> Pericynthion
>  by Skystrider
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Ember
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Pericynthion ☽
 
It’s hard to hold a grudge for a millennium. One hundred years, two hundred, even three was easy, but a thousand? Nightmare Moon just didn’t have the heart for it… or the head, or any kind of form to speak of. The Elements had banished her so thoroughly that the only remnant of her likeness was the shadowed profile on her beloved moon.
 
May Celestia stare at it every night, she thought ruefully.
 
Oh, she had tried to hang onto her fury, her rage, the deep-seated jealousy and bitterness that had fueled her transformation oh so long ago, but like tightly-clenched sand, emotion simply flowed away grain by grain until after countless years, all that remained was dullness.
 
A consciousness and a vague sense of her moon were all she had left. Her only possessions were her memories, and Nightmare Moon refused to let those fade. Without her memories, she would lose the meaning behind her banishment and the reason for her eventual revenge.
 
Not even Celestia was all-powerful. The evening would come when Nightmare’s banishment would end. Then she would regain her form, and like the smoldering fire that becomes a raging inferno with a gust of air, she knew her anger and hatred would return once she had a body that could feel. Her emotion would fuel her magic as never before, and nothing would stand in her way, for Nightmare Moon had been preparing for hundreds of years.
 
After the first few centuries, when the emotional battery of her memories had run dry, she had turned to cold analysis, reviewing every act from her transformation to her banishment. How young she was… how foalish. It was easy for Nightmare to see, now that she was removed from her passions, just how easily her defeat had come. It had been arrogant to believe Celestia could not wield the Elements on her own, and though she was proven wrong on that fateful day, Nightmare Moon also witnessed the means to her eventual victory. No one pony, alicorn or not, could contain all of Harmony at once. Nightmare remembered vividly how Celestia’s mane changed color from its natural pink to the pastel hues of the aurora; it was all she could see as her body faded away.
 
It was the last time she had seen her sister.
 
Celestia had traded a part of her own power to use the elements without help… a last ditch effort to stop Nightmare without killing her.
 
The foal… now there was nothing Celestia could do when the banishment ended. It had taken the combined power of the Divine Sisters to wield the Elements against Discord – she doubted Celestia could handle even her original three now. Who would she rely on this time, her “little ponies?”
 
So Nightmare Moon had spent the next few centuries reviewing everything she had learned about the arts arcane, and about her own divine power. In her mind, she played, and replayed, the chess game that would be the fight against her sister. This time, there would be no underestimation, no arrogant assumptions. This time, Celestia would pay for what she had done.
 
This time, Celestia would die.
 
Could she do it? Nightmare had wondered a long time when the thought occurred to her. When she first came into being, Nightmare Moon had dreamed a foalish dream: Her sister locked in her own castle, forced to bear witness to a glorious eternal night. Lu-no… Nightmare Moon would have never thought of harming her sister, only of finally achieving the recognition she long deserved. But here in the cold absence of emotion, in the simple analysis of what her sister would do, it was clear that the Solar Princess would always oppose her, always strive to regain the balance.
 
It had to be this way. Once she understood that, preparing the spells and laying her plan was easy. After all, she had nothing but time.
 
But one cannot spend forever envisioning even the most intricate of magic spells, and despite her efforts to look otherwise, Nightmare Moon was still a very young alicorn. Compared with Lun– her previous life’s span, the days of her banishment would easily outnumber the days before it. She could only spend so much time going through old memories before they started to repeat.
 
It was at this point that Nightmare Moon began to simply let her mind drift, reaching out to the far remnants of what had once been her divine power. Though the Elements had done well to seal her, not even they could cut off everything. Beyond the dull sense of her beloved moon, Equestria itself was completely obscured; that much was certain. But in the other direction, towards the cold black of the stars, some of her strength still remained. Nightmare could hear the stars singing to their lost mistress, and it was to this ambient choir she lost herself for decades.
 
Peace.
 
The alicorn drifted, almost forgetting herself in the void.
 
Even without eyes to see it, her disembodied consciousness pieced together a mental map of the cosmos more detailed than any Nightmare had made in life. She began to “see” it as a shadowy tapestry made of black fog and strung with the brilliant diamonds that were her stars, each calling to her in its own voice…
 
…until one day, a blinding golden light seared across the tapestry, a clarion call amidst ambient bells.
 
Had she a mouth, she would have screamed. Jerked out of her reverie, Nightmare Moon experienced a brief return of her emotions, but it was not the anger she so desired. It was stark fear.
 
The light was like the tightly focused beam that searches for ships lost at sea. It churned across her tapestry at an incredible speed while raspy clicking voices echoed behind the sweeping beacon. It settled first on the empty space behind her, the hole in her senses she knew to be Equestria. Then it settled on her moon.
 
Nightmare knew an instant of terror as she felt a mind behind the light. It was so different, a mind not of now, but of what was and what will come… a mind not of I, but of we. It was searching, hungrily, but not for her, and in an instant it was gone. The Lunar Princess reeled, trying to regain her mental footing. Though she couldn’t see the light on her tapestry anymore, she couldn’t shake the feeling it left behind, as if something was resonating within her to vibrations coming from somewhere else.
 
Incensed, and not wanting to let go of the emotions so recently restored to her, Nightmare forced herself to concentrate, attuning her mental map to the… beacon that had just raked over her. The ambient song of her stars shifted until, there, below the fog of the tapestry, she could again see the sweep of light. Its target was close, far inside any of her stars, yet well away from Equestria or her moon. Nightmare Moon paused, willing complete stillness from herself lest it detect her and return with its blinding attention, but the beam of light remained steady on its target.
 
It was odd, the light seemed to rest on something, yet Nightmare knew there was nothing there; after her moon, it was an impossibly far distance to the nearest star. Curious, she looked more closely. Now that most of her terror had dissipated, the alicorn realized the importance of what she was observing. The beacon wasn’t showing clearly anymore, instead, the black fog was obscuring it. Strange, Nightmare thought, if the tapestry is supposed to represent the space between the stars, how can something be below it?
 
As she thought the word, she adjusted the hold on her power, reaching out, reaching below her tapestry of space to follow the beacon. That was when everything opened up to her.
 
There were rocks… hundreds of them, no, thousands of them spread along a wide orbit far from Celestia’s sun. Some were as big as mountains, and others were nearly the size of her moon. She pulled back, marveling at the revelation. At a casual glance, the tapestry was still there as she knew it, unchanged. She looked below again.
 
The beam was focused on one rock in particular. It was massive… one could fit all of Canterlot and its supporting mountain inside. As the alicorn stretched her consciousness as far as she could, she sensed the clicking, raspy voices of the beam stop and something else entirely begin. There were simply no words to describe it.
 
☽
 
                Nightmare Moon, despite the name she had chosen for herself, had never worked with dreams. That had been… a specialty of her previous self, before the transformation. It had taken a solid month of observation before she realized what she was sensing from the beam of light. The mind, or minds (her exposure had been so brief and disorienting, she wasn’t able to remember which) behind the beacon were sending dreams. The truth had surprised Nightmare in two ways. First, this was nothing like Lu-her skill. She had gently guided restless ponies through their slumbers with whisper-soft spells, settling agitated minds and calming frayed nerves. This light was overpowering; it was like a voice shouting itself hoarse across the void. Second, this was not magic at all. Even without a horn with which to sense the ether’s vibrations, Nightmare Moon could tell she was witnessing something else entirely. The most startling realization of all was that there must be living beings inside that desolate rock in space, otherwise what would be the purpose of the dreams? Was she witnessing some other kind of alicorn, tending to its own herd? She tried to peer again beyond the fog, to see what was out there, but beyond the place where the light shown, all was intangible, outside the borders of her reality.
 
                Wrapped in the here and now, her consciousness drifted. The Night Princess contemplated the celestial tapestry of smoky fog and shining diamonds before her. On this side was the existence she had come to know over countless years and below… below was something new.
 
                But an unknown could be dangerous. A brief look into that light had left her blinking. What would happen if she reached out for it? Her banishment would end eventually… what would be the point of outlasting her imprisonment all these years if she wasn’t around when the spell was lifted?
 
                However, now that she knew the light existed, just beyond her ken, and that it illuminated more than she could possibly imagine… no, there was no way Nightmare could ignore all that through the untold centuries to come. She was the terror of Equestria – let the beacon and whatever was on the other side be afraid of her.
 
                She extended herself, grazed the light, and was pleased to find none of the previous terror. The voices were intent upon their target and now instead of being the object of their scrutiny, she was along for the ride. An image began to take shape, and though she had never experienced it herself, Nightmare recognized the creation of a dream.
 
☽
 
                The return of three-dimensional space was jarring to a mind so long accustomed to displaced consciousness. Though it only appeared to be a non-descript hospital room, Nightmare drank in every detail. A large bed with rails sat far higher than she would have expected. Bathed in the bright light of a nearby window, it was clearly the focal point of the room, and of the dream. The sunbeams illuminated dust motes throughout the air, and as she gazed at their swirling patters, she noticed row upon row of metallic boxes set on counters around the edges of the room. Some appeared to be containers with endless drawers and cabinets. Others emitted a low hum and displayed odd patterns of dancing lights. She would have walked over to examine them more closely, but Nightmare was disappointed to find that she had no body in this place, or even a presence to speak of. She knew instinctively that she was a mere observer, relegated to watch in the same manner as the dreamer. Was this the way she had done it before? Was she a spectator to the very dreams she wove for her subjects? Maybe had she taken an active role and revealed her presence, they would have been more grateful, would have understood all she did for them…
 
                The alicorn’s thoughts and observations were interrupted as the presence of the actual dreamer made itself known. Nightmare Moon looked at him, and though she knew the dreamer was something different, something outside of what she knew, the only concept supplied by her mind was “colt.”
 
                It was infuriating, but it made a backwards sort of sense as she considered it. The mind doesn’t question itself in a dream – it sees what it is meant to see. The dreamer knew what he was, and his sense of self filled his role in the dream with no need to elaborate. Though what she clearly “saw” wasn’t a pony, all her mind provided was a sense of a young male, so she perceived a colt.
 
                The dreamer appeared to be strapped to the bed, needles and tubes protruding from long appendages (those aren’t hooves… but it’s still a colt). He looked around, wide-eyed, as Nightmare Moon felt another presence enter the room.
 
                The vibrations of the new creature were gold, and as it appeared, the alicorn briefly saw the color of the beacon’s light reverberate throughout the walls of the dreamscape. This was the sender, she realized, the chattering mind of I and we that had briefly swept over her and pierced the fog of her tapestry. This time, there was no mental substitution; she saw the creature clearly for what it was, as did the dreamer, to his apparent horror.
 
                It was easily taller than Celestia. Nightmare thought briefly of the changelings who lived on Equestria’s far frontier, but quickly dismissed the image… this was much worse. It stood on two stocky legs, and out of an armored, chitinous trunk sprouted four arms, two major above two minor, each ending in a clawed talon. Two lithe antennae sprouted over bulbous, multi-faceted eyes on its v-shaped head. The alicorn was momentarily glad for her lack of physical presence when she saw the creature’s mandibles, each supported by muscular jaws.
 
                The creature was soon joined by its fellows who multiplied seemingly out of thin air. Alike in their green-and-black hides, the… bugs, she decided to call them, began to swarm around the colt’s bed. They reached out and took sharp instruments from trays that materialized from nowhere, as things often do in dreams, and leaned menacingly over the (not) colt. Curiously, where Nightmare would have expected a hungry gleam in their eyes, or at least some sign of interest, she found only a dull lack of expression, like puppets controlled by a distant master. Somehow, this made their next actions even more terrifying.
 
                To his credit, the colt (what is he?) didn’t cry out in fright. His eyes were set in an odd mix of determination and resignation. Nightmare suddenly had the sense that he had seen this all before… a recurring dream then? She wanted to turn away or close her eyes, as the sharp instruments drew closer to the colt, but she was just an observing mind. She had no eyes to close, and couldn’t turn away without tearing herself wholly from the light.
 
                Nightmare Moon didn’t know what the consequences of that would be, and she didn’t want to find out.
 
                So the alicorn watched as the bugs leaned closer, raising their instruments to the colt’s decidedly non-pony face. Instead of tearing into his skin, as she feared they would, the instruments stopped as a brilliant silver spiral of wispy smoke erupted over the captive. Nightmare stared in amazement. Inside the spiral was an endless array of images, shifting and moving as she focused on each one. It was a life, she realized, his life. Or rather, his memories… all arranged and displayed in a glittering fractal helix.
 
                The colt screamed as the bugs set upon the spiral with their instruments, slashing out memories, then taking each one and cutting it into its component parts. The images flashed too quickly for her to fully make out, but like the dreamer’s mind, hers filled in the blanks of what they were supposed to be: friends, triumphs, fears, losses, and family. Each image would momentarily appear whole when it was removed from the helix, just long enough for Nightmare to get a good look at it. Then the bugs set to with their instruments, razor-sharp scalpels and blinding torches of light, separating individuals and emotions, examining them under magnifying loops before letting them go to evaporate into thin air. The alicorn’s mind received details from the dreamer while she watched… there were his parents, his brother, his… his sister.
 
                The colt’s cries continued to echo as Nightmare Moon ignored her earlier caution and tore herself from the light.
 
☽
 
                Had she a body, the alicorn was sure she would be panting heavily and sweating. Never before had she witnessed anything like this. Her own rise to power had been fueled by the terror she inspired in ponies, but this was… this was something else entirely. To attack through dreams, to bring that level of fear into a mind’s last respite… Nightmare Moon may have fantasized about giving her enemies a few bad dreams, but nothing like this.
 
                The princess retreated as far as she could within the shroud of her moon. Though the separation from her tapestry deadened her connection to the remainder of her power, it also brought the oblivion of her early incarceration. From here, she could no longer perceive the light, and that’s exactly what she wanted.
 
                Nightmare stayed that way for a long time.
 
☽
 
                Weeks, perhaps months, passed before she worked up the courage to return, and it was with trepidation that the night princess approached her tapestry. A tiny thrill ran through her as she failed to spot the light with an initial glance. Had it vanished? No, with a harder push below, she found it again, but it was far dimmer than it had been before.
 
                What was happening?
 
                She had originally meant to just observe, and perhaps learn more about the beings at the other end of the beacon, but the sight of the feeble light pushed the alicorn into action. Regardless of what she had seen the last time, Nightmare didn’t want to lose this one escape from her prison. She pushed her consciousness below, towards the beacon.
 
This time, there was no dream, no sudden realization of physical space. Instead, her consciousness floated amidst the light. A mix of boredom and desperation emanated from its source, and Nightmare Moon wondered at the combination of mutually exclusive emotions. She wanted to reach towards the minds on the other side of the light and inquire further, but her memory of their first encounter stopped her. She was still in an exposed and potentially dangerous position. It was probably better to remain undetected.
 
Immeasurable time passed. The princess supposed that their target was not yet asleep, and it relieved her somewhat to know that the powers behind the light couldn’t direct their assault through waking consciousness. Eventually, Nightmare felt a shift in the beam around her and sensed the start of a new dream.
 
Instead of finding herself inside as expected, Nightmare’s consciousness was buoyed above, as if looking downward through a large glass dome. Around her, the golden light flickered. The alicorn guessed that the bug-like creatures from before were outside as well. What am I seeing then, she wondered, a natural dream?
 
The setting this time was a temperate wood with little brush to obscure a vast carpet of pine needles. As the dreamer appeared, walking down a clear forest path next to a winding stream, Nightmare Moon noted with a hint of annoyance that he still appeared as a colt. It was a maddening sensation; her “eyes” clearly saw what was a new and alien creature, yet her mind only rendered the familiar equine form. The youth sighed with recognition as he surveyed the landscape… perhaps this was another recurring dream?
 
The princess’ consciousness continued to hover outside the dreamscape as the colt moved on, quickly following the path until he came upon what looked like a playground set into a clearing. In it, roughly a dozen colts and fillies played, though Nightmare continued to wrestle with her mind as to what these beings actually were. As the dreamer walked through, the other children seemed to ignore him, not even recognizing his presence until he approached the playground equipment. Then, they would push him violently out of the way. Whenever the dreamer did manage to get on, something wouldn’t work for him. The merry-go-round would sling him away at random, he would pass through certain bars on the climbing structures, and the slide seemed to have an invisible hole through which only he could fall.
 
Suddenly, one of the other fillies happened to follow too closely behind the colt after he passed through the hole in the slide. She fell and lay stunned. The dreamer sighed, reaching out towards the filly, but then stopped, pulling back his hooves (those aren’t hooves). Instead, he sat on his haunches, and waited with his eyes closed. The alicorn wondered, has he seen this all before?
 
Nightmare drew in to look more closely. Before her eyes, the not-filly changed into a shape she recognized well, one that needed no filtering by her errant consciousness. Where the filly once lay was a wolf, crouched and staring through blood-red eyes at the dreamer. The colt sat, accepting his fate. The dream went black as the wolf lunged at the dreamer, seizing his throat.
 
The night princess mentally shuddered as her field of view blackened, then returned to the forest scene she had seen previously. Again, the dreamer walked down the path, now with a weary sag to his shoulders. This clearly is a recurring dream, thought Nightmare, and that last iteration was not his first time experiencing it. This time, the colt did not delay, seeming to know the actions required of him. He went straight to the slide, and instead of starting down immediately like before, he waited at the top for one of the other children to come up behind and fall through with him. Another colt this time, the dreamer seized it the moment it was stunned and began dragging it back towards the forest path. As he reached the stream, the dreamer wasted no time in shoving the other colt’s head under the water. The transformation was instant this time, but the dreamer had a good grip (with hooves?) and despite the wolf’s thrashing, he held on. It wasn’t long before the beast drowned.
 
If she wasn’t already numb from witnessing the first end of the dream, Nightmare would have recoiled at the neutral expression the dreamer maintained throughout the ordeal. To see such a look on a colt’s face as it killed was shocking, even though she knew it wasn’t actually a pony. The dreamer sighed heavily as it turned back towards the playground. Its footfalls were heavy and leaden; he clearly did not want to finish the dream.
 
It was then Nightmare felt the familiar golden flash of the beacon. Wrapped up in her observation, she had completely forgotten about the strange consciousness enabling it. All of a sudden, she was inside the dream, floating next to the colt as he returned to the playground. A pit of fear opened within her. If they were changing things, this dream could only get worse.
 
The colt stopped as he saw at the other children playing, and a look of confusion crossed his face. Nightmare’s sense of dread worsened – apparently this was not how things normally went. Shaking his head, the dreamer again went to the slide. He was first pushed away by another colt, and then followed by the same filly from before. Now the dreamer didn’t hesitate, he grabbed the filly as soon as she fell, striking her to make sure she stayed unconscious. It wasn’t a long trip to the stream. Nightmare desperately wanted to look away as they drew close to the first body, but again, with no form of her own, she was locked into observing the dreamer’s actions.
 
As before, the not-filly changed into a wolf as soon as her head went below the water, and again, the colt was able to hold on as he drowned her. However, as soon as he pulled her back up, the form again shifted… this time to a different filly. Every bit of Nightmare’s persona froze, realizing what she was seeing before it registered in her conscious mind. On the edges of her perception, the alicorn could see the colt going through the same paralyzing horror. She didn’t know what he was looking at, though, because all she could see was the limp form of Celestia staring at the heavens, the rictus of suffocation on her pale features. This was not the radiant warrior who had banished Nightmare long ago, but instead the little playmate who used to play hide-and-seek in the throne room, and the one who would sing to her whenever she couldn’t fall asleep.
 
☽
 
Nightmare Moon quavered at the edge of her tapestry, unwilling to expend even the minute amount of energy needed to pull away from it. She stared at the beacon, directing every bit of long burned-out hatred at the light. Hundreds of years of contemplation, consideration, and planning had led to the ultimate conclusion that she needed to kill her sister, and, and…
 
…and what? Nightmare channeled the maelstrom of emotion into a funnel, whipping and compressing it down into the narrow pit of analytical thought at the center of her being. A silly vision changed nothing. Her return would still precipitate a war between the goddesses, and the only result which would end in her victory was still Celestia’s complete elimination. The vision was undoubtedly horrifying, but no matter what the Solar Princess used to be, she was still the only threat to Nightmare’s existence and eventual ascendancy. She would not be killing a filly; she would be killing a tyrant – an old nag of a tyrant at that.
 
The princess regarded the beacon’s source, a growing malevolence welling up within her. She wished she could reach out and crush it, grinding it into nothingness as retribution for inflicting such horrid dreams. Suddenly, as Nightmare entertained a few possibilities of suitable revenge, the light went out.
 
Did I do that?
 
Even at her full power such a feat seemed… improbable. Only a few months ago, she didn’t even know a plane existed beyond the fabric of her stars.
 
A short breath of absolute silence passed before a howling wind erupted from below her tapestry. Across it, she felt a roar as what seemed like countless minds screamed out and then were instantly silenced. The following stillness and absence of light was shocking to the alicorn. Had she become so used to the beacon’s presence?
 
Numb, Nightmare pushed her consciousness below to see if anything remained. Sure enough, there was no trace of the beacon, and consequently, no light to let her see the shadowy forms on the other side. Gone were the thousands of rocks and almost any indication of there being anything on the other side.
 
Almost.
 
In the darkness, Nightmare could sense one ember, glowing with residual light. With the beacon present, she could never have made it out, much in the same way that the sun obscures even the brightest stars in the sky. Now, however, she could see it clearly.
 
It was the dreamer.
 
☽
 
The Princess of the Night spent the next few months in a sort of limbo, split between her tapestry and the unknown space below it. Had it been months? With the time spent on the other side, she couldn’t be absolutely sure. She lost her sense of the moon’s movement, her only reference to the passage of time, when she descended below.
 
With the loss of the beacon, she could no longer interact with the dreamer, but she could still observe him as a point of light, a tiny firefly lost below her tapestry, somewhere between the moon and the stars. Had she Luna’s skill with –
 
Did I really just think of her name? Nightmare Moon was mortified.
 
If she’d possessed her predecessor’s skill in weaving dreams, she might be able to reach across the void, but even then, she doubted the range of her power.
 
So for lack of anything better to do, the alicorn simply observed, watching the tiny candle in the immeasurable darkness. Her idle mind wandered, considering what she knew of the dreamer from her brief glimpses into his world. Nightmare wondered what he was doing out there in the cold depths of space. The memory of those thousands of rocks began to take on new meaning. Did his kind live in the remnants of a broken world? How did they survive?
 
As the days wore on, the ember waxed and waned. Sometimes it flickered brightly, other times it grew so dim, the alicorn feared she had lost it altogether. As she gazed longer, Nightmare noticed that its position wasn’t exactly fixed either. The dreamer moved ever so slightly, presumably within the confines of the rock she had seen under the beacon’s illumination. From her position and sense of scale, however, his motion was almost imperceptible.
 
It came as a total shock when the ember suddenly took off at an unfathomable speed, directly towards her.
 
☽
 
Lieutenant Sarah Martin was on edge. Priority runs were always harrowing, what with the no-fail status and the inevitable close scrutiny of the brass in charge, especially those riding as passengers. But the past few days had become exponentially more stressful for the tug pilot.
 
She had always hated 433 Eros, better known as Command School. The layout made no sense, the corridors were wider than they were tall, and the constant down-slope always gave her a feeling of vertigo no matter how strong the artificial gravity. Needless to say, Martin was not happy when given the order to stay station-side while her tug was assigned to another captain. She should have known something was up when she saw Graff’s face on the screen in Station Ops. The fat bastard never got directly involved unless it was something important.
 
Colonel Graff… he wasn’t the first International Fleet officer she had met, but to Sarah, he represented the start of it all, the spider at the center of the web. Once he had you, there was no escape; even when you thought you were clear, he always had some sticky strand attached, ready to reel you back in.
 
Had Martin given it more thought, instead of just getting frustrated, his involvement should have told her everything. There was only one reason why Graff was not sitting on his throne at Battle School, and only one person important enough to merit his personal involvement in something as trivial as transportation.
 
Her passenger… singular noun.
 
Getting a new tug, one that was decades more advanced than her last was surprise enough. Receiving it solely to transport one admiral to Earth was something else entirely. During the long weeks of absolute tedium that comprised inter-planetary travel, Sarah filled her time calculating fuel costs, determining how much each of her passengers or cargo pallets were worth to Hegemony taxpayers. She didn’t want to even start thinking about the number this time - she was unnerved enough already.
 
When the war ended, Sarah’s plan had been simple: keep her head down, do her job, finish her time, and get the hell out of the IF. She had given her youth to the service, and she wanted every possible year of freedom she could get. This assignment was the polar opposite of what she wanted – every asset in the fleet would be trained on her throughout this trip. Why Graff had chosen her was a complete mystery… it wasn’t as if he didn’t know her reputation.
 
Then there was the passenger himself. Honestly, she didn’t know what to expect when she met him at the gangway, wearing her dress uniform for the first time in years. It had been so long that her blues leggings were a full six inches short and she’d had to buy new ones at the last minute. Admirals usually came in two flavors, the ones too full of themselves to converse with mere mortals, and those who were so focused on “taking care of their people” that they came off as over-the-top, asking every minute detail about your life. The kid… correction, her high-ranking passenger was… painfully normal. He was engaging, cordial, and had a manner that instantly put her at ease.
 
Or it would have, anyway, had he not been a damned teenager wearing admiral’s stars. Martin had heard the story, hell, the whole planet had heard his story, but seeing it all right there in front of her was just too much to handle. It was like talking to a caricature.
 
Was he even a teenager yet? He was twelve when the war ended, a fact the news personalities loved to reiterate. How would someone like that even celebrate a birthday?
 
Martin snickered, envisioning a roomful of IF brass awkwardly applauding and eyeing each other as the young flag officer blew out his candles.
 
Then there were the vids, the scenes from Graff’s trial back home; the things that had surfaced since her passenger’s rise in fame. “Of course the killings weren’t his fault,” the talking heads would say, “of course they were in self defense, or the product of a criminally negligent training program, but still… what kind of child could do this?”
 
She had to admit, no matter the circumstance, watching one six-year-old brutally murder another gave her pause, especially when the murderer was the only other soul on her ship.
 
To his credit, the boy stopped trying to interact with her once he realized that she wouldn’t stray from standard military formality. She was his pilot. She made sure he was comfortable in his room and that he knew where he could find everything he needed on board. Beyond that, she kept to herself in the flight deck and her adjacent quarters. If she was lucky, she could avoid him for the entire trip.
 
She wasn’t lucky. Nearly a week into the voyage, the admiral arrived on the flight deck unannounced, and dropped himself into a jump seat without a word. Sarah had been dreading this, but at the same time, she had never been more grateful for her new tug. The ship was far faster than her old one… a week would have barely brought them an eighth of the way home. Now, with the moon entering scope range, there was only a half day of travel remaining. She could do this.
 
“Is there any problem with your accommodations, sir?” Martin asked, keeping her voice as level and neutral as possible.
 
“They’re wonderful,” he replied evenly. She could sense he was eyeing the back of her head. “I just wanted to come up here to get a look at the view.”
 
It was an obvious barb. Windows on interplanetary spacecraft were only something you saw in bad movies. Steering a spaceship visually was laughable when traveling at relative speed and any kind of transparent material used to make a window would be a comparative structural weakness.
The question is, Sarah thought to herself, do I rise to the bait or shrug it off? What is he playing at here?
 
“The desk in your room can pull up any external camera, sir.” she deadpanned, rotating the pilot’s seat so they could speak face-to-face. It wasn’t respectful to address anyone without looking at them, much less a superior. He didn’t seem the sort, but Martin didn’t want to give her passenger any reason to report on her conduct.
 
After a second, she noticed he was wearing his full dress uniform. Odd, considering they were underway.
 
“Oh, this?” The admiral withdrew his desk, unrolling the flexible tablet and powering it up as he handed it to her. “Would you mind showing me? I don’t think I have the right access codes.”
 
Martin took the device, mind whirring at a mile a minute. Word on her passenger had spread like wildfire among her circle of alumni once his role in the war was made public. This was the kid who had broken Battle School network security on his first day. Of course, the security programs on Launchy desks were designed to be broken as a way to test the new recruits, but it wasn’t long before he had hacked into the school’s real networks. Bottom line, her passenger did not need the access codes to the ship’s cameras.
 
What does he want? Sarah wondered. Could this all be just a convoluted way to interact with me? He doesn’t seem like the type to need attention; he was perfectly fine being on his own before.
 
She wasted no time in accessing the applicable codes and bringing up the cameras. A three dimensional view around the ship sprang to life above the desk as she handed it back to the admiral.
 
“That should be everything you need, sir. Enjoy stargazing and let me know if there’s anything else you require. We should be arriving in…” she glanced at the clock, “just over eleven hours now.”
 
Sarah turned back to her console. It wasn’t strictly proper to turn away from a superior without leave, but she thumbed a few controls, initiating diagnostics to make it seem as if there was work to be done. Not that it would fool anyone, but she didn’t think he’d stand on ceremony.
 
“Actually, I was wondering,” he started, his voice casual and ambivalent, “how exactly does a Battle School graduate end up flying a tug?”
 
Martin froze as the corners of her vision started to turn red. What the hell, she raged, has he been going through my records?
 
“Who says I graduated?” she hissed through gritted teeth. Sarah’s concern with protocol went right out the window as her temper flared. She hated when people got involved in her personal life, especially when they had no reason to do so.
 
She barely heard the smirk in his voice, but it was enough to make her clench a fist involuntarily. Why had she risen to the bait?
 
“If you didn’t graduate, they would have sent you home. Given that you’re in uniform, it’s pretty clear you made it to one of the follow-on programs.”
 
Sarah sighed inwardly as embarrassment deflated her anger. That was a stupid thing to say, she thought. Now he’s probably wondering how I even got into Battle School in the first place.
 
“I washed out of Pre-Command,” the lieutenant replied, an old weariness settling into her voice, “they said that my leadership style ‘while novel and formidable in Battle School, was a liability to good order and discipline in the fleet at large.’”
 
“After all they invested in you,” he wondered, “they couldn’t find you a place at the Tactical or Support Schools?”
 
“Let’s just say I didn’t play well with others,” she spat. “Besides,” the pilot returned hotly, “wouldn’t you have seen that in my records?” As she said it, Sarah realized with a sinking feeling that she was starting to tread on very thin ice. She may have long-since torpedoed any chance at a prosperous career, but there was a cadre of people you just didn’t mouth off to in the military… her passenger being one of them.
 
Turning around, the lieutenant started to apologize, but was brought up short by the boy’s surprisingly amicable reply.
 
“I… never looked at your records,” he said, raising his hands defensively. The surprised expression on his face showed that he had similar feelings about poking into someone’s personal life.
 
Martin paused, confused. “Then how did you know I went to Battle School?”
 
Her passenger stared for a few moments, his brow furrowed, until a look of realization struck him. Apparently, he had not given the source of his knowledge much thought.
 
“Ah, now that I think of it, I got the impression when you first picked me up on the docks.” He laughed apologetically. “What confirmed it was how you moved through the boarding tube. You almost immediately ditched the station-side orientation, and when we hit the right-angle in the tube, you performed a textbook corner-drop.”
 
Sarah thought hard, trying to remember the events he described. Because of the sensitive nature of her mission, the tug had not been stationed at the usual docking ring, but tethered instead at a discreet point on Eros’ nadir. Without the ring’s artificial gravity, Martin and her passenger had to descend via a zero-g boarding tube. He was right – humans naturally kept their previous up-down orientation when subjected to zero-g. Battle School graduates, having spent hundreds of hours in the zero-g combat simulator known as the Battle Room, were conditioned to instead shift their orientation to whatever perspective best suited the environment. When she had entered the tube, she had pictured the far direction as “down” and imagined herself falling towards it. The maneuver her passenger mentioned was simply a body motion used to negotiate stars, cubical obstacles common in Battle Room games. Looking back, she had indeed done a corner-drop out of habit, and was surprised that she hadn’t noticed it at the time.
 
She glanced at her passenger, noting a small and hesitant smile on his face. Was that all this was, an attempt to reach out to someone because of a shared experience? It seemed so… beneath him.
 
The admiral hesitantly continued.
 
“You know, I had a teacher, another admiral actually, who made a career of ‘not playing well with others.’ It can be a surprisingly important trait, depending on the situation.”
 
“I’m sorry, sir.” Martin shook her head. “I’m having a hard time picturing that. Every admiral I’ve met has been either the consummate politician or a self-professed ‘man of the people.’ Both are usually windbags with a lot of volume and little substance. Uh, present company excluded… no offense.”
 
Great, she thought, could I possibly stick my foot any farther into my mouth?
 
Her passenger only chuckled. “Ever hear of Mazer Rackham?”
 
Sarah blinked. Of course she had. Mazer was the hero of the Second Invasion, the pilot who had inexplicably stopped the Buggers with a single volley of nuclear warheads. In his day, he had been celebrated even more than her passenger was now.
 
In his day… the state media had glossed over how Rackham had been involved in the war’s end, only stating that he was. No one seemed to bring up the fact that Mazer’s heroics happened nearly a century ago.
 
“… has more reprimands in his records than medals, and believe me, they gave him a lot of medals,” the admiral said, not seeing Martin’s inattention. “His attitude probably saved his life, and by extension, the rest of humanity as well. Had he been given a ‘good’ assignment on one of the capital ships, Rackham would be radioactive dust in the Oort Cloud with the rest of our fleets.”
 
“Sir,” Sarah asked, suddenly curious, “how is he… here? Shouldn’t he have died decades ago? How is it Mazer Rackham was your teacher?”
 
The pilot hoped the question might steer things away from her earlier outburst, and besides, she’d probably never again have the opportunity to find out. The truth, at least with this subject, was in short supply.
 
A somber look shadowed the boy’s features for a moment. He paused, seemingly choosing his words with care. “After the Second Invasion, IF Command was reeling. Their every effort at high strategy had been circumvented or simply overpowered by the Bug-by the Formics.”
 
Martin didn’t miss the slip of the tongue, but she didn’t interrupt. It was oddly comforting to know that her passenger hadn’t adopted the forced “politically correct” term for an enemy her generation grew up hating.
 
“They knew the victory was a fluke,” he continued, “the result of correct and timely intuition on the part of a squadron leader, who in fact violated orders by remaining in position and firing when he did.”
 
The lieutenant was dumbstruck. THIS wasn’t something they taught in schools.
 
“Mazer instinctively saw something that’s been missed by generations of xenobiologists, before and after.” He sighed heavily. “Unfortunately, what he saw is highly classified.”
 
The boy paused, flicking his eyes around the flight deck, indicating the various sensors, cameras, and microphones that supplied information to the ship’s flight data recorder. Martin quickly understood; normally the records were only used in the event of a mishap, but there was no reason the IF couldn’t access them when they arrived. Hell, if someone had connected the recorder to the ship’s ansible, any number of people could be listening in as they spoke. It was a chilling thought.
 
“Suffice to say that Mazer and Mazer alone was singularly qualified to select the commander for our eventual counter-attack,” he continued. “The trouble was, it would take our ships decades to reach the Formic worlds, even at high relativistic speed. So they…”
 
“He left too, only he took a round-trip!” Sarah blurted out as she connected the dots, mind staggering at the implications. “High v with minimal Park shift… oh… why would he do… didn’t he have a family?”
 
The admiral lowered his head, a somber expression clouding his face. “A wife and two children… naturally he asked for certain considerations from the government for them, but yes, he left and stayed at the highest relative speed our engines could manage at the time. He traded two years for sixty, and only returned once the Battle School program had produced promising results.”
 
“Like a living death.” Martin thought of the weeks she skipped every time she made a run to and from the outer IF outposts. Her family had grown accustomed to it, but now that she was approaching a year of “skipped” time relative to them, the changes were starting to become noticeable. What would it be like coming back and finding everyone you knew to be either dead or impossibly old?
 
“That was a hell of a sacrifice. Was it worth it?” she asked.
 
“We won,” the admiral replied. “Though I’ll say this, after he told me his story, I never again complained about my own hardships. They only paled in comparison.”
 
The pilot sat for a moment, contemplating what she had just learned.
 
“Wait a moment,” she looked up, “if Mazer is still alive, why didn’t he command our forces?”
 
The boy smiled - a surprisingly genuine expression compared to the placating ones used by most admirals.
 
“I asked him the same thing, though I admit I was being quite petulant at the time. It’s an interesting story…”
 
☽
 
Nightmare Moon watched with fascination as the ember arced across the void. Its speed was unlike anything she had seen before; even comets did not fly this quickly. As her moon moved relative to Equestria below, the alicorn realized that the ember was not, in fact, heading directly towards her like she originally thought. Instead the planet itself was its actual destination. It was this realization that sparked an idea in her mind, one that had consumed her over the past several days.
 
While the Elements were powerful, their seal was not infinite. Whatever this space below her tapestry was, she had been able to extend herself into it. If she could do so again, she might be able to latch onto the ember and use it to escape her prison. Whatever the dreamer was, and however he was moving through the void, he was going to Equestria. Surely her body and power would be returned once her consciousness was clear of the moon and the seal, Nightmare reasoned.
 
The question was, could she reach the dreamer’s consciousness while he was awake, and without the beacon as a guide?
 
☽
 
The conversation had returned to the commonalities all Battle School graduates discussed: what armies they were in, which ones were strong at the time, which soldiers had the best stats, and what teachers were most reviled. As they spoke, Martin began to realize that the admiral was not that different than the other Battle School graduates she had known throughout her career. Sure, he was a little too composed for a young teenager, but honestly, how many of her compatriots could really be considered “normal?” At the end of the day, they were all kids who grew up on a space station, raised by soldiers to become soldiers.
 
Suddenly, the fact that he had killed two other children was no longer as unnerving. In each case, he had been defending himself – was it his fault if he was just good at fighting? Wasn’t that what they had trained him to do?
 
Seeing a lull in their exchange, she interjected.
 
“Sir,” Martin hesitated, not knowing quite how to address the subject of the murders, “those tapes they’re showing at the trial… why are they bringing those out? I’d think that’s the sort of thing that would end up buried under a ‘classified’ stamp, never to see the light of day.”
 
The admiral sighed. Apparently this was a topic he had addressed before, and Sarah started to worry that she had again crossed some sort of line.
 
Looking up at the ceiling, he seemed to weigh his words, considering how to answer. “Think of it this way: why would they put Graff on trial in the first place?”
 
The lieutenant looked down as she considered this. Why indeed? In a way, Graff had been responsible for their victory, finding and training the boy in front of her. Why was he being court marshaled?
 
It hit her all at once. “Graff isn’t on trial. You are. But… why would they want to discredit you?”
 
“Our victory had barely been announced when the League War erupted. You know as well as I do that the IF is only barely enforcing the peace landside, and we nearly were taken over from within when the Polemarch ordered his troops to attack headquarters.”
 
Martin shuddered. She had been in transit when the brief civil war, incited by the Warsaw Pact countries within the Hegemony, had attempted to take over both in space and on Earth. Had the insurrection not been defeated, she would have been killed the minute she docked.
 
“The peace is tenuous, and without a common enemy, the nations of Earth have gone back to jockeying for power. Battle School graduates, especially the ones who led the campaign against the Buggers, are seen as force multipliers – huge military assets to the nations lucky enough to get them. There are many people who think that if I go home, it will mean the return of American power over the world. They’re trying to make sure that even if I do go home, everyone will be too uncomfortable with me to allow any chance at formal leadership.”
 
The pettiness of it all turned Sarah’s stomach. This was all about nationalism? Sure, as an Aussie, she had been on the receiving end of the standard “prison colony” insults from a few British students at Battle School, but that had been about the extent of it. Hell, one of her commanders, a Turk, had made a Greek kid one of his toon leaders.
 
“So is this why they’re sending you to the colonies?”
 
He sighed. “There’s more to it than that, but let’s just say it’s the best option for everyone involved.”
 
The pilot shook her head. “Does that include you? What about your family?!” Sarah was shocked that her passenger didn’t seem to be even the slightest bit upset about the situation.
 
“My family is part of the ‘more to it,’” he began.
 
☽
 
Nightmare Moon fixed every part of her consciousness on the ember as it arced ever closer to her moon. This was it: in mere moments it would start to pull away as it traveled towards the planet below.
 
She reached deep into herself, touching the very base of her divine power. The familiar restrictions of the Elements’ seal sprang up around her, but Nightmare noted with satisfaction that they mostly ended at the edge of her tapestry. As she leaned below she could feel at least some of her power marshalling as it did in the days of old.
 
The alicorn concentrated, imagining her horn as it once was: a locus of control over the ether that permeated the universe. She focused her energy, reaching out across the void. Nightmare pictured the ember and the mind behind it, and plunged her consciousness through the tapestry and across the gap. With every last bit of strength she possessed, Nightmare Moon grasped and held…
 
☽
 
In the tug’s flight deck, the unlikely pair sat back, regarding each other. Considering how she had originally planned to never speak to her passenger, Sarah was surprised at how she couldn’t think of anything more to say. As she regarded the admiral, something surprisingly trite popped into her head, and she couldn’t resist asking the question.
 
“So… what’s with the dress blues?”
 
The admiral blinked. After the weighty subjects they had been discussing, Sarah wasn’t surprised that it took a second for him to shift mental gears.
 
“This?” he asked, fingering his collar. “Oh, well, I have the sneaking suspicion that I’m going to be going from one interview to the next as soon as I arrive, so I thought I’d get used to wearing it again. I’d hate to be seen adjusting my crotch on international television,” he deadpanned.
 
Martin had to laugh at that. The male dress pants were notorious for being ill-fitting, and it was a common joke in Battle School that they had been designed by women. Sarah clutched her sides, the laughter resonating throughout the small flight deck, surprising even her. How long had it been since she was genuinely amused?
 
The admiral, for his part, egged her on, pantomiming a desperate struggle to straighten bunched-up underwear as he answered inane questions in front of an imaginary camera. In an instant, the officer was gone, and in his place was just another teenager, making fun of stiff formal clothing.
 
Sarah thought it was a nice thing to see.
 
Before she could finish that thought, the transport began to shake violently. Her training immediately took over as she hurriedly turned back towards her console.
 
☽
 
Had she a body, Nightmare Moon would have been straining from her horn to her hooves. It wasn’t that the ember was big, or powerful, but that despite its apparent closeness, it felt so impossibly far away through the ether. She almost lost it, but after everything she had undergone, the alicorn was not going to let this chance to escape pass her by. Nightmare redoubled her efforts, bending every last ounce of her will to holding on. Had a pony been looking up towards the moon at that exact moment, she would have noticed it dim ever so slightly.
 
☽
 
To his credit, the admiral didn’t ask any questions or try to interject himself into the situation. All Lieutenant Martin heard behind her was the click of seat restraints as she looked over her console’s readouts.
 
Simply put, what she saw was impossible. The ship had gone from high relativistic speed to a full stop instantaneously, and it was only because of the new ship’s upgraded inertial dampers that they hadn’t been transformed into a pulpy red stain on the flight deck’s forward bulkhead. All that energy had to be transferred somewhere, though, hence the shaking throughout the hull’s damping system.
 
The impossibility came from the lack of any cause behind their unexpected stop. Other than the moon off to their left, there was nothing solid anywhere close to the transport, and none of the ship’s engines, conventional or otherwise, had fired since the initial up-shift a week prior. The navigation program had entered a state of recursion, unable to handle the input. She tried re-starting the program, and then its individual processes, but the result was the same each time.
 
“I’m… going to have to take over manually,” she said incredulously, half for her benefit, and half for the admiral’s.
 
“What?!”
 
She wasn’t surprised by his reply. Contrary to the belief of most landsiders, ships were never piloted by hand. In most cases, manual control wasn’t even possible because the required inputs came faster than a human could react to them. That wasn’t to say flying was automated, though many aspects of it were, but human control was generally limited to selecting the proper program sequences for a given scenario.
 
Manual control existed only for the most dire of emergencies – such as what they now faced.
 
Sarah felt her mind clear as hundreds of hours of training kicked in. Thumbing off the various safeties, she took direct control of the tug, applying a simple thrust vector in the hopes of moving the ship forward and dissipating the built-up energy.
 
Nothing happened. If anything, the vibrations got worse.
 
☽
 
The alicorn felt a shift as the ember renewed its struggles against her grasp. Slowly, ever so slowly, she could feel herself pulling away from her moon. Just a little more, she thought, focusing on her mental grip through the ether. If she could hang on, the ember would pull her free from the prison and take her back to Equestria.
 
☽
 
Martin’s fingers flew across the console as she tried different combinations of thrust input to reduce the ship’s vibrations. She fired up a quick simulation on a side panel to show what would happen if she cut the throttles instead… it wasn’t pretty. The energy from the previous stop would tear the tug apart.
 
