wide-open spaces. Once the earth ponies had discovered how to use their connection with the land consciously, their magically-grown food had pretty much killed the need for farms - except for a few of the specialty ones. But even Sweet Apple Acres, growers of the finest foods in all Equestria, had finally closed more than three hundred years ago, after nearly seventy generations of loyal caretakers.

The Apple family itself was just as dilute now as her own bloodline. After so many centuries, she was guaranteed to be related to any pony she might meet. She’d given up trying to finally complete Shining Armor and Cadance’s full family tree - she only got fifteen generations down the track and then there were half a million descendants, and each one of those was related to about a million other bloodlines... More ponies than had ever lived, in fact, because you only had to go back a few hundred years and you discovered that everypony was related to everypony else. The Twinkle and Cadenza family’s genes were all over Equestria, that was certain.

When she thought about it like that, she could almost imagine that her friends were all still here with her in some way, whenever she was around other ponies. They’d all had foals - well, Rarity had no biological children, but her family’s line was everywhere. Sweetie Belle’s four consecutive sets of triplets, a record that still stood... Oh, and Pinkie Pie’s bunch. Her poor husband, he really had no idea what he was getting himself into. She remembered the legendary mayhem from so long ago and almost smiled again.

Almost. Because Spike hadn't had any children. So not quite all of her friends were sort-of still here after all.

She looked around the grassy hills and valleys surrounding her for miles. It looked just like any other undeveloped part of Equestria. The library tree was still here, and that was good, though the books were long-gone. It was the only thing that remained of the centuries-abandoned former town of Ponyville.

She would see this tree stand proudly in the very centre of the new city.

Here.

We’ll build it here.

“Well, there’s still two weeks to go on the castle,” Twilight told Luna as she tried not to giggle. The Princess of the Night was wearing a thoroughly unnecessary hard hat, a neat hole drilled through it for her horn. Luna had spent most of the last two years in a fairly silly mood, and had become known across Equestria as something of a practical joker. It seemed the excitement of the new capital city’s impending dedication and opening had been getting to her.

Twenty years, twenty very long and hard years had been spent on this project, with hundreds of thousands of ponies working on the construction and Twilight supervising it all. Ponies had been moving in for years already as the different parts of the enormous city were completed at different times. It seemed that everypony had a house, everypony had a job they all seemed to love, everypony had hobbies... True Harmony was coming to Equestria at last.

Just not to Twilight.

Celestia landed next to the other Sisters and bent down to look at the map they were checking over. “Just the castle, then?” she asked after a moment. Twilight nodded, then looked up to see her Biggest Sister wearing both a hard-hat and a very forced expression of nonchalance.

Twilight burst out laughing.

After a very uncomfortable few seconds - for Celestia and Luna, at least - Twilight, snorting with mirth, looked at her two Sisters and almost lost it again. “You two look ridiculous!” she managed, then promptly started laughing again.

The two older alicorns were now blushing furiously. Celestia started to levitate her hat off, but Twilight, slumped over the worktable and banging a hoof in laughter, pushed it back onto her head with a brief glow from her horn. “No, p-please, I’ve just w-worked it out,” Twilight managed. “I- you-” She started to get more of a grip on herself. “You’ve been wearing that thing for a week, Big Sister. And now Biggest Sister turns up wearing one too.” She paused for a moment and snorted out a chuckle. “You’re messing with me, aren’t you? And them,” she said, pointing at the construction crews above them on the gantries and scaffolds around the almost-complete castle towers. “You’ve been waiting for days for me to say something, and I didn’t. And you know no ordinary pony would dare -”

“I think they look good,” Luna said, twirling hers around her long midnight-blue horn. “And they make us fit in. Why would you think we were messing with you?”

“You might as well have turned up wearing pants,” Twilight chuckled.

“We’re wearing them to fit in with the workcrews, Twilight,” Celestia said, no longer blushing and almost laughing herself. “It makes them feel more comfortable to see us wearing protective gear around a construction site. They don’t really know that we’re indestructible, do they?”

“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry. Really,” Twilight said, her eyebrows drooping, “I’m sorry, it’s just that you two looked so -”

“It’s true,” Luna said. “We do look completely ridiculous. And that makes me happy.” She danced back up to the table, adjusting her hard-hat as she came. “I’m in a very happy mood. I’ve been feeling happy for years, and I didn’t know why until last week. But then we figured it out.” Twilight looked her confusion.

“So, we’ve got a new school starting up soon,” Celestia said, seeming to change the subject even though she wasn’t. She smiled at the thought. “Bright young unicorns from all over Equestria -”

“Unicorns?” Twilight said. “Oh. The special magic school. Sorry, my head’s a bit full at the moment... We did just open a higher education school for the junior leavers that want to get into artistic trades, stuff like sculpture and so on, I thought you meant that one. There’s nine thousand schools of every different kind all up and running across the city now, and that one was the last. Well, apart from the magic school. It’s finished but unstaffed, it’s scheduled to start hiring teachers next month. What are we going to call it? If it follows the... pattern...” She gaped.

How did I never run through that train of thought before?!

“How does teaching grab you?”

Twilight was taken aback. “Teaching? I.. No, I... Just... No. That’s too... No.”

“You managed just fine in Court,” Luna pointed out. “You did a great job there for more than a thousand years. And you’ve been a fantastic forepony here ever since we broke ground -”

“That’s not - I mean, if I -”

“Celestia and myself both have schools for the most talented unicorns in the land, Little Sister,” Luna continued as she tilted her hard-hat to the side. The hole... moved with her horn. Twilight was distracted by that rather swanky bit of magic before she remembered what they were talking about.

“I can’t! The headmistress of a school... that’ll mean I’ll have contact with the teachers, maybe some of the students -”

Her sisters pressed their attack. They’d thought this construction project would pull Twilight out of her centuries-long funk, but it hadn’t, and the project was almost over. But now, they truly believed they’d found a way that would really work.

“You have lots of contact with lots of ponies,” Celestia said, even though she knew exactly what Twilight was trying to say through her surprise.

“I can’t, you know what I- I can’t risk getting close to anypony,” Twilight said in a panicky tone. “You know that. I don’t want that heartbreak again.”

“You used to be fine in Court because you’d almost never see the same pony twice. The guards and servants, you could ignore them, fine, they’re guards and servants and they’re paid to be ignored. There was no risk of you forming an attachment to another pony. You got to sit on your throne and act all detached, hear the petitions and make your proclamations and judgments, generally behave exactly like a monarch is supposed to behave,” Celestia said. “That’s fine. Luna and I do it too when we’re in Court. And the chances of you making a friend -”

“I don’t want any friends.” Twilight’s mouth had contracted and her ears were twitching. “You know that I don’t want any friends. You know that I can’t risk making any -”

Luna cut right across her. “We know perfectly well. That’s the same reason you’ve managed so well out here. There’s so many ponies working on this project that you have no chance of getting to know any of them.”

“But... A school!” Twilight said, almost wailing in her distress. “I can’t! I just can’t! I’ll see the same faces every day, I won’t be able to treat them like servants, I have a hard enough time treating servants like servants, I’ll form attachments -”

“You’ll only form attachments if you want to,” the Princess of the Night said very firmly. “You can’t make a friendship just by looking at somepony every day. You can’t make a friendship by attending meetings with the same ponies every week. If you really don’t want friends, then you won’t make friends, Little Sister. I’ve been feeling happier and happier for years and years now because this day was coming. I must have been sensing it, like a changing tide, though I didn't know what it meant. But Big Sister and I figured it out last week. We figured out how to make you happy again, and that makes me happy!” She twirled her hat again.

Twilight’s intellect had been taking hold for several minutes now. She couldn’t deny that the chance to run a magic school, one of the Royal Pony Sisters’ very special schools, was a challenge she would relish, a task she would attack with great gusto.

Princess Twilight’s School For Gifted Unicorns...

But the same ponies every day? Colts and fillies too? I’ve always loved children the most out of all of my subjects... How will I not get attached?

She really wanted to do this.

“Try it for a while, and if it doesn’t suit you, nothing could hold you if you don’t want to stay. But you might just do the most important work of your life there. After all,” Celestia said, already knowing that she’d won, that she may just have saved Twilight from centuries of misery and loneliness, “who better to teach the most talented unicorns how to perfect their magical skills than the Master of Magic herself? Such a possibility should at least be tried, Littlest Sister.”

It was a very persuasive argument, and it wasn’t as if she wouldn’t enjoy the task. She’d take immense pride and pleasure out of such a worthy endeavour. Twilight found herself, still reluctantly, nodding her head.

She was terrified.

I’m going to have to be so very, very detached. This is dangerous. What if I make a friend? I can’t possibly allow myself to make a friend. I really will go mad from grief if I lose one more friend.

Chapter 06: Talents

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Chapter 6: Talents

She strode into the small classroom, a smile on her face and a sparkle in her eye, and not an inkling in her mind that her life was about to change forever. The five colts and fillies sprang to their hooves at the sudden and unexpected entrance of an honest-to-goodness Princess. She kept smiling despite the fact that she hated such formality and respect. She didn’t think she deserved it from anypony, and certainly not from children.

“Alright, my little ponies, this is important. I want you to remember this. When any of your other teachers come into your classrooms and lecture halls, you should of course show proper respect by getting to your hooves. But not for me, please.”

Besides Twilight’s, every single mouth in the room was hanging open. She smiled wider and sat down on the floor in front of them, ignoring the fortress-like lectern completely.

“Please sit down, my little ponies,” she said warmly. They did, expressions of petrified terror on their faces. Twilight kept her well-practiced welcoming expression on her own face, even though she mentally frowned at the stunned faces before her. Sometimes she wished very hard that she was just a totally-normal everyday ordinary pony. But she couldn’t help that, and so she tended to ignore such thoughts. She found them particularly difficult to ignore when they came from the reactions of foals.

“My name is Twilight Sparkle. Yes,” she said, forestalling the three or four hooves that had shot into the air, “I am a Princess. One of the three Royal Pony Sisters. I bet you never thought you’d ever see me, let alone be taught by me. Right?”

There were very nervous nods from all around the room. Twilight’s smile got even wider.

“While we’re here, you can call me ‘Twilight.’ Not ‘Princess,’ not ‘Your Highness,’ none of that nonsense. We’re all equals here,” she said, winking warmly at the terrified-looking green filly off to her left. “We’re going to be exploring and discussing all of magic’s deepest secrets, you and I. Together, we might all learn something new. And because we’re taking this journey together, I don't feel the need for formalities like ‘Princess’.”

The five little ponies were quaking on their cushions.

She levitated the clipboard that she'd brought in with her. Another of her little stage tricks to try to get them to calm down. “Your entrance exam reports are here. And you know what? I don't need to read them.” She tossed the clipboard into the metal rubbish bin near the classroom’s door. It clattered and clanged, and she was rewarded with smiles and even a chuckle or two. “I’d prefer to get to know you myself, not based on what some examiner thinks of you. What’s your name, little mister?” she said to the orange pony second from the right. He looked to be the oldest one there.

“Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-”

“Don't be nervous,” she said, shifting on the floor in front of them. “Remember, we’re all equals here. What was your name?”

“Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-”

“Okay, Buh-buh-buh-buh-buh-buh” - the explosive laughter was like blooming flowers to her heart - “would you like to tell me your real name? Or do I have to pretend to be a boring old teacher and go and get the roll book?” she said with a false air of tiredness and a weary glance over to the teaching lectern. There wasn't any such book there, but the children couldn't be expected to see through her theatrics.

Put them at ease. These may well be the greatest magicians in Equestria. They’re all extremely special and should be treated as complete equals, despite their age and my position. If you treat them as equals, then maybe one day your dreams will come true, and they’ll treat you as an equal as well.

The adolescent unicorn looked even more terrified now that he was under her direct gaze.

“Alright, we’ll get to names shortly. Take out your pens or pencils and your notebooks, and write this down.” To the sounds of scrabbling through saddlebags, she stood up and walked over to the large whiteboard at the front of the classroom. She levitated a marker, popped its cap off, and wrote:

In this class, there will be no writing. There will be no reading.

There will be no homework. There will be no tests or exams.

This class will be one hundred percent ADVENTURE.

The strangled chuckles were starting as she put the marker back on the shelf. The sound made her smile. Turning around, she saw that all of them were levitating pens or pencils to write, apart from the small colt in the middle. He’d been writing with his mouth. She walked back to her new students, sat down in front of them, stretched her front hooves out, and relaxed on the floor. There were quite a few gasps as the five children saw a Royal Princess of Equestria lie down and smile at them.

“Okay. You can throw those exercise books away. This is not a normal class. You’ll all see me once a week on this afternoon, friday, at this time. Congratulations to all of you, by the way. Not every unicorn wins a place here at my school. And very, very few are referred through to me as particularly-talented little ponies, requiring my special touch to bring out their true potential. Now, little filly,” she said with another smile to the mortified green unicorn on her far left, “What’s your name, and how old are you?”

“I, uh, Princess, I’m, uh -”

“Please call me ‘Twilight’.”

The filly let out a strangled scream. “Eleanor, your Highness! My name’s Eleanor!” She ducked her head and hid it under her hooves.

“That’s a beautiful name, Eleanor. How old are you?” Twilight’s face didn’t show it at all, but inside, she was crying floods. She didn’t deserve this level of awe.

“THIRTEEN!” the hapless filly wailed.

“Please, please don't act like that,” Twilight said in a soft tone. “This happens every year, you know. I might be a Princess but that doesn’t mean that I’m any different to any of you,” she said, bending the truth quite a lot. “I’m a normal pony in here. Please, don’t be scared of me.” Her face took on a well-practiced half-sad, half-hurt expression.

Eleanor raised her head and saw a genuine bona-fide Princess of Equestria looking at her with a pleading expression in her sad, shimmering, watery eyes. The effect was, of course, exactly what Twilight had planned.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, Princess! I mean, Twilight! I didn’t mean to upset you! My name’s Eleanor Heartshine and I’m thirteen. And I’m very pleased that you think I’m good enough to be in your special class!”

The ol’ waterworks. They work every time. Your average pony can’t stand to think they’ve upset an immortal living legend of Equestrian Royalty...

She hated herself sometimes.

“Thank you, Eleanor Heartshine. And you?” she said to the filly on Eleanor’s left.

“I’m Clover Honeydew, Twilight. I’m thirteen years old and I’m so happy to be in your special class,” the brown unicorn said in a subdued, but happy, tone.

Twilight smiled at Clover. “You know, a very, very famous pony shares your name. She was one of the greatest magicians that Equestria has ever known. Do you think you could be as good at magic as Clover the Clever?”

“Clover the Clever? I thought she was just a legend! Was she real?” Clover asked in stunned surprise and awe.

“Oh, she certainly was real. My sister Luna knew her once, a very long time ago. Before Equestria was even founded, in fact. We’ll just have to see what you’re capable of, won’t we?” Twilight said, winking.

As Clover Honeydew blushed brilliant scarlet, Twilight turned to the smallest pony of the five, a purple colt with no Cutie Mark as yet. She casually glanced to the left and the right - the other four ponies had their Marks, but this young fellow didn’t. “Hello, you seem very young. What’s your name, and how old are you?”

“St-St-” The colt stammered in blind shock and panic for a moment, then cleared his throat and seemed to pull himself together, straightening up where he was sitting. “I’m Starburst, your Hi- I mean, um, Twilight. And I’m seven.”

Seven? I know he looks small, but SEVEN? That’s much too young. Can he even perform magic at all?

Well, he IS in this class. I’ll check the clipboard after they leave.

Wait a minute. He wasn’t levitating his pen. He was using his mouth to write. Talk to him after this little meet-and-greet is done. Maybe there’s been a mistake. He shouldn’t even be here, he’s so young.

Well... You were seven...

“That’s a very handsome name,” she said, making the tiny colt blush almost as furiously as Clover. “And your name, young sir?” she asked the orange pony with the blue mane to Starburst’s left. “You’ve managed to untie your tongue by now, right?” A couple of the other unicorns giggled.

He certainly had. “Bevonen Bevonen the Third, Twilight. I’m fifteen and I’ve been at your school for two years already. My teachers and tutors have told me that I show uncommon potential, so they put my name forward for inclusion in this special advanced class.” He lifted his chin proudly and nodded.

“That’s excellent, Bevonen. I very much look forward to working with you,” Twilight said, privately making a note to speak with his previous teachers to find out if he'd always been such a stuck-up douchebag. And maybe check out his parents as well. “And lucky last. Your name is?”

“Cr-Cr-Cr-Crystal Sigil, Tw-Twilight,” the small honey-gold filly said. “I just turned twelve yesterday when I had my entrance test, Your Highness.”

“Please, no titles, no formalities,” Twilight said. “Is your mother Sapphire Sigil?” The filly nodded. “I know your mother very well. She was one of my favourite students, and she’s one of the very finest unicorn guards that I’ve ever known. I’m sure you inherited your mother’s powerful magical abilities, Crystal,” she finished with another warm smile as the petite and pretty filly joined the others in her furious blushing.

Twilight sat upright again. “Alright. Our little get-to-know-each-other session is finished for today. The next lesson will be quite a bit longer. When I see you next friday, we’ll be going over each of your strengths and weaknesses, so that I know what each of you should concentrate on to fulfil your individual true potentials. Now, you have the rest of the afternoon off. Please, go and have some fun. Do whatever you want around the campus, and if anypony complains, tell them that Princess Twilight said you have permission and they should take it up with me. Starburst, please stay behind for a minute. We need a private chat.”

The other ponies snickered at the purple colt’s apparent misfortune as they left the classroom, each one of them giving a strangled little bow to Twilight as they went. She hated her station sometimes. It even made children feel the need to bow to her. She’d been doing this for almost a hundred years and she was yet to figure out how to make her students feel genuinely at ease around her, and that made her pretty damn frustrated sometimes...

She shut the door after the last of them with her magic and turned back to the terrified little colt sitting on his cushion, shaking like a leaf in a breeze. She stood up, trotted close to him, and lay down again. She still had to look down at his tiny sitting form.

“Tell me, Starburst, when I did my silly little joke before about this class not having any need to write,” she said, nodding at the whiteboard, “You wrote that down with your mouth. All the other students used their magic to hold their pens, but not you. Do you have trouble with psychokinesis?”

He looked blank. “Um, Princ- I mean, Twilight, I don’t know... what that... means...”

“Telekinesis?” she prompted. He still looked blank. “Levitation?” Still nothing. Well, he was only seven. “Lifting things with your magic?”

“Oh! Yeah, I, um, I have a lot of trouble with that, um...” he said, clearly embarrassed.

Twilight pulled the clipboard out of the bin and magically flicked through the admission notes as she levitated it over to where the two of them were sitting. She read his form for a moment, then tossed the clipboard back into the bin with a friendly grin. Starburst grinned too for a moment, then seemed to come to his senses and resumed looking nervous.

“Your entrance exam. The unicorn in charge says that she’d never seen such a talented young unicorn, and she recommended you for this special class without hesitation. You’re the youngest pony to ever join a magic school, along with me. The normal admission age is thirteen, though occasional exceptions happen for especially talented ponies. The youngest pupil I ever saw was ten, apart from you, and me. I was seven as well when I started learning, and I’ve never stopped learning since that amazing morning nineteen hundred years ago.”

“You went to school?” he blurted. “I thought... I thought you and Princess Celestia and Princess Luna had been here forever!”

“I haven’t been here forever, and I sure did go to school. Hardly anypony knows that I used to be a unicorn. I grew these later,” she said, ruffling her wings. “It was half-accident, half-fate, and I’ve been a Princess ever since.”

“Did Princess Celestia and Princess Luna go to school? Were they unicorns too?” he asked, amazed at this revelation. The Princesses were practically gods to the ponies, and to be just speaking to one, let alone on a first-name basis, was mind-blowing enough. To learn that they were really just like any other pony...

“No, Celestia and Luna are much older than me. Much, much older, and they were born as alicorns. Born with pegasus wings and unicorn horns,” she said, noticing his confusion at the term. “‘Alicorn’ is a very, very old word that means ‘winged horn.’ They’ve been here almost since the founding of Equestria. Do you know when that was?”

“I, um, I don’t know,” he admitted.

“What year is it?” she asked.

“Uh, it’s fifty-nine sixteen.”

“Right, it’s 5916 F.E. So Equestria was founded five thousand nine hundred and sixteen years ago, on the winter solstice in fact, though we celebrate the new year almost two weeks later. And two years after the three pony tribes founded this land, my big Sisters were crowned as the rulers of Equestria. So that’s a really, really, really long time ago. And Princess Celestia and Princess Luna were older than me when that happened.”

He looked stunned. This was almost too much information for his young mind, and the facts and figures made his head spin. He couldn’t visualise just how long nearly six thousand years was...

“But I’m different. I’m different from the other Princesses. I used to be just an ordinary pony, but too many important things happened in too short a time, and now I’m an alicorn as well. So,” she said, straightening up and pointing a hoof at the teacher’s desk at the front of the classroom, next to the lectern, “Why don’t you try lifting that desk with your magic?”

Starburst looked at the desk. “Are you sure, Princ-”

“Just ‘Twilight’, remember. We’re still in the classroom,” she said warmly. She loved children so much, and this young colt was just so endearing. She’d been as nervous as he was on her first day of magic school, a very, very long time ago. She also remembered being completely terrified of Celestia. She didn't want him to be terrified of her. “I want my students to call me by my first name so that they’re not nervous, Starburst. And just privately,” she added, lowering her voice and leaning forwards again, so that her head was conspiratorially close to his own, “I was terrified on my first day of school. I don’t want you to be. So why don’t you give lifting that desk your best try?”

“I don’t think I should, um, Twilight.” He was still too nervous.

“What’s the worst that could happen? she asked with a smile. He mumbled something incomprehensible. “Come on, please. Just try.”

“Okay,” he said, still sounding unsure. “I’ll do it.” He looked very hard at the desk, then set his jaw. A faint reddish glow appeared around his horn, and then a tiny point of bright-white light sparked at the very tip.

The desk glowed brilliant flaming red and leaped into the air, smashing itself to pieces against the ceiling, which was left cracked and dented. The young colt yelped and ducked, covering his head with his forehooves for protection as a shower of splintered wood...

...was caught and plopped down in a neat pile on the floor by a stunned Twilight.

Starburst raised his shaking head. “I’m sorry! Princess, I’m sorry! I always do that, I didn’t mean -”

She levitated a bent mechanical pencil out of the rubble and over towards him, putting it on the floor near his hooves. “Please,” she said quietly, “could you try levitating that?”

“I don’t want to!” he wailed. “I might hurt somepony!”

“No you won’t, not with me in the room,” she breathed. “Please. Try. For me.”

His horn glowed again, and with a loud thwack, the pencil was suddenly embedded in the ceiling beams. He looked stricken. Twilight had quite a different expression on her face.

She pulled the clipboard out of the bin again and read the report from the examiner.

“...turned me into a bucket of water and then somehow managed to set me on fire...”

“Starburst,” she said, voice still quiet from her surprise as she dropped the clipboard aimlessly at her side, “I don’t think I’ve ever met anypony with your raw magical abilities before. You need to learn how to control and focus your magic, but I’m afraid that this school doesn’t have the facilities to teach someone with your level of magical power.”

His face scrunched up and he looked as if he was about to burst into tears. “But, but Princess Twilight!”

“Just ‘Twilight’, please,” she said, somewhat numbly, as a thousand things ran through her mind.

“But Twilight, I want to learn magic! I’ve wanted to learn ever since I saw Princess Celestia raise the sun at -”

“- the Summer Sun Celebration,” they both said at the same time.

There was silence for a few seconds while Starburst froze in terror where he sat, and Twilight’s face went through many, many differing emotions.

He might just be the most talented unicorn in Equestrian history, well, next to me maybe... I can't really remember my childhood with any kind of accuracy or clarity, I’ll have to ask Celestia if I was that powerful. Could she or Luna teach him? No, they don’t take a hooves-on approach with their schools, they’re too busy running Equestria. He has to be trained, he could be a menace to society if his magic were to get out of control, and there’s not a single teacher here or in either of the other schools that could possibly teach him how to use that much magic safely. So, I’m going to have to teach him...

But what if I get attached? What if we become friends? He’s mortal, he’ll die one day and I can’t ever go through that again, not with another close friend, even if I live to be a hundred thousand years old...

But he HAS to be trained. And I’m so lonely... Stop. Forget that. Maybe not a friend. Maybe just a good acquaintance, yeah, I could live with that. I have acquaintances, and I could have another one. And this young unicorn colt is going to go far. It would be a crime not to teach him.

“Starburst,” she said, having made up her mind and be damned to the consequences. “The school can't teach you, but I can. How would you like to be my personal student?”

He started quivering. His eyes were wide as saucers, and his mouth was open in a perfect ‘O’.

“Is that a ‘yes’?” she asked, smiling again now that she was over her shock.

“YES!” He leaped up from the floor and started shouting. “YES!” he exclaimed again. “Yes yes yes yes YES!” He began to bounce on his hooves, his eyes closed in joy as he capered about, as happy as anypony could ever be. He was about to get a whole lot happier.

Twilight saw a flicker of light play around his hindquarters. Her gasp made him stop springing about and look at her in surprise. “Prin- uh. Twilight? What’s the matter, you don’t look so -”

His Cutie Mark. He'd just got his Cutie Mark. It was a reddish-purple six-pointed star, a relatively common Mark amongst unicorns. It represented Magic. She had the same mark, just like thousands and thousands of other ponies did. They came in all kinds of sizes and colours, but red, purple, or magenta meant a deep connection to Magic itself, with magenta the strongest of the three. Hers was much more different from the norm, though. She had a large white star behind the ancient magenta Star of Magic. Her Sisters and herself were quite certain of the symbology - that large white star represented Twilight herself, standing proud and tall right behind Magic. And there were five smaller white stars surrounding the central pair, these representing the other Bearers, her best friends, the first real friends that she had ever had. Her cutie mark, as occasionally happened, was prophetic. It foretold the six Bearers uniting together, Twilight at their centre, and wielding the Elements of Harmony to save Equestria. She stared at the only other variation of the classic Star of Magic Cutie Mark that she’d ever seen.

One large six-pointed magenta star, representing his innate magical ability. One large white star immediately behind it, presumably representing Starburst himself. One small white star to the left of the larger pair, and a very tiny white star to the right, almost a dot if not for its six miniscule points. Prophecy was happening right before her eyes, though she couldn't possibly guess what his Mark might mean. She made a mental note to talk to her Sisters about it this evening, then hitched an expression of happiness on her face as she pointed at his backside.

“You just got your Cutie Mark, Starburst.”

He shrieked in surprise, whipping his head around to stare at his hindquarters. He shrieked again when he saw the Mark there. “My Cutie Mark! I got my Cutie Mark! Yes, yes, yes, yes, YES YES YES!” he shouted again, resuming his manic dance around the room.

“Okay, okay,” Twilight managed after she stopped thinking too hard about his Mark. “Congratulations, I’m very, very happy for you, Starburst. I’m sure your parents will be so proud.”

“Mom and Dad’re gonna flip out! I mean, WOW! My Cutie Mark! And everything else! This is, just, um, I don’t know how to say it!” he laughed. “I’m so happy! I’m so happy!”

At least he hasn’t asked me what it means... I’ll cross that bridge when it comes.

She beamed at her new protégé. “You and I, we’re going to go down to the Teachers’ Only section of the Library. Which, incidentally, you’re welcome to use at any time. There’s a book there that I think you’ll like. It’ll teach you how to slow your magic down to a trickle, and then I’ll show you how to control that trickle, and we’ll work up from there until you can properly control your full magical abilities.”

“Really?” Starburst exclaimed. His mind was completely overloaded at the moment. The triple shocks of becoming a Princess’s private student, getting his Cutie Mark, and now being shown how to control his magic all at once... “Pr- I mean, Twilight. Twilight, this is the best day of my life!” he practically squealed. “What’s this book called?”

“It’s an old favourite of mine,” she said, smiling as they left the empty classroom and headed down the marble-floored hallway together. “It’s called ‘So How Exactly Do You Control A Floodgate?’.”

Chapter 07: Student

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Chapter 7: Student

The front door banged open. “MOM! DAD! YOU’RE NOT GONNA BELIEVE IT!” he shouted, galloping at full speed into the living room. “You’re not gonna believe it!” he repeated, a little quieter now that he was indoors and was actually face-to-face with his parents.

“Starburst! Where have you been?” his mother said, face full of concern as she stood up and walked over to him. “We were about to go up to the school and look for you, it’s nearly five o’clo -” Her concern evaporated, replaced with surprise and joy. “Your Cutie Mark! Rising! Starburst got his Cutie Mark! It’s a star! Oh, that’s just perfect! I knew you could do it! And you’re still so young! I’m so proud of -”

“Well done, Son, that’s really fantastic stuff. Keeping the family tradition alive too!” his father said, beaming as he sat down next to Starburst and rumpled his son’s mane. Then he noticed that his wife had frozen where she stood, and seemed to be choking. “Dear? What’s wrong? Something stuck in your throat?” He followed her petrified gaze to the open front door, and then he choked as well.

“Good afternoon. Mr. Rising Star and Mrs. Evening Star, I believe? A very great pleasure to meet you both. My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I’m here to speak to you about Starburst.”

“What have you done?” Evening hissed as her husband got to shaky hooves and started to make spasmodic bowing motions, ushering the Princess inside their home.

Starburst looked hurt. “I haven’t done anything, Mom! She wants to talk to you about me. She wants me to live in the castle!”

“Whuh-what?” Evening spluttered. These words didn’t make any sense to her at all. “Your Highness, I’m so sorry, if our son has been up to mischief and broken anything we’ll pay for the damage-”

“Starburst is the most magically-powerful unicorn I’ve ever met,” Twilight said, smiling warmly, “and I’m here to speak to you about his education. I’ve asked him if he’d like to be my private student, you see.”

Evening shrieked and sat down, hard. “Oh my! Oh, I’m so sorry, your Highness, I need to sit down for a minute...” Her husband seemed to have gathered his wits. He dashed out of the room and came running back with a glass of water for his wife, who looked as if she was about to faint.

“I’m sorry for dropping in on you unannounced,” Twilight began, sitting down on the floor next to Starburst and smiling at the two discombobulated unicorns. “And I’m very sorry if I’m making you feel nervous. But I really do need to talk to you about your phenomenal son here.”

“We... Phenomenal?” Rising asked shakily. “Er, Your Highness,” he appended. “The- the school told us that he was too young for general admission, but he kept insisting, and so they let him take the special entrance test. Caused a lot of mayhem, we heard, but they did give him a place despite his age...”

“We’ve been worried all day, Your Highness,” Evening said in a very faint voice. “When he didn't come home on time, we’d assumed he’d got himself into trouble, and...” she trailed off. “He didn’t get into trouble, did he?”

“His magical potential is enormous. I don’t believe I’ve ever met a unicorn with even a quarter of his potential, in fact. Now, this is serious,” she said, raising her eyebrows slightly. “By law, the most magically powerful unicorns must be properly trained in an accredited magic school. Undisciplined use of that much raw magic can be dangerous, you see, and then irritating things like indemnity discussions and insurance cases start to raise their ugly heads. So, while Starburst will be enrolled at my school on paper - just to keep the lawyers happy - he won't be attending. He’ll be having private lessons with me, at the pace that we both find to be best. I’d like him to move into his own quarters in Ponytopia Castle for these lessons, because they won’t start at pre-appointed times of the day. They might, in fact, happen at all hours of the night as well - a lot of the most powerful magical spells, the ones that draw their power from the sun for example, can only be safely practiced when the sun is down. There’ll be no rosters or exams here. He must be trained at his own pace. I saw him destroy a desk today-”

“Oh, I’m so sorry! Can we write you a cheque-”

Twilight shook her head, chuckling. “Please, Mrs. Star, you mustn’t think of things like that. Starburst is a very talented little pony and his education is most important to me. As of now, he has official Royal sponsorship for his education. Which,” she added with a wink, “automatically makes him, and you by extension, minor nobleponies.” His parents’ sharp intakes of breath made Starburst start giggling. “As I was saying, I saw him destroy a desk with hardly any magical exertion at all. I’ve almost never seen magic of that power, not even from fully-grown and graduated unicorns. Certainly never from a child. Now.” She got to her hooves. Mr. and Mrs. Star started trembling as they stayed sitting. “Have either of you ever been teleported before? Starburst has,” she said, smiling at the grinning colt.

“Teleported? Goodness me, no!” Evening said. “Have you, Rising?” she asked her pale-looking husband. He shook his head.

“Oh wow, you gotta try it!” Starburst raved at his parents. “It’s so much fun, it's how we got here, Princess Twilight says that-”

Twilight coughed quietly.

“Sorry!” he said, grinning at her like a maniac. “Mom and dad, Twilight says that I-”

His parents both uttered strangled screams. “Starburst!” Evening hissed. “You apologise to Princess Twilight right this second! I’m so sorry, your Highness, I’m so very sorry, I thought we’d raised him better than that-”

“But Twilight doesn’t want me to call her ‘Princess’, Mom!” Both of his parents screamed quietly again and clapped their hooves over his mouth.

Twilight’s horn started glowing faintly. “I know this is all a bit overwhelming, Mr. and Mrs. Star, but I can explain all of this to you much better -”

There was an enormous flash of reddish-purple light.

“- in Starburst’s new lodgings,” she finished.

The two unicorns gasped in shock and surprise as they looked around the large, cozy-looking round room. There were soft cushions everywhere, a large number of bookcases, a writing desk that seemed well-stocked with paper and pens and pencils, and a curving staircase leading to a set of doors, presumably an upper floor. Large tapestries depicting many different unicorns casting various spells hung almost everywhere there wasn’t a bookcase. And through the two large balcony doors, the early evening sun was colouring Ponytopia a beautiful red. They were very, very, very high up...

As Evening and Rising started spluttering, Twilight bent down to Starburst and murmured into his ear. “I need that chat with your parents that we talked about. You go and read some more of that book, okay?”

“Okay!” he said, and galloped off up the staircase to his private study. He vanished through the arched double-doors at the top as Twilight walked over to his parents.

“I’ve explained a few things to your son, but, whatever else he is, he’s still a child and he can't be expected to fully understand such important things. You can understand them, and I have a duty to explain myself properly to you.” Twilight sat down before the stunned husband and wife. “Please, sit with me.” They did, and, ignoring their raised eyebrows and wide eyes for the moment, Twilight stretched out on the floor so she could look straight at them. She took a deep breath, and started from the beginning.

“This whole situation concerns me on some very strange level. What happened to Starburst was almost exactly what happened to me. It’s not really a secret, but it happened so long ago that nopony really remembers anymore - I went to Celestia’s school as a filly, and became her private pupil, the only one she’d ever had. I was the same age as Starburst, and I received my Cutie Mark right after I accepted Celestia’s offer of tutorship. Exactly the same thing happened with Starburst today. His Cutie Mark is almost exactly the same as mine as well.”

“Well, he, uh. Uh, sorry, Your Highness,” Rising said. “Sorry to interrupt.”

“That’s perfectly fine,” Twilight said. “Interrupt whenever you like. Go on, please.”

“He, um, well, he looks a lot like you, Your Highness. Darker coat colour, closer to mine, but it’s the mane that does it. It’s the same colour as yours.”

“And his eyes,” Evening said. “Y-your Highness,” she added hastily.

“I’ve noticed. I still need to speak to my Sisters about this. Celestia and Luna will have plenty of ideas, I’m sure.” She looked worried for a moment. “What do you think about all this?”

“I- We- Your, Your Highness...”

“I’m sorry,” Twilight said. “I’m intimidating you. Please, tonight, talk about this. Go through the possibilities and the drawbacks with each other. And talk to Starburst about it in the morning. It’s Saturday. Take the whole day if you need to. Take the whole weekend. Heck, take as much time as you need. Starburst can stay with you until the three of you make up your mind.”

“Your Highness, I’m afraid my wife and I are a bit overwhelmed at the moment...”

“Please don’t be.” Twilight was getting distracted. Her mind hadn’t stopped buzzing since she’d seen Starburst dent the classroom ceiling that afternoon. Buzzing with warnings. “Take your time. For the moment, this is what I needed to tell you. I’m very sorry that he came home from school so late today. You must have been so worried, and I apologise. Not knowing where your son was after his first day at a prestigious new school... I should have sent a messenger. I’m sorry, it didn’t cross my mind. I was a bit distracted at the time. You see, I needed to have a chat with him first.

“I needed to explain a lot of things to him. I needed to make sure that I was making the right decision, And I needed to make sure that he wouldn't treat me like Royalty. When I started learning magic myself, I was terrified of Celestia. I can understand how you must feel yourselves. You’re sitting on the floor of your son’s new private chambers in the Royal Castle with a Princess sitting right in front of you, having an intimate chat.”

Evening and Rising looked, if possible, even more awkward. They were totally out of their element, though they were both starting to get inklings of just how important all of this was. Their son... Their wonderful, fine handsome colt that, despite his propensity for curiosity-fuelled mischief, they both loved with all of their hearts... Their son could be somepony...

“I don’t want Starburst to feel that way about me. He did this afternoon,” Twilight said, slightly sadly. “I take a special class once a week at my school, it’s for particularly-talented unicorns. In this class, I insist that my students call me by my first name only. It’s a little bit like that with my lessons with Starburst, but we’ll never really be out of class. Every moment that we spend together will be, essentially, a lesson. I told him that while I might be a Princess, I don’t ever want him to think of me as one. More like a big sister. More like” - she hesitated very, very briefly - “a friend. I learned a lot of magic from Celestia, but I made so many mistakes, and even caused a couple of genuine disasters, because I was absolutely terrified of her, terrified of upsetting her, terrified of disappointing her. Terrified, completely terrified of failing her.”

The two unicorns were in danger of spraining their eyelid muscles upon hearing that.

“Once I’d done a bit of growing up, everything was fine, but getting to that stage was... It wasn’t fun,” she went on. “I made sure that Starburst understood how much I valued his” - another tiny hesitation - “friendship. I explained that I’ll never be disappointed in him, that I’ll never be upset by anything he does. That we were both on an adventure to discover magic together. And because of these things, he should only ever call me by my first name. I think he’s young enough to allow that to happen. As to our physical similarities...” Her gaze started to wander upwards slowly as she started remembering the pony who used to look out of her mirror, all those long, long centuries ago.

Twilight thought a lot about what she used to look like. She used to look a lot like Starburst. She’d had a light-pink streak in her purple mane and tail her whole life, but his hair was a uniform purple. Aside from that... They might have been twins. He had a slightly darker coat too, but their faces...

I’ll dig up some of the old pictures. I don’t think I’m imagining it. I think we look almost completely identical. What the heck is going on?

She brought her gaze back down to the two worried ponies sitting in front of her. “I don’t think that anything particularly sinister or bad is going on. He may be destined for greatness, or he might be just an ordinary pony with an extraordinary gift. That isn’t important. The only thing that is important is that he gets the proper training. And speaking of training,” she said. “There’s one small lesson I want to run through with him this evening, then I’ll take the three of you home for now. While Starburst and I go through this lesson, would the two of you like a tour of the palace? Or would you prefer someplace quiet, to think things over?” she said, smiling as she got to her hooves.

“I, uh, we, um,” Mr. Star said. “We, I think we need a talk, I, um...”

“We need some time to think, Your Highness,” Mrs. Star said. “Thank you for the kind offer of a tour, we’ve never been to the palace before,” she said faintly. “Can we... Is there somewhere...”

Twilight’s horn flashed deep red for a moment. “I know somewhere you might like. It isn’t far,” she said as a unicorn guard came through the doors and trotted up to her, saluting. “Please, could you take this very important mare and stallion to my garden?” she asked the guard politely. “Get them any refreshments they wish, and then please give them some privacy. They have a lot to talk about.”

“Okay, can you tell me what’s different between these two pictures?” Twilight asked. They were both very realistic paintings of a perfectly ordinary housecat, except in one of them, a faint white glow was just visible surrounding the cat.

“That one there, that kitty’s glowing,” Starburst said.

”What about these?” The paintings this time were of spoons. Again, one of them had a very faint silvery-white outline, and he pointed it out.

The last pair was a glass. The outline was very faint and hard to see, but it was there on one of them. He got it.

“So, when I want to lift something up with my magic, I should be able to see something like that? And that’s what I have to grab with my magic?”

“That’s right. You need to use your oculus mentis. Your mind’s eye, the magical sight that all unicorns have. What does the psychokinesis book say about that?”

“Ummm...” His eyes scanned down the page of the book to his left. “I have to want to use my magic to lift something, and I have to look at what I want to lift, and I can’t be looking at anything else?” He looked confused. “What if I can see two things? Or if I want to lift two things?”

“That comes later,” she smiled. “For now, you just have to look very, very hard at the thing you want to pick up. And that’ll show you how to pick it up.” He still looked unsure, so she explained on. “When you want to magically manipulate something, you need to know how to grab hold of it. Leaving magic aside for a moment, if you didn’t know how to pick up this pen,” she said, holding one up with a hoof, “then you might just try something like this.” She put the pen back onto the floor and smacked it with the same hoof. It skittered and spun off to the side, bumping into the wall. “Obviously, you know how to pick up a pen with your hooves, right?”

Starburst picked up his own pen and popped it into his mouth, nodding fervently. He looked ready to start taking notes by the ream.

“That analogy’s a bit silly, really. Everypony knows how to pick things up. But not everypony knows how to pick things up with their magic. There’s usually a magic class at school, where the unicorns are taught basic psychokinesis. You’re far too young to have had that lesson, though. I was very lucky, because when I was a filly I read a book on magical manipulation - it was the very first book on magic I’d ever read, in fact. I got about halfway through it and just thought to myself, ‘why not?’ and I tried it. I’d never even ignited my horn before, not consciously at least, but I did then, and I tried to turn a page of that book with my magic. And it worked, and I didn’t blow up the book or set anything on fire. If I could do it, you can do it.”

He put down his pen and crinkled his brow. “What if it goes wrong? What if I break something?” he asked.

“Then we’ll fix it. You know how to ignite your horn. That’s good. Using magic for a unicorn new to the art is like using a muscle you never knew you had. Now, what if you found that muscle was much stronger than you expected? Like, if suddenly you had the strength in your lips to crush your pen?”

“That’d be weird,” he said, grinning.

“But you have that problem with your magic,” she grinned back. “Now, what if you picked your pen up between your two front hooves instead of just one, and you were, somehow, super strong. You’d squash it, right?”

“Well, if you were careful you might not, but you’d have to make sure you were very careful. Right? Um,” he said, “No. Sorry, Twilight. I don’t get it.”

“I don’t get it either,” she said. They both laughed at that. “Forget examples and analogies, Starburst. Let’s just try it. The only thing you need to remember is that you can’t just pick something up with your magic straight away. You have to get your magic to show you that fuzzy little white outline with your magical sight. That’s the object’s aura. You can pick the aura up safely, and the object will follow along.”

“I don't know, Twilight... I'm not really scared, but... Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I am. I'm scared.”

“Don’t be. Please. You can’t hurt anypony and you won’t break anything. I promise.” She had a containment spell ready to fire off at a moment’s notice, just to make sure she didn’t break that promise. “Would you like to try lifting your pen?”

“Um...”

“What does the book say about squeezing down your magic?” Twilight prompted.

Starburst looked at the other book he had open. He read the first few sentences of a chapter called ‘Metaphorical corks’ even though he didn’t really know what a ‘metaphorical’ was. The book’s advice, though, was perfectly clear. He had to imagine a giant cork in his mind, plugging up his magic like the stopper in a bottle. If he imagined it hard enough, it would work. And if it didn't, Twilight had promised that they could keep trying and trying and trying until it did work, no matter how long it took him.

He glanced back over at ‘Psychokinetic Techniques as Applied to Practical Magical Spellcasting for the Advanced Unicorn’. Confidence. The most important thing was confidence. He’d always thought he would break stuff before. Maybe that’s why he always did break stuff.

“I can lift my pen,” he said. “I can lift my pen up and make it float right in front of me.”

“Yes, you can,” Twilight confirmed.

He looked down. He looked at his pen. He stared at his pen.

He stared very, very hard at his pen. He stared harder. He stared so hard that, if it had been capable of doing so, the pen would have run away because he was thoroughly staring at that pen...

“Can you see the pen? Like, really, really see it? It’s the only thing you’re looking at?”

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“Are you sure? Really sure? You’re not looking at anything else? Just the pen?”

She could see his eyes start to water. They were fixed completely on the pen. “Yes.” Almost a whisper. Beads of sweat had appeared on his forehead.

“Now, carefully, without trying to use any magic, light your horn.”

He grunted slightly. A very, very tiny white spark popped out of the top of his horn and burned out. His gaze became even more set, and a flickering light appeared around his horn, wavered, danced for a moment, then flashed out.

“Princess Twilight!” he gasped, jumping to his hooves. “I mean, Twilight! Sorry! I saw it! I saw it, the pen, it was like it was all lit up and it had this funny white glow around it! Like the pictures!”

“Well, now that you can see how to hold something magically, would you like to try and pick it up?”

He sat down again and stared at his pen, a delighted grin playing on his face. His horn ignited, flickering and sputtering. The grin turned into a determined frown as he really stared at that pen...

The glow around his horn steadied into a deep purplish red. Starburst grunted, like he was trying to lift a pair of saddlebags that had been packed full of lead weights.

A tiny point of pure white light appeared at the tip of his horn. His pen glowed red on the floor before him, the same shade as his own magical aura and not the bright flaming glow she’d seen around the desk this afternoon. This was wonderful. Even if he didn’t lift the pen, he’d learned how to control his magic. He needed a lot of practice before it became instinctive and natural to him of course, but this was very promising.

His pen stayed exactly where it was. He grunted again, the spark of magic at the tip of his horn flickering brighter. And then, as he started to tremble, slowly, very very slowly, the pen lifted gently into the air, the young colt’s eyes locked rigidly onto it as it moved higher, then stopped, bobbing slightly, two feet above the floor and barely six inches from the end of his nose.

Twilight didn’t move or speak, didn’t do anything to distract him. The pen stayed floating there for half a minute or so, Starburst’s trembling getting more and more pronounced, until the glow around both the pen and his horn vanished. He let out a huge breath of air as the pen bounced gently to the floor. He gasped in another deep lungful. He was breathing fast, almost panting.

“Were you holding your breath?” she asked. He nodded. “Well, it sure seemed to work! Congratulations, Starburst. You just safely levitated your pen.”

“Yeah, I did! Wow, that was really, really hard! I’m gonna try it again.”

She’d been expecting him to start dancing around the room again, but he was suddenly serious. Elated, sure, but taking everything seriously. “Alright. We have time. We’ll practice until you want to stop, or until your parents come back. Take it easy. If you think holding your breath will help, then do it. But try not to if you can, alright?”

“Okay. I’ll try,” he said. His breathing had slowed down by now.

