Act 1 Prologue: Another Place and Time

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I soar above the Royal advance post, speeding past the Princesses as they focus their power on the Elements of Harmony. The jeweled icons come to life, each alicorn haloed by the three Elements they call their own, and I push myself to fly past the sisters as quickly as I can. As much as I enjoy a good show, the two of ‘em are about to cut loose with enough raw energy to vaporize stone, and I can’t very well give my ponies their orders if I’m caught in the blast.

I let out a long breath as I speed past the enemy’s front lines and turn my gaze to the Princess’ target. There’s a mass of ruddy, bull-sized demons lurching through the rough-hewn gate to Tartarus below me, but they won’t matter once Celie and Luna have worked their magic. The Elements will blow that gate to kingdom come, the enemy will stop pouring into Equestria, and then my soldiers get to send the demons back to Tartarus the old-fashioned way.

Blood and steel being the old-fashioned way, in case that ain’t clear.

As it happens, I’m staring at the Gate from a healthy distance away when the sisters unleash their Elements, and I give the demons below a cheeky grin as a blinding gout of energy strikes it --

-- only to dissipate uselessly, as if it were a foal’s light show. The stone arch stands, not even a single scratch on it, and the demons continue their advance.

I snarl aloud, and then I bring my hoof up to tap my black and gold helm, activating its communications spell. “Royals, haul yer tails back to command; if you can’t blast those gates apart you’re just drawin’ fire. Pansy, advance on Middlegate with first and third phalanx. Hold ‘em off the hard way while we get our hooves out of our arses. Clover, drive your wedge in behind Pansy and give ‘em cover.”

“Acknowledged, Commander,” reply three familiar voices in my ear, and I wrinkle my nose and bare my teeth in anger and frustration. On a good day, I love my job. Nobody knows strategy like I do; nobody has my grasp of battlefields, formations and tactics, and nobody but nobody threatens my Equestria without getting a bloody nose in the deal. But this...

This ain’t lookin’ like a real good day.

I growl to myself -- a bad habit I’ve picked up from Melvin, bless his leathery wings -- and as I angle towards the command post, I try to wrap my mind around what’s gone wrong. We’ve been fighting off these pus-leaking demons for the better part of a year, but they weren’t a a challenge ‘til today. Oh, sure, the first time a Gate popped up it was a fur-wetting mess of an afternoon, but once we worked out that the Gates were the key, and that the Elements could find ‘em and then knock ‘em down, it was just like taking out the trash. It didn’t matter that the gates kept popping up, it was the same thing every Sunday: bag ‘em up, tie ‘em off and take ‘em to the curb before morning.

Sundays and mornings being figurative, as it were.

Today, though -- today it’s different, and I don’t know why. And if I don’t figure out why -- and bloody fast -- we’re gonna be in for a real rough ride.

“Commander!” comes Princess Luna’s voice, familiar if a bit tinny in my ear. “Commander, we’ve arrived at the command post, but -- sister! Behind you!”

“Royal Guard, to arms!” I shout, and then I fold my wings behind me and push into a power-dive, plummeting to the command post at breakneck speed. I pull up at the last second: my heart’s pounding in my ears and my vision’s gone red, but in between heartbeats I take it all in.

Celie and Luna stand side-by-side, facing away from each other: Celie’s got her golden waraxe suspended in a cloud of magic, but Luna’s bloody and limping, and the magic holding her silver greatsword is fading. They’re surrounded by... something new, something lithe and quick and deadly. They’re smaller than the bulls, but as tall as Celie, and with claws as long as my cannon-bone jutting from their scaly green fists. The bodies of ruined guardsponies lie strewn across the clearing like discarded toys; more guards are racing to the Princesses from their tents, but they’ll never reach the sisters in time.

“FOR SUN AND MOON!” I cry, hurtling towards the enemy. “FOR EQUESTRIA!”

One of the demon-beasts turns to face me and I juke reflexively, hoping to get it off-balance while I close on its position. Its empty eye sockets are filled with bloody red flame, and its mouth opens to roar at me, but I’m too fast for it to track. It tries to catch me, but I fly under its guard and make the lightest possible contact with my left wing, a move I’ve made a thousand times if I’ve made it once.

As I pass the demon by, I see its form slump to the ground, a wicked gash in its gut sliced open by the razor-fine blades attached to my wing armor. Black, steaming ichor spurts from the wound as it falls, and I push myself into a hairpin turn to get back to the Princesses before it’s too late.

My tight turn’s for naught, though; by the time I’ve looped around to the post again, the rest of the guard has reached the sisters, and they’re putting the demons down like diamond dogs. All but one of the scaled assassins have fallen as I come around to take another pass, and the last one decides it’s high time to leg it.

“Not today ya don’t,” I mutter, flapping twice to accelerate towards my target. The demon might be able to outrun the guard, but it can’t escape me in full flight. It never even sees me coming, and I end the bastard with a snarl and a flick of my wing.

Beating my wings to break my momentum, I slow and land just outside the command post. My black and gold barding clanks as I settle to the earth, and I turn to get a better look at what’s left of whatever I just slaughtered.

I draw near the corpse, and I wrinkle my nose, doing my best to ignore the thick stench of sulfur rising from its body. It’s lizard-headed and thick-scaled; the claws look like they’re just bones without flesh, stickin’ straight out of its scaly knuckles. As I watch, those scales slowly change color, from their original forest green to a dead, ashen grey.

We’ve been knocking these thrice-cursed Gates down for over a year now, but these things never showed up ‘til today. I lay my ears back and curl my lip as I step away from the dead thing. Another surprise. I’m starting to wonder how deep this dung heap really is, and whether I’m up to my ankles or my armpits in it.

“Commander?!” calls a voice from ahead, and I snap to attention, retracting my wing-razors into their safety position and cantering back to the camp proper. Celestia’s kneeling at Luna’s side and fussing at her, right where they’d both stood against the assassins moments ago. Luna looks steady enough, but her medic looks worried, and the linen bandages wrapped around her barrel are bright with blood.

“Unhoove me, sister,” I hear her say, her ears flat against her skull as she tries to shimmy away from Celestia. “I shall not be held like a child by anyone, let alone you. I must --”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the red-maned pony tending her says nervously. “Your Highness, you have to stop moving so much! It’s hard enough keeping pressure on this wound; if you keep moving it’ll --”

“Be silent,” she says, flattening her ears. “We do not wish to move. We simply wish to remove this canker of a sister from our --”

“The pair of you fillies done yet?” I say, moving towards them with a confident swagger I don’t feel. “In case you ain’t noticed, there’s a war on. Sense of urgency and all that.”

Luna’s eyes widen until she sees I’m the one giving her grief, and then her lips purse into a half-smile. “Commander, remind Us again why We allow you to vex Us so.”

“Because you need a good vexing,” I say, narrowing my eyes at her like always. I know the sisters better than anyone alive, and right now, they don’t feel like they’re in control. When that happens, they try to tear each other apart -- as siblings do, I suppose, though these two are especially bad lately. Anyway, I need ‘em focused, and not on each other.

To my relief, Luna’s half-smile becomes whole, and she shakes her head at me haughtily. “Peasant,” she grumbles good-naturedly.

“Tart,” I reply, winking at her.

Celie shakes her head at me and rises gently, leaving her sister in the expert care of the field medic. Her face, unlike Luna’s, shows a hint of doubt at my display of bluster, and my smile fades as she comes to me.

“Hurricane,” she says, breathing my name, and her furrowed, violet eyes show me how deep her worry goes. “These… these monsters came from the trees unseen. Before we knew it they had set upon the guard -- they had no warning, the poor souls. But thou shouldst not have come; we fare well enough --”

“Well enough? You mean aside from your sister leaking a fair bit of red around the ribs?” I ask, gesturing to Luna, “Harrowmane, how bad is she?”

“The blade missed her vitals, somehow,” the earth pony medic grumbles between his teeth as he ties off a bandage. “She lost a lot of blood, Commander. It’s a minor miracle she’s still conscious.”

“Patch her up good, soldier,” I say, gritting my teeth. “She’s got work to do.”

Celestia frowns. “What would you have us do? The Elements are powerless, and with Luna injured our options are limited. Surely you can contain this threat without us for the moment?”

“Celie,” I say, peering back at Luna and her fussy medic. “Just between us, how limited are our options?” I ask.

“Badly,” she says ruefully, softening her voice and leaning subtly into my shoulder. “There… there is a ritual Luna and I could try… it focuses the concentrated power of both Sun and Moon. We could strike all three Gates at once that way. I don’t know of anything that can stand against its effects, but… it takes time, Hurricane, and it will drain us both terribly. Luna’s wounds will slow us further. If you can wait a few more hours --”

“There ain’t time,” I say, lowering my voice so only she can hear. “I think I bunged this one up good, love. We keep getting caught off-guard, and I’m startin’ to think I got played. We’re too few, they’re too many, and they’re bringing the special china out of the cabinet for the occasion. We’ll never hold the gates against them if they keep coming, Celie, I don’t… I don’t know how else --”

She gazes at me with those beautiful violet eyes of hers. “You and I stood side by side against Discord, when nothing made sense except each other. You caught me when I fell, remember?” she says softly, and she flashes me that tiny, secret smile that only I know. “Now it’s my turn, beloved. We’ll fix it together,” she says, nuzzling me. “What shall we do?”

Fly away with me, I want to say for the millionth time since I’ve met her. Fly away with me, and we’ll find a place and a time where Princess and Commander are someone else’s titles. You’ll throw away your crown and I’ll bury my barding, and we’ll live out the rest of our lives in a tiny home by the sea. We’ll skim the waves at sunrise, and laze in the afternoon shade under the palms, and fall asleep entwined, manes braided by the wind, lulled to sleep by the sound of the surf, and the world can forget we ever existed.

I don’t say it, but I should have. A long time ago.

She presses her body close to me and arches her neck upwards to whisper in my ear.

“Tell me,” she says simply.

“Commander!” comes the voice of my scout captain, her excitement ringing in my ears, and I grimace, stepping back from Celie and holding up a hoof to my helm again. “There’s something huge coming through the West gate! I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“Steady on, Hailstone,” I say, keeping cool on the outside while my heart sinks into my hooves. “What’s your assessment?”

“Looks a bit like a catapult, Commander,” she replies, too excited for her own good. “We’re swooping down to get a look. Definitely some kind of war engine, maybe a ranged weapon, sir, and there’s a team of demons winding it up right n-- by the Sun!”

I don’t need her to describe what happens next, because I can see it from where I’m standing. A massive blast of green Tartaran fire appears as if from nowhere near the western gate and arcs its way towards the defensive squares of my earth pony phalanxes.

“Pansy! Scatter!” I cry, but I know it’s already too late, so I do the only thing I can: force myself to gauge the damage and try to recover. “Captain Stormbreaker, get Razor Wing in to harass the weapon’s fire team, we can’t let it open up again! Magistrix Clover, move in and blast that infernal machine apart! Forward phalanxes, whoever’s in charge, regroup and cover Clover’s flanks! Major Stonehoof, move Fourth Phalanx forward to support the line, now!”

I lower my hoof and listen to my field commanders acknowledge my orders, but now I see where it’s all gone wrong. The bloody demons have been coming for a year, but they never tried to take any ground. Instead, they’ve probed, feinted, tested us to learn how we worked together, to learn what resources we had and how we’d react.

And me, I fell for it. I thought they were dumb beasts from Tartarus; I thought those feints were all they could muster, but instead these bloody demons learned everything I could muster. This… this isn’t just another Sunday trip to the curb. This is the last move in a game I didn’t realize I was playing. If they win here, they’ve won Equestria.

Nobody knows strategy like I do. Damn my arrogance.

“Unicorn wedge in range,” Clover’s cool, emotionless voice sounds in my ears, and I latch on it like a drowning foal to a scrap of flotsam. “Assuming focal position. Firing.”

A dazzling beam of raw energy from the unicorn wedge - emanating from the single focal point of Clover’s horn - strikes out at the Infernal war machine, lashing at it like some gigantic whip of multicolored light. The beam locks onto the massive weapon, and for just a second, the thing’s own dark energies push back against Clover and her unicorns, threatening to trace the wedge’s attack back to its source.

Ah, but Clover -- Clover’s the most powerful unicorn since Star Swirl, and even he was no match for her legendary iron will. After a few gruelling moments, Clover and her wedge push back, and the beam of energy pierces through the machine’s protective magic. Within seconds, the thing explodes with a massive blast, and a ragged cheer goes up from the troops.

I let myself breathe again, then tap my helm and speak clearly. “Magistrix, that was brilliant work.”

Clover’s voice, a bit strained, answers me. “Glad we could entertain you, Commander. As fate would have it I suspect there will be an encore soon.”

I chuckle grimly in reply. “We’d best be done with this show before too many repeat performances, Magistrix. First Phalanx, who’s in charge?”

“Have a little faith,” comes General Pansy’s haggard voice, and I breathe an audible sigh of relief.

“Thank the stars. What’s your status, Pansy?”

“Second Phalanx took the brunt, Commander. I’ve pulled survivors into First and Third, filled the gap with Fourth and created a skirmish group to steer the enemy our way. Recommend we leave Fifth Phalanx in reserve for now. So long as Clover and Stormbreaker can manage those war machines, we can handle anything else they throw at us.”

“Do it,” I say, relieved beyond words that my best General has survived my worst mistake yet. I take another breath as I lower my hoof, and I reluctantly meet Celie’s gaze.

“Everything we thought we knew about the demons was wrong, love. If you and your sister can’t seal those gates soon, we’re going to lose everything. Everything, Celie, not just --”

I never finish the sentence, because that’s when the world goes dark.

“LAY DOWN THY ARMS,” comes a foul, hollow voice, cutting through the din of battle like a scream in the night. The voice resonates like Celie’s and Luna’s, but where their words inspire, this black voice terrifies like a deep, forgotten horror. I shiver uncontrollably as my vision dims nearly to blackness, and I think I hear, faintly, Luna whimpering.

“YOU HAVE NO HOPE AGAINST LADY MAGOTH OF THE VOID.”

I’d been such a fool to try to stand against… this monster, this Tartarus-spawned hellbeast. Resisting her was… wasn’t… something…

The voice reverberates in my skull again, interrupting my thoughts. “STAND ASIDE AND GIVE US THY ROYALTY. WE SHALL SPARE THY LIVES AND QUIT THIS FIELD.”

Relief floods through me -- of course she doesn’t want us. I can save my stalwart soldiers after all, I can make things right before they’re all cut down. They don’t have to die for my stupidity, because she doesn’t even want us. All she wants is…

I look to my side; through the darkness I can barely make out Celie’s form as she stands beside me. She’s all they want, after all. The rest of us can go home and the demons will go away and we’ll all live and all I need to do is to give the dark lady… just… give her… give her my… my Celie?

My Celie, whose mane smells like daisies in the spring, and whose nose is soft as velvet. My Celie, who smiles at me with her secret smile, with her violet eyes half-lidded and her brow arched in mischief. My Celie, who teases me with the subtlest of motions, with the shift of a wing or the quirk of a lip? Who then fulfills her unspoken promises with ferocious, boundless laughter and joy?

How is it worth my life to give her away?

Wait, give her away? How… what in the name of Discord’s left nut am I thinking?

I shake my head to clear my vision, and then I realize even Celie is affected: her lips quiver and her eyes are narrow with fear. She could counter the darkness with a word, but she hesitates. A second passes, and another, and still she hesitates.

No, Celie. I’ve already failed Equestria. I won’t let you do it too.

“No,” I snarl aloud, my voice barely a whisper between clenched teeth. “You can’t bloody have them --”

Waves of nausea and revulsion nearly bring me to my knees. My voice is weak and strained, but Celie stirs at the sound, and I can just make out Luna shaking her head.

“You cannot have our Princesses,” I say, louder this time, baring my teeth in growing fury. “You will not have our Sun and Moon!”

Celie gasps and then glances gratefully at me as she masters her fear, and her expression shifts as though the dawn was chasing away the night’s last shadows. She calls to her people, her subjects, her devoted warriors and protectors with all of her might and glory.

“WE SHALL NOT FALTER!” she cries, her voice strong and pure and true. The fear loosens its grip on my heart as she does, and the blackness fades from my vision. “RISE, MY PONIES! RISE AND STAND FOR EQUESTRIA!”

A cheer goes up from the troops that I can hear even from here, and I shake my head to rebalance myself.

“Officers!” I bark, tapping my helm. “Report!”

“General Pansy, holding position.”

“Magistrix Clover, eliminating targets of opportunity.”

“Captain Stormbreaker, harassing the war engines at the Gates. That got hairy for a minute or two, Commander. Relay our thanks to the Princess.”

“Hold for your orders,” I say, and then I turn to the snow-white alicorn at my side.

“Love, ye’ve no choice. It’s that ritual or nothing. How do we make it happen?”

“I can’t do it alone,” Celestia says, her lips taut. “This… Lady Magoth… she wields terrible power, Hurricane. Once we start, she’ll know what we’re doing, and she’ll try to stop us. And Luna is too weak to raise --”

“Think’st thou I am so weak that I cannot wield my birthright?” Luna asks, her voice proud and angry. She tries to stand, much to her medic’s chagrin, and mostly succeeds, though her balance is wobbly. “I know the ritual of Sun and Moon. Let us begin at once.”

“Luna, no -- if it were evening, and your moon simply had to take its place, it would be as simple as breathing,” Celestia says, turning to her sister. “But this is midday, not nightfall. The natural order of the world will resist us, sister. You could be hurt, Luna. It could even kill you.”

“Speak’st thou not for me,” Luna says, steadying herself and standing tall, one wing swatting irritably at her frustrated medic. “I am no foal, and thou’rt not my dam. I know the risks as well as you. You simply fear being eclipsed by me, proud sister. As well you should!”

“Luna, you cannot believe -- this has nothing to do with that,” Celie says, her nostrils flaring in anger. “Think of more than just your petty jealousy! What of Magoth? The moment we begin, she will focus all her might upon us. You can barely stand; how can we respond to that while completing the ritual?”

“We need a distraction,” I say, cutting Luna off before she can amplify their argument any further. “Clover and Pansy can fall back to give you some padding… we can feint with a broad attack, and then rush one gate before they know what hits them… Stormbreaker can harass the skirmishers while we regroup, and with the element of surprise we can push them back, just for a short while… it could work.”

“Push the demons back?” she asks. “Didn’t you just say there was no way you could hold the Gates?”

“Aye, their numbers are too great for that,” I say, completing the strategy in my head and nodding to myself. “But if we don’t mean to hold our ground, we can push past them in a counteroffensive. Distracts the enemy, forces them to deal with the immediate threat, and gives you two enough time to --”

Her eyes widen as she begins to catch on, and she stops me in mid-sentence, her anger as clear as the sky above us. “Commander, what exactly are you proposing?”

“Princess of the Sun,” I say, “you’re right to question me. I may yet have led us to the end of everything today, but if you can close those gates, you can save us from my mistakes. When we fought Discord, you put me in charge of the Equestrian Host, because this,” I say, gesturing to the battlefield, “this has always been my Element. And now I know what the game is. Now I know how we can win. You’ve just gotta trust me, Celie. I can get us through this.”

“I… I shall,” Celestia says, nodding to me, her eyes shining oddly in the afternoon sun. “I do. But you must not be rash, Hurricane.”

“That ship’s sailed, love,” I say, lifting my hoof to her chin. “Now we do our jobs. Now we save Equestria, no matter the cost.”

“No,” she says; she knows me too well, and she knows where this is headed. She pulls her head away from my hoof, and her voice grows cold and haughty, as though she could have her way by intimidating me. “No. Whatever thy plan is, Commander, We forbid it if it sacrifices --”

“Sorry, my Princess,” I say. “Not even you outrank your Commander in the field.”

“Then as your beloved I forbid you,” she whispers, her voice low and her eyes wide. “Stay by my side. We’ll find another way.” She nuzzles me gently, and the scent of daisies fills my nose.

If only she’d flown away with me. If only I’d asked.

I lean forward to kiss her forehead, just above her horn. “Our ponies are gonna need you when this is done. But me? I’m just a soldier, and I guess not even a very good one. Just you get those bloody gates shut. I’ll do the rest.”

Her eyes are wide and her jaw is set. “You will not --”

“Shine for me, little sun,” I say, smiling and spreading my wings.

“Hurricane! I will come for you! I will find a way!” she calls out, but I’m already in the air. I tap my helm with my hoof, I pretend I don’t hear her, and I don’t dare look back.

“Magistrix Clover!” I shout, fighting off a catch in my voice and building up speed quickly. “Select a new focal commander, take ten of your best and get your sweaty rump back to command, double-time! Princess Celestia has your orders.”

“Sir? Yes, sir,” she says, confusion coloring her voice. “I am turning command of the wedge over to Dominix Novalight. I am enroute.”

“General Pansy, you are to relinquish forward command to Major Stonehoof. Fall back with Fourth and Fifth Phalanx to Command and assume a defensive posture.”

“Commander?!” Pansy replied, a hint of anger in her voice.

“This ain’t the time to argue, Pansy. I’m about to do somethin’ daft.”

“Commander, with all due respect --”

“You listen to me, General,” I say, raw, ragged steel in my voice. “The only thing that matters is giving our Royals enough time to shut those benighted Gates. If we fail, you’re their last line of defense. If we succeed… well, if we succeed, they’ll need you to keep everyone safe when it’s all over. Make sure they get those gates closed, Pansy. No matter the cost.”

“No matter the cost, sir,” she replies, her anger only partly tempered. “Enroute.”

“Stonehoof, Novalight, Stormbreaker, you’ve drawn short straws, so listen close. You’re with me, and this is how we’re going to play it.”

* * *

Stonehoof’s soldiers gallop at double-time, their shields raised and their spears set. In their wake are the stinking corpses of hundreds of bull-demons, impaled by the infantry's sudden, devastating charge to the westernmost Gate. I smile grimly as the body count grows; clearly, Magoth didn't see this coming. So far, so good.

“Intercepting!” calls Stormbreaker, and I watch his flight peel off to take on a mass of infernal bats pouring out of the eastern gate. Armed with wing-razors like my own, Stormbreaker and his wingponies are the perfect counter to the infernal bats, but losing him for the next few minutes is gonna hurt us.