Sarah let out a breath through clenched teeth. Her options were quickly running out.
 
“Admiral,” she began, her voice the even calmness of a trained soldier under duress, “I need you to get to an escape pod. You’ll need to go on your own because the tug needs constant input right now to maintain sufficient stability for launch. If I can recover this, I’ll let you know when to return. If not…”
 
She trailed off, suddenly not wanting to finish the statement. Training for these scenarios in the simulator was one thing, facing them was another altogether.
 
“I understand.”
 
She heard his restraints unbuckle, followed by heavy footfalls towards the door as he struggled against the shaking deck. Sarah half expected a protest, some chivalrous offer to stay and help, or a foolish insistence that she try to get to a pod as well, but none came. Protocol was clear in this case, and he was a trained soldier, professional enough to do what he was told without distracting her with needless chatter.
 
A slight pause as she heard the door open. “Kill the artificial gravity – it’ll make getting down there easier. Take care… and thank you.” There was an edge to his voice at the end.
 
Well, maybe he wasn’t completely professional, but Sarah appreciated the sentiment. She spared a half second to toggle off the ship’s artificial gravity field. A secondary display showed the boy’s movement down the corridors to the life boat hangar. He wasn’t kidding; in zero-g, he positively flew.
 
Suddenly, she wished she could have seen him in the Battle Room. From all that she had heard, it must have been poetry in motion.
 
Before long, Martin saw the status lights on an escape pod go green. A half-second later, the transport lurched slightly as the boy departed.
 
☽
 
Nightmare Moon’s consciousness reeled as the ember’s mass suddenly dropped by several orders of magnitude. Her ties to the moon, stretched by the constant force she had been holding across the void, snapped back with a vengeance as she felt herself dragged back through the tapestry to her prison.
 
She screamed mentally, fearing her chance of escape had slipped through her grasp. Suddenly, it dawned on the alicorn that she still held the ember. It hadn’t escaped her magic, it had just stopped running. Instead of it pulling her away, she was now pulling it towards her.
 
Before she could react, the ember tore through her tapestry at great speed. Appearing above her moon, she could only stare as her grasp whipped it into a tight, unstable orbit. The Elements’ seal held, reducing her power as it passed through the barrier. It was all she could do to slow the ember, bringing it to a gentle stop on the surface before her power faded entirely.
 
Had she eyes, Nightmare’s would have been held wide open in surprise.
 
What had she just done?
 
☽
 
The vibrations stopped almost instantly as the escape pod cleared its bay. Sarah couldn’t explain how the energy dissipated so quickly, but that didn’t stop her from breathing a sigh of relief as she killed the thrust vector and returned the ship to auto-pilot. Thumbing open a communication channel, she started to call her passenger back when she noticed something on the external sensors.
 
The escape pod wasn’t there.
 
Confused, the lieutenant pulled up the telemetry automatically generated by the ship’s computer after launch. Such info was always saved by the ship’s black box to aid in the recovery process.
 
The craft had separated normally, and then it… vanished?
 
The pilot felt panic start to rise in her gut as she checked the recordings from the ship’s external cameras. The pod was there one instant and utterly gone the next.
 
Thermal imaging, transponder interrogation, everything came back with the same information.
 
Sarah triple-checked every instrument she had as she marked the current time on the ship’s logs. She had the feeling no one would believe her when she sent out her distress call, and she needed every bit of proof available to keep herself out of the brig.
 
Martin could scarcely believe it herself.
 
Ender Wiggin was gone.
 
☽


> Giant
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Consciousness came to Ender in rolling waves, incrementally bringing his mind out of the deep dark. Opening his eyes, he found himself upside down, hanging from his seat’s restraint harness in the escape pod. The boy instinctively tried to reorient his perspective of down to something more favorable, only to find it impossible to do so because he could actually feel a pull towards the pod’s ceiling.
 
Has the artificial gravity malfunctioned? Ender was genuinely puzzled – an unusual feeling for him. As his faculties fully returned, he realized with a start that a pod this small didn’t have enough power to generate the required field. Shaking his head, the soldier tried to piece together what had happened. He clearly remembered the launch; an external feed had shown the distressed tug falling away as his pod boosted to a minimum safe distance. Then… then there was a lot more acceleration, more than he would have thought possible from a life boat. That was it – Ender supposed he had blacked out from the g-forces.
 
He glanced at the few control panels available in the tiny craft. Acceleration couldn’t be causing this force; the only primary thruster is offline, and it’s pointed in the wrong direction. That means…
 
Small movements confirmed the boy’s suspicion. The pull against his body was far weaker than normal. Ender couldn’t think of another explanation: he was somehow on the moon.
 
Reaching down, the soldier unclipped the desk from his belt and unrolled the data tablet. After powering it up, it took only a few commands to link into the pod’s control systems and bring up an external feed. Two dorsal cameras were obscured or destroyed, but sure enough, a ventral camera showed him the desolate expanse of the lunar landscape.
 
How did the ship recover from such an uncontrolled acceleration and manage to land safely? Ender was dumbfounded. Even if it had the power, which he doubted, it would take a quick, not to mention conscious, pilot and some very advanced navigational software to keep the escape pod from making yet another crater on the moon’s face.
 
That would be a mystery for another time. After running a system diagnostic and checking the surrounding landscape for rocks big or sharp enough to pierce the hull, Ender accessed the flight control program through his desk and directed the ship to right itself. The world seemingly rotated around him as he felt the pod’s maneuvering thrusters fire. After a few seconds of vibration and a disheartening crunching sound from below his seat, Ender unbuckled and began moving toward the main control console at the front of the pod.
 
As he maneuvered between the double row of seats facing the axis of the cylindrical lifeboat, Ender felt his knees weaken and his legs grow sluggish.
 
Did I get up too fast? It hasn’t been that long since…
 
The thought died as Ender tumbled forward into the aisle, collapsing into a deep slumber.
 
☽
 
Nightmare Moon imagined herself breathing a sigh of relief as she released the hold on her tenuous power. That had been a close call. In the hours since she had pulled the ember to the surface of her moon, she had tried every means possible to reach it, but the Elements’ bonds were strong as ever. Try as she might, the once-Mistress of the Moon above could not even access its surface. Nightmare had no choice but to remain below, tormented by the possibility of escape just on the other side.
 
Then, suddenly, the ember awoke and its… container, or whatever it was, had started to move. Fear gripped her core as Nightmare Moon realized that she wouldn’t have the strength to repeat her previous escape attempt, not on this side of the tapestry. Frantically, the alicorn had thrown everything she could conceive at the ember to keep it from leaving. It was a simple sleeping spell that finally did the trick. Thankfully, such low-level magic was weak enough to get through her bonds.
 
But how long can I keep him asleep?
 
Glancing at her tapestry, Nightmare Moon came to a realization. Now that the ember was here, the space below had completely vanished, and the weave of stars and fog appeared as it had when she first crafted it. It was the original beacon, the minds of those bugs who had originally intruded upon her domain, which enabled her to see it. The being they touched had shown with their light and had kept the way open to her… but now everything was dark.
 
The ember was the dreamer; he had been the key.
 
She considered this, ever mindful of the ticking clock. The ember would try to leave again when he woke up, and she might not be able to stop him a second time.
 
Wait, Nightmare realized, he’s asleep! How could I be so foalish?
 
A dream was the answer! Her consciousness had wholly gone through the tapestry before, leaving her prison behind. Why should it be any different now? If she could create a dream, she could enter it and escape through the mind of the dreamer!
 
Suddenly, the alicorn’s hopes deflated. The ember couldn’t well fly away while he was asleep. Furthermore, how effective would her escape be if she was stuck in the mind of another pony? Or rather, if she was stuck in… whatever he was.
 
He’s not a colt, damn it, she told her stubborn mind.
 
Nightmare Moon shuffled through her memories of the arts arcane, looking for another solution. Centuries of preparation for her battle with Celestia made it easy for the alicorn to quickly review every spell available to her, but despite all the choices her knowledge afforded, she couldn’t find of another possibility.
 
The seal placed on her by the Elements of Harmony was simply too crippling.
 
A dream it was, then. She would simply have to find a way to escape once she was in the colt’s… in the other being’s mind. Satisfied now that she had a path forward, Nightmare Moon calmed her nerves, delving deep into her center. While she was intellectually familiar with dream magic, it was something she had never personally performed. Rather, she was simply relying on the memories provided by her previous self.
 
It took a very conscious effort for the alicorn to avoid thinking of that name.
 
Abruptly, Nightmare Moon’s search for her power over dreams came to a halt as she reached a portion of her mind partitioned by an impenetrable barrier; one she had herself created.
 
No! Nightmare railed inside her own head. No! I couldn’t have… I didn’t…
 
A feeling of despair radiated outward from her core as she slowly realized the truth: the part of herself she needed, the piece that could spin and weave the threads of others’ dreams, was locked away inside the one part of her mind she hated most.
 
It was sealed inside the barrier holding Princess Luna.
 
☽
 
Had she been asleep? Was this a dream? She couldn’t tell.
 
It sure felt like a dream.
 
She heard a voice, though it was muffled, distant. It was like someone was trying to wake her.
 
Tia?
 
The first thing Luna noticed was the lack of anything to notice. There was no sensation, no sense of body, just… her mind, floating in emptiness.
 
Panic suddenly flooded throughout her being as memories began to roll back in chaotic waves.
 
A desolate flight over a sleeping Equestria, longing, anger, a desperate wish, awe, as she felt her power blossom exponentially to levels she never thought possible, wonder, at seeing an older version of herself in the mirror image of a lake, terror, as she realized that this new Luna had a mind of its own: her mind, sans mercy and pity, and ever so much more powerful.
 
Now new memories were hurling themselves against her psyche, demanding attention. She couldn’t process it all; only broad concepts and facts stuck as the rest crashed around her like water through a broken dam.
 
The other, Nightmare Moon, had fought Celestia and lost. Tia had… her sister had…
 
She was banished, merely a shell of consciousness trapped with the other in what had once been her moon.
 
“It’s about time you woke up,” a curt voice enveloped her. “We don’t have all day.”
 
It was her voice, only deeper, and with an arrogant lilt. Luna cringed, remembering the last time she had heard it.
                
“W-what happened to me? To… us?” It was all Luna could do to keep her voice from wavering. There was no way to hide your fear when your opponent shared your very mind, but for the young princess it was a matter of pride. She wanted to be able to show some small aspect of self-control in the face of such overwhelming power.
 
“There’s no use in playing dumb, child,” her other self scoffed. “We both know what your sister did to us. I am merely trying to rectify the situation. Now come along, we have no time to waste.”
 
“Tia was only trying to-” The princess’ objection was cut short by a sharp magical blow that left her dazed.
 
Luna felt herself pulled along by the sheer force of the other’s will. She briefly entertained the thought of struggling, but knew that there would be no point. Nightmare had always controlled the vast majority of their divine power. Here, inside the Elements’ barrier, she was as strong as ever.
 
Higher and higher the pair went, ascending in consciousness to the edge of their prison. To Luna, it felt like emerging from a great watery depth: the pressure gradually lessening as the light increased.
 
“Why did you unseal me?” she ventured. “I’ve been sleeping for-” Luna gasped mentally as the amount of time finally caught up with her. The world she had known, and the few ponies to which she had grown close, all of it would be…
 
A prickly crimson wave from her captor washed over her. It was Nightmare’s bitter laughter. “Still want to defend your sister, little one? See what her mercy has wrought.”
 
As they stopped near Nightmare’s tapestry, Luna felt the full weight of the countless years the other spent here. She staggered at the memories… Nightmare’s time here surpassed even her previous life span and threatened to consume her.
 
It was like trying to drink from a staggering waterfall. Out of pure survival instinct, the princess discarded all but the brightest of the memories that washed over her. The rage and bitterness of the early years hit first, then the centuries of cold calculation. The latter blurred and meshed with the following period of boredom and stillness; either it was unimportant or Nightmare didn’t want her examining that time too closely. Finally, she saw the beacon, the discovery of another side to her tapestry, and the accidental arrival of this… craft?
 
A cold fear prickled over Luna as she considered the implications. What if it had worked? What if Nightmare had been able to escape and reach Equestria? What new horrors would she have visited upon it and what would Celestia have been forced to do?
 
Luna despaired. Now she was needed for some element of the other’s plan, and she had neither the strength to resist nor a place to hide.
 
The young princess felt some aspect of herself being twisted and pulled, but to no effect, and soon the feeling disappeared. Nightmare seemed frustrated.
 
“Create a dream for… him,” the dark alicorn highlighted the being she called an ember in Luna’s mind, “and take us both there.”
 
So that’s what this was about. That feeling… Nightmare was trying to co-opt her power over dreams, but for some reason she couldn’t do it. She needed Luna to escape. This was it – the place to make her stand. Luna gathered herself, resolute in facing the other.
 
“No. I won’t. YOU got us in here, and I won’t help you get out. Besides, Tia will just beat you again!” Luna didn’t mean to throw in the last barb, and the thought of fighting her sister was saddening, but the princess needed to feel something, anything, backing her up.
 
Her small amount confidence withered almost immediately as she was enveloped by Nightmare’s wrath. The dark alicorn didn’t even reply with words, rather, she buffeted Luna’s consciousness with pure force of magic. The malevolent wind tore at Luna, leaving her hollow, ephemeral. It was all she could do to remember her name, much less her desire to resist.
 
“Create the dream… now,” Nightmare commanded.
 
Luna stumbled forward, weakly drawing upon old knowledge, nearly as innate as her control over the moon itself. Without feeling, she created silver threads that slowly wove together into a fabric. The fabric multiplied once, twice, fourfold, doubling over and over again until it was no longer silver but now countless facets of every color. Before the two alicorns, the weave became a landscape, opening to them, and they stepped through.
 
☽
 
Ender opened his eyes and rolled over, trying to clear a muddled head. Everything seemed off, and he had to find out why.
 
It was fresh air. That was it. Years in space will make even the smallest breath of unfiltered air seem like another world entirely. Hints of pine and dry earth reached his nostrils and for a moment, Ender was a child again on an Earth lost long ago.
 
As his vision cleared, the sight of blue sky confirmed what his nose was telling him. But how was this happening? As far as Ender knew, he was in an escape pod, settled impossibly on the moon’s surface.
 
The boy rose shakily to his feet, blinking in the bright sunlight and fighting off the slight vertigo caused by such an open sky above him. Ender was thankful for the moderately dense forest surrounding him; waking up on an open plain would have left him reeling for a good few minutes, clutching the earth around him as his eyes cast about, desperately wanting some part of the land to curve up.
 
Wait, he thought, a thrill of fear running through him, this forest, it’s…
 
Ender could hear the sound of a nearby stream. A clear path wound through the sparse underbrush, covered in pine needles. Sure enough, he could barely make out the ladder of a playground slide through a tiny gap in the trees ahead.
 
He stared, wide-eyed and unmoving. This was Fairyland. Or at least that’s what the Fantasy Game had called it so long ago. To Ender, it was the place of countless nightmares.
 
And now it felt real.
 
☽
 
Two alicorns stepped out onto a broad, grassy plain. Rolling hills, brilliantly green in morning sunlight, were only broken occasionally by a clutches of broad trees that promised comfortable shade and perhaps a sweet fruit or two. A light breeze brought the smell of clover. To any equine, it was heaven – a place of food, peace, and rest.
 
Nightmare Moon took a long while to simply relish the feeling of again having a body, even if it was only a dream. Clad in armor, the larger alicorn’s obsidian coat stood in stark contrast to the bright world around her. The sunlight seemed to disappear as it touched her, the black of her coat being not a true pigment, but rather the very absence of light.
 
Beside her, Luna was dismayed to find that she appeared younger than she remembered. Her midnight blue coat was lighter, and gone was the ethereal starry mane of which she had been so proud. Instead, the light blue curls of her childhood fell past her eyes as she shook her head, trying to get them to float as they once did. She glanced up at her other, older self.
 
Must she take everything from me?
 
It was with a visible effort that Nightmare Moon dragged herself back to the situation at hand.
 
“So, where is he?” she demanded of the princess.
 
Luna was glad that she was able to retain a measure of defiance in her voice.
 
“You wanted a dream, I gave you a dream. This is my simplest weave – a basic place of relaxation for ponies needing it,” Luna paused, adding as much of an edge as she could. “It was all I could do. You should be happy I could still weave at all after what you did to me.”
 
Nightmare snorted, not even turning back as she replied, “That’s nothing compared to what I would have done had you kept refusing. Again, where is he?”
 
“I don’t know,” Luna lied through her teeth. “I just create the dream; the dreamer has to come on their own.”
 
The princess sensed her other self was still too preoccupied with having a body and the sensations that came with it to notice her deception. Nightmare was trying to make up for centuries of incorporeal existence in only a few minutes. Meanwhile, Luna was desperately trying to sort through what new memories she could in an effort to figure out the other alicorn’s plan.
 
Segmenting the weave, creating one for herself while pushing the ember into a natural dream, had been a last-second insight, and for now it was working. Nightmare didn’t know how dreams worked, and Luna had realized she could use that to her advantage.
 
Suddenly, every fiber in her being froze in horror as Luna decrypted enough of Nightmare’s memories to understand the basic intent of her plan.
 
She was going to kill Celestia, and worse, she had worked out how to do it. Wide-eyed, Luna stared at her dark half. Before her emotions could betray her through their shared mental link, the princess clamped down on them, driving her focus elsewhere.
 
I can’t fight her on equal footing, and the longer I am with her, the sooner she will simply force me to do her bidding, she reasoned. She needs me somehow, so to thwart her, at least for the time being, I need to run.
 
But where could she run? There was only one answer.
 
Before the dark alicorn could collect herself and make any move to react, Luna breached the boundaries of her weave, diving into the ember’s own dream.
 
☽
 
The playground was empty, thank goodness. No wolf-children, or bugger-children, or shadows of his past were waiting to torment him today. In fact, the forest reminded Ender of the time when he reached the room at the End of the World, and the rest of the game lost its lethality everywhere else.
 
In fact, this whole experience seemed more like the game than any sort of dream Ender could remember. In his dreams, his sensations were always fuzzy, and his actions plodded forward on an inexorable course. Things happened because they were supposed to happen. Though he always felt as if he were making choices in his dreams, he never actually did.
 
So if this was in fact the game, Ender reasoned, he had better start remembering how to play it. Maybe then he could figure out what was going on, and how to get back to reality.
 
The Fantasy Game was one part of his training Ender made sure to investigate once he was promoted and received all the security clearances that came with his new rank. While the doctors and officers who designed and ran the Battle School program were loathe to divulge their secrets to so recent a graduate, they couldn’t deny a flag officer. It was then Ender learned the truth about one of the many games he had played.
 
While the game played in the Battle Room formed the core of the Battle School training program, the Fantasy Game was no less integral. Everyone played it, and unlike many of the simple games designed for Launchies and the younger kids, nearly everyone kept playing it right up until graduation.
 
But no one ever talked about it. It was something you did in your downtime, on your own desk. Sometimes Launchies would compare notes, but soon they noticed that their game became different from their friends’ experiences, and eventually they wouldn’t want to talk about it anymore.
 
When he was finally given access to the Battle School records, Ender became frustrated because he could find no mention of the Fantasy Game anywhere. He was about to accuse his sources of falsifying records, when he realized that it was simply known to the adults by another name: the Mind Game.
 
One of the largest problems that plagued early Battle School classes was a myriad of developmental disorders that popped up among the students. Brilliant though they were, the program was simply too stressful and grueling for even the brightest of humanity’s minds. Therapists and experimental psychologists were brought in to support the students, but the workload was simply too great and the problems too numerous.
 
Then, one of the teams selected to correct the problem noticed how attached most of the students were to the basic cognitive development games designed for Launchies. They were simple things: guiding a mouse through a maze while avoiding cats, getting a cartoon bear through a dangerous forest, all designed to teach advanced concepts like threat mitigation and three-dimensional spatial orientation to young minds. But many Battle School students at the time created a greater narrative connecting the games, even when no link was written in the basic storyline or software. They even attached small superstitions to the games. Save the bear a certain number of times and you’ll be harder to hit in the Battle Room. If you can make it through the maze without even being seen by the cats, you get put on a secret list that’ll get you promoted early. Things like that.
 
Seeing an opportunity, the psych team spent months crafting an AI that could procedurally create many games in one program, and then tailor the program to the needs of each individual student based on everything the school knew about them. Considering the amount of resources poured into the selection of Battle School candidates, there was little the International Fleet did NOT know.
 
The Mind Game was a resounding success. By starting with simple games and then building new experiences based on the student’s profile and active feedback, the AI could do what a team of psychologists could not. Overnight, it became the children’s mentor, therapist, teacher, confessor, coach… and tormentor. Unlike any human counselor, the program had no qualms with forcing a student to confront their deepest fears early and often, if that’s what was required. The program directors may have quavered when they first saw the AI’s methods, but they couldn’t argue with the results. Developmental disorders almost completely vanished within the Battle School, and the AI program ran for decades without any substantial change.
 
Until Ender Wiggin arrived, and changed the game.
 
The Giant’s Drink was one of the common features to all students. A simple guessing game with no right answer, it was designed to teach resilience in the face of an impossible situation, and gauge how long a student would continue playing a game when the correct answer was not to play.
 
During his investigations, Ender had learned that he was only one of two students who had refused to stop playing, and the other one had killed himself.
 
Until Ender Wiggin arrived, poor Pinual had been the school’s only fatality.
 
The only difference between the two of them was that instead of lashing out at himself, Ender had vented his frustration at the game, breaking it and forcing the AI to invent a new program on the fly to accommodate him. The result was Fairyland, the very place where he was now standing.
 
He had not known it then, but Ender later learned that everything he saw after the Giant was the result of the computer “winging it.” Some of the basic programming was there, after all “Fairyland” was referenced in some other parts of the game as an incentive to get children to play, but no players had ever succeeded in finding it.
 
Knowing this did not fill Ender with confidence. In his dreams, Fairyland was never this real, just the shadowed memory of the game he had once played combined with his deepest fears. In the game, he always had the benefit of his desk as a filter between reality and the game; “he” was never more than a holographic character running through a generated landscape above his desk. Now he could smell the pine of the forest and feel the pitted metal of the playground equipment. Was this just another psychological experiment of the Fleet, a last-ditch effort to heal him after his breakdown on Eros? Everyone of importance knew about the night terrors he had suffered since the end of the war. Had the trip from Command School really happened, or was this somehow all in his head?
 
Well, whatever this was, the first order of business was to determine the rules of the game, and that meant testing its limits. In his dreams and in the game itself, Ender had always moved forward, towards the room at the End of the World. He knew what awaited him there and had no desire to see it again. What if he went backwards this time? Could he reach those simple early games? It would certainly be safer, and would hopefully signal those running this place that he wasn’t interested in playing.
 
☽
 
Luna knew she was jumping blindly into a dream of a creature she didn’t understand, yet it was her only option. As much as she feared arriving in a place or reality completely alien to her, she feared the wrath of her other self even more. Even so, it was to her great relief that she arrived not only as herself, but in a setting she could comprehend.
 
Well, comprehend to an extent, anyway.
 
The young alicorn gazed around at a perfectly flat plain of checkered red-and-white squares. She marveled at its uniformity, until a sense of scale and the feel of fabric beneath her hooves told her what it actually was. She was standing on an impossibly massive tablecloth. Towering before her was a giant loaf of bread, easily the size of Canterlot’s main gates. A bowl of jelly to her left gave off the tantalizing smell of strawberries. She could have easily swam in it had she wanted to. Awestruck, Luna trotted between massive platters of food, each one more improbable than the last. The salad bowl featured carrots bigger than even her sister. The water pitcher alone could supply a small town for days. It wasn’t until she saw the roasted and glazed carcass of some giant bird that she began to feel alarmed. If the food was this big, how large was the diner? Was this dreamer a giant compared to ponies?
 
No one was around to enjoy the table’s fare, however. The only setting was empty; no chair loomed above the lawn-sized placemat. Instead, two short glasses stood upside down on the blue cloth. Walking to the edge, she saw a series of hills, forming a vast and strange shape along the plains far below. Was that a village she spied in the distance? If so, it was impossibly small compared to the table on which she stood. Strange… were there ponies or other beings of her size in this land of giants? Now that she looked, she thought she could see a cluster of ponies grouped together far in the distance.
 
Seeing no obvious way down from the table, she thought about flying off, but instead cast about with her magic, examining the elements of the dream around her. Perhaps she could discern the purpose of the table, or maybe find the dreamer himself. Instead, she found a memory – a chain of memories, actually. A soft glow permeated the air around her horn as Luna conjured them up, hoping to learn something about her surroundings.
 
Wispy, silvery figures appeared over the landscape in front of her. One was the giant she had feared before, now sitting at a massive chair in front of the table’s one place setting. The other ran out from behind the bread, moving on a course straight for the giant.
 
As the memory cleared, Luna noticed that while the giant grew more detailed, the smaller figure did not. Both were tall, long-limbed creatures that shared the same basic body structure. The giant had a broad brow, bulbous features and was devoid of hair. The runner was lithe, and moved about on only two limbs. Even though it was far smaller than the giant, something about it left her with the impression that it was small, even for its own kind, like a child. While the giant grew more and more detailed – Luna could make out individual pores in his skin and she noted the crookedness of his teeth – the runner remained vaguely defined. Featureless… that was the best way to think of it. Even the runner’s face was utterly unremarkable.
 
“I think I’ll bite your head off,” the giant boomed. Luna wondered at her ability to understand the creature, and then quickly realized that her mind was directly interpreting a dream; language was unimportant when meaning was the actual medium for communication. She just interpreted that meaning in her own language.
 
All the same, it was sort of funny to hear Equine coming from such improbably shaped lips.
 
The runner was unimpressed by the giant’s threats. He ran up and kicked at the giant’s chin. Instead of chomping the smaller creature as Luna expected he would, the giant just rolled out a massive tongue, knocking the runner back.
 
“How about a guessing game?” he asked. That was a strange response to a kick in the face, the alicorn thought. The runner only waited, not responding.
 
“One is poison and one is not,” the giant said, setting out two glasses filled with liquid before the runner. Luna noted they were the same ones she had seen before starting the memory. “Guess right and I’ll take you into Fairyland.”
 
The young princess examined the contents of the two glasses… one was a vile green mixture, like a potion. It bubbled and emitted a noxious odor. The other one was a thick creamy white, like milk. Well, that was a fairly obvious choice.
 
The runner did not move, not even inclining his head either way. After long seconds of consideration, he approached one of the glasses, the one filled with white liquid. Luna wondered how he was supposed to drink; the glass was nearly as tall as he was.
 
The figure leaned his head over the rim of the glass and began to drink. Suddenly, his body began to inflate grotesquely, like a balloon. Soon he floated up and away, eventually popping high in the air. The giant laughed grotesquely. The alicorn was shocked at the apparent murder, and even more appalled at the giant’s casual laughter. What kind of creature killed for sport, for a game?
 
Surprisingly, the memory did not end. If the runner died, Luna wondered, how did the memory continue? Was it the giant’s?
 
After a few minutes, the runner emerged again from behind the bread, and the same events repeated, minus the kick to the giant’s face. This time, a gray liquid became solid around the runner’s head, holding him in place while the giant withdrew massive utensils and flayed him alive, eating pieces as he went.
 
Luna had to look away, and it was all she could do not to run off the table in a wild panic. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real. It can’t be real, she repeated to herself, over and over, until her ears told her it was finished. The runner was returning.
 
She was glad the giant was only a memory.
 
The events repeated themselves, and this time, the two glasses held red foam and a blue liquid moving in perpetual waves. Again, the runner waited without moving. Luna dreaded what his death might be, until she remembered that he might be able to win this time. After all, statistically speaking, he had to guess correctly at some point, right?
 
The small figure had strange appendages at the end of his forelimbs, similar to a dragon’s talons. Luna noticed that he had them tightly clenched and as she looked closer, the princess noted that he was shaking. Whether it was in anger or fear, she couldn’t tell, but either would have been appropriate.
 
Suddenly, the runner kicked over one glass, then the other before running towards the giant.
 
“Cheater, cheater!” the giant shouted as he tried to smash the figure with his carriage-sized… hands, she realized, as her mind supplied the word. A dragon term adapted to Equine, it seemed, but Luna pushed the thought out of her mind. She’d worry about that later. The runner was unfazed, and nimbly dodged the blows, eventually jumping up to land over the giant’s lips. To the alicorn’s amazement, he survived his assault on the massive creature. To her horror, the figure began burrowing into the giant’s eye, causing him to emit gut-wrenching screams as the runner went deeper and deeper, despite the giant’s attempts to dislodge him.
 
The giant stood bolt upright in pain, knocking over his chair. Then with one last strained gasp, he keeled over backwards, dying. Seeing where he fell, Luna realized that the strange hills in the plain were actually the long-reclaimed remnants of his body, covered with dirt and grass.
 
Though she could no longer see the runner, she could hear, as if over the wind, words that he must have heard.
 
“How did you get here? Nobody ever comes here.” If he replied, Luna couldn’t hear it. Then, over the wind: “Welcome to Fairyland.”
 
The memory ended. The princess could only stand there, paralyzed in shock.
 
Suddenly, a voice jolted her out of her reverie. It was clear and lucid, not part of the memory, but part of the current dream.
 
“What are you doing here?”
 
☽
 
Nightmare Moon raged impotently over the annoyingly placid plain. That little wretch! The fact that she could be so easily tricked made everything worse. Here, inside her mind where she had access and control over her full power, Nightmare could easily dominate that sniveling filly, but no, she had let herself be distracted, and now she was trapped. The alicorn could sense her other half, as well as the ember, out in the distance somewhere, yet no matter how fast she flew, there was nothing more than this endless plain.
 
Now Nightmare well and truly regretted never learning this particular part of her abilities. She could sense other layers, other portions of the dream out there, but she had no idea of how to get to them.
 
Only one option remained: brute force. No matter what else happened, Nightmare knew she was more powerful than the princess. Summoning every last bit of her aura, she focused on the spark she knew to be Luna, far off in the distance. Like she pulled herself towards the ember, she would do the same to her other half, relying on her power to punch through whatever stood between them. Nightmare Moon’s armor began to glow and spark with her horn as she gathered her magic about her. As she focused, the very plain around her began to warp and waver, buckling under the assault.
 
Soon…
 
☽
 
Ender noted that the climb up the table was far harder than the climb down had been. Fighting gravity was tough enough, but there was a big difference between commanding an on-screen avatar to find hand and footholds and doing it yourself. If he remembered correctly, he had been able to use the Giant’s overturned chair as well. This time, it was nowhere to be found.
 
Reaching the top, the boy was surprised to find a figure waiting, staring out over the plain where the Giant had fallen. It was… a pony? Ender struggled to remember if he had seen them before in the Fantasy Game. After a moment, he vaguely recalled there being a herd kept by the dwarves who had built their village amidst the Giant’s corpse. Candy-colored and cute, he had ignored them because they looked just like every other background component of the Fantasy Game. So what was one doing up here?
 
“What are you doing here?” he ventured, half expecting it to turn and stare at him dumbly. After all, not all the animals in the game could speak.
 
It turned, regarding him with wide eyes and a surprised gasp. She, if the timber of her voice was any indication, fumbled for words, shock showing on her strangely expressive face.
 
Ender had not seen many animals in his lifetime, but he knew a real pony looked nothing like this simulacrum. At the same time, though, something about this one simply struck him as… off. Most of the characters in the Fantasy Game were cartoonish; it was a game for children after all. This one, though, looked like she came from a different design. She certainly seemed tangible enough, as real as the trees he had seen earlier. Her midnight coat had a similar texture to that of the one horse he had seen as a child, and her cerulean blue mane lifted in the slight breeze. As she raised her head, a long spiral horn separated itself from the rest of her profile, resting proudly on her forehead. Ah, she was a unicorn then. Ender chided himself for being surprised; this was Fairyland after all.
 
Or, perhaps she wasn’t. Further examination answered Ender’s question as to how she got to the top of the Giant’s table when he spied a pair of wings adorning her back. Was she a… what was the word… pegasus then? The Battle School’s curriculum barely touched on mythology.
 
“You’re… you’re the dreamer,” she blurted, eyes never leaving his face.
 
Okay, that was not what I expected to hear, Ender thought. Is this the start of some IF psyche program?
 
He decided to play along. “Am I? I had come to the conclusion that this wasn’t a dream.”
 
She stared, apparently not the only one to hear something unexpected.
 
“Why not?” the pony asked slowly, her words seemingly catching up to her thoughts. Her ears rotated fully forward, focusing on his reply.
 
Ender knelt, pinching the tablecloth between thumb and forefinger. “Well, to begin with,” he said, looking up at her, “I generally don’t remember feeling things in my dreams. Sights and sounds, yes, but never touch.” He noticed that she had large emerald eyes. They seemed to consider his words.
 
Some psych program, he thought.
 
“The same goes with smell. The bread over there smells good enough to eat, and that’s definitely never happened to me in a dream before.” Ender tilted his head towards the massive loaf behind them as he stood.
 
The creature was silent for a long minute, regarding him with an inscrutable expression. Small shifts in her weight between fore and back legs spoke of indecision, or at the very least deep thought.
 
If this is a simulation, it’s a damned good one. The body language is incredibly lifelike. Ender noted. Even so, I wish it would hurry up.
 
“Um…” he prompted, leaning forward and raising his eyebrows. Hopefully this program would take the hint and start talking. Perhaps there was a human operator behind it?
 
She shook her head. “Forgive me,” she replied, fixing him with an earnest, almost pleading gaze. “I’m trying to decide whether I should wake you or not, you see…”
 
Ender suppressed a laugh. Ha! They already don’t know what to do with me. Did they honestly expect me to think this was all a dream? Aren’t they even going to try to play it off?
 
“…my other, well, let’s just say someone else put you to sleep when you tried to leave. She wants to use your craft to escape. You’re in great danger the longer you stay asleep, but if you wake up, I’m going to be right back where I started, trapped with her.”
 
What?
 
“What?” he asked incredulously.
 
She shook her head again, closing her eyes. “I knew you wouldn’t understand. I don’t either, not all of it.” The pony stepped closer, ruffling her wings slightly as she looked up into his eyes. The movement spoke of earnestness. “I think she wants to possess your body, but I don’t even know if that can be done. I just can’t think of any other way for her to escape. You can’t very well fly that craft of yours while you’re asleep.”
 
She spoke as if everything leading up to his current circumstances had actually happened. Ender had been operating under the assumption that at least some of it had been a part of this admittedly realistic simulation.
 
Ender considered his options. While he felt like challenging her, playing along would probably yield more results and perhaps show him a way out. As therapy, this scenario didn’t make a lot of sense, though nothing in the Fantasy Game ever did, at least not in an obvious way.
 
“Alright,” he responded levelly, “so it’s a catch-22.” The pony stared at him blankly.
 
“A what?” She blinked, looking genuinely confused.
 
It took a second for Ender to realize what it was she didn’t understand. Interesting, a human operator, or any decent program, should recognize that idiom. Shaking his head, he opted to not try and explain it.
 
“Nevermind, if neither choice is good, then maybe we can make another one. Just who is this ‘she’ you’re-“
 
Ender was interrupted by a massive shudder that resounded not only through the ground, but seemingly through the air and his very body. A harsh voice tore around them, turning both heads towards a spot high above the table.
 
“A-ha! Thought I was helpless, didn’t you?! You’re about to find out exactly what ‘helpless’ feels like, child.”
 
Another unicorn’s head, this one much larger and dark beyond the color black, marked the center of a fissure ripped seemingly from the air itself. It struggled, and concentric ripples emanated outward, as if something were pushing through an invisible wall. The world shuddered again, as the second unicorn uttered a feral cry.
 
Turning back to his companion, all Ender could see were the whites of her eyes. Her pupils had shrunk, and her ears lay back in fear. She was frozen momentarily, then she remembered herself and looked at him.
 
“Run!”
 
The soldier didn’t need to be told twice. He flung himself over the edge, grabbing for the first handholds on the table leg, intent on climbing down. Suddenly, the unicorn-pegasus-whatever name he couldn’t remember was hovering behind him.
 
“That’s too slow! You’ll never make it – climb onto my back!”
 
Ender looked dubiously at her wings. Forgetting that a horse was not aerodynamic to begin with, they didn’t seem large enough to support her weight, let alone his. Even so, she was flying, and knew the threat better than he did.
 
He reached out as she came closer. With one great leap, he pushed off the table leg, and swung onto her back. At first, the pony made a sickening spiral as she struggled with the additional weight that had arrived off-balance. Ender caught on and righted himself, swinging both legs to rest under her wing roots and dropping his body as close to her frame as possible to minimize the change in her center of gravity. It must have helped, because she soon leveled out and began a slow descending flight towards the forest below.
 
“Are you OK?!” the boy shouted over the rushing air.
 
“You’re… heavier… than I thought,” his mount replied, gasping for air as she beat her wings mightily. “I can’t keep flying… but… I’ll take us as far… as I can go!”
 
Ender considered their options. “Can the other one fly as well?” he asked.
 
“Yes!” They were losing about a foot of altitude for every three they were going forward. All told, they weren’t going to get far by air.
 
“Then head for the forest! It’ll at least provide some top cover. Will you be able to run after we land?”
 
Though Ender couldn’t see it, the pony’s jaw set in a grim expression. “I’ll have to!” she shouted over the wind.
 
 ☽
 
Nightmare Moon paid no attention to her quarry as the pair disappeared over the edge of the improbably-colored plain. Noting only which direction they went, she returned her focus to breaking through the barrier between dreams. There was nothing to worry about: not only could she see the ember in her mind, she could follow the mental link to her other self.
 
They wouldn’t get far.
 
In the meantime, Nightmare had to contend with this barrier. Had she known only her head would fit through on that final push, she would have waited and weakened it further. By getting stuck part-way, she had warned her quarry of her presence.
 
Oh well, the alicorn sighed mentally as she gathered the rest of her magical reserves to renew her assault on the barrier, remembering the brief vision she had of the ember in his natural form. After all this time, it was nice to satisfy her curiosity. Soon enough, she’d be able to study him in detail as she worked out how to take over his body and finally escape her prison.
 
☽
 
They touched down in a small clearing in the seemingly endless woods. Winded as she was, it took a while for Luna to recognize the strange metal structures around them as childhood play equipment. The slide, swings, and merry-go-round looked familiar – the purpose of the other objects wasn’t immediately clear to the princess.
 
“Take a moment and catch your breath. There’s no point in ruining yourself now if we have a long run ahead.” Luna’s new companion guided her to the forest edge, glancing up to make sure their pursuer was not imminently approaching. She didn’t have the wind to tell him that they’d both feel it the second Nightmare fully broke through, so the alicorn simply let herself be led.
 
All she could hear was the sound of her own panting. What a foal! I could have levitated him instead of exhausting myself like this! Luna chastised herself. Well, nothing to be done about it now. Perhaps it’s better that I save my magic – who knows if she can sense me using it, and cut off the source of my power.
 
The alicorn considered that for a moment. Of course she can’t cut off everything – otherwise the dream will collapse. I wonder if she knows how much power I need to maintain it… probably not.
 
She looked at the dreamer. He paced, head down with eyes unfocused, staring off into the far distance. It was remarkable how familiar his body language was, despite his form being completely different.
 
As Luna felt her heart rate slow and her lungs cease their burning, she ventured a question.
 
“What am I to call you? ‘Dreamer’ sounds impersonal and I don’t want to use her word for you.”
 
He glanced up, his thoughts obviously interrupted. “What did she call – never mind, it’s not important.” He motioned with a hand, indicating that they should start moving.
 
“My name is Ender,” he said, falling into a quick but steady pace. Luna found that a standard trot matched nicely, two of her hoofclips matching each of his strides. Hopefully they could maintain this for quite some time.
 
“Ender? Finisher?” Luna wasn’t sure if the Equine she heard matched correctly. ‘Finisher,’ it seemed an odd name, but not too different from the many ponies whose names matched their talent and eventual cutie mark. She wondered briefly if he had one, and what it would look like.
 
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a faint smile, then he shook his head, suddenly serious again and intent on maintaining his pace. “It’s a nickname, actually, and you’re not the first to say that – long story. What is your name?”
 
“Luna,” she replied. He balked for a moment as she wondered if there was a similar translation problem as their minds exchanged meaning instead of words.
 
“So I’m guessing it’s no accident that I landed on the moon?” The princess tried to follow his logic, wondering if he knew about her other self’s actions until she realized that her name was also another term for the moon, if an archaic one.
 
“No, actually, it’s not at all. But that’s also a long story.”
 
He nodded. “Alright, let’s focus on surviving for now. Story time can come later. That other unicorn back there… you said she wants me for something, right?”
 
Luna was feeling her lungs start to burn again, especially when trying to talk and trot, but she pressed on with their pace. “Alicorn, actually. But yes, I think she wants to possess you.”
 
Hmm, Luna pondered, he knows what a unicorn is, but he doesn’t recognize an alicorn. In spite of the urgency of their situation, a part of her mind catalogued the fact for later review. She was sure she could come up with many more questions, but they were unimportant now.
 
“And where do you come in?” he asked.
 
“She can’t create dreams – that’s what she needed me for. She forced me to weave one, thinking to trap you in it, but I made a separate fabric for us while I put you into one of your natural dreams. Then I tried to escape, but as you can see, she followed me here.” Luna paused, cringing at her role in all this. “I’m sorry; I didn’t think she could do that. To push through with brute force would require more power than I ever had. I didn’t think she could manage it.”
 
The trees passed by as the princess turned to watch her companion. He opened and closed his mouth a few times to reply, but apparently thought better of it and stopped.
 
“There is a LOT of this that doesn’t make sense and a lot more that I doubt, but let’s say I believe you. It’s either you wake me up and you’re back where you started, or I stay in this dream and we get chased until she catches us, right?”
 
“Yes, again I’m so-“
 
“-sorry, I know,” he interrupted. “Can you fight her?”
 
Luna’s eyes widened as she shook her head. The princess stumbled a bit as she missed an errant tree root. Ender stopped momentarily, but when it was clear she was fine, they both continued.
 
“I’ll take that as a no.”
 
“In here, she’s immensely powerful. I might be able to cast a few spells and delay her, but she would just overwhelm me. Then she would turn on you.” Luna wondered why they were even running. It would only be a matter of time before they were found.
 
“Spells? Oh, right… unicorn. I forgot the horns were supposed to be magic. I guess anything goes in the Fantasy Game.”
 
The alicorn was about to correct him on his terminology again when the rest of the sentence registered in her mind. Fantasy Game? Does he not believe this is a dream?
 
Before she could ask, he had moved on. “What about a trap? Would we be able to take her by surprise?”
 
Luna considered that, finding it harder and harder to think as her legs continued to tire and her lungs started to become more insistent that she stop and take a rest. “She would have to be very distracted and surprised, and even then, I don’t know if I have the power.”
 
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the hint of a smile on his features. There was an idea forming. “What if it wasn’t you?”
 
“Are there dangers in this dream? What do you have…?” Luna stopped herself.
 
How could I be so foalish?! We share a mind! Who knows what she could pick up? “Wait, stop. Don’t tell me!” Ender glanced at her, a puzzled expression on his face.
 
How am I supposed to explain this to him?
 
“Again, it’s a… long story. Let’s just say she and I are… intimately familiar. We’re linked, if you will. She might be able to know what I’m thinking.”
 
Why am I even bothering? How do I even have a chance at stopping her? This was supposed to be my escape, and she was able to follow me even here.
 
Luna gave up. She planted her hooves and skidded to a stop in a small clearing. It took a few strides for Ender to realize he was alone and double back. While she waited, the young alicorn noticed an old stone well with a weathered rope hanging from a pulley.
 
“Look, I’m sorry. Just stay there and I’ll wake you up. At least you’ll be safe. Promise me you’ll leave as fast as you can, and do whatever you can to stay awake. As soon as we’re both back… where we were, she’ll probably try to stop you again.” Luna approached her companion, horn glowing.
 
“Hold up,” Ender raised a hand, fingers spreading out as if to ward her away. The alicorn had never before seen the gesture, but it made a strange sort of sense. “You said you know her well. Tell me, what distracts her? What is she afraid of?”
 
Luna paused, amazed that he wanted to continue when his own safety was assured. Blinking, it took her a few moments to register his question.
 
“Not what: who. She’s afraid of our sister… that’s who put us in this situation to begin with.” She saw the wheels turning in his head, eyes alight with an idea.
 
He seems so confident… could we actually have a chance?
 
“So you’re saying she fears a sibling? That’s perfect.”
 
Luna couldn’t comprehend any of this, but perhaps that was a good thing. If she was clueless, than her dark half would be as well. She had to ask one thing, though.
 