He stared very hard at his pen.

Very, very hard.

Glowing softly, it floated gently into the air.

“That was the weirdest day I’ve ever had,” Twilight said as she clopped through Celestia’s doors and parked herself on a cushion. “The weirdest one by far. Guess what?”

“Is this to do with our new resident?” Celestia asked. Twilight nodded. “The guards don’t know anything, except that you gave orders to prepare a set of chambers for a new arrival.” She looked expectant.

“Have to wait for Big Sister,” Twilight said, a half-worried, half confused expression on her face. “I don’t know if I’ve done the right thing. I might have done the best thing ever. Or the worst thing. I don’t know.”

The whooshing of soft wings and a clatter of hooves from the balcony announced Luna’s arrival. “Little Sister, one of my guards tells me that you’ve moved a suitor into the palace,” she said with a rakish grin as she walked in, closing the balcony doors behind her.

“Give your guard a pay cut, he's a lousy spy. Our new houseguest is a seven year old colt. How old was I when I became your student?” she asked Celestia.

“You were seven, Littlest... Sister. Oh. Oh my goodness.” Celestia’s eyes had gone wide. “Seven? He’s seven?”

“He’s seven. The only other unicorn, ever, at least as far as I can find out, to perform magic of any kind at that age. He’s dark purple, his mane is this colour” - she pointed at her own - “though without the highlights, I have to admit. His eyes seem to be a very similar shade to these” - a hoof tapped the side of her face - “his Cutie Mark looks almost the same as this” - she pointed at that too - “his aura just so happens to be this particular hue,” she said as she briefly lit her horn, “and he just spent the afternoon thoroughly amazing me with his magical ability. What the hay is going on? I feel like I just met myself.”

Celestia stood up and walked over to one of her bookshelves. Luna just looked stunned. “What’s his name?” the dark-blue alicorn asked.

“Starburst. His mother’s a bookbinder, his father’s a librarian,” she said dryly. “Is this, I don’t know, reincarnation or something? But I’m still alive. Like I said to Biggest Sister, the weirdest afternoon I ever had.”

“The most magical unicorns in history have always been purple, with purple hair and eyes,” Celestia said, flicking through a small tattered notebook. “They’ve all had magenta stars for their Cutie Marks. Purple and magenta, the two counterpointed colours of magic.”

“Clover the Clever looked a lot like you used to,” Luna said. “Dark purple coat and hair. Exactly the same Cutie Mark, as I recall. Though without the five smaller stars.”

“He’s got two small stars on his Mark. Do you think the Elements might be moving on?” Twilight asked.

“Not likely. They picked you and your old friends. You’re still perfectly alive and healthy, and Equestria’s not in danger,” Celestia said as she closed the notebook and put it back on the shelf. “That’s a few notes I've been keeping over the last couple of thousand years. Every particularly-talented unicorn I ever met, the ones with magic itself as their special talent. They were all purple, though otherwise they all seemed to be perfectly normal ponies to me. You didn't,” she continued. “I recognised you as Magic’s future Bearer when I first saw your Cutie Mark, Littlest Sister. I recognised it in all of your friends when I eventually met them. Did you see an Element in him?”

Twilight shook her head. “Nope. He just looks like an ordinary pony. I was surprised when he got his Cutie Mark, though. I’ve seen a lot of Star of Magic Marks but never one with any companion stars. Apart from mine... I don’t know, training him... I have to teach him, don’t I? You’re both too busy and the teachers... He’ll end up putting them in hospital. Am I right to take on this responsibility?”

Too late to go back on your word now...

“Only you can answer that, Little Sister,” Luna said. “We’ll help as much as we can, of course.” Twilight was contemplating her front hooves and missed the two older alicorns’ shared expressions of glee. They quickly hid them as Twilight raised her head.

“Anyway, just letting you know. I won’t pretend that I’m not worried. I hope I can do this properly... I don’t want to get too attached to him. I’ll have to see if this hooves-on thing can be done without getting too... friendly.”

I’m SO lonely... And he’s exactly like you... You’ll get along with him so well...

He could be a very good friend, you know.

And then he’ll die, and you’ll die a bit more inside. Again.

“Well, we’ll all see,” she finished. “He’s gone home with his parents, I told them to talk it over between themselves this evening and then talk to Starburst in the morning. Though if that kid gets a wink of sleep tonight, I’ll be surprised. I swear I didn’t sleep for a week after you asked me to be your student, Biggest Sister.” She trotted over to the door. “This is weird. For the first time since I started teaching, I feel like I should come up with a lesson plan. But I don't have a single idea of what to teach him yet. Good night, Sisters.”

Just as soon as Twilight had stepped into the corridor and closed the doors behind herself, Celestia and Luna were hugging each other, tears of joy streaming down their faces for their sad and lonely Sister, their Sister who never had close friends by her own choice. Luna’s vaguely-sensed prediction of future happiness for Twilight was finally beginning to come true, they could both feel it. They were both happier than they had been in nine hundred years.

Chapter 08: Thaw

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Chapter 8: Thaw

“Enter,” the regal voice announced at the knock on her chamber doors. “Oh! Starburst,” Luna said, brightening immediately. She’d assumed it was her usual messenger, come to deliver the usual stack of paperwork for her to approve before she headed off for her usual mid-morning nap. She was pleased for some diversion from the usual morning. “Welcome back, nice tan. How was Baltimare? I hope the higher education conference wasn’t too dull.” She smiled a very warm smile at Twilight’s number-one assistant.

“I just got back. Sorry, I have to get this out of the way first. Your Highness,” he said, his voice sounding very important as he nudged the doors closed behind him. “I come on Official Royal Business.” Luna cocked an eyebrow as he stood at rigid attention and levitated the scroll he’d brought in with him. She hadn’t seen a scroll in years. Her eyes narrowed with concern as Starburst gave a small cough, then read aloud:

“For the private desk of:

Her Royal Highness,

The Princess Luna Nocturna Socius Selenus of Equestria.

Your gracious Royal Highness,

As you are no doubt aware, Night Mare Night this year will fall on the evening of the new moon. I wish to petition you for a special temporary full moon for this year’s celebrations.

Many ponies look forward to this magnificent night of celebration in honour of you, our beloved Princess of the Night, and we on the committee do not wish for this year’s festivities to be remembered as anything less than the most spectacular in history.

I am sure you will see fit to grant such a petition. A Night Mare Night with no moon in the sky hardly celebrates your majesty and station in the most fitting manner.

Anxiously awaiting your most urgent reply,

Your humble and most faithful subject,

Bevonen Bevonen the Third,

Night Mare Night 5939 Festivities Committee Chairstallion,

7th Court Lane 143-42,

Rose Meadow Downs,

Ponytopia.”

Luna was rolling her eyes. “Sorry about that,” he said as he sat down and leaned on her desk, tossed the scroll into her ‘out’ tray and sighed. “But Official Royal Business is Official Royal Business. I met him downstairs, he couldn’t get an appointment so they made him write you a letter and I said I’d deliver it, as I was going to see you anyway. The pretentious bast... Well. The esteemed gentlecolt insisted that it be on a scroll, so we had to dig one up for him.”

“Don’t I know his grandfather?” Luna asked. The name was uncommon and she was sure she’d heard it before. “Did he hold public office?”

“He was mayor of Hoofington. For two terms, I think. Before I was born, of course, but he was supposed to have been good at the job. I know Bevonen the third from school and I swear, that pony’s convinced he was born royalty and stolen as a foal. He, uh, really hated me teaching him how to self-levitate. I was only ten or eleven but Twilight insisted I come in and show the whole senior psychokinesis class how it was done. He had to pass that to graduate and he just couldn’t get it, what with having to see your own aura and then get it to grab itself and whatnot. Had a cork in his oculus mentis.”

Luna snorted, and then so did Starburst. Chuckling, she smiled at Twilight’s personal assistant. “That’s so like her. Teach somepony to shine, then show their light so that others can do the same. And you have shone. This pretentious pony did graduate, though?”

“Sorry, I’m being unkind. His nose’s more comfortable in the air than to the grindstone, I think the saying goes. But yeah, he graduated. He wouldn't have been in Twilight’s class if he wasn’t talented, right?”

“What’s his Cutie Mark?”

Starburst chuckled, nodding at the message he’d delivered. “A scroll.”

“Well, we do all have a particular fondness for our Marks and the things they represent. Yes, I suppose I could pull a full moon out of my hat for Night Mare Night,” she said. “It’s an unnecessary fuss but it’ll make them happy.”

“I’ll get Meredith to write him the most outrageous letter she’s ever typed up. She’s the best secretary I ever met, Princess. Incredible gift for turning a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ into about twenty pages of floral legalese and doubletalk mumbo-jumbo.” Luna giggled, nodding. “Anyway. How’ve you been?”

“Worried,” she admitted, turning suddenly serious. Unlike her moon, Luna’s moods didn’t wax or wane. They flicked, instantly, from extreme to extreme. “The dragons sent another letter. Seems they didn’t like our reply to the last one. I can’t possibly believe they’d be stupid enough to try another attack on Equestria, but you can’t be sure they’re telling the truth. I’ve only ever trusted one dragon. Don’t let her know,” she added.

Starburst nodded. “She’s got enough on her plate already. Thirteen in her new class, it’s the most ever. And some of them are amazing. She’s got me in to help out a few times already this year. But the dragons, damn. Is Celestia going? Good,” he said as Luna nodded in turn. “She should sort this out. Point out the very serious drawbacks of breaking their treaty.”

“And if not, then we will tell Twilight, and then I think that the dragons might just get a visit from three fully armoured angry alicorns with their horns pre-charged for megafaunacide. They don’t need to know we’d never do such a thing. You know about the massacre when we lost Spike?”

“Yes. Twilight talks about him a lot. She told me what happened. That must have been horrible, losing such an old friend and then almost losing her mind as well...”

“The dragons think she did it. The rest of them don’t even know Spike was there, as not a single dragon escaped his rage to tell the tale. They think Twilight killed all of those dragons, and some of them were as big as dragons ever get. That’s why they signed their treaty so quickly, and that’s what I just can’t understand. They’re terrified of alicorns, but they’re asking us to shorten the days again, and I think it’s a trick just like last time. But they should remember the results of the last time they tried it. I think that all Celestia will have to do is threaten them. We don’t like it,” Luna admitted. “We don’t like threatening them, especially as We’d never willingly harm them. They’re magnificent creatures and We love them all. But those magnificent creatures are far too dangerous to be allowed to have designs on our peaceful land.”

Starburst was nodding again. “Not now, not with over a hundred million ponies in Equestria. That’s far too many innocent lives to risk. I think she’s forgiven them for the most part, but she’d love the opportunity to make her feelings known to them. With an implied slaughter,” he finished grimly. He’d never met Spike, of course, but he knew everything there was to know about the greatest Number One Assistant in history. Twilight could talk about him for hours, and she frequently did.

Luna flicked back to warm and welcoming again. “So, why did you come up to see me anyway? You didn’t just come to deliver that scroll, I think.”

He looked sheepish. “I really, really need to ask you something. Well, tell you something, then ask you something.” He’d suddenly started looking nervous. He never looked nervous. Luna hadn’t seen him look nervous since he was a foal.

“Do tell, then. And then ask,” she smiled, hiding her concern for his obvious nervousness. She adored Starburst, as did Celestia. He’d been living here in the castle for over twenty years, ever since Twilight brought him under her wing. And now he worked as personal troubleshooter and magical assistant to all the Princesses in general, and Twilight in particular. Because he’d essentially grown up with the three alicorns, he spoke to them as if they were family, not Royalty. They were usually on a first-name basis, when they were in private at least.

Starburst opened his mouth. He closed it again and frowned. He tried again. “I, um. Wow. So, I was away... Stupid. You know that. When I was away, wow. Damn, this is hard to say.”

Luna smiled a comforting smile at one of her closest friends. He was obviously concerned about something. Was it something personal? Had something happened? Was he alright? Tiny lines of concern just barely marred the edges of her smile. “Just tell me,” she said gently.

“I’m in love with Twilight,” he blurted.

Luna froze. She actually stopped breathing as he continued, talking in a flood now the subject was broached.

“The conference... I could barely concentrate, oh, I got the new school reforms pushed through that she wanted but my mind wasn’t on the job. I’ve known her for more than twenty years. She’s a wonderful pony, she’s a magnificent teacher, and it’s not like I haven’t been away from her before, on trips a lot longer than this one too. She’s a great friend,” he said, “she’s my mentor, she’s one of the most incredible ponies in Equestria and I think she’s absolutely brilliant. But this trip... I’ve never felt like this before. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. It started before I went but I didn’t know what it was because I’ve never gone out with a mare for long enough to fall in love and so I don’t know what...” He paused, taking a breath and staring into the Princess’s eyes. The expression on his face was pleading. “I’ve never been in love before. And I missed her, Luna. I missed her while I was in Baltimare, missed her so hard that it ached. I’ve never missed her before, I’ve never missed anypony before! I think I’m in love with her. I’m in love with her. Am I? Am I in love with her?”

Luna willed herself to speak. “I think you just might be,” she said, slowly and with enormous effort to keep her voice even. “There’s a very distinct possibility that you just might be. Alright, that’s what you needed to tell me. What do you need to ask me?” She hoped that he wouldn’t notice how much control she was exerting over her voice.

“What do I do about it?” His voice was pleading, the distress on his face made him almost seem like a young foal again.

“I'm afraid to say this, but that’s up to you. I’m sorry I don’t have any real solution to this problem. Have you thought of speaking to Twilight about this?” It was getting pretty difficult to keep her voice at an ordinary volume.

“I can’t do that!” he said. “I only just figured this out myself, well, I think I figured it out, did I figure it out? What if she... She’s my mentor, my old teacher, I’ve known her since I was seven -”

“But love,” Luna said, “is where you find it.” She was almost quaking now as she fought to stay in control of herself. “I think that you should speak to her. Go see her. And gently. Broach the subject gently.”

Starburst hadn’t noticed there was anything wrong with Luna. He was too busy with his own head and heart. “I... I have to see her anyway. The report on the conference, I...”

“You’ll be fine,” Luna said, almost strangling. “Go see her. Go on, go see her. Good to have you back, let me know how you get on. Go see her.”

Starburst nodded distractedly as he wandered over to the doors. “I have to see her anyway,” he said, not realising he was repeating himself. “Okay, I’ll see you later, thanks for listening. Bye, Princess,” he said, using her title as he went through the doors.

Luna’s horn glowed bright blue as she cast a soundproofing spell on her entire chamber. She almost mis-cast the spell in her current condition. As soon as it was completed, she leaped into the air and shrieked.

“YES!”

She banged the balcony doors open and took to the air to find her Sister. She hoped Celestia wasn’t in Court today, but if she was, Luna was quite happy to barge in and interrupt the session regardless of who the audience was. Happiness was coming. Happiness was coming for Twilight, she could feel it. It was coming right now, the tide was turning right the hell now, right at this very moment. She very nearly shouted in joy again as she streaked over to her Sister’s tower.

Starburst didn’t knock on this Princess’s door. He didn’t need to. “Hey!” he called. “You got the extra funding for the graduate studies program!” He was fairly amazed that his voice was steady, what with the way his heart was banging against his ribcage.

“That’s great!” Twilight said, swivelling around on her cushion and beaming at him. “I knew you’d get that sorted out. I couldn’t just have made a proclamation, it’d have been rude towards the education committee. It’s good they agreed to my proposals on their own merit.”

“They nearly didn’t,” he said as he trotted over. “Someone on that board doesn’t like all the funding that unicorns are getting. It’s not like pegasi and earth ponies don’t get just as much funding in their own areas.” His heart hammered harder as he got closer.

“Well, everypony has their special interest lobbies... But it got through! Thanks, Starburst. That’s fantastic news, now we’ll be able to hire some new teachers. Get them installed as full professors of magic and have them take personal apprentices from the graduates. This is going to be great!” she said, clearly as happy as could be. “Thanks, thanks so much for all your work, I’m sorry I couldn’t go too.” She gestured at the mountain of paperwork on her desk. “I hate this bureaucracy stuff, it ties up so much of my time. I really should hire an accountant. It’s good to see you, by the way. You look tired. Did you just get back?”

“No, I went to see Luna first. I had a message to give her.” He sat down directly in front of her, his eyes level with her own. He was sitting very close and looking at her with an expression that she’d never seen there before. Fear? There was fear there, she’d seen fear on his face before when they’d been in dangerous situations but this was different, this was -

“Would you... Um.” He coughed. “I was wondering if you... Ah, I mean... I want to ask you something, can I ask you something?”

She was concerned now. He was so nervous. He was almost never nervous. “What’s wrong, Starburst? You can ask me anything. Nothing’s off limits, you know that.” He was acting like a youngster. He seemed jumpy and excited as well as nervous and afraid. Eyes opening a little wider, she felt a thrill of excitement herself. The last time he'd been nervous... Had he... Had he found a new marefriend? Had he asked a pretty young mare out on a date? He’d certainly dated before, but the nature of his work meant those relationships didn’t really go very far... She was starting to feel overjoyed for him, thinking that she’d figured out what was -

“Would you like to go to dinner with me?” he said very, very fast.

“Oh. Dinner? But we have dinner all the time,” she said, now thoroughly confused. Why would he ask her if she’d like to have dinner? They frequently ate together. They were, after all, very close... acquaintances. She didn’t like using that ‘F’ word so she used the ‘A’ word to keep her mind at ease.

“No,” he said. Now there was despair on his face as well. “No,” he said again as she simply looked her puzzled confusion. “What I meant was, Um. Twilight. Would you, like to go to dinner. With me. On a date.” He was sweating bullets.

Suddenly, so was she. Her quizzical smile evaporated. Her eyes went wide and a hot burning sensation started somewhere deep in her chest. She felt her heart rate increase, could hear her own blood thundering in her ears as a thousand horrible things flew through her mind. She started to mentally rage at herself as she felt her colour rising.

NO! DON’T YOU DARE! DON’T YOU DARE SAY YES!

He was asking her on a date. On a date. Like she was a little filly and he was a charming young colt. But she wasn’t a filly, she was nearly two thousand years old, and she certainly was not a little pony any more. Sure, they could look each other in the eye just fine, had been able to for years. So he wasn’t really a “little” pony any more either. He wasn’t a colt. He was a tall, handsome stallion who... looked really good, she suddenly realised. She’d... never looked before. It made her feel...

DON’T YOU DARE! THIS CAN ONLY END IN TRAGEDY!

His eyes, full of terrified hopefulness just moments before, were starting to fill with sadness, the sadness of rejection. She was rejecting him, or at least her face must be. She had no idea what her expression looked like but it couldn’t be good, not if it was causing Starburst the anguish she now saw spread across his entire face.

“I, uh,” he said. He looked down, then glanced back up. “I’m... I’m sorry, I...”

His eyes were starting to glisten. She’d never seen him cry before. She’d just broken his heart and she didn’t even know how. She very much wanted to say something, but she didn't know what to say. Her mouth wouldn’t work at any rate, so even if she did know what she should say... Her hooves had gone numb and her forelegs started trembling as her mind made the greatest attempt it could at sparing her heart from the despair of the death of another loved one.

DON’T YOU DARE! DON’T YOU BUCKING DARE! YOU KNOW WHERE THIS WILL GO! YOU KNOW HOW THIS WILL END! NO MORE LOVED ONES! DO YOU WANT TO VISIT HIS GRAVE? DO YOU WANT TO SEE IT IN YOUR DREAMS? HAVE YOU LOST YOUR BUCKING MIND?!

Perhaps she had, because Starburst was already a loved one. He was her friend, and she his, despite all of the promises she’d made to herself, despite her refusal to admit it to herself until now. The dreams were coming back, not often, once or twice a month maybe, but for the first time since she’d discovered teaching, she was having nightmares. Except they now had a tiny unicorn colt in them as well who happened to share her Cutie Mark. Starburst was a loved one. And he apparently wanted to be a bit more than just a loved one. Did she? Did she want the same thing? Had she, in fact, wanted the same thing for years, centuries upon centuries... millenia? Did she want a companion? Did she want...

NO! NO, NO, NO!

Yes...

NO!

He was getting to his hooves, saying something that her screaming mind couldn’t understand at the moment. There were tears in his eyes and he obviously wanted to get away so he could wipe them with dignity. She didn’t want him to go. She raised a hoof in a foolish attempt to stop him from leaving, he was starting to turn away, surprise, shock, sudden unexplained fear shot through her like a sword, even though no sword could pierce her magical skin she still felt it, she felt it like a physical pain, something she hadn't felt in such a long time but she recognised instantly and then The Terror came, The Terror that he would go, that he’d leave, leave now with so many things unsaid and The Terror helped her to find her voice so she opened her mouth and somehow she found the strength to whisper a few words and then...

As she uttered them, the blindfold was lifted, the clouds cleared from her heart and she realised that she'd never, in fact, spoken truer words in her life. Her mind screamed one final time at her treason, gave one last valiant effort to halt her traitorous betrayal of her vows -

DON’T - YOU - BUCKING - DARE - SAY -

“I’d love to,” she breathed.

Chapter 09: Fairly Forward For a First Date

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Chapter 9: Fairly Forward For a First Date

She was so nervous that she was pacing. In public. With dozens and dozens of ponies around to see. And only one of them paid her the slightest attention.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” came a serious-sounding voice from behind her. Twilight turned and saw a frowning pegasus guard glaring at her. She recognised him. His name was Eagle Eye, and he had a reputation for watchfulness. “Are you alright? Can I help you with something?”

“No, that’s... That’s okay, I’m... I’m fine,” she said, slightly nervously.

“You don’t seem fine. It’s unseemly to pace around like you own the place, ma’am,” he said. “This is the entrance plaza of the Palace, you know. A lot of important ponies here.”

“Oh, I’m s-s-sorry,” Twilight managed, now starting to sound very nervous indeed. There weren’t so much butterflies in her stomach as griffons. Flocks of them.

“Are you alright?” the guard asked again, expression softening slightly. “I’m sorry, ma’am, you seem upset.” The expression hardened again as his training overrode his solicitude. “This is a public plaza, but it’s still part of the Palace. And you’re acting suspicious.” His eyes narrowed.

“I’m just... I’m waiting for a... a f-friend,” she said, almost whispering the final word. She was starting to sound moderately terrified.

She wasn’t terrified about the guard at any rate - she had no reason to be. She was perfectly within her rights to be doing what she was doing - she could do anything she wanted, after all - though it might give the guard a heart attack if she pointed out exactly who she was. She was nervous, and yes, a little terrified, because he wasn’t here yet and she didn’t know if it was because he was late or she was early. She genuinely could not remember what time they were meeting each other.

“Okay, ma’am. Sorry to sound so rude, but would you mind waiting for your friend in a slightly less obtrusive manner? As I said, this may be a public plaza but it’s still the Castle, and you’re not Royalty.” He should know. He knew every Prince, Princess, Lord and Lady that lived here. This young earth mare was certainly not one of the seven earth Princesses, nor one of the two hundred or so earth Ladies that lived in the vast Ponytopia Castle and Royal Palace.

“I, uh, sure. Sorry. No problem,” Twilight said. She turned and trotted shakily off the main concourse and took a seat along one of the walls. The guard had resumed what had to be his patrol route, but he was shooting her glances every few seconds.

Where is he? Is he late? Am I early? Did he say eight or eight thirty? It’s seven past eight already, good grief, how will I even recognise him? He might already be here and looking for me too, why didn’t we tell each other how we were going to disguise ourselves -

“Hi,” said a green earth pony as he sat down next to her. The stranger had spoken in Starburst’s voice.

“How did you recognise me?” she hissed as she shot to her hooves. He followed suit, backside having hardly touched the low seat. “I was starting to get worried, I thought you were late and then I thought I was early -”

“I don't know,” he said. “I couldn't remember if I said eight or half past eight, so I thought I'd get here early just in case, I saw you talking to that guard, I knew it was you, well, I thought it was you,” he said in a rush, looking at least as nervous as she felt. “I didn’t know until I got close, but I can recognise you.” He grinned awkwardly.

She looked closely at him. She’d never seen this stallion in her life, but now that she was actually looking... He was there. In the way he stood, in the shape of his smile, how he held his head...

“That’s amazing,” she said. “I never realised before just how well I know you.”

“Same here. You’re damn right it’s amazing, you don’t look like you at all, but you’re still you,” he said, gesturing along the plaza towards the enormous Castle gate. “Shall we? Our supper awaits.”

“So where are we going?” she asked, barely managing to keep the excitement out of her voice. She felt so young. She felt like a giddy little filly on her first date.

This is your first date, you giddy little filly.

“You grew up in Ponyville, right?” he asked.

“Canterlot. Well, no, sort of.” Her inexplicable wooziness was making her sound like a nutcase. She shook her head and tried to explain. “Well, I was born in Canterlot, and I grew up there. But I did most of my real growing-up in Ponyville. You know the story, I was sent there when I was eighteen to do that little job for Celestia, and I somehow ended up staying for three hundred years.” A slight frown creased her brow as she remembered the reason she’d left. She shook her head again, putting Rarity’s funeral from her mind. Tonight was not the time for that kind of reminiscence - it only reminded her about how Starburst was going to die one day, and how she never would, and how damned unfair that was - not to him, to her. She wasn’t going to let thoughts like those spoil this night.

The frown vanished and she smiled quizzically at him as they trotted through the Castle’s main entrance and started down the sweeping walkway to the street. “Why do you ask? Not that I mind,” she added hastily. That was odd. She’d just second-guessed something she’d said to him. She suddenly didn’t want to sound like she was giving him orders, something she’d never done anyway.

I’m so nervous! Calm down. Get a grip, Twilight.

“I’m just curious,” she finished.

“I thought I’d take you to Ponyville for dinner.”

Twilight actually managed a laugh. “That hole? It doesn’t deserve the name,” she said. They’d eaten there before and neither of them had been impressed with the fare. Of course, the one time they’d been there, it was an official function that she’d been invited to, followed by an official dinner. Far less important than tonight. Then, they’d celebrated some noblepony’s fiftieth birthday and then just had dinner. Just an unimportant dinner. Then, they weren’t... going to dinner.

“No, no,” he said. “Not that awful restaurant. There’s a park, way over in the Forest Quarter. It’s called Ponyville Park, probably named after the old village too. It should be pretty much empty this time of the evening, and there’s this nice little row of picnic tables. I made dinner,” he said sheepishly.

They hopped into one of the magically-powered carriages that waited at the stands on Royal Junction Way. Twilight took a seat on the back bench, and Starburst popped down facing her on the front one. The carriage started trundling off towards the tram depot.

At the same moment, they both realised that they were each looking everywhere but at the other. They laughed.

“This is crazy,” Twilight said. “We’ve known each other for years and suddenly we’re too embarrassed to look one another in the eye!” They both laughed again.

They immediately resumed looking anywhere but at each other.

The ride didn’t take long. In all of five minutes they were walking into the Royal Quarter cross-city tram station. Starburst started into a slow trot as he looked at the trams.

“This one’ll take us there, c’mon, quickly, it’s about to leave!” he said, trotting onto a tram carriage with ‘TREETON’ emblazoned on its destination sign. Twilight cantered along behind him, eyes taking in the sights. She didn’t often get to walk around in public and even though she’d helped to build this station, she’d never been inside it. “The park’s pretty close to the tram station too,” he said, taking a seat on one of the long benches that ran down each side of the carriage. Twilight sat down next to him as the tram started off with a jolt, moving out of the station and up onto the leafy vine-like overhead wires and curving tree-shaped supports that comprised Ponytopia’s citywide public transport system.

Twilight stared out the tram windows at her bustling city. She’d never really seen the city like this. Celestia and Luna liked to amuse themselves by occasionally wandering around incognito in public, but she’d never done so before. These were her subjects as they really were. Not bowing and scraping, not half-terrified out of their wits at meeting a Princess. If she were to drop her disguise right now, she knew there’d be a literal riot on this carriage as ponies fought to be the first one to get down on their knees in front of her.

This disguise idea was brilliant. She planned to use it a lot from now on.

To be a normal pony for a day...

“I thought this would be much better than just teleporting,” Starburst said. “And besides, I couldn’t have taken you along, and you don’t know where the park is. Sunny told me that you could teleport other ponies even when you were a young mare.” They’d agreed not to drop any names in case they were overheard. For the last few generations since the building of the city, a resurgence in Royalistic pride made ponies feel that naming their foals after one of the three Princesses was in bad taste, and perhaps even insulting to the Royals. If he’d said ‘Celestia,’ there could be only one pony in the world he could possibly have been talking about. And even though there were only half a dozen other ponies in this carriage built for fifty, and none of them particularly close, there was no reason to take risks.

“‘Sunny’ would get a kick out of that nickname,” Twilight grinned. “I’m going to start calling her that. What about Big Sister? Moony?” she asked with a grin.

“Loony,” he offered, smirking.

They both laughed, then she turned wistful. “The teleportation thing... My translocation's always been unusually powerful, ever since I first set hoof in that ancient room that held the Element... I think the Element did it. It started to magnify my magic, until it magnified it too much for a unicorn to handle. Hardly anypony ever learns to translocate. I think I’ve met, what, three? Three that I remember who could. Apart from myself and my Sisters,” she added. Then she grinned. “Three, heh. I meant four, of course. I forgot to count you.”

He looked embarrassed. “I can only go a couple of miles, you know. You can go to the moon. You could probably go to the sun. Heck, you could probably visit the stars. And I certainly can’t take other ponies along with me.”

“You never know,” she said. “Magic is your talent, and your magic is still getting stronger every day. You constantly amaze me with the spells you come up with. This disguise, for example. I can do it. My Sisters can do it. But no other pony could possibly perform such a powerful illusion spell.” He was blushing as she went on. “It’s flawless, it’s perfect. Your blush even comes through,” she teased with a grin. “I can’t see through it at all. It’s just your mannerisms that let me recognise you. Nice job on the horn, too. It’s hard enough to cloak yourself in a magical skin that changes your appearance, but quite another to make a body part invisible.”

“I could say the same about your wings, you know,” he said, grinning himself yet again. She smiled back at him, and his knees started feeling wobbly as long, strong, unseen feathers gently stroked his own invisible horn. “Yeah,” he managed. “That’s a really good bit of magic right there.”

They got into another road carriage at Treeton Station. After telling the unicorn attendant where their destination was - it would have looked a bit fishy if two earth ponies started magically directing their own carriage - their freshly-spelled ride bumped and wove its way through a mile or so of charming tree-strewn roads and covered walkways before stopping at the roadside entrance to a small park. There were a few swings and slides set up near the entrance, but the rest of the park was nothing but trees, bushes, grass, gentle hillocks and slopes, and a few benches set up near a stand of elms.

“‘Built on the historical site of the ancient village of Ponyville’,” Twilight read aloud off the sign by the entrance. “I should get that changed.”

“Yeah,” he said. “No idea who thought Ponyville was here. The Castle’s right on top of the old place, right?”

“My old home... Well. A certain tree that I’m extremely fond of had the Royal Memorial Garden built around it. It’s right at the back of the Palace inside the Castle grounds, that’s where... That's where all of this started. Maybe we should get that sign changed, but maybe we shouldn’t. Nopony remembers anymore...” She shook her head, banishing old memories for brand-new ones that were happening right now. “Sorry. I’m sorry. Let’s have dinner,” she said, a genuine smile on her face as she walked alongside her - she giggled inside as she thought the word - coltfriend.

“This is kinda cheating,” he admitted as they sat down facing each other. He looked about. Nopony. Nopony about, nopony who could possibly see what he was about to do, and somehow the secrecy just made everything all the more exciting. A reddish glow appeared above his head, and a checked picnic cloth flashed into existence on the table, along with a wickerwork basket. Twilight looked on, impressed, as he pulled stacks of sandwiches and bowls of salad out of the basket, along with a small bottle of wine and two earth pony mugs. “It’d be a bit tricky to explain if somepony came wandering through the park and spotted two earth ponies levitating glasses,” he explained. She grinned, picking up her mug with her hoof and waggling it at him.

“I know how to handle one of these. This looks lovely, Starburst. I’m starving. And thirsty.” She put the mug down next to his own.

“Well, tuck in. It’s not much,” he said, pouring two mugs of wine - badly, as it turned out, his nerves making his unicorn hooves slightly unsteady on the bottle - “but if I say that I slaved all day over the dinner, will you enjoy it more?”

“Did you?” A quirky smile, a raised eyebrow.

“Ten minutes’ work before I put on my disguise,” he admitted cheerfully. She laughed, not seeing through his little fib. It had taken him all day, hours and hours of stress and worry to make sure everything was perfect.

And everything, amazingly, was perfect. They ate. They drank. They talked. They admired the peace of Ponyville Park. They smiled at each other a lot.

The atmosphere in the carriage back to the station was unexplainably awkward. They weren’t saying anything, and they both looked nervous, embarrassed somehow, and sheepish. They’d both been relaxed in the park, so what was different now? Twilight decided that there was some ice here that needed to be broken, ice that hadn’t existed until yesterday when he’d asked her out. She decided to break that ice. Even though she was easily as nervous as she’d ever been, she somehow overcame her jitters and took the initiative.

She hopped off her cushioned bench, moved forward, and sat down on the facing seat right next to Starburst. He seemed to tense up for a moment, then relaxed. She was pretty damn tense herself.

“I didn’t say it before. You look really nice tonight, by the way,” he said, unconvincingly.

“Thanks, I heard ‘dull brown earth pony’ was in this season,” she said flatly. He laughed. “It’s really funny, not to be recognised.” She paused, thinking for a second or two. “I like that.” And then she did something that briefly terrified them both. She shifted over on the seat and leaned gently against him, closing her eyes and attempting to relax against his side. After a few moments, her heart started beating again and she managed to find her voice. “I like this, too.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, neither of them moving at all, just gently swaying back and forth with the motion of the carriage. Her ear must be pressed up against one of his blood vessels or something, she realised, because she could hear his heartbeat. Her hearing was better than the average pony’s, but not that much better. His heart was really going for it, beating both fast and hard. It was like a set of drums. Then she realised her own heart was beating at about the same speed and with the same amount of force. The realisation made her want to say something, but she didn’t know what. Finally, a topic occurred. “Dinner was lovely. Thank you. The park was beautiful. Lots of trees, beautiful old trees. When did you first go there?”

He couldn’t answer. His mind was in overdrive. Here he was, a very famous unicorn in his own right, sitting in a public carriage with not only one of the three greatest ponies in Equestrian history, but a universally-admired-and-loved immortal goddess leaning against his side. And she was asking him about a park he’d been to once as a colt, and again this morning for all of two minutes to make sure it was just as he remembered it. And he hadn’t paid the slightest little bit of attention to the park during dinner. Her warm, gentle weight was making his heart go slightly crazy - he wouldn’t be at all surprised if he suffered a heart attack right now. He blinked at the rear wall of the carriage, moved his mouth soundlessly for a moment, then looked to his left.

He’d always been astounded by just how powerful Twilight’s magic really was. It was so much deeper and wider and far more profound than his own sizeable abilities, and here was yet another example. He’d changed the colour of his coat and hair, hidden his horn, and disguised his cutie mark, but he still looked like what he really was - a thirty-year-old stallion. Twilight, however... Twilight looked like a young earth mare barely out of her teens. This made her slightly shorter than him. Her head was there, leaning against his shoulder, her eyes closed, one of her ears twitching slightly, the other pressed flat against his neck. Her faintly-smiling mouth was barely three inches from his own. He didn’t think. He was, at this moment, totally incapable of thought. It happened completely automatically. He leaned his head down slightly.

Their lips met.

Twilight’s round green eyes flew wide open, and she found herself staring into a sky-blue pair that were almost as wide as her own. She didn’t recognise the eyes at all from their physical appearance, but she could see Starburst gazing out at her from behind them, boring into her with the most intense gaze she’d ever felt. The gaze was cut off as he slowly closed those eyes, those stranger’s eyes that were still completely his own, familiar as her own face in the mirror.

She opened her mouth to say something - what, she had no idea - and realised that she’d only be able to mumble with his lips pressed to hers. Suddenly, though, she found that she didn’t need to say anything at all. A soft moan began in her throat as she closed her own eyes. This was, possibly, the only thing in the world that Starburst knew more about than she did. She almost gasped as she felt his tongue slide gently out of his mouth and hesitate, briefly, at the point where their lips met. Her own tongue, somehow, almost against her will, slid gently forwards to meet it. She moaned again, feeling the most incredible sense of ecstasy that she had ever felt, felt it grow in her chest, felt it spread throughout her entire body, right down to the tips of her hooves, marveled as it left every inch of her feeling warm and comfortable. Her invisible wings started to ruffle at her sides as she became vaguely aware of faint movements and quiet shuffling sounds.

Starburst must have moved around on the seat to face her because she now felt his hoof sliding gently up the right side of her face. His touch was so very gentle, so wonderfully tender, it was almost like it wasn’t there at all. She felt like she was melting. Her hooves started trembling slightly and a strange ringing started in her ears, more of a sensation than a sound. She wasn't breathing. It was no big deal if she was deprived of oxygen, her magic would just take over in such a case, but something wasn’t working right. She started to get dizzy and lightheaded as she felt his other hoof gently stroke the other side of her face. If heaven existed, she was there.

She had waited one thousand nine hundred and forty six years for her first kiss.

It was well worth the wait.

But it ended about a billion years too quickly.

The carriage bumped to a halt outside Treeton Station. Twilight blinked dazedly as their lips parted. She saw that his own eyes were still closed as he moved his face gently back from hers. Then she noticed that one of the station attendants was opening the carriage door, and she jerked upright and made to scramble to her hooves.

It didn’t work. Her front hooves didn’t want to move, and her back legs spasmed on the seat. Crying out in surprise, she went tumbling, face-first, onto the floor of the carriage. She heard several surprised voices, felt several pairs of hooves pick her up. She couldn’t really see properly, everything was swaying and blotchy, millions of little pinpricks of light were popping in front of her eyes. And she couldn’t stop smiling.

“Twilight! Oh, damn! Sorry! Twi’! Twi'! We’re in public! Please, Twi’, try to pull yourself together!” The hissing voice she heard, faint and indistinct at first, sounded urgent and full of panic.

“You okay, lady?” a gruff voice barked.

“N... no... no, I mean yes, I’m okay... I’m just... I need to sit down...”

She felt herself being helped to all fours by several pairs of hooves. She blinked, shook her head clear, and realised where she was. They were on the curb by the tram station, and she’d had something of a brain meltdown in the carriage. Starburst was helping her into the station, murmuring hasty thanks and apologies to the ponies that had come to her aid. Her vision was still wobbly, but she could see where they were heading. A row of chairs mounted to the station wall was getting progressively closer. She felt herself being gently lowered onto one of them.

“How’re you feeling?” Starburst asked.

“We’re in public,” she whispered.

“Huh?”

“Why are we still in public?” she nearly moaned.

“Huh?” he repeated. He was completely taken aback. “What do you mean? We’re at the tram terminal. We’ve got” - he looked up at the large departure signboard - “about three minutes until the next tram back to the Royal Quarter. You’re sick, I should get you back to the -”

“Why, why are we still in public?” She really did moan this time.

“Uh, Twilight... Your disguise is still fine, I mean, I can tell it’s you because I know you so well, but nopony’s going to recognise you... Why are you worried about being in public?”

“Because if you don’t kiss me again within the next five seconds, I’m going to scream!”

His eyes opened wide. “Okay, a little help please?” She looked up, confusion entering her smoldering gaze. “So we’re not seen,” he prompted.

She looked around at the crowds of ponies in the station. Quite a few of them were still looking in their direction from the small scene she’d just created. She couldn’t possibly teleport away or cast an invisibility spell while they were being watched. She let out a small, frustrated sigh.

“We don’t really have to take the tram home,” he pointed out.

“No,” she agreed, earnestly, breathlessly.

He appraised the arrivals and departures boards on the other side of the station. There was nopony near them, just a line of information kiosks below that were closed at this time of the night. “They’ve got insurance,” he said quietly. “And they’ll get an anonymous donation for the repairs at any rate, right?”

Twilight nodded madly.

A flickering red horn-shaped glow appeared in the air above Starburst’s hornless head. There was a creak, then a pair of sudden ringing snaps as two of the three large supporting braces holding the arrivals board to the wall gave way. There were gasps from the crowd as the large board ground its way in an arc down the wall, bending the remaining strut. The board began to glow, first one colour, then several, then a literal rainbow of auras as the many unicorns present all tried to magically grab hold of it to stop it from falling. He saw that there was no chance of that happening, at any rate. The third support strut was bending but it was far too strong to break. Nopony would get hurt, no matter what else happened. And most importantly, not a single pair of eyes was on them any more. He looked over at Twilight, stared straight into her hungry gaze. The intensity of that gaze took him completely aback, but he found his voice regardless.

“Somewhere private.”

Her invisible horn flashed, and then they were in each other’s hooves, rolling on the stone walkway behind the parapet that ringed the base of the spire atop Twilight’s Palace tower. With a faint popping sound and a flash of reddish light, the green-and-white earth pony seemed to evaporate like mist. The brown earth pony followed suit a moment later. Their disguises gone, Starburst and Twilight were locked together, eyes closed, whimpering moans coming now from both of their throats.

They rolled over again, and Starburst found himself on top of her. He planted his hooves firmly on the flagstones and ignited his horn. Without their lips parting, he magically slid her up from the walkway to rest with her back against the tall pointed spire that topped the tower. There was a fire in his deep-purple eyes, a fire that was reflected and amplified by the burning in Twilight’s own. Their tongues began to explore again as Twilight wrapped her hooves around him and pulled him to her. Then her wings opened, and they, too, embraced him.

He broke the kiss, but immediately kissed her again, on the corner of her mouth this time, a hot, strong kiss that he again broke before he kissed her cheek in the same way. A gasp escaped her lips as she closed her eyes and leaned her head back, the tip of her horn tapping the gilded brickwork of the spire. He was moving down her neck now, the kisses like fire on her skin. Another gasp, then a moan as she felt warmth explode within her chest as he moved slowly and tenderly over it. She had never felt like this, had never imagined that such physical and emotional pleasure could possibly exist in the world. Right at this moment, she wasn’t thinking about his mortality, wasn’t thinking that one day he would die and leave her all alone, leave her with her heart torn to ribbons. She was only thinking of now. She was thinking that she would never feel any greater ecstasy in her life, no matter what she did or how long she lived.

She was mistaken, as she was about to discover, by quite a large degree.

As Starburst’s trail of kisses took his lips down, lower and lower, over and then below her tight and trembling abdomen, her eyes snapped very wide indeed as she suddenly learned just what the very heights of ecstasy could truly be. Running her hooves through his mane, head thrown back in rapture, she now knew she would never feel anything greater in her life.

She stopped thinking completely as her emotions overwhelmed her, leaving her lost in the highest bliss she was sure she would ever experience. A few minutes later however, she found out that she was mistaken again.

And again.

And, again.

And... again.

Chapter 10: 'Til Death...

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Chapter 10 - ‘Til Death...

Everypony knew that something was up. Everypony guessed that it had something to do with Twilight, and a few of the really smart ones had even managed to put two and two together and come up with the right answer. Most of the gossip columns and magazines managed to get it right. Three weeks, so far, of stunning sunsets and sunrises were pretty much giving the game away. The meteorological wonders were far, far more spectacular, in fact, than anything any living pony could remember, and the announcement just confirmed what everypony had been hoping.

For the Attention of
Every Royal Subject
within the bounds of
The Land of Equestria

The Marriage
of
Princess Twilight
to
Lord Starburst

Shall take place on
Tuesday September 19th
at 10:00 A.M.
in the
Royal Ponytopia Memorial Garden

It was only two months away, and the wedding organisers were going slightly mental. There were about six thousand invitations to send and check. Nopony even knew that Starburst was a Lord, but his Royal sponsorship while he was a colt made him and his immediate family nobleponies in their own rights.

His parents, of course, were slightly overwhelmed. Years ago, they’d quietly refused Twilight’s offer to move into the Palace - as was, in fact, their right as new Lords of Equestria - and had unobtrusively carried on with their respective lives and careers, quietly proud of their famous son. They were only now discovering how maddening fame could be as constant requests for interviews from a hundred gossip magazines had driven them a little bit mad. Furthermore, as the bride’s parents had passed away nearly two thousand years ago, Evening Star found herself in charge of most of the arrangements. She’d almost forgotten what a good night’s sleep was.

And the happy couple hadn’t been apart for weeks. It was, in fact, almost completely impossible to separate them. Twilight’s duties and Starburst’s responsibilities were now shared duties and responsibilities. They went everywhere together, they did everything together. And Twilight hadn't stopped smiling since that weird morning when the guards had found them curled up together behind that parapet... Thank goodness that the guards knew all about keeping secrets. The gossip rags would have exploded at that one.

The overall mood of the populace, the reports said, was of excitement and anticipation. But with the big day rapidly approaching, Celestia and Luna decided to take a hooves-on approach. They regularly walked throughout their cities, partly to relax, partly just for the delight of talking to ponies that they'd never seen before and would never see again, ponies that had no idea they were talking to Royalty. It was good to have a conversation where the other participants didn't keep bowing. They hadn't had the chance to get out and about since the wedding announcement, but they were going to do so today.

“I’ll go to Trottingham and Phillydelphia. You want to try here and Manehattan?” Celestia nodded at the suggestion. “Alright then,” Luna said. “Let’s go and see the mood on the streets. This is happening very fast but Twilight’s needed this for so long, Big Sister.”

Celestia nodded again. “See you back here shortly.”

Luna vanished with a pop of moonlight as Celestia stuck her head through her chamber doors. “Guards,” she said to the pair flanking her door. The two pegasi straightened and saluted. “Please ensure that I’m not disturbed for the next hour. No disturbances at all. No exceptions, please. Official Royal Wedding business.” They both saluted again, and she closed her doors and magically locked them.

Walking to the middle of her study floor, she looked out one of her tower windows. Far, far away against the horizon, she could just see the faint outline of the tall skyscrapers of Manehattan, a city famous for the dour moods of its residents. Her horn flashed and a young white unicorn mare with a sunflower Cutie Mark stood in her place. She trotted over to her closet and slipped a slim pair of saddlebags on. Glancing quickly at her mirror to make sure her disguise was perfect, she nodded at her reflection, closed her closet door, and vanished in a burst of golden sunshine.

She took note of the looks on her subjects’ faces as she trotted lightly up a bustling sidewalk of the large and impressive city. They all seemed to be smiling, and those that were walking together in pairs or in groups were all talking excitedly amongst themselves. The words and phrases she heard most often through the hubbub were “can’t wait,” “amazing”, “wedding” and “Princess”. After seeing nothing but happy ponies for several blocks, she moved aside through the crowd and entered what seemed to be a juice bar.