“Threat acquired -- firing, Commander!” Novalight’s emotional cry is the opposite of Clover’s cool, methodical style, but any worries I have about her abilities are quickly put to rest. Within seconds, there’s a huge explosion at the eastern gate, and an Infernal engine, half-in and half-out of the Gate, burns with eldritch fire.

“Nice work, Dominix!” I call out. “Now keep it up!”

“Sir! Middlegate!” comes Stonehoof’s cry, and I focus my attention on the largest, central gateway. What I see there… I can’t even describe, not really. No pony has ever needed words to describe the blot of malign darkness standing before the Gate. It’s painful to look at, a complete absence of light and warmth and hope, but some of the details are clear. Bipedal, like Discord, but hunched over and robed, like some kind of sickly diamond dog. It don’t take much to figure out what it is.

“Hullo again, Miss Magoth,” I growl, gritting my teeth. “Time for a proper Equestrian welcome. Stonehoof! Novalight! On my mark, charge your secondary targets!”

They confirm, and I take a steep ascent, flying up, and up, and up some more, until I’m a thousand feet above Middlegate. As I hover in place, I watch Stonehoof prepare his ponies to charge again, and I wonder, briefly, how else this might have gone. How another Hurricane, a smarter or a wiser Hurricane, might have saved the day, thrashed the demons, and gone home to a parade, a warm bed and a warmer Princess. How another me might have won the fight without losing everything else.

And then I crest the arc and begin my Hammerhead descent.

“Mark in three!” I cry, powering into the fall with five powerful strokes of my wings. Within seconds I reach terminal velocity, and I lock my wings against my sides to reduce drag as much as I can.

“Two!” I cry, as the ground advances on me at an impossible speed. With a practiced move, I tap a button at the middle of my croupiere with my wingtip, and the hidden blades in my black and gold barding snap back into place, adding drag and causing a monstrous, screaming whistle as I descend.

“One!” I extend my wings, and every bone in my body shakes as I try to pull up from my dive. Maybe it’s my armor, screaming in the wind and rattling from the sheer force of my descent, or maybe it’s just my hate, flowing so free that she can feel it, but Magoth looks up at me then, comprehending too late what’s about to happen.

“MARK!”

I level off, mere inches from the ground, and far too quickly for Magoth to evade. With a parched cry, she tries to stumble away, but my outstretched wing catches her across the chest and a black gout of steaming ichor spurts into the air, splattering against the ground and across my armor. The metal of my barding smokes and scores, and the stench of sulfur is thick and heady, but I grit my teeth and ignore it. Grimacing, I risk a glance at the battlefield.

My heart leaps. Stonehoof’s charge has routed the bull-demons around Middlegate, and Novalight’s unicorns are is destroying the last war engine as I duel the demon queen. A mass of bull demons roil at the Tartaran side of the gate, ready to advance, but Magoth stands and screams, and the mass steps back in fear and confusion as she turns to face me.

“INSECT!” she screams, and her black rage nearly overpowers me again. “WORM! YOU WILL BEG FOR DEATH BEFORE I AM DONE WITH YOU!”

I summon Celestia’s face in my mind’s eye and draw my strength from her image, pushing the darkness back. My vision clears, and I refocus on my attack, pulling a tight Immelpony to gain some altitude and extending my wingblades into strike formation as I dive towards the demoness.

“Shut your hole and bleed for me again!” I cry.

Maybe not the most inspiring thing I've ever said, but that’s why I’m not a poet.

I swoop in at top speed, but as I close in I see Magoth’s hands begin to… glow? The opposite of glow: an inky shadow roils and grows around her withered fingertips as she mutters foul words into the wind. I know a spell being cast when I see one, but I clench my jaw as I speed towards her, not knowing what to expect.

She strikes without any warning, without any grand gestures, and it’s all I can do to peel off hard enough to maneuver around the shadowy ball of energy she hurls at me. It’s a chill so cold it burns, a fire so black it devours light, and I only barely evade it: the hairs on my back legs crisp and singe as I spin and roll away from her deadly magic.

I hear Magoth’s dry, rasping laugh as I turn to execute a high-speed pitchback. The maneuver gains me some height and lets me roll into a tight turn to make another pass at her. She thinks she’s ready for me, but I’ve learned from her. She'd tested me for a year to learn how Equestrians fight, but I’d just tested her, as well -- and now I know what she’s capable of. I juke randomly as I speed towards her, making her aim less certain. She unleashes another blast of cold fire towards me, but this time I know what to look for, and I dodge it, barely, tipping my wings as it passes me by and using their bladed extensions to strike at her again.

Almost too late, she realizes I’ve slipped past her magic, and by then she has no way to escape me: though she manages to turn away from the worst of my attack, my razors slice cleanly across her shoulder and back, leaving more stinking, smoking ichor on my armor and the ground below the arch.

Her scream this time is a primal one, of hate unquenched and vengeance denied, and I bare my teeth as I track her, making slow, uneven turns around her to gauge my next move. I have no doubt she’ll bring me down eventually, but to my surprise she quenches her dark fire, turns away and moves quickly back through the Gate.

I begin to fly after her in pursuit, but my first real glimpse through the Gate gives me pause, and I allow her to shuffle into the reddish, hazy darkness of Tartarus as I realize what I’m seeing.

Entire columns of the ruddy-skinned demons hold ranks no more than a quarter-mile from the Gates, massed and waiting upon the bleak, broken grey plains of Tartarus. The bloodlit, ashen sky limits my vision, but I can see thousands upon thousands of demons waiting in ranks and files. At least three dozen war machines stand ready, scattered amongst the ranks, waiting for the command to move forward.

At last, the truth. We have no hope against this enemy. We never did.

“Commander!” Stonehoof cries out, shaking me from my reverie. “The demons are regrouping.”

“Fall back to the Gate proper,” I reply, nodding to myself as I watch the demons churn in confusion. The game has played out as well as I could’ve hoped, but now it’s time to bring it all to the bloody end.

“Novalight, Stormbreaker -- all forward troops, form up with Stonehoof at the Tartaran Gate!”

“Acknowledged, Commander,” comes Novalight’s response.

I peer into Middlegate again. We’ll never survive the onslaught, but surviving it isn’t the plan. It’s not about winning; it’s about losing as slowly as we can.

“Stormbreaker,” I say, gently tapping my helm. “We’re about to enter Middlegate. Do you copy?”

I wait a second, and one more, and then I flatten my ears and shake my head.

“Stonehoof, Novalight: Razor Wing’s gone quiet. We’re goin’ in without ‘im”

“Acknowledged,” they reply, like the good soldiers they are, and they gather in a defensive formation around Middlegate as the bull demons begin to circle around us.

I fly to the upper arch of the Gate and spin in midair, hovering to face the brave soldiers who have marched so far and fought so hard, my beloved, devoted, doomed battle-stallions and war-mares. I have never been so proud of my ponies, and I have never been so ashamed of myself.

But I have to lead them to their deaths now, so there’s no room left for pride or shame.

“Form up and march, you blaggards!” I cry, giving them the rough and tumble Commander they know best. “Stonehoof, staggered formations! Novalight, assume focal position! Into the Gate and set defensive lines! Rearguard, form up when everypony else has crossed over and line up along the arch! Let’s show these filthy shits what Equestrians are made of! For Sun and Moon!”

“For Equestria!” they cry, and without a moment’s hesitation they march into Tartarus itself for me, leaving their country, their homes, their loved ones and their world behind them forever.

I fly in ahead to get a lay of the land, but once I’ve passed the arch I have no time for details. As the first of our line cross the threshold of the stone archway, a column of demons breaks formation and charges our position with a ragged cry. The ground thunders as they stampede towards us, and Stonehoof’s infantry lock their shields and brace for impact at the front of our formation.

I land at Stonehoof’s side and nod once at him. “Make ‘em bleed for every foot, Major.” I tell him.

“A hundred gallons for every inch, ” he replies, glancing over at me and smirking.

“Make it two hundred and we may win this yet.”

He chuckles, and then his laughter stills as he lowers his visor. “It’s been an honor, Commander,” he says, staring his death in the face.

“The honor’s been mine,” I say, and I mean it, and then the time for talking is over.

They come at us from from all sides, and as the bull demons slam against Stonehoof’s phalanx, the infernal war machines cast their vile fire at us. The flames set everything ablaze, ponies and demons alike, and the screams of both mix in an unholy chorus of pain and death.

I leap into the air, hovering above my soldiers to direct them. In return, they respond to me as though they’re in my head, hearing my thoughts as I think them. For the first time today and possibly the last time ever, I sing out in exultation as the flow of battle guides and consumes me. A formation splits here, and a war engine’s green fire spatters harmlessly against the barren earth. A shield wall turns there, and the bull demons find a solid defense instead of a vulnerable flank. Another war engine prepares to strike only to be destroyed by raw unicorn magic, and green fire spills from the wreckage, setting demons alight by the score. Despite all odds, we hold the line.

And then Magoth comes.

Laughing shrilly, she appears from nowhere and unleashes her dark fire at Stonehoof’s stalwart infantry. Without the speed and maneuverability of flight on their side they have no chance to escape her wrath, and all I can do is watch while their armor melts to slag on their bodies. Still they try to rush her, even as they stagger and crawl in howling agony towards the beast that brought their end. Within half a minute, most of Stonehoof’s soldiers are dead or dying. Even the rearguard holding the line at the Gate are beginning to fail now, as wounds, exhaustion and attrition take their toll.

We’re about out of time.

“Novalight!” I call out desperately. “Do something or it’s all over, lass!”

As I yell, the light from the Gate behind me dims. I risk a glance behind me, through the Gate, above the battle, to see --

Darkness. Equestria is dark: the day has turned to night. For a second I’m sure the demons have done something new and terrible, but then I take heart as I see what’s happened. It’s an eclipse, a rarity on Equestria. The Sun and the Moon overlap each other, something that can only happen when both Princesses will it.

I swallow and nod to myself. That’s them. That’s my Sun and Moon, doing their job. All we need to do is to hold the line just a little longer, to die just a little slower.

A bolt of furious energy explodes from Novalight’s horn, and the power of the entire unicorn wedge strikes directly at Magoth. The demoness is engulfed in pure energy, her dark fire quenched, and for an entire second I think that this might be the miracle I was hoping for.

And then my hope fades completely. Magoth is laughing, just laughing, as she’s bathed in the wedge’s energy. If I were standing where the demoness was, there’d be nothing left of me but a fine mist -- but all the demon queen can do is laugh and wag her finger at Novalight, as though she’d caught the unicorn doing something naughty after school.

The ground underhoof shakes, and there’s a blinding flash of light just outside the Gate. Cracks form in the massive stone archways, and the glowing runes carved into the Gate begin to sputter and spark, like the coals of a dying fire being touched by the wind.

Negligently, Magoth grasps the unicorns’ magic as if it were a physical thing, and then she turns it somehow in her hand, smiling grimly. Almost too fast to follow, the bright cord of magic fades and darkens, and a line of inky, stygian blackness traces its way back towards the unicorn wedge. Before Novalight can so much as shout a warning, the blackness strikes her full on, shattering both her horn and her skull. Uncontained, Magoth’s dark power arcs from Novalight’s ruined body like a lightning storm, instantly striking down the rest of the unicorns in the wedge with a ruinous storm of black energy.

I look back to the demon queen in hatred, and then I realize, suddenly, that there’s nothing left between her and the Gate but me. She sees it, too, and her smile spreads wide. Stonehoof’s phalanx is broken and his soldiers are dead or scattered, with only the rearguard still alive to fight a losing battle on the Equestrian side of the gate. The unicorn wedge is gone, just gone… and after all that, after all the death and horror, the Gates are still open. We’d come so close. So bloody close.

Magoth smiles and points at me, and the next column of bull demons begins their stampede to the Gate. It doesn’t matter what I do, whether I fly out of the way or let them trample me underfoot, they’ll break through to Equestria, slaughtering the rearguard and --

“FOR EQUESTRIA!” comes an unexpected cry from behind me, and I turn to watch in relief as Stormbreaker dives through the Gate and into Tartarus with Razor Wing at his back. Heedless of the danger, they strike mercilessly at the rushing demons and soar out of reach just in time. Dozens of demons fall in mid-charge as the armed pegasi cut through them, and Stormbreaker sows chaos among the enemy’s ranks with bloodthirsty abandon as he and his wingponies stall the demons’ advance.

“NO!” Magoth screams, raising her arms to lash out again with her black, unholy fire. Careless of her aim, she unleashes her cold fire frantically, and Stormbreaker’s flyers begin to fall from the air like stones as Magoth roasts them alive inside their armor. The bull demons, equally fearful of their master’s rage and Razor Wing’s assault, halt their advance on the Gate, trying to escape the slaughter.

I let myself breathe again. Stormbreaker’s bought Celie and Luna a little more time, and for a moment I watch him and Razor Wing sacrificing themselves for these last, precious seconds.

And then it strikes me. There’s nothing left for me to command. My soldiers have done their duty. It’s time for me to do mine, time to add my seconds to the clock.

“FOR CELESTIA!” I cry, swooping and diving straight for Magoth. She turns to face me, smiling like she always knew I’d come for her, but she’s never seen a pegasus fly like me. Even on my worst day I’m the best damned flyer in all of Equestria. On my best day, no one can come close. And maybe today ain’t my best day, but right now I’ve got nothing left to lose, and I laugh like a madman as I close the gap.

I know her spell’s coming, and I roll at the last second to try to get clear, but the bloody witch changes things up, and what I expected to be a bolt of energy winds up as a cloud of darkness. Its leading edge catches my left front leg before I can compensate, and I roar in pain as the stench of sulfur, burned fur, and charred flesh assails my nose, but I extend my wingblades and bear down on her at top speed. All pain does now is fuel my rage.

She tries to dodge me at the last possible moment, but she’s slow, and she telegraphs her desperate escape attempt with plenty of time to spare. I adjust my flight effortlessly, and I yell triumphantly as my blade strikes true, slicing her deep from crotch to crown and knocking her off her feet. Gouts of vile black ichor spill from her massive wound; my wingblade smokes and hisses, and she screams again, a gurgling cry, as I execute a tight wingover to make another pass. Somehow, she struggles to her feet, trying to get her bearings, and I smile grimly as I close in on her. She has no idea where I am. I’m going to take her filthy, maggot-laden head. I’m going to end her.

Without warning, an enormous blast wave knocks me out of the air and slams me straight into the ground. My ears ring, and a series of dull aches along my barrel tell me my barding has crumpled around me in at least a dozen places. I raise my right hoof to my chin and pry off my ruined black and gold chamfron as I try to get my bearings. My hoof comes back bloody.

Behind me is only darkness; when I turn to get a better look, pain shoots through me like a bolt of lightning, but beyond the stone archway there’s only more of the broken, soot-stained land of Tartarus. I nearly weep with relief, despite my pain.

They finished the ritual. They shut the Gates. My ponies are safe. My love is safe.

We’ve won.

My senses recover slowly, and I try to rise to my feet, but instead I cry out in agony: my left leg is charred beyond recognition, and it simply can’t bear my weight anymore. The sound of my cry echoes strangely, and I realize that the silence surrounding me isn’t just my ears trying to recover from the sound of the blast. Tartarus itself has grown deathly quiet.

I cast around, looking for… for anything but the corpses I find littered around me. I knew each and every one of these soldiers by name and by face, but what’s left of them now are sad, bloody shadows of the brave ponies they’d been. Every one of them died a hero. Every one of them died for Equestria. Every one of them died because I failed them.

For them, I weep.

Eventually, a shuffling sound draws my attention, and I look up to see Magoth approaching me, an unreadable expression on the rotting ruin of her face. Row upon row of bull-demons wait behind her, still as statues, watching with complete obedience and in total silence.

The demon queen’s sackcloth robes are burned, tattered and soaked in stinking, black ichor, and she’s moving slowly, hobbling as though she’s in an immense amount of pain, but still she comes to me. She watches me as she does, staring at me with an unreadable expression. I try to struggle to my hooves again, but I slip in a pool of blood, and she laughs. The sound is raw and shrill, like the last scream of a dying thing, and I flatten my ears and bare my teeth as I endure it.

“You are mine now, beast,” Magoth finally says as she draws near, her voice unexpectedly mild as she stands over me. “Your suffering will be legendary. Even in Tartarus.”

“It don’t matter what happens to me,” I say, raising my head in defiance and spitting at her feet. “Equestria is safe. We won, ye gangrenous hag. Do your worst.”

As it happens, that’s exactly what she does.

Chapter 1: An Unexpected Pony

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“I’m -- we’re just worried about you, Paul, that’s all,” Lessa says, reaching over from her seat on the couch to pat me on my knee. Her Liz Taylor eyes glint as she tries to attract my attention, and I expertly stifle the urge to wince at her transparent attempt. Her date, Greg, leans back and half-heartedly stifles a yawn, as bored by her mild flirtation as I am embarrassed for her.

“Lessa,” I say, gently removing her hand from my trousers, “I’m fine. I’ve told you, I’m fine. I’m doing what I want to do now, there’s seriously nothing to worry about. Greg, can I get you another beer?”

“No thanks, Harken,” he says, using my last name with that bold, authoritative voice politicians love to use when they’re trying to make an impression. He runs his fingers absently through his immaculately styled black hair and smiles vacuously. “I’m driving. Appreciate it, though.”

“I could sure use one man,” Bobby says, finally interested enough by a topic to speak up. He picks up his empty from the coffee table and waggles it at me. “Totally dry over here.”

I nod thankfully at him, allowing myself a small grin, and push myself out of my comfy leather couch. “Same?”

“Same,” he replies cheerfully, and I head towards the kitchen.

Tonight’s the train wreck I knew it would be, but that’s okay. Honestly, I feel bad for Lessa, but she needs this kind of a night to understand that we really are through. Breaking up with her was one of the toughest things I’d ever done -- she’s smart, she’s motivated, she’s successful, she’s attractive, and she’s… very demonstrative in her affections. Just about any guy would say she’s the complete package. Hell, I still say she’s the complete package.

And no, I’m not crazy, though I suppose I can understand why she might think that. I’d be a liar if I said I hadn’t thought about getting back together with her. Sure, she’s not perfect, but nobody is, and there’s a lot that’s right about her, too. We had some good times together. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t gotten over us yet, and I’m pretty sure Greg is at least partly an attempt to make me jealous. I hope he isn’t, I really hope she’s moved on, but I have my suspicions.

I won’t even deny that part of me is jealous. I cared a lot for Lessa, and I probably always will. She’ll be the one who got away when all of this is over with, and a big part of me would love to take her back and say to hell with all the hard work that’s still ahead of me. Part of me would love nothing more than to go back to being… what I had been. Part of me wants nothing more than to leave reality-breaking and mind-bending to sterner folks wearing wizard hats, flowing capes and wild beards.

But I won’t. I took stock of my position eighteen months ago, and I know this is the only way forward. My battle plan was clear once I determined my goal: I put my relationships on hold, I closed my consultancy, I got my dead ass back in shape, I spent most of my savings on occult artifacts, I changed my diet, I stopped watching television and I’ve read nothing but old books and ancient texts for the last year and a half. There was nothing wrong with Lessa; our relationship was just an unfortunate casualty. Maybe when it’s all over we’ll figure out how to try again, and maybe we won’t, but I can’t let myself think that way. I’m not stopping now. It’s too important.

Reluctantly, I suppress my excitement, but I smile to myself before snagging a cold one for Bobby and heading back to the living room. Lessa’s a good woman, and she’ll make someone real happy one day, but what’s waiting for me at midnight tonight is something I lost a long, long time ago -- lost, and never thought I could get back. Something that’s more important than anything in the entire world. And now that I know I can get it back, no matter what it costs me, no matter how much it hurts, I will get it back.

By the time I get back to the living room, Greg is standing and helping Lessa into her coat, and it’s all I can do to keep myself from audibly sighing in relief. Lessa looks disappointed, but Greg’s expression lies somewhere between boredom and impatience.

“Going already? It’s only eight” I say, briefly taking on the role of Captain Obvious for simplicity’s sake.

“Greg’s got to fly to DC in the morning,” Lessa says, unsubtly tossing her immaculately styled mane as she glances at me. “The Senator asked for him specifically to help prepare for a committee meeting next week. Isn’t that amazing?” she finishes, dramatically clutching Greg’s arm. “I’m so proud of him.”

“Amazing,” I deadpan, handing the beer bottle to Bobby. “Good luck with that, Greg.”

“Yep,” he says, extending his hand to me and assuming the emotionless, reptilian smile so commonly used by members of his profession. “Thanks.”

I briefly consider letting him hang there -- not because of his relationship with Lessa, but because my respect for politicians lies at a level roughly equivalent to my respect for ticks, mosquitoes, leeches and lawyers: to wit, avoid at all costs, and remove with prejudice once they start sucking you dry. But then I remember:

I shall bear no man ill in will or deed.

This is what the Book tells me. I can’t just pretend to be pure, I have to mean it. Changing that cynical, mocking, angry part of myself has been one of the toughest parts of the process, even tougher than letting Lessa go. It’s so easy to let old habits get in the way.

Who knows, maybe he’s the exception to the rule. Maybe he’s an honest, incorruptible politician. It could totally happen, right? And even if he’s not the exception, it’s not my place to judge him.

So I smile, I take his hand, I shake it, and I walk the pair to my front door, booting them out of my house with as much polite decorum and sincerity as I can muster.

I watch the pair head down the walk, take a long breath and realize I have no regrets. It’s a good feeling, and it’s probably the first time I’ve felt it in… I don’t know how long, really.

“Awkward,” Bobby says, reaching for the TV remote as I shut the door. “Why did you want them here anyway?”

“I didn’t,” I say honestly, flopping back on the couch. “She’s relentless; she’s been dying to show him off to me for days. I agreed so she could see how pointless it is. I just want her to get me out of her head.”

“Rough life, stud,” he says, settling on a hockey game. The Rangers are losing. “She’s been stalking you for what, a year now?”

“Year and a half.”

“A year and a god damn half,” Bobby repeats, swigging his beer. “Damn, man. If a woman chased me for a year and a half after I dumped her ass I’d let her have me once or twice, you know?”

I don’t reply, and he peers at me out of the corner of his eye, his thick, curly black hair and beard hiding his expression. “You’re really committed to this, huh?” he asks, his tone taking a turn for the serious.