“How is that perfect?” Now he grinned in earnest, nodding his head towards the well in the clearing.
 
“I do too, and this is my dream.”
 
☽
 
Nightmare Moon gave a cry of triumph as she pulled the last part of her body through the invisible barrier between dream worlds. The little annoyance did good work, she noted begrudgingly. The weave had contracted each time she pushed through it, making every curve of her body another obstacle to her progress.
 
The alicorn flapped her wings, luxuriating in the feeling of flight now that she could again move freely. Hovering over the strange landscape at a higher altitude, she could now make out the strange plain below. It was… a table? Her sense of scale tilted wildly as she made out rolling hills below, surrounding a tiny village. Shaking her head, she ignored the comparative insanity of the dream world and focused on the ember and her sister in her mind.
 
There they were… father than she would have expected, but nothing worrisome.
 
In fact, Nightmare grinned wickedly, a little chase might make the capture all the sweeter.
 
Black wings furled as she dove towards the ground, gaining momentum. It would be a fine chase indeed.
 
☽
 
The well, according to her companion, was actually the entrance to an underground cavern, Luna looked at the rope dubiously, but this was his dream after all. Judging by how he moved, he had been here before.
 
As she watched Ender deftly vault the rim of the well, catch the rope, and begin lowering himself down, Luna couldn’t help but admire how agile and dexterous he was. His was a body, it seemed, designed for climbing, jumping, hanging, and otherwise negotiating vertical obstacles. As Luna catalogued yet another fact about him in her mind, she suddenly wondered what label to use, not for him in particular, but for his species.
 
Leaning over the well, she realized that it was not wide enough to accommodate her wingspan. She couldn’t very well hold onto the rope as he was doing. Luna sighed, realizing she would have to risk a levitation spell. She could teleport, but she couldn’t see the bottom of the well, and didn’t want to risk appearing in mid-air, still too far from the ground to safely land.
 
Floating next to Ender as he descended, Luna took the opportunity to ask the question on her mind.
 
“What do you call yourself? I mean,” she added, getting a confused look from the dreamer, “as a common name. What does your kind call itself?”
 
Apparently, the question was odd enough that he actually stopped climbing, and hung on to the rope for a moment while looking at her strangely. Apparently not seeing the reaction he wanted, Ender turned and kept climbing without a word.
 
The young alicorn hurried after him, using her magic to catch up. “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to offend you. I just don’t know what to call you other than ‘Ender.’”
 
He fixed her with an unbelieving stare. “You really don’t know?”
 
“Why would I ask if I did?” Something didn’t quite add up regarding his reactions, and it was confusing Luna. He must believe I am a figment of his imagination, she reasoned, and now that I consider it, can I really blame him? We’re in one of his dreams, after all. She couldn’t imagine what this entire experience seemed like to him; maybe his disbelief was just a way of coping?
 
At least he was not only being cooperative, but actively helping her. He could have given up when she offered to wake him.
 
Ender continued his descent, stepping off the rope and onto the damp stone floor of the well. Reaching up to guide her to the bottom, he replied, “Human is the word you’re looking for. Man for male, woman for female.”
 
Luna heard stallion and mare, and knew they weren’t right, but apparently the Equine terms translated directly. It was another interesting fact to note. She touched the fabric of the dream momentarily, forcing out those details. Man and woman were rendered in her mind the same way hand was earlier.
 
She opened her eyes to see the human – she liked using the new word – looking at her cautiously.
 
“I just felt something when your horn lit up. What did you do?”
 
Before she could answer the entire world shook again. Luna felt her heart race as adrenaline shot through her system. She looked at Ender, eyes conveying her alarm.
 
“She’s broken free. We need to move… I’ll tell you on the way.” Luna did her best to keep her voice calm; panicking would help neither of them.
 
Nodding, Ender turned and started to jog again through the broad stone corridor. Luna fell in next to him, trying her best not to slip on the damp floor.
 
“In dreams,” the princess explained, “we don’t exactly speak. We perceive it that way, but our minds are sharing meaning, not words. I was only trying to discern the actual words you used; all I heard were my own translations.”
 
Ender only nodded, his eyebrows furrowed. He remained silent for quite a while as they moved quickly through the cavern.
 
I must have given him a lot to think about, or else challenged his viewpoint of what’s going on. Luna hoped he would come to understand the reality of the situation and not pass it off as a mere dream or fantasy. Well, a normal dream anyway.
 
The flagstones soon gave way to natural rock as the pair traveled through the long cavern. Piles of gems, cut jewels, and other treasures lay in open vaults. They passed rooms featuring tables with more jewels or heaping piles of food amidst fancy china and gleaming golden utensils. As they passed, Luna noticed eyes peering out from behind the gems and other treasures.
 
A chill went down her spine as the princess wondered what happened to anyone who approached the vaults.
 
Ahead, a myriad of cages hung from the ceiling, each containing a different, friendly-looking animal. It was a menagerie worthy of the Royal Gardens, and Luna was sorely tempted to examine all the new species up close. She had to remind herself of their dire circumstances to keep her hooves moving forward.
 
For his part, Ender paid no attention to the temptations on either side as he single-mindedly moved through the cave system. Eventually, he led the alicorn to a broad stone door at the end of the corridor, seemingly hewn from the very rock of the cavern. Brilliant glowing emeralds were embedded into the door, forming shapes that Luna soon realized were letters. It took a moment for her mind to receive the meaning, but before long the words were clear:
 
The End of the World
 
The alicorn balked, wondering exactly what the creature beside her had in mind for this trap. He did plan on keeping the two of them safe, right?
 
Maybe waking him up would have been the better option.
 
Ender didn’t hesitate and walked right up to the door. In spite of its massive size, it moved easily, opening into brighter light beyond. Luna blinked and hurried after him, not wanting to be left behind regardless of her misgivings.
 
The sight that greeted her was the last thing she expected: the mouth of the cavern opened into the side of a mountain. The alicorn stood with her human companion atop a high cliff overlooking a broad pastoral landscape bathed in rich autumn light. Forests and fields blended in a patchwork quilt of green, brown, and gold that stretched from the base of the mountain to the far horizon. In the distance a castle loomed that reminded her greatly of Canterlot. Taller than it was wide, the citadel had so many towers and spires that the princess had a difficult time making an accurate count.
 
How could we be on the side of a mountain after traveling underground for so long? Luna wondered. If anything, their path had been level, and it certainly had not gone up. Granted, she of all ponies knew that dreams didn’t necessarily have to conform to natural law, but they usually made some kind of sense.
 
Looking up, she found the answer to her question, and it was even stranger than their improbable elevation. Above the landscape and castle was not open sky but the immense ceiling of an even bigger cavern. Countless gems sparkled high above, providing the late-afternoon sunlight to the world below. Some were too bright to directly observe, others were much like her stars, though these gems shone with every color of the rainbow. Luna knew of no artifacts, magic or otherwise, that could provide so much light for so large an area. The spectacle was breathtaking.
 
The human barely paid attention to the landscape; she guessed he had been here many times before. Instead, Luna watched has he walked right up to the cliff’s ledge and looked over. It was an unusually confident act for a creature without wings.
 
“Alright, Luna,” he said, turning back and looking her directly in the eyes. His use of her name drew the princess’ attention. It seemed he wanted her complete focus. “I need you to trust me on this. We both need to jump off this ledge, and don’t worry,” he held up his hands when he saw her reaction, “there is a cloud that catches us and takes us where we need to go. I don’t know how the dream would work if you were to fly – I don’t have wings, after all, but I don’t want us to get separated. Do you think you can jump and let yourself fall?”
 
The princess shrugged; confident that even should absolutely nothing happen, she could stop her descent with levitation. It would be unpleasant, but not dangerous. In response, she nodded and walked up to the edge.
 
On second thought, the rocks below seemed awfully far away.
 
Luna didn’t get the chance to rethink her decision as Ender threw himself off the ledge, rotating his body in midair so that he was face up, staring at her and the gems above. Even though she knew what was supposed to happen, Luna couldn’t suppress her shock, and instinctively dived after him, tucking her wings in to gain speed.
 
In the blink of an eye, a cloud flew out of nowhere and caught the two of them. Luna rolled over in the soft material to see the human laughing as the cloud carried them over the landscape.
 
“That’s always fun, no matter how many times I do it!” His face suddenly grew somber. She thought he had merely remembered the nature of their situation until he remarked, “It’s the one good part of this dream.”
 
Not knowing what to make of that, the alicorn could only voice the other thought in her mind. “Do you normally walk on clouds? Usually that’s a talent limited to creatures with wings. How did your kind develop the skill?”
 
Ender raised an eyebrow. “We can’t, normally. I thought it was just a dream thing. Are you saying you can?” Luna noted the surprise in his voice. It was one more piece of information to file away.
 
“Well, yes.” Luna wanted to describe the basics of pegasi magic, but she noticed that they were quickly drawing near the castle’s tallest tower. Lifting her head towards their apparent destination, she asked, “Is that where we’re going?”
 
Ender turned his head, and she instantly heard a drop of pitch in his voice. It was the tone of deep dread. “Yes, yes it is.”
 
☽
 
Nightmare Moon landed between the trees and immediately began to cast about for her quarry. Though she succeeded in scaring a few birds who warbled angrily and took to the sky, the alicorn found no sign of her other half or the troublesome ember.
 
How could this be? She had them fixed solidly in her mind, and from the air, it had seemed like they were directly below. Closing her eyes and reaching out with her inner senses, Nightmare found them again, but they were still far away, farther than she expected. They were right… below…
 
The truth hit her like a cold wave. They’re underground! Frustrated though she was, Nightmare had to give credit to the foal. It was the perfect way to avoid pursuit, given her method of tracking. At another time, she might actually have been proud of the princess.
 
Now however, Nightmare had to catch up, and quickly. The dream weave that comprised the physical world here was just as tough as the boundary between dreams had been. While the alicorn could have easily blasted through a few hundred feet of earth in the real world, she would have as much trouble doing it here as she did when she originally broke through the barrier of the ember’s dream. She couldn’t afford to delay; each second took her quarry farther and farther away.
 
What are they hoping to accomplish, anyway? Even if the dreamer wakes up, we’re just back to where we began. Running only delays the inevitable.
 
Nightmare knew she had to find the entrance to whatever underground passage they were using, and she had a good idea where to start. The only breaks in the long forest behind her had been two clearings. The first one she recognized as the playground from one of the ember’s earlier dreams; the alicorn had been relieved to find no demon fillies playing there after her previous experience. The second hadn’t held much to draw her attention, but she was willing to bet that was where her prey had gone to ground.
 
She couldn’t remember the second clearing well enough to teleport there, but she could certainly remember the first. Figuring it would be faster to jump to the playground instead of trying to scry the second clearing, Nightmare took to the air, and prepared the requisite spell. In the blink of an eye, she popped into the sky above the playground, wind whipping the swings into motion below. She wheeled around in the air, making all possible haste to the second clearing.
 
Within minutes, Nightmare thudded down next to the well that was the meadow’s only feature. This was it, she was certain. She could sense the shape of the weave forming a long tunnel below. Now to get down there…
 
The alicorn snorted in annoyance, kicking the side of the well as she realized the passage was too small for her. Again, tearing it open would be an easy feat in reality, but Luna’s weave was simply too strong to destroy in a timely manner. Again, Nightmare had to give credit to her adversary’s ability. Either she simply made everything in her dreams this strongly, or she was specifically strengthening the weave behind her as she traveled. Regardless, she was effectively thwarting the dark alicorn, and Nightmare had to respect her for that.
 
Being thwarted was not the same as being stopped, however. Nightmare Moon could sense that the passage below was large enough to accommodate her. She would simply have to scry the bottom of the well in sufficient detail for her to teleport down. Touching her horn to the well, the alicorn began the necessary spells.
 
Soon, she could continue her pursuit.
 
☽
 
The cloud brought them to a lone window at the top of the citadel’s tallest tower. Far below, Luna could perceive the staggeringly complex architecture that comprised the castle. Staircases, archways, and bridges seemed to intertwine as they connected the various spires. None, however, led to their tower. As far as she could see, this window was the only entrance. Seeing no other option, she moved to the edge of the cloud and extended a foreleg to step over the windowsill.
 
“No!” Ender shouted, roughly grabbing her tail and pulling her back. As she turned and faced him with a severe expression, he let go immediately, raising his hands in what she now recognized as a common gesture of apology or self-defense. “I’m sorry; it’s just that you don’t want to go in there.”
 
Her anger faded instantly as Luna scolded herself for blindly going forward. “I’m assuming that is the trap, then?” Ender nodded. “Well, what are we going to do? We can’t very well stay here. She’ll have no reason to enter if we’re just sitting on a cloud outside this window.”
 
“I have an idea,” the human began, motioning to the conical red roof atop the tower. “Think you can fly us up there?”
 
He was still heavy, but it was only a few hoof-lengths up to reach the roof. In a matter of seconds, the alicorn and her companion were lying flat against the slick tiles. It was not a comfortable position to be sure; Luna felt as if they were in perpetual danger of sliding off the steep incline, but their position placed the room and the window between them and Nightmare’s avenue of approach.
 
She still was not sure how exactly this was going to work. “She can sense us, you know.” Luna turned her head to regard the human. Both of them lay completely flat against the roof, pressing their cheeks against the tile in a desperate attempt to stay in place without sliding down and over the lip below. “What’s to stop her from simply flying around the building and taking us from above?”
 
“That’s where you come in,” he replied. “You said she could share your thoughts, at least partially, right?”
 
The princess nodded, or rather, moved her head vertically along the tile.
 
“I’m going to describe to you what is in that room below, and I want you to think of nothing other than that. Believe that we are hiding inside, hoping she won’t find us there. All we need to do is get her in the window, the dream will do the rest.”
 
“What makes you think I can fool her by just misdirecting my thoughts? That would have to be a pretty convincing lie… besides, it’s all I can do right now to not slide off this roof, how am I going to ignore that?!” This plan, she thought, wasn’t as solid as she hoped.
 
“You tricked her before, right? After all, you got into my dream while trapping her in the one you made. How did you do that without alerting her?”
 
He has a fair point, the princess noted.
 
“She was distracted then. Now, she’s anything but.”
 
“So distract her.”
 
Luna remained silent, considering how she might be able to do this. Ender must have taken her silence for agreement, continuing after a few quiet moments.
 
“I’d better start describing what’s below us. I imagine your mental image will need to be perfect.”
 
The alicorn turned back to him, grinning against the roof’s tiles. “I can do you one better. I weave dreams, remember?”
 
Suddenly the tile softened, becoming stringy and pliant. Where before a slick surface threatened to spill them over the edge at any moment, now it grabbed at them and sunk every so slightly, providing a slight hollow in which the pair could rest. At the same time, the new material became translucent, allowing the pair to see into the room below.
 
Ender looked up in surprise, his body visibly relaxing now that he didn’t have to work so hard to stay attached to the roof.
 
“That’s amazing, but won’t she be able to see us now?” he asked.
 
“I made it one-way. All she’ll see is the ceiling.”
 
“Again – amazing. Glad you’re on my side.”
 
Luna smiled in response, and then turned her head to examine the room below. It was a simple bedroom, decorated like any of the hundreds in Canterlot castle. The furniture dimensions were different, sure, but it still reminded the princess of home. Strangely, though, no door seemed to connect to the room, even though it was clearly designed for occupancy. There was a bed, a nightstand, a table with a few place settings, a bureau and dresser with a chair, a porcelain water basin, and a wardrobe on the far side. Some items in the room, however, just seemed to draw Luna’s eyes. In front of the room’s only window lay a resplendent crimson rug woven with fine gold inlay. A massive mirror, framed in ornate golden leaves, hung on the wall on the far side of the room. The princess wondered if a door was behind the mirror – the placement seemed correct and the furnishing was certainly large enough to conceal one.
 
“What happens here?” she asked her companion.
 
In her peripheral vision, she saw Ender shake his head. “I think it’s better if I don’t tell you. I don’t want you to accidentally give it away.”
 
It was a fair enough point. She returned her focus to the room, memorizing every detail. Luna pictured herself crouching behind the bed and motioning Ender to hide in the wardrobe. ‘Stay inside,’ she imagined herself saying, ‘if she comes in, I’ll try to hold her off. If it happens, don’t try to help, just RUN!’ Luna didn’t know if her other self would notice the lack of an escape route, but it was the best scenario she could think of on short notice. She repeated the scenario in her mind over and over, trying to accept it as truth and believe she was actually down there hiding.
 
They waited, hoping.
 
☽
 
Once the teleportation had worked, Nightmare Moon wasted no time in charging after her quarry. The cavern was wide enough for her to spread her wings, and spread them she did. Charging down the path, the alicorn barely noticed the treasures along the way and only barely missed knocking down the various cages of the menagerie. Before long, she faced the door at the end of the cave. Without even waiting to read the words inscribed in jewels, she blasted it open with her magic and charged through.
 
The drop came as a surprise, but Nightmare merely extended her wings and took off, heading for the image of her other self and the ember as they were fixed in her mind. As she grew near, she was pleased to feel the fear in the princess’ thoughts as they became clearer with closer proximity.
 
They’re hiding! Nightmare thought with a laugh. What, did she think I would simply lose track of her?
 
Had she really stopped to think about it, the move wouldn’t have made sense, not from an adversary who had so far seemed resourceful and cunning. But the dark alicorn was reaching the end of a frustrating chase, and the smell of fear was goading her onwards. Besides, she dwarfed her rival in power – what threat could she possibly present?
 
A castle’s tall tower emerged in the distance, and Nightmare knew it to be her destination.
 
☽
 
“She’s coming!” Luna uttered through a strained jaw. She tried not to think of anything other than hiding in the room below, but the alicorn thought it prudent to spare a brief moment of warning for her companion. She hoped he knew what he was doing.
 
Wisely, the human didn’t respond. He had been quiet ever since she began her efforts and seemed to realize how difficult the process of faking her thoughts was. The princess was grateful for the consideration.
 
Before long, Nightmare’s massive black figure occupied the window. At first, she couldn’t quite negotiate the passage – every time she furled her wings to fit through, she dropped too far in elevation to reach the sill. With an enraged snarl, she simply popped in, the short teleport ruffling the bed’s sheets.
 
This is it, Luna thought with a gasp. Whatever was going to happen would happen.
 
She didn’t have to wait long. As soon as Nightmare’s silver-shod hooves touched the stone floor of the room, the beautifully ornate rug jerked as if alive. It impossibly raised itself upright, winding, unraveling and re-spinning itself into the shape of a snake, a massive crimson python. It opened its mouth, and long white fangs extended below glittering orange eyes. Whipping around, it regarded the black alicorn.
 
“I am your only escape,” it hissed, a voice full of echoes and gravel. “Death is your only escape.” With that, the snake lunged, intent on sinking hoof-long fangs into Nightmare’s neck.
 
There was a bright crack and the acrid smell of ozone. When her vision cleared, she saw Nightmare’s hoof on the smoldering body of the snake, grinding it into the stone floor. With a stamp that shot sparks against the stone, Nightmare Moon decapitated the snake. The part below the head unraveled to form the rug, now devoid of its golden thread.
 
The dark alicorn laughed. “Was that it, filly? Did you hope a little serpent would take care of me?” Her voice resounded throughout the small room below.
 
Luna looked over at the human in a panic. “Was that it?! What do we do now?” she whispered. Thinking fast, she reasoned that if worst came to worst, she could still wake Ender up before her other self discovered their location.
 
His eyes were fixed below. He seemed calm, unworried.
 
“No, just wait – focus on us hiding below,” he replied.
 
Luna struggled to focus but it was difficult. She was afraid, and it was interfering with her ability to project a false perspective to Nightmare. Figuring that might actually work better, Luna instead focused on her fear, transmitting that, and only that, to her adversary.
 
Below, Nightmare Moon stalked around the room, horn flickering menacingly.
 
“Where are you, little one? Come out, come out... I promise I won’t be… too harsh.” She seemed to pick up on Luna’s general location and started walking toward the far side of the room. Noticing the mirror, the dark alicorn approached it, seemingly unable to resist the urge to examine her features.
 
Luna wondered how long it had been since she had seen them.
 
What Nightmare saw must have been unsettling, because the alicorn’s entire countenance completely changed to show utter shock. Forgotten was her quarry and the chase; the alicorn focused completely on the mirror.
 
The princess felt Ender shift uncomfortably beside her. This was his plan, apparently. She leaned forward trying to see what her other persona saw in the glass.
 
It was Celestia, a perfect rendition of their sister. She had something in her mouth, but Luna couldn’t make out what it was. To her surprise, it wasn’t just a static image. The reflection moved along with Nightmare, as if it was her own.
 
The effect on the dark alicorn was profound. A low, guttural sound emanated from her throat as she paced back and forth, intent upon the mirror.
 
“No…. no…. no…. NONONONONOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!” she cried, voice escalating from a whimper to a piercing shout that vibrated the very roof where Luna hid. With a level of anger in her eyes beyond anything Luna had ever seen, Nightmare reared up, and crashed both front hooves through the mirror, shattering it into countless pieces.
 
Instantly, a red liquid poured forth from the hole behind the mirror. To her horror, Luna realized that it wasn’t liquid at all, but countless snakes, writhing from the space behind the broken glass. Nightmare Moon thrashed as they swarmed over her, but there were far too many. Despite dozens being burned by blasts of magic or thrown off by the alicorn’s constant bucking, the snakes soon overwhelmed her, and Nightmare’s frantic cries were slowly muffled as their venom took effect.
 
It was over in less than a minute. The alicorn vanished, and the snakes dissolved into ash, blown away by breeze from the window.
                
Luna could scarcely breathe. The horror of the events below muted any relief she felt from no longer being pursued.
 
Ender gently prodded a wing. “She’s gone. Do you know what happens now?”
 
The princess struggled to focus, Nightmare’s last screams echoing in her mind.
 
“She’s presumably back inside our prison. She can’t get out, not without me to weave another dream, but she can still affect you as she did earlier. I should wake you up, to let you escape before she recovers.”
 
“Won’t that just put you back with her? You know, the whole reason we were running in the first place?” The human fixed her with a concerned gaze.
 
Luna had been considering this. Her experience with dream magic was limited to crafting simple dreams for her subjects. There had never been any need to stay with them after they woke up. The alicorn had always assumed that the weave would simply disappear once the dreamer became conscious, but had never actually tested it.
 
“Honestly,” she sighed, “I don’t know. That’s what I always believed would happen, but maybe I can try something different.” Luna considered the possibilities. “Do you think you could keep me visualized in your head, the same way I was imagining us hiding in that room?”
 
Ender nodded, though a wistful smile said he didn’t quite believe all of this.
 
At the very least, Luna thought, if this works he’ll know for sure I’m not a figment of his imagination… unless of course he believes he’s starting to go crazy.
 
“Well, no time like the present… the longer we wait, the more she will recover.”
 
The princess sat up, reaching out with her hooves. Taking the hint, Ender took her forelegs in his hands. Leaning forward, she touched her horn to his forehead.
 
“Focus. On. Me,” the alicorn intoned. “Remember me. Take my image with you.”
 
She hoped it would work; otherwise, the next voice she heard was going to be that of a very-enraged Nightmare Moon.
 
“I’m ready,” the human whispered.
 
Luna’s horn flashed, and all was white.
 
☽
 
Ender’s face felt like it was pressed against a cheese grater. Opening his eyes, he realized that wasn’t far from the truth – there were small holes in the escape pod’s metal decking.
 
Any notion that this was all part of an elaborate simulation was banished from Ender’s mind with the arrival of a pounding headache. There was no way this wasn’t real. Dreams didn’t hurt this much.
 
So what was all that, then? Was his mind just that far gone? Was he so bent from months of night terrors that his brain was running itself through the Fantasy Game now? Everything had felt so real, though, and what about all those new…
 
Luna. She had said to remember her.
 
He almost laughed, dismissing the thought out of hand, but a small fear in the pit of his stomach made him wonder what would happen to her if he did. In the infinitesimally small chance that a magical talking uni… er, alicorn had been responsible for all this, could he really live with himself if he abandoned her?
 
Ender sighed. This is crazy.
 
He pictured the midnight blue pony, envisioning her as he had first seen her on the Giant’s Table.
 
That’s strange; I normally don’t remember dreams with such clarity, even my nightmares.
 
“Luna?” he asked aloud, feeling infinitely foolish.
 
Yes! I’m here! Can you hear me? I’ve been trying to break through ever since you woke up!
 
Ender Wiggin fell back into the aisle, flat on his backside. He was shocked, but not too shocked to notice the headache recede immediately.
 
“No… this, this can’t be real.” He looked wildly about the pod, trying to discern if the voice was coming from some sort of speaker, or perhaps from his desk.
 
He jumped again when he realized the words came from inside his own head.
 
It worked! Her voice was filled with joy, giving it a lilting bounce. I’m free!
 
The young admiral had been many things in his life. Speechless was never one of them. What did you say to a situation like this?
 
Luna had no problem filling in the gap. First, we need to get out of here before my other self recovers. Knowing her, she’s going to lash out at the first opportunity she gets, no matter if she hurts herself in the process.
 
“Wait a minute, other self? That other… alicorn,” he paused, the word unfamiliar on his tongue, “is you?”
 
Ender felt Luna admonish herself, apparently surprised at how the meaning of her thoughts had bled through. Come to think of it, he really didn’t notice her words now that he thought of it; rather, that’s how he was just interpreting her thoughts.
 
We don’t have the time for me to explain, but since you’re apparently hearing my thoughts…
 
A broad image, many memories and thoughts consolidated into one burst made itself known in Ender’s mind. Nightmare was the result of a wish Luna had made out of a desire to be respected. The wish, powered by her own magic, which she couldn’t fully control, answered itself by creating Nightmare, a far more powerful and assertive version of Luna herself. The new consciousness wanted nothing to do with the old, and after seizing the majority of their combined power, had sealed the original away.
 
Ender staggered under the combined memories and experiences, grateful that his own psychological issues couldn’t become self-aware. He was pretty sure what his ‘Nightmare’ would be like. The world had its collective hands full with his older brother; it didn’t need a duplicate.
 
So you understand? Luna asked.
 
“I do, more or less. Let’s get going then – I assume you want to be taken somewhere?”
 
Ender moved quickly up to the control console at the head of the escape pod. Powering up the display, he quickly initiated diagnostics and a basic engine start-up sequence. The soldier had no desire to repeat his last experience in dreamland, especially if this ‘Nightmare’ could put him to sleep at will.
 
My sister will be able to help. The alicorn’s thoughts and memories of her sister’s location clashed instantly with Ender’s own mental image.
 
“Um, Luna, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this place where you think your sister lives, that’s…” he brought up a camera feed of the lunar horizon. The navigation program had now fully spun up and was indicating that Earth would be rising just above them. With as certain as Luna was of her home’s location, he felt he needed visual proof.
 
“…Earth?”
 
Try as he might to deny what he was seeing, Ender could not reconcile what he knew of Earth with the planet he saw before him. The continents were simply too different.
 
Earth? Luna inquired. That’s Equestria… my sister is there, and if anyone can help us, it will be------
 
All thoughts of the planet before him were cut off as he sensed a violent tear in his mind, as if someone had reached into his skull and was attempting to remove its contents by force. He bore down on the pain, focusing on the pod, his surroundings, the cloth of his uniform, anything to keep himself in the here and now.
 
She’s… pulling me back, Ender. I can’t… I can’t…
 
The boy felt anguish as his passenger tried to hold on. Then, a simple plea:
 
Help.
 
Ender remembered all the times he was at the mercy of his older brother. Seeing the worst aspects of his own personality given life and power over him made the torment that much worse. He could only imagine what it felt like for his recent ally… knowing that her adversary actually was herself.
 
Calming his mind as best he could, he reached out to the other consciousness in his head. You came first, right?
 
Y-yes.
 
Responding aloud, to help take his mind off the sensation, Ender continued.
 
“Then why is she stronger? You created her.”
 
Frustration. She holds most of my power! She’s always been stronger than me! Ender, help, I can’t hang on…
 
He channeled what strength he had, forcing her mind to focus.
 
“You still came first. No matter how strong she is, she’s still a shadow of you.”
 
What does that matter, she’s still--- Pain. Anguish.
 
Now completely oblivious to the outside world, Ender focused inwards trying to illustrate the concepts in his mind as he spoke them.
 
“There existed a time when it was only you. Focus on that, dwell there. Remember the time before you wished for her. Use that to deny her power. Remember that she was created because you wanted her. Without you, she is nothing.”
 
Nothing. Luna was silent, and for a few heartbeats, Ender was afraid he had lost her. Then, slowly, ever so slowly, he felt the pull in his mind subside. Soon, he heard her again.
 
I… that… she… thank you. Luna’s “voice” wavered. I don’t know how that worked, but it did. I just thought of life before her, and her strength weakened. It still hurt, and I still had to struggle, but she didn’t overpower me like she always does.
 
Ender felt drained, even though he had not been the one fighting. Wearily, he dragged himself up to the control console, falling into the seat. He wanted nothing more than to sleep, but that could be more dangerous now than trying to fly tired. Ignoring the strangeness of the planet on the display, he continued the previously interrupted start-up sequence.
 
There was a significant amount of damage to some of the maneuvering thrusters. In order to get the proper angle to boost away and reach escape velocity, he would have to do some fancy programming to roll the craft on its initial ascent so as to point the working thrusters “downward.” It took quite some time to make the necessary changes. Each second passed with greater and greater tension. Neither of them knew when the next attack would come from Nightmare.
 
Suddenly, Luna seemed much more awake from her perch “behind” his eyes. She didn’t have to ask, he felt her desire to look back at the screen, then pan a lateral camera to observe some of the stars in the field of view.
 
Her perception of the stars was vastly different from his own, but by looking at a top-level display on the navigational computer, his mind was able to discern which ones she wanted to see. Ender didn’t stop to inquire, he could feel the level of importance she placed on this information, and decided to just go with it. In a matter of minutes, he had all four of the surviving external cameras trained on different stars. They seemed to be moving fast enough for the naked eye to see, and in a highly irregular pattern.
 
Ender felt the alicorn’s fear, and it drove his own heart into the pit of his stomach, though he didn’t understand why.
 
Oh, no… what did it have to be NOW? We were so close.
 
“What’s going…” before he could finish, Ender felt her presence suddenly vanish.
 
☽
 
Nightmare Moon stood on the surface of her namesake, exultant. Her stars, her loyal stars, had finally rescued her from the Elements’ seal. Her mane again drifted in the ethereal void, and her body felt real. Above, the glowing orb of Equestria hung like a massive jewel in the sky.
 
It had been such a very long time. Revenge had waited… she checked the relative position of her stars… a thousand years.
 
She looked at a metal cylinder resting in the distance. …and it shall wait a few minutes more.
 
As her new body retrieved the last of her power, the last vestiges of her trapped consciousness from inside the moon, the final portion returned and found itself locked in a newly designed cage, created to immobilize but enable a full view of everything Nightmare did.
 
Welcome back, princess.
 
Nightmare Moon laughed into the silence of the moonscape.
 
☽
 
Luna was terrified. This was far worse than the oblivion from before. Now she could see and feel everything Nightmare did, but was helpless to stop any of it. She could feel the cold wrath that flowed through the dark alicorn. Nightmare was beyond enraged for what had been done to her in Ender’s dream, and her revenge would be slow and methodical, starting with Ender himself.
 
Luna screamed in her mind as she felt her hooves move of their own volition towards the human’s craft. She felt Nightmare savor her anguish as she charged her horn, intent upon cracking the metal shell and letting him suffocate to death.
                
Worse yet, Luna knew her dark half was going to make sure she saw the corpse before they left. Nightmare wanted to punish her other half with an image that would torment her for the rest of her immortal life.
 
Ender! she screamed into the void, hoping against hope that some remnant of their connection remained. Run! She’s going to kill you!
 
Nightmare only laughed.
 
Step by step, they approached, one mind gleefully triumphant, the other fighting every motion helplessly. The alicorn charged her spell, ready to land the killing blow, when a white-hot torch suddenly erupted from the tail of the craft.
 
Instantly blinded, Luna and Nightmare both cried out in pain as the sensitive skin of her lips and nose began to boil away before she could raise a protective spell. The craft shot away, but not before leaving the alicorn’s face a gleaming death’s head, singed to the bone.
 
Their scream was silenced by the airless moon, but it was felt by the planet below them as the rock itself vibrated with its mistress’ anguish.
 
It took a lot of time for the alicorn to channel her divine power, but the pain slowly vanished as Nightmare Moon reconstructed her damaged face. Within minutes, she looked as if nothing had happened, but the memory of the pain had enraged her to a point she had never before experienced.
 
Luna’s consciousness was still reeling as the alicorn pushed off the moon, shooting like a comet towards her intended target.
 
☽
 
They were over halfway to Equestria before Luna spied the human craft. She couldn’t understand how something so small could move so quickly, but she hoped he could go faster, because her dark half was quickly catching up.
 
The princess tried to send out another warning, but was roughly silenced by Nightmare. This time, she was helpless to do anything but watch.
 
Luna started to plead for his life, but Nightmare’s consciousness wasn’t even paying attention. Instead, she was focused fully outside, wary of another trick from her prey. On their first pass, Nightmare lanced a beam of pure energy through the metal fittings that had burned her the first time around. A brilliant plume of fire exploded, then immediately vanished into the airless void. Suddenly a trail of liquid flame, burning within some unknown substance, appeared behind the craft. The alicorn had to swerve violently to avoid being hit.
 
Circling in a wide arc around the now tumbling capsule, Luna felt Nightmare briefly touch her mind, taking joy in her anguish as she watched. She felt herself grin perversely as she saw the atmosphere of her home loom ever closer. The dark alicorn had an idea, remembering the friction of the high air from Luna’s early days of flying beyond the skies.
 
Matching the craft’s movements, she found herself looking into one of the cameras, its position, function and perspective gleaned by Nightmare straight from Luna’s memories. She wanted the human to see her face as she sent him to his death.
 
With a seemingly errant hoof, Nightmare Moon pushed the craft into a flat spin, its angle taking it down a descent gradient too steep to survive the heat from the atmosphere’s friction. She wanted to burn him alive.
 
The alicorn stopped suddenly and hovered, making sure to watch the long plume of fire as the craft became a torch; the mysterious burning fluid mixed with parts of the craft as they broke off, making a comet’s tail as beautiful as it was tragic.
 
Look carefully, child. You WILL remember this.
 
Luna could only cry in anguish.
 
☽
 
The cool, still air of the throne room was a welcome relief to Nightmare Moon after her own descent through the atmosphere. True, she could have teleported, but she wanted to make a grand entrance. Let Celestia see her approach and despair.
 
Surprisingly, the throne room was empty of guards and courtiers when she arrived. The Sun Princess was the room’s only occupant. Nightmare had expected to feel something more as she broke through one of her sister’s prized stained glass windows, but at this point, she was only looking forward to finishing what she came here to do.
 
The white alicorn raised her eyes.
 
“Welcome home, sister.”
 
There was no rage as Nightmare Moon enacted her plan. That was to come later. For now, she had to focus on her objective. There was good reason she had practiced this countless times over the centuries.
 
Even without the elements, her sister was immensely powerful. Instantly, both alicorns locked each other in a fierce contest of wills. The very air of the courtroom cracked and hummed with their combined energy.
 
Maybe that’s why she excused her guards. Her prized little ponies would be vaporized if they so much as stepped in the wrong spot between us.
 
Despite their difference in age, the two alicorns were roughly equal in power – that was one of the many reasons why Celestia had to utilize to the Elements during their last fight. The upside and downside of the stalemate was that neither side could maintain the upper hand for long. This time, Nightmare didn’t fight to win; instead, she fought to pin her sister, to make it impossible for her to move or do anything other than resisting the onslaught.
 
It was clear that Celestia had not expected this. So focused was she on trying to push back her sister, she didn’t even see the runes appearing around her until Nightmare had all but finished them.
 
Now, her eyes widened in fear as she realized the dark alicorn’s plan. Now, Nightmare could let her rage through, and thoroughly enjoy it.
 
The beautiful part about runes was that they had a power all their own, and when properly crafted, nopony, not even an alicorn, could resist them. Nightmare Moon had spent those countless centuries not on developing her own spells, but in perfecting the art of double casting – using one spell secretly behind another. By fighting her sister to a standstill instead of trying to win, she had conserved enough power to engrave a very simple but very powerful runic circle around her throne.
 
“Yes,” Nightmare allowed herself a small laugh as she witnessed her sister’s realization and panic, “say goodbye, Celestia.”
 
Celestia narrowed her eyes, composing her face in a mask of defiance, right to the end. “This… isn’t… over… Nightmare!” she strained each word between labored gasps.
 
Nightmare Moon didn’t bother with a response. No fancy words this time, no attempt to rub it in her sister’s face. Overconfidence was her undoing before, and Nightmare was not going to repeat that mistake. With no delay, she executed the rune.
 
The white alicorn disappeared in a blaze of fire.
 
Funny… Nightmare Moon had never seen a death rune activated before, but she hadn’t expected it to look like that.
 
She took a long breath, weary from the effort. Flopping herself on Celestia’s throne, Nightmare cast about her mind, looking for Luna. She was anxious to feel the princess’ sweet anguish from watching her beloved sister die.
 
The filly was exactly where she had left her, but instead of crying morosely she was feeling… victorious?
 
You should check your spelling, Nightmare, both with your horn and your writing.
 
Nightmare felt dread at her alternate’s confidence. She couldn’t have sabotaged the spell, could she? Looking down, she glanced over the circle, looking for anything out of place.
 
An initial examination revealed nothing wrong. Nightmare was about to rebuke her other half when she saw it, a single character changed… a very critical single character.
 
“Banishment,” she uttered aloud in disbelief.
 
The thing about double casting is that it requires you to split your mind, and when a mind is already split, it’s very easy for someone else to come in and change something, especially when your focus is elsewhere, such as listening to your opponent.
 
Celestia’s last words of defiance suddenly took on new meaning. Had Luna somehow signaled her?
 
“IT IS OF NO MATTER, CHILD!” Nightmare Moon shouted in the voice of old. All but one remaining window in the throne room shattered from the force. Ponies would definitely come running now.
 
Calming herself, she scolded her other half. It doesn’t matter how you got out of your cage and performed that meaningless little change. It will be a simple manner to undo the banishment, and then I will simply kill her as I originally planned. You accomplished nothing, foal.
 
I defied you once, Luna shot back harshly, I can do it again. He showed me how. The life you so callously sacrificed will be your downfall. Tell me, how can you undo a spell you did not cast?
 
Nightmare Moon scoffed. Of course she cast the rune, how could she… not? Looking at it another way, she had the horrifying realization that technically, since she did not finish the rune, she did not cast it. Luna did.
 
Now you see it… nag. Even with her newfound confidence, she was hesitant with name-calling. Nightmare would have found it cute had she not been so angry.
 
The only time I will undo that spell is after your defeat. Celestia will survive on her sun the same way you survived on our moon.
 
“Then your efforts will be in vain, and you will be responsible for the banishment of your sister, for I will never be defeated.”
 
So you say. I know my sister; she always has a contingency plan. And I would rather banish my sister than kill her. She did the same for me.
 
Nightmare stood and lashed out, a single kick cracked Celestia’s throne.
 
“We shall see.”
 
With that, she took to the air, breaking through the last intact window in the throne room as a rush of guard ponies entered.
 
☽
 
It was a short flight to the Everfree. Nightmare Moon didn’t know if her sister had rebuilt the old palace after their original battle, but she sensed the power of the Elements coming from within. If her sister had a backup plan, the Elements would surely be involved. First, she had to secure her power. Conquest could wait, as could her revenge on Luna.
 
In the distance, she spied a quaint town on the edge of the forest. Had ponies built here since her banishment? She couldn’t imagine why… the forest was the one wild and dangerous place left in the world. Nightmare was about to pass the town by when she noticed hundreds of gaily flying banners, all bearing a familiar sun sigil.
 
The Summer Sun Celebration… of course it was today. Nightmare had chosen it symbolically for her day of conquest all those years ago.
 
And this happened to be the town where it was going to be celebrated this year.
 
Maybe it’s time to indulge a little. The Elements aren’t going anywhere. Wouldn’t this be a perfect time to arrive and announce my victory?
 
She imagined it, and grinned wickedly at the spectacle. Nightmare Moon, standing triumphant when all around expected her sister.
 
Yes, she thought, the Elements can indeed wait.

> Journey
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

        Acrid smoke burned his nostrils as Ender struggled to open his eyes. Fighting back lethargic muscles, the soldier reached up to wipe his face. As the escape pod’s control console came back into focus, Ender noted a deep pain across his chest and legs where the five-point restraint harness had kept him securely fastened to his seat. It wasn’t unbearable - hopefully he had nothing more to deal with than deep bruising and soreness.

        It could have been much, much worse. The ship from which his pod came was a military transport, not a civilian tug like the one that had brought him to Eros so long ago. During the Second Invasion, humanity learned the hard way that Formics had no taboo against shooting escape pods, so for the Third Invasion, the International Fleet had designed them to be modular. The new design enabled the pods to segment into smaller, self-sustainable units as they came under fire. The idea had been to save as many people as possible and fool formic targeting into thinking a pod had been destroyed when in fact only one or two of the mini-pods had been hit.

        The design had saved Ender’s life.

        He vividly remembered Nightmare’s face as she leered directly into one of the dorsal cameras and pushed his tumbling pod into a fiery descent. For all he knew at the time, the move would have successfully killed him; there was no way to tell if the attack that had vaporized his thrusters had also knocked out the separation mechanisms. The first indication that he might survive came when a bulkhead slammed down behind him, sealing in the foremost two seats as the lifeboat shuttered. Ender couldn’t see the remaining fragments trail behind him - the view from the cameras had cut off as his pod separated from the rest of the lifeboat. The nav computer was showing an ever-increasing descent rate before Ender blacked out from massive g-onset.

        The soldier couldn’t remember what system the mini-pod used to slow itself. Was it thrusters or a parachute? Whatever it was, Ender silently thanked the engineer who designed it. Aside from a thin white smoke training from the control console, the interior of the craft was largely intact. Hell, aside from the deep furrows around the restraint harness, his dress uniform was barely disturbed.

        Ender let out a sharp laugh at the absurdity of it all - the brief sound abruptly cut into the silence around him and informed the boy of a dry, sore throat. He should have been stepping off the transport into a milieu of reporters right about now. Getting used to them again was the entire reason he had put on his blues this morning.

        This morning... was it even the same day? How long had been unconscious? How long had he been trapped in that dream world?

        Suddenly the image of the strange planet rising over the lunar surface lept into his mind. Ender had been too concerned with staying ahead of Nightmare Moon to give it much thought as he fled, but now that he examined his memories, the continents had not changed into something recognizable as he flew closer to the planet. Every nav program on the pod had insisted he was holding course towards Earth, but his eyes simply could not reconcile what he saw with what the computer told him.

        Where am I?

        Ender struggled to unbuckle the harness, grateful that his craft had landed right-side up this time. He stood, noting a slight downward slope towards the front of his pod, and made his way towards the new bulkhead that had separated his mini-pod from the rest of the craft and saved his life. There was no obvious hatch, but after fumbling in the low light, the boy’s hand found a lever. He pulled, and a segment of the bulkhead fell away, revealing the dark landscape beyond.

        The moon, larger than he ever remembered it on Earth, bathed an endless stretch of arid plateau in milky light. Deep cliffs fell away where the land cracked and tall spires of wind-carved stone held watch, casting long shadows in the silvery moonlight. Ender was amazed that he didn’t feel the vertigo he expected from seeing such an open sky. Perhaps it was the stars above that made him feel comfortable - he had spent much of the past two years in the simulator where a starscape comprised the primary background.

        A line of fire blazed a trail behind the pod as far as the eye could see. The craft must have been trailing hydrazine gel from a remaining thruster, or else been coated with it when the lifeboat broke apart. Either way, Ender could see a path of destruction carved into the rock and scrub where the superheated metal of the mini-pod ignited the fuel and set the landscape ablaze as it skidded to a stop on the butte.

        Turning back into the craft, Ender opened the storage compartment underneath the pod’s floor grating. Never in his life did he expect to use ground survival equipment, but now the boy was thankful he had at least half-listened to Lieutenant Dap’s hurried class all those years ago. Landing on a habitable planet after a battle in deep space was a one-in-a-million shot; something better relegated to film than actual military training. The IF, however, felt it needed to at least make a notional attempt at preparing their personnel for this eventuality. Ender wondered briefly if the soldiers of the Third Invasion, the ones now settling the recently conquered Formic worlds, had been better trained.

They had to know they were fighting near actual planets, he mused, maybe the short version was just reserved for us, the Battle Schoolers who wouldn’t actually be going anywhere.