Approaching the counter, she joined the short line waiting to be served. Even here, there was a buzz of anticipation underlying the conversations. Most of the booths and tables were full, everypony was talking in excited tones, and even the servers looked cheerful as they mixed and made fruit punch.

“‘Morning, ma’am,” the young unicorn colt behind the counter said pleasantly as her turn came. “What can I get ya?”

This was definitely not the typical mood of a Manehattanite. “A tall mango and watermelon crush please, extra ice, and can you stick an umbrella in it?” Celestia asked.

“Sure thing ma’am,” he said, turning around and yanking a couple of levers on the juice dispenser. “Free shot of cherry syrup?” he asked over his shoulder. Celestia nodded. “That’s six bits please, ma’am,” he said as he put the tall foam cup down on the counter in front of her. “What the hay, make it five.”

“Really? Thanks. So,” she asked, levitating a few coins out of her saddlebags and onto the counter. “What do you think about this wedding business? I’m just visiting,” she explained, laying on a thick Baltimare accent to mark her as an obvious foreigner, “and I’m surprised by the mood on the streets here.”

“Ah come on, ma’am. They gotta be just as excited up there as we are down here. A royal wedding! A real one, not just a Prince or a Princess, it’s Princess Twilight! One of the Princesses, one of the real Princesses getting married! I don’t think I’ve ever been happier in my life, ma’am!”

They were holding up the line now. Celestia glanced apologetically to her left at the ponies who’d come into the juice bar behind her, but they were all cheerfully smiling and didn’t look to be the least bit worried about somepony holding up the service.

Definitely not the typical mood of Manehattan.

Returning the server's cheery wave, she sat down at the last unoccupied table and began to sip her juice thoughtfully. It was a pretty good fruit crush, she realised. She’d have to come back here again, although she could probably write the pleasant service off after the wedding was over. Equestria was a great place for ponies to live, and almost everypony here was content, but life was life and nopony could be happy all the time...

Maybe Twilight could be, though. Maybe. For a little while.

And then what? What would happen to her Littlest Sister after Starburst passed away? She thought she knew what might happen, and she’d never hoped that she was more mistaken about anything. Twilight had so much life to live. The Eternal Sisters might still be needed for another ten or twenty thousand years yet.

Normal unicorns couldn't move the sky, never had been able to. The old folk tales were nonsense. The sky used to move just fine on its own, but then Discord had come, and she and Luna had been needed. Discord's curse was still there, and the whole world would die without at least one alicorn. Her Little Sister and herself could handle things just fine, and she’d even managed relatively well on her own once. But it would be a lot more fun with her Littlest Sister along for the ride as well. She hoped Twilight could stand the loss.

Her attention was pulled away from the possible future and back into the present. “Is this seat taken?” a young stallion asked, a stack of books balanced on his back and a harried look on his face. He’d been walking on three hooves as he held his cup of juice.

“Not at all, please, sit down,” Celestia said. He plopped his books and juice on the table and sat down with a sigh. Celestia was just starting to think that she might have just met the only pony in Equestria in a bad mood when he grinned widely at her.

“Thanks! Thanks heaps. Been on my hooves all morning. Name’s Spec. Spec Sheet.”

“Sunny Daze,” Celestia said, shaking hooves with the stallion. “I’m visiting from Baltimare. Manehattan sure is busy.”

“You think this place is busy? You should try Ponytopia,” he chuckled, then slugged down half his cup of juice in one swallow. “Eighty million ponies in that place! ‘Course, it’s about a hundred times bigger than ol’ Manehattan. It's peaceful there, no real bustle to speak of. Went once with my folks. I should visit again, maybe for the wedding. I’ll probably get a couple weeks off work then anyway.”

“What do you do?” Celestia asked. This young pony, probably only in his early twenties, looked like he worked all day and half the night. There were bags under his eyes and he looked exhausted, despite his massively happy expression.

“City survey. For new buildings, like, and old ones that need fixing up. I got the job of checking the shops and stores along the wedding route. Well, proposed wedding route. There’s supposed to be an official Royal Tour of Equestria after the wedding and we’re making sure that everything on the proposed routes is fit for a Princess.” He grinned, slurping his drink. “Everything checks out so far. Oooh, I really can’t wait, this wedding is gonna be something else!”

“I didn’t know there was going to be a tour,” Celestia admitted, quite truthfully.

“Oh, it’s not announced yet, heck, it’s not even official yet, we’re just doing the advance work. The Manehattan celebration organisers are still running through the checklists and proposals before they send their official request to Princess Celestia.”

Spec had no idea, of course, that Princess Celestia herself had just given her wholehearted blessing to the entire proposal. She beamed at the young earth pony. “Good luck. I hope your proposal gets accepted.” Not for the first time she found herself wondering if it would be embarrassing or hilarious to just drop her disguise.

“Thanks. Hey, nice meeting ya.” He squashed his cup and flipped it into the trash bin by the counter. “Gotta get back to it!” He hopped up, balanced his books on his back, and trotted merrily out the juice bar’s front door.

She sat watching the other customers for a few minutes, listening to the buzz of their conversation. Yes, it sure seemed that this city, at least, was on top of the world right now. She finished her fruit crush and was giving serious thought to ordering another one to go when another pony sat down opposite her. The place really was packed, and the only remaining seat had been at her table. She smiled at the newcomer.

“Nice day we’re having,” she said at the same time as her tableguest. Celestia paused for a moment. “My name’s Sunny -” she began, and the pink unicorn spoke again in perfect unison, even adding the little surprised gasp at the end.

She knew this unicorn from somewhere, she was sure of it. She never forgot faces, but she couldn’t place the newcomer at all. She looked at the stranger’s Cutie Mark. It was familiar too, but she just could not place it. In fact... A little frown creased her brow. She knew that this unicorn was familiar to her, but she was also completely sure that she’d never known any unicorns with that particular Mark. She knew an earth pony once with -

The unicorn spoke. She looked sad, probably the only sad pony in the city, maybe in Equestria. “This is really weird. I feel like there’s something missing from my life, I don’t know what but it’s like there’s this big hole. I see things in my dreams and I don’t know why. I saw this. I saw myself sitting down at this table and saying ‘Nice day we’re having’ at the same time as you, I don’t know why, I don’t know a lot of things. But I found you and I have to say the rest.”

Celestia raised her eyebrows.

“Anyway, you have to beware the dragons, because if she goes to them, their indirect actions will steal the little one from Equestria and drive her mad with grief. I don’t know what that means,” the unicorn said sadly. “I saw myself saying that. And then saying this too. And then getting up to leave “ - she did - “and then saying ‘Nice to see you again after so long, say hi to Luna and Twilight for me. Bye, Celestia’, even though I don’t think I’ve ever met you, and your name’s Sunny, not Celestia.” The pony turned and trotted over to the door.

Celestia was completely gobsmacked. What had just happened? That pony had just called her by her name. How had she been recognised? But no, no, she hadn’t been recognised, that’s not what that pony had said. She very specifically had not recognised her. Where did she know that unicorn from -

Her eyes flicked wide as she recalled who that pony was. Impossible. She did know that pony. She’d once known her very well indeed. But to have just run into her today, that was completely impossible. Impossible. She’d been an earth pony, not a unicorn. And she’d also been dead for nearly nineteen centuries. But that face, that voice. That utterly-unique Cutie Mark. Three balloons. Two were sky-blue and one was sun-yellow, and only one pink pony in history had had such a Mark.

Ignoring the surprised looks she received, Celestia bolted off her seat, upturning the table in her haste as she galloped to the door. Wrenching it open in mid-stride with a flash of magic, she came to a clattering halt out on the busy sidewalk. The left. She’d seen the ages-dead pony move off to the left. She started heading that way, looking all around for a bobbing pink horn. There, down the street, about thirty feet away... Why hadn’t she disguised herself as a pegasus, she briefly wondered. She could have just flown over the crowd to catch her. Pushing through the dense hoof-traffic, she caught up to the owner of the pink horn -

It wasn’t her. This unicorn was pink, but she wasn’t the same one who’d just walked out of the distant past and into that juice bar. Cursing under her breath in ten different dead languages, she raised her head and scanned her eyes all over the crowds. She kept moving.

There could be no doubt now. The hair had been different, it was long and straight and that wasn’t how she remembered it, and there was the small matter of that horn. But everything else, no, there could be no doubt. There could be absolutely no doubt. It wasn’t some distant descendant of hers, it had been her. That pony was Pinkie Pie, the one and only Pinkie Pie. In the flesh.

It was evening before she finally gave up. She’d been chasing pink unicorns all over the damn city, and not one of them was the one she sought after. She sat down on a bench in a small and welcoming park, surrounded on three sides by skyscrapers and a busy street on the fourth. She wondered if she was going crazy. For the hundredth time since she’d left the juice bar, she told herself that what had happened today was impossible.

She’d seen that pony grow old. Grow old and die, centuries ago. She’d been at her funeral. How in all Equestria could that particular pony have just waltzed back into the world? And looking no older than she had on the day they’d first met as well. And with a unicorn horn, no less. And then that cryptic message. Beware the dragons? What little one? More importantly, what was she going to tell her Sisters? How could she possibly tell Twilight that she’d just run into Pinkie Pie?

She kept thinking about that message. Its tone and meter made it sound a lot like one of her mother’s prophecies. Twilight, Luna and herself had changed so many things now that the ancient book didn’t really apply to the world anymore. Most of the prophecies would never happen, and tragedies and disasters had befallen Equestria over the centuries that weren’t mentioned at all. No, too much future history had been changed.

But what had happened to Pinkie Pie? How was she still alive? She didn’t doubt that it really had been her, perfectly alive and well despite her honoured grave back in Ponytopia. Celestia had seen a lot of very strange things through the course of her long, long life, and this was the strangest.

That prediction. Pinkie had said that she saw things in her dreams, things that were real, things that would actually happen later in real life. Celestia had once known another pony who had had such prophetic dreams. She’d just been thinking about her, in fact. Her mother had seen the future... A memory came to her, a memory from so long ago, a memory of a letter that Twilight had written to her that concerned a bizarre escape from an angry hydra and some thoroughly unexplainable magic seemingly exhibited by an earth pony. That earth pony had been Pinkie Pie.

Her mouth dropped open as she remembered that Pinkie Pie had been able to see the future as well.

Celestia vanished in a burst of orange evening sunlight that startled the few cityponies strolling through the park. She appeared in her private chambers to find a guard captain speaking to Luna. She managed to drop her disguise spell before the guard turned at the flash of her arrival.

“Your Highness!” he called in surprise. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you, are you alright? Oh, of course you are,” he said, shaking his head. “Your Highnesses, please excuse me, I’ve got a search to call off.” He trotted out the doors and started barking orders at his subordinates.

Luna looked a little stern as she closed the doors. “I thought We were only going to be an hour or so -”

“I missed a lot of meetings this afternoon, I know,” Celestia said as she started pacing. “Sorry, I’ve been chasing a ghost.”

Puzzlement replaced Luna’s slightly disapproving expression. “Beg your pard-”

“What do you remember of Aunt and Uncle?”

“I, uh.” Luna was surprised. “Mother’s sister? And her husband? Not a lot. What’s -”

“I can’t remember. They had foals, right?” Luna nodded. “I can’t remember how many. And I also can’t remember if they were unicorns or not. Mother and Father were unicorns.”

“Hmm,” Luna said thoughtfully. “We never saw them much, they... I have this old idea that they didn’t want to have much to do with Mother and Father after we were born, I remember Mother saying that -” She frowned. “These memories are very old. Mother said, I was very young, I can’t really remember properly, but... She said something like Aunt Starbeam being scared of her after...” Luna gasped as she remembered. “After she grew her horn! After Mother grew her horn! She was an earth pony who grew a unicorn horn!”

“I thought so, I thought so,” Celestia said, looking more and more agitated as she kept pacing. “I wasn’t sure, I couldn’t remember, I needed you to help jog my memory. I think our cousins were earth ponies. I can’t remember them very well, but I can’t remember any of them having horns. It never seemed important until now.”

“Aunt and Uncle and our cousins were earth ponies. Mother and Father were earth ponies. They grew unicorn horns and began to -”

“- see the future,” Celestia finished. “I ran into Pinkie Pie today. She was a unicorn.”

“Pinkie Pie? As in, Pinkie Pie? But she’s dead,” Luna said as Celestia nodded. The midnight-blue alicorn was thoroughly confused now. “Hey, and she was an earth pony, not a unicorn. Big Sister, are you okay? You’re starting to creep me out -”

“Pinkie Pie could sense the future. She could sense things that were going to happen to her or to her friends in the immediate future.” Celestia stared straight at Luna, and Luna stared back. “So could Mother. And she was an earth pony. An earth pony with a unicorn horn.”

“Mother... Mother saw things far into the future. Not in the immediate future. She never told anypony, but she gave you that book in secret. On her deathbed. And you know what Father gave to me.”

Celestia nodded. Moonglow’s Weapon of Harmony had been wielded by Luna during the Windigo Wars to defeat the final part of The Lunacy’s millennia-spanning plan. Luna had cracked the curse that first began when Discord conquered Equestria in the days after its founding. That curse was damaged but not broken yet, and it still prevented the world’s natural physical laws from working correctly, prevented the changing of the seasons, held the sun and the moon stationary in the sky unless the Sisters moved them with magic, but one day it would break and nature would return to the world and then their tasks would be finished. But that day might not come for ten thousand years or longer.

The Element of Harmony wouldn’t have worked in the final battle of the Windigo Wars, and Twilight had refused to try it anyway. Harmony couldn’t be imposed on the entire population of Equestria. Their father’s Weapon, however, had been purpose-made for the task, though Moonglow himself had never even understood what he was making or why.

“He gave me something else,” Luna said. “He gave me a book too.”

Luna went to Celestia’s balcony doors and stepped out into the dying sunlight. “Night will have to begin a bit early today, Big Sister. I’ve got some digging to do.” Her horn glowed brilliant blue momentarily, then flashed as bright as the full moon as a billion stars popped into being in the orange-pink evening sky. “I hope I can find it. I buried it in the woods under that mountain to the south of our old village just after Father died. The last words he spoke to me were ‘ceyeg teo bowat aromohi Joretil fodoru’,” she finished, rumbling the final words in the language they’d both spoken as foals.

Luna took to the sky as Celestia thought about those words, spoken in the tongue that now only three ponies in the world could speak or read or understand. It predated even the founding of Equestria by millennia.

Read this when you find the third Oracle.

She thought that she might just have done so - or rather, the third Oracle might have just found her. But while Luna did her task, she had one of her own to perform. She had to look up a spell, so she left her rooms and trotted briskly through the castle, down to the large ground-floor library. Twilight would almost certainly know how to perform the spell Celestia needed, but she was not about to ask her Sister for assistance. The thought of what she was going to do almost made Celestia want to vomit, but it had to be done.

The library was closed, but not to her of course. She stepped up to the first librarian that she could see. The musty-grey unicorn looked up from her paperwork and shot to her hooves. “Good evening, Your Highness. How may I be of assistance to you?”

“Good evening, Octavo. Sorry if I’m a little short right now but I need to locate a particular spell. Urgently.”

“Certainly, Princess. The index cards are this way.” They walked past empty reading desks and packed bookshelves and up to a tall stack of card files. “Section three is completely dedicated to spellbooks, as you know,” the librarian said as she pointed down the long hall to an arched set of doors with ‘Princess Twilight Section - Practical Magic’ emblazoned above them. “Let’s see, these drawers here, yes, these three are all spells. All the references are here and they’ll lead us to a book or books describing the exact type of spell you’re looking for, Your Highness. What kind of spell were you after?”

“Thank you, Octavo” Celestia said graciously as she opened the third index drawer and started to psychokinetically flick through the cards to ‘T’. “I’m afraid it’s a private matter. I believe I should be fine from this point. Sorry for disturbing you,” she finished distractedly as she read a reference number, closed the drawer, and started down the reading hall.

“Oh, not at all, Your... Highness?” The librarian trailed off as she found herself talking to Celestia’s rapidly departing tail. “Wedding business, I'll bet,” she muttered, shaking her head and smiling as she trotted back to her desk.

Half an hour later, Celestia stood in the darkening Memorial Garden before the elevated row of special graves. The entire patch of ground they stood on had been transported reverently and completely from Canterlot to right here, the very centre of the old town of Ponyville, more than a century before. The whole huge chunk of earth had been magically dug up and gently supported all the way to the final home of the Bearers, so these graves had never really been disturbed. She thought she’d start with the one that would have the least chance of making her sick.

Looking at the ground before Spike’s tombstone, she concentrated very hard and cast the transparency spell. And there it was, seeming to float in a sudden deep hole beneath her hooves, encased in grime. The grime flashed and disappeared as well, and then she could see it clearly. A large square gemstone. She nodded and extinguished her horn, the grass covering Spike’s most treasured possession from sight once again.

She stepped to the left and steeled herself, feeling like some kind of terrible ghoul for this. The ground seemed to fade to nothing as it became completely transparent, revealing the petrified remains of a coffin. She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them again, and made the coffin invisible as well.

Ste took a step backwards, tripped, sat down awkwardly. The ground covering Rarity reappeared as she lost concentration from her shock. There should have been some remains, that was certain, but she wasn’t sure what would be there, not after so many centuries. Bones still, she’d guessed. She hadn’t expected this though. She forced herself back to shaking hooves and stepped forward again as she recast the spell.

Rarity looked exactly as she had done on the day she’d died. She was lying motionless and still, looking older than any other pony Celestia would ever meet, but essentially unchanged from the moment of her death. She looked peaceful, and the last thing that Celestia saw as she cancelled the spell again was a slight smile on her perfectly preserved face.

Applejack, too, looked as if she’d only just passed away. She was old but still seemed amazingly fit for a pony who’d died aged a hundred and two. There was a faint ring of whitish dust around her head. That must be where her famous hat had been. It had crumbled to nothing, but Applejack had not.

Celestia skipped the next grave for the moment and saw the same thing in Fluttershy’s ancient burial place. The small snow-white pony looked as if she’d just fallen asleep moments ago. Celestia suddenly jerked her head upright and whipped around, the ground reappearing and hiding the kind old pegasus from view. She looked up at the enormous oak that stood over the six graves. Its branches were full of birds, and they had all just burst into song, a beautiful haunting song of recognition and loss. She was almost moved to tears. Clearly, the birds still remembered Fluttershy.

As the brief song died away, she turned back and stared into the grave of the Bearer who had died the youngest. Rainbow Dash looked exactly as Celestia remembered her during her legendary tenure with the Wonderbolts. She’d been the greatest captain in the team’s vast history. She looked young, fit, perfectly whole and healthy, her hair still the trademark brilliant rainbow shock, and just like all the others was smiling in her eternal sleep. The dirt, rocks and grass reappeared again and hid her still form as Celestia moved over to Pinkie Pie’s happy-looking memorial. A bunch of marble balloons wrapped around a spiralling, tapering cylinder. What else could have suited the Element of Laughter better?

The coffin was there, six or seven feet down, fossilised into stone just like all the others. Doing this was making her sicker and sicker by the second but she had to know. A flash of reddish-purple light illuminated the gravestones as she cast the spell on the coffin -

“Hey, Biggest Sis,” Twilight said as she walked up to Celestia, having just teleported into the Garden. The eldest Princess whirled and gasped, her hornglow flickering out. “Woah. Sorry. You okay?” Twilight was looking with sudden shock and concern at the stricken expression on Celestia’s face.

“Oh, I’m... I’m fine,” Celestia said. She re-lit her horn and turned back to the graves. “Just... Just a little extra light to read by,” she fibbed. “I wasn’t expecting anypony else, I guess you just startled me. I haven’t come here for such a long time. Thought I would, uh, catch up with your old friends again. You know. What with the wedding coming up.”

Twilight stepped up to Spike’s gravestone and sat down, smiling sadly at the carved marble flame. “It’s nearly two thousand years too late for most of them, and a thousand for Spike. But they’ll be at my wedding. That’s why I’m getting married under the old tree, you know.”

“I, um, I’ll leave you alone, Littlest Sister. I have too many things to do at the moment, and you should have your privacy here -”

“Hey yeah, I guess they found you,” Twilight said as she gently nuzzled Applejack’s headstone. “Where’d you get to? The guards were going nuts looking for you, I told them that you were probably on Official Royal Business and not to worry. Big Sister probably told them the same thing.”

“Um...” Celestia mumbled.

Twilight looked around and cocked her head at the other alicorn. “Something wrong, Biggest Sister?” She narrowed her eyes. Celestia looked terrible. She looked like she was about to throw up. “Hey, you alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Celestia very much wanted to stop lying to Twilight and say that, yes, she had seen a ghost. But she couldn’t, not until Luna and herself knew just what was happening. So she covered her nervousness with thousands of years’ practice at defusing diplomatic stoushes. “Wedding stuff, Twilight. Top secret.” She grinned, winked, and tapped the side of her muzzle conspiratorially with a forehoof, amazed at how well she was acting considering the emotional torment she was under right at this moment. And even better, that hadn’t actually been a total lie. She’d certainly started the day focused on top-secret wedding stuff.

Twilight blushed and looked back to the bas-relief apple on the headstone. “Ah, sorry, Biggest Sis. I’ll forget all about it, I promise.”

“Your sunsets are still incredible, by the way,” Celestia said in an effort to move the topic away from what had happened today. Both alicorns looked to the western horizon, where tall streamers of red and gold were still dancing bright against the deep-purple evening sky. “I bet you’re doing that unconsciously, aren’t you?”

“I guess I must be,” Twilight said. “I don’t know how, my special talent’s magic, not the day or night sky. And not dawn or dusk, despite my name. I could probably enhance a sunset, but I haven’t been doing the recent ones on purpose.”

“They look beautiful,” Celestia said. “You just keep doing whatever it is that you’re doing, and we’ll continue having beautiful sunsets and sunrises. Hey. Where’s Starburst?” Celestia hadn’t seen them apart ever since... Well, ever since they’d started spending a lot of time in each other’s private studies.

Twilight’s eyes closed briefly at the mention of his name. “He’s making me dinner. He wanted it to be a surprise, so I told him I’d come down here for a few minutes. I miss him already,” the youngest Eternal Sister said. “Love is wonderful, Biggest Sister.” She moved down along the line of her old friends.

As Twilight started telling Pinkie Pie’s headstone about her day, Celestia turned away and trotted through the archway and back up towards the castle. The sick feeling she’d gotten from doing this horrible task was starting to fade. She was beginning to get her heartrate back under control.

At least she knew now. There was nothing in that ancient petrified coffin. No bones, no dust, and certainly not a perfectly-preserved corpse. Pinkie Pie’s grave was empty. And the other Bearers looked like they’d just passed away moments ago. Not for the first time that day, and not for the last either, she wondered what the hell was going on.

She couldn’t really see very well. Oh, her vision was fine, but her mind found it a little difficult to keep track of the details. She vaguely remembered walking up the blossom-strewn aisle in this garden a few minutes ago. She couldn’t really remember why Celestia was speaking at the moment - at least, she thought that Celestia was speaking. She couldn’t be sure. She couldn’t even remember when this weird feeling had started to come over her. This morning when she’d got up? The other day? She had no idea.

The only thing she was sure of was his face as he stood next to her. Now that was perfectly clear. He was saying something back to Celestia but she had no idea what. As his lips moved, he nodded, and Twilight felt a weird twinge in her chest at the nod. It felt like the beginnings of a spell.

She thought she heard Celestia mumbling something. It sounded imperative. She had this little niggling feeling that she remembered it from the rehearsals, but she couldn’t be sure. She also had a vague idea that she was supposed to reply to it, somehow... Was she? Yeah, probably. What was she supposed to say? She really couldn’t remember. Something came floatily up through her consciousness and she voiced the words that sealed the union, the spell, and her fate.

“I do.”

And then it happened.

A spark in her heart so hot and powerful that she gasped. Everything came screaming into perfect focus and clarity. She was standing on the special temporary dais at the base of the ancient oak that, ages upon ages ago, she’d called home for three centuries. She was smiling at Starburst as he smiled back. And she could feel... She could feel what he could feel.

Love. She could almost see herself through his eyes. Her overwhelmed mind tried to make sense of it all, but Celestia spoke again, and this time, Twilight could hear her properly.

“By the power and authority of the Royal Pony Sisters, I take great pleasure in pronouncing you husband and wife,” Celestia said jubilantly. “You may now seal your magical union with a kiss.”

Their union was indeed magical, and it was already sealed far more strongly than they thought, though they didn’t know it yet. They each leaned forwards. Starburst lifted her veil up with his magic.

The small pink unicorn watched the kiss through one of the ancient gnarled knots in the huge old tree. As thunderous applause erupted from outside, her face screwed up and she started crying.

She had no idea why she was crying, and that made her cry even harder. She should be happy. Her oldest friend had just got married - though she couldn’t remember ever meeting either the bride or the groom in this ceremony, she felt certain that the beautiful purple winged unicorn was her oldest friend - and surely her friend’s wedding would make her happy. But she hadn’t been happy for... For so long, for as long as she could remember.

For hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.

For forever.

She felt crushing sadness all the time but this was the worst it had ever been. She wished the Element would just let her die again, even though she had no idea what the Element was. She just knew that it wouldn’t let her die. Again. She was sure she’d already died once before, and it seemed that everything she had truly been had died at the same time. That horrible, horrible hole through her mind and heart, the certainty that something vitally important was missing and she’d never find it or get it back, because no matter where she looked, it wasn't here any more.

But that wasn’t what was making her especially sad right now. This wedding would somehow result in great sadness for everypony. For all Equestria. As a sob escaped her mouth, Pinkie Pie vanished in a puff of pinkish-silver light.

‘The Honeymoon Suite’ was a thoroughly inadequate title. It didn’t do the place justice. They had the top three floors of the largest hotel in Las Pegasus, and they were here incognito. Only Celestia, Luna, Starburst’s parents, and a few very high-ranking guardsponies knew where they were.

They'd earned some time alone. The last three weeks had been crazy, completely mental, and draining. They'd toured Equestria, and it seemed that every city they went to tried to outdo the celebrations of the last. Manehattan's street parade was particularly awesome. But that was behind them now, and the next month or so was private time.

The bedroom - one of nine in this place - was enormous and almost painfully lavish. The walls were covered with brocaded silk, and so was the ceiling. The carpets were so thick that they came up past their fetlocks. The bed itself was an almost criminally-opulent silk fortress that could have comfortably slept twenty.

Twilight barely registered any of this as she sat morosely, staring at the carpet.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m worried. I mean... This is a horrible thing to talk about, but -”

Starburst sat down right next to his wife and stroked her cheek with a hoof. “Whatever it is, you can tell me about it. You’ve been sad ever since the reception. You didn’t look sad until we got some privacy, but I could feel it. You were sad. Is that what this is about? Why in Equestria can we sometimes feel what each other is feeling?”

“That’s part of it, I guess. I don’t know what happened. I don’t know how we can feel each other’s, um, emotions? Feelings? It’s magic, but I don’t know what kind of magic. It’s not that though. That’s puzzling and a bit weird, but... I just can’t get it out of my head,” she admitted. “Now I have far too much to lose. I have you, and I feel like I’ve already loved you for thousands of years.” She couldn’t bring herself to look up at him, so instead she just kept her head down. As she felt the tears start, she closed her eyes, ashamed. She had always been able to contain her emotions so easily before. Apart from a few lapses, she’d kept all of her sorrow well under control for so long, but now she was in love for the first time in her life, and she knew it wouldn't last forever. “I’m going to lose you.”

She felt him gently nuzzle her. “Why would you lose me?” he asked in a whisper. “I know you’re gonna live forever, Sweetie, and I’m not. But why do you think I won’t be with you forever?” He placed a hoof on her chest, directly over her heart. “I’m gonna be in here forever. Right in here. I can feel it. Can’t you?”

She raised her watery eyes and met his gaze, and she felt it again, like an explosion in her heart that made her knees feel weak. She felt, again, what he was feeling. She experienced every emotion that was running through his own mind and heart.

Happiness, wonder, excitement, joy, but most of all, love. Pure love. He was smiling at her with pure love in his eyes and, she could feel, in his heart.

Her tears stopped as the same feelings of her own began to flow consciously back through this magical connection they now both seemed to share. She smiled back at him as he gently lifted her to her hooves.

And a little over a year later, on the day that had the most beautiful dawn in Equestrian history, the prophetic meaning of the very small star on Prince Starburst’s Cutie Mark became clear at to all.

Twilight, finally, would be happier than she ever thought she could be.

For a little while.

Chapter 11: Lore

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Chapter 11: Lore

Starburst glanced up from the ancient spellbook. He looked very serious. “You should do this, Sweetie. You’d be better at it than me.”

“I can’t, I’m too nervous.” Twilight was practically vibrating where she sat. “I’d mess it up or something, and I don’t think I want to risk messing this up!” There was a funny kind of look in her eyes. It was more joy than terror, though terror was certainly there.

“Alright,” he said, looking back at the book. “Okay, a spell to detect heartbeats.” He turned a few more pages. “A spell to detect sapient beings, and another one to confirm the presence of sentient souls. These are some seriously arcane spells -”

“Sweetheart, the spell you can’t cast doesn’t exist,” Twilight said. “You know it, I know it, and we both know what a nervous wreck I can be under pressure -”

“Oh, rubbish, Sweetie. You’re a rock, always have been -”

“That’s crap and you know it, I always screw important things up, so just do it!” she squeaked, closing her eyes. “No! Wait! Stop, don’t, I’m too nervous.” She opened her eyes again and looked at him. “What if it’s, what if I am, um, I mean, what will we do?”

“Well,” he said, “we’d start with a party. Then the announcements. Then, I dunno, bask in the adulation? Neither of us like it, but you know what everypony will say. Everypony’ll think that this is the happiest thing to ever happen to Equestria.”

Twilight started shuddering, terrified by the very thought.

“I’m gonna do it,” he said. He looked down at the book before she could object. His horn started glowing deep reddish-purple.

Twilight felt his heart leap as he cast another spell. Her own heart followed suit as he flicked a couple of pages back and cast the first spell he’d found. The explosions of joy were going to make her collapse if they kept up. Starburst started flicking madly backwards through the old and obscure spellbook.

“Guess what?” he asked as he flipped pages with his hoof and his magic.

“What?” Twilight breathed, feeling his massive excitement and joy.

“There’s three sentient beings in this room. I counted three separate souls, and I heard three distinct heartbeats. Well, two of them were beating in sync, and the third was really small and faint,” he said very quietly as he stopped turning pages and read voraciously, “but there were definitely three beating hearts.” He scanned down the page he’d noticed earlier. He skipped past the insect, avian and reptilian paragraphs and read the brief directions for a spell titled Gender Determination in Mammalian Species via Magical Gene Inspection. His horn glowed briefly, and so did the area of Twilight’s belly below her solar plexus.

He looked up with a face-splitting grin, straight into her expectant eyes.

“Well?!” she asked, unable to take the suspense any longer.

“Filly.”

She squealed in delight and grabbed him into a hug. It was good to forget that she was so old sometimes. She didn’t look old, but, still...

You’re only ever as old as you feel. And I feel so young right now!

“We should tell Celestia and Luna and my parents at the same time. How about now?” Starburst asked. Twilight nodded, then there was a sudden tap at the doors. “Ahhh, crap,” he said. He kissed his wide-eyed wife and turned to look at the doors. He magicked them open.

A unicorn guard stood there, saluting, between the two usual armoured pegasi. “Your Highnesses,” she said, “I’m sorry to disturb you both. Princess Twilight, your Royal Sister requests your presence in her private rooms, as soon as possible.” She bowed.

“Oh! Does she know? How’d she find out?” Twilight got to her hooves and looked over her shoulder and out the nearest window. The sky looked perfectly normal, like any other late-morning clear blue sky. So she hadn’t accidentally coloured it pink or started a shower of comets in her excitement, at least. Funny things tended to happen when she lost control of her emotions. So, a coincidence? Well, she’d find out when they got there. “Actually, this might work really well. Thanks, Shebang.” The unicorn bowed again and trotted off towards the staircase. “Thunderstrike?” she asked one of the pegasus guards. “Could you deliver a message to Lord and Lady Star for me, please?”

“Certainly, Your Highness,” the armoured pegasus said. He was already standing ramrod-straight but he somehow managed to stand a little straighter.

“Would you please ask the Lord and Lady to come up to the castle right away? Evening’s probably going to be at work, it doesn’t matter. Just find them, wherever they are, and take them up to Celestia’s tower. It's very important.”

“At once, Your Highness!” the pegasus said, saluting and leaping into the air to race off and deliver the summons.

Twilight and Starburst trotted down the winding stairways and cloistered halls of the enormous palace. They could have teleported - the message did say “as soon as possible” - but they needed to have a very important private conversation first. Like, how to broach the subject with their family.

“We should wait until your parents arrive, at least,” Twilight was saying as Celestia’s guards saluted and opened the chamber doors for her. Then they took to the air and flapped along the hallway and out of sight. “Hey. Where do they think they’re going? They’re on duty!”

“They’re following my orders. We need privacy, Littlest Sister,” Celestia called. “Starburst’s perfectly welcome, of course, but this has to be for your ears only. Our ears only. No guards, even on the other side of the door.”

Twilight and Starburst walked in through the doors, which glowed gold and closed behind them. All the curtains were drawn and the lamps were blazing bright. Celestia stood, looking uncharacteristically grave, near her roaring fireplace.

And beside Celestia, mud-splattered, bedraggled, looking exhausted and relieved in equal measure, stood another alicorn.

“Big Sister!” Twilight bounded forwards and gave Luna a hug, ignoring the caked dirt that was dropping off the Princess of the Night and soiling the floor all around her. “I haven’t seen you in ages! Not since the wedding! Where have you been? Celestia kept brushing me off, saying you were doing something personal -”

“I’ve been looking for something, Little Sister. I was already looking for it before your wedding, but I came back for that special day. I couldn’t have missed that occasion. Big Sister’s been handling all of my tasks and duties for more than a year, even bringing the night sky. I’ve been out of Equestria, combing every inch of an ancient forest, digging up and replanting nearly every tree in the entire place, searching for something my father left me on his deathbed.”

Twilight took a step back and looked at Luna. Then she glanced at Celestia, and then at a slightly awed Starburst as he came to stand beside her. She said the only thing she could think of saying. “Huh?”

“I couldn’t even take the time to clean myself up. This is incredibly important, Little Sister.” The muddy, messy alicorn tapped the small slimy box at her feet. “There’s a book in here. We should have read it thousands of years ago. I should never have hidden it, but Father’s instructions were perfectly clear - we had to wait for a sign. I found it less than ten minutes ago and flicked it open. I’d barely started reading before I realised that we all needed to hear this together. That chapter I’d opened it on tells of Oracles, like our parents. The first chapter tells of the Elements of Harmony and how they came to be.”

Twilight and Starburst were looking at the box in awe. Their little announcement could wait.

“This book was written eight thousand years ago. It’s been buried in a magically-sealed wooden box since the day it was given to me. The pages are vellum, Little Sister. Not paper, as Mother’s book was written on.”

Twilight’s look turned from astonishment to distaste. Living things had died to make this book. Times were very different back then, of course. She couldn’t tell what kind of skins had been used to make the pages, but nowadays, with almost every living creature and species in the world being classified as fully sentient and sapient beings, such a thing would be considered murder and wilful ill-treatment of a body. She shook her head. “Well, that can’t be helped. You had to wait for a sign? What sign?”

“We didn’t want to tell you until we knew. Really knew,” Celestia said. “The guards have been looking for her for just as long as Luna’s been looking for this book. They nearly caught her in Manehattan, which is where I ran into her. Well, where she ran into me, I should say.”

“Nearly caught who? Who have they been looking for?” Twilight asked. “I could have helped to look, I could have magically located whoever you’re looking for. All those extra guard patrols were supposed to be a training exercise -”

“They weren’t.” Celestia had magically maneuvered a soft cushion behind Twilight. “A few days after the announcement of your wedding last year,” she said, “Luna and myself went to see what Our subjects were making of the whole engagement. Turns out they were all over the moon about it. I bumped into somepony I hadn’t seen in a while, and she gave me a very interesting message. I’ve passed it on to Luna, but I have to pass it on to you as well.” Twilight had cocked her head, looking intrigued and puzzled at the same time. Celestia braced herself and spoke on. “Pinkie Pie sends her greetings.” Twilight’s mouth dropped open and she sat down in a blur.

The cushion would need a few seams repaired. Thankfully, the feathers didn’t make too much of a mess. Twilight’s face, however... “Tell me this is a joke,” the lavender alicorn said flatly.

“No joke, Littlest Sister,” Celestia said, moving cushions for herself, Luna and Starburst over to Twilight. “I didn’t recognise her at first. She’s got a unicorn horn.”

“Seriously. Stop messing around. This isn’t funny. This isn’t bucking funny at all. That can’t have been Pinkie, it could have been anypony. There’s lots of pink ponies and she wasn't a unicorn anyway, she was an earth pony -”

“That’s true. That there’s nothing funny about this at all, I mean,” Luna said, sitting down and holding up her father’s ancient book. “It’s in here. We need to read this.”

“This has to be some sort of mistake, Pinkie Pie’s gone, she’s buried down in the garden, she can’t still be -”

“Her grave is empty,” Celestia said. “I’ve checked. We had to know. I’m sorry. If it makes you feel any better, later that night I started throwing up. I couldn’t stomach food for days in fact.”

“Do you want answers?” Luna said. “They’re in here.” She waved the book back and forth. “There’s a couple of very strange things about this book.”

“Like what?” Twilight asked softly, a buzzing sound starting in her ears. Starburst sat down next to her, a serious expression on his face. She leaned into him for support. She needed it right now. The buzzing died away with his warm comforting presence right next to her.

“Well, what’s the first thing that you notice about it?” Luna said, floating the book over to her Little Sister. Twilight took it and opened the blank cover. It was a very short book, nothing like Starshine’s enormous collection of predictions. Maybe twenty or thirty pages in total. The cover was easily twice as thick as all the pages put together. She read the brief message on the first stained, yellowish page twice before she realised what was wrong with it.

My dearest Luna, if you’re reading this then things are rapidly coming to their conclusion. Share this with your Sisters. You should have two of them by now. When this book is needed, you should have no trouble understanding it. Your father does not know what the strange symbols he is writing could possibly mean, as they don’t exist yet. These are not his words, they are mine.

- Cingretto Sclacta

Some of the letters were a little spikier and thinner than those she was used to, but they were essentially the everyday alphabet. And the language... The language was Modern Equish. The language she spoke every day, the language that everypony in the land spoke every day. The official language of Equestria.

“This is written in Equish. How’s that even possible?” she exclaimed. “Equish didn’t even exist until a few hundred years ago, it’s a really modern tongue. Old Equestrian, you know, from back when I was a filly, that wasn’t even remotely like it, and that’s not even mentioning the language that Starshine’s book was written in -”

“Who wrote the book, Littlest Sister?” Celestia asked.

“Cingretto Sclacta,” she said. “Who’s that? Sounds almost like ‘twisted branch’ in Old Equestrian.”

“Almost right. In fact, that’s very nearly poetic,” Celestia said. “That, Twilight, is a name that Luna and myself both heard in our minds, the name of the voice that called us together to the heart of the Everfree Forest in the days after Equestria’s founding. Right after Discord’s conquest. He couldn’t poison the reunited tribes’ hearts any longer, so he attacked them openly. We were directly needed for the first time. It’s Caballusian, the language spoken at the time. 'Cingro Sclaia' is Old Equestrian for 'Twisted Branch'. 'Cingretto Sclacta' is Caballusian for 'Broken Peace'. It’s what the Elements of Harmony called themselves when we first found them.”

Twilight closed the book and lowered it to the floor, staring at her Sisters with shock on her face. The silence stretched on. Starburst broke it, beating Twilight to the same question. “This book was written by the Elements of Harmony?!”

“Yes,” Luna said, picking the book up and opening it. “The first chapter’s titled ‘Harmony Lost’. I think this will be an eye-opener for all of us.” She cleared her throat and read aloud, as the other ponies looked on in open awe.

“The day that the world first started to break was, coincidentally, the very day that Celestia was conceived. It had been tens of thousands of years since magic came to the world, and a thousand generations of unicorns had unlocked most of its secrets. Something was missing, though. The world was peaceful, and unenforced peace just can’t last. Something will always try to upset the balance. Something did.

“A cosmic event of world-shattering power created myself and The Lunacy, as I said, on the evening of Celestia’s conception. The event itself, well, I have no knowledge of it. Nor does The Lunacy, I believe. However it happened, we suddenly came to be: pure magic, two opposite sides of the same thing. Order and chaos. Light and dark. Peace and war. Happiness and suffering. I couldn’t destroy the monster but I banished it, sealing it in stone just a few days before Celestia was born.

“No creature ever knew of the battles that we fought so far away from every other living thing, though the scars of our magical war can still be seen all over the world in what will one day be called The Deadlands -”

“The Deadlands?” Starburst asked, interrupting. “Like, that’s everywhere but Equestria, right?”

“Nearly. You know that most of the world’s uninhabitable,” Twilight said faintly. Her head was spinning slightly.

He nodded. “I never knew why though. It never occurred to me to wonder why. It feels... wrong, to be wondering why. Like I’m not allowed to think about it.”

“That’s part of the magic that keeps us safely here. We think that something prevents ponies from thinking too much about the places beyond the borders,” Celestia said. “The Deadlands are almost everywhere, no living thing could ever visit them, there’s far too much dangerous magic in the ground, in the very air. Even We can’t visit them. Our powers start to fade as We get too near their boundaries. They’re why everything has to live on this one little continent, barely two thousand miles from one side to the other. An island in the stream. Equestria and the lands around it. And we never knew what made The Deadlands so dangerous. So it was because of a war between The Elements and The Lunacy?” she asked Luna.

“Apparently so,” Luna said, then she read on. “Ahem. The Deadlands. I left the monster alone, buried in the centre of the most magically-infected part of the world. And a few days later, a very strange thing happened. Your elder sister Celestia was born, and I was drawn to her. You did not even exist yet, my dear Luna, though I sensed you would soon come to be, and also that you would be as important as the small, white winged unicorn I saw in your mother’s embrace. Winged unicorns are rare and always a cause for particular celebration. But despite appearances, your sister was not a winged unicorn. She was a magical creature of phenomenal power, as are you.

“I had no idea of why at the time, but I knew that your sister and yourself would be the key to defeating The Lunacy. There was something different about your parents, too. The magic that had created Harmony and Chaos, and had created the first of three eternal ponies, had changed your parents. I guessed that your parents would have the ability to see the future as I can, and so to give you and Celestia the best chance you could have, I enhanced their innate magic with a spell. The moment I cast it, I felt The Lunacy vanish from its prison, and before I could do anything about it, I broke into pieces. Six pieces, to be exact. I seemed to have gained a physical form. I appeared in the centre of a forest on the other side of the world from where The Lunacy had been overpowered.”

“The very centre of the Everfree Forest. So that’s where they came from,” Celestia breathed. All three alicorns looked a little unsettled. Starburst just looked puzzled.

Luna continued reading shakily. “I waited there, unable to do anything alone, while your sister and yourself grew. I saw what The Lunacy had planned. Like myself, it seemed to have shattered into pieces as well. It couldn’t do anything directly. Now, the future. The rest of this hasn't happened as of the moment that your father is putting quill to page. But it will happen, so I will speak of it as if it has already done so. The monster made itself a servant when you and Celestia were approaching your nineteen hundredth birthdays. It destroyed the free will of thirteen living creatures, made them lose their minds and attack and murder each other, then it melded their sacrifices into the creation of its servant, the monster that would bring misery and chaos to the world.”

Luna looked up from the book. Everypony looked sick. “Well, Big Sister,” Twilight said. She’d gone slightly pale. “That explains what happened when you... Thirteen corpses. Ugh.”

“What did I miss?” Starburst asked. Nopony wanted to answer him. He was about to apologise for asking when his wife finally relented.

“Discord. Draconequui aren’t... They’re not a natural species. There have been a few in the past, but they usually just like to cause a bit of mischief. Nothing mean-spirited, I mean. He was the only one that was actively malevolent. He was huge, too, they’re usually smaller than a pony. When Luna defeated him, he... He dissolved into the rotting corpses of thirteen different creatures. Thirteen different sentient creatures. Including a lion, a griffon, a goat, a baby dragon, and three different ponies.” Starburst started to look as ill as the alicorns.

“I’ll never forget their Cutie Marks,” Celestia continued. “The sun, the moon, and a star. Kind of fitting, as the three of us had just managed to kill him. We buried those poor, tortured ponies. We buried all of the poor creatures. That monster always was a vile bastard but... Discord has thirteen separate graves. That wasn’t pleasant.”

“Wow. You girls sure have had some adventures,” he said faintly. “I knew Luna ended the Windigo Wars, but... Wow. Sorry. I won’t push if you don’t want to answer, if it’s...”

“There’s no keeping secrets from you, Sweetheart,” Twilight said, smiling faintly at him. “I’m sorry I never told you before. I guess we were all just trying to forget it.” She leaned against his side again as Luna read on.

“Your sister and yourself will eventually defeat this monster, using me, or rather, using whatever I am now as I sit here, buried in the cold ground, speaking to your father from so far away. It won’t be the end, though. This monster’s power will be immense, and its first defeat will freeze the world, separate this place from the rest of the universe. I believe that the two of you should discover your special talents around this time. I think you will be needed by all the creatures of the world, for a very long time to come.

“Alone, The Lunacy itself will remain almost powerless, just like myself, but will still be an enormous threat. My beloved Luna, I see the monster bending you to its will, though I also see you escape its grasp on a day far, far in the future. A day when I will be united together again by six unknown ponies, the final Heroes of The World. I see one of their number being so skilled in magic that she would find the sixth part of me and ascend her mortal form to claim me for her own. I see her going on to totally destroy The Lunacy itself, and joining you and Celestia as your third sister. The servant will outlive its master, however. In the last confrontation, you, Luna, will start the world on the path to the end of chaos. Your father’s tool should have helped you enormously.

“The world will stay frozen as it was for a very long time indeed. You and Celestia have incredibly-powerful illusion magic. You know how it is when you put your legs into a stream, they look as if they bend at the point where they touch the water, but they don’t really? You and your sister will need to do this, on a worldwide scale. You should have discovered your talents for this in time. Without your magic bending the light from the sun around the world, everything will be dead within days. It will feel real but it’s only illusion. It’s not what it feels like. The servant’s curse holds everything frozen in time. As the servant outlived the master, the curse will outlive the servant. But everything, eventually, will die. Don’t give up hope.” Luna looked up. “That’s the end of the chapter,” she said blankly. Her expression was ashen.

“Well, holy horseapples,” said Twilight quietly. “That explains a great deal.”

“So, we don’t move the sun. We don’t move the moon or the stars. It feels like we do,” Celestia said, “but nothing could do that. Even the Element of Harmony couldn’t do that, it would be like a fly lifting a mountain. When we grab hold of the sky and move it, or send it on its way for the day, we’re only changing where it seems to be?”