Bobby knows. Well, ‘know’ is probably a strong word: I haven’t shared any specific details with him, but since I met him a year ago he’s become my closest friend, and his honest, down-to-earth thinking has kept me on the straight and narrow more than once. He’s well-read, and despite his rough, carefree appearance, nothing escapes his notice. He’s been putting two and two together ever since I dumped Lessa, and his guesses are getting closer and closer to the truth. I don’t volunteer anything, but I don’t bother denying it either.

“Yeah,” I reply. “I’m committed.”

“Is it worth it?” he presses me, just a little. “I’ve seen what you sacrificed, man. You’re a way better dude than you were when I first met you, and I hope you don’t mind me saying so. I’d hate to see a good guy suffer for nothing, you know?”

Coming from anyone else, I’d ignore the question, but it’s Bobby. He’s proven that he’s got my back. He’s earned the right to ask, and he deserves an honest answer.

“Yeah,” I say, settling into the couch and thinking briefly about what’s going to happen at midnight. “It’s worth it. So let’s drink to it before I toss your sorry ass out the door, too.”

He laughs, and we drink, and I toss his sorry ass out the door not long after. I promise him I’ll tell him all about it tomorrow, and he says he’ll bring the beers.

Assuming I’m still alive tomorrow, I’ll take him up on that.

* * *

Six minutes to midnight.

The wards are in place: a nine-foot diameter protective circle is set into the wooden attic floor via four five-foot marble tiles engineered to slide and lock together into a perfect square. The circle’s glyphs and symbols are meticulously rendered in inlaid stone and metal, triple-checked for accuracy, colored per the precise directions in the Book, and conjoined seamlessly at all the critical juncture points. An oversized duffel bag full of occult miscellany, like incense for area cleansing, idols for defensive spellwork, and various random but useful gadgets, sits behind me and just within reach, under an antique table. Just in case things get especially weird.

Five minutes.

A square of parchment, inscribed in golden ink with a completed magic square, lays complete at the center of the circle, illuminated by a single hanging electric light and a half dozen thick storm candles positioned around the room. This last magic square had been a doozy: unlike my earlier summonings, this one had been left intentionally incomplete in the Book. An exercise for the student, in a sense -- and a way to assure that only the studied, the pure and the wise would be able to access the ritual’s power. I’ve triple-checked the formulae, and I’ve validated the results a half-dozen times. It has to be right. It damn well better be right.

Four minutes.

I light a tiny brass brazier at the northeast corner of the marble tiles and watch the flames slowly consume the incense as I begin a ritual chant. When the chant is done, the last of the twelve infernal Powers, Magoth, will find herself entrapped within my Circle. Powerless and unable to retreat, she’ll be forced to bargain with me for her freedom, just like her brothers and sisters did. I have no interest in forcing her to do my bidding, though. I have a much simpler request in mind.

Three minutes.

I take a lock of my own red hair and place it in a lead receptacle at the southeast corner of the Circle, readying the Circle for its visitor. Most sorcerers would use this opportunity for something much more worldly; summoning an Infernal Power allows the summoner to find lost treasures, discover secrets, influence others, acquire wealth -- in short, anything I’d ever want would be in my grasp, but all I want is what’s mine. All I want is what she and her brothers stole from me.

Well, that’s partly a lie. I want a lot of things. But I know better than to ask for more.

Two minutes.

Wincing, I carefully slice my palm with an obsidian knife, letting a drop of blood drip into a small silver basin at the southwest corner of the Circle. Three years ago, I couldn’t even imagine a world where I’d do this again, let alone one where I cared about things like purity of thought. Two years ago, I couldn’t imagine changing my entire life to chase after the ritual magics from an old medieval manuscript.

But here I was. Eighteen months ago, I’d summoned an Infernal Prince into this very attic. I’d been scared as, well, hell, and I’d gotten lucky. Stuttering and out of my mind with fear, I’d forced Baelphegor to make a deal with me. By the time he’d gone, leaving the stink of sulphur behind in my rafters, I could feel the difference. Part of me had been restored. I was on the right track, and I knew it.

One minute.

I raise my voice as I reach the final verse of the chant. A crack of thunder sounds outside, and a torrential rain, completely unpredicted by the weatherman, begins to pound on the roof. A car alarm goes off in the distance, and most of the neighborhood dogs begin to bark. I can feel energy, barely contained, suffuse the air around me.

Midnight.

With the last word of the chant I breathe on a small tin bell at the west side of the Circle. It clanks three times, sounding more like a sleigh bell than a church bell as my breath caresses the metal. The quality of the sound doesn’t matter though; what matters is the association of the metal with the direction, with the element, and most importantly, with me. Everything is in order. Everything is as it should be.

At the last sound of the bell, the protective Circle springs to life. Glyphs and symbols of every color abruptly materialize around the circumference of the circle, floating up from the tiles and glowing like multicolored fireflies as they hang suspended in a rich, golden-hued field that spans the circumference of the Circle.

The light and the candles flicker as the sound of the bell dies, and then they all go out simultaneously, the light bulb extinguishing itself with a loud pop as a bright light begins to emanate from the center of the protective Circle. Squinting, I try to watch, but I have to look away as the brightness becomes painful. The light is so intense that it leaves behind an improbable afterimage: a unicorn, rearing. I can see it more clearly with my eyes shut than anything else with my eyes open for at least a minute.

Then, finally, the afterimage fades and my sight returns to me, and only the faint lights of the circle’s floating glyphs and the warm amber aura of the Circle’s protective field provide any illumination. Warily, I stare into the Circle, and at last I can make out a dark shape lying inside, apparently prone.

The last demon is within my grasp. My search is finally over.

“Magoth,” I say, commanding the demon by name. “You know who I am. I have summoned and mastered your brethren, and now I have summoned you. I have sealed this place by the elements of my body, and you are bound to me. You will complete my contract, or you will never leave this place.”

The demon in the circle shifts, and as my eyes become better adjusted, I could swear I see the creature yawn, extending a pair of forelimbs in a deep stretch, before speaking aloud in a sleepy feminine voice.

“Spiiike! I told you to stop eating pizza before bedtime! Gah, it smells like sulphur in… wait, this isn’t my… what!?”

I frown and squint, trying to get a better look at the demon in the Circle. I’ve heard swearing, pleading, laughing and even sexual propositions as the first thing out of a demon’s mouth, but this? This is definitely a new approach, and I watch the creature warily, wondering what other surprises it has for me.

As I watch, the creature’s amorphous form turns in place, quickly spotting me, and its huge, reflective eyes shine in the dim light of the Circle’s protective glyphs, widening further as they scan my confused face.

“Sooo… I’m… not in Equestria anymore, am I?” it asks.

Chapter 2: The Pony in the Circle

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I gaze suspiciously at the vague form of the demon in the Circle as the unexpected rain continues to pound on my roof. In the murky darkness of my attic, its shape is vague at best, and the faint amber light of the Circle’s ward is too dim to do more than highlight a curve here or a line there. I watch as it inquisitively pokes at the walls of the Circle with something resembling an arm. Gentle waves of visible magic ripple out from its touch, and its eyes widen as it watches the patterns of energy wash over the glyphs.

“This is really advanced magic!” the demon says, its voice tinged by a hint of what seems, impossibly, to be delight. “I’ve never seen an ethereal matrix built this way before, at least not without an active source of power. How are you keeping the glyphs engaged in the protective structure? Wait, are you actually using variations in the transreality membrane potential for this? Starswirl theorized you could activate and power a matrix via the interference waveforms that result from the interaction of potential energy differentials between two tightly bound realities, but he never got farther than theory. This is incredible!”

I squint, trying to get a better look at the creature despite the darkness of the attic. I suppose the banter could just be a way to put me off my guard, but the thing in the Circle just isn’t acting very… well… demonic. And it’s definitely not sounding demonic. If it sounds like anything, it’s a college girl going on about her favorite subject.

Maybe I’d better try the ritual approach one more time.

“Magoth,” I say, peering at it dubiously. “You know who I am. I command you to name me.”

“Okay, this is a little… weird,” the maybe-demon replies hesitantly. “Are you talking to me? Because if you are, well, one, my name isn’t Magoth. And two, I’m sorry, but I have no idea who you are, other than some humanish-looking person I don’t think I recognize. We... didn’t meet at Canterlot High, did we?”

I frown. This can’t happen. If that was Magoth in there, the demon would have been compelled to speak my name. What in the hell have I summoned into my Circle?

More accurately, what not in hell have I summoned?

The probably-not-a-demon appears to tilt its sparkling eyes diagonally, and they narrow slightly. “I mean, can’t tell for sure in the dark -- honestly, I’m not even completely sure if you’re a human or a centaur! Oh, oh wait, no, you’re not Tirek’s brother are you?” it gasps. “I mean you couldn’t be, right? And besides he helped us the last time, but did Tirek have another brother? I don’t think that’s in the book anywhere but maybe I skimmed the part about the brothers and -- I mean it was kind of an emergency and all, and -- uh, look, mister centaur, I can totally explain. I, uh, I mean...”

The almost-certainly-not-a-demon chatters on as I watch with growing bemusement, and eventually it dissolves into not much more than fragmentary sentences and nervous laughter. “All a big misunderstanding. Ha! Big misunderstanding, right? VERY big. Boom! misunderstanding. Huge, and tall, extra tall. Giant. Wow! Oh, look at the time. I should go. Thanks!”

From out of the darkness at the center of the circle, a fizzle of purple sparks, emanating from a spiralled horn in what looks to be the center of the demon’s head, briefly illuminates its face. It looks…

Fuzzy. Its face looks fuzzy. Fuzzy and oddly... equine. But it’s not ‘equine’ in a flaming horse-demon from hell sort of way, which I could have reasonably expected, considering I was supposed to have summoned up the infernal princess of books, magic and shapeshifting. No, this is ‘equine’ in a cute cuddly fuzzy pony sort of way.

The definitely-not-a-demon giggles nervously. “Well! That’s different. Maybe I’ll stay here instead,” it rambles manically, poking the Circle’s wall nervously with an unseen appendage. “Yep! I think I’ll stay. Right here. Me over here, and you over there. Sounds good? Sounds good. Great!”

Something has definitely jumped a track somewhere.

“Hold on a second,” I say in a carefully neutral tone. Getting to my feet, I feel my way to a nearby shelf and locate one of the storm candles, its three wicks still smoking. I fish a lighter out of my pocket and light all three wicks, then pick the candle up and lug it back over to the Circle. Sitting down, I place the glowing candle between myself and the demon.

Tentatively, it shuffles forward, closer to the light, and the two of us take a good look at each other. Sure enough, it’s fuzzy, and though I’d doubted myself, I’d been right: it looks unusually like a horse, though her face has a less elongated quality that makes it more… familiar, I guess. So, in sum, sitting in my Circle is a small pony with a purple coat, unusually large eyes and a deep purple mane with… uh… are those highlights?

Yeah, those are highlights. Pink ones.

And that, in the middle of its forehead? That’s a horn. And though I can’t be entirely sure in the candlelight, I’m pretty sure I can make out a pair of wings folded up against its sides.

So it’s a unisus. A pegacorn. Some kind of weird mythic equine hybrid. That talks. And probably dyes its mane.

Well.

During the last eighteen months I’ve seen some outlandish things struggling to get out of that Circle of mine, and I’ve seen at least a dozen medieval illuminations of Magoth to prepare myself for some crazy manifestations, but this is definitely not what this particular demon princess is supposed to look like.

“So you’re not a centaur, and I don’t have to hyperventilate anymore,” the pegacorn erstwhile-demon says, looking at me with relief. “That’s good! And you’re definitely a human! That’s even better. So we’re on Earth! I am so relieved. Phew!”

“...no,” I venture, “I’m definitely not a centaur. And yes, I’m a human. And yes, we’re on Earth. And I’m not sure what you are yet, but I’m pretty sure you’re not Magoth.”

“That, we can definitely agree on,” it replies cheerfully. “So since I’m not, uh, Magoth, can we maybe get me out of this thing?” it asks, tapping on the Circle’s wards again with a han-- oh. With a hoof. It has hooves, apparently. Of course it does. It’d look pretty silly running around on all fours with hands at the end of its legs.

“It’s a little stuffy in here, you know,” it says, pulling me back from the hands tangent.

“Not so fast,” I say, clearing my head. “Just because you’re not Magoth doesn’t mean you’re not a demon. I need to figure out where this summons went wrong before we can make any decisions about you and that Circle.”

“You think I’m a what now? A demon?” it repeats, trying to stifle a giggle. “Silly, there’s no such thing as demons. Demons are fictional constructs created to embody and vilify antisocial, undesirable or corruptive influ--”

“Look, Purple, until five minutes ago I’d have said there was no such thing as a whatever you are, either,” I say, interrupting it. “So until I have some definitive proof that you’re not a demon, you’re not going anywhere.”

“But why would you think I’m a demon?”

“Because that’s what I was summoning when you showed up.”

“Oh,” it replies, frowning. “That would seem like a logical conclusion, wouldn’t it?”

“I thought so,” I deadpan.

“Well, list some qualities of demons then!” it says, coming quickly to a sensible solution. “I’m sure we can find at least one that I don’t have.”

I nod at the pegacorn gratefully. ”Good call. So, for one, you’d smell like sulphur,” I say, and its ears fold back along the top of its head.

“I’m gonna kill Spike. I swear I don’t usually smell like this.”

“I can’t smell anything through the Circle,” I reply, “but we’ll just take that one as failed.”

“Fine,” it grumbles. “What’s next?”

“You’d probably have a horn or two,” I say, glancing meaningfully at the horn in the middle of its forehead.

She glances upwards and crosses her eyes, and I nearly chuckle at the display. “Oh come on! I’m a uni- ehr, an alicorn! I was born with this thing! It’s how I focus my magic!”

Alicorn. Okay, fine. Sounds better than pegacorn anyway.

“Failed, sorry. But you can use magic, you say?”

The purple alicorn smiles demurely, warming to the topic. “You… could say that.”

“If you’re a demon, you probably can’t use magic from inside that Circle,” I say, narrowing my eyes at her.

“Great! I’m sure I can do magic. Hold on,” it says, narrowing its eyes. When nothing immediately happens, it blinks, peers up at its forehead, grits its teeth and furrows its brow, as though it’s thinking angry thoughts, or maybe it just needs some prune juice. At one point, it glances over at me, laughs awkwardly, and focuses harder.

Eventually, its focus is rewarded, and a fizzle of purple sparks launch into the air as a result of its concentration. I think the glyphs floating around the Circle dim a little, too, but nothing else happens.

“That’s not real impressive,” I say, lying a bit. The sparks are cute, but a demon probably couldn’t affect the Circle’s glyphs like that. Magoth is supposed to be the demon of magic, though. I need to dig a little deeper.

“You didn’t say it had to be impressive,” it replies, scowling a bit. “I’ll admit my powers are dampened in here, but come on, that’s got to count for something.”

“We’ll say inconclusive for now,” I say. “Hooves, right?”

It sighs, its face flattening in frustration as it lifts a hoof. “Right.”

I peer at the hoof more closely and nod. “Not cloven though, so inconclusive. Tail?”

“Seriously?” it huffs, maneuvering to the side and switching its long, straight tail in irritation. Its tail, I notice, also has highlights, but as it swishes its tail I notice with some embarrassment that there are more recognizable parts at that end of its anatomy than its tail.

Her tail, I should say, given the evidence.

I catch myself wondering if she does lipstick with the highlights, and then I stop myself and take a closer look, keeping my eyes on her tail, and not what’s under it.

“It’s, uh, definitely a tail, but neither hairless nor barbed, that’s good. Tongue?”

She glares at me and sticks out her tongue. “Hoo duthent hath a thun?”

“Not forked. That’s good, you can put that back,” I say, and she gives me the raspberry before she pulls her tongue back in. I snicker despite myself, and she grins, relaxing a little.

“So we’re kind of borderline here,” I say, running through a checklist of demon attributes in my head, “but I think we’re casting enough doubt on the demon theory to try one last test.”

Her expression brightens hopefully. “I’m all ears!”

“They’re not THAT big,” I say, wondering if dry humor translates to her culture.

“What aren’t that big?”

“Your ears.”

“What about my ears?” she asks, genuinely confused.

I blink, sigh, and shake my head. “Never mind. It wasn’t a very good joke anyway.”

“Oh!” she cries. “It was a joke! I get it now. You’re right.”

“I’m right?”

“It wasn’t a very good joke,” she says, her expression deadpan.

Stifling a snort, I reach behind me, digging through to the bottom of my overstuffed duffel bag, and pull out a flat iron bar curved into a long arc, about six inches wide and three feet long. This is rash, I know it’s rash, I know better than to do this. I’ve spent the last eighteen months doing everything in my power to protect myself from the corruption of demons, learning how to purify myself from their influence, learning how to evade their traps. This goes against absolutely everything I’ve learned.

But my gut tells me I’m right. Whatever this alicorn thing is, I just don’t think it’s demonic. And if that’s the case, I can’t justify keeping it a prisoner. Purification isn’t just a series of spells and rituals, it’s a philosophy. Meaning well, doing well, being well. If I’m going to get what I lost back, I have to really be pure, sincerely pure, across the board. Not just play it on TV.

I lay the arc of iron across an edge of the Circle, and the glyphs that were hovering over the Circle in that arc wink out of existence, leaving behind tiny multicolored starbursts for a brief moment before disappearing entirely. A rush of wind outside buffets the house, and I feel a strange tightening in my chest, but the sensation quickly passes. I’d never broken the Circle prematurely before, so I suppose that’s just what happens when you do. I’ll look it up later.

“That bar’s made of forged iron,” I say, pointing to the curved bar lying on the tiles.

“That’s… nice?” the alicorn says, raising an eyebrow at me.

“Forged iron nullifies ritual magic,” I say, gesturing to the gap in the Circle. “But it also physically constrains demons. Basically, if you’re not a demon, you should be able to just… leave. But if you are a demon, you’ll still be stuck inside.”

She frowns and wrinkles her nose. “How do we know forged iron won’t constrain me, too? I mean, it doesn’t at home, but that doesn’t mean it won’t here. You don’t seem like you’ve dealt with ponies before.”

“I haven’t, and I don’t really know for sure,” I reply. “Nothing I’ve read gets into the ‘why’ on the iron thing, they just say that it works in a pinch. So, yeah, it might still affect you. If it does, we’ll have to do more tests. But if it doesn’t, you’re definitely not a demon, and we’re done here.”

The alicorn returns my gaze curiously. “Okay, that’s… so what you’re saying is, if I’m not a demon, I’m free to go? Just like that?”

I shrug at her. “Look, I didn’t want to take prisoners in the first place,” I say, standing up, moving back several paces and gesturing to the break in the Circle’s magic. “Care to give it a try?”

She locks her gaze with mine and smiles appreciatively, and then slowly, carefully, she begins to walk forward. She’s graceful as she moves, exerting fine muscular control as she steps lightly and effortlessly over the iron bar, and as she moves out of the Circle I realize she’s actually a bit intimidating, physically speaking. One doesn’t tend to think of something the size of a small pony as dangerous, but in close quarters like these, with four powerful legs, wings, a big horn in the middle of her head, at least human-level intelligence and possibly even magic at her command, she could probably overpower me without much effort if she wanted to.

As her last hoof clears the iron bar, I start to wonder again if this was the smartest thing I could have done.

Her hopeful expression once she’s cleared the Circle, though, quickly assuages my fears. “Soo… not a demon?” she asks, a smirk on her face.

“Definitely not a demon,” I reply, grinning down at her.

“Well that’s --” she starts, and then her eyes roll back in her head.

Chapter 3: The Pony's Got a Problem

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“What --” I start, but before I can finish the question I’m rushing forward to stop the purple alicorn from keeling over. I get to her just in time and grunt as her full weight comes down on my side: she's not real big, but she’s probably around two hundred pounds of dead weight I wasn’t expecting to support, so for a second it’s all I can do to stay upright.

Getting my balance, I shift my own weight and ease her partway to the floor. “Purple, what’s wrong. Talk to me here,” I say, my concern growing.

There’s no answer from her, and as she slides the rest of the way to the floor, I realize that providing an answer isn’t the only thing she’s not doing.

She’s not breathing, either.

“Shit,” I say, extricating myself from her limp body. I stare at her small, limp form as it lies crumpled on the floor, and my mind races. In the Circle, she was fine. Out of the Circle, she’s dying. That’s all I’ve got.

Right. Back to the Circle.

“C’mon, alicorn girl,” I pick up her hind legs and drag her awkwardly towards the Circle. I heft her body up as I try to get her over the iron bar that holds the Circle open, but my hold on her is too ungainly for me to drag her all the way past without moving it. I have no idea what might happen if she were to nudge that iron bar out of position, but if the Circle became active with her in the middle of it, I don’t think it’d be great for her figure.

Dropping her hind legs, I turn and stand astride her, reaching down and getting my hands under her barrel, pinning her wings to her side. Gritting my teeth, I lift and drag her backwards until I think I can get her over the iron bar. “God damn, Purple,” I grunt, “maybe a little less grain with your hay, huh?

Getting both of us over that iron bar takes a bit of luck, but I finally get her fully contained within the Circle. I lower her carefully and drop to my knees in front of her. Gently, I lift her muzzle, and I watch her, anxiously, waiting for her to breathe, to flutter her eyelids, for any improvement at all.

There’d better be some goddamned improvement. I know CPR, but I have no idea how I can get my mouth over her entire muzzle, and I sure as hell can’t close up her entire nose with my thumb and forefinger --

And then she breathes. Thank whoever’s watching over us right now, she breathes, a sudden, gasping, wrenching breath, followed by another deep breath of air. Her eyes flutter, as though she’s just coming out of a deep sleep. I exhale in relief. It’s bad enough I’ve brought her here by mistake. If anything else had happened --

Unfortunately, something else is happening. As she begins breathing regularly again, the light in the attic dims considerably. I glance away from Purple, and it’s immediately clear to me that some of the Circle’s floating glyphs have inexplicably dimmed: some even wink out of existence as I watch, the faded starbursts of their disruption lingering dully for a moment before disappearing. Never seen that before.

“Getting awfully familiar, aren’t we?” Purple says weakly, an echo of mirth in her voice. I look back to her; her eyes are half-open, and I thank the higher powers that she’s okay. Then I realize we’re basically nose-to-nose and I’m still holding her muzzle. Abruptly, it feels intimate, and it’s pretty awkward.

“You weren’t really in any condition to argue,” I say, attempting a smirk and looking back at her. Very purple, very large, those eyes. Unexpectedly guileless.