        In the compartment, Ender found two canisters, each nearly as tall as he was. Everything in the training referred him back to these... PACs? That sounded right. The admiral could not remember what the acronym stood for, but like most military abbreviations, it probably didn’t matter. The important part was the cache of supplies inside. The PAC held ground uniforms, provisions, temporary shelter, signaling equipment and weapons. Most importantly, the entire apparatus was self-powered through photovoltaic paint and kinesio generators. A small grav cell, similar to the ones that provided a starship’s artificial gravity, could reduce the effective weight of the PACs to allow even a boy like him to move easily while carrying one. Ender was strong, but he was still small, and the boost would be gratefully appreciated.

        He took the first, swiping a hand across the control screen to power it on and extend shoulder and waist straps. Setting it aside, Ender stopped short as he noticed something while reaching for the second.

        Three four-pointed starbursts were etched across the front of the large canister.

        Looking down at his shoulder, and the three stars emblazoned on his epaulettes, he couldn’t help but wonder aloud at the IF’s seemingly obsessive level of preparation.

        “No way,” he muttered.

        Each lifeboat held twelve passengers, two in each mini-pod segment. Had they prepared special PACs for him, and placed one in EACH of the pods... on EVERY lifeboat? Considering that his transport had only carried two people, it was conceivable.

        Sure enough, when Ender opened the second PAC, he found ground uniforms in his size. They were rugged camouflage affairs, as completely ill-suited to shipboard life as a spacer’s jumpsuit was to surviving outdoors. The thick leather boots fit perfectly. Ender had only recently procured new dress shoes for his blues; these boots and the PAC itself had to have been assembled within the past month.

        Shaking his head, the admiral put on the camouflage. He was tempted to simply leave the dress uniform behind, but remembered an admonition from his instructors to do the exact opposite. Everything could be useful in a survival situation, and with two PACs, Ender certainly had the space and weight capacity. Hopefully he’d never even need bandages, much less run out of the ones in the PACs’ medkits, but the thought of cutting up the hated blues for that purpose brought a smile to the soldier’s face.

        Donning the first PAC, he withdrew a sidearm, flare gun, and a length of cable from the second and affixed them to designated slots on the waist and shoulder straps. Ender figured if he dropped ‘his’ PAC, he’d have spares in the one on his back. The cannisters were bulky and cumbersome, but the grav cells did their job. The only inconvenience came from the younger soldier’s legs hitting the back of the PAC as he walked. Unfortunately, Ender wasn’t quite tall enough to meet the IF average. He briefly considered switching, and shouldering ‘his’ PAC, but a quick glance revealed that the one with stars on it was the same size - apparently the only difference between them was the contents.

        He’d get used to it. With a deep breath, Ender picked up the second PAC like a duffel bag and stepped through the gap in the bulkhead. Making a circuit around the ruined craft to which he owed his life, Ender gasped in shock as he saw how close to death he had come.

        The pod rested no less than two feet away from the edge of a nearly thousand-foot cliff. Ender could barely make out the bottom in the moonlight.

        Skin crawling, the boy turned his back to the pod and withdrew his desk with a free hand, tying into one of the PAC’s power sources as he did so. He didn’t expect the get a navigation signal, but he hoped something might dispel his fear that he was lost on another world. Sure enough, there was no response from the IF satellite network, or even the old GPS and GLONASS constellations. The compass still functioned, though, showing that his pod had crashed towards the southwest. Lacking a map, he followed the trail of fire to the northeast for lack of a better direction. At least the glow from the burning fuel would let him walk without a flashlight and perhaps keep nighttime predators away. Hefting the greatly-reduced weight of the two PACs, the admiral made his way into the night.

☽

        Four hours of walking saw the moon set, but the sky still remained dark.

        It must be midnight, or very early morning, Ender reasoned. The 1553 displayed on the desk’s chronometer was clearly incorrect. The soldier reminded himself to reset the clock at sunrise - it might not be accurate, but it would give him a reasonable estimate of the time.

Out in the distance, the boy could barely see the tail end of the long trail of fire left by his craft. Nearby, a few bushes burned, lit by the scattered fuel and heat from his pod’s passing. Grateful for the convenient fire, Ender drew close and set down one PAC to warm both his hands.

An exhaled sigh of relief caught in the soldier’s throat as two large golden eyes appeared on the far side of the burning bushes.

Ender remained perfectly still, half-remembered training and deep primate instinct telling him that predators keyed on motion. Inch by inch, a form revealed itself around the eyes as the creature moved into the light. At first, Ender thought it to be a bird as an eagle’s head and two impossibly large talons emerged from the shadow. The boy gawked first at the size, then at the rest of the animal’s form as it stalked forward. Brown feathers transitioned to fur around the chest, and as it turned to circumvent the fire, Ender could see the hindquarters and tail of... a big cat? His startled mind was hard-pressed to come up with a name, but at this point he didn’t much care. This thing was far bigger than he was and somehow managed to have claws, talons, AND a cruelly-shaped beak.

Grabbing his second pack, Ender thumbed the weight-reduction to maximum, power requirements be damned. Suddenly grateful for the hundreds of obstacle course hours forced upon him at Battle School, he took off into the night at a dead sprint.

The soldier’s blood turned to ice as he heard massive wings flap and begin to lift the predator’s impossible body into the sky behind him. A dread call, the strange combination of an eagle’s high-pitched cry and the low resonance of a lion’s roar, was magnified by an echo from the plateau. The sound drove adrenaline into his blood, bringing Ender’s thoughts and vision into sharp focus. He ran tangentially away from the line of burning flame. While it became harder for him to see, the admiral hoped that at least his form wouldn’t be outlined to the monstrosity behind him. Slowly, his eyes began to adjust - the moonless night sky provided an amazing amount of starlight.

As fast as he was, though, Ender heard the beast’s wings draw ever closer. There was no way to outrun it... he would have to fight. Spying a small rock outcropping, Ender dove for it, placing his back against the rock and setting his second PAC in front of him for cover. Drawing his sidearm, the soldier strained his eyes to get a bead on the rapidly approaching form.

Though he was an expert shot with training lasers in the Battle Room, Ender had no practical experience with real firearms. His first two shots went wide, and a third might have grazed the beast, given the roar of pain he heard, but it still didn’t prevent him from being knocked over. One PAC took the brunt of the impact while the outcropping above must have stopped the animal’s slashing beak. The pistol, however, was knocked from his hand, and Ender didn’t hear where it landed. Scrabbling against the metal cannister and the rock, the monster cried again and took to the sky. Suddenly, it dived behind Ender, well below where he thought possible.

Looking back, the soldier quickly realized why he didn’t hear the sidearm hit the ground. Another cliff fell away behind the rocky outcropping, and this time, he couldn’t make out how far it was to the bottom.

Ender briefly considered retrieving the pistol from the second PAC, but he doubted the predator would make the same mistake twice. Even if it did come at him straight on, he couldn’t see well enough to take a good shot...

Wait, he thought, as an idea came to him, I can’t see in this darkness...

The sound of flapping wings grew louder, coming from somewhere off to the side... and below. Ender was right - this thing was smart, and even if he had time to get the sidearm out of the other PAC, it wasn’t going to let him take another shot like his last. He could only hope his other idea worked.

Drawing the flare gun, Ender crouched down and covered his eyes with his other hand. He aimed as best he could towards the sound of the monster’s wings, and pulled the trigger.

Night turned to day, even behind his hand and eyelids. The boy could only imagine how painful the light from a magnesium flare was to a predator whose eyes were fully dilated for nocturnal hunting. Dap had said that the flares could be seen for hundreds of miles... the monster’s pained cries told Ender it was mere feet away.

The boy wasted no time. Ender holstered his flare gun, grabbed the second PAC, and tore off into the night as fast as humanly possible.

☽

        It had now been fourteen hours since he woke up in the escape pod, and Ender had no doubt left in his mind that this was not Earth. Forgetting the impossible creature he had left behind, there was no way the night could last this long in a subarctic latitude. Furthermore, the same moon had now risen again in a single night. The soldier was too tired to work the orbital mechanics in his head, but he had seen enough to know that either the rotational period of this planet was too long, or the orbital period of the moon above was too short.

        Ender ate his way through a compressed meal bar to fend off any feelings of despair.

        At least I don’t have to waste energy running the emergency beacon, he thought ruefully. That was another concern slowly creeping up on the soldier’s list of problems. While the highly efficient kinetic generators transferred the energy created by his movement into the PACs’ power cells, it was only enough to maintain a bare minimum of output once the batteries discharged. At some point, he would need the sun to activate the photovoltaic paint that provided the majority of their power. Without it, he’d barely be able to lift one PAC much less two.

        As if on cue, the sun rose over the horizon. It wasn’t so much the timing that shocked Ender, but rather the way in which the bright star arrived. Instead of slowly lighting the sky, then finally emerging in the east, the sun appeared rapidly, shooting to a position fully ten degrees over the horizon before coming to a stop. As his eyes adjusted to the sudden daylight, Ender swore he could see a large beam separate itself and touch the surface far off in the distance.

        Strange.

        Dumbfounded. Ender stared for a moment before regaining the presence of mind to reset the chronometer on his desk. Manually setting 0700, the boy figured that even if a twenty-four hour clock wouldn’t work for this planet, he could at least time the day-night cycle. Ender then flipped through the PACs’ control settings to verify that both were charging - if this sun was so different than his own, who knew if the paint would even work correctly?

        Thankfully, the green charge meter was slowly increasing. Making use of the new daylight, Ender set his desk to imaging mode and started constructing a map of his surroundings. Behind him, to the south and west, lay a vast desert comprised of high stony buttes and craggy scrubland. The cliff wall he had been following since the attack shadowed a river far below that meandered to the north and east. In the distance, he could see it drop into a deep gorge, not unlike the Grand Canyon he had often observed from the Battle School’s high orbit. This one was obviously smaller, but it would still make for difficult terrain.

        Ender considered his options. He could bypass the gorge and stick to the flatter land, but as far as he could tell, the river was his only nearby source of water. The PACs, large though they were, only held a certain amount. Unlike food, water couldn’t be compressed, and it was far more efficient to store water purifiers than water itself. Even with a second PAC available, the boy knew he only had a day’s supply left, maybe a day and a half if he stretched it.

        Alternately, he could follow the river in the opposite direction, but that was where he had left the predator. Who knew if it was still waiting for him, or how many of its fellows lived in the desert? Besides, Ender could see a belt of green far off to the north. The desert horizon only held red-and-gold mountains. Green meant water and possibly food... this was a pretty clear decision.

        His mind made up, Ender begin to pick a path down into the gorge.

☽

        Steam from her sister’s bath curled around her as Luna stood quivering in the flank-high water. It took every last ounce of self control she possessed not to break down while Celestia’s attendant fussed with the elder princess’ raiments.

        The day had been excruciating. After Nightmare had been annihilated by Celestia’s remarkable protege, it was all Luna could manage to simply stand on her own four hooves. She’d wanted nothing more than to be swept away under her sister’s wing to begin the long process of becoming herself again, but no, there was ceremony. There was always ceremony.

        Intellectually, she had understood the need. There was still the Summer Sun Celebration to consider, and moreover, generations of ponies had lived and died without even knowing Luna’s name. Her sister needed some way of reintroducing the Night Princess to the world, and what better way than to be seen riding next to Celestia herself on a royal chariot?

        Ponyville was manageable, though Luna thought the name to be dangerously quaint and mundane for a town bordering the last truly dangerous place in the world. The ponies were amazingly friendly, especially considering the terror wrought by her other self. The problem had been Canterlot. 

It seemed to Luna that Celestia was picking up on her distress as the hoofmaiden continued working. The larger alicorn started using her own magic to help the maid remove the royal ensemble and hasten her departure. Luna watched as she recalled the painful return to Equestria’s capitol.

The young alicorn had initially been amazed throughout the chariot’s approach. Through Nightmare’s eyes, she had only seen brief glimpses of the city - all her other persona cared for was Celestia and the throne room. The capital had grown so much since she had last seen it; the city practically dwarfed the castle!

Just as the dark alicorn thought she could relax, Celestia had ordered the chariot to pass through the main gate. The resulting commotion was instantaneous - crowds formed along the entire route, filled with ponies desperate to get a look at their ruler after the unexplained and terrifying long night.

Celestia had offered apologies to her sister through teeth gritted in a broad public smile, one, Luna noted, that hadn’t changed in a thousand years. The young princess understood the need to reassure the citizenry, but it didn’t make the ordeal any easier. The Canterlot elite were far less welcoming than the Ponyville crowds, and it seemed like every third set of eyes viewed her with suspicion and distrust. Mutters rippled through the rows of ponies as they questioned her sudden appearance and nature. Her sister’s smile wasn’t the only constant in the world; the dark alicorn was sure that the modern nobility would be no more welcoming to changes in the social strata than they were a thousand years ago. A new royal, and an alicorn at that, would upend whatever system they currently enjoyed.

Luna had done her best to maintain a regal composure, not wanting to provide any more fuel for the rumors that were sure to follow, but the control was only skin deep. Inside, she was shaking the entire way to the castle. It had been the same inside the gates, all the way to her sister’s private quarters. Professional though the staff was, the fear and distrust behind their eyes was still evident. She was an interloper to a system they had built over centuries, no matter that Luna predated them all. To all the ponies surrounding her, she was the stranger.

Mercifully, Celestia’s garments were finally removed, and the hoofmaiden was on her way out. As the door closed, leaving the royal sisters finally alone, Luna broke down completely.

Sobs wracked her small body and she cried in both sadness and utter relief. Anguish, she could endure. Joy, she could embrace. But the strange mix overwhelmed her, and left the alicorn shaking in the steamy water.

In an instant, Celestia was by her side, enveloping her in a winged embrace. Luna expected questions; the sister she remembered would never let sadness or distress go unanswered. But time had apparently changed Celestia. Instead of prying she merely held her sibling, a calm, comforting presence to steady inner turmoil.

Luna was grateful for it; she didn’t think she could even speak, much less answer any questions coherently.

After a time, Celestia began, her voice soft and mellow amidst the steam of the bathroom.

“I am so, so sorry Luna. I wanted to show you to the city as my equal, riding with me triumphantly on our return. I never thought they could be so.. cold.” She sighed, and the barest hint of an edge crept into the Sun Princess’ voice. “I thought I had taught them better.”

The younger alicorn only shook her head. “N-No, Tia,” she replied with a shaky voice, barely containing the sobs that wracked her body, “‘tis nothing I did not expect. I-I...”

She meant to continue, but her throat closed off with a choked sob. Celestia only responded by holding her tightly, settling down into the hot bathwater and guiding her sister to do the same. Luna barely noticed the touch of her sister’s magic as she was moved into the crook between Celestia’s neck, forelegs and chest. So held, the midnight alicorn cried softly into her sister’s ethereal mane.

She wept in anguish at the realized passage of time since she had last been held like this. Only now did she fully see how much her sister had changed throughout the centuries of their separation. Gone were the last vestiges of Celestia’s youth; she had matured into the full bloom of their race’s adulthood. Luna could barely remember their mother, but was sure that the Sun Princess now bore a striking resemblance.

        And Luna had missed it all.

The young princess also wept at the absolute joy it was to again be herself, free of the domineering and sadistic other that had been her companion for so long. Like a prisoner released after a lifetime of confinement, her mind reveled in freedom. Each free and private thought, once a rare and hard-fought luxury, was now a continual occurrence. The elation was almost unbearable, hence the tears.

But behind the maelstrom of emotions that wracked her body and mind, one vision, one clear mental image lurked. A bright plume of descending fire, stark against the beautiful blue-and-green globe of Equestria below, stood out in her mind, framed by the echoing laugh of Nightmare Moon.

        The other had made sure it was a memory Luna would never forget.

        Ender... burning alive.

        “What’s wrong, Lulu?” Celestia ventured, finally pressing the question Luna expected from the beginning.

        She wanted to open up, tell her sister everything that had happened immediately before her escape from the moon. But in looking back, Luna saw just how crazy the entire story seemed. She didn’t doubt for a second that it had happened, but how would Celestia view it?

        A thousand years was a lot time to be imprisoned. Celestia was her only ally in this new, modern Equestria; she didn’t want her sister to think she was less than sane after the ordeal.

        What’s more, Luna felt that if she verbalized it, telling the story of how Ender died at Nightmare’s hooves, it would become real. If it was only a memory, she could rationalize that maybe he had survived, somehow. But Celestia would never abide that... she would make her face it and let him go. Death was not something an immortal could linger on for very long, lest she become overwhelmed by its magnitude.

        But Luna did not want to let go, at least not yet.

        “I...it’s just too much to handle at once, sister,” she said softly into Celestia’s mane. “It is not all sadness, the joy is also overwhelming.”

        It was mostly the truth.

        Her sister did not answer, and merely wrapped the young alicorn in a silent embrace. They stayed that way for a long time.

☽

        The sun settled overhead as Ender began to pick his way down into the gorge. Though bright, it didn’t feel nearly as hot as he thought it would given the climate. For this the soldier was thankful. Looking down into the ravine, he didn’t think he’d be able to find a way down to the water before nightfall, and his own supply was dwindling faster than expected.

        Untold years of erosion had eaten into the stratified rock of the canyon walls at different rates, leaving behind natural ridges where harder rock layers were left exposed. These made excellent, if narrow, passageways along the walls of the gorge. Figuring he would descend along these ridges as the opportunities arose, Ender climbed down to the first one and continued north alongside the river below.

        The sun had moved about mid-way to the horizon when Ender decided to take a short break to sip water and check his desk’s chronometer. Unrolling the datapad, he was surprised to find that it read 1530. Given the length of the previous night, he had expected the daylight to last for approximately the same amount of time, but instead, the sun’s movement seemed to correspond to Earth norms.

        It was yet another mystery that would have to wait for another time. His exposure on the cliff face and rapidly shrinking supply of water were more pressing concerns than strange rotational periods. Ender noted that he was only about halfway down the ravine’s side. If the sun was moving this quickly, he might not be able to make it to the bottom before night fell and made it impossible to find footing on these narrow pathways.

As Ender continued north and the shadows began to touch the top of the ravine, he noticed the red, gold, and brown sandstone slowly give way to hard gray slate. The ridges he followed were becoming few and far between, often forcing him to withdraw rappelling equipment from a PAC to progress between them. The lines were awkward to the spacer at first, but the general premise wasn’t too different from sliding the walls in the Battle Room. He just had to remember that a slip now meant much more than simply overshooting a target.

Ender was getting close to the bottom, though, and decided to try to rappel all the way down when a clear shot presented itself. At the moment, there was no bank alongside the rapidly flowing river below, but up ahead, past a turn in the gorge, the admiral could see the ravine flatten out into a gravelly basin.

There, he thought, relieved at the prospect of a night’s rest, that’s where I can draw water and set up.

Approaching the bend, Ender began to see a strange set of circular caves in the rock wall on either side of the ravine. Drawing to a stop, the soldier puzzled at their amazing uniformity. He had passed a number of caves on his way here, but these seemed almost... artificial.

The thought of danger only hit Ender as he heard a rapid slithering from behind and suddenly found himself thrown into the air over the chasm.

Before his brain could register what was happening, he found himself crunched into a ball, his legs almost drawn up to his chest. All around him, massive rows of teeth filled his peripheral vision as warm air, reeking of old meat and bile wafted across his back.

Ender’s first thought was that he was inside something’s mouth... and it was HUGE. His second thought was to wonder why he wasn’t dead. As his brain kicked into gear, Ender saw a large amount of daylight between the teeth and realized his predicament... the PAC he wore had stopped the thing’s jaws, and now it held him precariously in the air as it figured out how to bite down on this harder than expected meal.

The world spun violently between the jaws as the thing thrashed its head about, trying to dislodge him. Ender had no time to be afraid as his gut was wrenched first in one direction, then the other. The soldier did not delay. Hitting the quick-release on the PAC’s straps, he cut himself free and dove from the beast’s mouth, clutching the second PAC as he lept into thin air. The ravine looked terrifyingly different as Ender fell towards the river. Long, red bodies protruded from the caves and filled the boy’s vision. They were giant eels with jaws the size of a small car, and presumably, they came to see what kind of trouble their fellow was having.

Ender hoped he would be a small target as he fell towards the water. Holding fast to the remaining PAC, the boy fumbled for the grav control, trying desperately to switch it to maximum lift before he hit. He couldn’t afford to lose his remaining supplies, and he didn’t want the cannister to take him to the bottom of the river as he clung to it.

Teeth snapped shut all around him as he fell. Rebounding off the snout of one eel, Ender’s fall was broken as he skidded sideways into the water. Before he could react to the icy flow, his arms were flung apart as the PAC expanded and something snapped into his face. Thrashing his arms as he struggled in the current, Ender came up with some kind of line as he kicked for the surface. Holding fast to it, he felt himself pulled downstream in lurching bursts.

He surfaced with a ragged gasp, kicking hard to keep his chin above water. The line pulled again, and with a fling of his head, Ender saw that his PAC was now surrounded by a bright yellow inflatable tube. Multiple lines trailed from it, one of which he held with a white-knuckle grip. Hand over hand, the boy pulled himself toward the makeshift raft, careful not to let the current tear the lifeline from his hand.

Ender reached the tube, and with one last surge of strength, flung his upper body over the edge. The entire thing pitched up, thrown off-balance by his weight, and nearly upended itself. Afraid of losing his one means of flotation, Ender let go and merely clung to the line as before. The PAC and its flotation device settled back into the water, and this time, the soldier only linked an arm around the side of the tube. It pitched up a little with his weight, but stayed in the water, providing just enough buoyancy to keep the boy comfortably afloat.

The admiral caught his breath as he floated behind the PAC, watching the ravine walls pass by. The current was slowing down, but it had already taken him northeast, well past the gravelly shoals where he had wanted to camp. Already, the basin he had spied was behind him, and both sides of the river again rose in sheer granite walls without any kind of bank. Ender had no choice but to stay afloat and follow the course of the ravine.

His wits returning, the soldier suddenly realized what had happened to the PAC as he impacted the water. A squib switch in the bottom of the escape pod was supposed to release a life raft and the PACs in the event of a water landing. The tube to which he was clinging was the PAC’s flotation device, deployed automatically when it got wet. Had Ender remembered proper procedure, he would have deactivated the system as soon as he donned the PACs. Thankfully he had forgotten, otherwise, his impromptu liferaft would have sunk to the bottom of the river, possibly taking him with it.

Remembering his frantic attempts to adjust the grav cells on the PAC as he fell, Ender figured out why he had pitched it so easily when trying to climb on top. Working his way around the tube to the panel, the boy found that he had succeeded in turning the weight negation to maximum. As a result, the floatation tube, designed to hold the PAC at its default setting, was riding high in the water because it weighed almost nothing. Ender reset the controls, noting how far the PAC sunk as he did so. When the tube was half-submerged, he set the control and experimentally pushed himself up. This time, the PAC stayed put, allowing him to awkwardly flop himself on top of it, arms and legs splayed over the width of its encircling tube. It was uncomfortable, but at least Ender was mostly out of the water. Additionally, he found he could partially steer the PAC by paddling with his hands and feet.

Looking downstream, the soldier noted that the current was slowing down. In the dim light of the setting sun, it was hard to make out the tops of the sheer walls to either side, but thankfully there didn’t seem to be any caves, circular or otherwise. Ender didn’t fancy another ride in the jaws of one of those eels.

He was cold, wet, and alone, but he was alive - no easy feat considering the day’s events. Setting his jaw against the shivering he knew was on the way, Ender looked ahead, straining his eyes in the dying light to find a place he could land.

☽

        “Are you ready to try?” Celestia held a neutral countenance as she turned towards her sister, outlined in the crimson and gold of the setting sun.

        Luna was thankful for the Sun Princess’ self-control. Any doubt or worry on her face would have made her far more nervous than she already was.

        Neither of the royal alicorns could explain Luna’s sudden change in appearance after Nightmare Moon had been vanquished. Now, she was scarcely larger than when she had received her cutie mark. Thankfully, it still adorned her flank, but the loss of her ethereal mane and an overall decrease in her magical power was worrying both the princesses. An unspoken question hovered between them: could Luna still control the moon?

        Luna dared not mention that her current form matched the one she had inside Ender’s dream.

        The Night Princess strode forward, black-and-silver raiment glittering in the sun’s embers. As her sister’s star fell below the horizon, she closed her eyes. Envisioning the moon, her beloved moon, drifting in space before her, she bid it rise.

        Heavy... it felt so very heavy, like she was lifting the moon’s entire weight with only her horn. Luna felt a magical aura emanate from her horn and diffuse across her entire body as she poured everything she had into moving her namesake. It budged, but only just. She cried out as the magic tension inside her snapped - a brittle pain resonating through her core.

        In an instant, she felt the warm glow of Celestia’s power envelop her. The Sun Princess had not taken over - the moon remained in its place. Rather, her sister was simply supporting her, allowing her the dignity of directing her own spell. Luna was grateful for the consideration.

        Within minutes, the moon had been set on its course, and the stars were in their rightful place. The Night Princess collapsed on her sister’s balcony, weary to the bone.

        Celestia made her presence known with a soft nuzzle behind her sister’s ear. “Do not despair, Luna. I felt it - your power is still there. It will only be a matter of time before it returns fully.”

        “How long?” The younger alicorn’s voice was a weak croak.

        Her sister didn’t reply, and instead settled down next to Luna, extending a wing over her sibling.

        The silence was as clear as any response. Celestia didn’t know.

☽

        Once he dried out, Ender found the night air to be warmer than he expected. The breeze still brought a slight chill with it, but it was nothing terrible. The river had continued on its slow course with little change. Towering walls of stone on either side prevented him from making any kind of landfall, so with no other options, the boy had flipped himself over on the PAC, partly to dry his front, and partly to try to catch a tiny bit of sleep. Floating like this reminded Ender a little of the one short vacation during his military career. Before taking him to Command School, Colonel Graff had brought Ender to an IF property in North Carolina. It was a sprawling vacation home with a small private lake. Still uncomfortable with open landscapes after years in space, Ender had spent most of his time floating on the lake in a homemade raft. The hills surrounding it formed a bowl of sorts, and the up-sloping land stayed the feeling of vertigo he got from open skies. The water’s buoyancy was also the closest thing to zero-g as Ender could get on Earth.

        That raft had been a terribly gerry-rigged affair, but even it was better than the PAC. The ring of rubber tubing helped, but it was still impossible to lay comfortably on a large metal cylinder. Ender shifted, trying to ease the weight off his shoulder blades as he stared up at the night sky.

        The boy had spent more time looking at the stars than most, but even he had to admit that this night sky was breathtaking. Though he could only see a small slice of it between the gorge’s walls, Ender marvelled at the depth of the field and the brilliance of the stars. When the moon appeared, it was brighter than he ever remembered it being on Earth. The boy tried to identify patterns on its face, but nothing would resolve itself into the patterns he knew. It was as alien as everything else Ender had encountered on this world.

        Mind working on the spectre of the strange moon, Ender drifted into a fitful sleep, missing the shadow of a railroad trestle bridge has he drifted beneath it.

☽

        The stench woke him long before the pain and stiffness in his back. Ender nearly choked as the combined smell of peat, decay, and pond scum assaulted his nostrils. Jerking his hands out of the water, he found them covered in a thin green film as he sat upright on the PAC, 

        Looking around, the boy noticed that the water had slowed to a standstill, widening into a broad, vast bog. Frogs, at least he hoped they were frogs, croaked in the distance, filling the stagnant air with their ceaseless calls. Gone were the high stone ceilings of the ravine. Instead, Ender found himself under a canopy of broad, wispy trees that drooped nearly to the water. 

        Not wanting to tangle with any potentially hungry mouths below the murky green water, Ender slid off the PAC and made his way to the nearest stand of marshy earth. Thankfully, the bog was only waist deep, though the thick mud made the going difficult. Before long, Ender was able to climb out of the muck and, using a lowly bent tree for leverage, pull the PAC out of water.

        A lack of movement and sunlight had all but drained the PAC’s power supply. The grav cell still maintained a small output, but Ender was forced to shoulder the majority of the cannister’s weight as he heaved it to dry land. Detaching the flotation tube, he patted the rubber gratefully before tossing it to the side. Much as it might be useful in the future, the PAC was going to be ungainly enough for the time being. Ender doubted he could manage the tube as well; he had no idea how to deflate it, or if it was even possible to do so without destroying the device.

        The boy grunted as he shouldered the cannister. It would take awhile for his movement to charge the kinetic generators, and even then, the PAC would be running on minimal power until he could find good sunlight. Looking out over the broad expanse of dim marshland before him, Ender sighed as he anticipated an intense leg workout in his near future.

☽

        Four months later...

        Luna sighed in frustration as she soared over the dark expanse of the San Palomino Desert. Tonight would be no different than the night before that, or the one before that, or every night since her return to Equestria. The Night Princess didn’t know why she kept doing this to herself, hoping for something, anything, only to be disappointed time and again.

        The alicorn thought by now she would have found something.

        The Night Guard, puzzled by their liege’s continual forays across the land, offered their assistance every night as she departed, and every night, Luna turned them down and bid they remain at their posts. Loyal though they were, she didn’t want the true purpose of her ventures to be revealed to her sister. Let Celestia believe she was simply “reacquainting herself with the night,” as she claimed every time she was asked.

        Luna still wasn’t ready to admit he was dead, not until she found some sort of proof.

        Deep in her heart, the princess knew that it was a futile effort. Equestria, the planet, was massive, and the ponies’ continent only comprised about a third of the total landmass. Ender’s craft could have easily crashed in Griffonia, or worse, the dragons’ aeries. He could have fallen in the unexplored desert wastelands on the far side of the globe. Or, given the vast size of the world’s oceans, the highest probability was that he crashed into the sea and was forever lost in the unreachable depths.

        And yet she searched. Luna had to know.

        The Night Princess had started small, as she was still getting used to her temporarily juvenile frame. Her wings wouldn’t carry her very far initially, which limited her nightly jaunts to the areas around Canterlot. As her body began to grow, slowly reaching its stature from before her imprisonment, Luna’s power started to return. Over the past month, she had been able to add long-range teleportation into her flights, picking up the search from where she left off instead of having to waste valuable time transitioning over ground she had already covered. The slow return of her strength had helped immensely; in the past two weeks alone, she had been able to search the entire north from Vanhoover to Manehatten. On a whim, she had even traversed the Crystal Mountains to see if there was any vestige of the Empire, but it was to no avail... Sombra’s realm remained hidden.

        Luna bypassed the various towns and villages that dotted southern Equestria. Had Ender crashed near one of the townships, Canterlot would have surely heard about it by now. That left the broad southern deserts and mountains, and of course, the Everfree.

        How she would search the forest was a question Luna would need to answer eventually. The dense and quick-growing foliage would quickly cover any scar left by Ender’s craft as effectively as it would prevent her from searching from the air. Of course, she could enlist her Night Guard to scour the Everfree, but that would surely invite questions from Celestia.

        The Night Guard... it still amazed Luna how quickly her sister had integrated her into palace life. While the whole of Canterlot was still coming to terms with the fact that the legendary Nightmare Moon was actually the sister of their beloved Sun Princess, the palace staff had quickly fallen into line when Celestia made it clear that Luna was her equal in every way but age, and that she would be resuming her duties as soon as her recovery permitted. At first, few had volunteered when Celestia sought to recreate the Night Guard, but after a quick demonstration of how Luna’s magic adapted pegasi to night-time operations, quite a few Royal Hussars stepped forward to receive the bat-like wings and tufted ears capable of picking up the slightest of vibrations in the night air. The Guard had served her remarkably well, and she hated keeping them at hooves’ length on this matter.

        Wait... what is that?

        Luna chastised herself as she realized that her musings almost made her miss something that didn’t belong on the arid landscape below.

        A black scar, starkly visible under her silver moonlight, ran parallel to the Palomino River. The princess’ heart leapt into her throat as her mind worked through all the possibilities of what might have caused it. It was too shallow to be an earthquake fissure, not that there had been a natural earthquake in Equestria for centuries. The gouge ran perpendicular to the existing slopes and cliffs of the surrounding mesas - that ruled out erosion, and it was far too narrow to be the result of an avalanche.

        Excitement and dread each tore at Luna’s chest. Swooping low, she flared her wings to settle at the northern edge of the scar. In an instant, the alicorn was standing over the fissure, examining the rock and surrounding vegetation.

        Her eyes confirmed what they had seen from far above - this was not natural. A quick pulse of her horn into the surrounding ether told Luna that this wasn’t the result of magic, either. In addition to being gouged, the rock had also been burnt, and a dark film indicated that the scorching wasn’t the result of wildfire.

        Luna’s heart rate increased as she took to the sky and sped along the length of the scar. A minute’s flight to the south saw her heart nearly stop as she spied a chunk of blackened metal resting near the gouge. The alicorn thudded into a hard landing as she drew up to the twisted wreckage. With a horrified gasp, the princess realized that it was a small part of the larger craft she remembered.

        Did his ship disintegrate?        

        Taking to the air again, the Night Princess remembered the plume of fire that had plagued her dreams for months. It was the very reason she had refrained from providing pleasant dreams to her subjects as she had in the past; Luna worried her own nightmares would be inflicted upon other ponies.

        Without delay, the alicorn sped on, ignoring other bits of wreckage until she saw the very end of the long cut in the earth. There, shadowed in her moonlight, lay a large remnant of Ender’s craft.

        She almost turned back. Knowing would probably be worse than wondering... whatever Luna found here would answer her question once and for all.

        Approaching the dark shape, the princess felt a small light of hope growing inside her. Whatever it was, it looked almost intact, and part of the exterior had fallen away as if somepony had opened it. Stepping inside, Luna summoned a ball of light to the end of her horn, illuminating the interior with a bright azure glow. Casting about her memory, the princess began to recognize the front end of the craft by the chairs and console before her as she had seen them through Ender’s eyes.

        The memory brought back a wrenching sadness to her heart. He brought me with him and let me stay in his mind, just to save me from her. He helped me stay... showed me how to hold my own against her.

        Had he not done that, would I have been able to sabotage Nightmare’s attempt to kill Celestia? 

        But he wasn’t here. Luna fought back tears as she walked around, observing the wreckage, especially the damage to the outside of the craft’s remains. The miles-long gouge showed how much force Ender’s ship carried when it crashed. She couldn’t imagine anyone surviving such an impact.

        But where was his body? If Ender died here, she could at least lay him to rest... physically and in her mind, as her kind did with all they outlived. It was the least she could do for him.

        Only then did Luna notice a set of tracks surrounding the craft, and long talon-marks in the metal of the hull.

        Griffons - two of them by the looks of it.

        The Princess of the Night saw red as her mind worked through the implications. According to her sister, Griffonia had been at peace with Equestria for centuries. It was no secret that the predator species ate meat, but many, many treaties ensured they only did so in their own lands, and that they never partook of any of the sapient races in Equestria.

        Griffonian citizens held strongly to these laws - it was a matter of honor. But griffon exiles were another matter entirely, and it wasn’t uncommon for them to take up residence and poach in Equestria’s many unsettled territories. 

        She could only hope that the crash had killed her friend. The thought of him surviving only to be taken by poachers was horrifying.

        To be sure of Ender’s death was one thing, but to know that he had been... food... for these beasts... that was simply... simply...

        An anguished cry rent the night air. Heard as far away as Los Pegasus, it woke ponies young and old and was soon followed by the first earthquake felt in Equestria in generations.

        Luna never turned to look as the earth cracked along the fissure created by Ender’s craft. Lifting the hoof she had just slammed into the ground, the alicorn took to the air, casting about for the campfires of the Griffon exiles she now knew to be in the region. Had anypony been there to observe her, they would have been struck speechless as her cerulean mane and tail shifted to take on the color and pattern of the night sky above.

☽

        A slight vibration woke Ender from a restless sleep. As his eyes shot open, he immediately scanned his surroundings for any sign of a threat. The soldier paid close attention to the tree in which he was sleeping - vibrations usually meant something was climbing up to eat him.

        The past few months had not been kind to the former admiral, who was now sorely wishing he had followed that damned river south instead of north. Better the open desert and a known threat than this endless wood where a new danger seemed to leap out from the dense overgrowth at every turn.

        The marsh had been bad enough. After days of trudging from bank to bank through the seemingly endless muck, yet another improbably massive creature had erupted from the bog, surprising Ender and driving him in a headlong flight into the woods where he was now trapped. Thankfully, he had been in an open area of the swamp where the sun’s light had kept the PAC charged, otherwise the soldier would have been forced to choose between abandoning his supplies and getting eaten by the four-headed monstrosity. Like many of the other creatures he had encountered on this strange world, Ender was sure this one had been mentioned somewhere in mythology, but he never got the chance to look it up on his desk - the boy was simply too busy with the day-to-day demands of survival.

        Ender smiled ruefully at the memory of escaping the four-headed lizard. Looking back from well behind the tree line, he had thought he was safe since the beast couldn’t fit between the massive trunks and the thick underbrush. The soldier couldn’t have been more wrong.

        Oh, he was safe from that particular monster, but not the countless others that awaited him inside the woods. After the first few attacks, Ender simply assumed that everything was out to eat him. Had it not been for hundreds of hours honing his reaction time in the Battle Room, the boy was confident he wouldn’t have survived that first week in the forest, much less the first month.

        Now his life had devolved to a simple hierarchy of needs: stay alive, find food, keep the PAC charged, and try to escape the wood. Even with all the monsters arrayed against him, Ender found the last one to be the most troublesome. It took him a month to learn that the desk’s internal compass simply didn’t work inside the forest. It slowly precessed, changing magnetic north at an imperceptible rate. Of course, in the trackless wood, it was almost impossible to tell this. It wasn’t until Ender had camped next what he thought was an east-west stream that he saw the discrepancy; in the morning, his desk said the stream ran north-south. To add insult to injury, experimentation later proved that the rate of precession wasn’t constant and didn’t seem to follow any pattern. Ender couldn’t even write a program to correct for it.

        When all was said and done, the soldier figured he had wasted at least five to six weeks wandering in circles, following the errant compass. Since the forest canopy tended to block most of the sunlight, the boy was forced to climb high enough to catch the sunrise in the morning and the moonrise every night to reorient his sense of direction. Between that and sleeping in trees to avoid predators, Ender became very good at tree climbing.

        Food was his next largest challenge. In spite of careful rationing, the soldier consumed the PAC’s supply by the end of his second month. The survival guide stored on his desk was extremely helpful when it came to identifying edible plants... assuming those plants were on Earth. Luckily many of the same rules applied to the vegetation found in these woods, save for one set of blue-ish berries that left the boy sweating in a feverish delirium for days. Had he not lashed his body and the PAC to a tree as he felt the onset of symptoms, Ender was sure that he would have either blundered off a cliff or straight into one of the forest’s many mouths.

        Hunting proved far less successful an endeavor. Ender still had his spare sidearm, but wanted to conserve his limited ammunition for self-defense. It wasn’t until he had stumbled upon a wild chicken that the boy allowed himself the luxury of shooting a meal.

        Sure enough, like everything else in this cursed forest, the chicken proved to be something else entirely. It had the lower half of a snake, and even after he had removed the reptilian parts, Ender found the rest of the chicken to be completely alien when compared to his desk’s guide to preparing wild fowl. He threw the whole thing away, not wanting a repetition of the blueberry fiasco. There weren’t many spare pairs of pants left in the PAC.

        Now he lay lashed to a tree, breathing slowly in an effort to hear whatever had shaken his perch. Almost every night had been the same - hanging on the knife edge of sleep, waiting for the next sound or vibration to herald the approach of yet another terror from this wood. Sometimes Ender swore that even the trees had teeth-filled maws, just waiting for him to let down his guard.

        The sooner he was out, the better. With his crude solar and lunar reckoning, Ender had a basic estimate of north. So long as he stuck to a heading, this wood had to end eventually... he hoped.

☽

        “Luna, are you there?” Celestia’s voice was calm and clear, but even through the door, the dark alicorn could hear an edge of worry.

        She didn’t answer. After the disaster that had been her encounter with the Griffonian ambassador, Luna didn’t want to see anypony until the event was long-forgotten. Perhaps she could hold out for a few decades... long after the parties involved had all passed away. Equestria had done without her for centuries, what could fifty years hurt?

        There was a sound of light clanking as the Night Princess heard her guards depart. Had Celestia dismissed them?

        “Sister,” Celestia’s voice was softer this time, as if she didn’t want others to hear, “you’re scaring me. It’s been a week now, this is... this is just like last time.”

        Her elder sister’s voice nearly cracked at the end.

        Rushing forward, she flung open the door. “No! Tia, ‘tis not like that, it’s just...”

        Luna blushed, realizing that her outburst, fueled by the need to keep her sister from thinking along THOSE lines, had echoed down the hall. In the distance, she saw two maids freeze and turn in her direction.

        “...’tis embarrassing,” she finished quietly, beckoning Celestia inside her chambers.

        The white alicorn touched her horn to Luna’s in a comforting gesture as she entered, closing the door behind her.

        “It wasn’t THAT bad, little sister. Give it a few years or so, and we’ll have a new ambassador. All will be forgotten.”

        “I made Ambassador Stormwing wet himself.” Luna deadpanned, not believing her sister’s assurances.

        “Well, maybe we will have to wait for a few more ambassadors to hold office before they forget everything.”

        “He wet himself... in the middle of court... and griffons do not wear pants.” Luna couldn’t believe her sister’s nonchalance.

        Celestia smiled. “Good thing the floors are tile instead of carpet, then.”

        Luna just stared.
        
        After a second, both sisters burst into gales of laughter.

        “Ok,” Celestia acquiesced, “I’ll admit... every Griffon ambassador from here to eternity is probably going to be briefed about you, and you specifically, before assuming the office. But really... there are worse things in this world.”

        Luna sighed. “It is not just Griffonia I am worried about. I am sure the story is all over Canterlot by now.”

        “So?” Celestia put a foreleg around her sister’s shoulders. “It’s good for them to know that one of their rulers isn’t all sunshine and rainbows.”

        The younger alicorn pulled back, almost violently. “So you want them to fear me... again?!”

        The Sun Princess was genuinely hurt. “No, of course not! I-I didn’t mean it that way! Never again, Luna...”

        Narrowing her eyes, she replied, “Then what did you mean?”

        Celestia lowered her head before responding, then looked up beneath a furrowed brow, straight into her sister’s eyes.

        “I’ll be the first to admit: the nobility has grown... soft. They only care about frivolities, and they can afford to do so because nothing truly bad has happened to them for a very, very long time.”

        Raising her head, the white alicorn moved towards her sister, regarding Luna with with a proud gaze.

        “For the first time, in a very long time, you brought something important to court. Griffonia has danced around the topic of their exiles for years, and you held their talons to the fire.”

        “But,” Luna interrupted, “all I did was publicly embarrass our closest ally in the Griffon court, and I did it out of anger. I-I was not thinking...”

        Celestia shook her head. “Like you said, those griffons killed an intelligent being. While your reaction wasn’t... optimal... it could have been a lot worse, Luna. I’m very glad that you didn’t find those poachers that night. Had you taken action against them, justified though you were, it could have become a bad situation politically. Instead, now the griffons are being forced to address the problem themselves, and I think that will better serve both our nations in the long run... soiled tile notwithstanding.”

        Luna couldn’t help but smile at this, and returned to her sister’s side. Celestia nuzzled her affectionately.

        “I am sorry, Tia.”

        “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

        A few moments of silence passed between the royal alicorns.

        “I know you said it wasn’t a pony they killed - thank goodness - but I was wondering... if it’s not too painful, what did those exiles take? Is there a family I need to comfort?”

        Luna only shook her head, an answer to the latter question but not the first.

        She still wasn’t ready to tell the story.

☽

        Five months later (nine months after Ender’s landfall)...
        
        He was down to his last set of camouflage. Of all his worries, clothing was absolutely the last one Ender thought would rise to the top of the list. When he had first opened his PAC and discovered five sets of the mottled fatigues, the soldier had thought it excessive. Now he was extremely grateful for the over-preparedness shown by whoever had outfitted the kit.

        The first set fell victim to the bog and the four-headed monster all those months ago. Even if one of the beast’s jaws had not grabbed hold of his collar and torn the blouse from his back, the multiple layers of caked mud would have rendered it unserviceable anyway. Set number two had lasted the longest; it took nearly six months for the boy to wear holes into the knees and elbows of the uniform. The acidic spit and blood of a horned, fast-running lizard had finally done them in. So much of the camouflage had been dissolved during the encounter that Ender didn’t bother trying to repair the uniform. The fatigues became bandages, one of which he still wore around a gashed forearm.