Luna nodded. “I don’t really understand, because it sure feels like I’m moving the moon and the stars around, but this says ‘legs in a stream’. Like a putting a spoon into a cup of water I guess. The spoon seems to bend, but it doesn’t. It just looks like it does.”

“So,” Twilight asked, confused, “we’re bending light? Bending light and heat and so on around the world? But it really does feel...” Her horn flashed and she poked the sun off to the side a bit. “It feels like an impossibly heavy ball of white fire. And it does feel like I’m moving it.” She nudged it back onto its proper course.

“It’s always felt like that to me,” Celestia said. “I’m just casting an illusion? Almost takes the shine off it. Well, the Element was right. That book was right. Discord spent two years causing, well, discord. He made everypony hate each other, until a few very level-headed ponies outsmarted him. The tribes united together and defeated the magical winter that he’d helped to bring, and then they founded this very land. And he turned up a week later, on what would eventually be dated the third of January, 1 F.E. - the calendar wasn't worked out properly until Our coronation the following year - and he made everypony’s life a living hell.”

“And then the Element, or the Elements, plural or singular, called you? Wow,” Starburst said as Celestia and Luna both nodded. “I could write a book about this. Nopony’d believe it though,” he snorted. “What happened next?”

“Yeah,” Twilight said. “How come you never filled me in on that? I always wondered how you found the Elements. But then, I never asked, did I?” She almost grinned.

“I’d have told you if you'd asked me, Little Sister,” Luna said. “This all happened so long ago. For my part, I was trying to forget it. Well, yes, Discord came, then Celestia and myself found five small engraved rocks buried in the Everfree Forest. We knew there was a sixth but we never found it. We didn’t need it at the time. They called Us, We found them, We used them. We trapped Discord in stone nearly three months later. On April the first,” she smirked.

“Foolish Foals’ Day,” Twilight snickered. “Makes sense. Curse him and curse his foul memory but I think Discord would have gotten a kick out of that.”

(Note: The following blue text was accidentally left out of the chapter when I imported it from Google Docs. Sorry I didn't notice!)

“It was a very difficult day. The few settlements were in ruins, and when we sealed him in his prison... The night sky went completely black. And later, the sun didn’t come up. It was four or five in the morning when we trapped him, just before dawn, but there was no dawn. There was no sunrise,” Luna said. “You can probably imagine the panic. The population had just been released from months of torment, and now there’s no daylight.”

“Well, we knew we would be needed. As we met with the tribal leaders to see what could be done, Little Sister and myself got our Cutie Marks,” Celestia said. “After nearly two thousand years with blank flanks. And I rose the sun for the first time. The first of... The first of millions of times. And that evening, I lowered it again, and Luna brought out the moon and the stars.”

They all sat in silence for a few moments, pensive, thoughtful. “Hang on, what about Pinkie Pie?” Starburst asked suddenly. “What does this have to do with Pinkie Pie?” He knew a great deal about his wife’s legendary friend, and had seen how badly Celestia’s news had shaken his Sweetie.

“A lot,” Luna said. “The page I saw when I opened this book. What I read there... Well, it explained...” She was flicking pages. “This chapter is called ‘Oracles’ and it’s only a single page.”

“Luna was telling me about it when you arrived,” Celestia said to Twilight and Starburst. “Before your wedding last year, Little Sister and myself decided to visit various cities around Equestria. In disguise. So we could judge the mood on the streets for ourselves, with no Royal nonsense getting in the way. And I met Pinkie Pie. She found me while I was enjoying a drink, and she gave me a prediction that sounded almost exactly like one of Mother’s.”

“Are you really sure?” Twilight asked. “I mean, she died so long ago.”

“As I said, her grave is empty. Think whatever you want about me for this. I inspected all their graves with magic. Spike’s jewel, his gift from Rarity, it’s there and it’s still perfectly at rest. As are all your other friends. It’s as if no time’s passed at all since they passed away. They just look like they’re asleep.” Tears had started to glisten in Celestia’s eyes at this. “Don’t go and look for yourself, Twilight.”

“I...” Twilight had started to tear up herself. “I couldn’t. I’ll just take your word for it.”

Luna sniffed herself and started to read from the book again.

“I believe that certain ponies have the power to see what the future might bring. My dear Luna, your mother certainly had this gift. Your father shared it, though his gift wasn’t as powerful. I believe I’ll meet another pony some time in the future who also shares this gift. Just one other pony, I think. You’ll probably know her if you meet her. Starshine used to have these strange shakes and wiggles that she’d learned to interpret. If something was about to fall with potentially injurious results, for example, she would experience a strange sensation in her tail -”

“Twitchy tail,” Twilight whispered as she stared wide-eyed at Luna.

“Yes,” Celestia said. Twilight’s cheeks were colouring. “Pinkie Pie could see the future, just like Mother. She’s gone, I know. I was at her funeral as well, Littlest Sister. But I met her in Manehattan all the same. The Elements must have done something to her after she died. I can’t imagine what -”

There was a sudden loud knock on Celestia’s doors. Everypony’s head whipped around in surprise as they swung open and Evening and Rising walked through, side-by-side.

“Good morning, Your Highnesses,” Evening said cheerfully as Rising closed the doors again. “How are you, Twilight dear?” As Twilight was now her daughter-in-law, she felt a little bit better about addressing a Royal Pony Sister by her given name.

“Little Sister?” Luna asked as she closed the book and, finding herself suddenly self-conscious, magically brushed the worst of the encrusted filth out of her mane.

Twilight and Starburst looked at one another, then nodded. “Uh, we have to put this off for a minute, Sisters,” Twilight said. “As much as I want you to keep reading, Luna. We, uh, we have something we need to tell you. To tell all of you.”

“And it’s why we asked you to come here, guys,” Starburst said, trotting over to his parents and smiling at them. Twilight joined him. “It’s pretty big news.”

“What?” said Rising, Evening, Celestia and Luna all at once.

Twilight coughed. “I’m... Um... I’m... Starburst and I...” She coughed again. “That is to say, the both of us, um. A-ha. Sweetheart? A little help?” Twilight was now blushing furiously. Her mind was reeling from the contents of that book, but there was something even more important to talk about right now.

“You should say it,” he said. She shook her head furiously. “Oh alright. Mom, Dad, Sisters-in-law, we’re going to have a foal. Twilight’s pregnant.”

“WHAT?!” Luna and Celestia yelled in stereo. But Twilight was preoccupied.

Rising had grabbed Twilight around her neck in a hug. Looking through his mane, Twilight saw that Evening was practically smothering her son. Tears were running down the middle-aged mare’s face and she was smiling, smiling as if all of her dreams had come true at once. Twilight’s own grin got bigger as Starburst’s father started sobbing into her ear.

“Twilight, oh Twilight, that’s wonderful, a grandson or a granddaughter! I just don’t know what I should say, I couldn’t be happier, I don’t know what...” Rising Star broke down as happiness overcame him.

“Granddaughter, in fact. Starburst used a spell to find out. She’s a filly,” she said. He hugged her tighter, laughing and crying in equal measure. Then, through his mane once again, Twilight caught sight of her Sisters.

Celestia and Luna were both sitting down, legs splayed, wings drooping. Their mouths were hanging open and their eyes were very wide indeed.

“What?” Twilight asked, a little grumpily.

“You... You’re... You are with child?” Luna whispered, her eyebrows so high that they were almost touching her mane.

“Well, yeah, if you want to put it that way,” Twilight said over Rising’s shoulder. She extricated herself from the overjoyed stallion - who immediately bounded over to his beaming, sobbing wife and his grinning son and swept them both into an immense hug - and frowned at her Big Sister. “It’s a fact of life, Luna. What’s the problem?”

“You’re pregnant?!” Celestia shrilled.

Twilight narrowed her eyes. “Very pregnant. About two months. What’s going on?”

Celestia had stood up again, but Luna stayed sitting awkwardly on the floor amidst her small pile of dirt. The eldest alicorn took a hesitating step forwards. “You’re pregnant? Really? You’re going to have a foal? Really?” She looked like the bottom had fallen out of her world.

Starburst and his parents were staring warily at this sisterly conversation. Twilight squared herself and glared at Celestia and Luna. “Yes. Really. I’m pregnant. I’m ‘with child’. I’m knocked up. What’s the problem?” she said angrily. “I’m going to have a foal. You should be happy for me! What’s going on, Big Sisters?”

“But we... Alicorns can’t...” Luna spluttered. “We’ve never been able to...”

“I... This is unexpected,” Celestia said. “Are you sure?”

“Very sure,” Starburst said. “Really? You can’t... You can’t conceive?”

“No, we can’t, we’re eternal and unchanging. Twilight, you look the same today as you did when you were only a hundred years old. That’s part of what being an alicorn is about. You can’t change. You can’t be hurt, you can’t be killed, you can’t be changed. This is change.” Distress and worry was all over Celestia's face.

“Well, I wasn’t born an alicorn -” Twilight began.

“- but you are one now!” Luna exclaimed. “Little Sister, this could be dangerous. We never warned you of this because... Because, well...” she spluttered.

“Well, because we never dreamed you could possibly conceive!” Celestia cried. “Who knows what will happen?! Who can say what the child will be -”

Twilight’s eyes went wide. She blushed bright scarlet. Her eyes filled with instant tears.

“Oh!” Celestia and Luna both said in unison. Then, the sun-white Sister continued, blushing furiously herself. “Oh, Twilight, I’m sorry!” She galloped forwards and pulled her Littlest Sister into a hug. “I’m so sorry!” There was a thump and the grasp of another pair of forelegs as a crying Luna joined the embrace. “Of course I’m happy for you, I’m overjoyed for you! I’m just... Surprised, I'm just surprised, that’s all!” Celestia was sobbing, and from the sound of it, so was Luna. It took a very long moment before the hug broke up. All three Royal Pony Sisters were crying like foals, though they were also smiling furiously.

Starburst and his parents all stood very still and pretended they were completely invisible.

“I’m s-sorry,” Luna sniffed as she beamed at her Little Sister. “Th-that was just a sh-shock. It’s, l-like you’d just t-told us you c-could breathe und-underwater -”

“I can breathe underwater, Big Sister, and so can you, and so can you,” Twilight said, pointing at Celestia and laughing through her tears.

“Well, yes,” Luna said, wiping her nose. “I mean, well, if you were a mortal pony and you told us you could breathe underwater. Or fly to the moon. Or move the sun. You know what I mean. This is incredible. Incredible! A little foal! A little filly! A little niece!” She was starting to bounce where she sat. Her tears had cut tracks through the grime on her face.

“I know, it’s amazing, isn’t it?” Twilight laughed again. “Who knows how it happened? Who cares? Who gives a flying feather?! I’m going to be a mother!” she almost shouted.

All three Sisters smiled very happy smiles at each other and wiped their tears. Starburst coughed. They whipped around and stared at him. He was standing there next to his mortified parents, forelegs folded, frowning at the three Eternal Sisters with gruff disapproval. His smiling eyes gave the game away, though.

“If you three have quite finished terrifying Mom and Dad?” he asked, tapping a hind hoof.

He and the three alicorns burst into peals of laughter. Starburst hugged his parents again as the three Sisters came over and started apologising through their joyous tears to the two nervous-looking unicorns.

“After all, we’re all family now,” Celestia said as she bade them farewell, half an hour later. Twilight and Starburst had gone back to their tower, and Luna had gone to take a bath. Probably a very, very long bath. They’d decided to continue reading the book together tomorrow. Luna had it locked away somewhere safe until then.

Celestia was halfway to her writing desk so she could pen the draft proclamation for the national celebration for her amazing, incredible new niece - unborn as yet but she could still have fun with the wording - when she stopped dead in her tracks.

Pinkie Pie’s prediction.

“‘Beware the dragons’,” Celestia said, slowly and quietly.

She blinked. She swallowed.

“‘...steal the little one from Equestria and drive her mad with grief...’”

“Oh no,” she whispered.

Pinkie Pie woke up screaming in the dark. She threw off her blanket and jumped to the floor of the cave, still shrieking, and crashed and banged over to her washbowl. Splashing cold water onto her face from the shallow stone basin, she managed to squash the screams down to whimpers for a moment. She took a deep, calming breath, but then she began choking and spluttering in terror.

The only emotions she’d ever felt were those of sadness, hopelessness, despair. Well, no, that wasn't totally true. She still remembered the first day she’d woken up, in this very cave in fact. On that morning long ago she'd felt surprised and confused, and later she’d just got even more puzzled when she’d gone wandering through the strange town at the foot of her mountain. But she hadn’t had any of the dreams then. That very night she’d had her first one, and she’d been sad ever since. Now, for the first time since the second day of her life, there was no sadness in her. Her perpetual misery had been completely displaced by white-hot terror.

She stumbled along the narrow rock passageway and pushed the wooden flap aside, emerging into the early dawn. Her breaths were fast, unsteady, ragged, and she hoped that some fresh air would help. Sitting down beside the entrance to the mid-alpine cave she’d called home for more than sixteen hundred years, she inhaled deeply, held her breath for a moment, then tried her hardest to just blow the emotions out with her exhalation.

It didn’t work. She was shivering, and it had nothing to do with the chilly pre-dawn air. She was almost screaming again, she was so scared. She’d never been so terrified in her life.

She’d seen thousands of horrific things in her dreams, but that had been the worst nightmare she’d ever had. That... That monster! What was it? What could it be? What was it doing to that poor creature?

It looked like a pony, a pony with widespread wings and a very long and sharp horn. It was huge, monumentally massive, gargantuan... No. Those words weren’t enough. That horrifically-nightmarish thing must have been ten miles tall. Enormous, colossal, twice the height of the tallest mountain in the world, speckled brilliant blazing yellow-white like the sun, and it had been screaming in fury at the cowering creature at its feet...

It had been screaming at a dragon, a huge dragon, a thousand-foot-long dragon that was huddled in quaking terror near the vast blazing forehoof of the titanic monster that was screaming down at it. That enormous dragon had looked smaller than a cockroach next to that... That... That...

Pinkie hugged herself and shook and shivered and hoped she’d never meet that monster. She closed her eyes and prayed, as she did every day, for death to take her away from the horrors she saw coming.

She knew it was fruitless. Her despair had driven her to try ending her own life so many times, to spare herself from the many, many oncoming storms she saw in her dreams. It never worked. She couldn’t be killed, she couldn’t be hurt, she couldn’t even stub a hoof. She could sit there all day smacking her face into a rock, and the only outcome would be a shattered rock. She couldn't remember ever experiencing physical pain - she knew of it from somewhere, but that was where her knowledge ended. Emotional pain, on the other hoof... Now, that was a completely different story. She couldn’t bear the agony. She couldn’t bear to see it happen. She didn't ever want to meet that... That... That horrible, horrible thing! Collapsing to the ground in her helpless terror, Pinkie Pie covered her eyes with shaking hooves and screamed damnation at the Element of Harmony. The true monster, as far as she was concerned. The thing that had ripped her out of her eternal rest at the very moment that Rarity had died. And what made it even worse is that she had no idea what this ‘Element of Harmony’ was, or who this so-called ‘Rarity’ might have been.

“Why are you doing this? Why are you torturing me? Why? WHY?! Why can’t you leave me alone? Why can’t you just let me DIE?! WHY? WHY?! WHYYYYYYYYY?! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!”

Her screams echoed down the deserted mountain valley. The echoes were followed by choking, shuddering sobs.

The Element of Harmony heard her.

It didn’t answer. It couldn’t answer. What could it have said? How could it explain?

It wasn’t that it didn’t care for its Oracle. She was only its messenger, as Starshine and Moonglow had been, eight thousand years before. Her eternal spirit was safely tucked away in The Everafter, happy as a lark with all of her family and friends, and ignorant of the torment that her resurrected soulless body experienced... Well. That didn’t matter.

Pinkie Pie was the only pony who could possibly do this. She was only the third pony ever, out of all the billions who had lived, who could visit the future in her dreams. It despaired when it learned this, for as the six separate Elements, it couldn’t make the changes needed to her body and her mind that would allow her to remember the dreams she’d had since she was born - as far as the Pinkie Pie of two thousand years ago had been concerned, she'd never experienced these dreams, because she couldn't remember them. All she was aware of was a certain amount of unease when she woke up some mornings. And of course, her close-afield precognition. She'd called it her ‘Pinkie-Sense’, though it ran far deeper than she'd ever known. The Element was whole when Starshine and Moonglow had been alive, so their transformation happened the moment the Element learned of their existence and their potential.

It couldn’t transform Pinkie Pie into an Oracle as six separate Elements. Pinkie Pie would die before it could act, and the third Oracle would never appear. The Lunacy’s curse would never end.

But a glimmer of hope surfaced on the day that the Bearer of Loyalty died. Pinkie Pie was a Bearer. She once possessed and commanded part of the Element, and her mortal body could not decay after death - not until the Element died itself. So at the moment that the Element had become whole again with the surprisingly-delayed death of the Bearer of Generosity, its full power open to it for the first time in more than sixty centuries, it had removed Pinkie’s undecayed and deathless body to this little cave and breathed new life into her, remade her as a young pony, a unicorn, had given her the magic she would need to perform her task. She had to remember the future she saw, so that she could tell the right ponies about it. Such a pity that Pinkie was the Bearer of Laughter. The important parts of the future were never happy, and it was torture for her to see them.

The Element managed to convince itself that Pinkie Pie’s torment didn’t matter. That she wasn’t really Pinkie Pie. That Pinkie’s body didn’t have a soul. Even though it knew that was a lie - when Pinkie died again, something would Go On. Her experiences since the day that it woke her up again counted as a soul, didn’t they?

It knew that it was deluding itself, but it managed to ignore those thoughts.

Not important. They weren't important. True Harmony was all that mattered. And True Harmony was coming. Soon. Very soon. Less than a century now. Perhaps eighty, perhaps ninety years, and then the end would come. It would be shattered apart again before that happened. It had a lot of work to do in a surprisingly short time.

The Element really should have spoken to Pinkie Pie, but it couldn’t. It couldn’t face its Oracle. It was far, far too ashamed. Perhaps later. Maybe it could try to explain things to her if it were welcomed into The Everafter. It wouldn't be surprised if it was turned away, after all the horrible things that it had done in the pursuit of True Harmony.

It just sat in its little box a thousand miles away.

It waited.

If it had had a mouth, it would be smiling for the future.

If it had had eyes, it would be weeping for what it was doing to Pinkie Pie.

But it had no choice.

Chapter 12: Her Little Pony

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Chapter 12: Her Little Pony

The yellow earth pony finished the long climb up the tower’s maintenance-access stairway and trotted out onto the flat roof, shrugging off her packs and stretching in the dawn light. Three other ponies gave her cheery waves and then continued with their highly-dangerous task. She waved back. The last trip, the last place, and everything was nearly ready. She took a moment to appreciate the dawn, to really, really appreciate it. It was spectacular. It made her heart leap in joy, something that must be happening to ponies all over Equestria. It was, she realised, the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen in her life. She was sure there were colours along the horizon that she’d never seen until now. It was like the rainbow had just gained another dozen previously-unknown hues.

Well, the date was perfectly spot-on. Today would be the day, by the look of that sunrise. That sunrise looked like the whole world had been made anew.

She was a pony of particularly spectacular talents. She wasn’t a pegasus, so she couldn’t fly. She wasn’t a unicorn, so unicorn magic was out of the question. She hadn’t attended an agricultural college, so she’d never learned any of the spells that earth ponies used to make food grow so quickly, but that didn’t mean that she couldn’t make magic happen. She made magic happen, alright. She’d excelled in chemistry and physics while at school and university, and she still excelled in them to this day. She was a very expert chemist in particular. She was often in demand, but she’d been working on this single project for half a year, and today would indeed be the day.

She hadn’t been named after the Royal Couple - she was a year older than His Royal Highness anyway, and he’d only started to become well-known in the last ten or twelve years. And he’d only been a Prince for two of those years. The second part of her name was more coincidence than anything else, but as happened quite often, it fitted her, and her Cutie Mark of a thousand tiny flaming sparks, perfectly. Ever since the Prince and Princess’s engagement was announced, her family and friends often teased her because of her name, and how disrespectful it was to be named after Royalty. But it didn’t bother her, and she laughed merrily along with the teasing, because they all knew she wasn’t named after anypony. She was named, before-the-fact as quite often happened, for her special talent, that one thing that she did better than anypony else.

Her name was Sparkling Starburst, and she designed and manufactured the most spectacular fireworks that the world had ever seen, far more jaw-dropping than anything mere magical illusion could possibly make.

Well, maybe not quite as spectacular as that magical sunrise, though. She could live with that.

Her small team and herself were all exhausted. They’d been working almost non-stop for the last six months. One day, completely out-of-the-blue, she’d received an invitation to Ponytopia Castle and had been ushered into a private meeting with Princess Celestia herself, where she’d been given the very secret news. The actual public announcement had been made a month later, but by then her thirty assistants and herself had already been pulling eighteen-hour shifts to make sure that everything was ready in time.

And it was nearly time. And everything was nearly ready.

She opened her large saddlebags and pulled out the last two magical detonators. One of her assistants grabbed one of them and trotted over to the rows and rows and banks and banks of tall mortar tubes lining the western edge of the roof, all safely dogged down and covered with tarpaulins for the moment. She picked up the other one and headed east, walking into the astounding sunrise.

The final wiring, checking, double-checking, rechecking and quadruple-checking took all morning. As the sun settled overhead and lunchtime arrived, she trotted over to the pegasus guardsponies that had been put at her disposal. She had two of them stationed at every launch site. This pair had just come on shift, replacing the ones who’d been here this morning when she arrived. Two of her assistants trotted past the guards and herself and headed down the stairs, while the third popped a folding deckchair and umbrella open and settled down for a snooze. Skyflash had earned it, and she had to be on top form for the show tonight.

“We’re all done, gents. Here you are.” She held up a small jangling bag of glowing coloured crystals. “Nothing can happen until these timers get plugged into the detonators. They’ve all been pre-charmed to go off at the right times.” The young unicorn she’d hired a year or so ago was the best pony she’d ever met at time-delayed spells, and though her fireworks were all non-magical, she wouldn’t trust the ignition of a display costing two hundred million bits, and not to mention fifty times bigger than anything there’d ever been before, to anything but expert unicorn magic. “Every site is wired and ready. The tech’ll ask you for these tonight. Guard the crap out of them until then, okay? Not that I don't trust her. She's one of my oldest friends, but we do things by the book on this one. You don't know how to put them in the detonators, and she does. She doesn't have them, and you do. None of you are unicorns, so you can't set them off early anyway.”

“Safety in depth, and don't leave anything to chance,” the purple pegasus called over in agreement as she propped a book over her face to shade the sun more fully from her tired eyes. “Not when you work with things that are designed to explode.” To their credit, the guards barely flinched. They were professionals in their field as well.

Sparkling continued, holding the bag up again. “They don’t go in the detonators until fifteen minutes before the show. Then all three of you get the hell off the tower and safely on the ground. All of Equestria’s going to be a no-fly zone for a few hours tonight. For anything else, Skyflash is in charge of this site and if she gives you an order, jump to it like your life's at stake, okay? It could well be. There's six tons of explosives on this roof, you know.”

“Understood, ma’am,” the senior guard said very seriously, accepting the bag and tucking it safely inside his chest armour. “You can count on us. Ms. Skyflash is in command. We let her install these at exactly quarter to nine this evening, then we all evacuate. Any further instructions?”

She shook her head. “That’s everything. I’m off for a nap and a shower before I meet the Princess. You've been marvellous over the last couple of weeks though, all of you.”

Both pegasi bowed, smiling. “Our pleasure, ma’am,” the younger guard said.

Sparkling smiled in return. “So, what’s the word?” Both guards instantly adopted blank, fixed expressions. They’d been in Ponytopia Castle this morning before they flew here to Old Canterlot and started their shift. They would know. “Come on, I can just ask Princess Celestia, you know,” she grinned. “I’m seeing her in a couple of hours to report on the show.”

Despite his training, one side of the senior guard’s mouth quirked up into a smile. It was the happiest day in history, after all. “You saw the sunrise, ma’am. That’s all I’m saying.”

She tilted her head and put on a confused look.

“Oh, fine,” he grumped. “You're supposed to be in the loop anyway. If anypony ought to know, you should. You’re arranging the most expensive fireworks display in history for exactly this reason, for goodness’ sake. Fine. Yes. Equestria now has four High Princesses. It happened right when we were told it would happen. Just before sunrise. My Captain’s seen her, and he says that she’s the most beautiful thing in the world.” Despite his gruff expression, the corners of his otherwise-stern eyes were glistening. “You know how many orders and regulations I just broke?” he said in a surprisingly strange voice. That hollow-sounding voice that stallions affected to prevent themselves from bursting into tears.

Sparkling Starburst smiled. The guard’s demeanour didn’t fool her for a second. “Probably a lot of orders and regulations, Lieutenant. Rules and whatnot don’t matter today. This is going to be a day to remember forever.”

She hugged the pegasus guard. After a moment, he hugged back.

As the evening would prove, she was completely correct.

Half a million pegasus ponies, the best of the best from weather teams all over Equestria, arrayed in a wide and loose formation a thousand miles across, streaked off the ground and rocketed high into the sparkling night sky. The moon was down and the stars were blazing far brighter than usual. The starlight was bright enough to cast shadows, and even to comfortably read by, but nopony was reading at the moment. They were all gazing skywards.

From the tallest tower in Ponytopia, The Princess of the Night leapt into the sky to join the racing pegasi. She caught them, outpaced them, left them far, far behind. Everypony but Luna turned sharply at thirty thousand feet and dived, racing for the ground as fast as they could go, flying along twisted, jagged paths, their wings sprinkling their natural weather-altering magic behind them.

Amidst the hundreds of thousands of diving ponies, six explosions of panchromatic light shattered the sparkling, blazing blackness and illuminated all of Equestria with every colour there was. The legendary Rainbow Dash’s full-blooded descendants left screaming trails of multicoloured magical light in their wakes as they beat every other pony back to the ground. The six Rainbooms were the opening act for the Night of Light.

Thousands and thousands and thousands of miles above, in the brutally hard blackness of high orbit, Luna finished her own ascent at a height that no mortal creature could possibly ever hope to reach even a tiny fraction of. She halted where she was for a moment. Her horn ignited, blazing brilliantly bright midnight-blue.

The pegasi touched down, having seeded the sky with streaks of weather magic for a thousand miles around the capital city.

The flaming point of blue-hued light, high in the night sky and far brighter than any star, suddenly sparked and flashed as bright as the full moon. And then the whole sky was on fire.

Princess Luna came screeching down through the atmosphere at a hundred miles a second, the blazing fiery pillar of her passage followed by a massive cloud of thousands upon thousands of shooting stars as half a million bolts of lightning started to flash, like a huge sky-high ripple, a great expanding circle, moving outwards rapidly from their central point right above the very heart of Ponytopia.

On the highest balcony of the castle that stood at the centre of the capital, four of the five most important ponies in the world sat and gazed in joy and wonder at the display that had only just begun - well, one of them wasn’t sitting, she was being cradled. Suddenly, a shadow, a dark whipcrack, a fast-moving bluish-black winged shape streaked onto the balcony, turned, flipped, and then Princess Luna brought the number to five as she dropped gracefully to her silver-shod hooves next to her family. Her Sisters, her brother-in-law, her infant niece.

“Not bad, if I do say so myself,” she said as she sat down next to Celestia. The shooting stars were filling the whole sky. They wouldn't stop falling until dawn.

“Definitely one of your better efforts,” her older sister said, right as the clocks struck nine.

The rippling cylindrical sheet of pegasi-forged lightning bolts had almost reached the distant horizons when thousands and thousands of streaks of fire erupted into the sky all around them. The non-magical celebrations had begun. The first of thousands of nationwide barrages of starshells.

Every colour of light exploded a mile above them, lighting up the city. More distant bursts showed all around, some near, some hundreds of miles away. A second set of ten thousand explosions of joy and celebration followed instantly.

The sound must have been deafening. The fireworks alone would have been loud, not to mention the still-echoing roar of half a million thunderbolts. But the balcony was silent. Twilight had a soundproofing spell surrounding the entire towertop chamber, for a very, very good reason. She didn’t want to hurt the little one’s ears.

She looked down at the tiny bundle she held as Starburst gently nuzzled her neck. Poking out of the swaddle of white wrappings, the smallest, tiniest, prettiest little purple face had her eyes open wide and was watching the sparkling explosions in the sky with wonder.

They’d had lengthy discussions over what she should be called. A name was very important. It might hold a pony’s destiny. Tradition told that a new foal should be named on-the-spot, that the parents should look on their child and say the first thing that came into their minds. Magic was everywhere and that magic extended to names as well. Names themselves were very magical.

Twilight and Starburst had spent weeks talking about it instead. Well, that was their way.

“What about joining our names?” Starburst had offered.

“Like, Star... Twilight... Hmm. Starlight?” They both chuckled at that. It sounded so trite.

“Okay, bad idea. We know she’s going to be a girl. Do you know any nice girl names?” he’d asked, months ago.

“I know loads of nice girls’ names!” she’d said. “Loads and loads! But her name has to suit her. Maybe we should decide when she’s born. Maybe we shouldn’t even think about it until then.”

“We can still talk about it. What about your name? You told me you were named after your mother, right?”

“That’s sort of a family tradition for the fillies. Well...” Twilight paused. She was nearly nineteen hundred and fifty years old. Her parents and grandparents and brother and sister-in-law and nephews and nieces were almost a legend to her now. Ancient history.

But tradition was still important.

“Yes, it was a tradition. The oldest girls in my family have all been called Twilight. There’s me, Twilight Sparkle. My mother was Twilight Twinkle. My grandmother, hmm.” She thought for a moment. “Twilight Dazzle.” She thought again. The memories of so long ago were hazy, but if she thought hard enough, they always came into focus. She concentrated on the sweeping family tree she’d learned as a filly. “My great-grandmother was Twilight Flicker. And her mother was Twilight... Twilight Spark. Almost me,” she chuckled, then opened her eyes wide. Memory was flooding back now, like it’d done so many times before. “Then Twilight Brilliance, and Twilight Shine. Twilight Glow and Twilight Fire. Twilight Night. Twilight Dawn. Twilight Sky. Twilight Dusk and Twilight... Twilight... Oh gosh. I can't remember. Twilight... Twilight... Oh. No, no. No, no, she only had one name. My great-great-great-great-great-great... I’ve lost count.” They both laughed. “My very great grandmother was just called Twilight, and her mother was called... Sunset Sky. I guess that’s where the tradition began,” she said pensively.

In the end, they’d decided to wait. And, like new parents all over Equestria discovered every day, when they first saw her, the name chose itself. They both knew instantly what she should be called.

And the tradition kept itself alive.

An hour or so after the birth that morning, while the spectacular sunlight was filtering in through her chamber’s half-closed curtains, the doctor came back. He was a very experienced obstetrician and paediatrician, and the job of delivering the most important baby to be born since the three Sisters themselves naturally went to the best that there was. Getting on in years, silver-maned and with a lined face - laugh lines, all of them - this elderly unicorn gentlecolt had been delivering foals for his entire professional life. He was widely regarded as the best there ever was - his Cutie Mark of a smiling colt and filly attested to that.

“Good morning again, Your Highnesses,” the kindly old stallion said, bowing slightly as he trotted up to the Royal Family. “Good to see that you’re up, Princess. I thought you would be,” he chuckled. Twilight didn’t need to recover from the trauma of birth, of course.

“Welcome back, Doctor Lucino.” Starburst bowed himself. “You did a great job this morning.”

Twilight was bowing her respect and thanks as well. Between her own indestructibility and this wonderfully-skilled physician, she doubted there’d ever been an easier birth in history.

“It’s what I do,” he said, smiling. “Now, please, Princess, there’s something else that needs to be attended to. I’m afraid the beautiful little filly needs her bloodwork done.” He levitated a small, very thin syringe. “We don’t need much, and she won’t feel a thing.”

She won’t feel anything at all if she’s an alicorn, because the needle couldn't possibly break her skin. And then we won't need her blood checked for abnormalities at any rate. I can't tell from her feathers. I suppose this is the easiest way to find out if she’s mortal. I’m certainly not going to allow anything to hurt her, just to see if she can be hurt... No wonder it took Celestia's parents three years to find out that she was indestructible.

Twilight nodded and smiled. She held the quiet little bundle out to the doctor and he took her with well-practiced grace.

“Don’t worry, Your little Highness,” he cooed as he opened the folds of fabric and gently stretched out one of the sleeping foal’s tiny wings. “Don’t worry at all, this won’t hurt. Not one bit. I promise.” He pushed a few of the downy feathers aside and spotted the vein he was looking for. The small patch of purple skin glowed pale blue with what Twilight could tell was a nervelessness spell for a moment, and then he slid the needle in.

A few drops of bright-red blood flowed up into the thin syringe. He popped it out of the vein, snapped the cap over the needle and magically scrubbed the tiny pinprick with an antiseptic spell. The baby was re-swaddled and back in Twilight’s forehooves in seconds. She hadn’t even woken up. She hadn’t even stirred. She just stayed still, breathing quietly.

No wonder everypony said that this kind old unicorn was the best paediatrician in Equestria.

“Well, this needs to get to the lab. I’m sure she’ll be perfectly healthy, of course, but we need to be thorough, check everything properly. Anyway.” He bowed again and beamed at the Prince and Princess. “Congratulations once again, Your Highnesses, and double congratulations. A beautiful little winged unicorn. Don’t believe I’ve delivered more than five or six of the little miracles in all my years. And I’ve helped to bring, oh, ten thousand or so little ponies into the world in my time. Rare and magical, and she's just about the prettiest little thing that I've ever seen. Well done, Your Highnesses.” He’d smiled and bowed once more, and they'd smiled and bowed back.

And now, hours later, under the blazing celebrations to end this magical day, Twilight gazed down at her daughter.

Her mortal daughter.

She didn’t care that her daughter and her husband would grow old and die. Not any more. It would be just like her friends, when they’d passed away. Well, all except Spike of course, but her heart was even softening towards the dragons after a thousand years. Yes, Spike’s sudden and unexpected death had been incredibly hard - she’d nearly lost her mind in the aftermath of that bloody afternoon, in fact - but the rest of them...

They’d all died very old for their kind. Dash had departed a few years earlier than hoped, but forty-three was still old for a pegasus. Fluttershy, though... That pegasus had far too much loving to do for her to die at a normal age. Her earth pony husband had passed away soon after she did at the age of seventy-three, which was even starting to get old for an earth pony. And Rarity, who’d seemed to just go on and on and on because of Spike's magical love. But all of them, they’d all died very old. They had all died completely natural deaths.

And that was the difference.

It would be so incredibly sad for her to see her beloved Starburst, and her wonderful daughter who wasn’t even one day old yet, pass away. But she would manage it. There was no way she’d ever let anything happen to the two most important ponies in her life, not until age itself snuck up and, rightfully, took them away. Especially not after Celestia told her of Pinkie Pie’s prediction. There was no telling if the prediction was referring to her daughter and herself, but the Sisters weren’t taking any chances. Celestia and Luna had strapped on their magically-intimidating armour and gone to see the dragons, and had reminded them in no uncertain terms of the severe and brutal consequences that would result if any dragon came within a hundred miles of any pony town or city.

She knew she’d be able to fulfil those consequences too. They weren’t just a threat any more. A threat that the dragons had no idea was empty. Well, it wasn’t empty now. Celestia and Luna would never be able to do it but she would. She could. For the sake of her husband and her daughter, she’d vaporise any dragon she found breaking their treaty. She’d let nothing come between her beloved, precious family other than old age.

And she would accept that, when it happened. And she would go on.

She could see the pinpoint sparks and flashes of the fireworks and Luna’s night-long shooting stars reflected in her baby’s wide, awe-filled eyes. The brashness of the celebrations didn't really suit her name, but that wasn't important. The tiny little winged unicorn was clearly enthralled with the fiery dances happening all across the wide, clear sky above her.

“I hope you enjoy them,” she murmured, smiling, as Starburst leaned in and kissed the tiny purple filly on the cheek. “I really hope you do. They're all for you, my beautiful little Twilight Glimmer.”

Chapter 13: Flying High, Falling Hard

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Chapter 13 - Flying High, Falling Hard
(Thanks to Flttrshy, Shadowvyper, TGDHamster and Fausticorn for prereading!)

The pink unicorn started in shock, coming to a halt on her wanderings through one of the parks she’d found in this strange and sprawling city. Keeping to herself and avoiding the many other ponies that were here, she was trying to get some enjoyment from the spring flowers that were blossoming everywhere around the land - she didn’t know why she ever bothered to look for enjoyment, she’d never managed to find any, but she kept trying all the same. But then, she’d seen it. Right there, right in front of her, all around her. Clear as crystal. Clearer. The park had disappeared and she’d seen it in a flash. For a brief moment it was real, more real than the actual real world itself.

A waking vision.

She trotted quickly over to a nearby park bench and sat down, closing her eyes and slowing her breathing. She’d had these awful things before, maybe once a century or so. At least it meant an uninterrupted night of sleep. Whenever she’d been awake and seen something that hadn’t happened yet, she always had a completely dream-free night that evening.

Wonderful, she thought. That’s like, instead of having rotten grass for dinner, there’s nothing for dinner instead. Hey, cheer up, at least you’re not eating rotten grass. Stupid thing to think anyway. She’d eaten rotten grass more than once, a long time ago when there was nothing else. If she just stopped eating she wouldn’t die of hunger, of course, and she never felt any hunger pains, but if she didn’t eat she’d start to feel so sick, she’d get sicker and sicker until she couldn’t stand it any more and then, grub’s up, rotten grass. But food was everywhere nowadays. Had been for centuries. And it was all free, which was good, because she wasn’t even sure she understood money properly.

She thought vaguely that the promise of a single night’s respite from dreaming the horrors of the future should make her glad, at least. It didn’t. It never had before and it certainly wouldn’t make her glad this time either. She’d spend the next few days feeling miserable, she knew it, because the waking visions were different. They were even more horrible than what she saw while she was asleep, not because of their content, but because she knew she’d never be able to prevent them.

When the future changed, usually with very important results, she saw what would change it. Perhaps only a minute or two before it happened, with no time at all to figure out who the ponies involved were or where they might be found. Something was about to change the future in a very, very important way, something she’d never seen before, something that the Element hadn’t seen coming either.

She had seen the strange creatures in this vision before though, seen them with her own eyes as well as inside her head. It was a very long time ago. She’d forgotten about them until now. She’d been very young, maybe only a hundred and sixty, maybe a hundred and seventy, back when the whole world had got dark and cold for almost a year, back when her dreams were even colder and darker. But she didn’t know why an unseen pony would have said ‘It’s nothing serious, and you’re certainly not in trouble’ at the same time, because she’d definitely heard somepony say that when she’d seen the... The whatever-they-were’s. She sighed sadly.

She put the vision out of her mind and tried to forget it had happened, though she knew she wouldn’t forget. She already felt miserable, and she’d feel like this for days. Whatever that vision was, it would happen in a minute or so, probably somewhere very far away from here. And so she could do nothing to help, could do nothing to warn. She got back to her hooves and headed down the path, looking sadly at the ground.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” a sharp voice said. She jumped. She looked up.

A pegasus pony was standing right in front of her, wings spread, as if to try to keep her where she was. This pony was wearing armour and he had a very piercing look on his face. The pink unicorn jumped again at that look.

“Whuh-what?” she stammered. “What? What do you want?” She was frightened. She’d spoken to thousands of ponies over the years, had had thousands of very short, mostly one-sided conversations. But nopony, ever, had spoken to her before she started speaking to them.

“Ma’am, is your name Pinkie Pie?”

“No,” she said, then paused. She knew that name. Did she? Pinkie Pie... Pinkie Pie had been Rarity’s friend. That pony who had died just before she woke up. Had she? Had Pinkie Pie been Rarity’s friend? “I don’t know. It could be, I guess. I don’t think I have a name. I think I know that name, but I don’t... I don’t really know.” She was getting more and more frightened by the second. She’d never seen this, she’d never dreamed this. “What do you want?” she asked again, panic in her voice now. She didn’t know what was happening. She didn’t know what to do or what...

“Ma’am, would you please come with me?” the guard said in a much softer tone, and then her panicked look disappeared. But not because of his change in tone. “It’s nothing serious, and you’re certainly not in trouble, but I think you might be the unicorn that we’ve been looking for for nearly ten years. Some ponies just want to talk to you. They want to make sure you’re alright.” She didn’t really hear him. She wasn’t looking at him. She’d sat down on her haunches and was looking straight up into the sky.

This was the waking vision she’d just seen, it was how it had started. It was about to happen, for real this time, right before her eyes. She could see them, she could see the start of the vision. The words that the gold-armoured pony had spoken, she’d heard those words as she saw what would happen. And she could do something about it. For the first time ever, she could warn somepony about a waking vision.

“A little winged unicorn’s about to be attacked. Up there. I think you can help.” Those words weren’t in her vision. Should she had said that? Well, they were her visions, she figured she could do what she pleased with them. And so she did something else that she hadn’t just seen before it had happened. She pointed at the small figures high above. Other figures were streaking towards the three airborne ponies. Many, many, many other figures. Black, angular, dangerous figures. They were appearing from nowhere, just popping suddenly into sight like raindrops on a window.

The puzzled guard followed her gaze skywards. He saw the small figures high above. He gasped as he recognised them and saw what was going to happen. “Princess Glim!” he yelled in horror and shock, leaping off the ground in a cloud of dust and feathers, pulling two long, sharp swords from twin scabbards, unbuckling his armour as fast as he could.

The pink unicorn didn’t need to watch. She knew what would happen. But she watched anyway. She felt strange. Something weird and warm was happening inside her chest. She’d just changed one of her visions herself. She’d never done that before, just repeated them as she saw them. Maybe when she dreamed herself telling certain ponies certain things, she was seeing herself repeat them before she actually repeated them? She shook her head. She didn’t like thinking about it like that, it made her dizzy.

Right now though, the thought that she really would get a very good night’s sleep tonight made the warm feeling in her chest spread. Bits and pieces of the guard’s armour clanged to the ground around her as she saw hundreds of other ponies, some near, some far, start racing high into the sky, discarding their own armour for extra speed. The many other ponies in the park had started to notice. Exclamations, the sounds of hooves, a few screams reached her ears. There were a lot of those strange black shapes in the sky high above her now, and it looked like the pegasi were fighting them. A lot of those ponies were already starting to fall...

Then she remembered how the vision had ended. She yelped, springing to her hooves and looking madly around for some cover. There wasn’t anything nearby, nothing close enough -

With a sudden flash of silvery-pink light, she found herself standing under a tree at the edge of the park. She always hated when that happened, but right now, she was thankful for the branches and leaves over her head. She jumped as a ringing crash echoed all around the park, causing a brief wave of surprised screams from the panicking ponies everywhere. There’d been a sudden hot pulse of light over by the bench she’d sat on. Just above it. Whatever that was, it had blown the bench into splinters and set the grass on fire around it. The stones of the path were all hot and red and cracked, too. Weird. That hadn’t been in her vision either. What had that been?

She looked up through the tree branches. More and more of the creatures were appearing up in the sky. There were a lot of little pops and flashes of light up there, some of them were red and purple and some were golden. There had been some blue ones before but they’d stopped after a really big silver flash. Some of them were the same colour as that big bang that had happened near the ground. The pegasus ponies that had all flown up to help were disappearing with some of the puffs of light, and then that really bad thing happened. She threw herself to the ground and covered her ears and eyes. She’d seen this once and she didn’t want to see it again.

Ponies all around the park, already panicked and fearful, started screaming in terror as the blue sky above flashed white-hot with an alicorn’s unstoppable rage.

The pegasi had pulled out all the stops today, that was sure. Well, everypony would have been surprised if the day hadn’t been perfect. It was a national holiday, after all. Little Princess Twilight Glimmer had turned eight.

Twilight smiled around at the memorials as Starburst spread out the picnic blanket and plopped the basket he’d been levitating down squarely in the middle. The little winged unicorn instantly set about straightening and smoothing the wrinkles and creases in the cloth. Her father sure was messy sometimes...

“Well, a graveyard’s not a very nice place to visit for somepony’s birthday,” Twilight said. “But this isn’t a graveyard, even though there are some very important ponies buried here. It’s a memorial garden. It’s where I come to remember my best friends.”

“I wish I knew them,” Glim said. “They all sound like such cool ponies, Momma.” She’d finished straightening the cloth and had sat down at the basket, pulling plates and bread and lots of lovely food out, stacking everything neatly into little piles.

Twilight smiled at her daughter. “Yes, they were all pretty cool. Especially Rainbow Dash. You know that rainbow-haired pony in your class?”

Glim looked up. “Firefly? Yeah, she’s really cool, Momma! She can already fly and everything! I wish I could fly,” the little pony said a little sadly. She turned back to her unpacking.

Starburst winked at Twilight as he sat down next to their daughter and started making sandwiches. Twilight winked back. Oh, their little filly had no idea what was in store for her today. “Yes, Firefly. I know her father very well. Shockfront’s head of the Ponytopia weather team. He’s got a rainbow mane as well. And he’s just as cool as his daughter.”

“How come you almost never see a pony with hair like Firefly’s? Like, all the colours of the rainbow? It’s pretty.” Glim looked up at her own hair, long and straight, deep-purple with a dozen cherry streaks. “My hair’s boring.”

“Your hair’s lovely, Sweetheart. It looks like your great-grandmother’s.” Though just a distant childhood memory, Twilight Sparkle could still remember her grandmother’s mane. “But there is something very special about ponies with rainbow manes, you know. They’re all descendants of Rainbow Dash, and they’re all the best flyers in the world.”

“Wow, I wish I had a rainbow mane so I could be the best flyer in the world. Hey, Momma? How come only some ponies have wings? Like, pegasuses -”

“Pegasi, Sweetheart,” Starburst said as he shredded a lettuce.

“Yeah, pegasisers... Pegasigns... You know!” she said. “Why are some ponies pegasus ponies and some ponies are unicorns? And how come I’m both? None of my friends are both. And how come some ponies don’t have any wings or horns?”

Starburst popped a thick tomato sandwich down in front of the little purple filly. “What do you call a pony with no wings or horn, Sweetheart?”

“An earth pony, Daddy,” she said. “Why earth? What’s that mean?”

“It’s another word for the ground,” Twilight said, levitating a sandwich off the pile that Starburst had been building and putting it onto a plate. “They’re in charge of the land. They’re the only ones who really know how to take proper care of it.”

“Yeah but, um, what about me? What about pega... pega... Why is that word so funny? There’s pegasus, and then there’s pegasisisis...” Her mouth turned down. “How do you say it?”