“A gentlecolt always asks first,” she softly mocks, blinking rapidly as she tries to clear her head.

“And I’m neither gentle nor colt, so we’re good,” I reply, gently extricating myself from our impromptu embrace so she can stretch out on the floor, which she does immediately. "How are you feeling?”

“Like I just got run over by the Ponyville Express,” she says, and though I don’t know the exact reference I get the idea. “What happened? The last thing I remember is you saying I definitely wasn’t a demon.”

“That was about a second before you fainted,” I say, frowning. “And two before you stopped breathing.”

“I what?!” she gasps, concern and a hint of panic in her voice. “I stopped breathing?”

“For less than a minute, but... yeah. The second you left the circle, you collapsed. You recovered after I dragged you back inside, though, so I think it has something to do with the Circle. Results support the theory, you know?”

She nodded in agreement. “I do,” she said, looking at me askance. “And thank you. But why did I collapse? And why did bringing me back revive me? The results are clear --”

“-- but the root causes aren’t.”

She nods again, a wry smirk on her face. “Exactly. You’re my kind of pony… uh… mister? You are a mister, right?”

I consider her implied question for a moment. I’m not generally in the habit of giving demons my name. They do nasty things with names, once they have them. And I’m not really sure what alicorns are, or what they might do with a name, but at this point I’m pretty sure she’s not a demon. She may be here for a while yet. And she didn’t try anything funny on me when she first left the Circle.

It makes sense to be civil.

“Paul Harken,” I say. “But just call me Harken. And I’m a mister.”

"Harken," she replies, saying it with unusual care. “And I’m a miss, but call me Twilight.”

“Twilight,” I repeat, raising an eyebrow. She smiles, nods, and holds out a hoof to me, which I decide to bump with my fist.

Definitely not the kind of weird I’d planned for tonight.

* * *

The freak rainstorm has all but passed, leaving a gentle patter of rain on the roof and the spillage from my gutters as the only sounds aside from the two of us in the attic. I’ve cracked a window to let a light breeze through, and Twilight and I are sitting together inside the Circle, leaning against its golden field and facing each other.

“So what you’re telling me backs up what I learned the last time I was here. You humans don’t actually possess any of your own magic.” Twilight frowns, peering at my forehead in the dim glow of the Circle’s floating glyphs. “What I don’t understand is why I’m having such a hard time as a pony. I didn’t have any problems like this the last time.”

“You weren’t a pony last time?” I ask.

“Actually, I was a human. Long story,” she adds, deferring my obvious question until later. “So even you doing… whatever it is you do, you can’t just, I don’t know, wiggle your eyebrows and make something levitate?”

I stare at Twilight, wiggle my eyebrows, wait for her to roll her eyes, then shake my head. “No. No human is innately magical, and though our world has some natural magic sources of its own, they only exist in very specific places -- ‘ley lines,’ we call them. Outside of those lines and their junctions, a construct like this Circle has to be prepared by combining specific rituals, purpose-crafted tools and sacrificial components, all of which are required to --”

“-- to open a conduit to a secondary realm where you can access and control greater magics,” she finishes, nodding as she does. “I get it. It’s like lighting a fire. You can probably muster enough magic on your own to make a spark, but unless you’ve built up a firepit, laid down kindling and set up a woodpile, you’ll never get a flame.”

I chuckle at her. “Close enough for me.”

We’ve been doing this for about an hour now, lobbing questions back and forth about our worlds and the nature of magic as we try to figure out what it is that’s trying to kill her outside the Circle. There are so many questions I want to ask this amazing sentient being from another world -- and I suspect the feeling’s mutual -- but the longer we wait, the more of the Circle’s glyphs deactivate. I’m afraid it means that the Circle’s degrading over time, and if I’m right then we need to focus on her safety before we can indulge each others’ curiosity.

“So there’s really only one question left,” she says, peering at me oddly. “And I think I already know the answer.”

“What’s the question?”

“Bear with me for a minute. I want to test my theory, but the only way I can test it is by stepping outside your Circle again.”

I frown at her. “Purple, you stopped breathing last time we tried that.”

“I know,” she says. “But we’re forewarned this time, and I think I might be able to get enough of a result by only going halfway out. And that should give you enough time to observe any changes.”

“I assume by ‘changes’ you mean aside from not breathing,” I say, scowling.

She winces. “Look, I know it sounds bad, and I know it’s on you if I pass out again, but if I’m right then staying partly inside your Circle will keep me conscious,” she says, sounding fairly sure of herself. “So I need you to watch my cutie mark when I do it.”

“To watch your what now?”

“My cutie mark,” she repeats, swishing her tail and gesturing towards her hind quarters, where a multicolored tattoo appears to be stamped on her butt.

“You want me to watch that tattoo on your butt?” I ask, a bit confused.

“It’s not a tattoo,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “Ponies all receive cutie marks as part of their coming of age. They indicate what our special talents are when we discover them.”

“So you’re good at... star clusters?” I ask, leaning in to squint at her rump in the dim light. “Supernovae? Bedazzling? Origami? I have no idea what that’s supposed to be,” I say to her, leaning back again.

“Magic,” she says, rolling her eyes again but clearly amused. “I like the supernovae idea though. I love astronomy. I’ve got this telescope at the top of a tower in my --”

“Twilight,” I say, interrupting her with some reluctance. “Tell me later, okay?”

Another one of the floating glyphs winks out in a half-hearted starburst.

“Right,” Twilight says, refocusing. “Astronomy later, plan now. One, I walk halfway out of the Circle. Two, you watch my cutie mark and note any changes. Three, if I start showing any physical symptoms, you help me get back inside the Circle. Got it?”

“And why again would that mark of yours change?”

“It’s magical,” she says, a little impatiently. “Trust me.”

“Good enough,” I say, standing up and stepping back out of the Circle. “Ready when you are.”

“Right,” she says hesitantly, getting to all fours and looking suspiciously at the gap in the Circle. “Don’t let me fall?”

“So long as you’re giving a non-gentle non-colt permission to get familiar,” I snark.

Rewarded by another raspberry, I smirk, back off and give her room to advance.

Tentatively, she does, and though our banter has been light-hearted I’m watching intently for changes to this mark of hers, and for any physical complications. I understand we have to take a few chances to figure out what’s going on, but I don’t like that she’s the one taking all of them on herself. Especially when I’m the guy responsible for bringing her here in the first place.

When she’s halfway over the curved iron bar, she stops, swallows, and glances at me. “Feeling fine so far,” she says.

“Right here if you need me,” I say, moving to her side.

“You know, I’m starting to wonder if it was a temporary shift in trans… uh --” Twilight starts, and then her eyes start to flutter as she loses her train of thought. I move to her side, but as I do I notice something strange about that mark of hers. “Results,” I say, supporting her at her right shoulder and moving her back slowly. “We have results. Get back in there.”

“Oh… okay… okay I’m just… yeah,” she says, a little deliriously, but she does what I ask with a minimum of stumbling, and I’m able to get her back into the Circle without further incident.

At least, without further incident to her. The Circle, on the other hand, isn’t looking so healthy. About half the Circle’s remaining glyphs wink out as I get her back inside, and though the Circle’s field has stabilized again, the amber glow of the protective field has dimmed to the point where it’s almost imperceptible. I don’t like this at all.

“You with me, Purple?” I ask, still supporting her, and she nods, blinking furiously.

“I’m here,” she says as she steadies herself, then sits back on her haunches, placing a hoof to her forehead and rubbing just under her horn. “You said you had results?”

“That mark of yours started to fade out,” I say. “Almost as if it were a shadow projected on your fur, and the light source started to dim.”

“I knew it,” she says, tired but triumphant.

“What did you know?”

“A fading cutie mark, a loss of physical coordination and an inability to focus mentally -- these symptoms together all point to arcanic disjunction.”

I raise an eyebrow.

“It means my magic is being drained,” Twilight says matter-of-factly. “So if I’m experiencing the effects of arcanic disjunction when I leave the Circle, and the symptoms resolve when I return, it means that your Circle is acting as a source of magic I can tap -- I can’t cast anything in here because of the protective wards, but I can still absorb its power. The real problem is your world, Harken,” she says, concern growing in her voice. “Earth isn’t just non-magical, it actively drains magic. That’s why I didn’t have this problem the last time; the portal from Equestria turned me into a human! Apparently it’s not just to blend in. Humans have adapted to this world, so it’s safe for you. Ponies haven’t, so it’s not. Safe, I mean.”

“This arcanic dis… thing,” I say, bobbling the phrase. “Can it hurt you?”

“Arcanic disjunction, and I… don’t know,” she says, her frown deepening. “Normally I’d say no, but that’s in Equestria. My world provides ponies with magic and actively supports all kinds of magical beings, so nopony’s arcanic reservoir ever drops below a certain point. But Earth appears to actively and rapidly drain magic...”

“...and you stopped breathing when you left the Circle,” I finish, grimacing as I realize the implications.

Another of the Circle’s floating glyphs brightens briefly before fading, and Twilight and I both turn to watch the sad little flash of light before the glyph is fully extinguished.

“We have to get you out of here,” I say, and Twilight nods in vehement agreement.

Interlude: He Who Watches

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A gunmetal gray late-model BMW sat parked on the street, mostly hidden from the streetlights of the suburban housing development by the shadows of the trees that lined the sidewalk. Nearly silent, the modern coupe had drifted into place just after eleven o’clock. Though its driver had never emerged, a passerby or an observant neighbor might have spotted an occasional dull orange glow from behind the tinted windows, but the late hour and the car’s stealthy approach assured his privacy.

Inside the coupe sat an older, stern-looking man with steely gray hair, immaculately trimmed and slicked back. His jacket was a Margiela and his sweater was a Lauren, but the rest of his ensemble was weathered and brandless: faded jeans, rough leather boots, a thick leather belt and fingerless gloves. He sat comfortably in his coupe, attentive but at ease, never once succumbing to distraction or fatigue.

Slowly, he drew a long pull on the last of his Cuban cigarillos and stared up at the attic window he’d been watching all night. The house was a few doors down from his vantage point; one man, a neighbor, had left as he pulled up, but no one had entered since. This did not, of course, mean that his subject was alone, but his mundane companions, at least, had gone for the night.

The stern-looking man exhaled, and the smoke from the cigarillo, pulled into a tiny ionizer attached to the car’s ashtray, evaporated without leaving even the faintest trace of an odor behind.

Without warning, a freak storm broke out, and heavy, pounding rain obscured his view of the house. As he leaned forward to peer into the storm, a flash of light from the house's attic window cut through the night, and a strange, purplish afterglow forced him to blink in order to clear his eyes.

As his vision slowly returned, he flexed his fingers as if preparing to go to work. This was no teenager dabbling with love potions. This was a sorcerer. This would have to be dealt with.

Switching his focus from the attic window to the electronic display on his dashboard, he tapped at the symbols on the touchscreen, and then activated the hands-free call button on the steering wheel.

“Control,” came a soft, feminine voice over his audio system.

“Matthias,” he said gruffly, stubbing out the remains of the cigarillo. “Subject confirmed as a person of interest. Uploading full-spectrum footage for spectroscopy.”

Several seconds passed before the voice replied to him. “Results are inconclusive, Magister. Spectroscopy suggests possible post-infernal residue within a classical containment field. Heat patterns from your area sensors indicate there are two beings with active carbon-based metabolisms currently inside the home.”

Matthias frowned. “Two living beings?”

“That is correct, Magister.”

“Image analysis,” he growled. “Who’s in there with him.”

There was another pause before the reply came. “Unknown, Magister. The camera angle appears to have been altered during the recent magical operation; we don't have a clear view into the Circle anymore."

“Zoom, enhance and onscreen,” he rumbled, and a blown up still image from the footage he’d just uploaded filled his touchscreen. He leaned in, raised an eyebrow, and studied his subject before leaning back and shaking his head.

"Damn it. Between the angle and the interference from that Circle there's just no way to tell for sure. What about electromagnetic readings? We had a collection net set up in that attic last week."

“The operational protective circle makes analysis difficult, but it seems as though the subject's visitor has an eleven percent higher resonance frequency than standard human baseline. Margin for error in this reading, however, is twenty-five percent.”

“Inconclusive,” he grunted, leaning back into the plush leather driver’s seat. “You’re certain there’s no taint on the primary subject?”

“Spectroscopy does not indicate any active or residual corruption, but I must remind the Magister that --”

“Yes, yes, I know,” he said, interrupting her, irritation clear in his voice. “There are passive effects that we can’t detect via spectroscopy. We’ll get a more thorough reading when we detain him.”

“Is that your recommendation then, Magister?”

Matthias looked forlornly at the crushed cigarillo in the ashtray, then peered briefly at the image of his subject on the touchscreen before replying. “Continued observation for now. I don’t know what that thing is in there with him, and I don’t want to intervene before I know exactly what kind of fire he’s playing with. But I’m requesting backup.”

There was another brief pause before the response came. “Control will dispatch two additional Adepti, Magister. Are you certain you would not prefer to let them --”

“I’m certain,” Matthias said curtly, cutting off the voice.

“Very well, Magister. I shall inform your supplicants of the continued delay. Next scheduled check-in will be at twelve hundred.”

“Out,” Matthias said, flipping the hands-free off before the female voice could reply.

Chapter 4: The Pony's Going Nowhere

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I grimace, flipping through the familiar pages of the Book as I pace outside the Circle. For all the times I’ve read it, for all the times I’ve used it to summon the demons I needed to bargain with, I’d never concerned myself with banishing. No demon would want to stay imprisoned in my circle, so they’d just… leave.

In hindsight, it does seem a bit cavalier on my part.

”This is a real problem, Twilight,” I say, shutting the Book gently. “There’s nothing in here that has anything to do with sending things home.”

“So that’s it?” she groans, pacing inside the Circle, matching me stride for stride. “That’s how you return a summoned entity back to their own world? You ask them nicely and they go away?!”

“It hadn’t been an issue until now,” I grumble. “The other demons I summoned just left on their own.”

“Other demons?” the alicorn says, stopping to stare at me. Her left eye begins to twitch. “Are you implying I’m a --”

“Come on Purple, you know what I mean,” I say, turning to her and trying to calm her down. “The rules must be different if you’re not a demon, and whatever those rules are, they’re not in here.”

She huffs, obviously as frustrated as I am, and sits back on her haunches. “Well, say the words to me anyway. Maybe it’s some kind of… aural resonance patterning? Maybe the sounds are what triggers an energy release in the Circle?”

She looks as desperate as she sounds, and I can’t afford to let her panic right now, so I nod to her reassuringly even though I don’t really think it’ll work.

“Sure, that could be it. Okay, hold on,” I say, kneeling down to pull the iron bar away from the arc of the Circle it’s been blocking. The Circle snaps back together seamlessly, and the faint yellow glow of its protective magic separates us once again.

I stand, flip to Chapter Sixteen in the Book, clear my throat and start to speak the ritual dismissal.

“Twilight Sparkle,” I say, raising my unburdened arm for effect. “For the present, you may go unto your destined place; but every time hereafter that you are summoned, you must give your obeisance to me without question.”

I peer hopefully at her over the Book, and she raises an eyebrow at me, unimpressed.

“The arm might be a bit much,” she says objectively.

“Worked fine the last time,” I say, feeling some warmth in my cheeks.

“Great. So you can summon something but you have no way to send it back where it came from. What kind of crazy pony comes up with this stuff?”

“Well, there are some banishing rituals in that book,” I say, pointing at a thick gold-leafed book resting atop my duffel bag, “but -- ”

“But what? Banishing sounds great!” Twilight says, standing up again in her excitement and approaching the edge of the Circle. “I want to be banished!”

“-- but they don’t just banish the demon,” I finish, shaking my head. “They banish all magic in the area. Every banishing ritual I know tells you to seal off all your magical implements before you start, because if they’re anywhere nearby when you finish, they’ll be completely drained and turn into junk.”

Twilight looks up at a floating glyph, and her ears flatten. “So it’ll banish the Circle too?”

“Yep.”

“And if banishing doesn’t actually send me back…”

I don’t answer her. I don’t need to; she already knows.

She looks at me, takes a breath, holds it, lets her breath go in a long sigh, and finally says “Ponyfeathers,” with such vehemence that her mane droops over part of her face, and I’m unable to stop an involuntary snort.

“What?” she asks, bemused, as she blows ineffectively at her mane.

I push the iron bar back over the Circle, slicing into its protective field so I can see Twilight clearly again. She’s defiant, but the worry etched in her expression is clear. She’s down, and we’re in trouble, but we’re not out of the game yet. The Book isn’t my only source for ritualized magic. The glyphs aren’t all gone. We still have some time.

“Ponyfeathers, huh?” I chuckle, leaning down, reaching forward and pushing the errant strands of mane out of her eyes. She watches me closely, and I make sure all she can see is confidence, determination and just a hint of amusement. I’m not sure if she completely buys the bravado, but I think she’s willing to pretend she does, and if that keeps her head in the game that’s good enough for me.

“Relax, Purple,” I say easily, reaching down for the gold-leafed book. “Don’t worry, we’re not lost yet. There’s bound to be an answer in here somewhere.”

* * *

“There are no answers in here!” Twilight grumbles in frustration, slamming the gold-leafed book shut with her hoof and slumping to the floor, defeated.

For reasons not entirely clear to me, neither spoken nor written English seems to pose any difficulty for Twilight -- but then, the demons I’ve summoned in the past have never had any trouble, either, so for now I’m going to chalk it up to something undocumented in how Circles work. Something else to add to my “I’ll find out later” list.

Regardless, while Twilight’s incredible reading speed, photographic recall and magical background has brought her through several of the largest magical reference volumes on earth in record time, all it’s done for us is to underscore the fact that there isn’t a single goddamned occult volume in my possession that describes how to send something home that isn’t demonic in nature.

I can see the desperation growing in her expression. Not a single page in any of my books had described any spells, rituals or incantations that could get her home. Not a hint of a magical operation in a lost text somewhere, not even a mention of any kinds of portals beyond the kinds that attract demons. Twilight knows she’s sunk, and as I watch her I can tell she’s starting to lose it.

She’s wrong, though. There is another answer. I’d figured it out when she was occupied with the middle chapters in the Golden Dawn reference book -- I just haven’t shared it yet. I was so sure we’d find something else. Anything else.

I avoid her gaze, because I want there to be any other way to fix this, even though I know there isn’t. Another glyph winks out, and from my seat on the floor I peer at its afterimage with a baleful eye.

“That’s seven left,” Twilight says, smiling nervously, and I nod absently. I can’t believe it’s going to end like this. Everything I’ve done to come so far, all the sacrifices I’ve made, two entire years of my life devoted to fixing one terrible, awful thing, and right at the goddamned end it all goes straight to --

“Harken?” she asks, glancing at me from under her frazzled mane. “Harken, what are we going to do?”

I turn to Twilight with a smile that quickly becomes even more genuine than I’d intended. What I’d wanted doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that someone’s life is at stake, and that if I show some goddamned backbone I can make a difference. This time, I can make things right. Maybe I’ll never be able to fix what I broke, but I can sure as hell stop something else from breaking.

Time to put up or shut up.

“Relax,” I say, my confidence and my purpose restored. “I told you I’ve got this.”

“But we didn’t find anything --”

“We did,” I say, standing resolutely. “You just didn’t recognize it.”

She stares at me, confused. “What are you talking about? I went through those books with every study method I know! There’s just no way out of this.”

I walk over to my duffel and kneel, pulling out a charcoal stick, some containers with incense, and a bunch of beaten-up knick-knacks. Balancing them carefully in my arms, I move to the far corner of the attic and kneel again, depositing the objects carefully. Finally, taking up the charcoal, I begin to draw, slowly and meticulously, on the rough wooden floor. The marks are thick and crude, but they’ll do the job.

“Harken? What are you doing!” Twilight asks, and I look up and wink at her.

“Saving your cutie mark, Purple,” I reply grimly, and I get back to work.

* * *

“Harken. Stop. I can’t let you do this,” Twilight says, her eyes wide and her voice laced with panic. She figured out what I was doing half an hour ago, right about the time her Circle dropped to five active glyphs. It took her long enough to work it out, but from her angle she couldn’t quite make out what I was drawing on the floor, and I suspect ritual magic isn’t really her forte anyway. It was only after I placed the sacrifice receptacles at the ordinal points of the new charcoal Circle that she realized what I was up to.

“You gonna come over here and stop me?” I reply, chuckling darkly to myself as I put the last details into the new Circle’s structure and drop the remaining nub of charcoal on the floor.

“It’s not funny!” she says, pacing back and forth within her own Circle, several yards away. “I read your books, remember? You can’t command a demon unless you’re purified!”

“Not true,” I reply, placing a roughly square piece of printer paper face-down in the center of the charcoal Circle. Black marker, bleeding through the back side, shows the outlines of a magic square, its puzzle solved with meticulous care, even if the components used to make the Circle were less than perfect. All the substitutions are reasonable, though. It’ll be fine. Definitely.

“Risk of infernal corruption!” Twilight shouts, louder this time. “If that Circle of yours has any flaws --”

“It doesn’t,” I insist, mostly sure I’m telling the truth, and I glance sidelong at her as I light a ball of incense with my lighter. “And this is no longer open for debate.”

I drop the incense into a dented brass brazier at one corner of the Circle and begin to chant. Twilight continues to protest, her voice becoming more shrill as I progress.

“The timing’s all wrong!” she calls out, grasping at straws. “The farther you are from midnight, the stronger he’ll be!”

“She,” I say, correcting her, and then I turn away to focus on the words of the chant. Only four glyphs, hanging roughly at each ordinal point in Twilight’s failing Circle, now hang suspended in its faded yellow magical field, and their glow is dim and sickly.

Pulling out my pocketknife, I cut off an uneven lock of hair from the back of my head and drop it into a well-used pewter soap dish resting at another corner of the Circle.

“Harken, no, please,” Twilight says, quieting. “Don’t do this. If anything were to happen to you because of this insane plan of yours --”

I ignore her and slice my hand with the knife, drawing a parallel line to the cut in my hand I’d made earlier and letting the blood drop into a tarnished silver cup.

Twilight goes silent as the ritual nears its completion. Whether she wants me to do this or not, she knows I need my concentration. In the corner of my eye I see her staring at me and absently biting her lip.

I speak the last word of the chant, and I blow on a sleighbell I’ve suspended from a length of twine from the ceiling. It clanks once, feebly, but once is enough.