        The third set saved Ender’s life. After a nasty fall into a hidden stream, the soldier had tried drying out around a fire. The fatigues, hanging together from a tree, had looked sufficiently lifelike to fool a bear. Instead of attacking him after charging out of its den, the animal had instead gone after the suspended uniform, giving Ender just enough time to escape deeper into the trees. Shaking his head, the soldier had to laugh at the image of himself tearing through the brush in just his underwear and boots. No wonder nothing else had come after him that day - the sight was too ghastly.

The fourth uniform had lasted until only a couple weeks ago when, amazingly, it had been ruined by milk. Ender still couldn’t quite believe it.

He had been laid up in a tree for weeks, fighting off a horrible fever. As best the soldier could figure, it wasn’t a case of food poisoning this time around, and he hadn’t been stung or scratched by the local fauna. That left a run-of-the-mill virus or bacteria as the cause, but whatever it had been, it’d thrown Ender for a loop. After the first five days, he had been too weak to even reach over to the PAC for food and water.

The rain of chocolate milk had been nothing short of miraculous. Cool and refreshing, it sustained the boy in his weakened state. Through the haze of his fever, Ender recalled seeing the strangest sights. Day and night seemed to pass in the blink of an eye, and he could have sworn that the trees around him tore themselves out of the ground and walked about on their roots. It was amazing, really, what a feverish mind could create.

Upon regaining his senses and finding the world around him to be quite normal, the soldier was about to dismiss everything he had seen as delirium until he realized that his uniform reeked of old milk... old, chocolate milk.

Ender didn’t even want to try figuring that one out. Suffice to say, the fourth set was unsalvageable. It took days of bathing to get the smell off his body - there was no hope for cloth that had been marinating in it.

So, outfitted in his final set of fatigues, the soldier shouldered his PAC. Sidearm at the ready, he set off towards a recent discovery that gave him a tiny amount of hope.

Ender had found a path through the forest.

☽

        Luna stood outside the royal dining hall, dreading what awaited her on the other side of the double doors. The Night Princess’ first foray into the outside world since her return had gone... differently than expected. While there had been no repeats of what the Canterlot elite had dubbed “The Griffon Incident,” Luna had still been wary of interacting with the public on a large scale. Instead, she had kept to her tower, spending the nights catching up on a thousand years’ worth of missed laws and records, much to her sister’s chagrin. After the Discord debacle, Celestia had all but thrown her out of the castle, insisting she reconnect with her subjects in some fashion “before we get hit by another disaster.”

        Nightmare Night had proven... troublesome, but again, Celestia’s prized protege had seen fit to help her. It was a good thing that a little social coaching did not require a blast from the Elements of Harmony. Twice was more than enough for one lifetime, eternal though it may be.

        The problem was that Luna heard tittering behind the door, and she was sure that a letter from Twilight was the primary cause.

        She sighed. Celestia would never let her live this down.

        Luna didn’t even have time to catch her breath as she opened the doors to the dining hall.
        
        “The Royal Canterlot Voice... really?” Celestia still had the letter open in front of her.

        Luna only glared. “You could have TOLD ME that it had gone out of style. There I was, my first time alone in public, yelling like an idiot because I thought it was proper manners.”

        “I didn’t think I needed to!” Celestia was still laughing, tears forming at the corners of her eyes. “Have you ever heard me use it here?”

        “You said yourself that Canterlot has become soft!” Luna shot back. “I thought you were just coddling them... saving their delicate ears! These were peasants... of course I thought it only proper to use the Voice.”

        Celestia’s eyes widened as she laughed even harder. “Lu... we don’t HAVE peasants anymore. I thought you were brushing up on the law books every night.”

        The young alicorn narrowed her eyes. “I AM, and that is a fact of which I would have been aware had SOMEPONY bothered to update them once every few centuries!”

        Celestia blushed sheepishly.

        “Alright, you’ve got me there... you always were the better book-keeper.” Levitating her plate towards Luna, she offered up its contents. “Would my crepes be enough of an apology?”

        Luna snorted. “Throw in the chocolate chip muffin, and we MIGHT have a deal.”

☽

        The first light of dawn touched the forest as Ender made his way down the poorly-maintained path. It did not bring much brightness though, as the dense canopy kept most of the sunlight from reaching the forest floor.

        At the moment, all the light in the world wouldn’t have comforted the boy. The young soldier was being tracked, and he knew it. Ender was no hunter, but he had set enough traps for his adversaries in the Battle Room and in the simulator to know when he was being corralled and sent down a route desired by an enemy. It had been little things that alerted the boy - a felled tree across one fork in the path, strange noises from behind to spur him on, and finally, moving shadows between the trees to keep him on the relatively clear trail.

        Ender was being hunted, and that scared him more than any of the monsters he had previously encountered . There was an intellect at work here. Everything else had either relied on surprise and ambush, or simply used brute force to try to overwhelm him. This was different.

        Looking ahead, Ender spied a small clearing through a break in the trees. Listening carefully, he noticed something was off - the forest was deathly quiet. The birdsong and animal calls that usually filled the air were conspicuously absent.

        The clearing ahead was a seemingly safe place - the perfect spot for a trap. If he were the hunter, Ender was sure that’s where he’d lie in wait.

        As silently as he could, Ender crawled up the nearest tree he could find. There were only two options when you knew a trap was set for you. If you were strong enough, you could spring it and exploit your knowledge of the enemy’s location while simultaneously removing their element of surprise. If not, you avoided the trap at all costs, or attempted to set one of your own.

        Without knowing what stalked him, Ender had little ability to set a trap, but at the very least, he could try to spot his adversary before it attacked. The solder set himself on a branch, PAC braced against the trunk, and kept watch down the path. Drawing both his sidearm and the remaining flare gun, Ender slowed his breathing, trying to hear anything over the pounding rush of blood in his ears.

        He didn’t have to wait long. Before his legs even had the chance to tire from squatting on his perch, the entire tree rocked violently, throwing Ender from the branch.

        The soldier flailed as limbs broke beneath him, buffeting his ribcage and solar plexus while slowing his fall. Ender landed in a contorted heap, gasping at the base of the tree. Thankfully, he had set the PAC’s grav cell to maximum while climbing the tree, otherwise it would have crushed him.

        Before he could even get to his knees, the soldier was knocked sideways as he heard the screech of claws scraping across the surface of the PAC’s metal surface. Knocked bodily into another tree trunk, Ender lost his grip on the sidearm and heard a rasp as it skidded across the leaf-strewn forest floor. Driven by adrenaline, the boy shook his head. Through starred vision, he levelled the flare gun at the blurry shape lumbering toward him.

        Pulling the trigger as he turned his head, Ender heard the ‘fwish’ of the gyrojet followed immediately by a roar that vibrated him to his core. Staggering to his feet, the boy backpedaled as his vision cleared, finally allowing him to see his adversary.

        Ender found himself staring down a very angry lion, or at least it would be a lion were it not for a grossly overdeveloped front half and a pair of leathery bat wings extending from its back. The beast had taken the flare to its shoulder, but instead of roaring in pain and running off, it had batted the gyrojet away with a massive paw and was now nursing small burns on its chest and forelimb. Fearing a sudden forest fire, Ender’s eyes followed the flare, only to discover why the beast was still standing. The gyrojet’s motor had fired, causing the monster’s slight injuries, but the magnesium itself hadn’t ignited. 

        Looking up, the beast snarled, set down its front paws, and charged Ender with a limping gait.

        There was no time to search for the missing sidearm; instead, the soldier opted to use the tactic responsible for felling the acid lizard from before. Ender keyed the weight setting to neutral as he unslung his PAC. Holding it by the straps, he began to sling the metal cannister around like a massive shot-put. After one rotation, he felt the end of the PAC connect to the animal’s skull with a resounding thud that stung his hands.

        Staggering and off-balance, Ender stumbled to regain his footing as he saw his adversary do the same. It crashed to the forest floor in front of Ender, carried forward by its momentum.

        The boy never saw the long scorpion tail flash in his direction, but he sure felt the searing pain as it drew a line of blood across his left thigh.

        Ender Wiggin had never been one to show pain. Even when tormented by various bullies throughout his life, he had made it a point to never vocalize what he felt. This pain, however, was worse by an order of magnitude. Fire seemed to race across his entire nervous system, and all he saw was red. Screaming in agony, the soldier staggered towards the clearing. The small part of his mind not occupied by pain was confident that the monster was down, but he wasn’t sure, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to stick around to find out.

☽

        The clearing did not seem to end. Through the red haze that permeated his sight and mind, Ender barely registered the fact that he may have finally escaped the nightmarish wood. Dragging the PAC behind him, he could barely think through the steps needed to maximize the cell’s output.

        Rounding a small stand of trees, the boy caught sight of a small stream burbling at the bottom of a knoll. He tried to stagger towards the water, but a moan escaped from Ender as he collapsed to his knees. Crawling forward, the soldier didn’t even consider trying to access his nearly depleted medical supplies. Even if he had the presence of mind to get into the PAC, he had long since used up the anti-venom injectors.

        Not like they had any effect, anyway. The random thought flitted about Ender’s rapidly degrading consciousness.

        He let go of the PAC. After nine long months with it, the boy could not carry the cannister forward another inch. Pulling himself ahead on his stomach, Ender barely reached the edge of the cool stream. He flailed a limb, and somehow managed to splash water onto the gash in his leg. The fog in his mind lifted somewhat, and though the pain was as intense as ever, the soldier was able to force his hands to repeat the action.

        Further washing of the wound helped ease the pain, but the fog returned, and the boy felt himself grow weaker. A numbness started at the bottom of his left foot and began to spread upwards.

        The sun crested the horizon, illuminating his surroundings in a brilliant green. Looking up, Ender’s eyes settled on a moss-roofed cottage seemingly built into the grassy hillock. He laughed, a short choking sound, as he wondered if if was real or if his addled mind was inventing things as it shut down.

        After all, the cottage did look like something straight out of the Fantasy Game.

        The sun continued to rise, bringing color to the world and eliciting birdsong from countless nests and bird houses that surrounded the home.

        Ender smiled as he felt his strength leave him. Closing his eyes to the rising sun, he thought that, real or not, this was a beautiful place to die.

> Found
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

        Fluttershy sang a wordless, happy tune as she left her cottage. She barely touched the ground as she flitted about, tending to her avian friends.

        “Good morning, Mr. Bluejay!” the pegasus sang cheerfully. “Oh, hello Mrs. Robin, how’s the wing? Oh my! Be careful little Sparrow... I just got that leg mended.” Fluttershy dropped a hoofload of birdseed containers as she dashed down to catch the errant youngling before it landed on a still-healing limb. Balancing the baby bird between her wings, she returned him to his temporary birdhouse, giving him a quick nuzzle on the way.

        The dawn sunlight brought unseasonable warmth to the early winter’s morning. Usually, the pegasi scheduled the first real snows for right after Nightmare Night, and Fluttershy was amazed to see such a rich glow light up the last of the autumn leaves around her home. It was invigorating, and brought a spring to her step as she finished her chores and tucked the bird feed back into the cottage. Bidding her pet bunny Angel goodbye, the yellow pegasus set off towards Ponyville with a bright smile gracing her features.

        I wonder what Pinkie has baked this morning, she thought, as the imagined texture of warm banana bread made her mouth water. Wait, didn’t she say something about trying to make an apple str-

        Fluttershy’s thoughts were scattered as a surge of adrenaline hit everywhere at once. She froze, wings locked tightly against her sides as her mind started to catch up to what her body had noticed on its own.

        There... in the corner of her left eye. She had seen that Something Wasn’t Right, and her well-developed sense of self preservation had kicked in.

        The pegasus stood stock still, moving only her eyes to bring the Thing into focus. Had something new come out of the Everfree? Fluttershy cherished the privacy her home provided, as well as the plentiful space for her charges, but the advantages came with one major drawback: the cottage’s proximity to the dark and scary forest. To date, nothing had emerged that she hadn’t been able to handle, but there could always be a first time...

        Initially, the pegasus didn’t know what she was seeing. A mottled form, nearly invisible against the browns and greens of the deadfall next to the stream’s far bank lay stretched towards the water. It wasn’t moving... was it a predator lying in wait, ready to snatch the next poor animal who went for a drink?

        Fluttershy’s pulse quickened as she slowly turned her head to bring the creature in view of her other eye. Inch by inch, it came into focus and... she still couldn’t place it. One thing became clear, though: it wasn’t lying it wait. A red gash stood out on one of its limbs, bright with oozing blood. It had collapsed!

        Fear for herself drained from the pegasus, replaced by fear for this poor beast. Had it come to her cottage in search of help? It wouldn’t be the first creature from the Everfree to do so. What if it had cried out last night while she was sleeping, or this morning when she was singing in the shower, and she hadn’t heard it?!

        Before she knew it, Fluttershy had cleared the small bridge’s railing and was gliding towards the prone form on the far bank. Alighting next to the strange being, the pegasus looked it up and down, but still could not recognize it as any of the Everfree creatures. Its head seemed to be turned towards the damp riverbank, so, steadying her nerves and preparing for the beast to startle and buck as she touched it, Fluttershy reached down to roll the creature over.

        The strangely-patterned skin crackled and shifted in her hooves, pulling away from the animal and causing the pony to shriek as she leapt into the air. Hovering above the motionless creature, Fluttershy’s eyes searched it frantically for any sign of damage she may have caused. Oddly, there was no blood and no cry of pain after she had seemingly torn away part of its body. Drifting lower, she gingerly touched its back. The sensation didn’t match any kind of skin, coat or fur she knew, instead...

        Are these... clothes?

        Suddenly, everything fell into place as she looked more closely at the body below. The mottled colors weren’t the natural camouflage of a predator. Instead, they were part of an outfit, ingeniously designed from some strange material to help the animal blend into the forest.

        No, not an animal, she thought. But not a pony either. Then what...?

        Fluttershy shook her head. These concerns could wait for another time; for now, the... being was hurt, and needed her help. The fact it wasn’t moving spoke volumes about its health, and the pegasus was confident that time wasn’t on her side.

        Now that she knew the green-and-brown material was fabric, she used it freely to gain leverage and roll the awkwardly weighted body over. As its face came into view, Fluttershy couldn’t help but gasp. It was different, no question about that, but unlike the often bizarre creatures found deep within the Everfree, this one’s face was instantly relatable. Though it lacked the muzzle and ears of a pony, everything else fell into a recognizable pattern. A quick check to see if the creature was breathing confirmed that the nose and mouth worked in a similar manner to her own and a few probing touches of its chest revealed a heartbeat more or less in the right place.

        A gasp escaped her as she saw, and more importantly smelled the gash on one of its lower limbs.

        Mr. Manticore, what have you DONE?!

        The pegasus looked up at her cottage, thinking of Zecora’s poultice within. 

        When was it stung? Fluttershy wondered desperately. There may not be much time left...

        The creature needed that wound cleaned, treated, and dressed, and she couldn’t do that on the stream’s dirty bank. She bent both forelegs under the being’s shoulders and, with a frantic flap of her wings, tried to lift its bulk up and over the water. It was a futile effort; after a few seconds of strained pulling, Fluttershy collapsed back on top of the form, having barely raised just its upper body off the ground.

        Suddenly, a prismatic blur flashed across the slowly brightening sky above. With a swell of gratitude for her good fortune, Fluttershy called to her friend.

        “Rainbow! I need your help!” she shouted at the top of her lungs.

        Seconds passed, and the yellow pony’s bubble of hope slowly evaporated as she realized that Dash hadn’t heard her. Silently cursing her soft voice, she turned back to the gravely ill creature below.

        OK, Fluttershy, the pegasus thought to herself, reaching deep down and mustering what resolve she could, this creature... no, pony... no, being... needs help, and you’re the ONLY one who can do it. Now you’re going to GET UP and take it OVER this stream, do you understand?!

        With a strained grunt, she tried again, throwing everything she could into her wings. Inch by inch, the body stretched out and unfurled below her like a long string bean. Though she was breathing hard, the pegasus managed to get just high enough to pull it off the ground. Her wings and back ached, but Fluttershy gritted her teeth against both the pain and insistent desire to collapse to the ground. If she did that now, her patient would probably be hurt.

        Leaning forward, the pony shifted her center of gravity, using the limp weight below to help sling herself through the air like a giant pendulum. It made lifting the body a little harder, but provided the pegasus with just enough forward momentum to start the short journey to her doorstep. Fluttershy breathed a sigh of relief as she cleared the far side of the stream, but quickly found that she didn’t have the strength to follow the incline to her door. Forced to let the creature’s lower limbs drag a bit as she moved forward, she hoped it wouldn’t hurt him too badly.

        It was all the pegasus could do to not drop her injured payload as she collapsed into a breathless heap at her doorstep. The patient was still breathing, thank goodness, but now came the hard task of dragging him the rest of the way into the house.

        Her bed was out of the question, both because it was on the second floor, and because she realized that the being was simply too tall for it. Looking down at the prone form, Fluttershy considered the possibilities and arrived at the conclusion that the couch in her living room was the best option. It was low enough to lever the body into position and was only a short distance away through the front door. Calling to her charges through ragged breaths, she quickly organized a group to help her take her new patient the rest of the way.

☽

        Tugging the free end of the bandage with her mouth, Fluttershy tightened the makeshift dressing and looked down at her work with satisfaction. It was a temporary fix at best - the gash left by the manticore’s stinger would need to be stitched closed, after all - but it seemed as if Zecora’s poultice was having the desired effect. The creature’s ragged breathing was smoothing out, and a small amount of color was returning to its face and hands.

        So much clothing, she noted. I’ve never seen anypony wear an outfit like this. Maybe Rarity could tell me more about it?

        Turning to face Angel, who was surrounded by the many animals who had turned up to gawk at the new arrival, the pegasus considered her next course of action. The patient needed stitches, and that was simply beyond Fluttershy’s expertise. But the question was, who to call? Dr. Stable had issued a standing order for Ponyville General to turn her away the next time she brought any patient who didn’t walk on four hooves. The town veterinarian wasn’t an option either. She had created a “no Everfree creatures” policy after Fluttershy took a baby hydra in for a checkup.

        There was only one option left, and thankfully the pony in question owed her a favor.

        “Angel,” she said, fixing her companion with a serious expression, “run to the clinic and get Nurse Redheart. I need a house call.”

        The white rabbit saluted, surprisingly cooperative for once, and scampered out the door. Turning to the rest of the assembly, Fluttershy looked at each of them in turn.

        “Well, what are you waiting for? I need fresh water, washcloths, and more bandages! We need to get this poor thing cleaned up!”

        Seeing their shocked expressions at her blunt orders, Fluttershy instantly blushed, regretting her words.

        “Umm...” she squeaked, dropping down and closing her eyes, “if you don’t mind, that is...”

☽

        “Fluttershy, I swear, I can’t keep doing this! Do you know how many ponies we have stacked up at the clinic right now? A whole bunch of young pegasi decided to try a trick they saw Rainbow doing this morning, and now we’ve got...” The nurse trailed off as she entered the cottage and saw the bandaged form lying on the couch, half-covered by one of the pegasus’ many quilts. “What... what is that?” She asked in a shaky voice as her eyes widened.

        “I don’t know, Nurse Redheart, but he needs your help,” Fluttershy implored, turning from the being’s side. “I’ve been able to take care of most of his cuts and scrapes, but this one on his leg needs stitches - it was slashed by a manticore’s stinger.”

        Trotting up to the couch, Redheart glanced at the wound Fluttershy revealed as she pulled up one corner of the blanket. Seeing the poultice, she complimented the pegasus.

        “You did well cleaning and treating the wound, and you’re right, he does need stitches. Wait a second,” the nurse blinked, brain catching up to what had been said, "I don’t even recognize this creature. How do you know it’s a ‘he?’”

        The yellow pegasus blushed, her coat turning nearly crimson as she responded. “Um... well, I had to remove his clothes to find and treat the rest of his injuries,” she started, indicating the weathered garment hanging over the back of the couch, “and you see...”

        The rest went unheard as Fluttershy descended into inaudible mumbling.

        Redheart didn’t bother asking the pegasus to repeat herself; it was pretty clear what happened. The nurse was slightly surprised that it embarrassed Fluttershy, considering how much she worked with animals, but maybe that was the issue. Animals didn’t wear clothing. This... thing... was something different.

        They could deal with that later - for now, a patient needed help. Digging into her medical bag, she withdrew the necessary supplies.

        “Think you can help me with the stitching? It’s normally a two-pony job. Mind you, there will be some blood as we work...”

        She expected the notoriously shy and meek pegasus to balk at the mention of blood, but surprisingly, Fluttershy stood firm and nodded resolutely.

        “Well, that’s good then. Will you boil some water while I undo the bandage and prepare the wound?”

☽

        Fluttershy marveled at the speed and efficiency of Redheart’s work. Using a needle and thread was usually a task best left to a unicorn, but the nurse was able to quickly yet carefully sew the wound closed in just under an hour using only her mouth and hooves. The pegasus had helped by holding the wound in position and wiping away any blood as it seeped from between the stitches.

        As she finished re-dressing the creature’s leg, Fluttershy noticed her friend staring intently at the patient.

        “What’s wrong, Nurse Redheart?” she asked, wondering at the white pony’s strange expression. Ice blue eyes flicked up underneath the pink mane; one that was very much like her own, now that she looked closely.

        “Fluttershy... have you seen the manticore that did this?

        The pegasus made a face, lightly stomping a butter-yellow hoof as she replied. “Absolutely not! If he knows what’s good for him, Mr. Manticore will stay away until he’s ready to apologize!”

        “I’m no expert on animals, but have you ever seen something escape after being stung?”

        Puzzled, Fluttershy lowered her head to think. “Well, no...” she replied slowly. “It’s hard enough to escape one normally, and after being stung, it would be even harder for...” she trailed off and shook her head violently. These weren’t thoughts the caretaker enjoyed having. Sure, she knew that many of her charges were carnivores - that was the way of nature. But she didn’t like dwelling on the fact.

        Redheart was getting at something, and Fluttershy didn’t want to see what it was... something deep inside told her it was Very Bad and better left alone.

        Unfortunately, the nurse was a pragmatist, and a very insistent one at that. Reaching forward, she lifted up pegasus’ chin with a hoof.

        “Fluttershy, think about this. If that... thing... lying on your couch got away from a manticore after being stung, then it means he left it in no shape to chase after him. I think you might be caring for the wrong monster.”

        The pegasus froze, her mind forcibly brought to the notion she had been trying to avoid. Could this strange being have actually hurt Mr. Manticore? No, that was silly - it was big, but not *that* big.

        Laughing nervously, she put on a lopsided smile to try and cover her unease. “Oh come on... just look at him: all soft and pink.” Fluttershy illustrated her point by lifting up the corner of the blanket covering the creature’s chest. Wedging a hoof underneath one of his forelimbs, the pegasus held it out for her companion to examine. “And these! They may look like a dragon’s talons, but see? No claws.” She shook the appendage. “How could something like this fight off a manticore?”

        Fluttershy could see that the earth pony wasn’t convinced. Redheart opened her mouth to reply, but closed it again, and instead turned to her medical bag to carefully and methodically pack away her supplies. An awkward silence stretched just long enough for the pegasus to start digging a hoof into the wooden floor before the nurse finally responded.

        “Do you at least have any inkling as to what he might be? We can’t keep calling him ‘beast’ or ‘creature.’” Redheart’s voice was muffled by the large black bag as she peered inside of it, checking that she hadn’t forgotten anything.

        “Umm... I really don’t know. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I sent Angel for you, but nothing comes to mind.” Fluttershy looked up from beneath her bangs, grateful to have something else to talk about. “I thought I’d seen just about every creature from the Everfree Forest, but he’s completely new. I’ve never seen a creature without some kind of fur or scales before.”

        Snapping her bag shut, Nurse Redheart looked up with a short laugh. “Well, he’s pink, but we certainly can’t call him ‘Pinkie.’ One of those is more than enough.”

        The pegasus grinned at that, briefly imagining the creature with the pink curls of her energetic friend. “Well, he’s not really pink either... actually, I don’t know what to call that color.” She stared at the strange mix of white-pink-peach skin - the parts that weren’t covered in bandages anyway.

        “Maybe you should ask Twilight? If anypony knows what he is and what to do with him, it’d be her. And if Twilight doesn’t know, she’ll know who to ask.”

        Fluttershy’s face brightened measurably. “Oh, that’s a wonderful idea... thanks Nurse Redheart!” Suddenly, the pegasus sobered as she thought about it. “But,” she asked the earth pony hesitantly, “do you think you could get her for me? I don’t want to leave him here alone... you know, in case he wakes up. Think of how you’d feel if you woke up hurt and alone in a strange place...” Her voice trailed off as she imagined that very thing.

        Redheart chuckled softly as she nodded her head. “Of course Fluttershy... just, be careful OK?”

        The yellow pegasus nodded emphatically as the nurse turned to leave. “Oh, wait!” she called out, waving a hoof at the retreating form. Turning from the doorway, the earth pony raised her eyebrows expectantly.

        “Could you... um... not tell anypony else about this? I don’t want everypony in town to show up wanting to see the ‘mystery creature.’” Fluttershy peered over an imaginary windowsill, pantomiming the over-eager curiosity of the average Ponyville denizen.

        The nurse laughed knowingly. “No problem. I’ll go straight to Twilight and make sure she doesn’t tell anyone else.”

        With that she left, and Fluttershy turned back to her new charge.

        Try as she might, the pegasus just couldn’t shake the sense of unease planted by Nurse Redheart. Looking again at his soft hide and clawless talons to reassure herself, Fluttershy exhaled nervously.

        “You’re going to be a nice creature... right, Mr. Stranger?”

☽

        Nine months. It had been nine tedious, lonely, frustrating, bloody months of sitting on her hands. Sarah Martin had reached her breaking point.

        The lieutenant stood fuming in front of Colonel Graff’s door on the IF cruiser Argyris. Angry as she was, Martin still couldn’t quite muster up the courage to knock.

        *Minister* Graff, she reminded herself, he was kicked out of the IF, remember?

        Strangely enough, a guilty verdict had done precious little to hamper the former commander of Battle School. In fact, he came out of the ordeal stronger than ever. When the powers-that-be first made him Minister of Colonization, it looked like the ultimate slap in the face. Graff was known for his hatred of bureaucracy; what better way to humiliate him than by making him a minor official in the vast government machine? Then humanity realized that the only way to reach the stars in the near future was on the back of the existing military fleet - it would be decades before comparable civilian ships could be constructed. Overnight, Minister Graff became the notional civilian head of the IF, and now he commanded the very flag officers who had court-martialed him.

        Hell, the wily bastard probably planned the whole thing.

        None of that changed her current situation, however. She’d been sequestered on the Argyris ever since it had responded to her distress call. Thankfully, Martin’s meticulous record keeping after The Incident had kept her out of the brig. When it was clear that the lieutenant was in no way responsible for Admiral Wiggin’s disappearance, the investigators had left her alone with clear instructions that she was confined to the ship and under a complete gag order until the situation was resolved.

        Then Graff had shown up with a small fleet of research vessels and they had been scouring the area since.

        Sarah resisted the urge to pound on Graff’s door. Being unable to call home was bad enough, but now the eggheads had decided to confiscate her tug and everything on board, including her possessions. Now the entire ship was disassembled and lying in pieces in the Argyris’ hold.

        “Are you going to knock, or are you just going to stand there and vaguely motion at my door?” A voice called from the other side of the hatch.

        A few years ago, Martin would have balked. Brash as she was, Graff had always been an intimidating persona.

        Now, she had nothing to lose. She kicked the door, hard enough to make it shudder in its frame. A moment passed and then it slid open, keyed from the inside.

        Graff didn’t even look up from the console on his desk. “I hear the IF is short on resources, what with the massive colonization effort going on. I’m sure they’d be happy to deduct repair costs from your pay, but I don’t think even a lieutenant’s salary could cover a pressure door.” His gravelly voice sounded more haggard and weary than ever.

        “Not like I can spend it, sir.” Sarah uttered the last word like an epithet.

        The middle-aged man ignored her, and continued his work. When it became clear she wasn’t leaving, he sighed heavily. “What do you want, Martin?”

        “Your scientists are looking in the wrong place.”

        Graff rolled his eyes. “If this is about your ship and your personal belongings...”

        “I don’t care about my stuff, sir, I want this resolved so I can go home.”

        I also want to know what happened to him, she added silently.

        Graff tilted his head upwards slightly. “Then by all means, tell me what my teams of physicists, astronomers, and engineers have missed.”

        To anyone else it might have sounded like sarcasm, but Sarah understood the man well enough to know he was genuinely asking. Graff never turned down a source of help, unlikely though it might be.

        “Your teams took apart my ship because they found nothing in space, right?”

        Graff nodded.

        “They didn’t search far enough.”

        The older man narrowed his eyes. “The teams systematically scanned every last bit of space within fifty cubic kilometers of the point where Ender disappeared. How far do you suggest they look?”

        Sarah extended her hands to illustrate what she was about to say. “The point he disappeared... relative to what?” She held out a fist, and pointed to a spot nearly a foot away. “Yes, we know the absolute point where the lifeboat vanished, but our coordinate system is mapped relative to the sun. Everything in space moves. What if the... phenomenon, or whatever took him, doesn’t orbit the sun directly?”

        A glimmer appeared in Graff’s eyes. He was not only following her logic, but it was giving him hope. “You think that the phenomenon holds position relative to the Earth?”

        “Or the moon. We were in its orbital path when he disappeared. Remember when we had to reposition the fleet and interrupt our search as it passed through the space where he vanished?”

        The minister looked down at his desk with a calculating expression. After a moment’s thought, he nodded. “That’s sound reasoning. I’ll pass it on to the teams.”

        He sat back, fixing Sarah with a subdued but genuine look of gratitude. It was the kindest expression she had ever seen on him. “Thank you, lieutenant. Is there anything else?”

        Martin almost walked away at that point, but she steeled herself and raised the other question she came to ask. “Why am I still here? I understand a gag order, but what could I possibly say that doesn’t have the world reeling already? Ender Wiggin is missing.”

        A cloud passed over Graff’s face. He almost looked sad as he held her gaze. Blinking once, he said softly, “Ender Wiggin left as scheduled on the first colony ship. He was to be the governor of humanity’s first off-world settlement, remember?”

        White-hot fury bubbled within Martin’s chest, momentarily causing her to see red. If it didn’t mean months held alone in the ship’s brig, she would have struck the older man then and there.

        “You... miserable... bastard!” she hissed through clenched teeth.

        It was the perfect lie... a lie couched in a bit of truth. Ender Wiggin really was supposed to have left on humanity’s first colony ship. That was the entire reason for his fateful voyage back to Earth. With the IF in strict control of the vessel’s anisble, its one faster-than-light communication link with Earth, it would be easy to hide the fact that he wasn’t really on board. Given that most of the colonists would be in cold sleep throughout the two-year voyage, it was probable that only a handful of crew (trusted high-ranking officers to be sure) knew the truth.

        What was worse, two years of relative velocity for the ship meant over sixty years would pass on Earth before the colonists arrived. By the time anyone could get word back that Ender was missing, no one on Earth would really care anymore. At best, it would be an interesting historical scandal.

        Striding forward, Martin slammed two fists down on the minister’s desk, not caring about the dull pain in her knuckles and forearms. “Does his family even know?!”

        Graff didn’t flinch. In fact, his steely gray eyes held her infuriated gaze without faltering. “Ender hasn’t communicated with most of his family since he left them. The one member...”

        “And whose fault is that?!” Martin’s voice cracked, her body shaking slightly with the crash of white-hot anger that coursed through her. She didn’t care to hear his excuses or reasoning. She wanted him to say... something... anything to acknowledge his role as the puppet master who had controlled the lives of all the Battle Schoolers for his own purposes, especially Ender’s. Especially hers.

        “Mine.”

        To her amazement, he did.

        Martin didn’t quite know what to do with herself as he rose and stepped back slightly from the desk. Gripping the back of his chair, Graff cast his eyes downward, a rare demonstration of humility.

        “Have you wondered at all why I am here?” he asked.

        Sarah didn’t reply. It did strike her as odd that the effective head of the IF had been personally running the search for Ender Wiggin for nearly a year. She knew the boy was important, but she didn’t think he was that important.

        “Lieutenant Martin,” he began, taking a deep breath as if to steel himself. “I broke Ender Wiggin. I did it intentionally and methodically by isolating him at every available opportunity. I did it because it was the only way to develop him into the commander... into the weapon we needed him to be. He would never have achieved his potential otherwise. I know this with a certainty gained from decades of finding and grooming the best military minds humanity had to offer.”

        The young woman didn’t know what to say or do. On the one hand, she wanted to strangle Graff. On the other, she wanted to soak in every word of honesty from a man famous for obfuscation.

        “I do not apologize for my actions, nor do I regret them. I did what needed to be done, because without him, we would have lost the war. He had the unique combination of empathy, sheer intellect, and pragmatic ruthlessness we needed to outmatch the Formic hivemind. There was no other - seventy years of Battle School history proved that.”

        He took a shuddering breath. Was this the first time he had voiced these thoughts? Sarah thought it possible.

        “I’m not sorry for what I did, but I did hope to someday repair the damage I inflicted. In my office there is a stasis chamber. I originally wanted to use it to let me skip through time, to check on the progress of the colonies we’re founding today. But once I knew Ender was leaving on that first colony ship, I intended to use it to make sure I would be around when he arrived - to give him guidance when everyone else he knows will either be dead, or so old that he’ll only be a distant memory.” He paused, raising his eyes to meet her hostile gaze. “If we don’t find Ender, I’ll never have that chance... and he will always be broken.”

        “I understand.” It was all Martin could say. Her mind worked frantically to process all that she had heard. The young woman couldn’t say for sure whether she agreed with Graff, or whether she could forgive him, but at the very least, she understood.

        Sarah turned, and with halting steps, traced her way back to the cabin door. Unused adrenaline coursed through her, causing the lieutenant to move as if controlled by marionette strings. Fists clenched, she braced herself against the door and caught a breath before opening it.

        “Martin?” the man called out.

        “What?” she responded quietly, emotions spent.

        “Your confinement is lifted. Join the science teams and help point them in the right direction. Do whatever it takes... find him.”

        “Yes... sir.”

        For the first time in her entire military career, she meant it.

☽

It was several nerve-wracking hours for Fluttershy before Twilight arrived. She alternated between pacing around her living room, nervously glancing at her patient, to carefully checking on his injuries. It was a strange whiplash of emotion. When actively involved in caring for him, her fear receded. After all, how could such a helpless and injured form possibly do her harm? But when she took a step back, Fluttershy could see just how different he was. Redheart’s concerns surfaced in her mind time and again. How did he get away from the manticore?

A knock on the door prompted the pegasus to spring into the air with a soft ‘eep.’

“Fluttershy? It’s just me. Nurse Redheart said you needed help with a creature you found... can I come in?” Twilight’s voice drifted through the door.

        Breathing a sigh of relief, the yellow pegasus quickly opened the door. “Twilight! Thank goodness you’re here. I’ve never seen anything like him before and I was starting to get so worried that he might be dangerous...”

        The unicorn nosed her way past Fluttershy and began to remove her pack. “Oh, I’m sure it’s just something from the Far Everfree that hasn’t made it to Ponyville before. I’ve got lots of books on those creatures, and if it was able to fit through your door, then it shouldn’t be dangerous at all. Now where did you put-”

        Twilight’s eyes widened as her voice halted in a small gasp. The saddle bags she had been levitating over her shoulders crashed to the ground as she spied the strange form on Fluttershy’s low green sofa. The clasp gave way as the bags hit the ground, letting a wide assortment of books, parchment, and quills spill across the floor. Angel pounced on an inkwell, grabbing its stopper before it could roll over and stain the living room rugs.

        “F-Fluttershy... where did you find this creature?” The unicorn’s eyes didn’t move from the figure on the other side of the room.

        “He was collapsed by the stream this morning. I saw him on my way to town.” Fluttershy drew next to her friend, looking at Twilight with concern. It was a rare moment when the lavender pony was caught speechless.

        Suddenly, the unicorn’s features broken into a wide grin. She trotted over to the couch, practically dancing in the air as she moved. “I’ve never seen anything like it in any of my books! Do you know what this means?” Turning back to Fluttershy, she graced the pegasus with a look of pure joy. “I might get to actually do ORIGINAL research!” An insubstantial, purple energy enveloped the contents of Twilight’s saddle bags as she levitated some of the many books over to the coffee table. “First though,” she began, “I need to double-check that there really are no documented sightings of something like your creature here. The LAST thing I want to do is seem like some hack who thinks she’s found a new species just because she couldn’t identify it...” Twilight’s voice trailed off as she started to rifle through one of her thick tomes. Fluttershy could tell she was already starting to tune out the world around her.

        With an exasperated sigh, the pegasus pushed off the ground and floated over to her lavender friend, putting a hoof down over the spine of Twilight’s book to garner her attention. “Twilight, it’s a HE, not an IT, and HE is injured,” she said in a hushed but forceful voice. “You’re going to wake him up if you keep talking this loudly. Besides, there’s more... this creature was wearing clothing.” Fluttershy indicated the dirty, well-worn garments draped over the back of the couch.

        “Clothing?!” She managed to keep her voice down, but it was still a very loud whisper. In an instant, Twilight levitated the mottled cloth up and over the sleeping creature and spread it out over her books on the low table. Peering closely, she examined every square inch. Fluttershy couldn’t help but be drawn in by her curiosity, though she didn’t know exactly what her unicorn friend hoped to find. It was just a strangely patterned set of forest-colored clothing.

        “This pattern is remarkable... completely random and yet it follows a theme,” she observed.

        Fluttershy could comment on that much. “It’s like camouflage, except it’s made instead of natural. I could barely see him in the grass this morning.”

        Something drew Twilight’s attention, prompting her to take the garment in her hooves instead of simply levitating it. “Fluttershy, did you see this? It’s like some kind of embroidery. You know something about fashion, right?”

        The unicorn was right; there were small sections of raised material on the top half of the creature’s clothing. Fluttershy could barely see them because they were the same color as the rest of the material, but now that Twilight pointed them out, it was easy to see the difference.

        “Um, I do know a few things, but only when it comes to sewing the clothing I actually like. I’ve never seen anything like this before.”

        Suddenly, to the pegasus’ surprise, Twilight’s eyes widened even further. She didn’t think it was even possible. Something on the raised material had seized Twilight’s attention, and she held the garment in the streaming sunlight of a window to get a better look.

        “Fluttershy,” she whispered, her voice hushed in awe, “this stitching here, and here, and here... it’s too regular, and some of the shapes repeat.” The unicorn pointed with the tip of a hoof. “I think... I think this is writing.”

        From her position, Fluttershy couldn’t quite make out what Twilight was seeing, but she trusted her friend’s assessment. The unicorn spent most of her time studying, and she wasn’t often wrong.

        She could swear the lavender pony was actually vibrating from excitement. “Do you know what this MEANS, Fluttershy?! I suspected it with the clothing, but this practically seals it. HE,” she waved a hoof at the sofa, “is not just a new creature, but a sapient! There’s another race in Equestria!”

        Fluttershy cringed at the unicorn’s steadily rising volume, but she chose not to bring it up again. If the sleeping form on her couch had not woken up after all that, she doubted he’d be up anytime soon.

        The books so recently opened and strewn across the coffee table were quickly closed and stacked as Twilight made room for her parchment and quills. “A check of the old books can wait... I have to take as many notes as I can while I have the opportunity!” Pulling the inkwell over - with a protesting Angel still attached - Twilight removed the stopper and dipped her quill. She addressed the pegasus while staring intently at her new research subject. “Tell me everything that’s happened so far.”

        So Fluttershy began a rendition of all that had transpired since she found the creature this morning. She had to often interrupt her story as the unicorn queried her on various details, from how the creature was positioned, to how much he weighed. When she began to talk about treating the poor thing, Twilight asked for every detail imaginable about his inner workings, or at least as much as Fluttershy had been able to see or feel. The unicorn had to change parchment when it was all said and done.

        By then it was late afternoon. The slanting rays and long shadows reminded the pegasus that she had been inside tending to the strange creature all day. Fluttershy still had many chores to do, not least of which was feeding her many outdoor friends. After making sure Twilight would be OK on her own, she set off to quickly make her usual rounds, apologizing at each stop for the long wait. Thankfully, her animal friends were very understanding, having seen her spend time taking care of gravely injured creatures in the past. Setting the feed buckets down, Fluttershy let out an exhausted sigh.

        Ooh, my shoulder muscles are going to be sore in the morning. That creature was a lot heavier than he looked.

        It had been tough keeping up with all of her friend’s questions, but at the very least, Twilight had put her mind at ease about the dangers of her patient. If he really was sapient, then he would probably try talking before doing anything more dangerous. Also, the unicorn pointed out, he had no wings. Flying out of reach would be all Fluttershy needed to stay safe.

        The pegasus felt silly for not thinking of that before. She knew she could move quickly if she was sufficiently scared.

        She returned just in time to see Twilight levitating the blanket back in place over the sleeping form. Gliding over to look at the very long and completely unrolled parchment on her coffee table, Fluttershy gasped as she saw what her unicorn friend had done. Before her was a complete drawing of creature from head to hind legs. The pegasus blushed a little at the level of detail. Twilight, for her part, seemed unfazed, looking at the drawing and the many notes beside it with immense pride.

        “I see now why he wears clothing. What sort of creature doesn’t have any kind of natural protection against the cold? It seems strange if you ask me,” she said.

“Maybe he came from a very warm place?” Fluttershy ventured.

Twilight shook her head. “There’s not enough pigment in his skin. If he was from a very warm climate, his skin would be darker to protect him from the sun.”

        “Oh?” This was news to the pegasus.

        “Zecora taught me that,” Twilight replied. “She showed me the skin underneath her coat, and said it was common for many of the desert animals, especially ones that had lighter fur.”

        “Maybe his kind always wears clothing?” Fluttershy added helpfully.

        The unicorn blinked. “That’s... that...” she paused, tilting her head to the side as she looked at her notes, “that actually makes some kind of sense. I dismissed the idea before because, really, who would wear clothing all the time? But now that you say it... yeah, maybe he does.”

        The pegasus smiled softly. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Twilight, you always do.” She looked back into the orange light that now filled the front room of her cottage. “It’s getting late... would you like to stay for dinner? I just picked the nicest daisies from a field down the road.”

        “Thanks for the offer, but no. I want to go back and spend the evening looking through the rest of my books, just to make sure I didn’t miss anything. Maybe his kind has been spotted before, but it has been so long that they’d be listed in the history section instead of natural biology.”

        “Okay, Twilight, just be careful on the road going home. Oh, and will you keep this between you and me for now? I don’t want everypony coming around here to gawk; you know how I feel about crowds...”

        The unicorn only smiled. “Sure, Fluttershy! I’ll be back in the morning, anyway. I’ve only scratched the surface on my research.” She turned towards the door. “Besides, I really want to be here when he wakes up!”

        A purple glow enveloped the door as Twilight closed it behind her. Checking on her patient’s breathing, and his many dressings, Fluttershy couldn’t help but notice that little had changed since she finished treating him earlier.

        “...if he wakes up.”

☽

        Celestia’s sun had barely crested the horizon when an insistent knocking woke a weary Fluttershy from her slumber. She rolled slowly out of bed, painfully stretching sore wing and shoulder muscles.

        I knew that was coming, she thought.

        Normally she was an early riser, but the pegasus had not received much sleep the night before on account of strained wings and persistent worry about the patient below.

        The knocking started again.

        Fluttershy never growled, but a raspy sound emanated from her throat the entire way down the stairs. Glancing quickly at her sofa, she was relieved to see that the creature was still there. Apparently, it had not moved the entire night.

        “Just a moment!” she called as she moved towards her front door. In another second, she opened it to find a brightly smiling Twilight Sparkle on her doorstep.

        “Oh, did I wake you? I’m sorry; I was just really looking forward to getting an early start today.

        Fluttershy only blinked, gazing out at the unicorn from under long disheveled pink bangs.

        Unhitching herself from a cart full of bulky scientific equipment, Twilight looked up with an embarrassed smile. “I brought some tea from home and I stopped by Sugarcube Corner on the way. How about I make us breakfast before we get started?”

        It was a good peace offering. The pegasus missed a trip to the bakery on account of yesterday’s excitement.

        While Twilight busied herself in the kitchen, Fluttershy checked on the patient’s bandages and changed the ones that had become soiled. All in all, she was amazed at how well the wound on his leg was closing. Nurse Redheart did good work. Thankfully, he showed no signs of infection and there wasn’t any fever.

        Or, at least no fever that she could detect. Fluttershy realized she didn’t really know what would be normal for the creature.

        Creature...

        “Twilight?” she called.

        “What is it?”