“Pegasi,” Twilight and Starburst both said together, chuckling.

“Pegassy,” Glim said. “Pegasussy... Oh... I mean, um. Am I a pegasus or a unicorn?”

“You’re a winged unicorn. Your Auntie Cadance was one as well, remember?”

“Yeah Momma, I wish I coulda met her. She died a long time before I was born, right?” The filly had finished her unpacking, and she picked up her sandwich and started to munch as Starburst finished building another impressive one. He picked it up and took a bite. “I like that picture of her in my room, she was so pretty. How come she died so long ago?”

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Sweetheart. Hmm,” Starburst said. “You know Momma and your Aunts are very, very old, remember?”

She swallowed her half-chewed mouthful. “But Daddy,” she said, giggling, “Momma looks younger then you!” Starburst laughed as well.

“I keep telling your Mom that she doesn’t look a day over thirty, but you should’ve heard her complain when we celebrated her nineteen hundred and fiftieth,” he said, smirking at his wife. “The cake had to be ten feet across to hold all the candles, and we had the fire brigade on standby in case they set fire to the Castle -” He caught the sandwich that Twilight had thrown at him with his magic and levitated it back to her plate. Glim started laughing her head off, while her mother glared at her father. Twilight was trying to look cross, but she couldn’t keep the smile out of her eyes.

“So, um, if I’m a winged unicorn,” Glim asked after the laughter had petered out, “that means I’m a unicorn, really. Right? A unicorn, with wings?”

“No, not really,” Starburst said as he finished his second sandwich. “It doesn’t sound like much but there’s an important difference. You’re half-unicorn and half-pegasus, but a very special one. It’s normally only one of the traits that come out, not all of them at once. You would’ve got the pegasus side from Mom because my whole family are unicorns.”

“Ah... Huh?” The little pony just looked bewildered.

“Sorry, Sweetheart. What I meant is that no, you’re not a unicorn with wings. You’re a pegasus and a unicorn at the same time. All in one.”

“Um, like Momma?” Glim looked at Twilight.

“Almost. Momma used to be just a unicorn, just like me, but now she’s all three kinds of pony,” Starburst said. “All three together. She has the magic of the unicorn, the wings of the pegasus, and the connection to the land that the earth pony has.”

Glim put down her sandwich and scrunched up her nose. “The connection to the land? What’s so special about that?” she said. “They don't have wings or a horn, they’re just ordinary ponies.” Twilight smirked. Starburst actually laughed. “What? What’s so funny, Daddy?” she asked, sounding a little put out.

“Oh, Sweetheart, that’s simply not true at all,” he said, smiling and shaking his head. “Unicorns are ordinary ponies. Pegasi are ordinary ponies. It’s the earth ponies who are extraordinary.”

“But how?” she asked. “If you can’t fly and if you can’t do magic -”

“They can do magic,” Starburst said. “They can do the most amazing magic.”

“But I’ve never seen an earth pony doing any magic! The Earth Princesses can’t do any magic! Well,” she said, a little quieter now, “I can’t do magic either. But one day I will! And one day I’ll be able to fly! What can earth ponies do that I won’t be able to do?”

“Hmm,” Twilight said, tapping her chin. “Here, I’ll show you.” She opened Glim’s half-eaten sandwich and levitated one of the fat, juicy slices of tomato inside. She brushed off the mustard and picked out a single tomato seed, stood up, walked off the checked cloth onto the grass and sat down, studying the patch of grass in front of her. The blades of grass flicked this way and that as she peered at the dirt beneath. Glim and Starburst followed.

“Now, watch this carefully, Sweetheart,” he said. “I can’t do this, and neither can you. It’s something only earth ponies can do, and it’s amazing.” She looked up at her father with puzzled excitement and anticipation in her eyes. “This is why Equestria is such a fantastic place. It’s not because of the unicorns or the pegasi. It’s because of the earth ponies. When they found out how to do this, everything changed.”

Twilight had evidently finished studying the ground. “Yes, this’ll work. Good soil. And I can use some of the grass, too.” She dropped the tomato seed onto the grass in front of her. “Auntie Celestia and Auntie Luna can do this too,” she said, “and me as well. Because we’re as much an earth pony as a pegasus or a unicorn. And this is why earth ponies are the most respected out of the three tribes.”

She stomped her front hoof directly down on the seed. Her entire foreleg sank into the ground, right up to her shoulder.

Glim’s eyes opened wide. So did her mouth. “Momma! How’d you do that? You nearly buried your leg!” The little winged unicorn stomped the ground herself a couple of times, as hard as she could. She barely dented the grass.

The ground was trembling for about six inches all around Twilight’s buried foreleg. The thick blades of grass were retracting, leaving a small bare spot of dirt. “This is what earth ponies can do that nopony else can,” she said, winking up from the ground at her wide-eyed daughter. She sat suddenly upright, yanking her hoof from the ground -

- and pulled a fully-grown tomato plant straight up out of the hole her foreleg had made. Its branches were laden, practically dripping with ripe, red, juicy fruit.

“Wow!” Glim squeaked, clapping her forehooves and waving her wings madly. “Momma, that was cool! I’ve never seen anypony do that before!”

“We never took you to an orchard,” Starburst said as he picked a tomato with his magic and took a bite. “We really should, one day,” he said thickly.

“Don’t talk with your mouth full, Daddy,” Glim giggled. As her parents laughed, she suddenly squealed and bounded over to the picnic basket. She yanked out a small punnet of strawberries. “Momma! Momma!” she cried as she came bouncing back, holding it up. “Strawberries have seeds! Can you do it to strawberries too?!” Twilight Glimmer was a particularly maniacal fan of strawberries.

“I don’t know,” Twilight said. “There’s plenty there for you to enjoy, you know.” She was grinning. Glim didn’t notice the grin.

“But Momma!” she cried, nose wrinkling up. “But Momma! It’s my birthday!”

“Yes, it’s your birthday. And you already opened your presents.” Well, most of them. Starburst and herself had one more surprise for her. “And there’s already a really big lunch over there,” she added, pointing at the picnic. “Don’t be so ungrateful, Sweetheart.”

Glim sat down and looked at the ground. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean it, I-” She was cut off as Starburst sat down and put his foreleg over her shoulders.

“We’ve always tried to bring you up properly, Sweetheart,” he said. “We always knew it would be hard, because we’re some of the most famous and important ponies in the world. But neither Mom or me were famous when we were little like you. We were ordinary ponies. But you know that you were famous before you were even born, and we want to make sure you understand what that means. We want to keep you grounded. That’s why you go to an ordinary school in disguise. That’s why your guards are disguised to look like little colts and fillies.”

Glim looked up at her father. She started to smile when she saw the expression on his face.

“I don’t think that Mom knows how to make strawberries grow,” he whispered with a smirk.

“Fine,” Twilight said. Father and daughter looked over at her.

“It is your birthday, and it is a pretty cool thing to see. And they are tastier straight off the bush.” She rolled her eyes. “Watch this.” She grabbed the top of the tomato plant with a hoof.

“Hold on,” Starburst said. He picked a few more of the fat, ripe tomatoes. “These are really good, Sweetie. Don’t want to recycle them all,” he grinned.

“You know, you can be as bad as her, sometimes,” Twilight grinned back, as Glim started giggling. “Okay. Here we go.” Twilight pushed the entire tomato plant straight down into the ground and patted the soft, damp earth where it had just stood.

Glim was the picture of awe once again. She started squeaking as Twilight plucked a single strawberry seed off one of the fat fruit in the punnet, laid it on the rich, brown dirt, and slammed her foreleg down into the ground again, paused for a second, and then pulled a completely different plant straight up from the ground. Like the tomato plant, it looked like it had been tended by a particularly caring gardener for years. Her daughter was already squealing in delight, eating fat, red strawberries directly off the bush.

“Don’t eat too many,” Twilight said. “You don’t want to get too full.”

“Yeah. We have one more present for you, Sweetheart,” Starburst said. His horn flashed bright scarlet and a small wrapped package appeared out of thin air at her hooves. The strawberries forgotten for the moment, she squealed again, clapped her hooves, and started to rip the paper to shreds.

“Oh thank you, Daddy! Thank you, Momma! What... What is it?” she asked in bewilderment. She held up a pair of large, round goggles. “What are they?”

“That’s not the present,” Twilight said, “but you have to wear them. We’re going to teach you how to fly.”

Twilight had to actually suppress the urge to cry. She hadn’t seen such an enormous smile since Pinkie Pie’s hundredth birthday.

“Alright,” Twilight said. “Daddy’s going to help keep you straight and level. He won’t really be lifting you up, he’s just going to help you keep your balance. You’re going to have to keep yourself up in the air, Sweetheart.”

“Okay,” she said, wiggling her nose to get the goggles seated properly. “Hey, wait. If we’re gonna be flying waaaaay up there” - she swept a hoof across the sky - “how’s Daddy gonna help me? He hasn’t got wings. Can he do a spell?” She looked at her father. His horn was flickering as he checked the wind above. “Daddy, can you do a spell to give yourself wings? ‘Cause I want you to come too, I don’t want you to stay down here on the ground!”

He cocked his head. “Just let me finish reading the wind, Sweetheart, then I’ll show you.” His horn flickered for a few more seconds then he looked at Twilight. “There’s a nice calm band up at about five hundred feet, it runs up to nine hundred or so then it gets a bit choppy.”

Twilight nodded. “Sounds good. Glim, Sweetheart, we’re going to go up pretty high but you don’t have to worry about falling. You don’t ever have to worry about falling. Daddy and me are going to be right underneath you and you can ride on our backs if you get tired.”

“But how’s Daddy going to fly?” the little pony asked, starting to get frustrated. “Daddy, you said you’d show me!”

“I don’t have wings, but I can fly,” Starburst said. His horn flicked into life and he reached for his own magical aura. It was always a bit weird doing this, it was like picking your hoof up with... itself. A faint reddish-purple glow spread from it and completely covered his body, and he bobbed up off the ground and hovered motionless about five feet in the air.

“Daddy!” Glim exclaimed. “You’re flying! Did you use magic to make wings? I can’t see any wings! Are they invisdible?”

“‘Invisible’, Sweetheart. I’m not really flying, I’m levitating. Like picking something up with magic. Like this.” He levitated the picnic basket and waggled it. “Except I’m picking myself up. It’s easy,” he fibbed.

“Wow, that’s really cool!” his daughter squeaked. “Momma, can you do that too?”

“Not as well as Daddy, but I don’t need to, anyway,” Twilight said as she spread her wings. “I have these, remember?”

Glim giggled as Starburst said “Levitating isn’t the same as flying, Sweetheart. I can’t levitate as high or go as fast as a pegasus can, and I have to keep using my magic to do it. And your Mom’s just being modest, as usual. She can self-levitate a lot better than I can.”

Twilight checked her daughter’s goggles again. “We’re all set. Ready to fly, Sweetheart?”

They’d managed, finally, to get somewhere up around five or six hundred feet. Glim was still shaky and nervous but with her parents directly underneath her, smiling straight up at her, she was managing pretty well for her first flight. Starburst had been using his telekinesis to tweak and correct her balance, though she seemed to have mostly got it now.

“Loosen up, Sweetheart!” Twilight called. “Your legs are too stiff! Just let them fold up under you!”

“Like this,” Starburst said over the wind. He zipped up next to her and tucked his forelegs up. “You fold the front ones like this, it keeps them out of the way but you can still move them for balance. Stick your back legs straight out!” Glim wiggled in the air as she adjusted her pose.

“When you’re flying fast, you put one or both of your forehooves straight out in front of you,” Twilight called up. “It helps you to push through the air when you’re going really fast. Like this!” She tucked one foreleg, extended the other, and raced ahead of her husband and daughter.

Everything got dark.

She halted, looking around wildly, surprised and confused. She was completely surrounded by a thick swarm of strange creatures, hundreds of them, they’d just appeared out of nowhere...

She recognised them. Her heart almost stopped.

Starburst was blinking furiously, trying to make sense of what he was seeing. Twilight had roared off ahead, a couple hundred feet or so, and then that rippling ball of black smoke had just appeared around her, out of nowhere. It had just faded into sight. He felt her surprise, and she must have been feeling his confusion. He looked over to his daughter who was wearing a puzzled expression.

“Daddy, what are those things?” Glim asked. “What are they doing? Is Momma okay?” She sounded a little bit fearful.

“Things?” He looked again and yes, he could discern individual shapes amidst the smoke. Legs, strangely-shaped heads, long bodies... There were a lot of them, must have been hundreds of them in a big ball -

He jerked and yelled in surprise and pain. Something had grabbed him around his neck. He yelled again as he felt claws cut into him, and he wheeled around in the air, breaking his assailant’s grip...

He was staring into a face that wasn’t a face. It was big. It was as black as midnight. It didn’t have eyes or a nose, but it did have a mouth. A huge, wide, yawning mouth filled with rows and rows of long, sharp, serrated fangs. It raised a clawed foreleg and swiped at him -

- and it exploded into dust as he fired an enormous blast of wild, unfocused magic directly into the centre of that mouth. His levitation spell vanished with a pop and he fell. Reigniting his horn, he started glowing again and flipped upright in mid-air, looking around madly for his wife and child.

Twilight was just above him, about two hundred feet away. Well, he assumed she was there. The swirling cloud of creatures had completely surrounded her, and he could feel her increasing panic in his own heart, flashing back along their magical bond. The ball of smoke pulsed and writhed, and then suddenly, there were so many more, hundreds and hundreds more of them increasing the size of the swirling cloud of blackness -

His Daughter. Twilight would be fine, what could harm an alicorn anyway, where was Glim, he looked, he found her, she was falling. She was screaming her head off as she fell straight out of the air, unable to fly in her terror and blind panic. Flight wasn’t instinctive to her yet. Half a dozen of the wispy black shapes were diving straight towards her. They shrieked madly as they closed the distance rapidly.

He teleported the hundred-or-so feet down to his daughter and caught her with his forelegs, almost knocking the wind out of him. She screamed again, in pain now as well as in terror. He’d heard - and felt - something snap when he caught her. He could feel one of her wings crushed against his chest. He pushed it from his mind as he prepared to teleport to safety, even though he’d never been able to take anypony else along when he translocated before.

Mass was important in magic. Mass and size and distance and magical ability. His daughter was small and light but she might still be too large for him to teleport. How far? They were about a mile from the Castle’s high towers. Close enough. But did he have the skill, the power? No. He didn’t. Not a chance. And those things were almost upon them.

He killed his levitation spell and they dropped like rocks.

At least they were now outpacing the monsters. They’d been about five hundred feet in the air, so maybe five, maybe six seconds to the ground. The monsters that had been approaching them screamed almost as loudly as his daughter was. As they fell away, he saw the sun behind the creatures, almost directly overhead as it approached the zenith. He squinted at it. The sun. Could he use the sun? Years ago, Twilight had taught him how to use it to power his own innate magical abilities, to strengthen magical attacks and defenses. He didn’t know if he could channel sunfire into a translocation spell but he was out of options and out of time. The ground was less than two hundred feet and two seconds away.

He reached for the sun with his magic and felt a roar of white-hot power flow through his mind and into his horn, leaving pain in its wake, blindingly hot pain. Using the sun for magical fuel was like staring directly at it with wide-open eyes. It hurt like a son of a bitch, and he shuddered, almost dropping his daughter. Fumbling with her, gripping her tighter, he built a translocation spell in his head, tracing the magical shapes with his mind’s eye, funneling the brutal magic of the sun directly into it. If it didn’t work... He spared a tiny drop of magic to fire a telesonic spell at the squirming, rippling black ball high above, where the monsters - hundreds of them - had completely surrounded his wife.

I’VE GOT HER, he screamed at Twilight with his magic. He felt his wife’s heart leap from frustration and worry and panic to sudden relief, and then more worry and panic again. The tops of a few tall trees seemed to be shooting up into the sky all around him like leafy-green rockets. Holding his screaming daughter very, very tightly, he cast his spell and vanished in a burst of yellow sunfire, less than ten feet above a park bench.

“Guards!” he shouted. He was bent over his daughter, almost sick with the pain from that spell. It had been so strong that the carpet underhoof was smoking from the shock of their arrival. He squinted through the pain, tried to ignore it. Glim shook and sobbed on her bedroom floor, and he was running tactile magic along the bones in her left wing, the entire limb glowing bright red from his nervelessness spell... There. He winced. Radius fracture. Greenstick. He manipulated the bent bone into something like a straight line and magically froze it in place. She’d need medical attention - or Twilight - but it would do for a few minutes at least. One more nervelessness spell. “GUARDS!” he bellowed. Where were the guards? Hadn’t they heard him? They knew she was out with Twilight and himself this morning, they were probably at the end of the corridor instead of right outside the -

The doors banged open and two pegasi raced in. “More! Get every guard you can find! Unicorns and earth guards too! Weapons out!” he fairly screamed at them. One of them wheeled and vanished back through the doorway while the other jumped into the air and drew the two long swords that every pegasus guard carried these days, holding one in each forehoof.

The guard flew over to the balcony doors and kicked them open, splintering the locks, looking outside, up and down, then he whipped across to the bedroom doors and repeated the process. “All clear outside, Your Highness,” he said as he whirred across to the balcony again. “You’re wounded, sir.”

“Don’t care. No time.” Starburst picked up his sobbing daughter. “Glim. Glim! Daddy has to go. No!” he said as she started shaking her head and wailing. “Don’t cry. You’re safe. Daddy has to go and help Momma.” Like Twilight needed help. But he still had to go. He could feel her terror and anguish - and building rage - in his heart. “Don’t move your wing, Sweetheart. We’ll be right back!” He carried her over to her bed and sat her down. Tears were streaming down her face like twin rivers.

“Daddy, I do-don't want you to g-go! Whuh-what happened, Daddy? Wha-what were those...” she sniffled.

“Stay here, don’t go anywhere, this is important, Sweetheart,” he said urgently as, with thunderous hooffalls, dozens of guards started pouring into her room. Some of those hooffalls were very heavy indeed. Good. Earth guards. “We’ll be right back!” Ignoring her squeaking, tearful protests, he whirled around and glared bloody murder at the guards. A lot of pegasi hovering in the air, all of them with golden blades upraised and ready. They wouldn’t land until they were told to resheath their swords. A lot of unicorns standing with feet wide, horns already ignited for instant, deadly use. A lot of earth guards, narrowed eyes glinting from the deep slits in their helmets, all of them in armour far too heavy for any pegasus or unicorn to possibly wear, all of them having strapped on their steel hoofmaces. They looked like they were wearing huge spiked balls on their hooves instead of boots.

There were fourteen other young earth, unicorn and pegasus Princes and Princesses in the castle at the moment, and the guards would defend any of them to the death, though such a possibility was laughable in Equestria. But such possibilities were deadly serious in this case. Every guard knew of the Royals’ fears. There was absolutely no screwing around at all when it came to this particular little Princess.

“We’re above North Castle Park. Order One.” Starburst vanished with a flash of light so bright that the patch of carpet where he’d been standing was left black and charred from his spell.

The guards moved like lightning. The fastest pegasus there barrelled out of the open balcony doors to alert Celestia and Luna while the rest of them formed a circle five ponies deep all around Glim’s bed, all facing outwards. The pegasi were circling above her bed with blades held ready. A unicorn, a pegasus and two earth guards raced out into the corridor to give advance warning, and another small squad did the same on the balcony. The remaining unicorns opened every cupboard, every drawer, every closet and even her toy chest, checked everywhere for any possible intruder. Satisfied there were none, they slammed the doors and windows shut and held them tightly closed with magic. It had only been six seconds since the Prince had left, and the Princess was secure.

They trained and trained every day for just this situation, though none of them ever thought it would happen. That didn’t matter, because it was happening, right now. As the little Princess started wailing behind them, every guard’s face took on the same expression, an expression transcending anger, transcending fury. They knew their orders, and they’d all follow them gladly. Without hesitation. And with no regrets afterwards.

Order One. Something had tried to attack their beloved little Princess.

Anything that tried to step inside this room would die before it could blink.

Chapter 14: The Biggest Mistake

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Chapter 14 - The Biggest Mistake
(Cheers to Fausticorn for the rapid-fire preread!)

Starburst appeared high in the air above the park, glowing fiery purple-red as he fed all of his magic into his levitation spell. He saw one of the things coming straight towards him, its forelegs raised, its fanged mouth open wide. He glanced straight up and squinted at the sun. Focusing his mind, he pulled the magic of raw solar fire into his horn and blasted the oncoming monster with a psychokinetic shock that blew it into oblivion. He shook his head, dizzy from the pain of the spell, then whirled through the air. He saw more of the creatures diving and dancing amongst a cloud of pegasi. Most of the ponies were armourless but their drawn swords marked them as guards.

But these monsters, these strange unknown enemies, they weren’t ordinary creatures. The long rapier-like weapons of the pegasi weren’t touching the creatures, just passing through and leaving them unharmed, as if they were made of nothing more than enchanted black smoke. That clearly wasn’t the case though, as the creatures were clawing and biting the pegasi, splashing hot red blood through the sky. Smoke couldn’t do that. These monsters were clearly very powerful magical creatures.

He roared towards the guards and the monsters on a jet of red-hot magic, horn blazing so bright it was almost pure white as he fed off the magic of the sun. He locked his eyes onto the nearest one. The thing that had a pegasus by the face screeched and exploded, blowing the pony sideways through the air. He transfixed another with a psychokinetic hold. They weren’t physical and so physical attacks couldn’t harm them. Magical attacks, though... He could feel this one through his magic, could feel it thrash and squirm as he held it, could feel its claws grating against his magical grip. He ripped it in two and it dissolved into black mist.

The pegasi couldn’t do anything. Unicorn guards. They needed unicorn guards. How many could levitate? He didn’t know. It was a common enough skill to have, but it was usually nothing more than a gimmick. A party trick. It wasn’t flight, not as fast, not as sure, and you had to keep using magic all the while. And how many unicorn guards could levitate this high and use offensive magic at the same time? Casting more than one spell at once was difficult. Perhaps they could draw these invaders down low so that unicorns could attack them from the ground. He considered translocating away again, back to the castle, maybe to one of the barracks, see how many he could find...

And then Starburst saw her, and all thoughts of leaving the battle for reinforcements disappeared. They didn’t need reinforcements any more.

A streak of purple fire was whipping through the air from monster to monster, moving very fast on large alicorn wings. Where it touched the creatures, they exploded into ash. Pegasi everywhere, injured and uninjured, conscious or otherwise, were vanishing with flashes of deep red as Twilight teleported them away, one by one, probably straight into the closest hospital’s trauma ward if he knew his wife. And then, suddenly, the streak of vicious purple gained a golden-white companion. And then a silver-blue one as well.

Celestia and Luna had appeared on either side of their Little Sister, and they were both wearing their battle armour. Their horns started to blaze, and the reddish pops of light that were teleporting the outmatched guards away were replaced with golden-yellow and pale-blue ones as the older Sisters started to save their subjects. Twilight had left them to it and started to concentrate entirely on the strange monsters.

But more and more of the creatures were appearing in the air all around them, as if out of nothing, hundreds of them, thousands of them. For every one that Twilight destroyed, another fifty just seemed to pop into sight. There were so many that the blue sky above was growing dark with them.

Not far below, he saw Luna suddenly stop dead in midair. She just stopped beating her wings and froze in place, seemingly disregarding gravity, physics and reality for the moment. Her horn was glowing though, she must be levitating. She’d gone rigid, her wings and legs and even her head just sticking straight out from her body. Celestia must have noticed as well, because she had started to turn around, to fly over to her completely stationary Sister, obviously to make sure Luna was alright, see what had happened, perhaps lend assistance -

Luna screamed. A horrible scream, a petrified scream, a scream so ghastly that Starburst’s heart faltered for a moment. Bright white light had started to flood from her wide, terrified eyes as she screamed even louder and then, just as Celestia reached her, the Princess of the Night vanished with a thunderous crash of silver moonlight.

He'd had his eyes on Luna for too long. As he started to wonder what had just happened, something sharp grabbed his neck from behind and he yelled in pain. Another of the monsters had him, its claws digging in right where that first one had slashed his neck. His horn pulsed, he teleported five feet backwards, and now he was behind the bewildered monster. Blowing it to wispy black shreds with another blast of solar-powered magic that almost blinded him with pain, he felt his magical connection to the sun flicker and fade. He’d flown out of sunlight and into shadow. They were blocking out the sky above him, they were almost a solid wall of blackness. He couldn’t use his most powerful spells because he couldn’t see the sun, couldn’t use the infinite reserves of magic to be found there. There were far too many... The alicorns couldn’t stop this and he was no real help at all, he’d destroyed half a dozen of the things while Twilight had vaporised hundreds and hundreds of them, but what was the use because they just kept coming and coming and he had to get to Twilight, they had to get back to Glim, she was protected by guards but how could their little Sweetheart be safe from this, they had to get her away from here, to run, to run away, far away, they had to hide...

His wife could feel his despair, his panic, his overwhelmed hopelessness. It pushed her over the edge. And it just kept on pushing.

He felt his Sweetie lose her mind, felt her release the tight grip she kept on her alicorn restraint. A tremendous fury, quite separate to his own and many times greater, sizzled through his heart like Dragonfire. It was followed by a blinding and brutally searing rage that made him gasp in actual physical pain. It was just enough of a warning.

He cast the thickest, most powerful shield spell around himself that he could manage as the entire sky exploded with white light. He just caught sight of Celestia streaking downwards, a blur of bright magic and fearsome armour, getting away from her Littlest Sister as fast as she could. Clenching his eyes shut, he felt an enormous something smash into the protective barrier, a huge wall of magic that almost threw him from the sky, almost made him vomit from the sheer power behind it. Even through tightly-closed lids and his forehooves, the light was so bright that it hurt his eyes. It seemed to bore right through his skull and into his brain. He managed to open them a crack as the whiteness started to fade. He couldn’t look up, the sky was still burning far too brightly, so he looked down towards the ground and saw Celestia flitting from pegasus guard to pegasus guard, still casting translocation spells on them one by one, teleporting them all away. Quite a few of them were injured, and all of them were unconscious and falling from the sky. He would be unconscious and falling, too, if he hadn’t cast that shield. In fact, it was a miracle that his protective spell had held in the face of whatever magic Twilight had used. His shield felt like it had been crushed and bent under the magical onslaught. The sky was still too bright for him to see his wife. His head was pounding with the pain from his abused eyes.

The blinding light from the sky finally faded enough for him to squint up. He was fairly surprised that he was still levitating, actually. There was so much magic in the air that his teeth were starting to ache from it. He saw Twilight far above, looking down with eyes of fire, towers of white flame where her mane and tail should have been. The creatures, all of them, tens of thousands of them, were all screaming, shrieking, flailing, burning with hot blue-white magical flames. Then all the fires seemed to go out at once. All of the monsters were gone, reduced to swirling black ash, and then Twilight, no longer blazing and with just her normal hair whipping around her in the wind, winked out of the sky and appeared right next to him. Or rather, tried to.

“Ooof!” she grunted as his shield spell smacked her away from his side. He felt it shudder where she’d touched it, felt it start to collapse. He dropped the spell before it cracked and potentially knocked him out with the recoil - using a spell on an alicorn when they weren’t keeping a tight hold of their magic could be dangerous - and concentrated on his levitation. He’d been floating almost sideways. He righted himself in the air and then the Prince and Princess swept towards each other and embraced. Twilight’s horn flashed and they vanished.

They appeared together in their daughter’s room. Sixty guards swivelled in their direction, the pegasi each hurling one of their swords like they were javelins, sweeping the other high as they tensed to spring forward at the intruders, the unicorns firing two dozen Fireshock blasts directly at them and preparing to fire two dozen more, the earth guards screaming and charging forwards, massive spiked forehooves swiping through the air. No guard took any time to identify their targets. They were all attacking on reflex, and they were all aiming to kill.

As ordered.

The blasts vanished as they hit the thick magical bubble that Twilight had wrapped around herself and her husband. The swords all flashed with deep red light as Starburst grabbed them and threw them aside, where they clanged and sparked against the wall. Recognising them at once, the earth guards all skidded to a halt, their armoured hooves tearing the carpet, and then every guard moved aside as fast as they could, all of them exhaling and visibly sagging with relief now that the Royals were back. Twilight and Starburst galloped straight through the opening in the ring of guards to their screaming daughter.

The meeting took place barely an hour after the attack. Half a dozen of the most senior guard captains from every branch, the commanding General of the entire guard, and even an earth Prince and Princess were attending. The guards hadn’t found Luna yet, so Celestia sat alone. Everypony was quietly sitting and waiting except for Twilight and her husband. They were both far too agitated to sit.

“Twakonitipawon,” Twilight said in a low voice to Starburst. He looked puzzled. “From Bestarium Diabolimagicka.” He still looked confused for a moment, and then his eyes flew wide in surprise and understanding. A moment later though, he’d resumed his grim expression and continued pacing alongside his wife. He shook his head.

“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he muttered. “Sorry, Sweetie.”

“Not your fault. You’ve never seen them before. You were magnificent.” Their voices were low anyway, but they stopped their private discussion and tried to pay attention when Celestia coughed - though they didn’t sit down, instead continuing to pace around the Court hall.

“Your Highnesses, We’re pleased that you were both unharmed,” Celestia said to the earth Royals, kicking off the meeting. “And your little foals as well. At least you weren’t the target of the attack.”

“Yes, but why would there be an attack on Twilight Glimmer?” Prince Geimos asked. “Changelings! Here in the capital! I can’t believe it, no pony would have believed -”

“Changelings?” Celestia said. “We’re at peace with the Changelings, Nephew. They have no reason to attack us, haven’t had a reason for thousands of years -”

“But they were all black! Black as night!” the earth Prince interrupted. He’d been in the park that day with his wife and their twin sons, celebrating Glim’s birthday just like the rest of Equestria, and they’d all had the shock of their lives - especially when their pegasus guards had abandoned them and their unicorn guards had practically herded the Royals into safety at a gallop. “Black and dangerous-looking and they could fly -”

“There are a lot of things that can fly,” Starburst said, “and a lot of them are black and dangerous. They didn’t look anything like Changelings, Your Highness.”

“From a distance, you might mistake them, though these are much bigger than a Changeling. They have no eyes or horns either. Though it’s no wonder you don’t know what they are,” Celestia said quietly.

“Well then, what -”

“Windigoes,” Twilight spat. “Bucking Windigoes! In spring, during the day, and with the entire land full of harmony! Windigoes! What the hell?”

There was silence for a few moments. Twilight glared. Every mortal pony, apart from Starburst, stared at her like she’d lost her mind.

“Sorry,” Geimos said, shaking his head a little. He was starting to think that the attack on the little Princess had unhinged Twilight’s mind a little. “Windigoes, Aunt Twilight? They didn’t look anything like Windigoes.”

“And how would you know what a Windigo looks like, Nephew?” Celestia asked quietly. “From children’s tales and fairy stories? From history and legends and films and books and light entertainment?” The earth Prince’s eyes went wide. Celestia’s voice had sent chills up his spine. The Princess of the Day always sounded so calm, so reassuring, but right then she’d almost sounded like her slightly-spooky absent Sister. “Until this morning, there were only three living ponies in the entire world who’d ever seen a Windigo, I believe. And two of them are right here in this room, Geimos.”

“It’s true,” Starburst said. “Completely true. I didn’t recognise them today. I should have, I remember reading about them when I was just a kid in a book Twilight gave me to study. I don’t think anypony made the connection. I sure didn’t, not until just now, when she told me.” He pointed at his grim wife. They were mirroring each other's expressions.

“What do you mean?” the earth Princess asked. She’d been quite as frightened as her husband that morning but earth ponies, even the Royal ones, were tough. “They didn’t look like Windigoes at all. Well, not like any Windigo that I’ve ever heard of,” she said, bowing her head slightly in Celestia’s direction. “Perhaps you could shed some light?”

“You think We’d allow the descriptions of actual Windigoes to go into children’s books?” Celestia asked. “My dear Princess Prandiale, Windigoes are creatures of pure nightmare. Nopony here’s going to sleep soundly for a week. Nopony who saw them. They’re among the most horrific creatures to ever exist, and as far as we thought, were utterly extinct.”

“And that’s even stranger,” Twilight said. “You can’t kill a Windigo, because they’re not alive. You can’t harm them, magically or otherwise, and they can’t harm you. Not directly. They bring famine, war, drought, winter, and that’s how they cause their harm. In order to destroy them you have to destroy whatever it was that brought them. But that was clearly not the case today. I didn’t try to attack them or anything. They surrounded me and I couldn’t see how I could break out. I panicked. I didn’t even think to teleport. I finally tried a concussion spell and I blew about fifty of them into dust. That shouldn’t have been possible.”

“They wounded a lot of guards, Your Highnesses,” the commanding guard General said. “A few fractured skulls and a lot of bites and scrapes. Nothing serious, nothing magic couldn’t fix in a flash. Everypony’s already back on their hooves, though I ordered bed-rest for the worst of them, a broken bone needs a few hours’ rest after mending. None of them are obeying, of course. The entire three branches of the guard have never been this heavily manned. And my boys couldn’t even scratch them. But magic certainly seemed to do the trick. I’ve ordered the strongest pegasi to begin weight and endurance training with the most powerful unicorns in the guard. I want them to carry unicorns for any further airborne attacks,” he said. “You know, Your Highness, you’re entitled to a decoration for that wound. You’re nominal head of the unicorn guards -”

“For this?” Starburst said, tapping the side of his neck. “Hardly. It’s not serious.” He’d ask Twilight to heal it up later, it was more a nuisance than a wound. “It’s already stopped bleeding.”

“Well, at any rate, you three, and Princess Luna, saved my pegasi from a fight they couldn’t possibly win,” the General said, bowing towards Twilight, Celestia and Starburst. “Thank you, Your Highnesses. It’s supposed to be the other way around but there’s nothing a pegasus can do in a fight with a magical creature. A lot of fine ponies would have died today without your efforts.”

“So... Windigoes,” Prince Geimos said as the other Royals bowed back to the General, acknowledging the fact that they had, probably, saved a lot of lives. “The legends, the stories aren’t true? They’re just, well, just bedtime stories?” Celestia shook her head.

“The stories are true, just... Just very old. They invaded the world - and nearly killed it - just before the founding of Equestria. Disharmony and war between the tribes brought them. Though even that had an external cause. They fled when the tribes united, and returned four and a half thousand years later for the wars that were named for them. And they were all destroyed in those wars,” she said. “The memories of the old horrors had already died when they came for the second time, and the conflicts weren’t called The Windigo Wars until three hundred years after their conclusion. Nopony but us three Sisters knew they were Windigoes at the time.”

“They were an eye-opener to me, back then,” Twilight said. “I’d never seen the things before, and after the wars I never thought I’d see them again. And now I’m terrified.”

“For Glim? The prophecy?” Celestia asked. Twilight and Starburst nodded. “Damnit. Prophecy always has so many meanings. So it’s not the dragons at all?”

“No idea, it still might be,” Starburst said. He was gritting his teeth. “If only that guard had convinced her to come up to the castle... We could have spoken to her.” He looked at Twilight. “You could have seen her again after all these years.”

One of the first guards to break out of the hospital and report back for duty - torn shoulder and all - had been adamant that he’d found Pinkie Pie in the park this morning. Right before the attack. And, he’d reported, she warned him that it was about to take place.

“So close,” Twilight said. “I was only five hundred feet above her... I need to see her. I need to talk to her. I can’t find her with magic. Damn.”

The earth Royals weren’t in the know about Pinkie Pie, though technically, neither was anypony else either. The guards just knew they had to find a sad-looking pink unicorn with long, straight hair and a balloon Cutie Mark, and they had no idea that she was prophesying the future. Although it was common knowledge that there was a prophecy concerning the little Princess and dragons. Celestia changed the subject before difficult questions were asked. “You’re wondering why we’re concerned about Windigoes and not dragons, Your Highnesses?”

“Well, yes,” the Princess said. “If Princess Glim is supposed to be kept away from dragons, well. Windigoes might not be spectral white horses that create blizzards from disharmony, but they’re also not dragons. Aside from the attack today, why would you worry about Windigoes? The prophecy mentions dragons.”

“Because they weren’t called Windigoes when they first attacked the world. That word came three thousand years later. In the language of the time, they were called Twakonitipawon,” Celestia said. Prince Geimos had opened his mouth to speak, a questioning look on his forehead. “Plague Dragons,” the Princess finished.

“Oh.” He looked a little disturbed. “So, Your Highnesses, your Generalship, this seems to be the question then. Why? Why did they turn up this morning, and why did they attack the little Princess?”

“Were they called by something?” Starburst said. He stopped his pacing for a moment and put a hoof to his chin. “Equestria’s happy, Equestria’s peaceful. If disharmony calls them or summons them, then what could have brought them here to attack my daughter?”

A bright flash of moonlight illuminated the entire Court chamber.

“LUNA!” Celestia and Twilight cried, running towards her. The Princess of the Night had appeared at the foot of the three thrones. She was still wearing her armour, although it was lopsided and almost falling off. The other two alicorns halted, stunned shock on their faces as Starburst came trotting up to join them.

She looked awful. Her cheeks were sunken and her mane was flat and limp. It was her eyes though, her eyes were the worst. They were wide, wild, haunted. Terrified.

“I’m sorry,” she choked.

Celestia and Twilight were by her sides in an instant. “What? What, Little Sister?” Celestia asked. She hadn’t seen Luna look like this since...

“I don’t want to think about it, I don’t want to be here, but I must. I’ve been thinking about it ever since... Didn’t you sense it, Little Sister? Didn’t you feel it?”

“I didn’t sense anything,” Twilight said. “I was a bit preoccupied. Luna, you look awful. What happened? Do you need to lie down? Where did you go?”

“The moon. I fled. Like a coward, I fled.” She scrunched her eyes shut and ducked her head. “Me, an immortal alicorn, supposedly afraid of nothing. And I ran, I ran away like a terrified little foal. I ran and hid on the moon.”

“How?” Celestia asked. Neither she nor Luna could teleport to the moon without Twilight’s help. She moved to drape a wing around her Little Sister, but Luna twitched and batted it away with a hoof.

“The fear. I fled and the fear took me to my old prison. I couldn’t stay on the field of battle. I felt it. It was there, in the park below us, looking up at me. I ran away from it, I was so terrified that I tried to forget about it, to put it from my mind.” Luna’s voice started shaking even more, her speech becoming rambling. “But I can’t. I mustn’t. I’ve felt it sometimes, since the end of the Windigo Wars, fleetingly, just for moments. I never worried before. I never thought anything of it until I felt it at the park, and then it was so strong, it was so near that I fled in terror, I had to save those guards, I had to do my duty but I... I’m sorry. I couldn’t. I hid.”

“But you came back,” Twilight whispered.

“I had to come back.” She looked every day of her eight thousand years. Ancient. Ancient beyond belief. “This could be all of Equestria at stake here, not just Twilight Glimmer.”

Every pony in the room was silent. The earth Royals, and the guards, just looked puzzled. The other alicorns and Starburst didn’t. They were starting to look a little bit frightened as well, because all three of them were catching on.

There was only one thing in the entire universe that Luna was afraid of.

But it was gone. Wasn’t it?

“I think, Sisters, Starburst,” Luna said slowly, her gaze low, her expression bleak, “that we have to consider the possibility, the very remote possibility... Six Elements. They’re all whole and still exist, and have recombined into the original Element of Harmony. At least, we think they have. The Element wasn’t the only thing that fractured eight thousand years ago. We have to consider the possibility, however crazy it sounds, that, despite parts of it having been destroyed... that The Lunacy might not be entirely dead.”

The last Oracle did not, as it turned out, have a dreamless night. She cracked her eyes as the first light of dawn crept around the edges of her rough wooden door, sat up, and looked puzzled.

That feeling, that really weird feeling. She’d felt all funky since that thing happened in the park yesterday. She swung herself onto her rocky floor and thought about it.

“Is that... Hmm.” That dream had been interesting. She supposed that it really had been a nightmare, and even though a lot of horrible, horrible things had happened in it, she didn’t feel sad in the least...

She didn’t feel sad. For the first time ever.

She jumped where she’d been standing, wide eyes looking down her cave towards the wooden door over the entrance. The corners of her mouth twitched as she recognised the feeling deep down inside her chest. She'd never felt it before but she could recognise it all the same. The feeling grew.

Warmth spread from her chest and all the way through her body, down her legs, up her neck, onto her face, onto her lips -

They were wrenched upwards into an enormous, wide, face-splitting...

SMILE.

She was smiling, smiling so much that her face would have hurt if she could feel pain. She was smiling with her mouth and her eyes and her whole face and her whole body because she’d never felt anything like this before. She’d never been happy before. Her mane and tail were quivering, starting to look slightly untidy and even just a little bit frizzy as she bounced around the cave, smiling, laughing... She suddenly frowned - a happy frown, even so - and sat down on the floor. She rubbed her chin thoughtfully.

“So... That’s what changed? That’s why I saw what I saw in the park, hmm. Because that wasn’t supposed to happen, and something I couldn’t, um, see... Something did something I couldn’t see before, because The Element couldn’t see it either...” She was starting to feel dizzy, but she wanted to puzzle it through because of how fantastic she felt. “Okay. Some really, really bad, um, thing? It did something yesterday when I was in the park, and that changed... That changed... everything?”

“Yes.”

“Hey!” she said in surprise, jumping to her hooves and looking around her dim cave. “Hey!” she called again, peering into the corners and under her low bed. “Who’s in here? Is somepony in here? Where are you?”

“I’m so sorry, my dear Pinkie Pie.”

“Hey...” she said again, slowly, warily. She sat down. She was looking at the jagged cave wall but she didn’t see it. “Hey. I know you.”

“Yes, you know me. And I’m sorry. You must hate me.”

“I did. Yes I did. But I don’t think I hate you now. Not after... That was... Thank you.”

“I don’t deserve thanks, not for all the things you had to see - What? What’s so funny?” Despite its sombre mood, The Element couldn’t keep the smile out of its voice. Pinkie Pie had started giggling.

“I dunno,” she said after she’d calmed down a bit. Her voice was full of mirth. “I guess I always thought your voice would be a lot deeper!”

It chuckled.

“So, my name’s Pinkie Pie?”

“It is.”

“It’s a nice name. I think I like it.”

“It is a nice name, my dearest Pinkie. I’m so sorry that I couldn’t face you before.” The voice in her head was full of shame. The shame of centuries, of millennia. “I couldn’t. I just... I couldn’t. But now... Now I can. Now I can face you and explain my shame at last. Now that everything has changed.”

“You didn’t see it coming either, did you?” she asked. It shook its metaphorical head. “Well, it’s happened. Or, it will happen. Or it won’t happen, it’s one of those. You know. The important one.”

“Would you like to go for a walk? We can talk about it.”

“Yeah, looks like it’s gonna be a nice morning. I think I’m gonna go find a park. Maybe smell a few flowers. And maybe you can tell me a bit about myself, or herself. About Pinkie Pie. Thank you,” she said again, and smiled her happiest smile.

Because even though that nightmare had been one of the worst things she’d ever dreamed, it had made her happy. Happy, overjoyed, literally skipping, for the first time in sixteen centuries.

Chapter 15: Not Our Destiny

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Chapter 15: Not Our Destiny

Editor’s comment: Those readers who are familiar with earlier editions of this text will notice that the following section was not present in the previous issues of these collected works. As has been widely reported in the popular press, a new collection of manuscripts have recently come to light, ostensibly from the private papers of HRH The Lost Princess Celestia of Old Equestria herself. These contain several new additions and extensions to a number of historical records. One, in particular, applies to this volume: the abridged story of the life and times of HRH The Late Princess Twilight Glimmer. After much debate we have decided to include this previously-unknown passage in the new revision of this work.

Despite its widely-regarded significance as one of the most important historical documents ever published, it is well-known that many ponies often read these compiled works to their foals as a collection of bedtime stories. We urge any parents to review the content of this entirely-new chapter very closely before they do so in this case, due to its particularly disturbing content, situations, language, and most of all, the inaccurate and distressing depictions of the actions of HRH The Lost Princess Twilight of Old Equestria. All of these points, we firmly attest, should not be considered suitable for the tender minds of innocent children.

Above all, the reader is reminded that the events related in this new section do not seem to match any verifiable historical record. They are included solely as a document that was evidently of some personal importance to HRH The Lost Princess Celestia of Old Equestria and nothing more. We do not mean to represent this manuscript as being a record of actual factual historical events, as the remainder of these collected works are.

- Professor Horantho Hoofswain, Dip.EqLit,

Supervising Editor-in-Chief,

The Collected History Of Old Equestria Reprint Seven,

Newday 9th Lune, 124 A.E.

Part 1: Life Is Good

“Loosen up, Sweetheart!” Twilight called. “Your legs are too stiff! Just let them fold up under you!”

“Right here,” Pinkie Pie said quietly. “This didn’t happen like it was supposed to.”

A couple of hundred feet out in front, she slowed, swooped around, flared her wings. “Come on, Sweetheart, you try it!” she shouted back as she stopped dead and flapped up and down on the spot.

The little winged unicorn couldn’t believe it. They’d just been flying slowly up until now, and she’d been having the time of her life, but now her mother wanted her to try flying fast? Cool!

“You’ll be fine,” her father said. He dropped from her side to directly below her again. “Lean forwards a little bit and flap harder! Put both forehooves out in front, it’ll help with your balance!”

Glim narrowed her eyes in concentration, raised her forelegs, and started beating her wings faster. She felt her father magically push up on her front hooves, because she’d wobbled forwards a bit and balancing was really hard, but this was fun, so much fun, the sound of the wind grew louder and louder as she sped up, flapping her wings faster and faster, she was getting really close to Momma now, her mane was whipping straight backwards, she flapped faster and faster and faster and she turned sideways and shot straight past her mother, shrieking in joy, Daddy was shouting something, she couldn’t really understand because the wind was too loud and then he was flying right beside her, she looked at him with the happiest smile and then Momma was there too, on her other side, they were both beaming at her, she threw her front legs upwards and back over her head as she dropped her back legs just like when she was swimming and she flipped straight up into the air, went up real fast, came right around, wobbled, caught her balance, straightened...

Twilight looked on, happy, overjoyed, incredibly proud as her daughter completed the backflip, straightened, leveled out again. Her little pony was screaming with delight.

She felt like screaming with delight herself. Just like before, in the garden before the flying lesson, it was getting very hard to hold back tears. She’d been so sad and lonely for so very long, but the last ten years had been the best of her life. The very best thing she’d ever done was to go out on that date with Starburst. She looked over at him as he soared on the other side of their wonderful daughter. He glowed deep flickering red as he levitated alongside the two feathered ponies. His face, like Glim’s, was almost split in two from his grin.