As the Circle springs to life, it occurs to me that I haven’t jury-rigged a Circle this badly since the first time. But hell, it worked, then, right? And I’m much better at this now than I was then. Even though the last time I tried this, I inexplicably got a pony instead of a demon.

What could possibly go wrong? For that matter, what actually did go wrong the first time?

A bright light begins to emanate from the center of the makeshift Circle, and I decide it’s probably best to focus on the task at hand.

As before, the light fades, and the new Circle’s glyphs provide enough light to spy a dark form in its center. Slowly, the shadowy form stands, its limbs thin and its stench vile, and it turns to face me.

“Magoth,” I say, my voice rough, “You know who I am. I have summoned and mastered your brethren, and now I have summoned you. I have sealed this place by the elements of my body.”

“But I am not bound to you, am I, boy?” it asks, walking to the edge of the Circle and testing its protective magics. A pale, emaciated face with long, stringy grey hair and blood-red eyes looks up and grins at me from within a hooded robe made of sackcloth, hide and sinew. “Because that’s... not really what this is about. Is it?”

“I have not brought you here for the usual compact,” I say, winging it a bit.

“Planning to sweeten the pot, then?” Magoth asks, gazing over at Twilight and licking its lips lasciviously. “A trade, perhaps? She’s a morsel, she is. So brilliant, so juicy. She’d make a fine sacrifice. We could do business over her, you and I.”

“I neither bind you nor bow to you,” I say, refusing to rise to the bait. “I command you.”

“Command me, hey?” the demon repeats, its grin widening. “A little… premature for that, isn’t it? Shouldn’t we be discussing something other than… petty demands? Aren’t you the least bit concerned about fouling up all that hard work you’ve been doing for the last two years?”

“My concerns are my own,” I say, suppressing my anger. “By the Circle that holds you, I demand a service. Otherwise you will never leave this place.”

“I think otherwise, boy,” Magoth says, its expression growing cold. “It’s all too clear what’s going on here. You’ve managed to lay hands on an Equestrian,” it says, placing a strange emphasis on the word. “Such a luscious world she has, but her kind are not suited for this wretched Earth of yours, are they?” it taunts. “Even now she’s sucking that Circle dry like a starving child on a withered teat. I count four glyphs left. What does that give you? Half an hour until her death, perhaps? I think I have the patience to wait that long, at least.”

“What do you want,” I growl, moving to place myself between the demon and the alicorn. “You didn’t answer the summons just to gloat.”

“I could have, actually, but you’re right. I didn’t,” it says, grinning horribly, its black, empty gaze somehow staring into mine. “But I’d like to see you squirm a little, first.”

As if on cue, one of the glyphs in Twilight’s Circle expires, and Magoth claps her hands together in glee.

“Just the thing! Only three little indians left, my little sorcerer. I suspect the last of her precious glyphs will go rather faster — now that there are too few to cover her ordinal points.” Magoth peeks around me and leers at Twilight again. “And oh, how I’d cover her ordinal points…”

“Enough, demon,” I say, moving between them again and biting back my anger as best I can. “What do you want from me.”

“Oh, it’s not what I want,” the demon says lazily. “It’s what my brothers and sisters want. You remember them, yes? You’ve been making deals with them for nearly two years now.”

I grit my teeth. I can see where this is going.

“And what do they want, Magoth?”

The demon smiles widely at me, exposing rotted teeth in a ruinous mouth. “You’re a smart boy,” it says mockingly. “Your deals were not particularly favorable for them. I suspect you already know what they want.”

“Fine. I cancel those deals, and you send her back to her own home. Agreed?”

“Oh, oh no, I’m sorry,” Magoth says, still smiling. “No. You see, access to her world is not given to my kind anymore,” it says, twiddling its thumbs idly. “Much as I would have it otherwise. No, what you have done, boy, only you can undo.”

“Then in return, you’ll tell me how to undo it.”

“Alas,” Magoth says, savoring the moment. “I could, and I even would -- and if you order me, I shall! -- but in all fairness I should warn you, by the time you understand what it is you have to do, complete your preparations, and, dare I say, find the right location? Why, your dear new friend would have long since become a putrid lump of rotting and lifeless but vibrantly purple fur. I suppose you could skin her and wear her as a splendid new hat?”

“Stop,” I say, cutting the demon off as yet another of the glyphs in Twilight’s circle disappear. “I need her alive.”

“Ah! Then we come to the quick of it,” Magoth says, its features triumphant. “Emphasis on quick, yes? I can, indeed, tell you how to facilitate her continued existence -- indefinitely -- on this hateful rock of a world. I can even do it in time to save her life.”

My lip curls involuntarily. “And all I have to do is release your brethren from my contracts.”

“Precisely so. Do we have a deal?” the demon smarms, extending its bony hand to the limit of the Circle.

“We have a deal,” I say, toeing the tarnished silver cup filled with my blood past the Circle’s amber field. It passes through as if the field simply didn’t exist, and Magoth greedily snatches it up, drinking its contents down without a moment’s hesitation.

“Wonderful doing business with you,” it says, wiping its mouth and pulling a thick, ragged piece of aged vellum from within its hide robes. “This is the magic square you will empower. Use this one or recreate your own, I care not, but place it within an unadorned case of horn or bone. Then seal it in wax, ensuring there are no breaks between case and cap, and place it within the Circle she now inhabits. Once this is done, carry out your Circle activation ritual one more time -- clearly, this art, at least, you know. Finally, make certain that she is the first to touch the case when the ritual is over. So long as she carries it with her, she shall be spared from your world’s… inhospitality. While its energy lasts, at least.”

“Fine. What do I need to do to break those contracts and get you out of here?”

Magoth smiles again, and I swear I can smell the demon’s carrion breath even through the Circle’s protections. “Already handled. We did, after all, make a deal in your blood. That generally suffices for my brethren and I. Fare well, then, my good and ancient acquaintance. Though I strongly suspect we’ll meet again soon. We do keep finding each other, don’t we?”

Before I can reply, the demon winks abruptly out of existence, leaving only a wisp of oily black smoke behind. The Circle’s field dissipates, its glyphs dissolving immediately into thin air, and the vellum square Magoth had promised me falls to the Circle’s center. I wrinkle my nose as the stink of sulphur fills the room, but I don’t have time to do much about it.

I step into the circle to retrieve the square, but as I do I notice something out of the corner of my eye: one of the symbolic sequences near my feet is completely ruined, the charcoal smudged beyond recognition. I kneel to examine it, and I’m not entirely sure whether I smudged it on my way in, or whether it was like that before.

Naturally, it’s the sequence that dampens a demon’s magical abilities. Without it, a demon would be able to use its full power from within the Circle. A demon like Magoth would be able to take a Circle down with little more than an irritated glance if that sequence failed.

I shudder. It had to have been my carelessness, just now. Magoth would surely have broken the Circle otherwise. And me.

Yes. That had to be it.

I retrieve the vellum square and move to my duffel to find the components I’ll need for the ritual. Twilight watches me intently from within her own decaying Circle, and I work quickly, folding the vellum square and jamming it into a small bone scrollcase, avoiding her gaze as best I can.

“What are you?” she whispers, half to me, half to herself as I cap the scrollcase. “What have you done?”

I stand and turn to face her; her eyes are shining strangely in the dim light, and her expression lies somewhere between pity and horror. I only have one answer for her, and I let her have it.

“My job,” I say, lighting a candle and holding it over the scrollcase’s cap. “No matter what the cost.”

Chapter 5: The Pony in the Kitchen

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“Just take it, will you?” I say, gesturing to the bone scroll case inside the Circle near Twilight’s hooves.

In return, she stares at me with unmasked loathing and edges away from the case. “You’ve got to be kidding me. There’s no way I’m going to do anything you --”

“Look, in about three minutes that last glyph is going to go away,” I say, cutting her off and pointing at the last floating symbol in the Circle’s faded golden field. “When it does, the entire construct is going to collapse, and so are you. And when that happens, I’m going to come over there, grab you by the hoof, and drag your sorry cutie mark over to that goddamned case anyway, because whatever else you think of me I don’t want you dead,” I say, exhaustion, nerves and irritation all creeping into my voice without much subtlety. “So can we just skip the part where you collapse for now? Because I don’t see how that does anyone any good.”

Staring angrily at me, Twilight takes a grudging step towards the case, wrinkles her nose and taps it hesitantly with her hoof. As she does, I sense as much as see the partial transfer of magic from the case to her as she comes in contact with it: a faint golden cord leading from the top of the case to Twilight’s hoof.

I pass a hand over my eyes and take a long breath, and when I open my eyes again her expression is confused and she’s shaking her hoof in front of her face. “It looks okay… it smells okay… it… it’s… okay? It’s okay. But what’s happening?”

“That golden cord is transferring a trickle of magic to you,” I explain. “It’s just like the Circle, only you can carry it with you, and it’s not going to run out of power nearly as fast. It’s not spending any energy on unnecessary tasks like limiting your abilities or keeping you imprisoned physically. All it has to do is feed you power to keep you upright.”

As if to underscore the fact, the final glyph in the Circle winks out, and the yellow field surrounding Twilight disappears into nothingness. We both flinch as it happens, but the alicorn maintains her consciousness, and we both exhale after a very long moment.

“I guess I’m just… I’m confused. You really seemed like you were trying to help,” she said, frowning. “But that… that creature you summoned...”

“Was a necessary evil,” I replied, lowering my eyes. “You were running out of time, and neither of us had any big ideas.”

“You made a bargain with it,” she says, disbelief clear in her voice. “It knows you. Its brothers know you. Just how often do you do this? How often do you summon terrible things into your home and make them do things for you?”

“Look, Purple, you have to understand --”

“I understood just fine, thank you,” she says, looking away from me. “I’ve seen some crazy things in Eques -- where I’m from. I’ve seen Ursa Minors big enough to destroy a town during a temper tantrum, and I’ve faced dragons whose smoke could choke an entire city. I’ve confronted ancient beings escaped from Tartarus, with little more than destruction and revenge on their minds, and I’ve stood against chaos incarnate -- but you?”

She looks at me again, with a dark courage in her expression that for the briefest of moments makes me realize that she’s someone I should respect, and possibly even fear. “You don’t stand against those kinds of things, do you? You stand with them. You make deals with them!”

Twilight’s voice has grown harsher and more resolute as she speaks, and with that last sentence she stares at me, her narrowed eyes boring into my own, and watches me with a mixture of anger and disbelief in her eyes. “You bring them here to this Circle of yours, and then they do things for you. What does that make you?”

“That’s… a good question,” I say uncomfortably, looking away from her. “You have every right to ask. I guess I can see how this must look to you,” I murmur, remembering all too well Magoth’s black, void-filled eyes and her terrible, decayed smile.

“It looks like you have the wrong kinds of friends,” she says, her voice nearly a growl.

“They’re not my friends,” I snarl, turning back to meet her gaze angrily. “They’re hateful and they’re dangerous, and if I had any choice I’d leave them in the pit where they belong. But they have something of mine. Something they stole from me a long time ago. Something I need back.”

“What did they take?” she asks, her revulsion partly tempered by her curiosity. “What could possibly be so important that you’d consort with those horrible things to get it?”

“It’s not your business,” I say, my voice cracking a bit.

“Isn’t it?” she replies, frowning, “If what you’re saying is true and you really want to help me, then I need to know I can trust you. I need to know why you’re doing this, Harken.”

Damn her. I glare at her, but I know she’s right. Normally I wouldn’t care so much about her trust, but as long as she’s here I’m responsible for her, and if she doesn’t trust me she could get herself into all kinds of trouble, even by walking out my door.

As the many and varied ways she could find to get into trouble filter through my brain, I realize I don’t have a choice. I’ve never told anyone any of this, but she doesn’t need to know the why. The facts alone are bad enough.

“They stole my soul,” I finally say, setting my jaw and ignoring her widening eyes. “I was supposed to get it back tonight. Instead, somehow I screwed up and I got you instead. And I almost got you killed while I was at it.”

“Your soul? But how --” she starts, but I put up my hand, stopping her.

“Look, Purple, it’s a long story,” I say, glancing away from her. “Right now we have to focus. That scrollcase is more efficient than the Circle was, but it's not going to last forever. We have to get you home. Until we do that, nothing else matters.”

“I didn’t think souls could be stolen,” she says, hesitantly.

I sigh. “They can’t -- not exactly, anyway. Look, you know how when you’re young and desperate, you do stupid things? Well, once, when I was young, I was really desperate and really, really stupid. I broke some things I never meant to break, and I lost my soul in the process. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to fix what I broke, but I can't even try until I get my soul back. And, well…it’s harder than it looked.”

I peer around my attic, littered as it is with occult paraphernalia, and exhale, letting some of my stress out with my breath before I turn back to Twilight. “Is that good enough for now? Because I’m exhausted, and if we’re going to keep fighting about this then I’m gonna need some coffee.”

Twilight blinks at me, then nods once, stifling a yawn. “It has been… a bit exhausting.”

“A bit,” I say, mustering up a weak smile. “Look, I get that you don’t trust me right now, and I don’t really blame you. But if you want to get home alive you’re going to need help, and unless you’ve got another ritual sorcerer hiding under that cutie mark of yours, I’m all you’ve got.”

“You… did try to save me,” she says, tilting her head and squinting at me, as if the angle might give her a better idea as to whether I’m a good guy or not. “I think.”

“Try, nothing, I did save you, sister. You’re here because I screwed up, but you saw how badly Magoth was drooling over your hide. I could have traded you for my soul then and there, but I didn’t, did I? I flat-out told her no, and you saw it. That’s gotta count for something.”

“It does,” she says, slowly nodding her head as much to herself as to me. “I don’t entirely understand it, but if you gave that up for me --”

“Yeah,” I nod, cutting her off. “So let’s go figure this out somewhere more comfortable, huh? Come downstairs with me. I’ll make coffee and waffles, and we can figure out what to do next.”

* * *

I’d been just a little worried about how to get my visitor out of my attic: all I have is a fold-down ladder, and hooves as I know them just aren’t compatible with that mode of travel. Fortunately, Twilight doesn’t have hooves as I know them, so while I don’t really get a good look at how, exactly, she manages to navigate the rungs, navigate them she does -- though she lets me carry her scrollcase before she does it -- and before long we’re hanging out in my kitchen while I get breakfast going.

“Coffee’s done, waffles are on the make,” I say, lowering the waffle press on the first batch. “Bacon?”

“Eh,” she says, moving to my side and craning her neck to sniff at the pancakes on the griddle. “I’ll pass on bacon, but I’d love some extra greens if you have any. I think we could both use our protein this morning.”

I nod in agreement and pop open the fridge, grabbing the bacon for me and pulling out a container of baby spinach leaves for her. “How do you like ‘em?” I ask.

“Oooh, nice,” she says, eyeing the spinach. “Plate’s fine, I’ll just graze a little while you cook if you don’t mind.”

I don’t, so she does, and before long I’m sitting down to a stack of waffles, a bottle of warm syrup, a plate of bacon and a steaming cup of coffee with my unexpected companion. I take a long, deep, satisfying breath, pour some syrup on my waffles, pick up my fork and dig in.

I watch Twilight as I chew, half-expecting her to have some difficulty with the process, but clearly she’s got no problems adapting to utensils. She peers down at her fork, and before I realize what’s going on, her horn begins to glow, the fork begins to glow, and then the fork moves, swiftly and gracefully, between the plate -- where it portions off a nice chunk of waffle -- and her mouth, where it deposits said waffle.

I laugh as I watch her. Magic has always been so serious to me, so overbearing and dark and dangerous -- a sorcerer is constantly drawing ritual protection circles, invoking powerful occult operations, and summoning malevolent entities, so there’s not even a single spell I know of for something like conveniently eating your breakfast if you don’t have any hands. To see her use it for a completely mundane reason just fills me with a weird, innocent glee.

It doesn't last, though. On her third bite I notice the golden cord that’s tying her to the scrollcase that’s keeping her alive, and when I do I nearly choke on my bacon. As she’s casting her fork-eating spell, the cord is beginning to throb, as though some kind of liquid were being forced through it faster than it could safely supply, and my heart drops to my shoes.

“Gack!” I grunt, inadvertently spitting out a piece of bacon that was suddenly trying to choke me. “Stop spell,” I gasp as I reach across to grab her fork in mid-flight. “Stop spell!”

She jerks her head back, blinking as the errant pork product expelled from my mouth barely clears her left ear. “What’s --”

“Do it!”

She frowns but senses the urgency in my voice, and immediately the glows around her horn and the fork fade to nothing.

I exhale, still clenching her fork in a death grip, and I clear my throat as I try to speak. “The cord,” I say, pointing at the thing, which even now is writhing as it tries to resume its prior, calmer operation. “You were bleeding the scrollcase dry to use your magic.”

Twilight’s eyes widen in understanding. “That’s… wow. Okay,” she says, putting a hoof briefly to her mouth. “So I can’t use any magic?”

“You can,” I say hesitantly, “but you’re pulling power from the scroll to do it. I don’t know how long it will last if you do that.”

“Do you know how long it’ll last if I don’t?”

“Uh… no? Not really.”

“So it could last for years...”

“Or less. Or a lot less.”

We look at each other for a long moment as that information sinks in.

“Well then!” she exclaims, ending the silence and grinning just a bit more manically than necessary. “Those waffles still need to be eaten, don’t they? Hoof that fork over and I’ll do this the earth pony way.”

I know she’s forcing her abruptly positive attitude, but that little bit of bravado may be all she’s got right now, so I let it pass and give her back the fork with a smile.

“You got it, boss,” I say, matching her bravado with an equally feigned nonchalance. “Let’s eat up.”

As we eat, and as I observe the golden cord resume a more normal state, I do finally relax a bit and enjoy the rest of our breakfast. I make pretty good waffles, after all. I started a few years back with a classic old-fashioned recipe, and I’ve been refining it ingredient by ingredient ever since. After her first few hesitant bites, Twilight shows her approval by scarfing her waffles down at high speed, though she fumbles her fork and exhales in mild frustration a few times as she gets the hang of using her hooves for fine manipulation. As I polish off my last waffle, I look up to see how she’s doing, and suddenly I realize exactly how silly this whole scene really looks.

I mean, sure, I’d noticed there was a winged purple pony sitting at my kitchen table before now, but then we’d been talking about magic and demons and other worlds and all sorts of supernatural concepts. Now all we’re doing is eating breakfast, and in a mundane setting it’s just plain goofy. Her brows are furrowed in deep concentration as she uses both hooves to awkwardly but successfully manipulate her fork, and as she stabs the last pieces of her waffle with it I start to get the giggles.

Twilight cocks her head at me, raises an eyebrow and asks “What?” in mid-chew.

It’s a completely reasonable question to ask, but the tilt-headed pose she’s in when she asks me makes it even sillier, and I wind up laughing even harder. Eventually I snort, which is inevitable when I really get going, and that gets her going, and before long we’re both laughing uncontrollably together at the breakfast table.

Maybe it’s the sleeplessness, maybe it’s the tension, and maybe it’s just the absurdity of what’s going on, but whatever got us to this point, laughter is exactly what we need now. My stress recedes, her uncertainty abates, and the simple purity of our shared laughter brings us back down to earth after our insane night. Our eyes meet, and her expression is genuine and curious now instead of defensive and wary. She smirks at me, I stick out my tongue at her, and we both laugh a little more.

“That snort,” Twilight says when she can finally get a few words out between the laughter. “Oh, Celestia, that snort!”

“So I guess I just ruined the whole ‘big evil sorcerer’ thing you had going for me, huh?”

“I have to admit, I’ve never met a villain that snorted when they laughed,” she says, venturing a small smile. “But you really have made a lot of bad decisions. You know that, right?”

“Yeah,” I reply sadly, rubbing my forehead. “I know that.”

She tilts her head sideways as she looks at me. “I’ve redeemed my share of bad guys lately. I guess I can add you to the list if you can keep the waffles coming.”

“I can live with that,” I say, matching her smile with one of my own. “Now let’s get to work and get you home, fuzzy purple pony lady.”

“Alicorn!” she corrects with mock imperiousness. “And I am not fuzzy.”

“Sure you’re not,” I smirk, pushing back from the table.

Chapter 6: The Pony in the Library

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“This makes absolutely no sense.”

It’s afternoon; Twilight and I had spent a few hours taking a nice long nap, recovering from the night’s events and the carbohydrate coma resulting from our much-needed breakfast. Now we’re in my library, and I’m sitting in my nice Aeron chair, poking away at my workstation.

Twilight had spent at least thirty minutes just going from shelf to shelf, ogling all the titles along the walls, asking about my organization system and the ages of various books I had, especially the illuminated ones in the vacuum-sealed glass cases, which she found fascinating. I could tell she wanted nothing more than to take half a year to absorb everything in here, but she knew we had work to do. With some reluctance, then, she finally brought herself under control and pushed an ottoman next to my chair so she could join me at my computer. Unceremoniously, she hopped up on it and curled up in the middle, folding her legs to one side so she could peer over my shoulder at the monitor.

I keep expecting her to react somehow to human technology, whether with squeals of delight or a dismissive wave of her, ehr, hoof, but then I remember she’s been here before. Kind of anticlimactic, really, having a dimensional traveler in your house who’s not impressed by your mysterious alien ways.

No longer distracted by Twilight’s antics, I frown and glance between the golden-inked square of parchment I’d used to summon Twilight and the virtual magic square I’d completed on the computer. I’d spent hours on the computer, making sure all the details were right, that all the arcane constructs added up, that all the symbols and glyphs intertwined just so. I’d copied the details to the parchment square with cautious, meticulous care. I’d triple-checked the glyphs and symbols after I was done. Hell, I’d double-checked my triple-checking. Twice. I’m not sure how many checks that is, but it should have been more than enough.

And yet there’s absolutely no similarity between the two squares. The symbols are completely different, most of the glyphs don’t form mirror images the way they’re supposed to, and the square itself -- hell, it’s not even the same size. As far as magic squares go, it’s complete crap.

And if I’m completely honest with myself… I don’t even think it’s my handwriting.

“Absolutely no sense,” I murmur, repeating myself and absently flapping the parchment square in the air. “I have no idea where this came from. It shouldn’t even do anything.”

“It had to come from somewhere,” Twilight mused, leaning in to peer a little more closely at the square. “I see what you mean, though. You said this square wasn’t complete in the source material?”