        The pegasus trotted over and stuck her head through the door to her kitchen.

        “We need a name for him... I can’t keep calling him ‘creature,’ or ‘being,’ or anything else. It just seems so impersonal.”

        Fluttershy moved to the side as the unicorn emerged from the kitchen, levitating a tray laden with muffins, jelly, butter, cups and a steaming teapot. Setting it down on the small wooden dining table, Twilight motioned for her friend to join her.

        “I was thinking about that too. I was hoping my other books might have some clue as to his origins, but my first instinct ended up being right - there’s no mention anywhere of anything like him.” She poured tea, first for Fluttershy, then for herself. “While I’m glad to have the chance to do real research into something unknown to pony kind, that still leaves me nothing to go on when it comes to selecting a name. He’s just too alien in comparison to every other living creature in Equestria. I thought that maybe I could go with something draconic, given how similar-”

        “That’s it!” Fluttershy interrupted. “Alien... ‘Mr. Alien,’ I like it!” She smiled over the steaming tea mug, quite pleased with herself.

        Twilight pulled a face. “Oh no! Nonono. When you say it like that, it sounds like one of those bad comic books Scootaloo keeps checking out. I meant alien as in foreign or different, not like a space-pony. Please, I’m trying to keep this scientific!”

        But the pegasus had already seized upon the name. “Well, I like it. It has a nice ring to it... Mr. Alien.” She sounded it out a few times in a sing-song voice. Twilight let out an exasperated groan.

        “Fiiiiiine. But as soon as he wakes up, I’m going to ask him what he calls himself, and THAT’S what is going in the history books. Not ‘Mr. Alien.’”

        Fluttershy only smiled as she bit into a banana nut muffin. “I wonder what Mr. Alien eats? Do you think we should try to feed him?”

        The unicorn shook her head. “It would be dangerous until we know he’s OK. His body might not be able to handle food just yet. Besides, until we know what he eats, we could accidentally poison him. Or maybe he has an allergy - we just don’t know.”

        Fluttershy made a squeaking sound as she nodded, eyes wide with understanding.

        “You’ve been giving him water, right?” Twilight asked.

        “Just little sips... enough that I could get him to swallow by massaging his throat. It worked exactly like it does with most of my sick critters.”

        “Good.” Twilight nodded. “Keep doing that. I’m sure he’ll be fine until he wakes up.

        The pegasus finished one muffin and reached for another. “So what are you going to do today? I saw you brought a lot of equipment with you.”

        Her friend chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of her mane with a foreleg. “Heh, yeah, I might have overdone it a bit, but I didn’t want to have to keep running back and forth from the library just to get test results.”

        Fluttershy glanced at the patient nervously. “W-what kind of tests?”

        “Oh, the usual.” The unicorn grinned as she thought of her plans. “Muscle and reflex response, brainwave measurement, heart rate monitoring, core and limb temperatures, and of course blood, ur-”

        “Blood?!”

        Twilight waved her hooves, trying to dispel her friend’s fears. “Relax Fluttershy, I’m not going to hurt him, just take enough - with a SMALL needle - to run some tests.”

        “Oh, well, okay... I guess. Just be careful, alright?” The pegasus looked somewhat placated.

        “Tell you what, if you help me bring in the equipment, I can get everything done while you’re doing your morning rounds. You don’t have to be here for any of the icky stuff.”

        Fluttershy nodded, sipping her tea.

☽

        The animals were restless, nearly all of them curious about the new arrival. Though they couldn’t speak, it wasn’t hard to understand what they were asking as they acted out the pegasus’ efforts to carry Mr. Alien across the stream.

        “No Mr. Badger, I don’t know what Mr. Alien is,” she explained for what seemed the twentieth or thirtieth time, “and no, I don’t know what he eats. He probably won’t be staying very long, so you don’t need to worry about him, okay?”

        Exhausted, the pegasus finished re-lining the badger’s den and turned to head back to the cottage. After all the interruptions and the work left unfinished from yesterday, Fluttershy found that time had slipped by without her noticing. It was already close to lunchtime.

        Pushing open the door, she expected to hear a myriad of beeps, squeaks, and whirrs from all of Twilight’s equipment, but to Fluttershy’s surprise, the glistening boxes were all packed up and stacked against the staircase. The unicorn herself was carefully ladling a small amount of water into Mr. Alien’s mouth, held open by her forelimbs. The magic glow around the spoon vanished as she set it down and proceeded to massage his throat to help him swallow.

        “All done?” Fluttershy asked.

        “Yep!” she said brightly. “I’ve done everything I can here. There are a few more tests I can run back at the library, but before that, I was wondering if we could look around the place you found him. Think we can go after lunch? I’m famished!”

        “That makes two of us.” Fluttershy nodded. “Want to finish off these muffins?”

        After a brief meal, the ponies checked on their charge one last time, then left the cottage. Since Twilight couldn’t fly, Fluttershy led her over the bridge and took the long way to where she had found Mr. Alien.

        “So this is it?” the unicorn asked, observing the indentations in the soft earth where Fluttershy had struggled with the ungainly load. “How do you know he came from the Everfree Forest?”

        “Well,” the yellow pony mused, a hoof to her chin, “I just assumed he did, since the forest is in this direction and I had never seen anything like him before. But if you want, I’m sure we can find his tracks.”

        She was right. Though the soft earth was soon covered by grass as they moved up from the stream’s bank, the ponies were easily able to find Mr. Alien’s tracks. Stumbling and crawling, presumably from the effects of the venom, he had gouged deep furrows behind him. As they crested a small hill, Twilight let out a happy cry.

        “Fluttershy, look! I think this might be something he left behind.”

        Lying in the grass, almost the size of a pony, was a brilliant silver canister. Though parts of its case were covered by dead leaves or caked mud, the metal underneath still gleamed in the noon sunlight. It was easy to follow Twilight’s reasoning - the furrows led right to it.

        Dashing over, the unicorn found a set of three straps extending from one side of the canister. Positioning herself along them, she began contorting her body. It took Fluttershy a moment to realize what her friend was doing; she was mimicking the body posture of Mr. Alien, or at least what they could see when he was lying down.

        “Look at this! These straps must be how he carried it... one to go around his middle and two over his shoulders. It’s like a vertical set of saddlebags.”

        If anything, Fluttershy noted, her friend was very clever.

        Springing upright, Twilight's horn flared as she enveloped the canister in a veil of purple light. It slowly began to rise, but after a few moments, the unicorn dropped it, panting heavily.

        “Wow... he must be really strong. This thing is much heavier than it looks!” she said through gasps of breath.

        A thrill of fear ran through Fluttershy as she remembered Nurse Redheart’s warning about Mr. Alien getting away from the manticore. Had that been how he did it? Was he simply far stronger than he looked?

        The pegasus drifted over and poked at the silver cylinder. To her surprise, it rolled easily. Curious, Fluttershy bent down, and with two forelimbs, lifted the canister upright.

        She looked at Twilight. “Are you sure you were lifting it properly? It doesn’t feel very heavy to me.”

        The unicorn blinked. Moving forward, she took it in her hooves, marveling at how easily it could be moved. Twilight let go and tried to lift it again with magic, but the canister plummeted straight to the ground.

        “That’s... very, very strange. When I try lifting it with magic, it feels like it weighs a ton, but you and I can pick it up and move it around easily with our hooves.” She stared, dumbfounded.

        Fluttershy again poked the silver canister with a hoof. “It sure is big, isn’t it? You could probably fit a pony inside if you wanted to.”

        Circling around it, Twilight cast a critical eye. “Maybe not a fully-grown pony, but you could definitely fit a filly in there.”

        Fluttershy gasped as something sprung to her mind.

        “Oh, no! The girls! I told Rarity I would baby-sit today. What time is it?”

        The unicorn laughed softly. “I’m sure it’ll be OK if you’re a little late. Where were you supposed to be, at the boutique?”

        “No, no...” Fluttershy shook her head in horror, “they were supposed to be here... at noon.”

☽

        Ender was brought to consciousness by a heavy rhythmic thumping on his chest. Was someone trying to perform CPR? No, that was supposed to hurt. This wasn’t painful, it was just jarring. His head and vision swam as he tried to open his eyes to see what was happening.

        A large orange and purple form was rising and falling directly over him, emitting a high-pitched sound. To his right, two other blotches occupied his peripheral vision, one white and the other yellow. The soldier blinked, trying to clear his eyes, but everything remained unfocused and hazy.

        He jerked one arm, trying to swat away the orange blob that kept landing on his chest and forcing air out of his lungs, but his hand didn’t move much more than a few inches. It did, however, get a reaction from the two shapes to his right. Now a cacophony of warbling voices filled his ears. It... sounded like language, but nothing that Ender could understand.

        Suddenly, a severe sound came from far away, and the three shapes retreated instantly. In a few seconds, all Ender could see was yellow and pink. A soft voice crooned over him, but the sounds were meaningless. Freed from the constant assault, the boy’s body succumbed to fatigue and he drifted back into oblivion.

☽

        To her horror, Fluttershy entered her home to find Scootaloo jumping up and down on her patient, calling for her friends to join her.

        “Come on, girls, we gotta protect Fluttershy from the nasty alien. Help me squish him!”

        “Are ya SURE that’s an alien?” Applebloom asked. “I thought those were only in yer picture-books.”

        “Girls...” Sweetie Belle’s voice carried a fearful tremor. “It just opened its eyes... oh no, it’s moving!” Her voice cracked as she started to backpedal.

        The fear in the three fillies’ eyes reached new heights as soon as they heard their babysitter from across the room.

        “GIRLS!” Fluttershy’s voice reached a timber that no one, including Twilight, had ever heard. “GET. AWAY. NOW!”

        Looking back, the Cutie Mark Crusaders found the normally shy pegasus hovering in mid-air, her wings fully extended. She glared at them with a terrifying gaze as her voice seemed to reverberate in the air around them.

        They didn’t need to be told twice. In a split-second, all three fillies had taken cover under Fluttershy’s dining room table, clutching each other in fear.

        The pegasus was over her charge in a flash, checking his bandages to make sure that none of the wounds had re-opened. One on his chest was oozing slowly, but thankfully Scootaloo hadn’t disturbed the stitches in his leg.

        She heard Twilight accost the three behind her.

        “Scootaloo, what were you thinking?!” 

        “I-I-I-I thought some dangerous creature was sleeping in Fluttershy’s house,” the little pegasus stammered.

        “You said it was an alien!” Sweetie Belle’s voice was strained to the point of squeaking.

        “Well, it looked like one!”

        “Ahhhh! Enough!” Fluttershy heard Twilight’s hoof smack her face as she sighed in exasperation. “Scootaloo, you should know better. Those comic books are FICTIONAL, and until further notice, you’re no longer allowed to check them out.”

        “Awww, no fair!”

        Applebloom chimed in. “Well if it ain’t an alien, what is it?”

        “Mr. A... that is, this creature came to us from the Everfree Forest gravely injured, and Twilight and I have been nursing him back to health,” Fluttershy called over her shoulder.

        The lavender unicorn picked up where she left off. “And what’s more, we think he might be... well, a sapient creature, so it’s really important that he get well and we learn more about him.”

        Fluttershy fumbled with one of the chest bandages as she heard Sweetie ask, “What’s that mean?”

        There was a rustling sound, and then Twilight answered, “It means we think he’s more than just a wild animal. See these? He was wearing them when Fluttershy found him. How many animals do you know wear clothing?”

        Applebloom started to say something when Twilight interrupted, “-wear clothing on their own, without you dressing them up.”

        “Oh.” The young earth pony almost sounded disappointed.

        “Now girls, it’s very important that-”

        The bandage just would not stay, even with Fluttershy using her mouth and both her hooves. Spitting out the end, she called to her friend. “Twilight? Could you help me with this one? I could really use your magic.”

        “Oh? Sure, just a second.” Soft clops crew louder as she heard the unicorn approach. Before she knew it, the bandage was lifted out of her hooves and expertly rewound and tied. “There, that better?”

        Fluttershy breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks. It looks like there wasn’t any lasting damage done, but girls, you really must-”

        Her breath caught short as she turned around and realized all three Cutie Mark Crusaders were gone.

        Following Fluttershy’s gaze, the unicorn sighed. “Oh dear.”

        I pit of fear began to form deep within the pegasus. “They’re going to tell everypony, aren’t they?”

        “Yup.”

☽

        “Applejack, hey Applejack!” The yellow filly galloped among the endless rows of apple trees at full tilt.

        “Back so soon, short stuff?” her sister replied, settling down from the kick she was about to deliver to one of the trunks. Applejack didn’t much like being interrupted mid-buck, but she always made an effort to put up a smiling face for her little sister. “That sure was a short visit.”

        Applebloom tried to stop, but she had too much forward momentum. Instead of skidding to a halt in front of the older orange pony, she tripped, bouncing a couple times before coming to rest between Applejack’s forelegs. Unfazed, she looked up at her sister with impossibly round eyes.

        “Ya gotta see what Fluttershy’s got in her house! At first Scoots thought it was an alien, so she started jumping on it, but then Fluttershy came in and scared us silly! And then Twilight was sayin’ that it was real important and stuff, but then they had to fix it up, so Scoots suggested we clear out before we got in even more trouble...”

        “Woah there, Applebloom. Slow it down, I can barely understand ya.” The farmer looked down at the young filly with a stern expression. “Are you sayin’ y’all was causing trouble for poor Fluttershy again? I thought I told you-”

        “No!” Applebloom interjected. “Ah told ya this morning, we were supposed to go over there with Sweetie Belle. Fluttershy was gonna watch us today. But when we got there, we found this-”

        “Yeah, yeah, I know, big scary space monster and all. Look, Applebloom, you know I like playing with you, but me an’ Mac have a lot of work to do today, and...”

        “But Twilight was there and everything! Even she said it was important. Pretty please?”

        Applejack always had a hard time resisting The Face. She didn’t know how her little sister did it, but Applejack knew that if she could ever copy it, Big Mac would never be able to say no to her about anything.

        Besides, it was strange that Twilight had gotten involved in something “important” without telling her.

        “Oh, alright... let’s get going.”

        “Yay!” Applebloom went from the ground beneath her sister’s forelegs to riding on her back in the blink of an eye.

        “Hey Mac!” Applejack called.

        “Eyyup?” The deep voice carried through the trees, even though it its owner was nowhere to be seen.

        “Can you take over for a bit? I’ll be back as soon as I figure out what’s goin’ on.”

        “Eyyup.”

☽

        Rarity glared from behind a massive mound of fabric. Only the tops of her eyes and a single wave of violet hair was visible to her little sister below. “Sweetie, I thought we discussed this. I NEED this day to myself. I’ve fallen so behind on orders. I’ll never be ready for the new winter release in Canterlot if I don’t catch up soon.”

        “But, Fluttershy and Twilight had this...”

        “Yes, yes, I heard you the first time,” she replied, cutting off the filly. “And while I’m always glad to help out my friends, it sounds like they have everything under control. Fluttershy takes in animals all the time, dear. Now I hate to be rude, but I absolutely must get back to assembling these capes.”

        Rarity’s eyes disappeared behind the stack as the sound of her magical levitation resumed. Scissors clacked as bits of cloth began to fly up and over the pile. One managed to land on Sweetie Belle’s nose, causing the little unicorn to huff in frustration. Blowing the errant piece off her muzzle, the filly sat down and stared at the pile of fabrics, trying to think of a way to get her sister to budge. Suddenly she had an idea, and a wicked grin stretched across Sweetie’s face.

        “You know why Twilight said the creature was important? Why she thought it might be...” she tried to remember the word, “sapient?”

        Rarity only gave a distracted “Hm?” from behind her work desk.

        “It was wearing clothes.” The filly thought she might as well go all-out, and a little embellishment right now wouldn’t hurt anypony. “They were strange, alien clothes, never before seen in Equestria and so unique they convinced Twilight that he was more than just an animal.”

        The sounds of levitation and scissor work stopped, and Sweetie Belle counted to two in her head.

        “Clothing, you say?” The words drifted over the pile of fabric bolts.

        The white filly grinned. Her older sister was so easy sometimes.

☽

        The grumpy expression disappeared from Rainbow Dash’s face as soon as Scootaloo finished her story. The orange pegasus normally wouldn’t have woken her idol up from an afternoon nap for anything, but space monsters seemed like a good reason to make an exception.

        “An alien, you say?” Rainbow’s face poked through the bottom of a low-hovering cloud.

        “Yeah, just like the ones in those comics you said were cool. Twilight said it that it wasn’t an alien, that it was some sort of sape... sapi... uh, important creature of some kind from far away, but I know what I saw.” The filly bounced excitedly. “You should have seen me Dash! I was on it instantly... wham! bam!” she cried as she acted out her fierce attacks on the monster, “it never knew what hit it!”

Dropping out of the cloud, Rainbow chuckled and ruffled the young pegasus’ mane. “You did the right thing, kid. Who knows what sort of trouble Fluttershy’s gotten herself into this time?” She paused, thoughtful for a moment. “Though if Twilight is there, I’m sure everything is okay, but why didn’t she tell me what was going on...?”

Scootaloo began to wilt at the older pegasus’ doubt, but she quickly recovered as Rainbow flashed a quick grin. “Well, come on... let’s go! Race you there?”

“You bet!” the filly replied, gunning her wings and taking off on her scooter as fast as she could go.

Rainbow gave her a few seconds’ head start before catching up and lazily circling Scootaloo. “You’re getting pretty good with that thing, kid!” she said, flying upside down with her forelegs behind her head.

        The filly held no illusion that it was a real race, but having her idol there at all made it the highlight of her week. She looked back and gazed at the light blue pegasus, smiling brightly...

        ...and crashed headlong into another pony. Thrown from her scooter, the orange filly and her roadblock tumbled head over hooves together before coming to a rest right in front of the forested path to Fluttershy’s house.

        “Sweetie Belle! Are you alright?” she heard Rarity’s voice call from somewhere behind her.

        Scootaloo blinked as she tried to clear her vision. She had landed on another pony who was now struggling, trying to untangle its hooves. Suddenly, everything flashed white as she was bucked up and into the air.

        “Watch where you’re going, Scoots! That really hurt!” scolded her unicorn friend.

        “Oww,” she moaned. “You didn’t have to kick me... I was getting up!”

        The white filly just huffed as she returned to her sister. Looking over at Rainbow Dash, Scootaloo saw her covering her mouth with a hoof, trying not to laugh. The young pegasus couldn’t help but snort with a little laughter in return.

        “Ya’ll alright?” Applejack called, galloping up with Applebloom. “Ah saw them coming down the hill and tried to call out to you, but we were just too far away.”

        Rarity looked up from where she was dusting off her sister and fixing the filly’s mane. “Nothing bruised but our pride, Applejack.” She turned a glare on Scootaloo, who instantly stopped laughing and tried to look sheepish.

        “So I’m guessing we’re all here for the same thing?” Applejack asked, turning to Rarity and Rainbow Dash in turn. The two older ponies nodded.

        Rarity fixed her sister with a suspicious stare. “Are you sure this isn’t just another wild goose chase? I know how you girls like to have fun, but we all have things to do, you know.”

        “Some of us do, at any rate.” Applejack looked pointedly at Rainbow Dash.

        “Hey! An afternoon nap is a critical part of weather control. I have to keep my strength up if I want to be in top form!”

        Chuckling, the farmer turned back to the three Cutie Mark Crusaders. “Well, before we go all the way to Fluttershy’s, is there something you want to tell us? If this is just a game, I promise we won’t be mad, but if we get out there and it turns out it’s just you three playing, well...”

        “It’s not a game - promise! We-” Scootaloo started to protest when she was interrupted by a bright purple flash of light.

        Twilight Sparkle emerged, blinking momentarily before fixing her gaze on all three fillies. “THERE you are. I’m so glad I found you before...” she trailed off, looking at Applejack, Rainbow and Rarity in turn. The unicorn sighed in frustration. “Who ELSE did you girls tell about this?”

        “Nopony, we promise!” Sweetie Belle squeaked. “Right girls?”

        Scootaloo nodded her affirmation and saw Applebloom doing the same.

        “Alright, then I need you three to do me a favor and Pinkie Pie Swear that you’ll tell no one else, OK?” Twilight held an expression that brokered no argument.

        Scootaloo and her two friends went through the motions, repeating the words well-known to residents of Ponyville. After they finished, Twilight fixed them with a serious gaze.

        “Good. Now just remember that you need to keep that promise, because a Pinkie Pie Promise las-”

        Scootaloo blinked. The unicorn had started to mouth the word ‘lasts’ but inexplicably cut herself off. She watched as Twilight’s eyes narrowed, focusing on a bush behind Applejack. Suddenly, a lavender aura permeated the bush, pulling it apart to reveal a pony hiding within.

        “Hi Twilight!” Pinkie said brightly. “How did you know I was here?”

        Twilight sighed. “Let’s just say I had a feeling.”

        “Ooh! Are you getting Pinkie Sense now too? Or would that be Twilight Sense? Twisense? I like-” The earth pony’s voice was muffled as Twilight closed the bush back over her.

        Shaking her head, the unicorn turned back to the three fillies, picking up where she left off. “Because as you know, a Pinkie Pie Promise lasts-”

        “FOREVER!” Pinkie erupted from the bush.

        Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Rarity groaned.

        “Well, I’d love to stay here all day chatting,” Applejack cut in, “but would you mind telling us what this is about, Twilight? What’s with all the secrecy?”

        The unicorn looked at her friends and the fillies. “The secrecy is because Fluttershy didn’t want everypony coming by her cottage to gawk. You know how she is with crowds.”

        The assembled group of mares all nodded to each other knowingly.

        “As for the rest... it might be better if I just showed you.”

☽

        “Well, it’s no alien, but I can see why she thought it was,” Dash observed, inclining her head towards Scootaloo. “Sorry about that... I was the one that got her started on the whole comic book thing when I said I used to read them when I was young. Well, not READ them read them, but I loved the awesome pictures of brave pegasi dashing to the res-”

        “So what is it Twilight?” Applejack interrupted. “Yer the smart pony around here.”

        “That’s just it, Applejack: neither Fluttershy or I know. None of my books had anything on him, and she’s never seen anything like him bef-Pinkie! Don’t poke him! It took us a long time to get those bandages secured.” The unicorn cleared her throat, glaring at her friend. “As I was saying, she’s never seen anything like him before.”

        “So it’s a ‘he,’ is it?” Applejack put one hoof on Pinkie’s shoulders in an effort to keep her in one place and out of trouble.

        “Er, yes,” Fluttershy blushed, “and Mr. Alien has been very lucky so far. When I first found him, he had a nasty gash full of manticore venom.”

        “Wait,” Rainbow said, a confused look on her face. “I thought you said that it wasn’t an alien...”

        Twilight sighed, noticing that she had been doing a lot of that lately. “He’s NOT an alien, but Fluttershy liked the name, so she’s been using it.”

        “I think it’s very fitting.” The yellow pegasus added brightly.

        Applejack looked around. “Well, this is all very interesting, but I really don’t see where we’re needed. Unless... Fluttershy, do you need any help with the animals while you’re taking care of long-and-tall over there?”

        “No - I’m good,” she said, carrying a stack of blankets to the sofa.

        “I’ll tell you what: how about instead of you babysitting Applebloom, she’ll stay here and help you with chores today?”

        “But-” the filly started to protest.

        “It would certainly be a lot more helpful and productive than any kind of punishment for wasting our time and causing trouble, don’t you think, Fluttershy?” The farmer smiled knowingly at her little sister.

        “Oh, certainly! In fact, if you could draw a bath for Angel, that would be most helpful. Thanks, Applebloom!”

        “Fiiiiine,” the yellow filly huffed, plodding up the stairs.

        Applejack chuckled as she watched her sister’s red bow disappear behind the railing. “Well, it’s been fun, but I’ve got work to do. Tell me if ya need anything, OK Fluttershy?”

        As the group waved their goodbyes, Rarity and Sweetie Belle were examining the creature’s strange clothing. Spreading it out on Fluttershy’s dining room table with her magic, the white unicorn used her hooves to brush away some of the caked dirt and leaves.

        “Well, I’ll give you one thing, Sweetie Belle; you’ve got the ‘alien’ part of the description right, even if that’s not what he is.” She examined the garment closely. “Whoever picked this pattern is colorblind, but this material is amazing. It’s so tightly stitched, I can’t see where one piece begins and the other ends - and look how it maintains its shape!” She stretched the fabric between her magic hold on one end and a hoof on the other, watching it snap back instantly. “It looks tough, too - these punctures stop almost instantly and don’t tear. Fluttershy, dear,” she looked up from the table towards her pegasus friend, “could I take these home with me?”

        Twilight answered for her. “Rarity, they’re his clothes, and as best we can tell, they’re not a fashion statement - he actually needs them to stay warm.”

        Rarity blinked. “Clothing that’s not fashion?” Twilight rolled her eyes, and magically lifted part of the creature’s blanket from across the room.

        “No fur, hair, or any kind of natural coat. See?”

        “Somepony that wears clothing all the time? Wow...” The pony, amazed, turned back to the garment.

        With the sister unicorns busy at the table, the rest of the group congregated around the container resting next to the fireplace.

        “Did you have much trouble bringing it in, Fluttershy?” asked Twilight.

        The pegasus looked up from her perch above the sofa where she was fluffing pillows for her patient. “Oh no, it was far easier to carry than he was.”

        The gleaming silver object stood in stark contrast to the soft wood and pastel tones of Fluttershy’s sitting room. Pinkie entertained herself by making faces in the reflective surface, causing Scootaloo to giggle.

        “I’m guessing this belonged to our guest over there... do you know what it is?” asked the cyan pony, peering closely at her own reflection.

        “I have no idea,” Twilight replied, “but it’s the strangest thing of all. I can pick it up easily with my hooves, but when I try to do it with magic, it feels like I’m trying to lift Applejack’s market cart when it’s fully loaded.” She demonstrated by shifting around the canister with her hooves, then straining to lift it with her horn.

        “Weird,” Scootaloo commented. “Are you sure he’s not an alien? They always have freaky stuff like this.”

        “He’s NOT an alien,” Twilight deadpanned, “and I’m not about to go around starting rumors until we know for sure where he-”

        “Well, what did Princess Celestia say about him?” Pinkie jumped up in front of Twilight, suddenly not interested in the canister anymore. Seeing the unicorn’s look of shock she asked, “You did tell the princess about the new creature, didn’t you?”

        “Um... I’ll be right back.” Twilight was not the most athletic pony, but at that moment, even Rainbow Dash would have been hard pressed to beat her out the door.

☽

“Oh, hi Twilight, where have you been all day - oh, hey, are you alright?” Spike asked as his friend burst into the library, slamming the door behind her and collapsing in the middle of the floor, completely out of breath.

“I’m... fine... Spike...” she responded, hooves splayed every which-way as she lay flat on the floor. The unicorn’s heaving lungs interrupted each word. After she caught her breath enough to speak properly, she unhitched her saddlebags and rolled over, looking up at her assistant. “Spike... take a letter.”

☽

        It took the pair nearly two hours to transcribe all of Twilight’s notes and diagrams on Fluttershy’s strange guest. Together with her letter, the roll of parchment was easily the thickest Spike had ever tried to send.

        “Think you’re up to it? We could always split it up into different pieces,” Twilight suggested.

        “Nah, I got this.” Spike puffed up his chest proudly and rocked his head back and forth, cracking his neck in the process. He drew a deep breath and let loose with a huge plume of fire, easily enveloping the roll. “See? No problem. Now I’m going to see about dinner, all that writing made me hungry!”

        As the baby dragon scampered off, Twilight breathed a sigh of relief. Hopefully, Princess Celestia would overlook the length of time it had taken to notify her of such a major development. Maybe if this became an important diplomatic occasion, the princess herself would come to visit! The young unicorn smiled at the prospect.

        She stood, and started to assemble the vast quantities of parchment that had become spread out over the library floor. Just as she levitated the last roll onto the stack, an explosion of light and sound knocked her up and into the far wall of the library, making a Twilight-shaped indentation in the soft wood.

        Held in place by a continuing magical force, Twilight opened her eyes to see Princess Luna floating in mid-air in the middle of the library, a maelstrom of books and loose papers swirling around her. The pressure started to dissipate, and the unicorn began to slide down the wall.

        “TWILIGHT SPARKLE... WHERE IS HE?”

        The force of the Royal Canterlot Voice pushed the unicorn right back into the indentation.

        In the near future, as she thought back to these events, Twilight Sparkle would come to understand exactly what happened. As she kept improving her teleportation magic, the unicorn noticed that each time she teleported, a gust of wind would always follow her and grow stronger as she jumped to farther and farther distances. Not knowing what to make of the phenomenon, Twilight had dismissed it as a minor side effect of the magic. Seeing the results of this teleportation, though, finally helped everything make sense. Whenever Princess Celestia had jumped long distances, such as during the Smarty-Pants incident a few weeks ago, Twilight noticed that she always teleported to a point high in the air. Finally, the young unicorn understood why... the farther the caster jumped, the more force came with them. Celestia teleported to spots high in the air to keep the blast from hurting other ponies. Apparently, Luna didn’t care, or had simply forgotten about that part of the spell.

        At the moment, however, Twilight was pinned to a wall by the princess’ powerful voice, and sorting out the deep mysteries of teleportation was probably the farthest thing from her mind.

        “Um... he’s... at Fluttershy’s cottage,” she stammered.

        Before she could say another word, Luna disappeared in another bright flash of light, drawing all the books and papers she had previously displaced into a whirling column in the center of the room. Stunned, Twilight could only slide down the wall slowly as Spike burst into the room and watched the column collapse onto the floor.

        “Holy c’mole! What happened, Twilight?!”

        Before the unicorn could gather her wits to respond, another sharp crack and burst of light snapped outside of the library. Twilight’s heart raced, fearing the dark princess’ return, but her anxiety was washed away as the door opened and the beatific face of her mentor came through. Princess Celestia glanced around the library, a look of surprise on her features.

        “Where did she go?” The alicorn’s voice was soothing, but firm.

        “Sh-She just appeared in here, and asked where ‘he’ was. I told her that he was at Fluttershy’s and... oh no!” Twilight’s eyes widened as she envisioned what would happen to the poor, shy pegasus if Princess Luna came bursting into her house. She nearly fainted just a few days ago on Nightmare Night when Twilight and the alicorn had come politely knocking at her door.

        Celestia nodded. “Come with me then. There’s no time to lose.”

        Twilight followed her mentor outside the library, not even pausing to give Spike any sort of direction. Celestia stopped just in front of the library, drawing surprised gasps and stares from the early evening passers-by. Motioning with her wing, she indicated for her student to stand immediately next to her.

        As soon as she drew next to the princess, Twilight gasped as the world shifted in a flash. It was far different than the way she teleported - there was no sense of motion, no expansion and contraction of the world around her. Rather, in the blink of an eye, the pair was standing in front of Fluttershy’s cottage. 

        Twilight could tell instantly that something was wrong: the door was hanging ajar, and a quiet whimpering emanated from inside.

        Dashing through the entrance, Twilight called out, “Fluttershy! Fluttershy, are you okay?!”

        Somehow, the yellow pegasus had managed to wedge herself under the sofa, judging by the pink tail sticking out of the side. The creature, and the rest of the ponies who had been here when Twilight left, were nowhere to be seen. She couldn’t see her winged friend’s face, but the soft mewling left no doubt as to Fluttershy’s state of mind.

        Princess Celestia strode confidently into the room, her horn emitting a soothing light. Twilight found herself feeling calmer and more relaxed as she drew nearer. Levitating the couch across the room, the alicorn focused the spell on Fluttershy and settled down next to the pegasus, extending a long white wing over her.

        “Fluttershy, it’s going to be alright... please tell me what happened.”

        Tears dried from the pegasus’ eyes as she turned her head to look at the Sun Princess. “I-I had just said goodbye to everypony, and I was checking to make sure that Mr. Alien - that’s the creature - was alright before I made dinner. Th-then the door opened and Nightma... I mean, Princess Luna burst in. She took one look at me, but then turned towards Mr. Alien. There was a bright flash of light, and I hid under the sofa. I-I-I’m sorry, I haven’t been able to move since.”

        Celestia hushed her subject with a soft nuzzle. “It’s alright, you didn’t do anything wrong. Would you two kindly come with me for a short while?”
        Twilight nodded. “Of course, your highness.” She followed her mentor and friend out the door, again taking up position next to the princess. Fluttershy swallowed nervously as Celestia told them to close their eyes.

☽

        It took a little additional concentration for Celestia to carry two additional ponies with her on a long teleport to Canterlot, but she managed to appear gracefully above the balcony to Luna’s tower, high enough to keep the shockwave from doing any sort of damage. Quickly, before either Element opened their eyes and startled from the sudden high altitude, she levitated both ponies down onto the balcony.

        The smaller ponies blinked, amazed to be standing so far away. Celestia landed and strode past them, towards the spot where she sensed her sister’s power. She didn’t know what had come over Luna. One moment, the Night Princess was with her as they read Twilight’s latest letter together. The next, she had vanished, far enough away that Celestia could no longer sense her and had to trace the spell to see how far away she had gone.

        Trotting into Luna’s bedroom, she blinked at the transformation it had undergone. What looked to be the palace’s entire medical staff swirled around Luna’s bed while Night Guards hefted up heavy metallic equipment from the stairwell that looked out of place amidst the subdued colors and decorations of the circular room. At the center of it all, Princess Luna hovered, directing the teams of ponies with aplomb. Celestia was amazed - over the course of the past year, Luna had barely interacted with the staff, and even then it was only on matters of necessity. Now she directed them with an efficiency even the Sun Princess envied.

        Celestia took a step in from the balcony and cleared her throat.

        All motion stopped. Bewildered by the sudden change, her sister turned to see what the matter was.

        “Princess Luna... a moment?” she asked, keeping her voice neutral.

        Her sister blinked with confusion, as if trying to understand why she was being called away. Then, as Celestia felt Twilight and Fluttershy draw up next to her, she saw a look or realization and shame cross Luna’s face. With her head held low, her sister walked out to the balcony.

        As soon as Luna, Twilight, and Fluttershy were out of earshot of the castle staff, Celestia turned.

        “Sister,” she began sternly, “please explain yourself. What is your reason for scaring these two so badly?

        Luna turned to face the two smaller ponies. Perfect starlight showed through her ethereal mane in spite of the late evening sun.

        “Miss Sparkle, Miss Fluttershy, please forgive me. I acted rashly and without regard to your well-being.” She paused, looking to her elder sister, then back to Twilight and her friend. “To fully explain my reasons would require a very long story, one I believe I should tell to my sister alone before anypony else. Suffice to say, we all owe a great deal to the being you rescued. Without him, the... incident... last year may have gone quite differently.”

        Nopony assembled needed to ask what Luna meant by ‘the incident.’

        “I honestly thought that he had died... either killed by my other self or by vicious scavengers in Equestria’s wild lands.” Both Twilight and Fluttershy were shocked at this. “But then I saw your letter, dear Twilight, and it sparked a hope in me that had been long extinguished. I could not delay and risk losing him a second time. Please forgive me.”

        The princess humbly bowed her head to the speechless ponies.

        “It - It’s nothing, princess,” Twilight stammered.

        “We didn’t know, your highness. We just thought he was a strange creature from the Everfree,” added Fluttershy.

        Luna smiled softly. “I cannot thank you enough for your kindness. I read your letter again in detail upon returning. Had you not acted as quickly as you did, Fluttershy, he may not have survived the manticore’s venom.”

        “It’s what I would have done for any creature, princess.” Fluttershy blushed deeply and looked away from the royal alicorn’s praise.

        Ever curious, Twilight couldn’t help but chime in and ask one of the many questions that bothered her. “If you knew him from before, princess, can you tell me what he is, or where he is from?”

        Luna looked at Celestia briefly. After seeing her sister nod once, she turned back to the inquisitive unicorn.

        “He is a human, and as far as his origin, all I know is that it is not Equestria - the planet, not just the continent,” she added, sensing Twilight’s follow-up question. “I do not know how he arrived here, only that my other self had a hoof in it. She pulled him from a place I still do not fully understand; perhaps she did not understand it either. I am continuously sifting through her memories and I confess there is still much I do not comprehend. One thousand years is a lot to process for one mind.”

        She looked back toward her bedchamber, and the human ensconced within. “Again, I apologize, but I wish to return and see how the medical staff’s evaluation is proceeding. If you will excuse-”

        Princess Celestia, who had looked away at the mention of Luna’s imprisonment, now turned back sharply and stopped her sibling. “Lu-Princess Luna, at the very least, I think you should return these ponies to their homes and put right the mess you made. Teleporting into a room from miles away creates quite a disturbance.”

        Luna’s eyes unfocused, looking into the far distance. She blushed profusely and said, “I completely forgot. I’m very sorry, you two. But...” She looked towards her room, worry etched on her face.

        The white alicorn set a gilded hoof on her shoulder. “I will watch over him while you are gone. Go, sister.”

        Princess Luna nodded once and, extending her wings over both ponies, whisked them away in a bright flash of light.

        Celestia exhaled, trying to process everything she had just heard. How was this... human instrumental in Nightmare’s downfall? Moreover, just how did Nightmare Moon reach beyond the strict barrier of her prison to bring him to their realm?

        These were mysteries within mysteries, but the Sun Princess was confident it would all be explained to her in due time. All she could do for now was keep the promise she made to her sister and watch over the strange individual.

        She was greeted by the palace’s head physician as she re-entered Luna’s chambers. Serpent Staff was an elderly gray unicorn with bright green eyes and a dark black moustache that contrasted sharply with his salt-and-pepper mane.

        “Your highness,” he said, bowing in the short efficient manner of castle staff, “we’ve carried your sister’s instructions out to the letter, though I’m afraid my assistants and I can do very little for the patient. His vitals, as best as we can tell, are strong. There seems to be no trace of manticore venom left in him, though we are waiting on additional tests to confirm that. I’ve handed the notes left to us by her majesty over to the Royal Academy as instructed. Hopefully they’ll remember that their job is not just to study the new specimen, but also to help us treat him. For now, they’ve left a couple specialists in non-pony biology to assist the medical team.

        Celestia suppressed a smile. Her sister was anything if not thorough. Looking around the room, she saw that the guards were still carting up medical equipment.

        “Dr. Staff,” she asked, “of all this laboratory and testing equipment, how much do you actually need?”

        The elderly pony cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Ah, just the pieces actually hooked up around the bed, your majesty.” There was clearly more he was not saying.

        The sun princess smiled in earnest now. “Let me guess, my sister told the guards to bring everything up?”

        Serpent Staff nodded slowly, not sure how to react in a situation like this, where one royal sister was questioning the actions of another.

        “Please tell the Night Guard to return anything you don’t need. I will deal with any issues my sister has on the subject... besides, I don’t think she knows exactly how much we have down in the clinic, and I’m sure she wants to be able to actually use her room tonight.”

        The doctor nodded graciously and turned to relay the orders. The princess stopped him short, adding a quick, “Oh, and please tell the Night Guard to seek help from the Day Guard as well - my orders.” The present members of Luna’s guard smiled gratefully as they started hefting the heavy equipment for the return trip downstairs.

        That situation dealt with, Celestia moved to the side of her sister’s bed. The ‘human’ looked strange in it; the form all wrong for how a pony would normally sleep. Lying flat on one’s back seemed uncomfortable, but based on what she remembered of Twilight’s notes, the position made sense for this creature.

        No, not a creature... a sapient, rational being... one to which she was apparently indebted.

        The Princess of the Sun settled on her haunches, keeping vigil as she promised until her sister returned home.

☽

        Luna alighted on her balcony just as the sun began to set. Without giving it a second thought, or glance, she raised the moon behind her.

        Let it be a little early tonight... I have more important things on which to focus.

        The Day Princess wasn’t focused on her orb very much tonight either. It looked as if she hadn’t even left the room to command the sun to set. As Luna entered, Celestia glanced up, a querying look on her face. Depositing the clothing and strangely heavy canister which Fluttershy insisted belonged to ‘Mr. Alien’ by the balcony threshold, the Night Princess joined her sibling.

        “How is he?” Luna asked, settling next to her sister.

        “As well as our medical staff can make him. Everypony else is carrying out your instructions - very thorough, I might add.”

        The Night Princess nodded at the complement. “Thank you.”

        “For the record though, ‘everything’ from the clinic wouldn’t fit in this room. My guards are helping yours return what wasn’t needed.” Celestia grinned, playfully elbowing her younger sibling.

        Luna blushed. “I’m sorry, I was... overly concerned. I didn’t want to take any chances.”

        The white alicorn’s face turned serious, but her voice maintained a gentle lilt. “Are you ready to tell me what this is all about?”

        Glancing around the room at the various medical attendants who were studiously trying to not look like they were eavesdropping, Luna replied, “Perhaps it would be best if we retired to my balcony to watch the moon rise.”

        Celestia rose. “I think that’s a splendid idea.”

        Once outside, the royal siblings circled away from the doors that led to Luna’s bedchamber. The balcony stretched all the way around the circular room, affording the princesses plenty of room to walk without the chance of being overheard by the ponies within.

        Luna looked down as she reached within herself, painfully dredging up memories that were at once both her own, and not her own.

        She began, “It all started before I returned to consciousness, so some of this story will be unclear, as I am still seeing it through Nightmare’s eyes...”

☽

        Celestia was shell-shocked.

        “I thought the banishment rune was your doing. I felt your presence and your desire for me to try and distract Nightmare so you could change the spell.”

        Luna held her sister’s gaze. “It was... but had Ender not shown me how I could thwart her power, I would have been helpless in her cage. She would have killed you... and forced me to watch.”

        “And Twilight?”

        “I wrestled with Nightmare the entire way... forcing her to stay insubstantial and keeping her from directly attacking the Elements. Don’t get me wrong, she would have eventually won had Twilight not united her friends and unlocked the Elements of Harmony, but I was able to help in my own small way. None of that would have been possible had Ender not stood fast and helped me fight her, both in the dream and when she first tried to draw me back into our prison.

        Celestia sat wordless under her sister’s sparkling sky. Finally, she looked up with moist eyes.

        “Why didn’t you tell me?”

        Luna looked away. “At first, I wasn’t sure if I believed it myself. Then, I thought for sure you wouldn’t believe me... after all, my sanity was the last thing on which I wanted to cast doubt.”

        Celestia hung her head. “I would have believed you, Luna...”

        “I know, or at least I did later, but by then I didn’t want to say it. If I did, it... it would have made it real to me, and then I would have had to accept the fact that he was dead. I hoped for months that he wasn’t.”

        “All those months of flying through the night... you were looking for him, weren’t you?”

        Luna nodded, and turned to look over the railing of her balcony at the moonlit Equestria beyond. “I was,” she paused, “and then I found the remnants of his craft.”

        Her sister put two and two together. “The griffons.”

        Luna nodded again.

        “Sister, I am so, so sorry. If only I had known, I would have helped. I would have done anything... you know that, right?” The Regent of the Sun approached her sibling’s turned back and wrapped Luna in a gentle embrace.

        “I know, Tia. It is my fault, not yours.”

        “It’s not a matter of fault, Luna.”

        The royal sisters sat for a moment in the night’s still air, comforting each other.

        “At least all is well, Luna. Your friend is here, and he is alive. That is more than we could have hoped for, given the circumstances.” Celestia released her sister and stood. “Perhaps it is time we checked on Mr. Wiggin.”

        Luna laughed suddenly, causing Celestia to turn and regard her with a puzzled expression.

        “Nothing, sister.” The Night Princess smiled. “It’s just strange to hear someone else say his name.”

        Shaking her head, Princess Celestia led her younger sister around the edge of the balcony and back through the doors to her bedchambers. The entire medical staff was assembled to greet the regents as they entered.

        A lone pony Celestia didn’t recognize approached first, bowing low. “Excuse me, your highness?”

        “Yes, Dr. …?

        “Third Eye, highness.” The off-white unicorn had a strange cutie-mark, an eye inside of a triangle. “I’m not part of the regular palace clinic; Dr. Staff brought me in specifically for this case.”

        “Oh? It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Eye. What is your specialty?”

        “Before I answer, ma’am, I have a matter about the others... the entire medical team has done everything they can, and there’s been no change in the patient’s condition. Ah...” he trailed off.

        “What’s wrong, doctor?” Celestia inquired.

        “They’re waiting to be released, highness. Their orders were to do absolutely everything they could for the patient until he was fully healthy. Seeing as he’s still unconscious...”

        “Oh!” Luna blurted out. “Ladies and gentleponies, my most sincere apologies - I did not mean for you to stay indefinitely. Please, go home and rest, you have done more than enough. Thank you, all!”

        With a sigh of relief the assembled medical and science teams broke apart and headed for the stairwell. Celestia grinned at her sister.