Twilight realised that her own face was carrying the same expression, and then she really did lose her composure, really did start crying, her tears lost in the rapid flow of the wind. She was glad for this because she didn’t want to have to explain to Glim why she was crying. She was so happy. She’d never been so happy.

It sometimes seemed to her that every new day was better than the last. That certainly held true today. Glim’s eighth birthday was the best day of her life so far, and tomorrow would be even better, and the day after it in turn, and the day after that, too.

Life was good. Life was very, very good.

“Yeah, that was funny,” Pinkie Pie said as she trotted through the familiar park. “Because that didn’t happen at all. Everything got really nasty, I mean, look over there, there’s the bench I sat on yesterday.” She pointed. The area was still behind a cordon and the splintered park bench hadn’t been cleared away and replaced yet, though a crew of earth ponies was growing new green grass over the patches where it had burned away. More earth ponies were laying new stones along the destroyed sections of the path, where the old stones had been blasted and cracked and melted.

“That’s right,” she heard her new friend say. “Thirteen years of peace and happiness were traded for eight. Thankfully.”

“I guess she would have had a few more years if they hadn’t come, but I’m glad they came. What were they? I’ve seen them before but I never knew what they were.”

“The creatures? They’re called Plague Dragons, or just The Plagues, and recently Windigoes, though there was something very wrong about them yesterday. They could be destroyed, which is impossible. You see, my beloved Pinkie, they’re not living creatures. They’re the magical manifestation of disharmony, and they can’t be hurt, harmed or killed in any way at all. I imagine that they were... Well. More importantly, I thought they were all gone, and I thought It was gone as well. Once again, thankfully, I was mistaken.”

“That’s funny too,” Pinkie said as she stepped off the path onto the lush grass and sat down in front of a long and riotous flowerbed, closed her eyes, sniffed deeply, smiled. She exhaled slowly. “I don’t remember It, from the first time I mean. From back when... Twilight?” She felt The Element nod. “From when It tried to use Twilight, from back before I died. I don’t remember It but I know it happened. That’s weird,” she giggled. “I think that I helped Twilight to kill It, like, forever. I thought It was gone too.”

“Mostly. I suppose that It’s my sibling, really. I’m still here, and so is It. There’s just enough hate left in the world, I guess.”

Pinkie nodded in turn. Then she wondered about the next part of her nightmare.

She’d seen it once before. Well, she’d seen a part of it. It had scared her out of her wits the first time she’d dreamed it. In fact, up until last night, every time she remembered it, she almost dissolved into shrieking terror.

But not now. Last night, when she’d dreamed it again, she hadn’t jerked awake from the nightmare. She’d watched it, calmly, peacefully. If anything, it was more horrific now that she’d seen it in context, but it just wasn’t upsetting to her any more.

Part 2: To A Screaming Halt

Thirteen is a very special birthday for a unicorn, and this little half-unicorn-half-pegasus celebrated hers in style. And in secret. As far as anypony knew, Twilight, Starburst and Glim had all vanished off the face of the world for three entire weeks, and they weren’t telling anypony what they’d been up to. The guards would have gone completely mental if Celestia and Luna hadn’t told them that everything was fine - although not even Celestia or Luna knew where they’d been, but it was clear they’d all needed the escape. Twilight in particular came back from their vacation looking younger than she’d done in years, despite her perpetual youth.

Glim, as a thirteen-year-old ‘unicorn,’ was going to start her lessons at Twilight’s School for Gifted Unicorns in the autumn. She knew a fair bit of magic already, of course, though now that she was thirteen her parents had decided to teach her a few advanced spells. Not so that she could show off when she went to Magic School, of course. They wanted her to master her disguise spell herself, and they wanted to make certain, absolutely certain that she could levitate.

Glim spent more time in the air than on the ground these days and Twilight and Starburst wanted her to have a backup, just in case. It wasn’t unheard-of for a pegasus to snap a wing in flight, or suffer some other mishap, and end up falling and suffering severe injury, or even death. So they’d both gone to visit their daughter and had surprised her with the news that she was about to be taught some very, very advanced magic today, months before her first official day of Magic School.

The first lesson had barely started, however, when there was a knock at the door. An important knock, two sharp taps and a thump. “Hang on a minute, Sweetheart,” Twilight said as she turned away from the lesson and magicked Glim’s bedroom doors open.

A Sentinel stood in the corridor. A member of the elite Critical-Alert branch of the pegasus guards, golden-armoured like any other but his specially-shaped helmet and chestplate set him apart as a very, very important guard. He strode into the little Princess’s room without being asked, trotted right up to Twilight and murmured in her ear. Then he stepped back a pace and spoke aloud. “What is your command, Your Highness?”

Twilight blinked. She paused for just a fraction of a second, then her entire expression hardened as she flicked to her most severe mood. “Understood, Sky Marshal. Thank you. I’ll see to this. Please, if you would, kindly notify the Palace Guard for me. General Alert for the moment.”

The guard bowed, total seriousness in his expression. “Very well, Your Highness, I will see to it at once.” He leaped into the air and whirred rapidly back down Glim’s bedroom corridor.

“What?” Starburst asked as he strode up to his wife. “Just a moment, Sweetheart,” he called over his shoulder to his protesting daughter. “What? What’s happened?”

“Treaty breach, Sweetie,” Twilight murmured. “A dragon’s been spotted eighty-six miles north-by-northeast of Saddlestop, entering the third old cave on Nequitariaus Mountain.”

“Oh. Well, damn.” Starburst’s mind was racing. “Uh... That’s still a long way away from anything. And it’s, uh, um... Saddlestop’s about seven hundred miles away to the west, well, give or take. What are we going to do?”

“‘We’ aren’t going to do anything. ‘I,’ however, am going to pay it a visit.”

“No. No you’re not. No way.”

“Momma? Daddy? What’s the matter?” Twilight Glimmer asked.

“Just a minute,” both of her parents said at the same time.

“But -” the small purple pony objected.

“Momma’s sorry, Glim,” Twilight said, her voice and eyebrows raised. “Your father and I have something important to talk about. Give us a minute please and then we’ll explain. Life-and-death, Sweetheart.”

“Uh, okay,” the small winged unicorn said, her own eyebrows raised by her mother’s use of a code-phrase. ‘Life-and-death’? That one was really, really important. Like, no-messing-around-because-somepony-might-die important. She jumped into the air, flapped over to her bed, plopped down right onto its middle and picked up one of the new telekinesis books she’d got from Dad for her birthday. She strained her ears but her parents weren’t speaking aloud any more. They were talking with magic now so there was nothing to hear. Sighing, she started to read about aural transparency and magical-fulcrum mass cancellation.

“Okay, a dragon,” Starburst whispered into Twilight’s mind with his magic. “You’re going to go and see it?”

“Yes. Eighty-six miles away from a town, I know it’s a small margin but that treaty’s very important.” Twilight’s face could have been carved from granite, her expression was so hard at the moment. “We leave them alone if they leave us alone. They know this, and they know what happens if they trespass.”

“The prophecy,” Starburst magically murmured. “Are you, I mean, is this... Is this safe?”

“I’m not ‘going to the dragons,’ Sweetie. I’m going to see one dragon and tell it to get lost. Sorta. In a manner of speaking. She’s here with you, she’s perfectly safe, there’s a couple hundred guards all around the place and they’re on alert. And I’ll be back in about two minutes.” She just noticed her daughter’s ears flicking in her direction.

Starburst put a hoof to Twilight’s cheek. “Are you alright?” he said, eyes wide, eyebrows raised, mouth closed in a tight line. “You said that out loud, Sweetie.”

Twilight flinched. Her horn flickered. “Really? I spoke aloud?”

He nodded.

“Wow,” Twilight’s magic whispered. “I didn’t even notice. Sorry, I’m obviously a little bit wound up at the moment. Yes, the prophecy. Sweetie, I’m bucking terrified. Guard her with your life.”

“Well, that goes without saying.” Starburst still didn’t like it. “I could go instead,” he offered. Then he realised how silly that sounded. He couldn’t teleport the distance, and though extremely-skilled in magic as he was, he was still just a pony. One pony versus one dragon? “Alright, stupid idea. What about Celestia or Luna? Or both of them, even? Or all three of you?”

“It’s almost midday. Big Sister’s asleep, Biggest Sister’s in Court, and we don’t really have to disturb either of them.”

His expression told her what he thought of this. “Maybe we wait,” he offered.

“Can’t wait. Not with a dragon trespassing, Sweetie. It’s impossible and you know I can’t. Sweetheart?” she called aloud to her daughter. “I’ve got to go somewhere for a minute or two, but Daddy can still start teaching you.”

Glim threw down her book and let out a truly impressive whine. “Momma! We only just got back yesterday and you’re right back to your usual self! Sorry,” she added at her mother’s frown, “but we just had three weeks of fun together and then we get back and I don’t see you for a whole day and we’re all supposed to be having fun together again today and you’re gonna teach me some really cool magic but now you and Daddy have something to talk about and I’m not supposed to hear what it is so you use magic to talk together and then now you have to go somewhere!” The little filly pouted, most convincingly.

Twilight trotted over. “I can’t help it, Sweetheart, but I’ll be right back. Five minutes at the most. Promise. This whole afternoon is for us.”

Glim pouted even harder.

“You look like Rarity,” Twilight chuckled. “Really, I do have to go. You know I’d rather stay here but something big’s happened and I have to go and fix it.”

The pout was replaced by wide-eyed curiosity. “Big? What? What’s happening? Where, Momma? Can I go with -”

“NO!” Twilight shouted in shock. Starburst had shouted the same thing, but his exclamation had been completely lost underneath Twilight’s. She’d yelled right into her daughter’s face with the full power of the Royal Voice.

Glim shrieked and toppled backwards off her bed with her eyes shut and her hooves over her ears, but before she could hit the floor her mother and father had both flashed and appeared on either side of her, catching her with their magic. They righted the screaming filly in the air. They wouldn’t even let her fall three feet without catching her. Both of their horns were flickering and flashing as they soothed and calmed her abused eardrums.

Glim opened her eyes again now that the pain had gone away. She wiped away a few of her surprised, pained tears and looked at her mother, who looked ready to burst into tears herself. “Momma... What the hay was that?”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, Sweetheart.” Twilight and Starburst lifted her back up onto her bed. “You, uh, you sorta gave us both a bit of a surprise. I’m sorry. You feel alright now?”

“Yeah, I feel fine,” Glim said. “What was that?”

“It’s something Mom can do. Your Aunties too. Don’t be mad at your Mom, Sweetheart, you just gave her a fright. You gave me a fright too.”

“I gave you a fright?” Glim asked in disbelief. “Daddy, I nearly peed myself. It hurt!”

Twilight and Starburst were looking at each other, horrible expressions on their faces. From her bed, Glim took in those expressions with widening eyes. She’d never seen either of her parents look even half as upset as this. “Hey, guys? Momma? Dad? What’s wrong? Really, what’s wrong?”

Neither of them answered. They both looked horrified.

“Daddy? Momma?” she whispered. She’d started trembling. Her parents’ fear was starting to infect her as well. “What’s wrong? What’s wrong?”

Nopony spoke.

“WHAT’S WRONG?!” she cried.

Twilight clapped her hooves over her eyes and turned away, suddenly sobbing. Starburst grabbed Glim and hugged her tight. He was sobbing too, though he was managing to keep his own emotional breakdown fairly quiet.

“Mom... Mom’s got to go and see a dragon,” he whispered. Twilight Glimmer gasped, her eyes flying wide. “Yes. You know how serious that is.”

The little pony’s eyes grew even wider, her mouth contracting. “Dad... Daddy... I don’t want... Can’t Momma get rid of... Can’t she do it from here? Does she really have to go?” She turned her head. Twilight was huddled against the wall, shaking and shuddering. “Daddy, Momma’s not all right. I think she needs you.”

Starburst put his daughter down on the bed and walked over to his wife. He lifted the sobbing alicorn from the floor, not using magic to do it. The situation called for something more... personal. He set her to her hooves but didn’t let her go - he could tell that she wasn’t able to take her own weight at the moment. So he did the only thing that he could. He crushed his wife into an embrace.

Twilight Sparkle, Royal Pony Sister, Eternal Princess of Equestria, burst into a flood of tears.

Nopony moved for almost a whole minute. Finally, Glim hopped off her bed and walked up to her mother and father. She stretched her little hooves around them just as far as she could. Closing her eyes, she squeezed her parents into a hug. And then they were hugging her.

“You know about the Dragon Treaty. You know how we all have to beware the dragons, Sweetheart. We can’t risk, I mean, we can’t chance it -” Starburst’s voice broke and he hugged his daughter tighter.

“I know, Daddy. Momma? You’ll be careful, right?” Glim looked awful. It was clear that she didn’t want her mother to go anywhere, but she also knew there was nopony who could do a better job.

Twilight picked her up and hugged her again. “I’ll be back soon, Sweetheart. Really soon. Promise. The sooner I get this done, the sooner we can start our lesson together.” She put her daughter down and forced a smile.

“I know you will, Momma. See you soon.”

Starburst put a hoof on his daughter’s shoulder as Twilight ignited her horn. “Hurry back, Sweetie,” she heard him whisper.

“I will,” she whispered back.

Everything flashed purple-red for a moment, and then Twilight gazed up at the mountain. It looked as if it’d once belonged to a range, long, long ago when the world was young, but now it stood all alone in the middle of the hilly plains that stretched as far as she could see in every direction. It was pretty tall, maybe fifteen or twenty thousand feet at the peak, but she wasn’t aiming for the peak.

Her horn flashed and she found herself standing on the edge of the big, wide plateau she’d seen jutting out only a few hundred feet up the mountain’s southern face. Several large caves stretched away from her to her right. All of them were pretty big, but she headed for the biggest, about half a mile away. The third old dragon cave. She decided to walk and not teleport. She needed time to think. She also needed to calm down. She didn’t want to just kill this dragon on sight, though she would be within her rights to do so.

Twilight might have despised dragons but she wasn’t a monster. She’d give it a chance to explain itself, she decided, as she walked over the sparse grass of the high plateau.

“Self-levitation,” Starburst said. “It’s not easy, but it’s not particularly hard either. Let’s practice with the couch first. Grab it, but don’t pick it up.”

“Okay,” Glim said. Her horn winked pale purple, and so did her couch as she telekinetically lifted it a few feet in the air. “Whoops! Sorry, Daddy.” She put it down again and the glow faded out. “Hey, that’s weird.” She picked it up again, put it down again. “I can’t! I can’t grab it without picking it up!”

He was smiling. “I’d have been very surprised if you could have. The instinct with levitation is to levitate, after all. I’ll show you.” Glim put the couch down again and it glowed deep red to match his hornglow, but it stayed completely stationary and on the floor. The glow vanished. “You need to practice that. Once you have it, you’ll be able to control your psychokinesis enough to hold your own aura, which is what you need to do to levitate yourself.”

After a few more minutes, Glim was getting the hang of it. The couch still wobbled a bit, but otherwise stayed on the floor. “Okay Dad, now what?”

“Keep practicing for a bit. You need to be able to, oh, let’s see. Don’t stop holding it, okay?” He walked over to the glowing couch and leaned against it. It didn’t want to move. It felt as if it was stuck to the floor. “Wiggle your head a little bit, Sweetheart.” Glim did, shaking her head slightly from side to side. The couch slid back and forth across the floor a few inches in each direction, matching her movements. “You’re still levitating it, even though you’re not lifting it up. You just need to hold it, so if I push it, it’ll move.”

“Jeez, this is really hard,” Glim said. She concentrated.

The cave was enormous. The opening had to be at least three hundred feet tall. Definite dragon cave. She strode inside, noting that there wasn’t any telltale smoke billowing out of the dark opening, but that didn’t matter. She could smell it. Brimstone, faint and even slightly sweet, which was unusual, but she ignored that. The dragon was definitely here. The cave was so enormous that it was quite light inside, at least until she rounded the first bend in the massive passage. Her horn flashed for a moment as she cast a spell on her eyes to enable her to see in the deepening blackness of the cave.

She marched forwards steadily, fearlessly, along the curving path for several minutes, not pausing as she rounded several more bends. The ceiling of the passageway was high above her head. This would be a very big dragon if it had chosen such an enormous cave. The rough tunnel, which had been growing wider and higher for the last few hundred paces, suddenly opened out all around her into an enormous cavern. There was not a scrap of light but that didn’t matter after the spell she'd cast. She narrowed her eyes as she saw it.

“I know you can do it, Sweetheart. I know you can. You’ll get it, don’t worry.”

Glim frowned at her couch. Then, her eyelids widened, her eyes lost focus, and she relaxed. She really, really relaxed. Her expression shifted, softened, widened. Became far more relaxed.

She looked at her couch. She could see it. She could see it. Really see it.

The couch glowed again. It didn’t so much as twitch. It remained on the floor, completely still and unmoving.

“Daddy,” she murmured. Her voice was faint and breathy. “How’bout now?”

Starburst shoved the glowing couch. It moved aside easily. “That’s it! You’ve got it, Sweetheart!” Glim just kept staring at the couch, her mouth slack, vacant amazement in her expression. “Hold it for a moment if you can, I’m going to try something.”

He picked the couch up with his own magic, Glim’s pale purple aura glowing brighter with the deep magenta of his own wrapped around it. He let go of the couch and it thunked back to the carpeted floor. His daughter’s magical glow hadn’t even flickered.

“Okay, Sweetheart, I think you’ve really got it now.” The glow around the couch faded away and Glim blinked, shook her head. She blinked again and looked at him. “You can maintain an unattached aura, you can sustain a magical link without physical effect. You can hold something with your mind and not move it. That’s the first step.”

“That was really hard, Dad,” she said. “And it was weird, so weird, like, I could feel you moving the sofa around. Almost like, hmm.” She sat down and shook her head, then lifted a hoof. “Like if I was... Oh!” She jumped up again and galloped over to her desk, grabbed a pencil with her magic and ran back. She plucked the pencil out of the air with her forehoof. “Pull it,” she said. “Move it around, I mean.”

Starburst chuckled. “I know where you’re going with this,” he said. He grabbed the end of the pencil with his hoof and pulled it left and right.

“Hey, that’s it!” Glim said as her hoof was tugged back and forth by her father. “That’s what it felt like, Dad! Like I was holding something and somepony else was moving it!”

He smiled indulgently. “You’re just like your mother. You’ve got it exactly right. And now, Sweetheart, you can learn to self-levitate.”

She squealed and threw the pencil aside. “Okay, Daddy! What do I do?” She was the picture of excited anticipation.

“It’s easy, now that you can hold a loose psychokinetic grip around something. A lot of ponies can’t, Sweetheart. But with parents like yours...” He chuckled for a moment, then blinked and focused. “It won’t be hard, darling. Hold up your forehoof, look at it, and then close your eyes and open your oculus mentis. And look, look as hard as you can, without using your eyes. This might take a while, it might take an hour or even longer. That doesn’t matter. Just don’t stop until it happens.”

“Don’t stop until what happens, Dad?” she asked.

“You’ll know, Sweetheart.”

Glim nodded, held up her hoof, stared at it for a moment and then closed her eyes. Thirty seconds passed. They both sat still as statues. One minute. Two minutes. Three, three and a half...

“Daddy,” she whispered quietly, her eyes still closed, “I can see my hoof.”

It was big. She couldn’t see it clearly, just a hazy magical outline, but that was all she needed. She wasn’t about to cast any light, she’d rely on her vision-enhancing spell. No treasure hoard that she could see, just a dragon, asleep and snoring softly. She marched straight up to the creature’s snout and tapped on it.

It opened its eyes and raised its head, blinking around blindly in the total darkness and rubbing the end of its snout. “Hmm,” a low voice rumbled - not as low as it should have been for the creature’s size, Twilight realised. “Is someone here?”

“Hi,” Twilight said in a voice that sounded cheerful. “Would you mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

“Trying to get some sleep,” the dragon said, looking more-or-less in her direction. “I’ve been flying for days and I’m tired. Are you a pony?” The dragon’s eyes opened wider in the dark. “You must be a pony.” It started to sound panicky. “Please, don’t tell the Princesses, I know I shouldn’t be here but I’m not hurting anybody, this cave’s empty, it’s an old dragon cave and no dragons use it any more, I’ve got nowhere else to go -”

“That’s your own aura, Sweetheart. That was the hardest bit of magic you’ll ever do and I’m so proud of you. Now, just pick your aura up like you’d pick anything else up.”

Twilight Glimmer glowed purple, shrieked, and shot into the air like a bullet. She glowed bright red as her father caught her before she could smack into the ceiling. He put her back on her bedroom carpet. “Gently, Sweetheart. You just accidentally levitated your own hoof, not your hoof’s aura. Your aura.”

Glim shook her head, blinking rapidly. “Sorry, Daddy, that was weird. I, uh, I could feel it, I could feel my own aura, it felt weird and then my magic went right through it and it kinda grabbed my hoof...”

“It’s okay, Sweetheart,” he said, stepping forwards and tousling her mane. “You know that most unicorns learn to do this when they’re eighteen or nineteen, and some of them never learn it. You’re only thirteen. We’ve got all the time in the world.” His smile widened as he narrowed his eyes conspiratorially. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Hey, imagine what Mom’ll say when she comes back if you can levitate!” he grinned.

Glim squeaked and then grew surprisingly serious. She closed her eyes and threw all of her willpower into the hardest spell she’d ever done...

Twilight was already mad, and what the dragon had just said made her even angrier. She’d actually managed to sound polite when she’d spoken to it, and she’d been prepared to let this dragon go if it had left the cave immediately. Mistakes happen, after all. But it knew that it was breaking the treaty, it had said so. And it would know what the penalty was. Twilight didn’t particularly want to kill it, though. She just wanted it gone. She gave it one final chance.

“The Draconic Trespass Treaty was written and signed for a very important reason, and you’re breaking it. You’ve got five seconds to get out of this cave and start heading back towards the dragon sanctuaries.”

“I can’t,” the dragon rumbled. “They won’t take me back, I just want to be left alone, I’m not harming anybody. Please, just go away. Just forget you saw me. I’ll stay hidden, I promise, just don’t -”

“No more chances,” Twilight said, cutting across the dragon in a voice that was suddenly harsh, loud, full of danger. By the terms of the treaty, Twilight didn’t have to give trespassers any chances at all, and she’d just given this dragon two. And they’d both been thrown back in her face. “You know the treaty. Dragons don’t break it, ever. Dragons do as they’re told. They stay in their sanctuaries and don’t leave them except to travel to another sanctuary.” Her voice was growing colder as her rage kept getting hotter and hotter. “And they never even try to come within a hundred miles of a pony settlement. When dragons try,” she said, narrowing her eyes and igniting her horn, “dragons die.” And then, more than her horn ignited.

She could see it clearly now in the light coming off her. The dragon, very large but somehow with slimmer, more delicate features than most that she’d seen, opened its own eyes wide in total horror now that it could see her. Now that it could see what kind of a pony had woken it up and asked it to leave. It screamed, scrambling backwards, falling over itself as it tried desperately to get away from the alicorn standing before it. An alicorn with furious red eyes and a flaming mane and tail.

Glim, eyes closed and face screwed up in concentration, wobbled crazily three feet above her bedroom carpet. Her wings were extended and fluttering in her instinctive attempt at keeping her balance. “I can’t get it, Daddy - whoops!” She flipped right over in the air before she wobbled upright again.

“It’s your wings. I think we need something to stop you from trying to fly, so you can get the hang of self-levitation faster,” Starburst said thoughtfully.

Glim’s hornglow vanished and the little purple pony dropped back to her hooves. “I know!” she exclaimed, then she whipped around and jumped into the air, flapped over to her closet, alighted again. Throwing one of the doors wide, she started opening the drawers within, tossing various items this way and that, until she found...

The purple pegacorn trotted up to her father with a wide smile on her face as an equally-wide shiny-purple belt floated along behind her. “Daddy! We need to stop me from using my wings, right? So how about this?” Her father wasn’t convinced, and his expression told her so. “Come on, Dad! I can tell that my wings are stopping me from getting it. So let’s tie my wings up!” She offered him the vinyl belt. “I wanna be able to self-levitate before Momma gets back!”

Starburst relented. “I suppose you’re right, darling. Now tell me if it’s too tight.” He took it from her magical grip and straightened it out, looking at the buckle. Glim folded her wings and bunched them in tight against her sides. He slipped the wide plastic belt around her chest, pulling it tight.

“That’s too loose, Dad,” she said, fluttering her wings briefly. They rattled against the restraint.

He cinched it tighter. “How’s that?”

Glim gave another experimental wing-shake. “Tighter.”

He closed the belt one more notch. “That’s too tight, Sweetheart.”

“No,” she disagreed. She gave her tightly-furled wings a shake and then took a few deep breaths. “No, that’s good. I can’t move my wings but it’s not too tight.”

Starburst frowned. He was vaguely upset about restraining his daughter's wings with a belt, but then he admitted the facts of the situation to himself. Glim could take the belt off at any time in about a quarter of a second, she’d come up with this idea herself, and it would force her to levitate with magic alone.

He made the biggest mistake of his life as he nodded. “Okay, Sweetheart. Daddy gives in.” He smiled. “Let’s see you levitate.”

Twilight marched out of the cave mouth and into the midday sunshine, dragging the huge dragon along behind her by its neck. She stopped, turned around, scowled at it. It was choking and spluttering, its foreclaws trying to bat Twilight’s magical grip away from its throat. Tears were streaming from its eyes and down its cheeks. It looked at Twilight with terrified, pleading, glistening eyes and shook its head madly.

Looks like it’s feeling pretty damn sorry for itself. Well, boo bucking hoo.

Twilight squeezed a little, lifted it into the air. It was pretty damn big. A thousand feet long at least, she reckoned, though slim and rounded instead of bulky and angular. This was sort-of interesting, but she didn’t really care. It was a dragon and that was all that mattered. She threw it at the towering cliff. The ground under Twilight’s hooves trembled as it hit, very hard, above and to the right of the cave entrance. It screamed almost as loudly as the crash of its impact, then collapsed to the ground where it was half-buried in the slide of boulders and dust that were brought down on top of it.

Hey, that was fun. She smiled wickedly. I’m gonna play with it for a bit.

The sparse grass and brush on the low plateau started to smoke and smoulder for a few feet all around her. Well, she was on fire right now. Somehow, that just made her smile even wider. The dragon was stirring, still choking and gasping feebly. Twilight sat down and waited for it to get up.

“DADDY!” Glim shrieked in panic. She was upside-down and bumping gently into her ceiling. “DADDY! GET ME DOWN!”

Starburst chuckled. His horn and his daughter both glowed bright magenta. “Okay, I’ve got you. Drop your spell, Sweetheart.” The purple glow underneath his own spell vanished. He flipped her upright and set her back on the floor. “Take a break, darling. Sit down.”

She did. He walked up to her and tousled her cherry-streaked mane. “You’re doing really, really well, Sweetheart. We can stop now. Mom'll be back soon and she’ll be so proud of you.”

“No, I wanna get it right! I wanna get it before she comes back!” Glim exclaimed. She jumped up into the air again, glowing purple. She wiggled. She wobbled. Though not as much as before. Starburst looked proudly on.

Twilight smiled at the coughing, bleeding dragon. This was fun, this was so much fun. She had thoroughly enjoyed the beating. Something deep in her mind was chastising her for breaking its fingers and toes and nose and wings, but that was easily drowned out by the deliciously righteous violence she’d delivered. And besides, she had something more important in mind than her conscience. Time to really have fun. Time to see just how far her magic could go. She’d waited a very long time to try this out.

She’d done this once before, fifteen hundred years ago during The Windigo Wars. The final battle with Discord. A real fight, a physical fight, no magic at all. The foul bastard and Celestia had beaten the snot out of each other as Luna hurried to join them all with her father’s Weapon. Twilight herself had been forced to sit on the sidelines as it were, unable to join in because she was doing something that occupied all of her attention.

She called it ‘The Magic,’ all the combined magical power there was. As the Master of Magic, she could do this, she could command all of the magic in existence. She had channeled every wisp of magic in the entire world, held it tight inside her mind so that nothing else could use it. And Discord and Celestia had taken the opportunity, as temporarily-mortal non-magical creatures while Twilight held The Magic, to release a few well-pent-up frustrations on each other.

Twilight didn’t do anything herself with all the world’s magic on that day, though. She just held it so Discord couldn’t use magic himself. And then right after a badly-bleeding Celestia had managed to crush Discord’s entire ribcage, Luna had arrived, Twilight had released The Magic straight into Moonglow’s Weapon of Harmony, and Luna ended the Wars, destroying every Windigo in existence forever. They hadn’t been seen since. Oh, and killing the otherwise-indestructible Servant of Disharmony in the bargain too.

Today, right now, she would channel all of the magic in the world again. But today, she would use it herself. And she would see what happened. She was sure it wouldn’t be good for the dragon at all.

Her horn flared with sudden vicious blood-red light, and then the light pulsed and vanished, replaced by darkness. Deep, utter, profound darkness. A darkness so deep that it made black look merely grey in comparison.

All the light and warmth seemed to vanish for hundreds of feet all around her. Hundreds and hundreds of feet, thousands of feet, then miles, and then dozens of miles. Hundreds of miles.

The Magic flowed into her, and she used it. Twilight Sparkle unleashed her fury.

The dragon screamed as it squeezed its eyes shut and clamped its bleeding forepaws over its ears. The little burning pony exploded with the loudest and most horrible sound that there had ever been.

“That’s pretty good, Sweetheart,” he said. “Looks like you’ve got it.” He was standing on Glim’s bedroom balcony, looking out at his daughter proudly as she pirouetted gracefully through the air, giggling her head off at the strange sensation of ‘flying’ without using her wings. It always felt really, really weird to self-levitate, and he could appreciate his daughter’s glee at mastering the talent.

Neither of them were the least bit bothered by the three-hundred-foot drop from her balcony to the courtyard below, of course. Glim could fly exceptionally well, and even though her wings were tied at the moment, he was right here if she lost control of her spell. But it didn’t look like that was going to happen. She was such a quick study - just like himself and Twilight, he admitted. “Okay, come on back and we’ll take that belt off, now you don’t need to cheat any more -”

He stopped talking. Something very strange, something very wrong was happening. He’d been getting odd flashes of Twilight’s moods for the last few minutes. Anger was there, but also pleasure and enjoyment and vindication, but this new feeling wasn’t right, it was so not right, it was completely wrong, it was bad -

Glim’s pale purple glow flickered, she fell a few inches and jerked to a halt again. She gasped in surprise. “Daddy! Did you feel that? What was it? That felt really weird.”

“Come back over to the balcony, Sweetheart. Something strange’s going on.”

With no warning, from out of nowhere, a sudden white-hot murderously-sadistic fury roared briefly through his chest, then the sensation vanished as suddenly as it had started. He jumped at the feeling -

The sky above darkened as the midday sun’s brightness faded to that of early twilight. Glim’s aura vanished with a snap, her horn extinguished, and she fell out of sight. Without even pausing to think, Starburst leaped straight over the balcony railing -

His horn wouldn’t ignite.

Glim started screaming. Her wings were still tied.

His horn wouldn’t ignite and her wings were still tied. And they were both falling a very long way to a stone courtyard.

Twilight exploded upwards as she used The Magic. Her feet were on the ground but her head was in the clouds. Above the clouds. Above the whole world. What a feeling, what a glorious feeling. She felt like she could do anything. She could do absolutely anything. Stop time, unmake the world, eat the sun, crack The Lunacy’s dying curse itself. Unlimited, infinite magical power roared through her. Anything. She could do anything.

The dragon almost passed out in shock. The tiny flaming alicorn that had been beating it nearly senseless had exploded, expanded, in the blink of an eye it was staring down at the dragon and not vice versa. The dragon looked skywards, its fear more extreme than it could have ever believed.

Twilight Sparkle, ten miles tall, ten miles long from mane to tail, two miles between her forehooves and blazing like the sun, looked upon the world. She turned her head this way and that, smiled around at all of Equestria. Then she looked down at the gnat by her left forehoof. The green-and-purple dragon was curling up, shaking so violently that it almost looked blurry. She smiled down at it and opened her mouth.

“YOU WILL BE MY EXAMPLE! DRAGONS WHO BREAK THEIR TREATY WILL DIE WITHOUT MERCY!”

Her magical voice hammered off the stone cliffside, hammered off the ground, hammered inside the screaming dragon’s skull.

The wind was shrieking, but not as loud as Glim. She wasn’t far below him, but there was no magic, there was no magic, he couldn’t reach her, he couldn’t stop his own descent -

The dragon was writhing, in pain, in fear, its forepaws holding its bruised throat. “Please,” it choked and stammered, “I ju-ju-just want to b-be left a-alone, I wouldn’t-wouldn’t l-leave them so they-they-they chased me away -”

His daughter’s screams were like daggers in his ears and his heart. She was tumbling, trying to balance herself but she was a pegasus at heart and so most of her balance came from her wings and her legs weren’t doing the job, she was fumbling at the beltbuckle, his heart spasmed in relief as he saw pegasus guards in the courtyard below, but they weren’t flying, they were jumping a few feet into the air with their wings flapping madly but they couldn’t get any height -

“They -” the dragon choked. “They wouldn’t let-let me k-keep them s-so I took them and f-flew and we-we had n-nowhere to g-go, p-please, they-they ne-never liked me, I n-never really li-liked them eith-either, I never re-really f-fit in with the dr-dragons be-because I was ra-raised by po-po-po-”

Twilight stared down at this writhing, choking slug near her hoof. This pathetic little worm. She was feeling particularly benevolent at the moment, so she wouldn’t kill all of the dragons today. Just this one, and a few of the big ones up in Shale Gully. Maybe some from the hibernation grounds in the south for dessert. A few more tomorrow to remind them to behave. Maybe a few more the day after too. And maybe the day after that as well. She smiled with anticipation for the upcoming slaughter. It felt good. It felt really good. She lifted her titanic forehoof to stomp the dragon into pulp.

“PLEASE!” the sobbing, retching creature shrieked. “DON’T HURT MY BABIES!”

He was screaming himself now, tears of frustration and horror blurring his vision. Where had his magic gone? Why couldn’t the guards fly? Because pegasi didn’t have the large flight muscles of birds, and so without magic, they couldn’t fly? But, again, where was the magic? He saw Glim get a wing free from the belt but there were only twenty or so feet to go... At least he’d die right after his daughter, that was something, he wished Twilight were here so he could kiss her goodbye, he closed his eyes so he wouldn’t see -

Twilight’s hoof paused, quivering. She started to tremble slightly as she realised what the dragon had yelled through its splutterings. And then she saw them.

Horror broke through her fury. In the shadows just inside the cave entrance, hiding behind a few of the boulders that had been shaken loose in her assault, there were three tiny, terrified little scaly faces. They were staring up at her, their wide eyes full of fear. Smaller than ants they seemed, but she could see them perfectly clearly. Three hatchlings. Three baby dragons. They’d come up to the cave entrance to find... their mother.

This dragon was a mother. A mother. What had it been trying to say as Twilight choked it? The dragon had refused to abandon its eggs, so the other dragons had kicked it out? Dragons always abandoned their eggs. This dragon was very, very strange, it was... It was caring for its babies? That it was showing care at all was completely unheard-of. It... It...

It had been trying to explain that it had been raised by ponies.

Her horror doubled as she finally appreciated its striking resemblance to another dragon who had been raised by ponies... It had nowhere else to go. And Twilight had kicked the shit out of it and had just been about to kill it. Twilight had nearly killed a frightened, outcast mother who just wanted to keep its babies safe.

It? Stop thinking of it as an It. It’s not an IT. It is a SHE. SHE is a MOTHER.

Just like you, you MONSTER!

The miles-tall alicorn shuddered.

I am a complete and total monster who almost committed cold-blooded murder.

Cold-blooded murder of a mother trying to protect her babies.

She released her grip on The Magic. With a loud crack she was herself again - completely herself; the fires of her rage completely gone - standing on the plateau in front of the cave, staring up at the bruised, bleeding dragon. It -

She! She is a SHE and not an IT!

She was still lying up against the fractured cliffside next to the cave. Purple and green, and about the right age. Could it be? Could she have come from the same abandoned clutch as Spike? Might other ponies have raised her, two thousand years ago? Could she, too, have been found by ponies, raised by ponies, raised with the values of a civilized creature? Could this be Spike’s... sister? Still shaking and choking with terror, now the long, slim dragon was making frantic waving motions at her hatchlings, probably to try to get them to turn around and run back into the cave, to hide, to hide from the monster -

Starburst felt magic flood into him at the same time as an unexplained feeling of crushing, terrible remorse tore through his chest. His eyes flew open again, but he could barely see his shrieking daughter through his frantic tears, she was so close to the ground, she still had one wing caught in the belt, she was trying to wrench it free, what could he do, he could grab her psychokinetically to slow her fall, he could teleport to the ground and catch her, yes, he concentrated, his horn started to glow as the straining guards near the ground suddenly shot into the air, too fast, too far, they all rocketed up far past Glim before they checked their sudden ascents, a bright point of light sparked right at the tip of his horn -

Twilight was in the process of opening her mouth to tell the dragon that it had Royally-guaranteed free reign of all Equestria forever, to try to explain what she’d just done and why, to get down on her knees and beg for forgiveness, to apologise over and over and over again, to cast some spells for temporary pain relief and then get proper medical aid, but most of all to wish the dragon long life and happiness, and then to wish the same to her three beautiful little babies, and could she meet them, would the dragon introduce them, and would the dragon in turn like to meet her wonderful daughter and husband and Sisters, and perhaps if the dragon forgave her they might even be friends, and would she like to hear about another friend she’d had long ago, the most wonderful dragon she’d ever known...

...when she realised that she hadn’t visited one dragon, she’d ended up visiting four. Dragons, plural. She had gone to the dragons...

...but none of that mattered because with her release of The Magic, her special magical connection to her husband’s emotions had been restored. She hadn’t even noticed that it had been gone until now, but she could feel it, it was back, and she felt...

She vanished.

Twilight appeared high in the air outside Glim’s castle tower, just in time.

Just in time to see her screaming daughter

hit

the

ground

and

DIE.

Twilight had been running on pure magic for the last five weeks. Every nerve, every fibre of her entire being was stretched to the breaking point, but she managed to keep it together, because she had to. She should be a complete and total nervous wreck but she wasn’t. She had to be there for Starburst.

“Please, Sweetie. Please. You have to at least eat something -”

Twilight recoiled as Starburst smacked the bowl of soup out of her psychokinetic grip with his own burst of magic. “I’m not hungry,” he said in that same empty voice he’d had for the last month. As the proffered bowl smashed and clattered over the headstones to their left, he managed to pull his gaze away from the grave and lifted his face, his half-dead face, to his beloved wife’s. He couldn’t bring himself to look her in the eye, so he focused on the corner of her trembling mouth instead. “I’m not hungry,” he repeated. “There’s more important things to me right now than... than food.” His bleak eyes returned to the simple stone marker in front of him.

Twilight’s alicorn resolve was already stretched beyond the limit, and this was just one heartbreak too much. Without another word, she vanished in an enormous ringing concussion of deep red-purple light, leaving Starburst swaying slightly in her magical wake. That was a massive spell, easily hundreds of times, thousands of times greater than anything he could ever perform. Wherever she’d gone, it was very, very far away.

The magically-bound emotional connection he shared with his wife was so strong that he felt her sudden explosive exhalation as her hooves touched the airless surface of the moon.

Well, at least he understood why that spell had been so powerful. The already-significant flow of his tears grew stronger. He wanted Twilight so badly, but he couldn’t bear to be around her. And now she’d gone where he couldn’t possibly follow anyway.

He couldn’t bring himself to look his Beloved in the eye any more. He’d failed their daughter so completely, so totally... He wondered how Twilight could even bring herself to look at him, let alone talk to him.

Starburst looked intensely at the totally-unworthy monument to his beautiful daughter. The pain in his chest was incredible, but somehow he knew that he’d find the strength to withstand it. His sorrow was enormous, his emotional agony unbearable - yet he’d bear it regardless. This was his punishment for letting his daughter die. He deserved this, he was sure.

He would bear this terrible agony for as long as he...

His eyes sprang open.

He coughed. He choked. He paled.

His hooves flew to his chest.

He wavered for a moment, then, as his forelegs grew surprisingly cold and numb, he lost all motor control, toppled sideways, head smacking into the ground with a sickening thud, the dull pain in his chest sharpening, being eclipsed by a sudden white-hot fire that made him yell, his collapse and shout bringing a dozen guards galloping to his aid...

This was not emotional pain. This was completely physical. As the guards turned him over, shouting confused questions at him and at each other, his horn began flickered wildly, his magical awareness searching deep inside his own chest, desperately trying to find the problem, to potentially halt or correct or fix the...

His hornglow faded away as the pain became unbearable, his eyes rolling back into his head as he started to convulse. A ghastly horrible gurgling sound escaped from his throat. His savagely-beating heart, already ravaged every-which-way from emotional torment, and badly weakened through malnourishment from his month-long fast, tore itself free from his aorta...

Almost a quarter of a million miles away, Twilight Sparkle screamed into the void as her own immortal heart felt all of her dying husband’s physical and emotional agony. She appeared beside the crowd of guardsponies in the Royal Memorial Garden in a burst of light and thunder and swirling clouds of moondust, still screaming. A shock of red-gold magic knocked the guards flying. She slammed to the ground beside Starburst, screaming louder and louder, her horn glowing so brightly that the ruffled guards had to squint and look away as they got back to their hooves. Her magic filled him, instantly found the damage to his heart and blood vessels...

Just in time.

She was just in time. Again.

Just in time to be too late. Just in time to watch him die.

Part 3: Broken

Twilight spend a lot of time in her high tower chambers these days. In fact, she hadn’t left them for more than half a century. She’d even stayed here for her two thousandth birthday, preferring to spend that day the same way she’d spent so many others.

She would watch the horizon brighten, deep black fading to deep blue and then bright blue and pink and gold as the sun peeked over the edge of the land. She’d sit at her east-facing balcony and watch it climb the sky, finally standing up a few minutes before noon and trotting to the middle of her towertop study. Then, she’d turn aside and look at the monster.

It didn’t really look like a monster, she supposed. But then, who knew what monsters looked like, really? It looked quite a lot like a pony, tall and delicate-seeming with what she admitted was a strikingly-beautiful face and graceful wings and a long, sparkling horn. The mane, too, looked breathtaking in its own way. It didn’t really look like hair. Just like the tail, the monster’s mane seemed to waft like silk or smoke in a breeze that wasn’t really there.

The monster really was particularly beautiful, she supposed. Supermodels everywhere aspired to look like the monster and its Sisters. Well, she couldn’t help how the monster looked. If there was one thing that Twilight had learned over the last twenty centuries, it was that appearances could be deceiving.

The monster’s eyes, though. They were truly frightening. They looked like a perfectly-normal pair of purple eyes. But what she saw below the surface there left her in no doubt that this horrifying creature she saw was indeed a monster.

And then, as she felt the sun tip over in the sky above her, she would turn away from her gilt-framed mirror and walk to her western windows to watch it set. She’d gaze at the sky all night long, counting the stars, before turning, glancing at the monster again, and preparing to witness another agonizing, heartbreaking dawn.

For almost fifty-eight years, Twilight Sparkle had no variation in her routine. Every day was exactly the same. And that’s exactly how she wanted things. Even her Sisters had stopped coming to see her after the first year or two.

On the bright and sunny morning of the 20th of June, 6011 F.E., however, she turned away from the sunrise and walked over to her chamber doors. She had to use a fairly strong spell to push them open - they were stuck shut through disuse.

Her corridor was dark and deserted, the windows boarded over, dust lying thick on the floor, though this was no surprise. She trotted down the passageway and opened the equally-stuck doors at the end of her short, private corridor. She closed her eyes for a moment, sighed, and walked down the tower staircase and into the Palace cloisters.

Pandemonium. From the moment that the first guard had seen her and and sprinted away shrieking, the sounds of panicked conversation in the castle had grown steadily louder and louder. Ponies everywhere were yelling and running away. It didn’t bother her - she’d expected it. She jogged lightly up her Biggest Sister’s spiral tower staircase. There weren’t any guards at the top - she’d seen one of them whip inside Celestia’s private study while the other one had leaped cleanly out of the open window and taken flight. She didn’t bother to knock.

Celestia looked up from the panicking guard and straight at her Littlest Sister, her face blank with shock. “Tw... Twilight?” she managed. The guard had backed away, shaking with fright. The only living ponies who'd ever met Twilight were either immortal or elderly now. No mortal pony had seen the Third Eternal Sister for nearly six decades, and everypony knew the reason why.

Twilight’s mouth moved, but no sound came out. She coughed, swallowed, coughed again. “Sorry,” she said, voice a little husky. “I haven’t said anything for fifty-seven years. Forgot how to use my vocal cords, I guess. Good morning, Biggest Sister. Your sunrise was lovely today, one of the nicest I’ve seen in a long time. Is Big Sister about?”

Celestia blinked for a few more seconds, then recovered. She didn’t dare move in case she collapsed. “Uh... I’ll, I’ll get her.” Her horn flickered for a moment. “It’s... It’s been a very long time, Littlest Sister.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

Luna appeared next to her Big Sister with a crash of moonlight. The Princess of the Night paused for one single heartbeat, and then she launched herself across the chamber, shrieking in joy. Celestia was right behind her.

“TWILIGHT!” Luna sobbed as she grabbed her Little Sister in a massive hug. Celestia thumped into the other two and hugged as well.

The guard tiptoed out onto the balcony and took to the air, terrified and relieved in equal measure.

After what seemed a very long time, the three Sisters stepped back and looked at each other. Celestia opened her mouth to ask a question, but Twilight answered her before it was even asked.

“Tomorrow is Midsummer. A very important solstice, too. It’s been... It’s been two thousand years tomorrow since... Since I met them all. My friends. I have to be there.”

To say that the three thousandth Summer Sun Celebration was merely spectacular would be to undervalue the word. It was breathtaking. Twilight herself had raised the sun, something she hadn’t done in a very long time. But as soon as the celebrations were complete and the sun had set, the Third Eternal Sister had just gone back to her private rooms and locked the doors again, saying that she needed to sleep and please could Celestia and Luna wake her in a couple of months.

Celestia met Luna in the middle alicorn’s Gothic-themed study chambers. “She can’t last. She really can’t. Every time she’s lost control in the past, she always had something to pull her back. Like when she was only nineteen and The Lunacy overpowered her mind, or after Spike was killed. And she lost her mind half-a-dozen times when Starburst and Glim were...” Celestia paused for a moment before continuing. “Something always pulled her back. But there’s nothing to do that now. If she falls again, nothing could bring her back. Nothing could stop her.”

Luna nodded sadly. “I see it in her eyes. You must see it too. Twilight Sparkle is dead inside. She’s still there, but she’s dead.”

“She will leave. She will use the Element to leave. We should be ready.”