“Yeah,” I say, grabbing my copy of the Book and thumbing through to the right page. “Chapter Sixteen: To Find and take possession of all kinds of Treasures.' Construct eleven, there: ‘For a Treasure hidden by a particular Person.’”

Twilight and I both frown. Sure enough, although the pattern in the Book is incomplete, the virtual square on the computer screen had a perfect copy of the elements from the Book, and my hard work had filled in the rest. The parchment square, though, bore absolutely no resemblance to its virtual cousin.

“I thought you said your soul was stolen by a demon, not a person” Twilight says, glancing over at me. “Wouldn’t that ritual have failed anyway?”

“Nah. It’s in the details; lowercase ‘persons’ would just mean a human, but capitalized ‘Persons’ actually includes anything sentient for the purposes of the spell. See, it says here it only works if the treasure isn’t magically guarded, but that’s not exactly true, either. The Book lies sometimes,” I say, winking at her. “It constantly tests you, to make sure you’ve been paying attention to your studies. Part of the test is to know when it’s lying and when it’s not.”

“What kind of crazy pony --” Twilight starts to say, then stops and shakes her head. “Never mind. This is a start,” she says, gesturing impatiently for me to hand her the Book. “You keep looking for ways to get me back home, and I’ll see if I can figure out which of these squares you actually used.”

“You think that’ll help?”

“It’s got to be a clue of some kind,” she says, arranging the book, the parchment square and herself on the ottoman. “We need all the help we can get, right? And if we figure out what went wrong --”

“-- we might be able to learn how to reverse it. Right.”

# # #

“Would you look at that,” Twilight finally says, absently blowing a lock of purple mane from her eyes.

It’s five hours later, it’s dark outside again, and it feels like I haven’t blinked for an hour, so any distraction from my lack of progress is a welcome one. I stretch in my seat, fail to suppress a yawn, and turn to her with an eyebrow raised.

“Whatcha got?”

“I found the magic square you used on the parchment. Well, squares. Sort of.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, pushing back wearily from my workstation to get a better look. She’s created an immense amount of paperwork, torn through two entire notebooks, and has at least three separate pens of different colors behind her ears. Wads of crumpled up paper litter the floor by her ottoman for five feet in every direction, but cradled in her hooves are a stack of probably three dozen neatly aligned sheets, each with a sample square from the book filled out, crossed out, highlighted, categorized by colored sticky note and underlined.

No doubt cross-referenced, too. Apparently, she’s very thorough.

Twilight sorts briefly through her well-ordered paperwork and finally selects a page, checking a detail on the lined paper and then opening the Book to a specific page. “See here,” she says, pointing at the topmost and leftmost entries on the parchment square I’d used to summon her. “These match the operation in Chapter Twenty-Seven, and it even has the nonsymmetric glyphs scattered correctly here, here and… here. See?”

“Chapter Twenty-Seven -- that’s visions, right?” I say, frowning.

“Yeah. In this case, specifically visions of unicorns,” she says, glancing briefly up at her horn before looking back at me. “Which is close enough, I guess. Now, look at this,” she says, pointing at the entries at the top and right-hand side. “These are from Chapter Eight, though they’re reversed to fit into the square.”

“Tempests?” I ask, and then I remember the weird, sudden rainstorm. “Right. That’s just… okay, we definitely had a rainstorm after the ritual completed, so you must be on to something. But these squares aren’t meant to work in tandem like that. Or, if they are, this kind of use is way beyond anything the Book talks about.”

“Well, hold on to your hat, because now it gets interesting,” she says, her eyes bright with discovery. “It’s not perfect, but if you look here and here,” she says, pointing at my parchment, “you get exact matches, and if you play a bit of a word jumble you get the rest of the entries from this.” She uses her horn to flip to a page in the Book she’s marked with a sticky note. Chapter Twenty-Two.

“That -- that’s not a good chapter, Twilight.”

“Chapter Twenty-Two,” she reads aloud, her voice strangely excited. “This Chapter is only for Evil, for with the Symbols herein we can cast Spells, and work every kind of Evil; we should not avail ourselves hereof.”

“Don’t tell me,” I say, glancing down the page at the example squares. “Construct Four?”

“Construct Four,” she repeats, tapping the entry. “This Symbol should never be made use of.”

And there it is, embedded in the parchment square between unicorn visions and a rainstorm. Chaotically, incorrectly, almost nonsensically, but it’s all there.

“So what does that mean?” I ask, half aloud, half to myself. “That square is listed in the Evil section, but even so when they mention it they pretend like they’d rather talk about the weather. It’s like the bad guy that the bad guys are afraid of.”

Twilight grins. “Don’t you see? We’ve already identified the other two operations. Unicorns and rainstorms, right? Well you made it rain and you saw a unicorn, so there’s only one other thing that happened upstairs, isn’t there?”

I blink. “I brought you here.”

“You brought me here!” she repeats, laughing. “It’s not evil - but the Book lies to you, remember? Whoever wrote this Book of yours knew exactly what this square did! They just thought that transdimensional portals were far too dangerous for novice sorcerers to create on their own. This is it, Harken. That square is my ticket home!”

“Well paint me purple and call me a pony,” I say, letting her grin infect me. “You really do have a knack for this stuff. Let me see that.”

She shoves the Book to the side of the ottoman, and I lean over, careful not to impale myself on her horn. I flip past the pages she’d marked, follow her notes, compare her results to the parchment square -- and it all adds up. Almost.

“I think we’re close, but just knowing that this is the square that creates the dimensional rift isn’t enough. We need to find a way to aim it back at your home, and then we have to switch it from suck to blow. We don’t want to pull another unicorn to Earth.”

“That had to be what the other symbols were combined for,” Twilight says, her eyes lighting up at the new challenge. “That Vision symbol… look! Construct Two: A Superb Palace.’ We can probably send me straight back to Canterlot Palace with this!”

I glance at her, doubtful. “I didn’t exactly picture you when I dragged you here, Purple. Are you sure we’ll actually get, uh, Canterlot? Or will we just get some random Superb Palace?”

“Magic is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with Will,” Twilight says, perfectly reciting one of the key precepts of magical operation. “That’s how magic works on Earth. You got a random unicorn because you didn’t have a specific unicorn in mind when you cast the spell. But this time, we can will the vision to show us Canterlot!”

“I…” I say, starting to object, but I have to concede her point. She really is an incredibly fast study when it comes to magic. “Yeah, that makes sense, but it means you’ll have to conduct the ritual. I have no idea how to visualize whatever Canterlot is.”

She beams at me, and the relief and joy on her face is almost palpable. “That’s fine! Native magical rituals should be perfectly safe for me to cast since they don’t require any magic from the caster. Besides, who wouldn’t want to conduct a powerful magical operation from a completely alien world? So all we have to do now is… what did you say? Figure out how to change it from suck to blow?”

“Yeah,” I say, thumbing back to Chapter Eight. “Spaceballs. Movie reference. Next time you visit, give me a call and we’ll stream it.”

“O… kay,” she says, looking at me with a strange expression on her face. “Just… you may have to wait a while. The portal on our side doesn’t open very often.”

I swear she almost looks a little disappointed when she says it, so I grin at her and shake my head. “It’s a good movie. Well, it’s a bad movie, but it’s a good bad movie. It’ll keep. Just make sure you bring enough popcorn for both of us. Now, where were we?”

“Chapter Eight!” she replies, her morale restored as she pulls the Book over to peer at it. “Hail, Snow, Rain and Thunder.”

“That’s strange,” I say, getting a closer look at the glyphs in the squares on the page. “They’re all similar. There’s nothing here to indicate which of these might reverse the operation.”

“What do you mean?” she asks, examining the entries a bit closer.

“Every square is made up of glyphs, which represent words. The glyph that makes up the square for Rain is Takat,” I say, gesturing to the glyph in the square. “That’s… uh, roughly translated, immersed in, or overflowing. It has a magnitude and a direction to it, see? But none of these have a meaning that indicates a direction, and they’re all just general references to storms. The opposite ritual operation to Rain has to be somewhere else.”

“Desert maybe?” she asks, double-checking her notes. “No, there’s no obvious references to desert. Stillness?”

“What about -- wait, hold on,” I say, the echo of a memory sparking in my head. “Let me see the Book.”

Twilight shifts back a little and turns the Book so I can flip through it. I scan through the pages until I stop at chapter Nineteen, and I tap the Construct I was looking for, though I blush a little when I suddenly recall why I remembered it.

Oblivious to my discomfort, Twilight tilts her head to read aloud from the Book. “Chapter Nineteen: For every description of Affection and Love. Construct Nine: By a maiden in general.” She turns to look at me with a wrinkled nose. “Really?”

“As if you wouldn’t have been curious enough to read it.”

She harumphs at that, but I think I see her lips briefly quirk into a grin.

Five glyphs make up the symbol, and I mouth the words softly as I read them. “Salom, arepo, lemel, opera, molas. I think this is it, Twilight.”

“And those glyphs mean?” Twilight asks, scrunching up her nose and looking at me curiously.

“It’s… a bit obscure, even for the Book,” I reply, still staring at the square. “Rough transliteration, ‘He distils peace unto fulness upon the dry ground in quick motion.’ Dry ground, contained and in motion. Sounds like the counter to wet, immersed and overflowing to me.”

“That’s brilliant!” Twilight says, a bit of respect in her eyes. “We make a good team.”

“Yeah,” I say, less than completely enthused. I’ve just put the rest of the puzzle together, but I’m not sure I like the picture it’s showing me.

“What is it?” she asks, frowning at me. “We figured it out, Harken! I’m going home! This is great, right?”

“Yeah, it’s great -- there’s only one little problem. Remember how the first spell I used still managed to evoke all of the other squares’ sub-effects?”

“Sure,” Twilight said. “You saw a unicorn and it rained, right?”

“Right. So the spell we have to add in order to switch from suck to blow? It’s a love spell. And it’s creating love ‘by’ a maiden, not ‘for’ one. That’s very specific Book language, and it implies that it’s going to affect the caster. We’ve already decided that you have to cast it, otherwise we’ll never get you to Canterwhatsit. So it’s going to create love… by a maiden. By you, for someone else.”

“So… wait,” she says, interrupting me and straightening up on the ottoman. “I have to cast a love spell on myself to get this thing to work?”

“It could be worse,” I say, deadpanning. “I could be ugly.”

“Eww!” she says, laughing in surprise and nearly falling off the ottoman. “Who says it’ll make me fall in love with you, anyway?”

“I guess it’s a risk you’ll have to take,” I say, waggling my eyebrows fiercely.

“Just stop,” she says, still chuckling. “Besides, it doesn’t say what kind of love it creates. If I visualize my number one apprentice during the ritual, it may just enhance our friendship!”

“Sure. Or it could make you drool lustfully after him any time you catch his scent. You want to roll those dice?”

“Eww,” she repeated, only this time she looked a bit more rueful. “No offense, Spike. Is there a counterspell, at least?”

“Sure,” I reply. “Chapter Ten, Construct One. Undoes all magics. You’ll have to wait until you’re home, though, otherwise it’ll destroy that scrollcase of yours too.”

“Oh, that’s not so bad then,” she says, nodding to herself. “If you have a ritual for it, then I’m sure Celestia or Luna can remove the spell with their own magic once I’m back.”

“Well then,” I say, pulling open a drawer and retrieving a thick sheet of parchment. “Let’s get this square drawn up. We might even be able to get you home before dinner.”

Interlude: She Who Waits

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"Still, sister? Truly?"

Celestia looked up, stirred from her reverie, and smiled fondly at Luna as she approached. "Oh, Luna. Forgive me, but it isn't what you think."

Celestia had awakened early, and instead of going back to sleep, she'd decided to wander the Royal Gardens. As usual, when her mind wandered, her hooves did too, and she'd found herself arriving at a very particular corner of the Canterlot gardens: four ancient statues, one larger and more prominent, the other three slightly smaller, all proud and defiant. Satisfied, she'd curled up in the grass at the base the largest statue as she waited for the dawn.

"So thou, in fact, are not still pining for thy long-lost love?" Luna asked, gesturing to the life-sized armored pegasus statue atop the pedestal Celestia had chosen to rest under.

"No, I'm not," Celestia said, rolling her eyes, getting to her feet and shaking off the morning dew. "I did for a long time, you know. He's even the reason I began taking apprentices, remember?"

"Indeed," Luna replies, her eyes narrowed. "A practice We never did approve of."

"Good thing I did it anyway, hmm? It was one of those apprentices who brought you back to me."

Luna's expression softened, and she allowed a low, throaty chuckle. "A fair point, sister. But we were speaking of thee. And thine."

"Really, Luna, it's nothing like that. While you were gone, it was hard sometimes," Celestia said, her gaze far away. "You’d always known me so well, and without you I -- well, I occasionally lacked perspective. The only one I’d ever trusted as much as you was Hurricane, so, without you to talk to... sometimes I'd come here. It cleared my head, talking to him. After a time it became a comfortable habit."

Luna peered up at the weathered statue, noticing as if for the first time the majestic arc of the pegasus's wings. "The artist captured the Commander and his officers well. This is a fitting tribute for their sacrifice."

"Indeed," Celestia replied, a faint smile on her lips.

"And 'tis sheer coincidence that thou hast rejected every suitor in the intervening millennia, no doubt," Luna said, slyly giving her sister a sidelong glance.

Feigning indignance, Celestia stuck her tongue out at her sister and blew a raspberry before chuckling. "You've caught me, Luna. At this very moment, Twilight Sparkle is coming to show me how to turn rock statues into real living beings!"

Luna's eyes widened for a moment before Celestia began giggling at her. "Laugh, sister mine," she said, chuckling a bit herself, "but there is aught We would believe that mare incapable of."

"Be nice," Celestia said, smirking. "She is one of us now."

"Another of thy more questionable decisions," Luna said, but this time she was the first to grin. "And where hast Our perilously powerful peer been these last evenings? We have noted that a number of sleepers in Ponyville are far more peaceful than usual, and she herself has been absent from Our own nocturnal travels. We are forced to wonder where Twilight might have taken her mischief of late, and what experiment has kept her so sleepless."

"You know, I haven't heard from her recently. Let's get her up for tea," Celestia said, conjuring an ink-laden quill and a parchment scroll. Quickly penning a missive, she sealed it and sent it along, a brief flash of green fire confirming it had reached Twilight’s right-hand dragonling, Spike.

Luna glanced up at the statue of Hurricane before looking back to her sister. "So truly, then, thy heart aches for him no longer? Thy search for his aura has ceased at last?"

"I... didn't quite say that," Celestia replied evasively. "I searched for his aura, for echoes of his soul, for years -- you were still there for some of it, as I recall.”

“Thou dost recall correctly,” Luna replied, clearing her throat. “Our hall of mirrors was once a legendary crossroads between the worlds, ‘til the day you sealed it off for your own ends. And, lest we forget, the new portal to Tartarus you personally and foolishly evoked after sealing off all the others --”

“I know, Luna. I was desperate, and doubly so after I lost you. At any rate, I never found him. And with you gone and Equestria in need, the luxury of pining for a lost love was… simply not something I could afford anymore. I had to… I had to let him go."

Luna watched her sister closely but remained silent, nodding once.

"Of course I miss him," Celestia finally said, allowing a small, sad smile. "But I accepted what must be a long, long time ago. He is a fond, bittersweet memory now. Nothing more."

"We find this appropriate," Luna said. "He was, in truth, a rough-hewn but singular pony, and had he not been thine -- but that to one side. If honoring him is thy desire, then thy own happiness should be a greater priority. He would not have wished to see thee alone for so long."

“I’ve taken lovers since then,” Celestia said, though an edge of irritation had crept into her voice.

“But never again a Consort.”

Celestia glanced away, a little guiltily. “It’s not against Equestrian law to want to be independent.”

Luna frowned. “Surely thou cans’t not--”

Not unexpectedly, a green flash of fire lit up between the sisters, and a parchment scroll, reconstituted in flame, wafted into Celestia's waiting telekinetic field. Thankful for the interruption, Celestia began scanning the letter, and as she did she read the high points aloud to Luna. "You're right, she's not in Ponyville."

"Dreamers do not lie," joked Luna, but she stopped her laughter when she saw Celestia's expression had grown concerned. "Sister?"

"She left her castle in Ponyville two mornings ago. No notes to anyone. Spike thought she'd come here."

"’Tis not her fashion, to leave so without much ado. We mislike the sound of this."

Celestia looked up, her brows furrowed, "Sulfur. Spike says the castle stank of sulfur the morning she disappeared. He says he thought he might have had too much pizza the night before," Celestia continued, stifling a small chuckle, “but he concedes that the sheer volume of the… odor… makes it unlikely that it was all his fault.”

"The dragon has always been a gastric terror," Luna mused, frowning. “It took months to purge the stench from Twilight’s old chambers.”

Celestia allowed herself a light chuckle this time, but her face fell as she considered the problem further. "Spike’s eating habits aside, Twilight’s still missing. And now I’m concerned, because if there was a magical operation in her castle which produced the stink of sulfur..."

Luna's eyes widened. "Cerberus has not left his post since the debacle with Tirek, sister. Surely you don’t think --"

"I don’t want to, but we don’t dare assume anything,” Celestia murmured, gazing up into the pre-dawn sky. “For now, keep this between us. It's dawn, and I have my duty to perform. But afterwards, we're going to find Discord and have him help us get to the bottom of this."

Chapter 7: The Pony and the Ritual

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Six minutes to midnight.

The wards are in place. I’m hanging back, away from the Circle so I don’t interfere with the ritual -- and, honestly, so I can watch Twilight while she works. We’d gone over the process together a dozen times this evening, and when we were done, Twilight wrote up a lengthy checklist from all the notes she made during those test runs. She’s referencing it now as she prepares the Circle, setting the various paraphernalia in their proper places at the Circle’s edges and checking each item off the list with a number two pencil in her mouth.

She really does have a knack for magic: when I watched her last test run, I was pretty sure I’d never enacted the ritual as cleanly as she had, and I’ve been doing these things for a year and a half now. I’m glad she’s up to this. I don’t know if I would be in her shoes. Assuming she wears shoes, of course. I haven’t actually looked.

Five minutes.

Twilight takes the sheet of parchment I’d meticulously inked and places it carefully in the center of the Circle. We’ve both independently validated the square, and we’re as certain as anyone can be that it’s as accurate, considering we, uh, ‘extrapolated’ based on how the original square was derived from its original forms. I’m not entirely happy about using a square that’s got so much guesswork to it, but Twilight’s confident, and her insight on magic is consistently solid. It’ll have to do.

Four minutes.

With a lit incense stick in her mouth, Twilight leans over and lights the tiny brass brazier. Carefully placing the incense into a nearby holder, she begins the ritual invocation. Her voice is lower than I expected, a rich alto with hints of musicianship showing through in the way she can control her breathing to match the rhythms of the chant. If I weren’t so damned nervous I might actually be enjoying the show a bit. It’s not every day a sorcerer gets to see another skilled sorcerer at work. Especially one from another world.

Three minutes.

With deliberate movements, Twilight pulls a lock from her mane -- one that we’d previously cut and tied in place -- and places it in the Circle’s lead receptacle. Her dexterity with her hooves continues to be a mild obsession for me. I’m not sure why I don’t just ask her how she does it, but I haven’t yet, and now’s definitely not the time. If we’re lucky, I won’t get the chance.

Two minutes.

Wrinkling her nose briefly in distaste, Twilight takes up my obsidian dagger and slices lengthwise down the middle of her hoof, demonstrating that she does not, in fact, wear shoes. A tiny trickle of blood begins to trickle through at the softer center. With fluid motion, she leans over the silver basin and lets a few drops of blood fall before returning the dagger to its place on the floor.

One minute.

Twilight raises her voice as she reaches the final verse of the chant, and a strange sensation, like the the gathering of an electric charge, pervades the room; the hairs on my arm stand up in anticipation, and I sway in place as the floor seems to move beneath my feet, but the shock never comes. The energy builds around us, but as I look up at --

“Twilight!”

In the unsteady half-light of the candles, I spot an unwelcome new element to the ritual: a thick, faintly glowing golden cord extending from the parchment square in the center of the Circle to the tip of Twilight’s horn. She’s doggedly trying to finish the chant, but her balance is unsteady: her legs are splayed as if she’s braced on the deck of a ship in a hurricane, and her eyes are fluttering, as though she’s barely able to keep them open.

And, worst of all, the smaller magical cord -- the one between Twilight and the scroll that’s keeping her alive -- is thrashing like an earthworm that’s just been cut in half.

I scramble to her side and pull her off her feet, staggering backwards to control both her fall and mine. Only barely resisting me, her chant turns into incoherent mumbles, and as she tumbles to the floor with me the power in the Circle dissipates, and the cord between her and the parchment shrivels, fades and winks out of existence.

“Twilight. Hey, Twilight,” I say, snapping my fingers and tapping her on the cheek to try to get her attention. "Talk to me, Purple. You here with me? Are you okay?"

"I'm --" she gasps, starting to reply, but as she looks up at me she simply stops in mid-sentence, and whatever the next word was going to be dies in her throat.

"Twilight?"

"...fine," she finishes belatedly, still looking at me. Actually, it's closer to 'staring' now than it is to 'looking.' "Just... fine?"

Abruptly, as if she’s just remembered something important, she looks away and scrambles unsteadily to her feet. "Seriously. I'm fine. No harm done, right? Right. Good. Okay! So, um, what are we doing again? Rituals! Right. Totally knew that. What happened? Why did you stop me?"

I sit up and gaze at her, with my brows knit tight. "Twilight, what are you not telling me?"

"It's nothing, really," she says, giggling nervously. "Just, um, adrenaline! Yeah. From the Ritual.” She backs a step away from me and and manages to trip over herself. "Nothing else, just clumsy, easily excitable ol' Twilight. N-not that I'm excited about anything! Totally calm. Really."

I shut my eyes, put my hand to my brow and shake my head. "Twilight?" I ask.

"Harken?" she replies, pretending to be engrossed by the cut on her hoof.

"The love ritual activated before I stopped you, didn't it?"

She gulps audibly. "Is it hot in here? I bet it's just me. It is, isn't it? Just me?"

"Twilight," I say, as calmly as I can. "Get it under control. You know it's the spell, not you."

"I know!" she says, exasperated. "But you try to function when you suddenly realize that the pony next to you is your perfect physical and philosophical ideal!" Her eyes widen a bit. "Oh my God, I just said that in my out-loud voice, didn't I?"