        Well, that’s one way to learn that lesson.

        Third Eye continued. “To answer your question, your highness, I am a doctor of the mind. It is a relatively new field, and not many ponies study it or even grant it much of a serious thought. But I have devoted my life to the study of the inner self, to include many of your early works on the theories of dreams, Princess Luna,” he said, his eyes lighting up as he turned to the Night Princess. “I must say that it is a terrific honor to meet you, and to finally learn who it was that wrote all those books I studied through the years of medical school.”

        Both princesses blushed, but for different reasons. Celestia cringed at the mention of the necessary censorship of Luna’s identity while she was Nightmare Moon. Luna herself, though, basked in the rare praise.

        “But that is not why I am here now. Dr. Staff is very thorough. He and his team could find nothing wrong with the patient’s body. True, he has been through a great deal of trauma recently, but there is no reason why he should still be so deeply unconscious. That is why I was brought in.”

        The doctor led them over to Ender’s bedside, indicating with a hoof a set of charts that lay strewn over the near side of Princess Luna’s bed. It was so massive that the large scrolls didn’t even come close to touching the unconscious human’s body.

        “I tried probing his mind with magic, but aside from being... well, very different from that of a pony, I found that his body is somewhat resistant to the effects of the ether. Reaching him is like trying to push mud through very dense cheesecloth - a lot of effort produces very little results.”

        Lifting up a chart, he pointed to a complicated set of graphs that neither princess understood. “What I can see, however, is that his mind has focused inwards, and I believe that it is locked in some kind of self-defeating cycle. Any attempt to heal is undone by the mind simply fighting itself. I’ve never seen anything like it. With your permission, I’d like to stay and...”

        Luna held up a forehoof, silencing the excited unicorn. “Dr. Eye, thank you very much for your diagnosis, and while I appreciate your offer, this patient is my responsibility and what you describe is very much in my area of expertise.” She smiled brightly, rare confidence blossoming throughout and warming her core. “I will take it from here.”

        Third Eye looked surprised, but he recovered and simply bowed. “Of course, your highness. I’ll take my charts, then. Please let me know if you need anything else.” Bowing again, he gathered his things and turned towards the door.

        Then, pausing halfway to the stairwell, he turned. “Um, Princess Luna... your highness?” he asked nervously.

        “Yes, doctor?”

        “If it’s not too much trouble, and if you have the time, could you tell me of your findings? It could potentially advance my field by many years, as this is something I’ve never before seen.”

        Luna graced the unicorn with another smile. “It would be my pleasure.”

        “Thank you, your highness. Good night.”

        The princess waited until she saw his tail disappear down the stairs. “Good night indeed.”

        Celestia watched the proceedings with both amusement and pride. “It’s nice to see this side of you, Luna. You haven’t interacted this well with the staff since you arrived.”

        “I now have both motivation and practice, sister.” The dark alicorn moved past a row of beeping machines to her bedside. “Will you be staying as I work? I don’t believe it will be very interesting... I’ll most likely be standing motionless with my eyes closed the entire time.”

        The elder alicorn sensed that the question was more of a request for privacy than anything else. “I’ll leave you to it, Luna. Be safe... I’ll be in my tower if you need anything.” Celestia gently touched her horn to her sister’s before turning and heading out to the balcony. Sighting her tower across the castle, the Regent of the Sun leapt out into the moonlight and flew towards her own chambers.

☽

        After all this time, those long months of wondering, and even longer months of grieving, he was finally here. Luna barely recognized him, so different was he from the small figure she remembered in the dream, but she was grateful all the same. As an alicorn, even a young one, she had seen countless friends and acquaintances pass from this life into the next. This was the first time one had been returned to her, and she was going to make sure she didn’t squander the opportunity. At a minimum, Luna promised herself, she was going to heal him. It was the very least she could do, given what he had done for her.

        Reaching out with her mind, Luna touched his, pushing through the veil of the ether. Third Eye was right: something about Ender was resistant to magic. Though she had to work a little harder, Luna was far more powerful than the unicorn doctor and eventually was able to push through. Even so, by the time she arrived, she could not maintain her form mentally. Looking down with her mind’s eye, all the princess could see of herself was a formless blue vapor.

        Oh well, at least she was inside.

        It was exactly as the doctor had said... Ender’s mind had locked down upon itself. To her senses, it appeared as if an immense vortex of memories - some real, some not - surged around the human’s psyche. His mind was supplying itself with an endless crash of nightmares, keeping it suppressed and allowing Ender no room to surface to consciousness. No wonder he was still asleep.

        Though she had no idea why his mind was doing this, Luna didn’t care - stopping it should be a simple matter. She reached out with her consciousness and thrust directly into the vortex, trying to stop it.

        The alicorn shuddered as she was violently thrown out of the human’s mind.

        Alright, perhaps the doctor was right in his assessment. His mind is slightly more resistant to magic and the influences of the ether than I suspected.

        Luna, however, would not be deterred. This problem would just require slightly more... direct... intervention.

        Opening her eyes, the Night Princess moved forward and climbed onto her bed. Setting down into a comfortable position perpendicular to the human, she set her head near his own. She smiled, and with a satisfying ‘clunk,’ laid her horn directly across Ender’s forehead. Channeling her power directly through the bony spiral and into the human himself, Luna easily breached the barrier of his mind. Now her psyche stood in the landscape of his mind, fully materialized down to her resplendent mane and tail.

        She looked up, focusing her power as she addressed the vortex.

        “I am Luna, Princess of the Night and Goddess of Dreams. I will not be denied.”

        A brilliant beam of light poured forth from her horn, both in Ender’s mind and in the real world. It enveloped him and caused the vortex to evaporate. In the absence of the tumult, Luna focused all her might on her simplest dream of rest and recuperation. As she saw a green sphere form around the small white light of Ender’s consciousness, she hoped he liked endless fields of grass and bright sunlight.

        Satisfied with her work, Luna withdrew into her own mind. Before drifting off to sleep herself, she made sure her horn and its stream of power kept in contact with the human to ensure the vortex didn’t return. Tonight, she was taking no chances.

        Overhead, the moon slid across the sky in its orbit, casting a peaceful pale light across Equestria.

> Awake
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: chamrajnagar%polemarch@ifcom.gov/centcom
To: MinCol@ColMin.gov
Subj: Fwd: Re: Requested Resources
Attch: List1

Minister Graff,

        At the request of the Strategos, I will be providing the IF’s formal response to your inquiry. Given our working history, IFCom thought it best if we communicated one-on-one. Knowing you, this would have found its way to my desk no matter what course of action we took.

        I am afraid that I will have to deny your request for the attached list of ships, equipment and personnel, especially considering the task force you have already commandeered. While the IF does report to you in matters of colonization, this pet project of yours does not fall under that umbrella, even under the broadest of interpretations. If you’d like to go behind my back and convince the Hegemon that the moon is somehow the next best hope for humanity, you’re more than welcome to try.

Jawaharlal Chamrajnagar
Polemarch

From: MinCol@ColMin.gov
To: chamrajnagar%polemarch@ifcom.gov/centcom
Subj: Re: Fwd: Re: Requested Resources
Attch: Wiggin Search
Encryption Alg#: 0942810294JJI

Polemarch Chamrajnagar,

        The details of my ‘pet project’ should be explanation enough as to why I’ve been sitting out here for the past few months. As you can see from the encryption, this information is for your eyes only. Do not disclose this to the Strategos or the Hegemon - especially the latter. We both know who will most likely replace him. If the young man in question were to find out his brother is still in reach, well... you’ve read the same reports I have.

        I have as much faith in you as you do in me, but I do trust you will act in your own self-interest.

        Make whatever excuses you want to the Hegemony, just get me what I need. We owe it to the boy.

Graff

From: chamrajnagar%polemarch@ifcom.gov/centcom
To: MinCol@ColMin.gov
Subj: Re: Re: Fwd: Re: Requested Resources

Approved.

Cham

☽

For the first time in nearly a year, Ender awoke without any lingering weariness or the echoing remnant of yet another nightmare. It was such a foreign sensation that, for a moment, he believed himself still to be dreaming. This feeling couldn’t be real, could it?

The sensations on his body certainly held a dreamlike quality. For months, he had been sleeping on precarious tree limbs or in dank enclosed grottos to protect himself from predators. Now he felt as if he floated on a cloud. His back, arms, neck and head were perfectly supported by a soft, downy material. A light layer of the same rested easily over his chest - warming without smothering.

It was heaven.

Maybe I’m dead, the boy thought, as his most recent memories surfaced in his mind. There was the harrowing crawl to the stream as pain coursed through his body. He distinctly remembered collapsing as an irresistible weariness overtook him. But what of the house, and those bursts of color?

Were those voices I heard?

Ender opened his eyes, and could not comprehend what he saw.

The black of space stretched as far as he could see. The stars shown as perfect lights in the distance, unmarred by the distortions of an atmosphere or the refractions of a station’s viewport.

It was magnificent.

Is this where I spend eternity then, an endless field of stars?

Honestly, he had expected much worse.

The soldier exhaled a breath he hadn’t known he was holding, and the starscape rent in two, throwing off his entire perspective. Ender’s eyes widened as he tried to comprehend what he saw. The very fabric of space seemed to split, revealing bright light beyond. As a breath caught in his throat, the starfield wove itself back together in countless threads.

Experimentally, Ender exhaled the rest of the way, watching in disbelief as the scene before him again parted. It was as if the sky was hollow, and he could tear it apart on a whim.

A thrill of adrenaline ran through the boy, awakening nerves and bringing a sense of body back to his drifting mind. Now fully awake, he raised his hand and realized that the ‘sky’ of stars was no more than a few inches above his face, between the limb and his eyes. Lowering his fingers, he was soon able to grasp...

...hair?

Nothing made sense. Ender tried to lift his head, only to notice a firm and unyielding bar was holding it down. Feeling trapped, the soldier had to fight down a rising sense of panic that urged his body to thrash against the restraint. He took a deep breath, and with a forced slowness, turned his head to the side.

A pair of brilliant green eyes stared out of the dark.

Now undisturbed, the false sky reformed itself and starlight gradually illuminated a face around the twin emerald points. Ender’s mind ground to a halt as it tried to fit the shape against a comfortable human norm. With a jolt, memories surfaced, and the boy recognized just who and what he was seeing.

“Luna?”

She smiled - a flash of white against the starlit background.

As the alicorn raised her head, Ender’s world suddenly grew brighter, forcing him to shield his eyes and squint into the sudden day. When his pupils finally contracted, he saw her whole form outlined by streaming sunlight.

        The starfield was... her hair? No matter how bright the light behind it, the flowing mane appeared to be a window into the night sky. From this perspective, it was even more confusing than it had been when he looked directly into it.

        She was larger than he remembered, and her coat seemed darker, but Ender was sure it was the same pony. After their shared experiences in his dreamscape and Luna’s brief time inside his head, hers was a face he wouldn’t soon forget.

        Noticing his gaze, the alicorn made a series of sounds, a melodic and wavering sequence of syllables that ended with a lowered note. As she looked expectantly at him, the boy realized she had spoken.

        “I - I can’t understand you.” It took Ender a couple of tries to say even a short sentence - his mouth felt thick with dryness and disuse.

        Luna blinked and opened her mouth to speak again when suddenly her eyes widened and she emitted a sharp, high sound. As she leaned forward, Ender saw her horn begin to glow. He looked at it with amazement, only then realizing what had been restraining his head.

        The soldier felt a brief moment of vertigo and was reminded of a similar instance in his dream where Luna had touched his mind to... to what? He couldn’t remember.

        “Nola heay hwaniene?”

        Ender blinked and tilted his head forward, straining his ears. Though he could hear her clearly, his mind felt as if she were speaking from very far away.

        Luna’s eyes narrowed. She paused, then leaned forward to briefly touch the tip of her horn against the boy’s forehead. The sense of vertigo was greater this time, but rapidly cleared away before Ender could fully realize its presence.

        “Can you understand me?” Now her voice was clear. It was melodic yet strongly resonant - the tone of a bell in winter morning air. Though Ender could remember her speaking during their last encounter, Luna’s voice seemed new, as if he were hearing it for the first time.

        He struggled to sit up, but cringed as a dull ache swept through his entire body. Every muscle protested, and a slow burn seemed to creep through his left leg. As the boy inhaled a sharp breath of air to brace against the pain, deep bruises made themselves known across his chest. Luna’s eyebrows furrowed with concern as he returned his head to the pillow.

        “I can, now. What... what did you do?” Looking up at her, Ender gingerly touched the spot where the alicorn’s horn had rested. He had to squint in order to make out the princess’ form against the morning sunlight.

        She grinned, eyes flashing with pride. “I conditioned your brain to render Equine in a language you can understand.”

        Right, the horns are magic, Ender thought. He had put off coming to terms with the existence of something so fanciful - mere survival had taken the lion’s share of his attention for the past few months. Even the most skeptical person, however, would be hard pressed to deny it given what the boy had experienced since arriving on this world. The very fact that he was here proved that there were at least some things outside the knowledge of modern science.

        Wasn’t faster-than-light communication thought to be impossible until we saw the Buggers doing it?

        “Thank you.” He nodded gratefully to Luna. A thought occurred to Ender as he considered the gift. “It’s one thing for me to understand you, but as far as I know, I’m speaking Common. How are you understanding me?”

        ...and if you can rewire my brain to hear one thing and interpret another, is the reverse true? Am I speaking another language without knowing it? The boy feared what would happen if he were to return to his own world in this condition.

        Luna’s smile, if anything, grew wider. The alicorn seemed pleased at having the opportunity explain her magic in detail. “That is the tricky part. A simple translation spell can twist a known language so that everypony nearby can understand one another. With you, however, I’m working off of what I gathered from both our time in your dream and my brief stay in your head. I don’t know your language, but I have a full impression of how your mind interprets it. The rest of my spell translates those meanings to the listener. Unfortunately, I’m only working on two hooves here. I’ll need a little more time to modify that part of the spell so it will work when I’m not around.”

        So I won’t be understood if I’m on my own, Ender noted. Good to know.

        “I’ll have to take that on faith, because everything you said after the word spell lies outside of anything I’ve ever learned. I don’t even know where to begin understanding it.” The boy smiled up at her wryly.

Luna blinked, cocking her head to the side momentarily. She opened her mouth as if to launch into a lecture, but cut herself short. She shook her head and scooted forward on the bed, looking at the soldier intently.

        “I’d be glad to explain, but some other time, perhaps. What I want to know now is: what happened to you? I thought you were dead, Ender.” Her expression took on a dark, faraway look. “My search took months, and when I finally found your craft, I was convinced you hadn’t survived.” As Luna refocused her eyes on the boy, her face brightened again. “I cannot convey how overjoyed I was to hear of your survival.”

        Ender was touched that she had looked for him, but confused as to why she would have thought him dead. Perhaps she had found only bits and pieces of the lifeboat?

        As he thought about it, Ender again cursed his decision to follow the river north instead of south. Given her wings, he could only assume Luna had been looking for him from the air. The cover provided by the monstrously thick forest could have delayed his rescue by months. If only he had known...

        “Where... were you?” Luna prodded gently, taking his silence for distress.

Ender blinked, realizing he had zoned out. Coughing apologetically, and wincing from the pain it caused, he replied, “I was a number of places, but most of the time I was lost within an impossibly dense forest.”

        “The Everfree...” Luna whispered. She motioned for Ender to continue when she realized he had stopped after her remark.

        It was clear that his audience was lost in thought, but the boy pressed on. “I was in a desert and a river canyon before that, but a fall into the river brought me quickly to the forest. I spent the rest of my time trying to get out of it. Why did you think I was dead?”

        The pony looked up as he asked the question, the rise in tone bringing her out of her reverie.

        “I found your craft in the San Palomino Desert,” she said quietly, eyes glazing over in recollection. “Griffons had torn long gouges into the metal and worn tracks around the site. I thought they had taken you.” A brief snarl rippled across Luna’s face, too quick for Ender to see.

        Griffon, the word rang through Ender’s mind as it made the connection he had missed before. Now he had a name for the beast that attacked him all those months ago, and it reminded him of his last fight at Battle School. The teachers had pitted two armies, Griffon and Tiger, against his own Dragon Army in an unprecedented match to see if he could finally be beaten.

        He hadn’t been.

        Then, Ender would have never imagined having to fight an actual griffon. The sigil worn by William Bee’s army was a pale imitation of the real thing.

        “One almost did,” he told the princess. “I ran into it not long after I left the lifeboat.”

        “And... you got away?” Luna asked in disbelief, her eyes widening.

        Her expression only grew more amazed as the boy told his story of the encounter. She began to ask what exactly he shot at the griffon and how he did it when an audible growl from Ender’s stomach interrupted her and caused the alicorn to laugh.

        Slipping off the bed, Luna shook her head as she chastised herself. “What am I thinking? We’ll have plenty of time to talk about this later. You’ve been asleep for over two days... you must be starving!” She began to trot towards a large door at the far end of the bedroom. “Just stay there. I’ll have my hoofmaiden bring something up from the kitchens.”

        The Night Princess was almost halfway across the room by the time Ender stopped her. He sat up, the rich blanket falling away to reveal a bruised and bandaged chest. “Um, Luna?” He raised an arm to attract her attention.

        She turned, hovering gracefully a few inches above the polished slate floor. “Yes?”

        “Would it be possible for me to bathe and, er... use the facilities first?” The boy made a show of sniffing slightly at the back of his hand. “I’ve been outdoors for a long time; it would be nice to use a proper bathroom again.”

        Luna blinked, then blushed slightly. “Oh, of course... I should have thought of that.” Her horn lit up briefly as a violet glow enveloped and opened a door to the right of the massive bed. The aura left the door, but her horn continued to illuminate as she turned her head to look into the bathroom. Ender heard the sound of running water followed by other, less familiar noises. In a matter of seconds the magic dissipated and the alicorn turned back to him. “There! I started a bath for you. Just go through the door and you shall find everything you need.” Nodding awkwardly, the pony turned and flew through the main doors of the room, closing them behind her as she disappeared.

        Ender sighed with relief after she left. Whomever had bandaged his wounds had also removed his clothing. While nudity was common in Battle School (at least in the barracks), the boy didn’t quite feel comfortable parading naked through this lushly appointed bedroom, especially with an audience. 

Looking toward the open door, Ender saw that steam was beginning to drift out of the bathroom. It carried a delicate floral smell.

Perhaps I can use a spare towel or something until I can find my clothing.

He maneuvered himself gingerly to the edge of the massive bed. Using a nightstand as a crutch, the soldier levered himself to a standing position and tested his weight on his injured leg. His entire body protested, but the aches and pains became bearable as he pushed himself into motion.

        The cool morning air and the cold of the stone floor raised goosebumps across Ender’s entire body. When he reached the threshold, though, the temperature and even his dull aches were completely forgotten when he closed the door behind him.

        Had the boy ever been to a spa, he might have had something with which to compare the royal bathroom. As it was, the admiral was simply left speechless. Bathrooms in the Battle School were communal affairs. The modular units were designed at minimal cost with the goal of conserving both space and water. Decoration, if one could call it that, was limited to the flow indicators on exposed piping and fixtures. Even the private bathroom that graced his room on Eros was a spartan affair - it was barely larger than a closet, and the sink was integrated into the shower.

        This... was something else entirely. Ender estimated that his entire quarters on the planetoid could fit in this bathroom and not even touch the walls.

        The room was circular, mirroring the shape of the massive bath in the center. To his left, a broad sink set into a counter made from a light gray stone stood under an equally wide mirror. It felt low to Ender until he realized that it was designed for someone of Luna’s stature. Long blue sliding doors matched the curve of the room to the right of the sink. One had been left ajar, and beyond it the boy could see row upon row of garments hanging from unseen racks. Directly opposite Ender was another door, smaller than the one behind him. To the right, floor-to-ceiling windows provided a stunning view of a set of snowy mountain peaks. The altitude gave him a small twinge of vertigo, even when standing a good distance from the glass.

        The bath, however, was the commanding feature of the room. Stretching easily ten feet in diameter, the polished ivory cylinder rose to Ender’s chest. A gold rim and waterspout gleamed in the morning sunlight and reflected the bright light fixtures set into the ceiling. Peering over the side, the soldier’s eyebrows raised in amazement as he took in the intricate artistry at the bottom of the bath. A silver crescent moon rested among light blue tiles, shimmering under the water of the rapidly filling tub.

        The sound of the cascading water had an effect on the boy’s bladder. Any further examination of the room was brought to an abrupt halt by the call of nature. Ender hurried across the white tile floor to the door on the far side of the room. Beyond, he found a wide stand-alone shower and the object for which he was searching. While the toilet was strangely shaped to account for equine anatomy, it worked much as he expected it would.

        I never thought I would be this happy to see indoor plumbing. The soldier laughed to himself as he went about his business.

The relief was palpable.

        After emerging from the side room and washing his hands, Ender noticed that the flow of bathwater had stopped on its own.

        More magic? he wondered. There were no visible mechanisms attached to the waterspout or faucets. As he walked around the bath, looking for a step to help him get over the tall sides, Ender noticed small golden shapes raised across the ivory expanse. Touching his fingers to the stylized suns, moons, and stars, he marvelled at the craftsmanship.

        All this for a bath tub, he thought, amazed.

        After making a complete circuit, the soldier slapped his forehead, realizing why he hadn’t found a ledge or a step-stool. His host had wings. Why would she need one? Looking down at his various array of bandages, Ender wondered if it would be wise to stretch his wounds, or even get them wet.

        He flexed and leaned over experimentally. His muscles protested, but not even his leg felt dangerously painful. He doubted Luna would have drawn him a bath if he wasn’t healthy enough for it. After testing the water’s temperature with one hand, the young man nimbly pushed himself over the rim, gritting his teeth against the flares across his body.

        Divine... there was simply no other word for it.

        As soon as he entered the water, jets near the bottom of the tub began to agitate the mixture, and in a matter of moments, a soapy froth of bubbles covered the surface of the bath. Ender sank down as he felt his tired muscles relax. Before he reached the bottom, the boy came in contact with a tiled ledge halfway down. Sitting on it, he rested his arms on the gilded rim of the tub, and let his legs drift, carried by the currents of the jets.

        The soldier sighed deeply and closed his eyes as the various pains and aches across his body melted away. He barely lifted his head when a sharp and succinct knock came from the door.

        “Ender, are you in the bath yet?” Luna’s voice was slightly muffled by the door.

        “Yes,” he called back. “This is wonderful, thank you.”

        His eyes shot open as he heard the door unlatch and swing inward. To his surprise, the alicorn strode in, turning her head briefly to shut the door with a slight motion of her horn.

        “I’m glad you like it!” She grinned broadly, looking back towards the tub. “I commissioned it last year - not even my sister has a bath as extraordinary as this. I’m not usually one for opulence, but if there is anything in the world that I like, it is the-” Luna’s words cut off abruptly as she noticed his shocked expression.

        Ender thought hard. There was something he was missing, and it was caught on the edge of his mind. Fighting through his initial reaction to the unexpected breach of privacy, the boy pieced together what his subconscious had already figured out.

        The size of the bath was more than just luxury. Luna was smaller than he was, and he was practically lost in the tub. A memory from Battle School presented itself - a Japanese boy from an older group of Launchies chastising Bernard after the he had complained about the school’s group showers. The elder boy had told a story about communal baths from his home country. Was that a common practice here?

        The large bank of windows told him everything he needed to know about a pony’s concept of modesty when bathing. The toilet was hidden, but the rest of the bathroom was not. And why should it be? He hadn’t seen Luna wear anything other than small accessories, and she had just left her bedroom without even those.

        His cultural norms didn’t apply here, and judging by the rapid change of Luna’s expression, she had just come to a similar conclusion. Ender quickly hid his shock and opened his mouth to apologize for the reaction, but she beat him to the punch.

        “Oh, I must have offended you.” The dark alicorn stopped abruptly, wings flaring as she began to back towards the door. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-”

        “No... No, really it’s OK, I just... didn’t expect you to come in.” Ender forced a smile.

        Luna regarded him shrewdly. “Your kind bathes alone, doesn’t it?”

        “Most of the time,” the boy replied. “I assume yours doesn’t. Really, it’s alright. We actually had communal showers where I grew up... it’s just that they were divided by gender.”

        Ender couldn’t help but notice Luna’s interest pique. Her ears flicked up as she seemed to consider his words.

        “Oh, so it’s an issue of modesty, not privacy, and... oh!” She blushed, which resulted in her face turning an interesting shade of purple as she backed towards the door. “I-I am very sorry then, I will just be going...”

        The boy laughed as he slid most of the way down below the layer of bubbles.

        “Again, it’s alright. It’s your bathroom, and I’m truly not offended. Besides, with all this,” he waved at the thick layer of pearlescent soap, “I am more than covered.”

        Luna lowered her wings and tentatively stepped towards her guest.

        “I see.” She nodded her head, then stared off into the middle distance, as if trying to regain a train of thought. “Oh! Right, I was going to say that breakfast is on its way.”

        Ender smiled broadly. “Wonderful.” In the luxuriously hot water, he had forgotten how hungry he was.

        He watched as Luna made her way around the bathroom to his side of the tub. She sat on her haunches, a feat the boy wasn’t quite sure a normal horse could manage.

        “How do you feel? I have a nurse coming up later to check on your injuries and replace your bandages.”

        Ender took a moment to consider it. These waters really were remarkable; he could barely feel the aches and pains across his body. He didn’t feel any kind of sting under his bandages, so hopefully that meant his wounds were closed.

        “Considering all I’ve been through, I’m pretty sure I should be feeling a lot worse.” The soldier looked up at Luna, who was now peering at him over the edge of the bath. “Whoever patched me up did an excellent job. My thanks to your medical staff.” Judging by the luxury that surrounded him, Ender felt it safe to assume that his host had a medical staff.

        Luna looked to the side for a moment. “While my ponies are very talented, they’re not the ones you should thank. You see...”

        As she started to explain the circumstances of Ender’s recovery, the night princess was interrupted by the sound of her main chamber doors opening and a voice calling out, “Luna? I missed you at breakfast. Are you still asleep?”

        Ender looked on curiously as he saw the alicorn squint in puzzlement, her brow furrowed. “Why is she...” Luna began under her breath, though she let the thought trail off as she looked towards the bathroom door.

        The voice sounded closer now. “Oh, are we bathing early? That’s a wondrous idea, sister. You would not believe the day I’ve had so far. The rumors have been spreading like...”

        The soldier did not hear the rest. As she listened to the voice coming from her bedroom, Luna’s eyes widened in shock. She scrambled up from her place next to the tub, drowning out the voice with the rapid clicks of her hooves against the tile.

        “What’s wrong?” Ender asked.

        She froze, looking back and forth between him and the door in rapid succession. “It’s Wednesday.. our weekly bath. I had completely forgotten...” Interrupting herself, Luna turned towards the entrance and called out, “Just a moment, sister, I’m-”

        The rest of her words were lost as the doors opened suddenly. A much larger alicorn entered, immediately drawing Ender’s attention. Stark white, she was nearly the size of the horses with which he was familiar. Like Luna, she had both wings and a horn, though the latter was decidedly longer. Her mane differed as well; instead of a field of stars, it was comprised of a flowing mixture of pastel strands. Ender couldn’t help but be reminded of the curtains of the aurora borealis. The white alicorn’s mane matched the colors exactly, and it even moved in a similar manner.

At the moment, the newcomer’s horn was engulfed by a bright yellow aura. The boy watched as it enveloped both a golden crown and a massive yoke, lifting them up and over her head. She closed her eyes and ducked her head through the loop, but never broke her stride towards the bath.

        “...pony’s been asking about what happened yesterday.” Ender heard the newcomer’s rich, melodic voice as she continued towards him, still not looking where she was going. “I’m shocked that word has already spread so far. Usually, the palace staff is good about keeping quiet, but I think your new guest is simply too much of a sensation for them to resist.”

As the heavy golden raiments cleared her long horn, the alicorn shook her head, sending her mane flying everywhere as she leapt into the air. Luna’s stammered protests were drowned out by the harsh clangs that reverberated off the tile as the crown and yoke fell to the floor, no longer sustained by the white pony’s magic.

Time seemed to slow for Ender as he backpedaled in the bath, his movements hampered by the depth of the water and the push of the jets. He fell back, eyes widening in shock as Luna’s sister bore down on him through the air. Her eyes were closed in serene joy, seemingly anticipating the same pleasure he had found in the waters. Reaching the top of her arc, the pony kicked off golden horseshoes, one of which nearly took off Ender’s head as it sailed past the edge of the tub. Just when the boy threw up his arms in futile effort to save himself from being crushed, massive white wings erupted from both sides of the descending alicorn, buffeting him with a sharp rush of air and slowing her to a gentle landing in the water.

        Ender blinked and wiped his face, clearing a hole in the mound of suds that now covered him. Though the sound was muffled by the water in his ears, he heard his new bathmate offer a long, guttural sigh and exclaim, “Ah, now that is exactly what I needed after this morning!”

        As his vision cleared, the boy saw only a shimmering curtain of her now wet mane. The alicorn had turned back to Luna. His host, on the other hand, was staring at the scene slack-jawed, her eyes wide in disbelief.

        “Oh, that reminds me, Luna,” the warmly resonant voice returned, “where is your guest? I noticed that your bed was empty when I came in.”

        For a moment, the dark alicorn didn’t move. She shook her head and returned a deadpan glare. It seemed to Ender as if she wanted to reply, but thought better of it and simply pointed at him with one deep blue hoof.

        Luna’s sister seemed to understand immediately. He saw her posture stiffen as she slowly turned her head and magically lifted the wet wall of hair that blocked him from view. A wordless “Oh!” formed on her lips as she regarded him with light violet eyes. To her credit, the newcomer didn’t miss a beat; her look of surprise was quickly replaced with a warm smile.

        “Well hello! It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said brightly.

        “Good morning.” Ender didn’t know what else to say. Command School had exactly one etiquette course for its students, and this situation was not in the curriculum. It didn’t help that the white alicorn was now eyeing him with an expression that bespoke mischievous intent and curious fascination.

        The new alicorn let a brief moment of awkward silence pass before glancing at Luna. “Well, aren’t you going to introduce us? It’s not every day we share our bath with a complete stranger,” she said as a slight but wicked grin graced her features.

        Luna gave an exasperated sigh. “Tia, this is Ender Wiggin,” she began, stepping purposefully to the edge of the tub to glare meaningfully at her sister. As she turned to look at him, the alicorn’s voice took a slight but noticeably sarcastic edge. “Ender, allow me to introduce Her Royal Highness the Princess Celestia, Diarch of Equestria, and Goddess of the Sun as well as my dear and mature older sister, who I am sure will give you a proper welcome and provide a good example of what to expect from ponykind. Right, Tia?”

        Celestia only rolled her eyes and scoffed. Ender didn’t quite understand what Luna was implying, but he was well-versed in bickering between siblings. Before the white alicorn could respond, he took the initiative.

        “It’s an honor, your highness,” he said, inclining his head respectfully. Ender couldn’t exactly bow amidst chest-high water and a veritable blanket of suds. Given what he had seen of Celestia’s attitude so far, the boy thought humor might be the best way to ingratiate himself. Luna’s reaction to her indicated that Celestia was the more lighthearted of the two.

“Please forgive me, had I known I was going to meet royalty this morning, I would have made sure to wear more formal bubbles,” he said earnestly, gesturing to the mound covering him. The white alicorn blinked and fixed him with a searching gaze, apparently not sure how to respond. It was only after Ender gave a small, wry smile that Celestia cracked and burst into a full-throated laughter that resounded off the tile walls of the room. Looking over, the boy saw that even Luna was covering a smirk with one hoof.

        “I like him,” Celestia announced, looking over at her sister while waving a hoof in Ender’s general direction. “At least somepony in this room as a sense of humor.”

Luna scoffed, shaking her head. The motion sent her mane flying in an arc of stellar black. “In case you did not notice, dear sister, Ender is not a pony,” she narrowed her eyes while staring up at the larger alicorn, “and this is not exactly the best way to begin a relationship with a new species,” Luna gestured at the bath, motioning emphatically for her sister to get out.

        “Whatever do you mean, Luna?” The white alicorn backed up towards Ender, luxuriously stretching her wings and settling deeper into the bath. “It’s comfortable, relaxing, and private. I can’t think of a better way to get to know somepony - oh, excuse me, someone.” She glanced back over her shoulder to wink conspiratorially at Ender.  “Just think of all the misunderstandings that could have been avoided had we done this when we first encountered the griffons.”

        Filing the fact about griffons away for future consideration, Ender looked over at Luna. Were she human, she would have been turning red, but given the dark pony’s coloration, frustration was turning her a deep shade of violet. She opened her mouth to respond, but froze, apparently thinking better of what she wanted to say. After a few seconds, she took a breath and began again.

        “Celestia,” Luna said calmly, “I just so happened to be discussing social propriety with Ender before you arrived. While communal bathing might be normal to us, it is something his kind does in private. It is an issue of modesty.”

“Oh? Then what were you doing in here, sister?” Celestia replied, her eyes flicking back to the boy for a moment. She stared at her sister blankly, as if slow on the uptake, but a small smirk at the corner of her mouth told Ender otherwise.

Luna fidgeted uncomfortably. “I made the same error, though not quite so... flagrantly. Even so, I think it would be best if -”

“Really, it’s fine,” Ender interjected. He appreciated Luna’s sentiment, but his embarrassment had fled with the shock of her sister’s entrance. “When in Rome, right?” He waved a hand dismissively. 

        Now both ponies looked at him blankly. It took a moment for the boy to understand why.

        “Sorry,” he shook his head, “it’s an idiom. ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ It just means that you should do your best to fit in, no matter how strange another culture might be.”

        Celestia smiled brightly. “Well said! I think that’s a very wise outlook to have. You see, Lulu?” She turned towards her sister. “There’s nothing to worry about. Now quit being a sourpony and get in.”

        Luna glanced at Ender, raising both eyebrows as if to ask if it was really alright. He nodded back, showing a slight smile to reassure her. With a shrug and a push of her wings, the dark alicorn gracefully cleared the edge of the bath and landed next to her older sibling. She muttered something that caused Celestia to laugh, but it was too quiet for Ender to hear.

“I hope you’ll excuse us, Ender. My sister and I don’t always agree.” The elder princess regarded him as she levitated two crystal bottles from the counter on the far side of the bathroom.

“That’s quite alright your highness,” the boy responded, accepting one of the bottles from Celestia’s magical grasp, “I have siblings myself.”

Luna glanced up at his revelation, but anything she might have said was cut off by a derisive, and decidedly unladylike snort from Celestia.

“Now, now. I’ll be having none of that,” she said sharply.

The soldier furrowed his brow in confusion. “None of what?”

“I haven’t met a new species in...” she trailed off, “longer than I care to admit, and I won’t have you bending and scraping like everypony else. Besides,” she looked at him seriously, “Luna tells me that we both owe much to you. When we aren’t in front of my subjects, please, call me Celestia.”

        Ender looked at Luna questioningly. To what was she referring? Sure, they had worked together to escape from Nightmare Moon, but he could not recall ever meeting, much less helping Celestia. Luna looked at him meaningfully. It would be a question for another time.

        “Of course... Celestia.” The word sounded strange on his lips... perhaps another effect of the translation spell?

        The larger pony smiled with approval and turned to her sister. Levitating several brushes and bottles, she fell into what seemed to be a long-practiced movements of washing and grooming her sister. After a long, hesitating glance at Ender, the dark alicorn powered her own horn and did the same in turn for Celestia.

Leaving them to their bath, Ender regarded the bottle Celestia had given him. A far cry from the ubiquitous plastic squeeze tubes of the International Fleet, the container was made of thick, faceted crystal. Pulling out the stopper, the boy found it filled with a substance slightly thicker than the shampoos to which he was accustomed. It had a vaguely floral scent that the boy couldn’t place; Ender was simply too unfamiliar with natural smells to identify anything but the most basic of fragrances.

He cast about, hoping to see a bar of soap. It took a few seconds for the boy to realize that he wasn’t going to have any luck. What use would ordinary soap be to creatures who had natural coats? A quick glance at his hosts told Ender that they used the shampoo for everything.

Oh well, he thought, I’ve certainly had worse problems over the past few months.

It seemed that for all her airs of obliviousness, Celestia was genuinely trying to let him wash in peace. After a few minutes, she began to relate to Luna all the goings-on at court that morning. Apparently, he was the talk of the household, and word had spread quickly to the surrounding town. Nearly everyone, or everypony, as she put it, had inquired about him.

Ender gingerly washed himself as he listened, delicately working around the bandages with one of the many brushes that were scattered around the tub’s rim. It took a little effort to remove the layers of sweat and grime accumulated from months in the woods, but soon enough his skin showed through, pink and slightly raw. It was a small price to pay to feel fully human again.

        Looking up, the soldier found he had an audience.

        “Your... hands, was it?” Celestia glanced at Luna for confirmation. “Your hands are amazingly dexterous, even more so than Twilight’s report indicated.” 

        Ender regarded her questioningly. “Twilight?”

        Luna stepped forward with the answer. “My sister’s protege, and a most gifted academic. While one of her friends cared for you, she wrote a detailed account of your physiology and even went so far as to offer conjecture about your origins and habits.”

        “Her friend... was the one who found me?” Ender asked, recalling the details of his earlier conversation with Luna. He hadn’t focused on it then, but he now realized that she wasn’t the one who had rescued him.

        “Fluttershy is her name.” the dark alicorn replied. “She is an animal caretaker who resides next to the Everfree Forest. She found you near death, just outside her home.”

        The last moments of his long and painful trek vividly flashed in front of Ender’s eyes. “I thought I was hallucinating. The cottage just seemed so... improbable... after spending so long in the wilderness.”

        Luna nodded. “You’re very lucky. The doctors told me that you would have died had she not given you the proper care when she did.”

        “I would like to thank her sometime, if that’s a possibility.” Ender looked up at his host.
        
Luna only smiled. “Of course. I’m sure it can be arranged.”

        “You should thank Twilight as well,” Celestia interjected. As Ender turned back to her, he saw her reading a scroll she had produced from seemingly nowhere. Though he was looking at the back side of the paper, the light streaming through it highlighted a figure that looked somewhat like the Vitruvian Man. “I never knew she was such an artist. I’m sure her detailed diagrams helped our physicians greatly after you were brought to the castle.”

        “Tia!” Luna reddened, though from embarrassment or anger, Ender could not tell. The golden aura that enveloped the scroll was quickly subsumed by midnight blue as Luna winked away the scroll. 

        “Hey, I was reading that!” the elder sister protested.

        “You can do that later.” The princesses engaged in a brief staring contest before Ender cleared his throat.

        “Well,” he began, “either way, I’m grateful. I’d like to thank both of them when the opportunity arises.”

        Celestia smiled in response. “Well, I’m sure you will. Very soon, if my intuition is correct.”

        Luna looked at her quizzically, but the white alicorn ignored her. Pressing on, Celestia stood up full in the bath, spreading her wings as far as she could. Sheets of water rippled off them and cascaded into the bath.

        “Well, as much as I would love to laze about all day, duty calls.” She sighed heavily. With one powerful leap, she cleared the rim of the bath and settled into a bright ball of golden light. Within a few seconds, Celestia’s water-matted coat settled out, and her wet prismatic mane and tail dried, drifting up to fly behind her as before. As the magical aura around her diffused, it reappeared around the various golden accoutrements she had so carelessly flung about when she entered. The drifted back to their owner and quickly fastened themselves in place. As she stepped into her golden shoes, Celestia glanced up at her sister.

        “I’ve already cleared your schedule for the next few days, Lulu. Just let me know if you need anything regarding our guest, OK?”

        Luna genuinely smiled in response. “Thank you, Tia. I will.” With that, the white alicorn swept out of the room, closing the ornate bathroom doors behind her with a flourish of golden light. After a half second, they heard her muffled voice call back. “Oh, Luna! Your breakfast is here. Just to let you know, I’m stealing a sweetroll.”

        Another voice beyond the door spoke up in muffled protest, but it was soon drowned out by Luna’s laughter. Looking up at Ender, she shook her head slowly. “I am sorry, Ender, I truly am. She is the most benevolent soul I know, but she can really be a hoof-full sometimes. I was hoping to introduce you in... well, in better circumstances.”

        The boy waved away her concerns. “It’s OK, it really is. Trust me, it could have been much worse.” Turning the conversation around, he asked, “So do you bathe together often?”

        “Why yes, at least once a week,” she answered brightly before her expression sobered. “We spent a long, long time apart, and this is one of the ways we are reestablishing our bonds.”

        There was an awkward silence as Luna regarded her reflection in the bathwater. Looking up, she fixed him with her emerald eyes as she said, “Well, I am sure you want to get out and dry off. I will leave you to it. Please do not be too long. I just realized that my poor maid has probably been waiting out there for quite some time now. I keep telling her to not be shy, but she never listens...”

        The dark alicorn exited the bath in much the same way as her sister, except that Luna elected to remain aloft as she dried off, floating across the bathroom and exiting in mid-air. As the doors closed behind her, Ender heard muffled voices as she conferred with her attendant.

        Standing, the boy quickly spied a large towel folded across the tub’s far rim. Ender could only surmise that Luna had somehow left it for him, as he didn’t remember seeing it when he entered. He was glad for the consideration, since it was clear that neither of the princesses needed such things.

        Princesses. The thought hit Ender as he stepped gingerly from the high bath, careful not to strain his damaged body. Though she had not specifically identified herself as royalty, it was clear that Luna commanded some kind of power. She seemed to defer to Celestia, but that was likely a factor of age. After all, Luna referred to her sister as a ‘diarch.’ Who else would share the rest of that position if not her?

        What have I gotten myself into?

        And what of Celestia’s comment on how much they owed him? Ender did not know what to make of that. He put that point near the top of a very long list of questions he needed to ask his host.

        As he finished drying off, Ender looked about unsuccessfully for any clothing. I guess I should be glad that I at least have a towel, he mused. Wrapping the damp cloth about his waist, the boy limped towards the door.

        A gentle breeze greeted him as he entered Luna’s bedchambers. Looking across the broad circular room, Ender spied a large set of open double doors leading onto a broad balcony. The cool air felt luxurious after the heat of the bath.

        A soft gasp drew his attention. A nondescript gray pony stood behind a service cart, openly gaping at him. She, given the feminine nature of her maid uniform, was decidedly smaller than Luna, and lacked the wings or the horn of his host.

        The maid’s jaw fluttered momentarily before she finally gathered the courage to speak.

        “Y-y-your clothes, er... sir.” She jerkily nodded to the pile on top of the cart. “W-we did the best we c-c-could, but Steelwool had never seen anything like it. And the b-b-blood was, well, we’ve never seen so m-m-much in...”

        She trailed off as Ender reached for what looked like his fatigues. “This is exactly what I needed right now, Miss...?”

        “D-Dusty, sir. Name’s Dusty.”

        Ender did his best to smile reassuringly. “Thank you, Miss Dusty. I’m sure you did your best.” He gathered up everything from the cart and laid it out on Luna’s bed, which he noted had been stripped of all its linens.

        Dusty hadn’t moved an inch. Looking back at her, he smiled again and said, “I’m going to need some privacy to change. Would you mind giving me a moment?”

        The small pony jumped an inch, then grabbed the wide handlebar of the cart with her teeth. “Ah, ov coursh, shir! Ah’ll shust ‘e going ‘ow.” Backpedalling, she stammered out a few words around the metal. The cart careened a bit as she brought it around a corner and through what he assumed were the main doors to Luna’s room.

        Ender chuckled to himself. Poor thing, it seemed like she was scared senseless.

        His camouflage looked as if it had been put through the wringer, which, now that he thought about it, it probably had. The various rips and tears he had incurred throughout his travels had been worsened by whatever washing process Dusty and her co-workers inflicted on them. The threads of his shoddy repair work had been torn out and most of the other jagged edges were left frayed. The whole uniform had faded, though Ender could not tell if it had always been that way, or if it was the work of extremely hot water or harsh soap. Rough as they were, though, he found his uniform and underclothes were still serviceable as he gently pulled them on over his bandages and bruises. The soldier’s boots fared the best of the ensemble. Though they were tight over one swollen ankle, the tough suede material felt as solid as it had when he first pulled them on nearly a year ago.

        Ender stood up straighter than he had in a long time. Well-rested, scrubbed, and dressed in clean clothes, he felt better than ever, even with his injuries. Tantalizing smells reached him on the breeze, and led the boy hobbling across Luna’s room and out into the bright sunlight of her balcony.

        Blinking away the late morning light, Ender’s eyes adjusted to see Luna resting on a supple patio recliner covered by a broad violet umbrella. A silver service cart laden with a variety of foods sat between her and an identical chair. The aroma drifting from the cart reminded Ender of just how hungry he was.