For a few months, it was almost like having the old Twilight back again. Almost. But then the day came.

Neither of the two older alicorns was surprised that it was two thousand years to the day that Twilight had fallen for the first time, then turned the tables on Equestria’s oldest foe, defeated The Lunacy, and begun her new life. They sat together, watching, holding each other for support, while Twilight sobbed on the ground at the foot of her husband’s and daughter’s gravestone. Hours and hours they sat there, setting the sun and raising the moon along the way, before Twilight stood up at last. The youngest Eternal Sister turned around. Celestia and Luna straightened, then stood. Twilight walked up to them, her voice quite steady.

“I’m leaving.”

“We know,” Luna choked.

“You must do this, Twilight,” Celestia said, wiping at her own tears. “You must do this or it will eat you away.”

The three Sisters, two of them biological, one through honour, embraced for what seemed years, but was only a few minutes. Then, they slowly began to walk up to the special room in the tallest tower.

Luna stepped out onto the balcony. She caught a brief glimpse of her Little Sister, high above, flying rapidly out of her sight. The Princess of the Night closed her eyes and lit her horn. When she opened her eyes again, the night sky above her was completely black.

“That’s a very nice touch,” Celestia sniffed as she sat down next to Luna.

“I... It’s the least I could have done.”

The two Eternal Sisters sat together and stared at the sky, tears streaming down their faces. It had to be this way. If Twilight stayed here, she would lose her mind, and nopony could possibly guess the outcome. One thing was certain, however. One fact was completely concrete. The outcome, the result, the aftermath of The Final Night Mare would be devastating. If Twilight Sparkle lost control without her husband and daughter to pull her back, she would never come back. There was no telling just how much destruction she would cause. There was no telling how widespread that destruction would be. And there would be absolutely no stopping her.

Twilight knew this, and she had done the only thing she could. She had taken the reconstructed Element Of Harmony and she had left. She’d left her Sisters, she’d left her city, she’d left her subjects, she’d left Equestria. She’d left the world.

Because if she hadn’t, then sooner or later, she’d reduce the whole world to dust in her grief. There was no ‘if’ regarding this. It would happen. It would only be a question of when.

Celestia and Luna both flickered briefly, then they seemed to shrink. Eyes wide, they looked at each other as they felt all of the magic in the world disappear.

Their large and graceful forms had changed. Each Sister stared at the other in surprise. This was how they’d looked almost eight thousand years ago, when they were young, when they were both in their late teens. How they’d looked almost sixty years ago for a brief moment as Twilight made her mistake. How Celestia had appeared as she fought Discord during the Windigo Wars. Small and ordinary, with non-magical manes and tails. Their eyes grew wide as they realised how Twilight was going to end her life.

The sky flashed blazing yellow-white, bright as a summer’s day, then winked back to black. A tiny point of light above exploded into a rapidly-expanding ball of rainbow-hued flame that almost reached the horizons, flickered, and faded away.

Princess Celestia of the Day of the Solitary Sun and Princess Luna of the Night of the Star-accompanied Moon both started wailing as they each grew in height, resuming their customary appearances as The Magic was released back into the world. They grabbed each other, hugged each other, sobbed into each other’s mane.

Slowly, sadly, the stars popped back into view. The moon appeared suddenly, halfway up the sky. The stars seemed to flare and brighten. Ponies that were still awake saw the sky and felt an unaccountable sadness. The night sky was beautiful, but for all the wrong reasons.

Celestia and Luna cried in each other’s embrace.

Their Sister, Princess Twilight of the Dawn that Follows Every Dusk, was dead.

Time passed.

The full moon dipped below the western horizon, though there was no brightening of the sky to the east. The stars above hadn’t dimmed either. The Sisters hadn’t even noticed that it was morning. Well, it was time for morning, but morning hadn’t come.

“Your... Your Highnesses?” They both turned and opened their eyes. A guard captain stood there, quivering slightly in his armour. “Your Highnesses, what... What is wrong? What has happened? The sun hasn’t risen.”

“Princess Twilight is... Has... She...” Luna took a breath. “Princess Twilight is gone. She has left Equestria.” She paused for a moment. “She is... dead.”

The guard’s mouth and eyes had opened very wide. “No,” he mouthed, stepping backwards a pace, knees quivering. “No. No, no, no, no, no, that’s not possible, Princess Twilight can’t be -”

“She’s dead, Captain Adamant. Pass the word, please,” Celestia whispered through tight lips, her eyes closed again and leaking golden tears.

The guard screamed, turned on the spot, and ran from the Antechamber of Harmony, howling his distress and grief.

“I can’t bear to raise the sun,” Celestia whispered after a few moments. “Not right now.” Her horn glowed briefly, and the edge of the eastern sky brightened slightly. “I... I can’t. That’s the most I can do.”

Luna shuddered, then stood up. “I’ll leave the stars out for her. I think... I think that’s right.” She turned, walked slowly to the balcony rail. “Come on, Big Sister. We have to check. We have to make sure.”

Celestia stood up as well, wiping at her muzzle. “Yes. Yes, you’re quite right, Little Sister. Let’s go.”

They took to the air.

The two Eternal Sisters walked cautiously into the ancient, dark, shattered chamber. Neither of them had been here for more than two thousand years, but they remembered the place well. They remembered everything.

This was the first room of their first castle, the castle that they’d made with their own magic and their own hooves. Sixty centuries had passed since they’d built this place around the Elements of Harmony. They could remember every brick, every flagstone, every lintel and window that they’d made.

Excepting, of course, that time does pass. It had been six thousand years. The floor was covered with wild patchy grass and creeping vines. The walls were broken, they looked like jagged teeth in an angry jaw. There was no ceiling at all.

But they remembered this place. And, more important than that, they remembered where things had once been.

The tall fountainlike stone pedestal they’d made to hold the Elements was empty, but they expected this. Celestia’s horn ignited and the pedestal glowed and levitated, revealing a spiral stone staircase. The elder Sister led the way down to the roots of the ancient castle, horn ablaze.

They trotted off the staircase and walked into a dank, moss-grown chamber of rock and dirt and memory and history. The face of the world, as it were. This was the original place where they’d found the Elements so many thousands and thousands of years ago.

Luna left her Sister’s side, strode to the far wall of the large and wild chamber, ignited her horn. The dust and moss and creeping fungus on the crumbling dirt floor seemed to flinch, then started to move. The greenery - though there was no ‘green’ here, so far away from sunlight - was slithering and retracting from the centre of the room, leaving a wide, roughly flat surface.

There were five small, shallow hollows set into the ground, in a roughly-scraped pointed circle of their own near the middle of the chamber.

Five small stones rested there, one in each hollow. When the Element of Harmony had shattered last night, its individual parts - the five they’d discovered, at least; Magic would be hidden elsewhere again, of course - had come home. But there was a problem.

The stones were small, shrunken, wrinkled, black. Neither Celestia nor Luna could feel any magical life in the five husks they saw between them. They were dead.

Dead.

The Elements were dead.

Luna looked up at her Sister. Celestia looked back. Their individual hornglows began to waver as they both started shaking.

The Elements were dead. They’d died with Twilight.

The curse would never, ever crack.

Pinkie Pie looked at the untidy, moss-grown chamber floor and sighed. “So you would have died? You would have died and disappeared?”

It nodded.

Several minutes passed as they both thought and reflected on this.

“So, if things had kept happening as they were supposed to, if your, um, your brother or sister or whatever It is, if It hadn’t come out of hiding yesterday -”

“Oh, the curse would have cracked, don’t you worry. It might have taken another million years but it would have cracked. Such magic is not forever.”

“But a million years,” the pink pony said. “That’s such a long time. I’m not even two thousand years old. And my life’s just seemed to go on forever... I can’t even imagine a million years. It’s too long.” Pinkie Pie sat down on her haunches and frowned at the ancient vine-strewn floor. “Too long. Equestria would have died. Disappeared. It’s just too long.”

The Element nodded. “Well, thankfully, that’s not going to happen. Despite the recent shakeup, I know the day of True Harmony. It’s seventy-six years away.”

Pinkie cocked an eyebrow.

“It’s the one thing that has always been constant. The one date. Despite upsets and mishaps, it’s never changed,” The Element said, matter-of-factly. “It will happen, as it would always happen, at nine minutes before five o’clock on the morning of Wednesday the twenty-ninth of June, sixty-twenty-four. So seventy-six years and two months from now. More or less. And that’s what always confused me. If I died, how would True Harmony come so soon?”

“Because The Lunacy made the biggest mistake in history,” she said. The Element nodded again. It was really weird, she realised, to be aware that something that didn’t have a head was nodding. It made her smile. “So. Just one last thing.”

“Yes?” It waited. It knew what Pinkie Pie was going to ask. The last two things she’d seen before she woke up that morning. Two things that would never have happened if The Lunacy hadn't so stupidly revealed itself yesterday.

“Those last two visions at the end of the dream. I’ve never seen them before. They were all fuzzy and dark. The Princess, Twilight, I’m sure it was her. She was in pain, I think she was injured. I think she was bleeding. And...” Pinkie paused for a moment, thinking hard. “The other two Princesses, sitting on top of that mountain and watching the sunrise. I... I was sitting with them.”

“What did they say?” The Element prompted.

“I dunno. I didn’t understand the language. I’ve never heard that language spoken before.” She thought a bit harder. The vision had only been a quick, dim flash. “Hmm. It sounded like... What does ‘Cheyro ne damastus, damastus Equatanios, cherdu Equatanios’ mean?” Pinkie asked. “That’s what they both shouted right as the sun came up. And... And I shouted it too.”

“I’m not sure I have the right to tell you what those words mean, Pinkie Pie. They’re happy words, though. Immensely happy. I’m sure you’ll understand when... When it happens.”

“Then why were we all crying when we said that?”

“Tears of joy. I think that you just foresaw the cracking of the curse.”

Pinkie Pie thought about that, then she stood up and turned her tail on the impossibly-ancient Cradle of Harmony. “Seventy-six years. Now that, I can wait for,” she smiled. The nightmares no longer mattered. They might be horrible but, very importantly, they wouldn’t happen. Never. Not ever. They would never happen. The future would still be really bad - even worse in some ways - but it wasn’t hopeless any more. She smiled at the thought, then her horn flashed bright silvery-pink and she disappeared.

The Element was still with her as she trotted down the marble hallway towards the tall double-doors set in the gilded doorframe. The pair of armoured pegasi flanking the doors noticed her and stiffened, extending their wings. Then they froze as they recognised her. Their wings drooped and they looked at her with shocked expressions as she walked right past them and knocked on the doors. They made absolutely no attempt to prevent her from doing so.

“Yes?” came a strangely-familiar voice as the doors glowed faintly and opened. The same voice gasped.

“Hi, um, you’re Twilight, right? I’m Pinkie Pie, but I think you already know that. We need to talk.”

Chapter 16: Vampire

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Chapter 16: Vampire

Thunderstrike ruffled his wings neatly and checked his combat armour - straight and spotless, of course, but he still made sure - as he walked between the four ornamentally-armoured unicorns flanking the main entrance to the throne room. The Palace staff all thought of it as the throne room, though its proper name was the Hall of the Royal Court. As one of Princess Twilight’s personal guards, he outranked nearly every other member of the Guard. All four unicorns saluted, and the one to his immediate left opened one of the two great double-doors slightly for him. He returned their salutes and stepped inside.

The huge room was packed. Hundreds of ponies from all over Equestria were here this morning to air their various emergency petitions. Princess Celestia was sitting on her high throne at the far end of the Court Hall. She was alone, the thrones to either side of her empty. And though her expression seemed warm and welcoming, her voice calm and reassuring, he could tell she wasn’t calm at all. Princess Celestia was really, really pissed.

So was Thunderstrike, of course. Yesterday, Princess Glim’s eighth birthday, was supposed to have been a happy national holiday, not the nightmare it had turned into. He’d helped to protect Her Little Highness after the Prince had brought her to safety. He was still furious. He’d heard her terrified screams as he circled in the air above her bed, weapons drawn and held at the ready. He unconsciously checked his left and right swords, just for reassurance.

Yes, he thought as he trotted down the aisle in the middle of the court chamber, Princess Celestia was pissed. She was hiding it incredibly well, but she was angrier than he’d ever seen her. But he still had to deliver his message, and he knew that, no matter how angry, Celestia would never bite his head off. And at least he wasn’t the poor sod who’d been sent to get Luna.

A very well-appointed pony at the Petitionary Podium was speaking heatedly, angrily. “Your Highness, I really must protest! My citizens are terrified! I don’t know how you could have allowed this to happen! I’ve been practically beseeched -”

The pony kept up his tirade. Thunderstrike’s expression didn’t change, but he mentally smiled with satisfaction as he imagined slapping the pompous prat at the podium. Sure, fine, the sudden appearance yesterday of millions of terrifying monsters straight out of everypony’s nightmares was a horrible thing, but nothing gave anypony the right to speak to a Royal Pony Sister in that tone. Not that that would upset any of them, of course. The Princesses were just so damned noble. He’d heard ordinary ponies use far too much familiarity, even their given names, when they spoke to them on occasion. Of course the Princesses didn’t mind, but that kind of thing really, really rankled him. The three Royal Pony Sisters deserved a lot more respect than that.

“Yes, We understand, Governor Grey. We know of the reports of the creatures yesterday, and of the nightmares from last night, and we understand that the citizens of Hoofington are worried and concerned,” Celestia was saying in a polite tone to the scowling stallion standing at the speakers’ podium. “We are worried and concerned too, as I’m sure you’ve heard me say fifty times this morning already. We are looking into the matter. More assurance than that, I cannot give.”

The guard was quite surprised that the angry pony hadn’t burst into flames at the well-hidden venom in Celestia’s voice, but then, the members of the Protectorate Guard did know Princess Celestia a lot better than anypony else did. He didn’t even falter in his stride as he walked straight past the spluttering Governor - who shot him a sideways scowl that he ignored - and directly up the staircase to the high platform where the three tall thrones stood.

Celestia looked at him, the almost-invisible flicker of anger vanishing from her eyes and being replaced at once with concern as she recognised him. He walked right up to where she sat on her white-and-gold cushion and craned his head forward. Muttering had broken out from the Hall at this interruption. Celestia leaned her own head toward the guard’s, cocking an ear.

“Emergency summons to Princess Twilight’s study, Your Highness,” he murmured.

“The Court,” Celestia murmured back. “I can’t just leave like this. Should I send for Luna? She’ll have only just gone to bed. And she may not be in the best shape to deal with the mood here at any rate.”

“Princess Luna has also been summoned to Princess Twilight’s chambers, Your Highness. I have sent a message to the senior earth, pegasus and unicorn Royals, asking that they convene here and act on your behalf. They should arrive within minutes. The summons from Princess Twilight is most urgent, Your Highness. Princess Twilight coded the summons as ‘Life-and-death.’”

Celestia straightened without another word. “Fillies and gentlecolts, this Court session is suspended momentarily. Prince Geimos, Princess Aspel and Prince Esterwing will be here shortly to act on Our behalf. Please excuse me, my Subjects.” She stood up and followed the guard back down the steps over the rising clamour from the assembled ponies.

Luna couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned in her lavish bed, then gave it up as pointless and threw back the covers. It was nearly twenty-four hours since she’d returned from the moon. Her behaviour yesterday had been appalling, and she was furious at herself for allowing her wits to be overcome by her old fear. That fear had been dispelled more than nineteen centuries ago, dispelled by hate. She’d only been caught by surprise, and her Sisters and herself had spent most of last night talking it through. There was nothing for Luna to fear from The Lunacy. Whatever it tried, she would meet it, once again, with unstoppable hatred. Now that she had her head, she was quite herself. Except for the fact that she was in a very, very bad mood over her behaviour yesterday.

There was a gentle tapping on her doors. “WHAT?” she thundered, then sighed and got a hold of herself. She rolled off her bed and stood up, then opened one of the doors with her magic. “I apologise, Lieutenant,” she said to the quaking pegasus who’d knocked. “I’m very sorry to say that I’m in an extraordinarily bad mood at the moment. Yesterday’s events, you understand.”

The guard walked forward hesitatingly. “Your, Your Highness, Princess Twilight asks for your urgent presence. In her, um, in her study.” He looked pale.

Well, she had nothing else to do for the moment. If she couldn’t sleep, she’d just spend the rest of the day pacing and getting madder and madder at herself. “Understood, Lieutenant. I apologise again. Thank you.” As the guard left and closed the doors, Luna drew back the midnight-blue curtains over her balcony doors, opened one of them, and took to the sky.

She wondered if she should go and get Celestia, too, but she spotted her Big Sister just then, lifting off herself from one of the Palace balconies near the Court Hall. The eldest alicorn was flying straight for Twilight’s palace tower. Luna bent her course a little to intercept Celestia’s own. Celestia must have seen her, for she angled towards Luna in turn.

“Little Sister sent for you too, then?” the midnight-blue Princess asked.

“It almost caused a riot in Court. They’re afraid, Little Sister. They’re all afraid, and they’re expressing their fear through anger. They want reassurances, and I can’t give them any. I don’t know what to do.”

“I don’t like this at all, Big Sister. I couldn’t sleep. I need to get out there and start looking for It. Little Sister and I will probably do that together. We both have the best chance of finding It.” Luna’s voice grew hard. “If we can find It, we can get rid of It.”

They touched down on Twilight’s wide eastern balcony. The doors were almost pulled closed, and the curtains were half-drawn. The chamber within was dim. Celestia and Luna walked side-by-side through the opening between the two balcony doors. A greeting and a question was on Celestia’s lips as she saw Twilight and Starburst, both sitting down, both pale with shock, expressions of horror on their faces. They were gaping at a small pink unicorn standing in front of them, listening intently to what the stranger was saying.

With sudden recognition, the two older Sisters stopped dead in their tracks. “Pinkie Pie,” they whispered together.

Starburst looked over at the two alicorns. His expression was hollow, bleak. “Pinkie here was just telling us how...” His voice cracked. He coughed. “How in about five years’ time, Twilight and me both kill Glim,” he said flatly.

The silence was total. Pinkie broke it. “Hey! Don’t let it get you down, silly! I said that's not gonna happen any more! Everything's great now! Well, no, not great. Really bad, I guess.” Her smile fell.

“Pinkie,” Twilight said quietly. She finally managed to tear her eyes away from her long-dead friend and looked over at her Sisters. Celestia and Luna had sat down awkwardly, and it looked like they were both about to pass out. She looked back at the dead earth pony with the unicorn horn and the long, straight hair. “Maybe you should start your story from the beginning.”

Pinkie did. After a couple of minutes, Celestia levitated a notebook and a pencil over from Twilight’s desk. “This needs to be written down,” she murmured, and started scribbling furiously.

“So, I saw the rest of yesterday happen completely differently. Twilight and her daughter and husband had tons of fun together. The monsters didn’t show up during her flying lesson, but things got really bad afterwards though. You went somewhere, the three of you, for her thirteenth birthday. Like, in, uh, five years. When you got back it got really horrible.” Pinkie looked to her left and cocked an eyebrow, then she nodded. “The things I see, I don’t know what they mean. It’s so upsetting. But I saw this whole chain of events last night in my dreams, and I understand. It's all changed, it won’t happen now, but you need to understand. What kicked this whole cycle off was a dream I had about twenty years ago. I’d always been sad but this one made me feel just awful, because it started the whole mess that ends with Twilight committing suicide.”

The Royals had never, ever been so stunned in their lives. “I... I kill myself?” Twilight whispered. “After... After Glim...?”

Pinkie looked to her left again, as if asking permission from somepony, Twilight thought. Then she looked back. “Well, Starburst dies soon after Twilight Glimmer does, that was really horrible. Broken heart, I think. You looked horrible when it happened,” she said, looking at the wide-eyed stallion. Her head turned back to the left again and she wrinkled her eyebrows. “Traumatic aortic rupture? What the hay is that?” She paused. Everypony looked puzzled and a bit sick. “Well, okay,” she said dubiously as she looked back at Starburst. “I still say it was a broken heart.”

“Uh, Pinkie Pie?” Twilight asked hesitatingly. “Who are you talking to? What do you keep looking at? There’s nopony there.”

“Oh, it’s not a pony,” she said, and looked to her left again. “Oh,” she repeated, as if she suddenly understood something. “Silly me. I’m sorry, everypony. I didn’t know you couldn’t see it.”

“See... what?” Luna asked. Celestia continued to scribble furious notes, but she stopped and looked up in stunned amazement when Pinkie answered.

“The Element of Harmony. It’s right there.” She pointed at the empty air.

All three alicorns stared at the place that Pinkie indicated. Their horns all started to glow at once. “What are you doing?” Starburst whispered to Twilight.

“Scrying, Sweetie. You need to use an ethomantic spell.” Twilight screwed her eyes up in concentration.

His horn, too, started to glow. For a few more seconds, they all stared very hard at apparently thin air. And then they all saw it at the same time.

A very small, rapidly-spinning ball of light and magic, swirled with rainbow patterns that constantly broke and shifted. There were no other features visible, but they all felt it. Felt it looking at them. Felt it smiling at them.

“Cingretto Sclacta,” Celestia breathed. “You’re whole again.”

The ball of light pulsed. Pinkie spoke again. “It says that you probably can’t hear it. It says hi, Celestia, and yes, Cingretto Sclacta is now Molus Soclero. Whatever that means.”

“Is, uh, huh?” Starburst said.

“Eternal Harmony,” Celestria translated from the ancient language of Caballusian. “Broken Peace is now Eternal Harmony. The Element really is whole again.”

They felt the Element speak again. “It says it’s been whole since Rarity died,” Pinkie said. “It’s yours, Twilight, and you’re apparently going to need it.”

The hornglows faded away. “How?” Twilight said urgently. “Can I use it to find The Lunacy? It is back, then? It sent the Windigoes? What for? Why?”

Pinkie looked to her left again. She listened for a couple of seconds. “Woah, woah, slow down. Okay, it says that it doesn’t know what happened. The piece that’s left might have escaped destruction when you killed It all those years ago, or It may be the splinter that was sealed inside Its servant. The Element doesn’t know, and it doesn’t know what to look for either.” She paused for a moment. “What about her?” Pinkie asked the air. “Oh.” Her forehead creased and she looked around. “Twilight, was your daughter out of sight yesterday? When the, um, the Windigoes came, I mean. The Element doesn’t think they were really Windigoes, by the way.”

“Out of sight? When those things attacked I took her to her room and posted guards. A ton of guards. I don’t think she was out of sight all day,” Starburst said. “Lots of ponies were keeping an eye on her. They still are, in fact.”

“No, uh, I mean, was she really out of sight? The Element can see that you’d be able to detect an infection if you cast the right spell. But I’m talking about the, uh, the alicorns.” Pinkie blinked a couple of times. “Mainly Twilight and Luna, I mean. They’ve both been under Its influence.”

Luna’s mouth and eyes contracted. Her voice was very hard and tight as she spoke. “You mean that both Little Sister and myself would be best equipped to recognise The Lunacy, if it had invaded a living mind?”

“Yeah.” Pinkie Pie nodded sadly, glancing from Luna to the purple Eternal Sister. “Yeah, I’m sorry, Twilight. It probably made its move yesterday when you were all in the park.”

Princess Luna and Princess Twilight both looked straight into each other’s eyes, utter horror on each of their faces. Their expressions grew wide in realisation, then they both swore very loudly and vanished with twin flashes of silver moonlight and deep-purple sunset.

Celestia started. “Where did they go?” She looked at Pinkie. “Where? Where?! Pinkie Pie, where did they go?!” she insisted. “What happened?”

Pinkie was taken aback. “Uh, I don’t know. Things are happening that I’ve never seen before, uh, hang on.” She closed her eyes for a moment. Her horn flashed once, and she opened her startled eyes again. “They’ve, um, they’ve gone to see Twilight Glimmer.”

Celestia and Starburst both vanished too.

Pinkie blinked in surprise, then she looked over at The Element of Harmony. “Well, I guess I’ll just wait here then.”

Celestia appeared right in front of Pinkie Pie with a flash of light that made the pink pony cringe. “Sorry, Pinkie. Come with me.” Celestia touched a hoof to her shoulder and they both disappeared with a crash of sunshine.

Pinkie found herself in a large, round, purple-carpeted room. It looked very cozy. Twilight, Luna and Starburst were all standing around a puffy purple couch against the wall. A small purple winged unicorn was looking at her parents and aunt in surprise, a book of fairytales falling from her hooves.

“Oh! She looks even prettier in person!” Pinkie said to Celestia. The eldest alicorn and the final Oracle were both hanging back, giving the others space.

The doors cracked open and a unicorn guard stuck his head in at the noise. Satisfied there was no threat, he withdrew. They heard the doors lock after he closed them.

“Momma, who’s she?” Glim was asking. “She looks like those pictures of your friend, but her hair’s all wrong, it’s all long and straight -”

“Glim,” Luna said, softly but firmly, “look at me.”

The little winged unicorn flinched. “Am I in trouble, Aunty Luna?” She looked slightly frightened. “Why do you look so scared?”

Luna started. “Oh, sorry. Sorry, Glim. Your old aunt is worried, that’s all. Nothing serious,” she lied outrageously and casually. “I have something I need to do. Please look at me. Look straight into my eyes, please. I have to... I’m looking for something.”

Glim did. She still looked a little frightened. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter, Aunty Luna? What’s the matter, Momma?” Her eyes drifted to her mother.

“Please look straight at me, Glim dear,” Luna murmured. The filly’s eyes snapped forwards again. They were starting to water.

“Just relax, Sweetheart,” Twilight said gently. Starburst, standing by her side, was nearly shaking with the stress. He’d worked out what had upset Twilight and Luna, and it was upsetting him too. Twilight put a hoof on his shoulder. “You relax too, Sweetie. Big Sister will find out.”

“Momma,” Glim protested. Her tall blue-black aunt was holding her face gently, staring straight into her eyes. Their faces were barely three inches apart. “Momma, what’s the matter, what’s going on? Aunty Luna’s scaring me...”

Luna exhaled. Her head dropped, and her whole body sagged. Then she swept the little filly into a hug. Glim squeaked in surprise.

“I’m so sorry, Glim, Sweetheart. I thought... Your mother and I thought you might be... sick,” she said. “I had to make sure. You’re not. You’re fine.”

“Hey!” Glim squeaked as Starburst and Twilight started hugging her too. “Really, guys, I’m fine,” she protested. “I don’t feel sick.”

“Pinkie Pie,” Twilight called over from where she was nearly smothering the filly. “Would you like to meet my daughter? Glim, Sweetheart, there’s a very important pony I’d like you to meet...”

Five minutes later, Glim was reading about Clover the Clever again and the rest of them were back in Twilight’s study. Luna and Twilight were both pacing.

“We need to look for it,” Twilight said. “It’s not after Glim, thank goodness. I was wondering. Something that confused me. The Windigoes cut me off yesterday. There were thousands of them in the sky, and how many chased you and her?” she asked Starburst.

He considered. “Maybe four or five, I think. Hey. That’s a good point. If they were trying to attack her, why so few?”

“The Element has a theory,” Pinkie said. “It says it’s not sure but maybe The Lunacy was trying to keep you all occupied, so It could get Twilight Glimmer on her own.” She shrugged. “Why would it want to do that though?”

“No idea,” Luna said. “Glim is mortal. There would be no point in the foul thing trying to infect her. If It did, we could see It, we could kill It. Little Sister, I can’t stay here. Not while I know that It’s out there somewhere. We need to go and look for It.”

“Hey!” Starburst called. Twilight had nodded and then walked out onto the balcony with her Sister. He galloped after them. “Sweetie! Luna! Where are you going?”

Twilight looked at him. He was brought up short. Her beautiful purple eyes had flickered bright blood-red for a moment. “We’re going to look for It. We can’t sit idle. We’re going to find It, and we’re going to kill It.”

Without another word, both alicorns opened their large wings, crouched, and rocketed into the sky.

He felt a hoof on his shoulder. Celestia. “Don’t worry, Starburst. They have to do this. I don’t think you can understand how much they both despise The Lunacy. If there’s a suggestion that part of It is still alive, they won’t rest until they hunt It down.”

“But they might... What if...” he said. Then he realised what he was trying to object to. “Yeah. I guess they are both indestructible. It’s not like It could hurt them, is it?”

“I doubt that whatever’s left of It could hurt anypony. Don’t worry.” Celestia turned around and went back inside, picking up her notebook and sitting down in front of Pinkie Pie again. “They may be some time, Pinkie. Would you like to finish your tale?”

Pinkie nodded. “Sure! I hated this next part, the first time I saw it. So they’d just got back from this trip, right? Twilight and Starburst were going to teach Glim how to levitate, but this guard knocked on the door, this really important-looking guard. Somepony’d seen a dragon, and Twilight went along to ask it to leave...”

“Together!” Luna shouted. “We shouldn’t split up! We should search together!”

“Yes!” Twilight called back. They flew side-by-side in an expanding spiral centred on Ponytopia Palace, sweeping close to the pretty peaked rooftops of the enormous city that they’d built, around and around again, following the flowing circles of the hundred-mile-wide city for nearly an hour until they were absolutely sure that what they sought was certainly not here. Alright, Ponytopia was covered. On to the rest.

Both Sisters banked to the south and streaked directly towards the ancient city on the side of the mountain to the south, the nearest populated place to Ponytopia. Both regal faces took on grim, half-savage expressions, both horns illuminated and flickering in unison.

Within minutes, Twilight and Luna were flapping swiftly on a spiraling path through the towers and turrets of Old Canterlot. Twilight glared to their left while Luna took the right. They wove their twisting route among the ancient buildings, banking here and there, occasionally circling a plaza or square or park several times. Then they flew up the towering peak that perched above the ancient ex-capital, circled its snowy summit once, twice, three times. They streaked off to the northwest.

They slowed to only a hundred miles per hour as they flew through Cloudsdale’s wispy tops and towers. Their hypersonic wakes would have easily damaged the fragile, ancient city of the pegasi. After several circuits, they oriented themselves to the east, aiming for the bustling metropolis on the horizon. Their wings started to screech as they accelerated, using powerful alicorn magic to demolish the laws of physics in their haste. The air exploded into roaring white flames all around them.

“MANEHATTAN’S HUGE!” Twilight called magically to Luna - ordinary speech couldn’t possibly carry at this speed. “HOW ABOUT I TAKE THE WESTERN BOROUGHS AND YOU TAKE THE ONES TO THE NORTHEAST?”

“NO!” Luna yelled back. “WE MUST STAY TOGETHER, LITTLE SISTER! WE MUST NOT SPLIT UP! OUR VIGILANCE WILL BE DOUBLED IF WE REMAIN TOGETHER!”

“OKAY! AGREED! GOOD CALL, BIG SISTER! WHERE DO WE START?”

Luna squinted, gritted her teeth, considered. “FROM THE SOUTHERN END!” she decided. “IT’S NEAREST, AND TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE! WE SWEEP IN ON THIS COURSE AND THEN REVERSE! WE SHOULD WORK BACK AND FORTH UP THE CITY, MOVING NORTHWARD, AND THEN WE TAKE ANOTHER PASS AT NINETY DEGREES TO THE FIRST, WE FOLLOW AN EAST-TO-WEST ZIG-ZAG TO CLEAR THE CITY AGAIN!”

Twilight nodded. Her horn flickered again and she focused on the southern suburbs of the huge city they were approaching at fifty times the speed of sound. The Lunacy wasn’t in Cloudsdale, It wasn’t in Old Canterlot. And It wasn’t in Ponytopia, the capital, the biggest city in Equestria, a massive sprawling place of eighty-five million ponies. So if It were anywhere, it was most likely that It would be in the next-largest city in the world. Manehattan had a population of thirteen million. A very good chance it would be hiding here.

They slowed as they reached the city. Twilight and Luna streaked across the enormous metropolis at half a mile a second, horns blazing bright, seeking the monster that had evaded them so far.

Twenty minutes later, they both rocketed side by side to the south, down the coast towards Baltimare. It took less than thirty seconds to cover the three hundred miles. They swept down the eastern side of the city, horns and eyes searching, searching. Banking sharply to the right, they began the search again, passing townhouses and condominiums and then long row-houses and finally tall apartments and skyscrapers. They banked left, turning as sharp as a billiard ball off a side-cushion, screamed south again, ducking in and around and amongst the towering buildings, not leaving any single place in the city uninspected for the monster they both hated.

Their next stop was far away, and the fastest way of getting there was on a ballistic course. Twilight and Luna’s flight paths snapped directly upwards. Once they passed ten thousand feet, they really cut loose. There were no structures around to damage. They surged forwards on a current of magic, their wings beating invisibly-fast and screeching far louder than the howling, flaming wind around them again.

Barely two minutes later, the Sisters re-entered the atmosphere nineteen hundred miles away from Baltimare. The air screamed into white-hot fire around them as they allowed the wind drag to slow them to a reasonable speed. Just on the outskirts of the desert city of Las Pegasus, they both banked sharply up and roared into the city, screaming along The Strop at a thousand miles per hour, their horns blazing bright as they looked everywhere. Breaking first to the left, then to the right, they completed this sweep and rocketed high into the sky again, heading north-east.

They arced over at two hundred thousand feet, falling towards the far-northern town of Hoofington. Nopony could possibly call this place of two million ponies a city; it was even more laid-back and relaxed than Ponytopia itself. They crisscrossed the hundreds of thousands of cozy cottages five times before they were satisfied.

Twilight and Luna turned to the south and screamed over Laketon, a thick forest, patchy prairie and then bare desert. They slowed as they approached Saddlestop, circled the town once, flashed away to the east, repeated their circles at Appleloosa, roared north again, ripped through Dodge Junction, screamed once again into the skies for their next target.

They descended onto the tall city of Phillydelphia like a pair of flaming demons. Once again weaving through the skyscrapers and towers, they flew on screaming wings to the southern suburbs, twisted above them, headed south once more.

They streaked across wide grasslands and circled the city of Galloway, sizing it up. They entered along a wide river, taking the north half of the city first before clearing the south. Then they headed off to the west again as fast as they could.

Almost an hour later, they paused and took stock of the situation, hovering in the hot and roiling air above the Great Western Desert.

“We’ve missed It,” Luna hissed venomously. “We sweep again.”

Twilight nodded. “Yes, again. It’s here somewhere, Big Sister. We go to the far north and sweep east-to-west. We cover every inch of Equestria.” She paused. “No, we search the entire continent. We go right up to the border with the Deadlands.” Twilight Sparkle scowled. “We’ll find It. We’ll find It and we’ll kill It. Let’s go.”

Luna nodded in agreement. The two Sisters rocketed into the sky, leaving twin trails of fire and magic behind them.

Starburst embraced his wife. “Oh, thank Starshine. Wow, you’re really cold, Sweetie.”

“We flew back above the stratosphere. Pulls the heat right out of you.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” he chuckled, then turned serious. “How’d you and Luna get on?”

The embrace broke and they both sat down in the corridor outside their daughter’s bedroom. “We didn’t find It, Sweetie. I’m sorry. We’ll look again tomorrow.”

Starburst shook his head. “It’s almost tomorrow already. No, I don’t like this. I think we should wait.”

Twilight blinked. “Wait? Are you serious? This is our daughter we’re talking about!” She glared at her husband. “Luna and myself are going to turn Equestria upside-down and inside-out until we find It, Sweetie. You can’t ask me to stop doing this.”

A pained look crossed Starburst’s brow. “No. Listen, Sweetie. Listen!” he said, cutting off her protest. “You didn’t find anything today, right?”

“Well... No. No, we didn’t find It today. But that doesn’t mean that It’s not -”

“You didn’t find It today,” Starburst said loudly. “What makes you think you’ll ever find It? It doesn’t want to be found, Sweetie. Leave It be.”

Twilight spluttered in shock.

“Think about it. Really think about it, and don’t let your emotions get in the way of your intellect,” Starburst said sharply. “You’re smart, Sweetie. Think it through.”

Twilight just spluttered again.

“You won’t find It. It’s too clever. So just calm down, just chill, and wait until It shows Itself. We know It’s out there, wanting to destroy what we all have. Let It make Its move, and then you can kill It.”

Twilight thought about this. Then, grudgingly: “Alright. Okay. You have a point, Sweetie.” Her mouth contracted for a moment. “But what if -”

Starburst swore and glared at her. “You’re an alicorn, Sweetie! A bucking alicorn! The Master of Magic herself, and the sole Bearer of the Element of Harmony! You can do anything! What possible harm do you think this shattered smudge of evil magic can possibly do against you and your Sisters?!”

“I still don’t like it.” Twilight hesitated a moment. “But, okay, you win. You win, Sweetie. We’ll keep an eye out but we won’t go looking for It.”

“How about bed? It’s nearly midnight.”

Twilight nodded. “Sounds good to me. What a day. Where’s Pinkie Pie?”

“We gave her my old tower. Seems she’s been living in a cave for sixteen hundred years. Last I saw her, she was bouncing on the bed and squealing that she’d ‘never imagined so much luxury could exist’ or something like it,” he grinned.

“Good. I really want to talk to her again. I hope she stays with us.” Twilight paused for a moment. “Let’s say goodnight, Sweetie.” She pushed open Glim’s bedroom doors and they both trotted softly over to the little filly’s comfortable bed. Twilight was surprised to see a tiny smile on her daughter’s peaceful sleeping face.

Maybe she’s dreaming. I hope it’s a nice dream.

Twilight bent close and kissed her daughter softly on the cheek. “Sleep well, Sweetheart,” she whispered. Starburst leaned in and kissed her too, then husband and wife went off to bed themselves.

The guards outside her room, in the corridor, out on the balcony, standing on the tower's parapeted walkway below the gilded spire, were all straining their ears. They were all alert for the sound of any possible disturbance. Of course, some things don’t make sounds when they cause their disturbances.

Twilight Glimmer was indeed dreaming, and it was a very nice dream. She and Momma and Daddy were flying, flying was so much fun, it was her birthday and this was the best present anypony’d ever given her...

They swooped and looped and laughed together, high in the air above the park...

The dream changed. It became a nightmare. Too many of those scary black things for her to count, she was falling, she was screaming, her wing hurt so bad, she’d never been so scared in her life...

She whimpered softly in her sleep.

Something tiny and invisible flitted out of Glim’s heart, danced up her spine. It would be quite safe hidden away in the filly’s strong, pure heart, It was sure. Nothing would find It there. Because nopony would think to look. Of course, It couldn’t exactly do anything there, either. But It could stay safely hidden.

It settled Itself into her sleeping mind. She shuddered. It gently stroked the inside of her skull as It willed her to stay asleep and dream on.

Despite her nightmares, the slightly-trembling face of Twilight Glimmer seemed to relax for a moment. Her lips were drawn upwards into a brief smile.

If any of the three alicorns had been in this chamber at this moment, they would have recognised the smile.

The Lunacy’s terrible world-ending smile.

It still could not believe how lucky It had been, after screwing up so badly yesterday. After It had nearly thrown Its last chance away. It had spent all of Its remaining magical reserves to create the enormous illusion of the Windigo Storm yesterday, specifically to draw the alicorns away from Twilight Glimmer. And then It had succummed to Its weakness, Its lust for mayhem and chaos, when It should have left the instant her father had taken her away and all three of the harpies were occupied. It had waited like a fool, lurking invisibly in that park, watching the glorious mayhem in the skies above, revelling in the glory of this unexpected battle. And then that worthless Bitch of the Night had sensed It. The last thing It expected, and perhaps a fatal error. They were alerted, and they were on Its trail, though they hadn’t caught Its scent.

It would have to be very, very careful from now on. It could not afford another mistake, no matter how small that mistake might be. Any mistake now would almost certainly be fatal.

It was so weak, so fragile right now that any fool of a unicorn right out of Magic Kindergarten could banish It with almost no effort at all. If one of the alicorns found It, then It would die, instantly and permanently. It could not allow that to happen, and that was why It had chosen Its host with particular care. Twilight Glimmer’s father was the most powerful mortal unicorn that had ever lived. And her mother, oh my. Her mother was the most magically-powerful being to ever exist. The progeny of such a pairing would have magic like the world had never seen.

Feeding on this vast source of magical potential, It would grow stronger and stronger again, until the only possibility of Its defeat could come from only one being. From Twilight Sparkle, the Master of Magic. And by that stage, Twilight Sparkle would have to be wielding the hateful Element to magnify her spell enough to bring about the result she desired.

The Lunacy clung to Its only hope. It sucked on the expanding magic of Twilight Glimmer, and it grew stronger, moment by moment, degree by degree. This plan was fifteen centuries in the making. This was a perfect plan that would absolutely work. It had thought this plan through very carefully. It would be damned if It allowed Itself to fail for a sixth time. The final time. This really would be the final time. It would not fail here, because this was Its last chance. And despite the fact that It had never been weaker, never been more crippled, more feeble, more horribly maimed, It had never had a chance as good as this.

Twilight Glimmer, as far as anypony knew, was just an ordinary pony. Certainly she was of a rare breed, both pegasus and unicorn together at once. Other than that, however, she wasn’t particularly special at all. She was just a perfectly normal pony. Her magic hadn’t developed yet, though. Eventually, her thaumaturgical potential would be immense, and then everypony would be astounded. But that was at least a decade away. For the moment, she was essentially a perfectly ordinary pony. She was a winged unicorn but she wasn’t an alicorn. She was mortal. Her magic would never match her mother’s. Twilight Glimmer was, It admitted, only second-best in terms of raw magical potency. But second-best had its advantages now.

If The Lunacy could have mastered an alicorn again, the world would end this very minute. This very second. But such things were forever beyond Its capabilities now. Too much of Itself was dead and gone. Night and Nightfall were both forewarned and far too strong to ever fall again, and Day herself had always been utterly incorruptible - such a pity, as Celestia would have made the ultimate Night Mare. But that was impossible now, as it had always been impossible. The first Eternal Sister’s will was unbreakable, utterly insurmountable. Celestia could never be overpowered.

But the will of a child, a mere child, a wide-eyed and innocent child...

A powerful child, and more importantly, a mortal child. Any spell that could kill It would also kill Its host. Twilight Glimmer was no alicorn, and so her magic would never be as powerful as an alicorn’s. But it would, eventually, be powerful enough for Its purposes. And, much more importantly... As a mortal pony, she was not immune to any imaginable physical or magical assault. Once revealed, the spell that would rip It from the mind of this little filly would kill the filly in the process.

When the time was right for It to reveal Itself, the only being that could possibly destroy It would be The Master of Magic, Twilight Sparkle herself. And then only if her own unimaginable powers were magnified a thousandfold by the reunited Element. Only Twilight Sparkle could wield The Element, The Ultimate Magic, the hateful other half of The Lunacy that foolishly wished only for peace and harmony. And therefore only Twilight Sparkle could ever kill It.

And Twilight Sparkle would never be able to kill her own daughter.

Glim’s sleeping face briefly twisted into that nightmarish smile again.

Finally, finally, after so long, after so many thousands and thousands of years, after far too many ruined plans... At last, at long, long last, true chaos would descend.

The world would burn. And it would burn very soon.

Chapter 17: Awakening

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Chapter 17: Awakening

Twilight opened her eyes as soon as she felt the faint predawn paint itself along the horizon. She hadn’t had a single wink of sleep all night. Well, she wasn’t the only one, she admitted with a brief mental grin. Starburst hadn’t had much sleep either.

She gently lifted one of his enclosing forelegs and slipped out of his embrace. He mumbled and smacked his lips, but didn’t wake. Well, she supposed she had tired him out last night... She blushed, but managed a little smile as she extricated herself from the satin tangles and fell softly off the side of the bed and to the floor. She headed for the His & Hers ensuites. She took ‘His’ - her own had a much bigger tub but Starburst’s had the better shower. Twilight wasn’t really in the mood for a bath right now. She’d had a bath with her husband last night. Baths were the punctuation mark to the end of long and weary days. Showers were the capitalisation at the beginning of a brand-new sentence. She opened the shower door and twisted the knob all the way around, then stepped into the steaming jets.

Five-thirty in the morning. Too early? Will she still be asleep?

The shampoo had barely touched her mane before it was rinsed out again. She did the same with her tail, then she grabbed the soap and furiously lathered herself up and washed the suds away under the streams of lavender-scented water. She punched the knob, killing the flow. Less than ten seconds. Her old friend Rainbow Dash would have been proud.

But what about another of my old friends? Should I go and see if she’s awake?

She didn’t bother with a towel. She just wrung the water out of her coat and hair with magic, then evaporated the remaining dampness. She grabbed her toothbrush and started to scrub. Her reflection in the mirror looked back at her with a slightly sad expression.

We didn’t have nearly enough time together yesterday. We didn’t catch up at all.

Twilight rinsed and gargled and rinsed again. She drew her hooves through her mane, but it had already recovered from the sudsy-wet assault. It was wafting about on its own and looking as perfect as ever. Sometimes she missed hairbrushes. She hadn’t needed them for so long, but there was something almost therapeutic about the simple act of brushing your hair.

Simple pleasures. What about Pinkie? I could brush her hair for her, though it doesn’t look like she needs it, it’s so long and straight... Maybe I could help her style her mane like she used to wear it. Maybe she doesn’t know how she used to wear it. I’ll show her some pictures. I have loads of old photos and films and paintings in magical storage.

Twilight tiptoed back into the bedroom - her husband was still snoring quietly - and snuck over to the door leading down to the main study of their tower. She opened it, stepped through, closed it again silently, her hoof lingering on the knob for a moment. She spread her wings and glided softly down to the dark landing, then jumped over the edge of the mezzanine and alighted again near the entrance doors. “Morning, gents,” she whispered to the two pegasi as she opened one of the huge gilded doors and trotted into her lamplit corridor.

The guards started. Twilight wasn’t usually up this early, and her stealthiness within her tower had managed to take them by surprise. But the Protectorate Guard were the best of the best. The Royal Guardsponies had both recovered their composure before she could even blink. “Good morning, Your Highness,” the senior guard said quietly. “Should I alert the breakfast hall?”

“No, no, let’s not wake the chefs up. I’m not having breakfast yet, it’s far too early. I’m going to see our guest. Well, I’m going to go and see if she’s awake, at least. It is very early.” They saluted, and Twilight trotted along the short, curving corridor and down the winding staircase.

She walked along the flowery vine-grown passage atop the wide parapet that the tall Royal Towers all rose from, and paused at the arch leading up into Starburst’s old residence. Should she do this? Should she just barge in, invade Pinkie’s privacy, probably wake her up? Just because she desperately wanted to see her old friend again?

She made up her mind and clopped lightly up the stairs. The guards at the top were as alert as ever, and she hadn't crept up on this pair. They stiffened and saluted as she approached. “Good morning, Your Highness,” they whispered in unison as she stopped before them.

“Is she asleep, do you think?” Twilight asked quietly, her forehead creasing.