“Focus, Purple,” I say, putting a sharp edge in my voice to catch her attention. “It’s just a spell. Ignore it. None of this matters if we can’t get you home before that scroll runs out of juice.”

“H-home,” she says, blinking. “Yeah. Oh God, Harken, I’m so sorry. It’s just so hard to think about anything but -- ehr, I mean, is there any way you can, you know… stop it?”

“Chapter Ten, Construct One,” I say, grimacing. “Undoes all magics. Sorry, Twilight, but using that one might destroy your scroll along with the love spell. Using visualization techniques might work, but if they don’t… well, we can’t take that chance. You’ll just have to deal with it for now.”

“I can’t even look at you without...” she says, briefly glancing at me before looking away and biting her lip. “How are we supposed to --”

“Shush,” I say, waggling my finger at her. “We’re adults, we’ll manage. But we have to focus. That ritual tried to pull magic straight out of your horn instead of powering itself like it does when I’m in the driver’s seat. Can you guess why? Can we fix it or change it?”

Twilight exhales, blinks again, and stares back at the ritual circle. “P-probably not. Powerful magical operations usually seek the closest, largest source of magic to draw additional energy from.”

“So where does the magic come from when you’re at home?”“Equestria itself,” she answers matter-of-factly; having a line of rational questions to follow is definitely helping to clear her head. “But you raise an interesting question. Magic works the way I expect it to here -- I could levitate my fork at breakfast just like I usually do. Rituals work here, so there has to be a source of magic to find somewhere. Humans are non-magical, so it’s not tapping you, personally. So how does magic work in a world that actively depletes sources of magic?”

I raise my eyebrow, and she rubs her chin with her hoof for a moment. “Your Earth sucks magic away… but does anyone know where it all goes?”

“Just a second,” I say, turning to her. “Maybe we don’t need to know where it goes. Maybe we just need to know how it gets there.”

She peers at me with a curious expression and raises an eyebrow to match my own.

I stand up and walk away from the Circle, towards the ladder leading downstairs. “C’mon, Purple, I’ll show you.”

Leaving the Circle and the attic behind, we head back to my library and I flick on my computer monitor. Twilight, close behind me, shuts the library door and gives me a curious look.

“There are maps, I think -- hold on…” I say, pulling Twilight’s ottoman up to the desk and sitting in my Aeron. Once she’s curled up and comfortable, I pull up a web browser and start Googling terms. “Ley lines… world maps… Becker-Hagens… there! There we go,” I say, and I click on the biggest image I can find.

She wrinkles her nose at the map. “Not a fan of the Kavrayskiy Seven projection, but what’s the node graph doing there? I don’t remember anything in highschool like that.“

“Ley lines.” I say, glancing at her and wondering briefly what bizarre series of events might have wound up putting a magical purple pony into a modern high school. Shaking my head clear of the thought, I trace one of the lines across the cross-sectioned map of the world. “Places of power. About fifty years ago, occult researchers theorized that there might be a magical relationship between the locations of all sorts of ancient structures across the world. Megalith formations, pyramids, temples, all of that. They suspected those locations were built over places where magic was more easily accessible, so when they found a few local examples --”

“-- they did what anypony would do by extrapolating their findings and applying it to your world’s geography!” Twilight says, finally catching on. She puts a hoof on my arm as her eyes flash with excitement. “So there’s a pattern? Those lines are your world’s network of magic? That’s great!”

“Yeah,” I say, noticing a bit too late that she’s been holding my gaze a little too intensely. To be completely honest, her eyes really are --

I look away quickly, forcing myself to get a closer look at the map. “So… uh... maybe all we need to do is get you to one of these ley lines.”

“Yeah,” she says, bringing her attention back to the monitor and rubbing her neck. “How far away are we from the closest one?”

I scan through the results page and click through to a promising link: the ley line map is overlaid on Google Maps, and I smile as I realize just how close we are. “Not far at all. We’re here, see,” I say, pointing to my little slice of heaven just east of San Diego.

“And that green line...?”

“Yep,” I say, zooming in the map and pointing at the line where it intersects a road. “That’s a ley line, a big one. Goes straight from UVG-17 to UVG-15. We can go into town, then take this road here to Pine Creek road, and from there it’s a straight shot. No more than ten miles or so from my front door.”

Twilight beams at me, but her smile fades a little as she processes the information more thoroughly. “So… what’s the plan if it’s not enough?”

“We find a confluence,” I say, zooming back out on the map. “UVG-17 -- right there. Just south of the Arizona border.”

I point at the map; no less than eleven ley lines converge at UVG-17, and I wink confidently at Twilight. “As much magic in one place as you’re ever going to find on Earth -- you’d be heading home in style. Take the 8 to Gila Bend, and then the 85 south to Lukeville. That’s a long haul, though. About three hundred and fifty miles... probably most of the day to drive it. Man, look at that terrain.”

It wasn’t pretty. The confluence was atop Cerra Cubabi, a rocky, desolate summit in the Sonoran desert. I could ditch the car not far from an inspection station, but we’d have to do about four miles worth of hiking and climbing through rugged desert to get to the ley line confluence. I’m in good shape these days, and four miles isn’t much in a flat, straight line, but hiking through the Mexican badlands with a purple pony from another dimension isn’t my idea of a good time south of the border.

I exhale, and Twilight peers at me. “So… we hope that one ley line is enough?”

“Yep.”

“Okay then!” she says, her manic smile telling me she needs a little reassurance, so I smile and nudge her shoulder.

“It’ll be okay, Purple,” I say gently. “We got this.”

Her mania fades, just a little, and before I can stop her she leans into my shoulder and shuts her eyes, nodding. Her warmth spreads down my arm, but her heart’s racing, and she’s breathing a little heavily.

“You better not be coming on to me,” I murmur, nudging her gently and hoping to make things a little less tense. “I’m really not your type. I mean, really not your type.”

She chuckles and looks up at me, glancing quickly into my eyes before looking away. “You have no idea how much I wish that was true right now.”

“Right now? Forget what you want, and remember that it’s a spell and you’d kick yourself into next week if you gave in to it.”

“Easy for you to say,” she says, letting her chuckle turn into soft laughter. “Seriously, could this be any more awkward?”

“Sure,” I say. “I could let you have your way with me and then the spell could wear off.”

“That’s terrible!” she says, laughing for real now. “You’re right, that would be more awkward.”

“Let’s avoid it, then,” I say, turning my attention back to the monitor and transferring the geolocation information I need to my phone. “I don’t think either one of us would want to explain that to our parents.”

“Definitely not.”

Twilight’s still leaning on me, her shoulder square on mine, but I can feel her muscles finally begin to relax, and her heart isn’t pounding nearly as hard as it was. “I’m sorry I didn’t trust you before,” she says, looking absently at the monitor.

I shrug. “Did I say I blamed you?”

“No,” she replies thoughtfully. “No, you didn’t.”

“Okay then,” I reply, looking at my watch. “It’s one in the morning, and we napped through midday yesterday. We can catch a quick nap, have a leisurely breakfast, be ready to roll by sunrise and have you at the ley line by six. That should get you back home in time for imperial second brunch or whatever it is fuzzy purple alicorns eat when they live in fancy palaces.”

“I’m not fuzzy!” Twilight says, and she slides off the ottoman indignantly to emphasize her point with two stamps of her hoof. “But I will let you make me waffles as penance.”

Chapter 8: The Pony's On the Run

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The sun is bright, the sky is clear, and the air is warm as Twilight and I bounce along in my trusty old Jeep. We’re in the rough, scrub-brush infested hills just north of Pine Valley, and we’re headed to a tiny cleft in the earth, situated a bit west of Noble Canyon. As locations go it’s unremarkable, aside from the fact that it’s remote, it’s secluded, and the ley line we’re looking for crosses directly under it -- which makes it a perfect place for us to work a little out-of-the-way ritual magic.

Twilight had to start the day under a stack of blankets in the back seat while we drove through town, but once we got offroad we decided it was worth the risk to give her a little time in the sun. She’s laughing as we drive, and the combination of being outdoors in beautiful California weather with being that much closer to finding a way home has her downright cheery. She tells me it reminds her a lot of Las Pegasus, a city she’s familiar with in her own world. Cute, huh? With a nod to Walt Disney, apparently it’s a small multiverse after all, too.

So we drive with the top down and the radio blaring, and Twilight raises her hooves into the air and sings merrily along with the radio. Yeah, it’s probably a little careless of us, but we deserve a little break, and there’s nobody else around to see a purple horse jouncing around in my passenger seat and whooping her little lungs out.

Of course, she’s taking as many opportunities as she can to not-so-casually toss her mane, peer at me when she thinks I’m not looking and brush my arm with her hoof, but she winces every time she catches herself doing it, and I can use the good mood as much as she can, so I don’t call her on it. It’s not like she can help it.

Besides, if I’m going to be completely honest with myself, I have to admit it’s flattering, even if she’s not really “attractive” in the usual sense. She’s been an outstanding companion for the last couple of days, considering I tore her away from her home and her friends and put her in nothing less than mortal danger. She’s got a great sense of humor, she’s at least as smart as I am, she’s easy to get along with and she’s got a will as strong as steel, so even if her affection for me isn’t genuine, it’s impossible to completely ignore.

I glance over to see her humming along to the radio, her mane trailing out behind her and her eyes bright in the California sun. She doesn’t pass for human no matter how hard I squint, but she doesn’t act all that much different. If I could get past the ‘four legs and a tail’ thing for a minute or two, I might even admit she’s cute in a nerdy sort of way. And I’ve learned something new about myself: apparently, all purple in all the places isn’t even a turnoff. Who knew?

Well, that and it’s been eighteen months since I had any. Men, huh? No wonder the Book tells you to stay the hell away from the ladies once you start with purification. Maybe some guys can focus with all those distractions in their heads, but I’m not one of them.

I think I’ll just keep my eyes on the road now.

Before long we find ourselves topping the gully’s eastern ridge, and I slow the Jeep until we roll to a stop at the bottom of the gully. A dry creek bed runs a track roughly north to south, and I hop out of the Jeep, using my phone’s GPS to find a spot no more than a few meters away from ground zero.

“Nudge the duffel out of the back, Purple,” I call out, digging my heel into the hard ground to mark the ley line’s position. “I think this rabbithole’s going your way.”

# # #

Six minutes to noon.

The wards are in place. We’d decided that the ritual to get Twilight home should probably take place during the timeslot opposite the one that brought her here, so the sun is almost directly overhead now as Twilight triple-checks the glyphs and their placement. She keeps bobbing her head up and down as she verifies everything, as if she were checking off some kind of checklist in her head. Finally, she stops her head-bobbing and turns to briefly wink at me before starting the main event.

Five minutes.

Twilight studiously scans the inked parchment square before dropping it, and she nudges it around with her hooves for a bit until it’s in the precise center. A bird calls out in the distance, and I realize how odd and slightly uncomfortable it is to be doing a ritual in the middle of the day, but a quick scan of the surroundings reveals nothing out of place. We’re out of sight here and well off the beaten path. We’ll be done -- and she’ll be home -- before anything crazy can happen.

Four minutes.

Twilight lights the brass brazier and begins the chant, and I notice a drop of sweat on my forehead. Typical inland California day: clear skies, hot temperature, and not much of a breeze. A bit farther north, the brush bends to a light wind, but here it’s as though the ritual has completely calmed the wind. Who knows, maybe it has.

Three minutes.

She drops a lock of her hair into the Circle’s lead receptacle, and my hand reflexively goes to my pocket, where I’ve put another lock just in case we need to repeat this quickly. She’s got an amusing length of shaved mane near the base of her neck, and it makes her look a bit like a punk pony. She wasn’t amused when I told her that, but I was.

I suppose I might also have that lock of hair just in case this all works and I never see her again, but I’m sticking with my other story.

Two minutes.

Without hesitation, Twilight takes up the dagger and slices through the base of her hoof, letting a few drops of blood dribble into the silver basin. She’s in the flow now, the chant is smooth, her actions are practiced, and if I didn’t know better I’d say she’d been doing this for years instead of hours. I really am envious of her raw talent, but in a good way. It’s a privilege to watch someone like her work.

One minute.

Twilight’s voice grows louder as she prepares to end the chant, and once again the electric sensation from before begins to suffuse the area, making the hairs on my arm stand on end. The ground seems to waver strangely, as if deciding whether to stay a solid or not, but as she nears the chant’s end --

“That will be enough.”

Twilight stammers at the unexpected words, barely keeping the chant going, and I turn to see a man and a woman in hiking gear and daypacks cresting the gully’s rise behind me. There are trails out here, but we’re not near any of them, so I’m more than a little surprised at their appearance.

“Hey, this is a private --” I start, moving to block their view and trying to quickly think up an explanation for a midget purple pony as I talk, but then I stop when I realize the woman has a pistol aimed at my chest.

“We know what this is,” the woman says, and she jerks the gun slightly upwards in the universal sign for ‘get your hands up in the air like they do in the movies.’

I indulge her, seeing as I’m a little light on projectile weapons at the moment. “Twilight, you’d better keep going,” I say, forcing a smile at the woman as her companion walks towards me. “We have guests, and they’re not taking no for an answer.”

“Just one more --” Twilight replies, and then there’s a stupendously loud crack, and dust flies at my feet, and I leap and probably yelp a bit in surprise as the sound of a bullet’s ricochet echoes down the dry gulch.

“No more,” the woman says, the hint of an eastern european accent coming through. “You will stop now, alicorn, or I will aim higher.”

“Twilight, don’t you --” I start to say, but my fuzzy buddy has already stopped her chanting, and the air and the ground have quickly become mundane again. I risk a glance backwards; for a split second I swear I can see a tiny rune hanging in mid-air, but when I blink it’s gone, and there’s no other evidence the ritual did anything but fizzle.

The woman’s silent companion moves behind me, and without a word of warning he yanks my hands behind me and secures them with something. Whatever it is, it’s too tight and it feels about the width of a piece of twine, and I grit my teeth a little. I’m about to ask if it’s really necessary to tie it quite that tight when quiet guy steps on my foot and shoves me forward. With no balance and no arms, I obligingly topple face-first into the dirt.

“You probably could have asked,” I say, spitting what I hope is grit out from between my teeth.

“What are you -- hey, stop that! ” I hear Twilight yell. “You don’t want him, you want me. Leave him alone.”

“You,” the woman says, turning her attention to Twilight while her companion stands watch near my head. “My friend will stay with your friend, and you will come with me. If you do as you are told, your friend will live to see the sunset. Do we understand each other?”

I wince. This just gets better and better.

Twilight nods, casting a desperate look in my direction. I nod to let her know it’s okay, even though I have no idea if it’s okay. I don’t even know how in the hell any of this happened. This was supposed to be a gate-opening party, not a cartel kidnapping simulation.

Helplessly, I watch as the woman marches Twilight away, down the creek bed. Eventually they turn down a bend in the gulch and pass out of sight.

I pass a few idle minutes lying there and trying to keep an especially industrious ant from getting up my nose, and then finally the silent man pulls a cell phone out of his pocket and hits a speed-dial number. He turns away from me and walks a few paces away, out of my view but not far enough for me to miss what he’s saying. I suspect that’s not a good thing.

“Ellis, sir. The subject is in protective custody and should be on the way to you shortly. No, no complications. No, he wasn’t an issue. Of course, the usual protocols. No, the ritual wasn’t completed, we stopped it in mid… yes, I’m certain. Yes, I’m… well, no, not exact... no, sir, I didn’t personally… yes. Yes, sir. I’ll -- it’s right here, sir. I’ll look right now, sir. I’ll call you back immediately,” he finishes irritably.

“Or not,” comes an unexpected but welcome voice. A dull metallic ringing follows almost immediately, and something drops to the ground like a sack of wet rags.

“Bobby?!” I say, coughing with the dust in my mouth. “Bobby, is that you? What the hell are you doing here? What’s going on?”

“Hey, Harken,” he says, coming into view and smirking at me, a tire iron dangling casually from his left hand. Reaching down with his right, he hefts me into a sitting position and quickly slices through whatever was binding my hands with his pocketknife. “Good to see you. We were a little worried.”

“We?” I ask, but then I see Twilight coming into view from behind the nearby scrub brush, and a sense of relief floods through me.

“I thought --” I say, and she stops me, hoof to lips.

“It’s okay,” she says, an odd smile on her face. “We’re okay. There’s nothing we could have done. Your friend here is pretty good.”

“Pretty lucky,” he corrects Twilight, shaking his head as the smirk leaves his face, replaced by worry lines. “Won’t happen again.”

“So what the actual fuck, Bobby?” I say, rubbing my wrists and standing slowly. “Not that I’m not grateful, but you’re the last person in the world I expected to pull my ass out of this particular fire.”

“You were expecting someone else to pull your ass out of it?” he asks, his brown eyes briefly sparkling with humor.

I frown. “I didn’t even know it was a fire until a few minutes ago, pal. How did you know?”

“Not here,” he says, gesturing for Twilight and I to go with him. “We’ve got to get you two out of here before the local Magister shows up.”

“Local Magister? What’s a -- okay, fine, not here. Twilight, can we can finish this up pretty quick?” I ask, turning to her. “The circle’s already set up, we just need to --”

“Sorry,” she says, grimacing. “I got through enough to find out what we needed to know. There’s definitely… what we’re looking for is here, but it’s not nearly enough.”

“Well, shit,” I say, grumbling. “Okay then, Bobby. What’s your plan?”

“You need to go east, right?”

I frown. “How exactly do you know all this?”

“Take my rig,” he says, ignoring my question and tossing me the keys to his beat-up green pickup. “It’s just over that rise there. Meet me at the Motel-6 in El Centro in two hours; it should only take you one to get there, so get a room for us. I’ll explain then. Don’t use your real name, and use the cash in the glove box for the room, not a credit card. And give me your phone.”

“My phone?”

“Yeah, they’re tracking you with it,” he says matter-of-factly, and I boggle at that revelation for a second. “I’ll lose it somewhere creative before I catch up to you.”

“Bobby, I --”

“Look, man,” he says, his expression clearly apologetic, “there’s no time. I know you don’t understand what you’ve gotten into, but you’re tangling with some bad dudes. Zip ties and kidnapping are the nicest things in their playbook, you know?”

Twilight stepped forward, frowning. “Look, we both… appreciate your help, but all I know is you showed up just in time to club a couple of people on the back of the head. I’m glad we’re not their prisoners, and you certainly seem helpful, but it all feels a little too convenient. Why should we trust you?”

“Little lady, you should absolutely not trust me, or anyone else in this world” he says, glancing down at Twilight with an odd expression on his face. “That fellow there with you, he probably knows enough to get you back home, and if I’m right about him then he even wants to help you do it, but he doesn’t even know how deep a hole he’s in, let alone how he’s supposed to get out of it.”

“So how deep is it?” I ask.

“You’re heading for UVG-17 now, right? You won’t get a hundred meters past the port of entry at Lukeville,” he says, looking directly into my eyes. “They’ll take you both right as you pass into Sonoyta. If they’re feeling generous they might leave you alive in a gutter, but after this little episode I don’t think generous is on the menu. And even if it is, you’ll never see her again.”

I toss Bobby my phone. “He knows enough,” I say, partly to Twilight, partly to myself. “If he’d wanted to stop us, he would have done it already. Let’s get to El Centro. And Bobby, we get answers at the Motel-6, right?”

“All will be revealed,” he says, his trademark smirk returning. “Catch you then, man.”

# # #

“So you’re sure Bobby’s an okay guy?”

Twilight is curled up on the passenger seat under a Budweiser beach blanket and looking vaguely annoyed as a result. Bobby’s pickup is a pretty big beast, but there are truckers on the highway that could peer through the passenger window under the wrong conditions, and the last thing we need is to draw any extra attention right now.

I glance over at her and frown. “Actually, no. I’m not sure at all,” I say slowly, considering the question. Yesterday I’d have said yes, but yesterday I obviously didn’t know a lot about him.

I return my gaze to the road, not that it needs me much. Route 8 between Pine Valley and El Centro doesn’t do a hell of a lot, really, and once you’ve passed the Golden Acorn by it’s a long, boring slog through low, rocky hills, scruffy desert and tiny forgettable villages. We’ve had the windows shut and the air conditioner blasting since we passed the Kitchen Creek overpass, but it’s not doing much for our overall comfort.

“Do you think we can trust him?” she asks, cocking her head as she looks at me through the folds of her beach blanket.

“Up until now he’s been a good friend,” I say, trying to ramble my way to an answer. “He’s kept secrets, but so have I, and he saved our asses back there. He didn’t have to.”

“That’s not really an answer,” Twilight says, wrinkling her snout at me.

“Yeah, I know,” I reply, reflexively squeezing the pickup’s plastic steering wheel. “He seems to know what’s going on and he isn’t trying to drag you off at gunpoint yet. That counts for something.”

“But why was he there at all?” Twilight asks, and I frown again, nodding to myself in agreement. “How did he know where we were going? How did he know someone else was looking for us, and that they’d find us? And isn’t just a little strange that I didn’t freak him out? I mean, not even a little? I’m a talking purple pony for crying out loud,” she says, shaking her head.

“And all this time I thought you were a fuzzy alicorn,” I deadpan.

“Jerk,” she chuckles, leaning over to reach into a small red cooler with both hooves. Gingerly, she pulls out a bottled water and lifts it towards me. “You know what I mean.”

“I do,” I say, reaching over to untwist the bottle’s cap while Twilight holds it. “And I don’t know if I trust him, but he’s right about one thing: I have no idea how to get us out of what we’ve gotten into. If there’s a chance he knows, well, anything, then meeting him is probably worth the risk.”

“Yeah,” Twilight says, taking a long drink from the opened bottle. “I think you’re right. But he’d better have some really good answers.”

Chapter 9: The Pony and the Sorcerer

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NOW

I wedge the silver basin roughly between a pair of rocks and rifle desperately through my canvas duffel bag. “Dammit,” I growl, giving up and up-ending the bag behind me. “Did we forget the frigging --”

“Got it!” Twilight says, jamming a wobbly, corroded brazier into the ground on the far side of the makeshift Circle. “You sure this is gonna work?”

“What could go wrong,” I snarl, grabbing a dented pewter mug from the junk I just dumped and grinding it into the rocky earth at the Circle’s edge. “Bobby! See anything?”