“Well, Your Highness...” The senior guard looked embarrassed. “Well, no, as a matter of fact. She’s, um, she’s been awake all night,” the lieutenant said. “You can still hear her now, Princess.”

Twilight tilted her head and cocked an ear. She could just hear faint sobs coming through the doors. “She’s... She’s been doing this all night?” she asked the guards.

They both nodded. “We asked if we could be of assistance, Your Highness, as did the shift that we relieved at midnight. She said that she was fine,” the young lieutenant said, his own brow lining with worry. “She didn’t look fine. She didn't look alright at all, Your Highness, but she insisted that she was perfectly fine and asked us not to make a fuss. I’m sorry, Princess Twilight. Should we have alerted you?”

“No, it’s okay. If she wanted anything I’m sure she would have asked.” Twilight moved forwards and pushed one of the doors open gently. She stepped hesitatingly into the room within. It was lit by a few hanging lamps. She looked around for the source of the soft sobbing she heard.

Pinkie Pie was sitting over by the fireplace, looking at something that lay on the floor in front of her. “Pinkie? Pinkie, what’s wrong?” she called softly, trotting over. Her long-dead friend’s shoulders shook. Twilight hesitated for a moment, then put her foreleg around those shoulders and sat on the floor next to her.

She looked down at her old friend and remembered the day they’d first met - on the morning of Midsummer’s Eve, almost nineteen hundred and forty years ago. Pinkie was the first pony she’d met in Ponyville. Maybe ‘met’ wasn’t the right word; they weren’t properly introduced until later that afternoon. But Pinkie was the very first of her legendary friends that Twilight had ever seen or spoken to. So she was, in a way, the very first friend that Twilight had ever made.

Twilight had changed a lot since that day. Aside from her colour and Cutie Mark, she looked completely different now. She was tall, taller than any fully-grown mare, taller than most stallions. Not quite as tall as Celestia - Big Sister had always been taller than herself or Luna. She was slim and slender, almost svelte, and she had a longer muzzle than was the norm. Her mane and tail were both very long - they would have dragged on the floor if her innate magic didn’t keep them gently bunched and wafting in a nonexistent magical breeze. Her horn was a lot longer and sharper than any unicorn horn, and tiny golden motes of magic winked all around it when she wasn’t holding her powers in check. And of course, she had wings. Somehow all of this made her more regal-looking than she’d ever felt she deserved to look, despite the fact that she was, apparently, destined to be indestructible immortal royalty. Her alicorn wings were easily twice the span of pegasus wings and far more majestic-looking when raised. They looked more like the wings of a swan than anything else. Starburst had once teasingly called her a six-foot-tall, four-legged purple swan with a horn and an attitude. She’d laughed at his teasing.

She wasn’t in the mood to laugh at the moment, however, because here was Pinkie Pie. A pony who, despite being old and wrinkled with a greying coat when she’d died, was crying here on the floor of Starburst’s old study, very much alive and very much young. She looked exactly the same as she’d done on the day the two ponies had first met - except for the long, straight hair, and the horn of course. The top of Pinkie’s horn didn’t even come up to Twilight’s eyes, even when her head was upright. It wasn’t upright at the moment though. She followed her friend’s gaze down.

Twilight recognised the item on the floor at once. It was a small framed painting that had sat on Starburst’s mantelpiece above the fireplace just in front of them. It was one of many things she’d given him when he was young and she’d told him all about herself. A very, very old painting. It was almost uncannily realistic; it had been copied from the original photograph by a master portrait artist about seventeen hundred years ago. This was one of the most important moments of her life, captured on canvas. Twilight drew in a small breath. Pinkie sobbed again and gently touched her hooftip to the happy pink earth pony in the painting.

“Oh, Pinkie...” Twilight didn’t know what else to say. Her old friend stroked the painting again and then looked up and into her face. Twilight blinked in surprise. She was amazed to see that Pinkie Pie’s face was alive with happiness. Tears were streaming from her eyes, but they were, apparently, tears of joy.

“Twilight, Twilight, Twilight! Look how happy I was! I knew something was missing! I haven’t been happy for so long! Will you tell me about me? I don’t remember me at all!” She looked back at the painting and laughed. “Look at my mane! It looks crazy! I don’t remember any of us! That white unicorn’s sooooo pretty! And that dragon! He looks so handsome! I’ve never seen a dragon wearing a tuxedo before!”

Twilight had a catch in her voice. She coughed discreetly. “The, uh, the white unicorn is our friend Rarity, and the dragon is Spike. This was their wedding day.”

“Wow, that’s Rarity? She looks like a princess! Look at that dress!”

Twilight sniffed and chuckled. She wiped her muzzle. “All our dresses were pretty spectacular, you have to admit. I mean, just look at them. Rarity made them all herself. She was a designer. It was her special talent and she was a natural at it. But she sold her business after they got married and they started taking care of orphans. Sold it for a fortune. It was more of an empire than a business, to be honest, it set them and their kids up for life.” She blinked. “Set them up for several lifetimes, in fact. Four hundred and sixty billion bits, I think she gave it all away for.”

Pinkie was bouncing where she sat. “Wow, she’s so pretty! I used to know her?! Wow! So who’s everypony else in the picture apart from you and me and Rarity and Spike?”

Twilight took a breath and smiled with remembrance. “That’s Applejack on the left, with her youngest daughter Applecrisp. That’s Rainbow Dash next to them, and the little filly in the air above her is Rainbow Rush. Just like her mother when she was younger, never on the ground. Then the pony with the bluebirds holding up her train, that’s Fluttershy. She was probably the kindest soul I ever met. Then Rarity and Spike, and that handsome earth stallion is Bramblebrush, Fluttershy’s husband and Spike’s best mane.” She chuckled. “He was Spike’s best friend. He and Spike both had an incredible gift for plants of all kinds. He was just... so... perfect for Fluttershy. Then there’s me of course, looking all small and unicorn-like -”

“Nah, your horn’s too long. And don’t forget the wings!” Pinkie pointed out. “The dress works really well with them. They go great with all that silk!”

“Heh. Thanks. I was only thirty-six. I hadn’t, um, hadn’t quite finished growing up, I guess. Then at the end there’s you and Oat-”

Twilight’s eyes opened wide and she gawked at the brown filly at the far right of the painting, standing next to the earth-pony-Pinkie Pie with a spectacular grin on her face. Wow. She hadn’t thought this through. She hadn’t thought this through at all. What the hell was she going to say?

“And who?” Pinkie prompted. “Who’s the one on the end?”

“Ah, well, you see,” Twilight spluttered. “There... There were... It was Rarity’s choice, they were all perfect for the job, you understand, Rarity wanted the traditional three flower maidens, okay, and so then -”

“Yeah, Twilight, I get that.” Pinkie rolled her eyes, grinning. “This is the wedding party, right? Bride and groom, best mane, bridlemaids, and the flowerfillies. Applecrisp, Rainbow Rush and the little brown filly with the poofy hair -” Pinkie stopped talking suddenly. She made a small choking noise. Her eyes looked like they were about to bug out of her head as she stared at the painting, looking rapidly back and forth from the little filly’s light-brown mane to her old self’s own. Aside from the colour, they looked exactly the same. They were identical.

“She has my mane,” Pinkie breathed. “My old fluffy mane. And her Cutie Mark, it’s a bunch of balloons. Like mine, but she’s got five of them. Who... Who is she, Twilight?”

“That’s...” Twilight could barely find her voice. All she could do was whisper. “That’s your daughter Oatmeal. Your sixth daughter. You had seven. And four colts.” Pinkie’s face had frozen at this. Twilight continued shakily. “They were... They were all wonderful, Pinkie. They were all amazing and beautiful and... You had more than a hundred great-great-grandfoals by the time you di-” Twilight choked. She tried again. “By the time you di-” Her voice completely failed her. She tried to cough but she couldn’t. Her lungs didn’t want to work right now.

“By the time I died?” Pinkie whispered. Twilight shuddered, then she nodded.

Pinkie threw herself at Twilight and yanked the alicorn into a massive hug. “Wow! Wowie wowie wow! Can you tell me about them?! I want to hear all about them! I want to hear everything about them! All of them! Oh, Twilight! I had a family! I had children! I had kids! Grandfoals and great-grandfoals and I’m so happy and I just don't know what to say and -”

Pinkie seemed to lose the power of speech, and started simply shrieking with delight. It was too much for Twilight, far too much. She grabbed her oldest pony friend tight and started wailing as she completely lost control of herself. Too many emotions, and they were all too strong.

Several minutes later, Twilight sat back and wiped her nose as Pinkie patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “You feel better?” the impossible unicorn asked. Twilight nodded, wiping her eyes now as well. “So, uh, what do you ponies do around here in the mornings? I dunno about you but I’m hungry!”

Twilight managed a laugh. “Oh, Pinkie,” she said, grinning despite her tears, “I’ve missed you. I’ve missed you so much. I, uh, I don’t, I just don’t deserve to have you here.” She grabbed the surprised pink pony again, hugged her tight. Pinkie squeaked. “I’ve missed you. Will you stay with me?”

“Uh, sure, if you want me to stay,” Pinkie said. “I wanna learn everything I can about the old me before I do anything else, and you knew the old me, so I’m not gonna go anywhere.” She paused. “You, um, you really, um, you really want me to stay?”

“I’ve been looking for you for nine years,” Twilight said, laughing through her tears. “I’ve mourned you for eighteen and a half centuries. Pinkie Pie, you can stay here forever if you want.”

“I didn’t know,” Pinkie said. The sudden grave expression on her face was something the old carefree Pinkie Pie could never have worn. But this Pinkie Pie had many cares. “I didn’t know who I was, I didn’t know what the things I dreamed even meant. I’m so sorry, Twilight. If I’d known, I would have come and found you the day I woke up in my cave.”

“I have a few choice words for the Element of Harmony,” Twilight grumped, then she beamed at her first pony friend once again. “The world is changing. It’s changing every day. I like to think that it’s changing for the better. You’ll stay with me to see it change?”

Pinkie smiled an impossibly-huge smile and nodded.

Twilight grinned back. “You’re hungry?” Pinkie Pie nodded again, furiously this time. “Heh. You couldn’t have come to a better place,” she said, wiping her eyes once more and smiling wide. “Come with me down to breakfast.”

Twilight and Pinkie were laughing as they walked into the breakfast hall. Celestia looked up, startled by the sudden joyous outburst.

“And then, and then,” Twilight was saying, “The whole cake. The whole cake! You ate the whole cake!”

Pinkie screamed with delight. “Wow! Sounds like I used to be a bit of a pig!” She snorted, and then laughed even harder. “I still sound like one too!”

“Good morning, Sisters,” Twilight called, wiping tears from her eyes and leading the way to the buffet. “We were just talking about the time you visited Ponyville with Philomena, Biggest Sister.” She looked at her other Sister and started in shock. “Oh! Big Sister! Are you alright?”

Twilight left Pinkie’s side and hurried around the table. Luna looked exhausted, as if she were a mortal pony who’d just run a hundred-mile race. She seemed to be smaller and paler than usual, and her mane wasn’t the colour of midnight and floating on a magical breeze - its light-blue tangles were plastered to her forehead and neck. Her eyes were half-closed and she was breathing shallowly as she contemplated a bowl of spicy noodles - breakfast for the other Royals was usually dinner for Luna. She picked up a set of chopsticks with her forehoof and sighed. “I’m fine, Little Sister,” she said weakly. “I’ve been out all night. I’m just tired.”

“But,” Twilight objected, “but you can’t be tired. We don’t ever get tired. You and I flew all across Equestria yesterday at a ludicrous pace, and I’m not tired at all. And I didn’t sleep a wink last night. I was thinking about Pinkie,” she amended, only slightly untruthfully.

Luna managed an exhausted smile. “Magic is not my special talent, Little Sister. I don’t have the reserves or the skill that you do. Remember how I kept insisting that we stay together?” Twilight nodded. “I was feeding off your magic, I think. If I wasn’t, I don’t think I could have kept up. I tried to match yesterday’s pace last night on my own. I managed, in fact for a short while I even exceeded it. I’m afraid I burned myself out.”

“Is that even possible?” Celestia asked. She was sitting close to her Sister, her own buttered toast untouched on her plate. She was clearly too worried to eat. “I know we all have limits but I never imagined one of us would actually hit them. Without... Without somehow using our dark powers, that is.”

“Well, I guess I know what my own limit is,” Luna said quietly. She twirled a bunch of noodles around her chopsticks and slurped them down. “About enough magic to fly at sixty thousand miles per hour, for about twenty minutes. It took me another five hours to get back.” She took another mouthful. “I’ve never felt so, so empty in my life,” she mumbled around the mouthful. “I’ll be fine. I’m feeling better every minute. Sit down and eat.” She lifted her tired eyes and looked at their guest. “Pinkie Pie, how are you this day?”

“I’m fine,” the pink pony said, hesitatingly. She took Twilight’s cue and sat down at the long oak table, next to her friend. “I’m really hungry!”

Twilight was still shooting glances over at Luna. “What would you like? Cereal? Toast? Fruit? Scrambled eggs?”

“Oh, scrambled eggs!” Pinkie said. “I had eggs once, they’re really nice!”

Twilight spun the large glass turntable around on its pivot. “Try them on toast with some tomatoes and mushrooms,” she said, lifting the silver-domed lid of a large tray and gesturing for Pinkie to dig in. “And put some parmesan and hot sauce on them. You used to love them like that, so let’s see how good my memory is!”

The doors cracked open and Starburst clopped sleepily through them, wearing a bathrobe and yawning widely. “Morning, ladies, morning Sweetie,” he yawned, then he blinked. “Oh. Good morning, Pinkie Pie.”

“Good morning, sleepyhead!” she called back, her mouth bulging with eggs and tomatoes. “Try some of these, they’re good!” She swallowed the massive mouthful. “Really good!”

Luna pushed her empty bowl away. “Ahh. That was what I needed. I feel so much better,” she said. She looked it. Some of the tiredness had melted from her face. “So, when do we leave for another sweep, Little Sister?”

Twilight had been dreading this. She swallowed her mouthful of cornflakes and braced herself for the outburst that was sure to result. “I, uh, I don’t think we will, Big Sister. I think we should leave It alone.”

Luna blinked. “I beg your pardon?” She looked incredulous. “You can’t be serious. We can’t just leave It. We have to find It, we have to stop It before It has a chance to start!”

“No, really, Big Sister. We should let It be.”

“How can you say that?!” Luna spluttered. She stood up, her coat darkening, her tail lengthening. “We should be out there right now hunting It down! I still would be out there if I hadn’t used up all of my magical reserves!” As if to illustrate the point, there was a sharp snapping sound, Luna’s plain mane flashed and flared, and then it flowed into deep-blue sheets of midnight smoke. She looked around at it and snorted. “It seems my magic is returning. Shall I search on my own?”

“I thought about it last night. Starburst was right.” She noticed Luna’s confusion. “He made me see sense. Really. What can It do?”

“It can destroy all that we have built!”

“No It can’t! It needs one of us. It needs an alicorn. We’d know if It had invaded one of our minds. I’m not nineteen any more, Big Sister. I’m the Master of Magic. If It shows up, I can kill It.”

Luna frowned.

“It’s not dead. It’s been hiding for nineteen and a half centuries. Let It do Its worst. Let It try.”

“Have you forgotten what happened two days ago? The Windigo Storm! Explain to me how We can ignore that kind of threat!”

“Because they weren’t real,” Starburst put in. “I was using Sunfire spells to destroy them, and it was overkill. I could have used much less powerful spells. They weren’t really there. Ordinary unicorn guards will be able to stop them if they show up again. They’re training with the pegasi right now, Luna. There are pegasus chariots loaded with unicorns patrolling Equestria already.”

“We all overreacted,” Twilight said. She could see that Luna wasn’t convinced at all, that her mostly-nocturnal Sister was ready to leap out the window and go hunting again on her own. “Please, Luna. Please. Let’s just wait. It’s not here or we’d all feel It. It’s not out there, or we’d have found It yesterday. So that leaves only two possibilities.”

Luna frowned, but thought about it. She looked worried for a moment. “Oh. Yes.” She sat down again, nodding slowly. Her drooping tail crackled and flashed back into its usual magical self, but she ignored it. “Yes. You’re right. Well, either way, It seems to be taken care of.”

“Two possibilities?” Starburst asked. “Where? Where could It be if It’s not in Equestria?”

“Not just in Equestria,” Luna said. “Little Sister and myself searched everywhere we could yesterday. Equestria, Zebraxia, Neutophia, the Frozen North, both Big and Small Monster Islands, the Western and Southern deserts, everywhere. Everywhere we could go. And we should have found It. So It’s either fled to The Deadlands, which would mean that It’s no longer a problem, because It’ll be dead Itself. Or It’s hiding in Tartarus, in which case It’s trapped.”

Everypony but Pinkie shivered slightly. Hell wasn’t just a figment of the imagination. Hell was a real place, and the Princesses held its keys. If The Lunacy had fled there so they couldn’t find It, It would never be able to get out again.

“So what was this trip you mentioned?” Luna asked Twilight. “When you two came in. You took your phoenix to Ponyville, Big Sister?” she asked Celestia.

“Oh yes,” Celestia said, smiling. “One of my most precious memories. I’m afraid I wasn’t completely forthcoming on that day. I accepted Twilight’s invitation to meet the citizens of Ponyville, and I brought Philomena along with me. The poor thing was halfway through a regeneration cycle. I liked to test and help improve special talents, you see, and I rather hoped I might teach Fluttershy a lesson or two about kindness.” Celestia grinned at Twilight. “Your old friend taught me a thing or two about kindness that afternoon.”

“Fluttershy sounds like such a wonderful pony,” Pinkie Pie said, eyeing the scrambled egg tray again. “I wish I could remember her.”

Twilight spun the turntable around again. “I think it’s time we told you about yourself, Pinkie. How much do you remember about the old you?”

“I don’t know,” Pinkie said, pausing as she piled eggs onto her plate again. “I, uh, I guess I know of things, but I can’t remember anything that happened before... Before, um, before Rarity died.”

“Well,” Twilight said, “we’ll start right at the beginning. You were born on a rock farm, about sixty miles to the north of Ponyville. We’re in the same place now, really; we built this city around our old home. Your family grew gemstones, and to get the best ones you needed to move the rocks containing the crystal seeds around a lot. I don’t think you were very happy there.”

“Growing gems sounds like a lot of fun, though,” Pinkie said around a mouthful.

“It’s not,” Celestia said. “It’s hard, repetitive work, and though the rewards can be great, it didn’t suit your nature at all. You were a very different pony than your parents and sisters, Pinkie Pie. They seemed to enjoy it, but you left just as soon as you could. I believe you headed in the direction of a certain magical rainbow you’d seen the previous year.”

“We all saw it, the six of us. Rainbow Dash and myself were both seven, you’d just turned eight, Applejack was eight as well, coming up towards nine, and Fluttershy and Rarity were nearly ten. Dash started the chain that brought us all together when she did the impossible. We all got our Cutie Marks that day. No, I think you got yours the following morning. Dash’s Sonic Rainboom let you discover your special talent for making other ponies happy.”

“I... I used to make ponies happy?” Pinkie asked quietly, setting down her fork now that her plate was empty for the second time. “How? How did I do that?”

“Cooking and baking, and celebrations of all kinds. The Cakes gave you Sugar Cube Corner when they retired. Uh, Carrot and Cup, that is. You left your parents’ farm when you were only nine or so and travelled to Ponyville. The Cakes took you in, sorta adopted you, and they gave you their business.” Twilight smiled. “You were probably the greatest pastry chef the world ever saw, Pinkie.”

“I can cook? I can bake?!” She looked astounded.

“We’ll pay a visit to the Palace Kitchens after breakfast and see if you remember anything,” Celestia grinned. “Oh yes, Pinkie Pie, you were a most magnificent baker. The cake you made for Twilight’s coronation was almost a hundred feet across, you know. Well, it did have to feed a few thousand ponies,” she chuckled.

Everypony looked around as the hall doors opened again. A pair of burly earth guards stuck their heads in, their grim faces turning in every direction for a moment, then they withdrew. An absolute gaggle of guards bustled through the doors. The teeming mass seemed to open up, revealing a glum-looking purple pegacorn, who trotted out of the throng and towards the table.

“‘Morning, guys,” Glim said quietly. She was staring at the floor as she walked over to her booster cushion, a thin book of some sort tucked under one wing. The guards all left, closing the doors behind themselves again.

“This is getting ridiculous, Sweetie,” Twilight murmured to Starburst. “There’s no danger, not really. Not with us here.”

He nodded in agreement. “Let’s call off the order. What do you think?” he asked Celestia and Luna quietly. They both nodded.

“I don’t like to admit it, but Little Sister is right. And you’re right,” Luna said to Starburst. “Let’s wait for It to make Its move, if It can. And then we’ll defeat It forever.” She raised her voice. “Good morning, Glim,” she called to her niece.

“‘Morning, Auntie Luna,” the little filly said flatly.

“Are you alright, Sweetheart?” Twilight asked, her brow furrowed.

“No,” Glim said morosely. She sat down at the far end of the table and put her drawing book and a pencil down next to her cereal bowl. “I had nightmares again, Momma. Same as last night. Those Wingding things.”

Starburst levitated a milk jug over to her. “Windigoes?” She nodded. “Don’t worry, Sweetheart. Don’t worry. The nightmares will go away soon. Just a few more nights, and you’ll forget them. You can sleep with us tonight. We can cast a spell to keep the nightmares away. Can we?” he asked Twilight softly, frowning when his wife shook her head gently. “Well, we’ll make sure you have a good night’s sleep somehow, I’m sure.”

“They cause nightmares?” Pinkie said. “How do they do that? And they’re all gone now, and they weren’t real anyway.”

Celestia spoke quietly, so Glim wouldn’t hear. The little pony was staring down at the table and crunching down her bowl of oats. “Windigoes are the most horrific things in existence, Pinkie Pie. Their appearance, their shape, whatever, it’s ingrained into the ancient memory of all ponykind. The worst possible nightmare come true. Plague, famine, war, death. Utter despair. The Windigo is the manifestation of all these things. Ponies can’t help but to experience nightmares after seeing one. It’s the deepest, darkest part of who we all are.”

“But they weren’t real,” Pinkie said. “The Element told me that they can’t be destroyed, but you killed loads of them the other day. So they can’t have been real.”

“That’s true,” Twilight said. All of the adults were clustered together around the same end of the long rectangular table, leaving Glim to her breakfast down at the far end. “They caused a lot of injuries though, which is something else they’re not supposed to be able to do. When’s the ceremony?” Twilight asked Celestia.

“It starts at one this afternoon in the Court Hall. We have three hundred and twenty two High Orders of Equestria to bestow on the injured guards. You should come, Pinkie Pie.”

Twilight continued. “Just like we were saying before, they could be destroyed with magic. And that’s utterly impossible.”

Starburst looked up from his own plate of scrambled eggs and nodded. “Yeah, I looked them up again yesterday when Sweetie and Luna were out on their mission. I went down to the library and found Bestarium Diabolimagicka.”

Pinkie blinked at him. “What's Bumsteadia Bamagicums?” she said, her eyes askew.

“It’s a book. It’s, uh, it’s ‘The book of evil magical creatures.’ It’s a very old book, the copy we have was translated from the original writings of Starswirl the Bearded himself.”

“Translated by me, in fact,” Luna said. “I hope I did the original justice.”

“I’d say you did. It’s Forbidden, Pinkie. Nopony can just go and read it, there’s a whole stack of paperwork and interviews and crap that needs to be filled out just to see the cover, let alone the text itself. Well, unless you’re one of us. Being married to a Royal Pony Sister tends to cut right through any red tape in the blink of an eye,” he said, shooting Twilight a quirky grin which she returned, despite the subject matter.

“Oh,” Pinkie said. “A forbidden book?” She looked slightly wistful for a moment. “I’ve never read a book,” she said quietly. “I know how to read but I can’t remember ever learning how. I can read signs and so on. ‘Toasted Honey-Nut Oats, the perfect start to a growing foal’s day,’” she read aloud off one of the boxes of cereal. “But I’ve never read a book, I think. There are forbidden books?”

“You probably don’t want to read this one. The original manuscripts were destroyed years ago. There’s only one copy in existence and it’s kept under magical lock and key. It’s down in the secret room in the Palace Library with all the other Forbidden works.” Starburst looked slightly sheepish for a moment. “It’s one of the most dangerous books ever written, because it tells you how to summon chimeras and draconequui and so on. And Sweetie checked it out and gave it to me to read when I was only ten. I guess she thought I was made of pretty tough stuff. ‘Of all that is foul in the world, Windigoes are the very, very foulest. Harbingers of hopelessness and despair, of suffering and death, such manifestations of Plague may not be defeated directly,’” he quoted. “Malicious, horrible, but not really alive. They’re magical, not physical. I killed half a dozen myself but I shouldn’t have been able to.” He looked at Twilight. “And you destroyed them all. Millions. Millions and millions of them and you burned them to dust when you lost control. If they really were Windigoes, you’d never have been able to do that.”

They sat in silence for a moment, considering. If these imitation Windigoes came again, unicorns would be able to destroy them. It was certain that The Lunacy had brought them, and there was now a chance that it was dead or trapped forever -

“Anyway!” Pinkie said suddenly, making everypony jump. Glim looked up from where she was doodling in her book. “Can you tell me about him? What was his name? What was he like? Oooh! Twilight, have you got pictures of him?”

Twilight’s eyebrows kinked together. “Yeah, if there was any doubt before, it’s gone now. You are definitely Pinkie Pie.” She chuckled. “What are you talking about?”

Pinkie grinned. “If I had kids and grandkids and great-grandkids, I must have had a husband too, right? Who was he?”

“Oh!” Twilight said. “Hmm. I’ll go and get some pictures in a minute. He was a very fine earth pony called Lucky. Although I don’t know who was luckier, you or him,” she said with a lopsided grin.

“Lucky,” Pinkie said slowly. “Lucky. I like that name.”

“You liked more than his name,” Luna said, smirking.

“He was a chef, as it happened,” Twilight said. “It started out as a contract for Sugar Cube Corner to supply desserts for his restaurant in Canterlot. It took him about two months before he sold the place and moved in with you in Ponyville, and it ended with you two getting married. Well no, it didn’t end there,” Twilight admitted. “It never ended. You had so many kids, so many grandkids. It never ended. It was... wonderful.” Twilight could see tears in Pinkie’s eyes. Her own were pricking again too.

Luna must have picked up on their emotions, because she abruptly changed the subject. “We had many adventures before you met your fine husband, Pinkie Pie. The first time I was properly introduced to you is still one of the happiest nights of my life. I wasn’t sure about you at first, though. You kept running away from me, you see, and you were wearing the least frightening chicken costume I’d ever seen.”

“I, uh...” Pinkie’s face went completely blank. “Why was I wearing a chicken costume?” she asked, utterly bewildered.

“Do you remember how I used to talk?” Luna said to a smirking Twilight. Her coat was its old colour now - she’d clearly recovered fast. “And how much of an ass I made of myself when I visited Ponyville? You remember, the first Night Mare Night after my recovery?”

“Hey, you told me about that,” Starburst said to Twilight. He looked at Luna. “After Twilight and her friends saved you and got rid of Night Mare Moon, right? Pinkie, you’re gonna love this story!”

“But why the hay was I wearing a chicken costume?” Pinkie asked again. “If it was Night Mare Night why wasn’t I wearing a scary costume? Chickens aren’t scary!”

“Because you’re Pinkie Pie,” Twilight said, barely managing to keep a straight face.

Luna nodded, chuckling. “I slept for more than four months after my return from the moon, four months to recover my magic and my strength. I woke up from my recovery and I found that it was the evening of the thirty-first of October. I didn’t even tell Big Sister, I just flew to Ponyville to greet all of my subjects and to see the six ponies who had saved me again. What a disaster! Everypony still believed that I was Night Mare Moon. My magic had returned so I didn’t look like a mortal pony, as I did when Big Sister and myself first visited Ponyville. And not to mention that Royal plurals and formal address had fallen out of use.” She shot Celestia a glare, though she was still smiling. “Somepony never mentioned that to me.”

Celestia started to laugh as well. “I didn’t really have much of a chance, Little Sister.”

Luna snorted. “‘Thou’ doesn’t have the same ring to it in Equish. It sounds far more regal in Old Equestrian.”

Starburst nudged Twilight gently. She glanced at him, to see that he was looking at Glim. The little pony was chewing on the end of her pencil and frowning down at her exercise book, where she seemed to have drawn something squiggly and pointed. That wasn’t what had caught his attention, though. Glim’s horn was flickering very faintly.

The proud parents smiled at each other. Their filly’s magic was beginning to manifest. They’d have to talk to her about it, probably straight after breakfast. She was sure to have powerful magical abilities, and she’d apparently developed them early, just like both her mother and her father had done. They’d have to teach her how to hold her magic in check, probably this very day, because uncontrolled magical outbursts could be dangerous.

“What about the time when that travelling illusionist came to Ponyville? Do you remember?” Celestia was saying.

“Oh, I remember,” Twilight said, turning back to the discussion. “She was good, very good with illusion spells. Quite an impressive special talent.” She frowned. Her memories of the event were fuzzy. She concentrated, and they sharpened a little. Something important had happened that day... No, it was that night...

“She’d been in Canterlot the week before. Again I must confess that I sent her to Ponyville myself, Littlest Sister. And once again, everything turned out differently - and far more spectacularly - to how I’d thought it would.”

“What do you mean?” Twilight was thinking hard, trying to remember. There’d been some kind of a disturbance, she was sure. The memory of an enormous star-streaked blue something was taking shape...

“The report you sent me was wonderfully vague,” Celestia chuckled. “Spike sent me a letter filling in the details. That was when I first became concerned about your magic, Littlest Sister. I always knew you would be powerful, but the reports of your magical besting of the Ursa astounded me.”

Twilight’s mouth fell open.

Oh my goodness, that’s right. It was an Ursa. An Ursa! What was I thinking!

“I don’t know this story,” Luna said. “Little Sister defeated an Ursa when she was mortal? Before The Element transformed her?” She looked impressed.

“There were two curious young colts from Ponyville that were absolutely taken in with that particular showmare. Those two little whelps actually managed to find an Ursa, an honest-to-goodness Ursa, and they lured it back to town, and then -”

Pinkie gasped. She’d felt it first, though she didn’t know what she was feeling. An instant later, Twilight and Starburst both felt an enormous surge of magic, like a gale screaming through their magically-aware minds. They whipped their heads around to stare at their daughter, the source of the gale, a fraction of a second before the little filly’s horn flashed bright white.

They both recognised the type of spell that Glim was casting by its unique magical tone. Neither of them could believe it. They both reacted completely by instinct.

Celestia and Luna had felt the magical disturbance by now. Their heads started to turn, following their Sister’s gaze, just as Starburst vanished and then reappeared directly behind Glim, forehooves spread, a thick web of sparkling magical streamers flooding from his own illuminated horn. They wrapped all around his back and he reached out towards his daughter as she shrieked, her eyes going blank and exploding with hot white light. Twilight had kicked herself back from the table and hit her Sisters and her old friend with a hard psychokinetic shove. Celestia, Luna and Pinkie Pie yelled in surprise as they flew off their cushions and fell awkwardly, sprawled on the floor, sliding backwards, out of the line of fire.

Everything in the room seemed to blaze with light for a moment. A hot streak of magic exploded from Twilight Glimmer’s horn and struck the heavy table, which burst into blazing purple flames and rocketed away from the filly with enough force to smash itself to flaming dust against the thick tower wall. The recoil shot Glim off her cushion and straight into her father’s magically-padded grip. Magical inertia propelled both stallion and filly backwards at an impossible speed. With an ear-shattering smash they blasted right through the thick stone wall as if it were nothing more than wet paper.

Celestia and Luna were already on their hooves again. As the unicorn-earth pony thrashed upright, the two alicorns charged out of the small crumbling hole in the wall, right on Twilight’s tail. Pinkie sprang from the floor and galloped over to the edge of the hole. The broken stone was glowing red and starting to melt in places, but it couldn’t burn her immortal hooves. She watched, gaping in stunned amazement as the three tall alicorns moved faster than should have been possible to catch up to the two falling mortal ponies. They were moving so fast that Pinkie’s brain was struggling to catch up with what her eyes could see.

Starburst ground his teeth and eyelids together and tried to ignore the pain. He hurt all over, every inch of skin, every strand of hair felt like it was on fire. His horn felt like somepony had tried to wrench it from his skull. Glim was thrashing and screaming, her eyes still flaming with white light, violent blasts of raw magic exploding in every direction from her horn. He wrestled his forelegs around her, tried to hold her tight. The magic she was channeling was burning him, singeing his coat, blistering his skin. He managed to block it by remoulding the thick protective shell he’d cast over his back into a close-fitting shield around his forehooves and chest, then he turned his attention to the most important issue. They were falling and he couldn’t see. He cast a levitation spell, and they slowed and came to a bobbing halt, and then he felt somepony’s hooves take his daughter. He let her go and straightened in the air, blinked, shook himself, and looked around.

He caught sight of Pinkie Pie staring with wide eyes and mouth from the glowing hole he’d made in the breakfast hall’s wall. The courtyard thirty feet below, thankfully empty of ponies this early in the day, was strewn with the shattered stony rubble that had been thick granite wall panels just a moment ago. He looked up. His wife and Sisters-in-law were crowded together just above him. He floated upwards through the air, running his hooves along his forelegs to check how badly he’d been burned. It didn’t hurt yet but he was sure it would start to, and soon. It was dangerous to be so close to the caster of such a spell, though he couldn’t even begin to fathom how his daughter had managed to do it. Fully-grown trained unicorns had trouble with annihilation spells, even the weak variations of them. He’d never even attempted an ekragokinetic spell of that magnitude. He bobbed higher, shaking his head and blinking, until he was hovering right next to his wife.

Twilight was holding Glim by the shoulders, shaking the little filly gently and staring straight into her blazing eyes. “Glim! Sweetheart! Momma’s here!” Starburst appeared at her side, and she amended. “Daddy and Momma are here! Everything’s alright, everything’s okay!” Glim twitched, shuddered, shrieked again. “Glim, listen to me! Twilight said urgently. “Calm down. Come on, calm down.” She made her own voice gentle, but firm, as she said this. “Everything is fine. Please, Sweetheart, calm -”

Twilight was cut off mid-sentence as one of the seemingly-random blasts of magic that were exploding from the little filly’s horn hit her squarely in the face. The filly and the alicorn both shuddered as the spell made contact. Twilight’s horn pulsed brightly for an instant.

Twilight winced, her face blazing with flames for a heartbeat before the magical purple fire died. She seemed to be fine, completely unharmed - but Glim’s eyes had rolled back into her head, her shrieks choked off into silence. Her horn winked out, the tip glowing - not soft purple from her magical aura; it had been heated to dull orange-red incandescence - and then her head flopped to the side, she gurgled, and passed out. “No! Oh no!” Twilight shouted in horror as she gathered her daughter to her chest. She looked around wildly, her eyes finding Starburst first of all. He looked awful, his mane blackened, his forelegs charred, his bathrobe ruined and smoking faintly, but that was nothing compared to the ashen expression on his face. He knew what had just occurred and, just like Twilight, he couldn’t believe it had actually happened. Her Sisters were right there as well, and they, too, looked aghast. “I’m taking her to her bedroom!” Twilight shrieked. Then she vanished with a puff of magenta magic.

Three more magical flashes followed in quick succession. Celestia trotted quickly over to Twilight as the youngest alicorn laid her unconscious daughter on the large, soft bed. Smoke was streaming from the tip of Glim’s glowing horn as it started to smoulder. Twilight cast a spell to remove the heat before it caused any real damage. The topmost quarter-inch of the filly’s horn cracked and crumbled into dusty-black ash on her pillow. Her eyelids fluttered madly, eyes vibrating sideways in their sockets.

Luna had flitted to Starburst’s side, supporting the mortal unicorn. He looked pale and shaky. Suddenly, his eyes and cheeks bulged and he galloped away from Luna and into Glim’s private bathroom, slamming the door behind him with a shout of magic. The sounds of somepony being violently sick filtered through the tightly-closed door.

Twilight was rubbing her daughter’s face gently. “I pulled her magic from her. I didn’t mean to but when she hit me with that ekragokinetic spell, I slipped up, I lost control, I didn’t have time to react, I mean my instincts, my magic...”

Celestia and Luna both knew exactly what had just happened. Magic could not be cast against an unwilling alicorn. The Sisters were unique, and they had unique magical defences. Their instinctive alicorn reaction to block an unexpected offensive spell was to rip all of the spellcaster’s magic out through the unfortunate unicorn’s horn. Such a thing was extremely dangerous for the mortal pony in question. Even mundane everyday things like taking a sheaf of papers from another pony’s levitation required careful control. The three alicorns needed to be particularly mindful of this fact, in case they accidentally maimed or killed one of their mortal subjects.

And Twilight had apparently done this to her eight-year-old daughter.

Twilight’s and Celestia’s horns were both flickering wildly as they bent over the small winged unicorn. Luna vanished with a pop of silver light, though the other two Sisters didn't pay any attention to that. They both looked up and at each other.

“She’s breathing evenly. Her heart’s beating. Fast, but regular,” Celestia said. “She’ll be fine. Just a shock. And you'll have no trouble growing her horn back, of course. Don’t feel bad, Littlest Sister. We’ve all done that before, and no harm done again. She’s going to be fine. Perfectly fine.” The tall white alicorn swallowed. “It could have been far worse, Twilight.”

Twilight was shaking her head furiously, which threw her tears all over the place. “Shut up! Shut up! Don’t - Don’t even say it! We’ve never done that before! Not to that extent! I could have killed her! Killed her! What was I thinking, how did I -” Twilight choked.

“Twilight Sparkle!”

Celestia’s use of her full name made Twilight start. She looked at her Biggest Sister. Celestia was staring at her with the sternest expression she’d ever seen. She balked.

“This is not your fault, and I will not let you beat yourself up about it!” Celestia said loudly, in a tone that Twilight recognised instantly, despite not having heard it for more than nineteen hundred years. The eldest Eternal Sister seemed to grow in stature as she glared fiercely at the youngest. “Get a hold of yourself, Littlest Sister. Twilight Glimmer needs you!”

Twilight backed up a pace. She felt like she was a child once more. Her face was blank for a fraction of a second, and then she seemed to visibly relax. She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and then looked up at Celestia.

“Thank you, Biggest Sister. Now is not the time to panic.” She stepped forwards again to resume ministering to her child. “I believe I forgot myself for a moment there.”

“I’m sorry, Twilight,” Celestia said gently, stepping up to the bed again herself. “Your magic can heal her, and, as you say, now is not the time for panic.”

With a flash, Luna and Pinkie Pie appeared on the other side of Glim’s poster-bed. “I thought it was a bit rude to leave our guest stranded in the Breakfast Hall, especially with pieces of rock and burning wood everywhere,” Luna began, then she was cut off by a feathery-purple explosion from the bed.

With a gasp of pain and a thrashing of hooves, Glim sat bolt-upright, her eyelids screwed shut. “Ow! Ow, ow ow OW!” she squealed through her grinding teeth, her hooves flying to her forehead. “My horn! My horn!” Tears were streaming from the corners of her closed eyes.

Twilight cried out herself, from surprise in her case. She pushed Glim back down to the pillows as her horn started to glow, wrapping a thick painkilling spell around the blackened and destroyed tip of Glim’s horn. “Easy, Sweetheart. Momma’s here. Momma’s here.”

The sound of Glim’s bathroom door banging open made them all jump. “So’s Daddy,” Starburst called as he charged to Twilight’s side. “Lie down, Sweetheart. Don’t move. Mom’ll fix this.”

Mom certainly did. With a faint grinding-squeaking sound, Glim’s horn glowed bright red and seemed to twist around for a moment. The glow died as Twilight completed her healing spell. The tension left Glim as she relaxed and opened her eyes.

“It... It doesn’t hurt any more...” She reached up gingerly, tapped the slightly-raw point of her horn. It was sharper than it should be.

“We’ll have to file it,” Starburst said. “She could have somepony’s eye out with that.”

“Glim, Sweetheart,” Twilight was saying, still all-business. “I’m very sorry that I hurt you. I promise I’ll never do anything like it again. Promise.”

“But you didn’t hurt me, Momma, you stopped me. I couldn’t stop on my own, what happened, what was that?” Glim shivered. “That was the most horrible thing ever, Momma!”

“Your magic has awakened,” Twilight said, looking very hard at her small daughter. “Where did you learn that spell?”

“Spell? I did a spell?” Glim asked. She looked up, touched her horn once again. “Hey, you’re right! I did a spell!”

“But where did you learn it?” Twilight pressed.

Starburst cut in. “What Momma means is, what were you doing right before all of this happened? Did you think of something or will your mind to make something happen?”

“Well, no,” she said quietly. “I was thinking about the star I drew, Daddy.”

“Star?” Starburst and the three alicorns all asked together. Pinkie just stood at the bedside, looking both interested in what was happening and embarrassed to be intruding on a clearly private moment.

“Yeah, the star I dreamed about last night. I drew it and I was looking at it and thinking about how funny it looked and how it was more a flower than a star and then everything got all hot and bright and I wanted to be sick and then it started to hurt and I couldn’t see any more and then my horn hurt real bad and...” She trailed off into silence.

“You drew something you dreamed? Could you show us?” Luna asked gently.

“Uh, sure, I guess.” She looked around. “Where’s my drawing book?”

“The book you had at the table? It’s gone, Sweetheart,” Starburst said. “It, uh, it caught fire. Could you draw it again?”

“Aw!” Glim protested. “I had loads of drawings in that book!”

“Could you draw it again?” Twilight pressed. “We need to see it, Sweetheart.”

“Yeah, I guess so. I can’t get it out of my mind.” She closed her eyes for a second. “Yeah, it’s right there.” Her forehoof traced a swooping pattern through the air. She opened her eyes and started to get up.

“No, Sweetheart. Stay on the bed.” Twilight pushed her gently back onto her pillows once again and levitated a few sheets of paper and a pencil across from Glim’s desk and popped them on the bed in front of her daughter. The little purple pony thought for a moment, then she picked up the pencil and started putting dots on the paper. She drew sixteen little tickmarks in a circle, like a clock with four too many hours.

“Offensive spell,” Twilight, Starburst, Luna and Celestia all said at once.

Glim looked up. “Huh?”

“That’s a spell map, Sweetheart,” Starburst said softly. “A sixteen-pointed spell is always an offensive spell, something you use to attack somepony else. They’re all offensive magic. Please, draw the spell but don’t think about it too hard.”

Glim touched the point of her pencil on the topmost mark she’d made. She started to draw a curving line, one that touched and looped and circled every point she’d made. The long, winding curve was completed when she joined the end of the line back up to the start again. She looked up.

She jumped. “Momma!” she exclaimed, a little frightened by the expression on her mother’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“Where did you learn this spell?” Twilight asked sharply.

“I told you, I dreamed it last night! I can’t get it out of my head!”

“That’s impossible. Hardly anypony knows this spell. It’s far too dangerous to be public knowledge, and very few ponies have the ability to cast it anyway.” Twilight looked at her husband. “You know it, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I read it in ‘Magic Of Last Resort,’ back when I was fifteen or so. But I can’t see how Glim could have found it. That book’s Forbidden. It has been for hundreds of years.”

“Glim, Sweetheart,” Twilight said, trying to sound as patient as she could, “You can’t have dreamed this spell. It’s a powerful spell that has no use other than to cause destruction. You must have seen it somewhere before. Can you think where?”

Glim shook her head. “I dunno where I know it from, Momma. I dreamed it. Honest.”

Twilight shook her own head. “Spells want to be remembered. A sufficiently-skilled unicorn only has to see the pattern once and they can remember the spell for the rest of their lives. You must have seen it somewhere before, Sweetheart. Please, tell me where.”

The purple pegacorn’s mouth was starting to scrunch up. “Momma, I swear! I dreamed it! I swear! I’ve never seen anything like that flower before!”

“Flower?” Twilight glanced down at the paper. It did sort-of look like a sixteen-pointed flower, made of a crisscrossing spaghetti of pencil lines. “Oh. Flower.”

“Sweetie, I need a word,” Starburst muttered in Twilight’s ear. “We’ll be right back, Sweetheart,” he said to Glim. “Momma and me have something to talk about.”

“What? What do you hafta talk about?” Glim began, making as if to sit up again. Celestia pushed her gently down this time.

“It’s alright, Glim. I think you’ll be happy with what they’re talking about,” she said to her niece with a wink and a grin.

“That was astounding,” Starburst muttered once they were far enough away from the bed to be out of earshot. “More powerful than me at that age, do you think?”

“I’d say there’s the same level of magical potential there. But yes, incredibly high, incredibly potent. More to the point, where did she learn that spell?” Twilight said. “When I was eight I could have probably cast it, if I’d known the spell. So could you. You transfigured your examiner and nearly destroyed the admissions testing hall back when you were seven. But neither of us could have possibly known that spell, and it takes practice to cast a sixteen-pointer. Our wild magic was powerful and dangerous, but unfocused.”

Starburst nodded knowingly. “That spell was perfectly cast, perfectly focused. If she’d hit me with that spell, I’d be dead right now.”

“Well, one thing’s for certain. She has to be trained, and soon. With that level of magical potential, she could destroy the city if she’s not careful.” Starburst nodded at this.

They turned around and walked over to their daughter’s bed. They were both smiling, and both smiles were quite genuine. Glim looked up, her worry vanishing as her parents rejoined the other ponies.

“Good news, Sweetheart,” Starburst said. “You’re going to Princess Twilight’s School for Gifted Unicorns. Your lessons start right now.”

“I’m gonna learn magic?!” Glim shrieked, leaping to her hooves. “But I’m too young! I thought I was too young!”

“We were waiting for something just like this,” Twilight said. “Well, not exactly like this, but it’s clear that it’s time we taught you magic.”

Glim squealed with delight. Before anypony could stop her, she’d leaped off her bed and started running around her room, flapping her wings madly and bouncing on her hooftips, shouting all the while with joy. She was gonna learn magic!

Behind the impenetrable walls of her heart, The Lunacy roared with delight too.

A well-thought-out plan. Just five years to go, and Equestria would die.

Glim

by Smayds

Chapter 01: A Furnace For A Heart

Chapter 02: Night Mare

Chapter 03: Aegis Invictus

Chapter 04: Nightmare

Chapter 05: Old Haunts, New Beginnings

Chapter 06: Talents

Chapter 07: Student

Chapter 08: Thaw

Chapter 09: Fairly Forward For a First Date

Chapter 10: 'Til Death...

Chapter 11: Lore

Chapter 12: Her Little Pony

Chapter 13: Flying High, Falling Hard

Chapter 14: The Biggest Mistake

Chapter 15: Not Our Destiny

Chapter 16: Vampire

Chapter 17: Awakening