“Silver Beemer pulling up now,” he calls from his perch at the top of the ridge. “Two… no, three Order goons getting out. Pretty sure the driver’s a Magister; they don’t pay Adepti enough for a ride like that. They won’t see our tracks but they know where we are. You’ve got thirty minutes tops before I have to start shooting, man. Make ‘em count.”

“We’re ready, I… think?” Twilight says, her eyes wild and her mane lanky with sweat. Running from witch-hunting zealots into the Mexican desert will do that to you, I suppose.

“Then get started,” I say, nodding to her. “Get your chant on and get your ass home.”

“But it’s not midnight, how can we --”

“It’s now or never,” I say, staring at Twilight. “Let’s make it now.”

“It’s not much of a plan, Harken,” Twilight says, her voice rising in pitch and her words coming breathlessly fast. “Our timing is off, our preparations are rushed, the materials are sub-par -- if a single elemental construct is even slightly out of phase, if any of the symbols are damaged or missing, if --”

“It’s not a plan at all, Twilight,” I say grimly, interrupting her before she gains too much speed. “It’s a joke, and it’s a bad one, and if you don’t get this thing started I guarantee it’ll be the last one you ever get to tell. So you’d better make the punch line count.”

Twilight gulps, nods once, and takes her position without another word, dropping the parchment square at her feet and nudging it directly into the center of the Circle.

I glance up the ridge at Bobby; he’s lying prone, and the barrel of his 30.06 rifle sticks out beyond the small circle of stones he’s stacked as rough cover. He’s watching some of the Order’s best climb up a rocky summit to collect Twilight and remove me from play. He’s putting himself between the two of us and the devil, and I wonder idly, as I watch Twilight begin the ritual, how I could have ever doubted him.

# # #

FOUR HOURS EARLIER

“You gotta listen to me, man,” Bobby says, his hand rubbing the scruff at his chin. “I know the Order, I know how they work, and I know they’ve been watching you. They’re not gonna let either of you go.”

“Because you worked for them!” I say, throwing that little revelation back in his face. “I was your goddamned assignment, Bobby! Or should I just call you ‘Practicus’ and be done with it?”

Twilight leans back, pressing her stiff neck into the cheap headboard, and the ancient mattress creaks a mild protest. “Harken, please, keep it down a little,” she says, trying to calm me. “If the hotel’s walls are as thin as the sheets, everyone’s going to hear you.”

Absently, she dips a hoof into the bag of Cheez Doodles Bobby had brought with him, and the absurdity of the moment, complete with a cheesy orange rime coating the purple fur around her hooves as she extracts a Doodle, shifts my mood more than her words do. I snort despite myself, take a long breath, and then nod at her when I’m done. “You’re right. I’m sorry.” I peer at Bobby and shake my head. “Yelling gets us nowhere. I just can’t believe you were spying on me that whole time, Bobby. I thought we got along. I thought we were friends.”

Bobby shakes his head. “I am your friend, man. Sure, I was spying on you at first. But then I got to know you, and I found out you were a decent dude. The kind of guy who makes the hard decisions for the right reasons -- my kind of guy, you know? So I started telling little white lies when I reported in. I thought maybe they’d lose interest.”

“Then why are they here, Bobby,” I say, keeping my anger in check. “How did they find us?”

“I don’t know, man,” he replies, shaking his head in what looks like shame. “I guess someone caught on. Like I said, I’m a Practicus, just a low-level frontliner. Maybe nobody bought my bullshit. Maybe someone else was watching you, too, and when our stories stopped matching they got interested. Whatever it was, you gotta believe I’m not with them now. I know what you two are up to, and I know what the Order will do to try to stop you. They think I’m still back in Pine Valley. Let me try to make this right.”

“For what it’s worth,” Twilight says, leaning forward to catch my glance, “I’m sort of an expert on friendship where I’m from. Sometimes, friends come from weird places. Sometimes, they do things that end up really, really badly. And sometimes, they start off as the exact opposite of a friend. But at some point, you discover that despite all that, they’re trying their best for you. When that happens, you have to think twice about who they really are. And it seems to me like Bobby’s been trying all day.”

“Are you saying you trust him?” I ask, glancing suspiciously at Bobby.

“He’s not my friend, Harken,” she says. “He’s yours. What do you think?”

# # #

NOW

“It’s not working!” Twilight calls out, her ragged voice teetering on the edge of madness.

The air is electric, and a pinprick of of ethereal light is shining at the center of the Circle, at a point very close to Twilight’s horn, but the alicorn is straining, and the connection between her and her scroll is throbbing with a dangerous, erratic intensity.

“It’s… so close… the ritual’s draining the scroll too fast… there’s something protecting the magic, some kind of… arcane fortification… I don’t know if I can…”

As I watch, I see her cutie mark begin to fade, and that’s when I know I have to stop her. I leap into the circle, pulling her out of the center and interrupting the ritual. In a heartbeat, everything dies down, the ritual fizzles, and Twilight all but collapses into my lap. I stroke her head between her ears, both affection and concern driving my actions, and her eyelids flutter open to let her eyes lock on to my own.

“It’s okay, Harken,” she whispers, reaching weakly for my hand with her hoof. “We did our best. You can’t stay here. You need to --”

I don’t hear what she says after that. Because no, it isn’t okay. Not even remotely is it okay.

“No,” I murmur out loud, and I gently extricate myself from her and head over to the pile of paraphernalia I dumped earlier. “No, we did not do our best. Not yet.”

“Harken?” I hear her murmur, but her voice is faint, and she’s too weak to get up. Too weak to stop me. Which is good, because she’d try.

I grab the Book and thumb quickly through its pages until I find what I’m looking for. I almost miss it in my haste, skipping ahead to chapter Twenty-Nine, and my eyes rest briefly on Operation Two: to cause Armed Men to Appear for one’s Defense.

I consider it for a moment before discarding the idea. I’m dealing with an angry and experienced sorcerer. If I oppose him directly, he’ll just launch into a dispelling operation, and that’ll nullify all the magic I have, including whatever I’ve summoned to fight him -- and maybe Twilight’s scroll in the process. I want her home, not dead. So the army’s out.

I thumb backwards and find what I’m looking for. Chapter Twenty-Three, Operation Three. To demolish Strongholds.

“You got fifteen minutes tops, man!” Bobby calls back to me. “If you’ve got something up your sleeve, now’s the time to whip it out!”

Twilight said there was some kind of arcane fortification holding back the magic. Maybe it’s more metaphoric than literal, but Twilight is right. Magic is nothing more than the art and science of forcing reality to conform to will. What’s protecting the ley lines is a stronghold. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to force this ley line confluence to conform to my will.

I’m going to tear the magic out of the goddamned earth whether it wants to come out or not.

“I’m on it,” I yell back to Bobby, and I set to work.

# # #

THREE HOURS BEFORE

“Shit, Bobby, can’t this thing go any faster?!”

Underscoring my point, the truck’s rear window disintegrates in a shower of safety glass as a bullet punches through, opening a hole in the roof on its way out. From inside the wraps of her Budweiser towel, Twilight yelps in surprise, and I duck, partly to cover her and partly to get out of the line of fire.

“I’m doing my best, man!” Bobby shouts, turning the wheel recklessly and throwing us around the far side of a hill so fast it feels like we’re going to tip for a couple of seconds.

“I thought you said you could get past them,” I snarl, glaring at him from my awkward position on the passenger seat. “I thought you said they wouldn’t be watching the dirt roads.”

“They weren’t,” he says, grumbling. “It’s not my fault the rangers saw us. Once they got on the radio it gave everything away.”

“So what, now we have the park rangers, the border patrol and the Federales after us as well as the guy in the BMW?” I said, boggling at him. “This is better than just going through Lukeville how exactly?”

“Relax, man,” he says, glancing into his rearview. “We just left the U. S. of A behind us. Border Patrol doesn’t get real excited about people heading south of the border, and the Rangers don’t care once you’re out of the park, especially to the next country over. And the guy in the BMW? Check him out.”

I risk sitting upright to look behind us, and I can barely make out see the silver BMW, far behind us now in a plume of dust.

“He’s not set up for offroad,” Bobby says, patting his truck’s console proudly. “But this girl’s got her four-wheel on. He’ll have to switch back to the main road.”

“And what about the Federales?”

Bobby shrugs. “Even if the Order took precautions and bought some locals ahead of time, the Federales ain’t too keen to hit the open desert without a real good reason. It’ll take them some time to mobilize, and by then it’ll be evening. We should be at UVG-17 by then.”

“So we’re going to make it?” Twilight asks, peering out at him from under her beach towel.

Bobby laughs and points ahead of us. “You see that mountain range out there?”

Twilight levers herself upright, shakes the glass out of her coat and peers into the distance. “That’s it?”

“That’s it. Call it three hours of hard driving, but that’s it.”

“We’re going to make it,” she repeats firmly, and this time it’s not a question.

# # #

NOW

“Harken, no!” Twilight calls out, but she’s still too weak to move, and anyway it’s already done. A bright light emanates from the middle of the Circle, and the college-ruled magic square I’d inked with a Bic pen flutters lightly but remains in place at the Circle’s center. The glyphs along the perimeter light up, winking into existence in rapid succession to illuminate an all too familiar face.

“Magoth, you are bound,” I say without hesitation. “I have sealed this place by the elements of my body, and you are bound to me. You will do as I tell you. There will be no bargain.”

It cackles at me as I finish. “What is it you humans like to use so much when you’re out of options? Duct tape and baling wire, yes? You might have made a better Circle with those, fool. Do you think you can hold me long here?”

“I don’t need to,” I tell Magoth. “You stole my soul back, remember? Purity really isn’t a concern of mine anymore. So I’m not asking. The Circle will hold you long enough to force your submission, and the Square at your feet is complete. All I have to do is get a single drop of my blood into that silver vessel, and it starts. You’re going to give me what I want, or I’m going to reach down your throat and rip it out myself. Either way, you’ve got three seconds. Decision time.”

“You do not have the strength, fleshling,” Magoth growls, her putrid, void-filled eyes narrowing into a glare. “You would not dare.”

“You’re cute when you’re scared,” I say, and I draw the ritual blade across my palm.

I gasp, but not from the pain – the blade’s bite is only a fraction of a pinprick, but everything else goes sideways. Backwards. Upside-down? Some direction other than the ones I normally use. I think I stumble, but then the blood begins to flow, and nothing is uncertain anymore.

My blood is everything, and everything is in my blood. Through its coppery scent I can smell the demon’s sweet, overripe panic as I gleefully tear gobbets of infernal power from her shuddering body. I can taste her unmasked hatred -- it's like raw chocolate, bitter but strangely, compulsively delicious. My vision fades to a deep, throbbing red, and I hear the echoes of her screams as my heart pounds rhythmically in my ears.

I am pain and howling rage and unbridled power, and I revel in it all as my blood spatters on the muddy earth and into the silver basin. I stretch out my right arm, and I leech the demon’s magic from her as she moans in an unholy chorus of pain, lust and submission. I am infused by her darkness, and I suck greedily from the infernal conduit laid bare to me.

If this is what it is to be a demon, I’m not sure I want to be human again.

“...Harken?” I hear a voice say. I’m tempted to respond. I think that might have been my name, once. But the demon might is so thick and rich and terrible and overwhelming that I --

I grit my teeth and shake my head, and when I look to my side I see Twilight there, limping to my side and staring at me with an expression somewhere between awe and fear. Clenching my jaw, I force a smile and nod at her once before turning to the work at hand.

I can see it all clearly. The energy coruscating through me illuminates everything in every dimension -- the real ones, the imaginary ones, and even the ones that shouldn’t be imagined.

I see the things I desperately need to see, like the exact center of the ley line confluence. I know immediately how to focus my stolen energy there, precisely how to pinpoint the Earth’s hidden, essential magics and how to crack open my world to expose them. It should be awe-inspiring, but I know I can do so much more.

I see the things I merely want to see, like Twilight’s emotions, all laid bare like fish gasping for breath on a riverbank. I see her fear, her revulsion at what I’m doing, and her guilty hope that I succeed regardless. I can see the fading remnants of the spell that’s forcing her to care for me, and, despite that, I can see a secret seed of love, just for me, that she tends carefully even as she tries to deny its existence. She finds my struggle heartbreaking, and my plight unjust. She finds my humor charming, and my warmth endearing. She wonders what a kiss would taste like, and she would help me regain my soul if I would only ask -- and she desperately, desperately wants me to ask. She has such love, and the deepest, most terrifying desire to share it. She thinks this makes us alike. She may be right, but it’s not important right now.

I see the things I should never have seen, like the shapeless, eldritch beings from beyond the world’s veil who lurk in the uncanny corners and the blackest shadows, watching and waiting for some fell, alien purpose. I should be deathly afraid of them, but even they balk at the forces I wield in this moment. When I smile at them, they recall a distant but clear memory of what it is to be prey. Then they go, for now. To where, I dare not contemplate.

And I see something else entirely, something that shouldn’t be familiar but which is anyway: a pair of eyes, dark and hateful, surrounded by a face of scorched and matted fur, and accompanied by the stench of sulfur and the tang of copper. I know those eyes, even though I’d swear I’ve never seen them before, and for a moment I nearly feel fear.

I finger the lock of Twilight’s mane still in my pocket, and it grounds me, reminding me why I’m here and what I’m supposed to do. I’m not entirely sure why it’s important anymore, but I know it was, once. Besides, I have nothing better to do, and I want to see it burn. I’m going to make it burn. I’m going to make it all burn.

“Shield your gaze,” I say aloud as I focus on the ley line confluence. I know what I’m about to do will be blinding, I’m just not sure in what sense, or in which reality.

Without further ado, I loose Magoth’s infernal energies at the ley line confluence. Reacting immediately, the confluence erupts, jetting forth a geyser of raw magical power in a display that I find impressive even in my current state.

I smile as I break my world. It seems somehow the appropriate thing to do.

I watch -- exult might possibly be a better term -- for a short while, but slowly I pull back from the torrent of raw power I’ve unleashed. The demonic energy I’m infused with can’t craft the portal for Twilight: the inferno destroys but cannot create. But my greedy, hateful world’s hidden reservoir of magic is perfect for the purpose, and the gaping wound at the confluence, spouting its geyser of untainted magic, is what we came for in the first place. Reluctantly, I mentally release the infernal conduit, discarding Magoth’s power so I can turn my attention to the magic at the ruptured ley line confluence. I’ll simply bring those energies to Twilight, and then her ritual can proceed.

I blink, frowning, and drop the infernal conduit, the way I’d meant to a second ago.

This is me, dropping the infernal conduit.

This is not good.

“Twilight,” I say, and the voice I hear isn’t really mine anymore: it’s deeper and harsher than I remember, and I recoil at the sound. “I can’t let go --”

“Told you… weakling…” screams Magoth between coarse, ragged breaths. Despite her pain, she’s smiling viciously at me, and I swear some of her breaths are more laughter than distress. “Addicted… you cannot control it... you’re ours, now....”

“Harken?” Twilight asks, watching me with growing panic in her eyes. “Harken, what is it?”

“Can’t stop… the conduit, it’s fused to me… I can’t let go.” The corruptive influence of Magoth’s magic is even greater than I’d imagined, and my flesh is simply too impure to contain it. Even if I had finished the rituals, even if I had regained my soul, I might not have been able to resist them. All my work would have been for nothing. after all. How utterly appropriate.

Twilight’s eyes flash in anger, and her wings flare as she approaches me. “If she’s hurting you--”

“No time,” I say, my voice half between a pant and a demonic rasp as a dull pain begins to throb through my veins. “You -- you need to shape the portal. Go on, Purple. I’ll keep the confluence open.”

“No!” she says, her secret seed of love abruptly blossoming beyond her control. She has decided I am something to her now, something worth saving, something serious and exquisite and foolish, and her decision, laid bare to my enhanced senses, shakes me as I wonder at its implications. “She’s not going to kill you, and I will not let --”

“You will let her,” I say, interrupting her, my breaths growing harsh and rapid. “I did not… do this… to see you die. I did it to see you live. Or it was for nothing.”

I see Twilight waver, but I won’t let her. The demon sight has laid her soul bare to me, and the spell on her has made her susceptible. I know her weakness, her deepest desire and her most secret hope, and when I understand those things, I know what I have to say. Magoth’s corruption creeps inexorably towards my heart, but if my last few words can inspire her, if they can help get her home, if they can make the mistakes I made mean something in the end, then I’ll say whatever I have to, whether I mean it or not. Whether I even know if it’s the truth or not.

“Do it for me, Twilight. Do it because I love you.”

There is no transition; in one moment, she is a desperate, solitary soul, a displaced traveler on a deadly, barren planet, lost and adrift and far from home. In the next, her horn flares and a beautiful, blinding light shines through her eyes as the Earth’s ruptured ley lines imbue her with their reluctant blessings. As I watch, she becomes righteous fury incarnate, her love and need and passion fuelling her instant transformation. I see her with my fading sight across infinite worlds; in this reality she is merely angelic: beautiful and harrowing, hovering effortlessly in midair with her wings stretched overhead as she gathers my world’s lifeblood into her horn. In other realities, though, she reveals her true self: she is a goddess, her power limitless, her devotion boundless, and I avert my unworthy eyes from her magnificent, unfettered form.

“I will save you,” she whispers to me in each reality, and my heart soars, unexpectedly, even as my body begins to fail.

With an astonishing, gentle, precise understanding, she reaches out to the torrent of my world’s power and shapes it slowly, lovingly, spinning it into a beautiful, placid disc hanging in midair. As the very incarnation of magic, she no longer needs a ritual: she is the ritual. She touches the disc with her horn, and a peal as clear and pure as a crystal bell sounds. The intense, blazing light goes out of her eyes, but her serene confidence remains.

Slowly, an image forms at the disc’s center. “Twi --” an indistinct white shape appears to say from the other side of the disc, the sounds muffled and indistinct. “Where have… are you…”

“I’m fine, Princess,” she replies in an assured, serene voice. “I’m coming through with a friend. Can you and Princess Luna sustain the portal?”

The shapes in the disc continue to resolve, looking more and more like another pair of alicorns, just like Twilight, only one a blinding white and the other a midnight blue. The sound clarifies as well, but more slowly. “...course we can, but what --”

I crumple to a knee, unable to stand any longer. I’m getting my earlier wish: I’m going to be able to watch everything burn, starting with myself from the inside out. It’s not impressive in this world yet, but in at least five other realities my blood is already boiling in my veins, black and thick as tar. Idly, I wonder how long I have until it starts here, too.

“No time,” Twilight says to the portal before turning to me, and with a negligent flick of her horn, the infernal magics surrounding me simply dissipate. “Harken, get up. We’re going.”

“Can’t…” I try to reply, but my mouth is dry and tastes like carrion, so all that comes out is a rasping hiss.

“Tainted,” I hear Magoth cackle gleefully as she watches me from within the Circle. “You’ll never take him from us now.”

“-- is that? Twilight, who’s with --”

“Magoth,” Twilight replies calmly, gazing at me as she siphons Gaia’s energies slowly away from the gaping wound in the earth and into her horn. “A demon named Magoth. And this is Harken, you’ll meet him soon enough.”

“Magoth? Twilight, did you -- Hurricane is there?! Twilight, answer me!” The voice from the portal suddenly seems intense, almost desperate. “Twilight! What do you --”

Three gunshots ring out in the forest, and I hear Bobby cry out. “Mother god-damned fucker! Harken, Twi, they found us!”

“No time,” Twilight repeats to the portal, bowing her head and levitating me off the ground. It feels like my skin is sloughing away from my bones. It probably is. Just as well I can’t scream out loud anymore, but I’m doing a good job of screaming on the inside to make up for it.

“Demons!” comes a voice I don’t recognize. “The enemy is here! Take them!”

“Twilight, what in Tartarus --?”

Another gunshot, and a grunt from above us. “Incoming!” comes Bobby’s voice again. “Three -- no, two, two incoming! Not sure where the third --”

“ENOUGH!” comes a different voice from the portal -- a voice so loud and commanding that if it had made a request I would have tried with my last breath to fulfill it. “THIS IS NO TIME FOR GAMES, SISTER. BRING THEM ALL.”

“Wait --” Twilight starts to say, but then there’s a flash and a bang, or maybe nothing at all, or something else entirely, and my consciousness begins to slip away. Everything is disjoint, a series of scenes without context, without meaning aside from the knowledge that one comes after the other.

Flash: Twilight is carrying me towards the portal, and a man wearing an expensive jacket and faded jeans points a gun at her. I try to tell her to be careful, but all I manage to do is spit blood.

Flash: a beam of blue-white light from the portal annihilates the gun and burns the gunman’s hand to a smoky black cinder. The stink of charred flesh assails me, strong in my nose despite my own putridity, and the man screams in agony as a golden light envelops us all.

Flash: I’m held suspended in midair by an unknown force, in a superb white palace with high, vaulted ceilings and ornate stained glass windows. Bobby, the gunman and the two Order thugs who tried to kidnap Twilight are there as well, floating side by side all in a row. Bobby’s bleeding from his shoulder. What’s left of the gunman’s right hand is black and smoking. Somebody’s yelling, but all I can do is smell is the overwhelming stench of my own rotting flesh.

Flash: I’m lying on my back, still in the castle, and the same pair of beautiful unicorns, one white, one deep midnight blue, are staring down at me. They remind me of older versions of Twilight, and I wonder why she's not there, too. The white one’s eyes are full of tears. Something cool and wet is on my cheek. The dark one says something in a soft voice: "Auras do not lie, sister."

Flash: a darkened room, its features indistinct, with the light smell of spring daisies in the air, a downy pillow under my head and a simple whispered confession in my ear: “I’ve missed you so,” says a soft, feminine voice, and my heart pounds when I hear it. I don’t know why.

Flash: the eyes, again: the terrible, emotionless dead eyes, surrounded by charred flesh and blackened fur. They watch me, their hatred palpable, until I have to look away.

And then the flashes stop.

-- End of Act I --

Deathless

by Gaudior

Act 1 Prologue: Another Place and Time

Chapter 1: An Unexpected Pony

Chapter 2: The Pony in the Circle

Chapter 3: The Pony's Got a Problem

Interlude: He Who Watches

Chapter 4: The Pony's Going Nowhere

Chapter 5: The Pony in the Kitchen

Chapter 6: The Pony in the Library

Interlude: She Who Waits

Chapter 7: The Pony and the Ritual

Chapter 8: The Pony's On the Run

Chapter 9: The Pony and the Sorcerer