        All thoughts of food vanished, however, as the soldier approached the balcony railing. The view he had seen from the bathroom windows paled in comparison to this. Before him stretched a beautiful river valley criss-crossed with streams and dirt roads. Forests gave way to rolling plains which shifted to farmland then back to forest again. Looking back, Ender realized that not only was he on top of a massively tall building, but the building itself was perched on a sharp gray peak nearly five thousand feet in the air. To the left of Luna’s balcony, a waterfall cascaded from underneath a wide bridge all the way to a river below.

Ender noted that the railing was barely higher than his waist. Glancing at it warily, the soldier guessed that if he fell, it would at least take half a minute to reach the bottom. The frantic flight from the top of the Giant’s Table briefly flashed across his mind.

He realized that Luna must have noticed his expression when a pastry drifted across his field of vision, enveloped in a dark aura.

        “Hungry?” the princess asked, waving the goody back and forth.

        Ender’s stomach growled in response, causing her to laugh. The boy turned away from the balcony and settled down on the remaining recliner. It felt strange; the padding seemed to be concentrated in the seat more than the back. Looking over at how Luna was sitting, settled on her stomach like a horse would normally lie down, Ender saw the reason why. He then wondered why the recliners had backs to them at all.

        Grasping the pastry from where it was suspended in mid-air, Ender thanked the princess and took a bite. Rich, warm apple filling burst from inside as the flaky crust parted. It was so sweet that Ender almost spit it out, but hunger overrode shock as his tongue acclimated itself to real food again. He had been hunting and gathering for so long that he’d nearly forgotten what baked goods tasted like.

        “Good?” Luna asked. Ender could only smile around a mouthful of pastry. His host grinned and moved the cart forward. “I was unsure of what you ate, so I had the cooks prepare a variety of everything they have.”

        Ender wasn’t surprised to see an absence of meat on the trolley, but the wide variety of egg and dairy dishes was unexpected. Apparently, Luna and her kind had a different diet than the equines he knew. The soldier also noticed that Luna either had a huge sweet tooth, or desserts were a staple here. There was even an honest-to-goodness cake amidst the breakfast food. When Ender pointed at a bite-sized hole on top of the it, Luna grimaced.

        “I think my sister took more than just a sweetroll.”

        They each laughed at that as Ender selected various bowls of cereal, yogurt, and fruit as well as a tall glass of what looked and smelled like orange juice. His host sipped at a cup of tea and bit delicately on a wafer that seemed to be made of woven grasses. The breakfast was wonderful, though Ender found that the cereal was not oatmeal, as he has originally guessed, but straight, unrefined oats. Luna pretended not to notice as the boy tried to discreetly spit it out. Otherwise, the pair ate in silence as they watched birds drift along the mountain air currents.

        “What happens now?” Ender ventured, breaking the comfortable silence.

        “I am not quite sure,” Luna replied. She did not look over at him. “I will try to return you to your home, though...” she trailed off.

        Ender sat up, but the princess’ gaze remained locked on the vista before them.

        She continued. “I still do not know how... how she brought you here. Her memories are still somewhat confusing to me. I will keep trying to examine them, and I am confident that one day I will understand.”

        Ender started to respond, to reassure her that it would be alright, that she had done enough, but she spoke over him.

        “In the meantime, I will ensure that you make a full recovery. It is the very least I can do in exchange for all that you have done for my sister and I.”

        This time, Ender pressed his words. “I’ve been meaning to ask about that. Why do you and your sister think you owe me some debt? Yes, we helped each other escape from... your other self, but I was in as much danger as you were. I am immensely thankful for your help, and you certainly don’t owe me anything. Anyone would have done the same in my position.”

        Now Luna turned in his direction. It was hard to see with the shade from her umbrella falling across her face, but it seemed as if her eyes were moist.

        Luna shook her head. “It was far more than that. You brought me with you when you could have escaped the dream on your own. You let me stay in your consciousness and most importantly, you showed me how to fight her in my own mind.”

        The boy did not know what to say to that.

        “When Nightmare was released, she imprisoned me in a place where I had to watch everything she did. She wanted to punish me for defying her and for helping you escape. I felt everything she did when she cast you down from the sky, and she was going to make me watch as she killed Celestia. But the thoughts you shared with me, the ways you showed me I could resist her... that let me assert my will just enough to save Tia’s life. You gave me the strength to fight her the entire way. I was able to blunt nearly all of her attacks against Twilight and her friends - Celestia’s backup plan,” she added when she saw Ender’s questioning look.

        “If you had you not helped me, all of this,” she gestured at the beautiful landscape around them, “would be a wasteland.”

        Ender furrowed his brow, and looked down at the cart between them. The steam had long since stopped rising over the tea and coffee pots.

        “When you first explained what she was, I saw,” he paused, not entirely sure how to voice his thoughts. “I saw parallels to some of my own experiences. When she first started to pull you from my mind, I knew I could help in at least a small way. All I did was draw from my own knowledge and offer what advice I could. I didn’t even know if it would work.”

        Luna smiled. “Nevertheless, it was a gift offered freely, and you saved countless lives by giving it.” The alicorn’s face sobered as she thought of what the boy had said.

        “What... what did you mean by parallels?” She stared at Ender intently.

        Ender turned toward the horizon, thinking of the face he sometimes saw in the mirrors of his dreams - the face that was not his own. 

“Two faces of the same coin.” Valentine’s voice echoed in his mind.

Ender blinked, shaking off the memory. Luna’s gaze had not wavered.

I was caught up in the moment, he thought ruefully.

Ender cursed himself for casually saying something so personal and wondered how he could possibly explain what he meant.

“I... humanity lacks your magic, so literally fighting oneself is an impossibility, but I’ve seen much in my life, and I know that you can pose a greater threat to yourself than any enemy could ever hope to do.”

It was a vague generality, and Ender saw at once that Luna wasn’t satisfied, but she didn’t press any further.

He hoped she never would.

☽

        Luna was still puzzling over Ender’s remark as they entered her room a few minutes later. A sudden rap at her chamber doors interrupted her reverie.

        “Come in!” she called.

        The doors opened to reveal an alabaster pony flanked by two of the Night Guards. The stark contrast made her coat shine all the brighter in comparison. The newcomer bowed low with a flourish that sent her royal purple curls bouncing.

        “Your highness, it is such an honor! Your sister, who has been so generous as to allow me to actually stay at the castle, mentioned that you would have need of my unique design services. I deeply apologize if I am interrupting, but before I started about my business in town, I wanted to see what you needed. Obviously any royal order would take precedence over anything that little old me happens to be doing.”

        Luna blinked. The Canterlot elite had always put on airs, but in the centuries since she had last lived here, they had adopted a positively foppish quality. This pony seemed to almost make an artform of it. Something seemed very familiar about her, but the princess was hard pressed to identify it.

        In the blink of an eye, the newcomer rushed into her chambers and started measuring her. She was faster than the guards, which was saying something, as they had only just raised their wings and started to protest. A quick glance from Luna directed them to close the doors and take their leave - after all, the Night Princess was in no danger from a simple measuring tape.

        “So what is it that your highness requires? I would be more than honored to design anything for you. In fact, I can’t think of any time in recent memory that a royal has worn a dress! What kind of event are you preparing for... a ball? Oooh, are you going to attend the Canterlot Garden Party? That would be absolutely lovely and I think I have just the perfect idea for...”

        The white pony nattered on as Luna stood stock still, trying to figure out her sister’s purpose in sending this... fashion designer. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Ender looking on in amusement.

        The unicorn must have noticed too, because the measuring tape suddenly fell to the ground with a soft rattle. Soft, careful footsteps brought the white pony back into Luna’s field of vision. Her expression spoke of utter shock.

        “Y-you’re that... that... creature Sweetie Belle was excited about... and you’re wearing those... those...” she stammered.

        Everything clicked at once in Luna’s mind. This was Rarity, the Element of Generosity and one of Twilight’s friends. She only vaguely remembered the white pony from her time as Nightmare Moon, and while she had run into the other Elements during Nightmare Night, she had somehow missed Rarity during her time in Ponyville. Given the way Twilight described her friend in her reports, Luna quickly deduced why Celestia had sent her.

        Putting a wing over the shocked pony, Luna took control of the situation. “Miss Rarity, I believe you’ve already met Ender?”

        “A-after a fashion. He was... indisposed the last time I saw him.”

        The human strode up and extended a hand. “That would be one way of putting it. Good morning, Miss Rarity, or afternoon, now that I think of it,” he added with a quick glance towards the windows.

        “Charmed.” Rarity flipped a violet curl out of her eyes and raised a hoof. Ender grasped it gently before letting go. It was a different custom, to be sure, but not entirely alien to pony society. Luna noticed that while Rarity’s ears were back, she had regained most of her composure.

        “I am sorry to disappoint, but I believe my sister sent you to design a garment not for me, but for him.” Luna nodded towards Ender, who observed the exchange with a bemused expression.

        Rarity’s eyes widened. “Well, I do enjoy a challenge, and I must say, sir, that you are most certainly a difficult one.” She quickly levitated the measuring tape and advanced on the human. Luna almost felt sorry for him.

        To his credit, Ender stiffened but did not flinch. Looking at Luna, he raised his eyebrows.

        “While I appreciate the generosity, is this really important right now? These fatigues have been through much, I know, but at least I have clothing for the time being.”

        Rarity was horrified. “My dear, no. Nonononononononono. As ingenious,” she tugged at a sleeve, “as this material is, and as durably,” she flexed a seam, “as it was stitched, the color and pattern are simply deplorable! I would not recommend this for Appleoosa much less Canterlot Castle. And these blood stains! What would the average Canterlot pony think of such... such...” she trailed off, apparently unable to articulate what proper Canterlot society would think of Ender’s attire.

        Based on his expression, Luna could tell Ender gave as much consideration to fashion as she did, but apparently clothing was not optional for him. Her sister was right - if they were ever to take him around the castle, much less Canterlot itself, he would need to be properly attired.

        “Are these your only clothes at the moment?” Rarity asked. When Ender nodded, she tut-tutted under her breath. “Such a shame, I could really use some kind of pattern, but as ever, I will make do.” She paused, closed her eyes, and exhaled abruptly. After a moment, Rarity regained her composure. “Let us see, let us see - hmm, I think with some additional measurements, I could probably make my own pattern, but I need to know your range of motion. Here, can you...”

        The white unicorn’s attempt to move Ender’s arm was abruptly cut off as he stiffened and clenched his hand, pain etched across his face. Only the slightest hiss escaped his lips, but it was clear that the human was in pain.

        “Oh! I’m so sorry... your injuries! I had completely forgotten - please forgive me!”

        “Quite... alright...” Ender bit back through clenched teeth.

        As Rarity approached him again, he held up his hand, forestalling her. His eyes widened as he looked around the room.

        “What’s wrong?” Luna asked. The human looked back at her.

        “Did they... the ponies that found me... was there a PA - a large silver canister nearby?”

        The Night Princess recalled the strangely heavy-yet-not-heavy object Twilight gave her along with Ender’s clothing. It had been extraordinarily difficult to teleport all the way to Canterlot Castle. She pointed with her horn toward the closet where she had stored it. “Over there. I’ve been meaning to ask you what it is.”

        Ender limped his way over to the far side of the room, grasping at end tables and chairs to support his weight when he could. Rarity winced at his obviously painful progress. 

        “It’s a pack, but a special kind that can... well, it’s a lot to explain. Let’s just say it carried all my survival equipment.” He pulled the large object from the closet and set it upright on Luna’s slate floor. The two ponies leaned in and watched as he opened it. Luna was amazed at the bright controls that appeared in the air as he moved his hands over the smooth silver sides of the cannister. It looked like magic, but there was none that Luna could sense. In a moment, a large portal opened in the top, and Ender reached down with both hands, fishing for something at the very bottom.

        “Aha!” he exclaimed after a few moments. “I can’t believe I forgot about this!” After much pulling, and an audible shift of the contents inside the canister, Ender withdrew an extremely wrinkled, but nevertheless beautiful set of garments.

        Rarity murmured in appreciation, and Luna could see why. It was an outfit that looked much like the Royal Guards’ dress uniforms, but instead of bright red, it was a deep blue that was nearly black. Bright silver piping outlined the sleeves and shoulders. An ornate latticework of silver and cobalt blue decorated the collar and the base of the sleeves. A silver plate with lettering adorned one side of the chest, and a multitude of ribbons with every imaginable color lined up neatly in rows on the other side. Above these rested a pin that looked like pegasus wings curved upwards in preparation for takeoff. Between the wings was the carved relief of a globe with sapphire oceans and emerald continents. As fascinating as the pin was, the dominating feature of the uniform rested on top of the shoulders. Each pauldron featured three beautiful starbursts wrought in sapphire and silver.

        “It’s... magnificent. Terribly wrinkled and neglected, but magnificent.” Rarity was awed. “What is it for? It’s so different than that... thing... you are wearing.”

        Ender grimaced. “It’s... for special occasions, and it is notoriously uncomfortable. Before I... found myself here, I was going to a function where it was required. When I set out, I put it into the bottom of my survival kit and completely forgot about it. I think at the time I was going to save the material for bandages if need be.”

        Luna could tell that Rarity was shocked at the notion, but restrained herself from commenting.

        The Night Princess examined the outfit with growing curiosity. It looked like so much more than just formal wear. 

        Ender continued, not noticing the alicorn’s gaze. “Could you use this for a pattern? You’ll have to re-size it first, but once that’s done, it should be a good template. Just don’t... make the new clothing as restrictive.” He laughed, though Luna could not understand why.

        The unicorn was puzzled. “Re-size it? Didn’t you say you were wearing it earlier?”

        “It’s been the better part of a year since I,” he paused, glancing towards Luna, “since I arrived. I’m sure I’ve grown since then. These boots are definitely tighter than they used to be.” He held the top up to his chest. The dark alicorn didn’t need any experience in fashion to see that it was slightly too small for him.

        Rarity looked at Luna, then back again. “You’re... still growing?” She looked up at his taller frame. “I really should have asked Twilight about about you when I had the chance.” She bounced forward, peering intently at Ender. “Given your size, I thought you were fully grown. Does your kind keep growing throughout life... like dragons do?”

        The human laughed and shook his head, though Luna could see it was slightly forced. The truth was beginning to dawn on her.

        “Ender, how old are you?” the princess asked directly.

        He paused before replying. “Assuming I kept track of time correctly while I was traveling, I turned thirteen a few weeks ago.” The boy looked her directly in the eyes, as if trying to gauge her reaction.

        Rarity blinked, backing up slightly. “That’s... that’s not much older than Sweetie Belle... and you said that you were out in the wild for a year?!”

        “Well... almost a year.” Ender replied, seeming as if he didn’t quite know how to respond.

        A few moments of uncomfortable silence passed before Rarity cleared her throat and moved things along. She enveloped the boy’s uniform with magic and levitated it away, clucking her tongue as she did so.

        “Well, alright then. I’ll need to take a few key measurements - don’t worry, you won’t have to move - but then I think I’ll have enough to tailor these and to make a pattern for a few more outfits,” she called over her shoulder. “Don’t worry, darling, Rarity will have you fixed up in no time!”

        Ender moved to join the unicorn where she had left her measuring tape, but Luna raised a hoof to softy rest on his chest, stopping him where she could speak softly and be heard. “That is a uniform, like a guard would wear, is it not?” Her voice implied a statement rather than a question.

        Ender looked her directly in the eye as he replied evenly, “Yes, it is.”

        Luna didn’t know why, but she had expected denial or deflection. Pleased at his honesty, she pressed ahead with the other question that had occurred to her.

        “Is it normal among your people for one so young to wear a uniform?” She thought for a moment. “Are you even considered young?”

        Ender pursed his lips. “No, and yes.” He clearly did not like answering her questions, but his gaze never wavered and she sensed his words were true.

        By then, the unicorn was staring back at them expectantly, so she let the boy go. His previously somber voice picked up as he began to ask Rarity about his new wardrobe, simultaneously changing the subject and deflecting any questions she might ask herself.

        Clever, Luna thought.

        She watched as he interacted with Rarity, complimenting her appearance and asking leading questions about her plans for his ensemble. He was subtly playing to her personality, even though he had only spent a few minutes with her. It was amazing how quickly the boy adapted.

Luna had been looking forward to getting to know Ender, simply because they had shared an experience which might have allowed him to understand her better than all but her own sister. After all, no one else had walked dreams with her side-by-side. The fact he represented a new species and a treasure trove of new knowledge was just an added bonus - a reason for her to add to the Royal Library for the first time in centuries. But the more Luna learned, the less she understood. Now, he represented a mystery instead of a mere curiosity... a mystery Luna wanted to solve.

☽

Ender stifled a yawn. After all Luna and her sister had done for him, the last thing the soldier wanted was to offend his hosts, especially given the strange formality of the evening. 

        He sat in a small but ornately decorated dining room. Mahogany panels covered the walls surrounding a matching dining table, and all the wood was polished to a high shine. Each side featured intricate tapestries edged in gold brocade. Moons of violet and silver dominated the clothwork on the far end of the room while suns of blue and gold wove their way behind Celestia, who was seated at the head of the table. Ender was surprised at his placement to the Sun Princess’ right, and he wondered briefly if it held the same implication of honor as it did in his own society.

        Luna sat across from him to her sister’s left, though the boy had a feeling that it wasn’t her usual place. The high-backed chair at the opposite end of the table featured a prominently-engraved crescent moon over its back. It was not the sort of chair to normally sit empty. 
        
The evening’s sense of formality flowed from none other than Celestia herself. Gone were the playful smiles and quick winks from the morning; she had replaced them with a queenly mask of measured grace and reserved benevolence. It took a few minutes of observation for Ender to see why: it was the presence of the servants and guards. He noticed that while the armored ponies had wings, and Celestia’s attendant levitated a large notebook and quill with her horn, only the alicorns had both. The other servants lacked either advantage. All of them, Ender saw, regarded the Princess with awed deference.

        She has an image to maintain, he realized. The soldier remembered how he had carefully concealed aspects of himself from his army at Battle School. Ender always, for example, ensured his toon leaders were the ones to pass lenient commands and praise while he was always the bearer of bad news and criticism. It welded his toons into cohesive units and provided his toon leaders a prestige and loyalty uncommon among their contemporaries in other armies. At the same time, the practice won the uncompromising loyalty of his toon leaders, all of whom were smart enough to understand what he was doing. That simple facade forged the foundation of his uniquely decentralized force, the army that went on to dominate Battle School.

        Celestia must face a similar situation. She clearly was one with a role to play, and judging by the ease with which she performed, Ender guessed she had been playing it for a long time.

        The white alicorn noticed his gaze and returned a gentle smile. “Is the food to your liking, Mr. Wiggin?” 

        “It is excellent, your highness. My compliments to your chef.” While he couldn’t exactly identify many of the ingredients in the vegetable broth, it really was delicious. A rich and hearty puree, it settled comfortably against Ender’s ribs. The trouble was, it was also lulling him to sleep and threatening to make him yawn again. The soldier took a long sip of ice water to rattle his nerves into wakefulness.

        “Sister,” Luna began formally, “I must compliment you on your idea to enlist Miss Rarity’s aid in outfitting our guest. Not only did she relish the novelty of such a challenge, but she has proven her efficacy yet again.” The dark alicorn nodded in Ender’s direction.

        Celestia took the opportunity to examine him closely. “Indeed, I noticed his splendid attire. Even I am amazed at how quickly she was able to produce such excellent work. I shall be sure to pass along my praise when next we meet.”

        Ender was, in fact, dressed in his newly washed, pressed        , and re-tailored formal uniform. The unicorn had done what generations of military designers could not - created a comfortable set of dress blues. It fit so well, in fact, that the boy had forgotten he was wearing it.

        Before he could respond, Luna cleared her throat with a polite cough.

        “I would not want you to embarrass our friend, sister. Not to diminish her fine work, but Mr. Wiggin actually brought these clothes with him. Rarity only tailored and cleaned them, though from what I saw earlier, even that was a formidable task.”

        “Truly?” Celestia raised an eyebrow. “It is quite a departure from the... clothing... you had before. Is your kind always so fashionable?”

        Ender shot a questioning look at Luna. The dark alicorn only responded with a smile and a flash of intent emerald eyes. She had steered her sister expertly to the topic he had previously dodged, and the soldier had little choice but to answer such an innocent question in polite conversation.

        Well, two can play at this game. Turning back to Celestia, he shrugged casually. “As a matter of fact I was on my way to a formal affair, not much different from this, before I...” was brought here, Ender was going to say, until he remembered how sensitive Luna was about the actions of her other self.

“...found myself here.” Out of the corner of his eyes, he watched the smaller princess for any reaction, but her gaze remained unflinching. Thank goodness. He meant to softly rebuke Luna’s prying, not hurt her.

        After all, she saved my life, and has done who knows what else over the past eight months. The boy considered his situation for a moment. I could give her something, he reasoned. Maybe not the whole truth, but some of it.

        Before either alicorn could respond, the boy continued. “It was a media function, actually. Do you have a press here? Peop... er, ponies who gather information, write factual stories and report them to others?”

        A bit of the mask slipped away from Celestia’s face; she looked genuinely curious. “As a matter of fact we do. It’s a relatively new institution, but it has quickly become a mainstay in modern society.”

“A main annoyance of modern society, perhaps,” Luna muttered. Ender could barely hear her. The other ponies standing at the edges of the room gave no sign that they understood the dark alicorn, but a brief grin flitted across Celestia’s face.

        “Well, it was supposed to be a press dinner, a grand announcement made to the whole of my race,” Ender continued.

        Now both ponies were listening and listening closely. Celestia’s visage remained calmly neutral, but the boy could tell by the look in her eyes that he had her undivided attention.

        “We were announcing to the world the launch of mankind’s first colony ship - our first attempt to settle a world beyond our own.”

        Luna blinked. “A... a world beyond your own, you say? Out... in space? How far away is it?”

        Ender smiled warmly, glad to have pushed her questions towards his future instead of his past. “I do not know how you measure distances, but it would take light forty years to make the journey.”

        She sat back, dumbfounded. After a few moments, Celestia stepped in to prevent an awkward silence. “That is quite a feat,” she began, mask thoroughly back in place, “might I ask what your part was in such a remarkable endeavor?”

        Ender laughed inwardly. Just when I stop worrying about one princess, here comes the other. Fortunately, the soldier was prepared.

        “Of course,” he said placidly, “I was to be the colony’s governor.”

☽

        “I owe you an apology,” Luna began, as soon as they were away from the entrance to the dining room and out of the guards’ earshot. The sound of her steps echoed along the long marble corridor, masking her voice from anyone else who might be nearby. “I should not have maneuvered you into discussing something you clearly wished to avoid earlier, and I am sorry I prevented you from assuming your role in such a historic event for your people.” The alicorn’s voice held an edge of sorrow Ender hadn’t heard since their time together in his dreamscape.

        He shook his head. “You have nothing to apologize for. I should have been more forthcoming,” and I wasn’t completely honest either, he added silently. But what choice did I have? “Regarding the rest, we both know it wasn’t you who brought me here.”

        “That is kind of you to say, but without me, Nightmare Moon would have never been-”

        Ender placed a hand on Luna’s shoulder, interrupting her and bringing her to a stop in the middle of the marble hallway.

        Waiting until she turned to look at him, the boy said softly, “You showed me the memory of when she was created, remember?”

        Luna nodded.

        “What could anyone have done against that? You couldn’t have known what would happen, and even if you had, you’ve more than paid for that mistake, wouldn’t you say? What more could any reasonable person... or pony,” he sighed at his difficulty with pronouns, “expect of you?”

        The alicorn didn’t argue, but judging by her expression, his words hadn’t swayed her in the least. Ender started to regret even mentioning the future that had been taken from him. The soldier was no stranger to guilt, and he had no desire to lay any on others.

        Damn it, I should have thought of this before opening my mouth. What’s that saying? “...and the truth will set you free?”

        Well, maybe not the whole truth.

        The soldier bent down slightly, resting his hands on his knees so he would be at eye level with the alicorn. “Luna, the truth is that I wasn’t exactly excited about going. I never chose to be the colony’s governor. The role was thrust on me and I fully intended to pass it off after assuring the settlement’s viability.”

        She looked up at him with a puzzled expression. “But... why not? Such a historic role, offered to one so young... it must have been an immense honor.”

        The boy smiled wryly. “It was, but it was also the only option given to me, and the last I would have chosen for myself.”

        Luna’s eyes narrowed as she looked at him with a mixture of puzzlement and wonder. “But why would you not want to-” the princess cut herself off when she saw his expression. “No, it is not right for me to pry. I am only repeating the mistake I made earlier. I am sorry”

        “Well, I appreciate the consideration, but again, no apology is necessary.” Ender paused, thinking of how to offer a diplomatic escape. “In your place, I would be curious too. Perhaps we can discuss it later?”

        She gave him a wan smile, understanding completely. “Of course, another time, perhaps.”

        Perhaps, he thought, and for a moment Ender believed it might be possible. Then he remembered his reasoning for being so reticent.

        Luna sighed as she resumed the journey towards her chambers. “Well, at least the rest of the evening was a success.”

        “Hmm?” Ender was not entirely sure what she meant.

        “The staff that attended us were not chosen by accident. They are some of the biggest gossips in the castle.”

        The soldier thought about it for a moment. “The rumors your sister discussed this morning.”

        “Exactly.” Luna nodded. “She hopes that by providing a first hand account of what you are like, she can head off some of the more... sensational things that are being said.”

        “Sensational?”

        “Well, you don’t eat ponies, do you?” She flashed a grin back at him.

        He laughed. “Only if they get on my bad side.”

        Luna smiled, but it soon faded as her eyebrows drew together in thought. “I should have asked earlier; Twilight was reasonably certain that you ate meat. Is our fare going to be a problem for you?”

        He gave it a moment’s thought. “I really don’t know. Other than surviving in the woods, which meant eating whatever was available, I’ve never had to provide for myself. I know some of my kind choose not to eat meat, but I’m not sure how they balance their nutritional needs. I’ll have to check my desk before I can give you a good answer.”

        Luna drew up to a full stop and looked back. “Check your desk?”

        He fumbled for an explanation. “It’s... wow, how do I even...?” Ender paused. “How do you store information?”

        “Scrolls or books,” Luna replied.

        Ender let out a sharp bark of laughter, drawing a stare from his companion.

        “Let’s just say that there’s no way I’ll be able to explain. I’ll have to show you, and I’m entirely too tired for that now.”

        Luna turned back towards the staircase to her tower. “Fair enough, human.”

☽

        “I don’t want to sound ungrateful, but could you, or perhaps one of the guards, direct me to my room? I’m still not entirely sure how to get around.” Ender rubbed his eyes sleepily as he waited by the door to Luna’s chambers.

        “What do you mean?” The alicorn looked back at him flatly as she closed the doors to her balcony.

        “Well, I’m not going to be sleeping here,” a startled look crossed his face, “am I?”

        The Night Princess moved towards her bed as she levitated the covers back and began magically primping pillows. “As a matter of fact, yes. The medical staff pronounced you physically fit last night, but something deep within your subconscious prevented you from getting the rest your body needed to begin healing.” Luna finished with her bed and turned back towards the boy. “It was such a problem that not only was I the only pony powerful enough to handle it, but I had to go so far as to shunt magic directly into your body in order to get you to sleep properly.” She walked up to Ender and demonstrated by thunking her horn down in the middle of his forehead, reminding him of the sensation from earlier that morning. “Do you realize what that means?”

        Ender shook his head, dislodging the horn.

        “It means,” the alicorn continued, poking him with a silver-shod hoof, “that you are most certainly *not* well, and that you will be under observation, by me, until such a time as you can rest on your own. I said this morning that I would make sure you recovered, and I intend to follow through on that.”

        The boy raised his hands in surrender. “Alright, alright. While I don’t understand any of that, I will agree that I slept better last night than I have in... well, probably my entire life. That being said, I’ve never had a problem going to sleep before, so how about this? I can sleep on that couch over there so you can observe me,” he pointed to the sitting area of Luna’s chambers, “and as soon as you think I’m better, I’ll go to a different room. I don’t know how it is in your society, but sharing a room like this in mine would be... inappropriate. I’d hate to think of what the castle rumors would be.”

        “They’d be silenced, is what they would be,” she muttered. Looking up, Luna nodded briskly. “Fair enough, but I insist on a bed - I’ll have my staff bring one.”

        Sure enough, by the time Ender changed out of his dress uniform and emerged from the bathroom, there was a fully-appointed queen-sized bed set up on the far side of Luna’s chambers. He limped towards it gratefully, not realizing how tired he was until he saw it waiting for him. Oblivion pulled at him strongly as soon as he settled beneath the soft duvet.

        Heh, he laughed to himself, there’s no way I’m going to have trouble sleeping tonight. Looks like Luna was worried about nothing.

        Ender wondered briefly where she was. The door to the balcony was cracked, but he saw no sign of her through the glass doors. The other side of the tower, perhaps?

        He drifted off as the moon rose over the far horizon.

> Memory
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: phwestfall@ColMin.gov
To: MinCol@ColMin.gov
Subj: Breakthrough

Minister Graff,

        I know you were expecting a report on what the team has found, but the bottom line is that you’re going to need to see this for yourself. You won’t believe a single word I say otherwise.

Dr. Westfall

From: MinCol@ColMin.gov
To: phwestfall@ColMin.gov
Subj: Re: Breakthrough

Dr. Westfall,

        After these past few months, you’d be surprised what I’ll believe. I am concluding my business landside and will be on my way shortly.

Graff

☽

        Though he spent the majority of his time in space, Hyrum Graff rarely had the opportunity to simply sit back and stare into its depths. Military vessels eschewed windows, and the precious few viewing ports found in Battle School were always occupied by students. It would have compromised Graff’s image to be seen there, staring out at the stars or down at Earth. While he certainly could afford to have a lavish office constructed for him as the Minister of Colonization, Hyrum was never that kind of bureaucrat. The resources needed to install hull-rated transparent silicon could pay for an entire shuttle on a colony ship, or even a long-range probe.

        The builders of this ship, however, had no such problems spending money on luxuries. The Azure Dawn had started its life as a pleasure vessel, an orbital cruise ship that was the crown jewel of a post-war space tourism industry. Now that the International Fleet did not require the use of every orbital shipyard surrounding Earth, venture capitalists had moved in to fill the gap.

        To say that they were not happy when Graff seized their ship for his project would be a massive understatement.

        Unfortunately, the Azure Dawn’s powerful entertainment computers and numerous living accommodations made it the perfect candidate for a dedicated research vessel. As all the nearby IF warships were being retrofitted as colony ships, and all of the Colonization Ministry’s shipyards were dedicated to building the same, the former colonel had no other choice but to commandeer the pleasure cruiser. Besides, Graff had reassured the fuming entrepreneurs, when they got their ship back, they could use all of ColMin’s modifications to venture into the long-neglected market of orbital research.

        That did not seem to placate them, but Graff didn’t have to care. They were lucky he consented to return the ship at all.

        Using the Azure Dawn as his primary research vessel did provide one very nice fringe benefit: Hyrum now had a glorious view of space from its luxurious observation lounge. Though the all-important ansible necessitated that he maintain his offices aboard the Argyris, Graff made it a point to visit the newly-minted research vessel whenever he could.

        The massive encasement of hull glass, impressive before his scientists repurposed it, was now nothing short of mesmerizing. The researchers had applied control lattices across most of the surface, allowing them to use it as a workspace while directly observing what they had dubbed the Anomaly. Green holo-displays echoed across the length of the lounge as scientists compared what seemed to be direct readings of the Anomaly at one end against simulations being run at the other.

        In the center, right above the head of Dr. Westfall himself, was an artificially rendered and highly magnified depiction of the Anomaly with lines pointing to where it was located in real space. Minister Graff could not help but notice the very large and exponentially-notated number next to the line marked “magnification.”

        “...which is why we never would have found it without the perseverance of Lt. Martin,” Westfall finished. Graff’s lead researcher had begun by explaining exactly how a highly-educated team of scientists with the IF’s best equipment had failed to notice the Anomaly, even after searching for the better part of a year. For all her faults, Martin had been right: the Anomaly was exactly where Ender’s escape pod had vanished, but at the point relative to the moon instead of to the sun, which was the default reference point for the standard spatial coordinate system. Knowing where to look did not completely solve the problem, though. The Anomaly was so very small that the team had only detected it by accident, and several advances in radiation emission were necessary to even confirm its existence. It was then that Graff’s team really shined; he hadn’t assembled the IF’s best minds for nothing.

        “That’s well and good, doctor,” Graff began, “but I’d like to know what the Anomaly is. Are we looking at a wormhole?”

        Westfall shook his head.

        “To call this a wormhole would be a grave insult to Schwarzschild, Einstein, and the rest. We’re simply not seeing any of the elements we should be seeing, especially the gravitic effects.” The scientist sighed. “Honestly, sir, I don’t know what this is, and with what little direct evidence we have, the best my team has is mere speculation. I hardly want to give you anything I can’t pro-”

        “I’m an administrator, Philip,” Graff interrupted, “not a peer looking to tear apart your work. I’ll take whatever you can give me, so speculate.”

        The older man furrowed his brow as he turned towards the observation window. Overhead, the moon dominated the vista, bathing the otherwise dark observation lounge with its pale light. From Battle School, the moon seemed scarcely larger than it did from Earth. Out here, Graff found the cratered and starkly contrasted landscape strangely unnerving. 

        “I have no proof, but to me, it looks less like a wormhole, and more like a window. Granted, a window that’s only a few hundred picometers wide, but a window nevertheless.” He turned back towards Graff. “One of the other physicists here has a theory. I’m very hesitant to mention it, sir, but you wanted speculation.”

        The minister nodded.

        “I said before that we only found it because it emitted a small amount of radiation that was different from the ambient. Likewise, we were able to confirm the Anomaly’s existence and size by shooting it with radiation and seeing what came out on the other side. Sure enough, anything that goes through the square you see on the glass is absorbed and goes… elsewhere.” He indicated the artificial depiction of the Anomaly.

        Westfall turned back to the glass and waved his arm, raising a set of controls. Touching a few keys, he brought up two displays showing similar but slightly different waveforms.

        “At the top is the background radiation surrounding the Anomaly when we found it. It’s solar wind, to put it in layman’s terms. Below is the radiation we detected coming out of the Anomaly.”

        Graff nodded, showing that he was following. “They’re close. Is the difference a result of the Anomaly?”

        The scientist shook his head. “We thought so too, but we found that any radiation we sent through either vanished or was absorbed by the Anomaly. So no, this radiation exited the Anomaly. The question was: from where did it come?”

        Dr. Westfall tapped a few keys and the two waveforms merged. Another few taps highlighted the differences between the two in red and amber.

        He continued. “This is not my field of expertise, but my specialists have found that not only is the second wave also solar wind, but solar radiation that has passed through an identical path of magnetic and atmospheric distortion as the one created by the Earth and the moon. The variations exist because of slight differences between our sun and the source star for the Anomaly’s radiation.”

        Hyrum tried to wrap his head around the implications of what Dr. Westfall was saying. “So the Anomaly is a gateway to an nearly identical solar system, at least concerning those three bodies?”

        Westfall indicated one of the readouts on the right side of the glass. “We’ve been running calculations since the discovery, but with our knowledge of the Formic systems and even considering the immense size of the universe, the odds of such exact similarity are… forgive the pun, astronomically low.”

        The minister felt the first ticklings of impatience. “Then where do you think it goes, Doctor, if not to a highly-improbable corner of our universe?”

        The doctor grimaced. It was clear that he didn’t put much stock in what he was about to say. “A… member of the team has suggested a few of the multiple universe theories.” He held up a hand, forestalling an interruption from the minister. “These are the hypothesis of theoretical physicists, used to describe the morphology of the universe as a whole - thought experiments really. There has never been a way to prove or disprove them. That being said, we could be looking at a gateway to our own solar system, just in a different universe; one where the sun’s composition is slightly different from our own, but the rest of the solar system is the same.”

        Graff blinked. That certainly wasn’t something he expected. Dr. Westfall looked pensive, uncomfortable with having to offer such an explanation. The minister, however, appreciated his candor and thanked him.

        “I asked for speculation, doctor, and at this point, I’ll take any explanation that fits. Regardless of what’s on the other side, your priority now is to find a way through the Anomaly, or at least a means of sending a message to the other side. Until we know otherwise, I am operating under the assumption that Ender is alive and well over there, and I intend to bring him back. If there is anything you need in terms of resources, do not hesitate to ask.”

        The scientist nodded and turned back towards his colleagues. Before Graff could even turn his eyes back to the observation window, a sharp voice drew his attention.

“Sir, there’s something else you need to see.”

         Hyrum didn’t even need to turn his head; the slight Australian accent identified the speaker.

        “Yes, Lieutenant Martin?” He looked back to regard the lithe young officer.

        She shook her head, short blonde hair following the motion. “Not here.” Without another word, she turned and left down a corridor.

        Had it been anyone else, Graff would have bristled at lack of courtesy, but Martin was Martin, and she had proved invaluable in this endeavor. He hurried after her.

☽

        A sense of displacement overtook Ender the second he opened his eyes. While it felt as if he had only blinked from the time he fell asleep until now, the bright light in the room indicated it was morning. That, however, was not causing his confusion. The ceiling had changed and he felt a familiar weight on his forehead. Gently moving Luna’s horn and raising his head, the boy saw the other bed across the room and confirmed that yes, he had been moved sometime during the night.

        “Good morning.” Luna’s voice drifted from his left.

        Ender let his head fall back as he exhaled. “I take it the observation did not go well?”

        “Your thrashing sent not only all four of your pillows to the floor but your entire quilt as well.”

        The boy groaned. “So no room of my own?”

        “Not until I fix what is wrong with your subconscious and you can get a decent night’s sleep on your own.”

        Ender was in no shape to argue, as his brain was still trying to fully wake after such a deep sleep. He rolled over and tried to swing his legs over the side of the bed, only to discover that he was nowhere near the edge. Simultaneously admiring and cursing the prodigious size of Luna’s mattress, the boy semi-consciously flopped and rolled until he was able to find the floor. Unfortunately, the tangled bedclothes made sure he found it face-first.

        Luna sat up, alarmed. “Are you alright?!”

        “Peachy,” Ender groaned.

☽

        The lieutenant did not pause or offer any sort of greeting as she entered a small side office. Locking the door behind Graff, she pulled up a holographic projection over her desk and launched right into what she wanted to say.

        “That thing is what seized my tug.” Sarah Martin pointed vehemently towards a vector arrow pointing away from a digital representation of her old ship.

        “Beg pardon?” Graff was completely lost. He may have been able to follow the doctor’s line of reasoning, no matter how fantastic, but the lieutenant had obviously skipped a few steps.

        Martin exhaled sharply, more frustrated with herself than the older man’s inability to understand. “The telemetry from my tug’s flight recorder - up until now, the experts could not explain how or why the readings show what they do. The official evaluation still cites ‘navigation computer malfunction’ and an ‘uncommanded thruster engagement’ as the reason why we went from mid-v to full stop in the blink of an eye, even though there was no physical evidence of a burn hard or long enough to cause it.”

        “...and you have a better explanation?” Hyrum prompted.

        The young officer’s hands fluttered across the desk’s interface as numbers whirled up to surround the three dimensional image of her ship. “I had the computers here model what kind of force, an external force mind you, would be required to cause the changes in our flight path and the abrupt change in our energy state. I couldn’t feel it at the time because everything was shaking to hell and gone, but when I looked at the simulation data afterwards, it seemed as if the whole damned ship was being grabbed by a giant fist.”

An animation played, showing the tug’s flight path followed by its sudden stop. Hard as it was for him to believe, Graff saw what the young woman described. The tug even moved in a small tangential arc after the event, as if it had been snared by an invisible lasso.

        “And when I had the computers extrapolate a vector for the unexplained force, guess what it pointed to?” The display panned along a green line towards a spot near the moon.

        “The Anomaly,” Graff finished. His blood ran cold.

        Martin stared at him intently. “Sir, I know it’s not ‘official,’ but every Battle Schooler worth their salt knows we’ve been doing things with gravity that aren’t supposed to be possible, and I’m pretty sure that we didn’t invent that technology, otherwise the rest of the world would at least know about it, if not be using it.”

        “You’re asking if the Formics are really dead.”

        She looked at him intently. “Among other things.”

        Graff kept his voice even. It was a reasonable question, given what she knew. “Lieutenant Martin, believe me when I say this: I would not have allowed the IF to remove me from my position if I had any reason to think that our enemy hadn’t been completely destroyed.” He paused, gauging her reaction to the statement. “Moreover, while we can do some new and unique things with gravity, there is nothing we have that could act at such a distance. Needless to say this is classified, but the extent of our abilities can be found on Eros, in the Battle Room, and on our ships. If we had technology like this, you can be sure we would have weaponized it and used it against the Formics.”

        She seemed to believe him, and relaxed visibly. Pondering for a moment, Martin looked up and asked, “if you’re sure it wasn’t the Buggers, and if it wasn’t us… then who?”

        “That,” Graff replied, “is a very good question.”

☽

        Ender emerged from the bathroom feeling far better than when he entered it. Luna’s shower had been just as invigorating as her bath, and much easier to operate. Contrary to his expectations, the boy had found simple faucets to control the water flow and the temperature instead of whatever magic operated the tub.

        Before he could greet his host, the boy noticed Dusty and another pony waiting for him at the far end of the massive bedchamber. Behind them, two unicorns were levitating the temporary bed and moving it towards the main double doors. Unlike Dusty during their last encounter, the newcomer strode up to Ender confidently and introduced himself.

        “Mr. Wiggin, good morning. I am Dr. Serpent Staff, Royal Physician here at the castle. Might I have a look at your dressings to check on your progress?”

        Ender fought to suppress a smile. The gray unicorn had, of all things, a pronounced black moustache that utterly dominated his features. While its styling suggested careful cultivation on the part of the doctor, the boy found the sight of a horse with facial hair to be utterly absurd. The last thing he wanted to do was insult the physician who was about to poke and prod him.

        “Of course… doctor,” he managed with barely a snigger. The unicorn looked at him curiously. “Would you like to accompany me to the bathroom so that I can undress?”

        “No need!” Luna chimed in as she walked through the open balcony doors. As Ender looked up, he saw her magical aura envelop a dressing divider and extend it in front of one of the bedroom’s many settees. “You can conduct your examination there, doctor. Dusty, will you set the table by my desk? I would like to eat inside this morning.”

        “At once, ma’am!” The maid froze for a moment, wide-eyed, then scurried towards her food trolley. She started dragging it into the room as Ender moved towards the settee with Dr. Staff in tow.

        Now that he wasn’t looking directly at the unicorn’s mustache, the boy found it easier to keep his composure. “I’ve been meaning to thank you, doctor. Your staff did an excellent job patching me up.”

        The pony coughed politely as they rounded the divider and Ender began to undress. “It was nothing, sir, most of the hard work had already been done by the time Princess Luna summoned us. The worst of your injuries were already cleaned, stitched and bound. All that remained for us was a thorough examination and an application of healing magic. It looked like earth pony or pegasus work, but it was knowledgeably done.”

        Ender stopped short of fully removing his undershirt. “Earth pony work?” He eyed the doctor quizzically.

        Serpent Staff blinked, unsure of what drew the boy’s attention. “Er… yes. They don’t have magic like we do,” he tapped his horn with a foreleg, “so they have to do everything manually. Oh! Do not worry, though - there is nothing wrong with your stitches,” the unicorn said reassuringly, “I inspected them myself. They are quite sound.”

        Ender shook his head. “No, I was just curious about the term; I don’t think I’ve heard it before. This translation… spell… that the princess performed isn’t always perfect.”

        The unicorn looked thoughtful. “I was curious about your ability to speak our language. But ‘earth pony,’ it refers to their abilities with the earth... the soil. They are good at - how to put it - making plants grow.”

        Another question to ask, Ender thought as he struggled to pull the undershirt over his head without aggravating his sore shoulder muscles.

        “Oh! Let me handle that,” Dr. Staff interjected, stepping towards Ender. His horn flared, and the soldier found his arms raising on their own as his t-shirt lifted itself off his body. The feel of the magic was incredibly strange to the boy; it was both there and not-there simultaneously. His eyes registered the bright green aura, but while Ender could feel its effects, he could barely feel the glow itself. The closest sensation that came to mind was that of dry air right before a static discharge.

        That feeling enveloped him completely as Ender found himself suddenly drifting from the floor, as if gravity had stopped affecting him. The boy had to quash the impulse to grab at his belt as he felt it start to unfurl. Unnerving as it might be, undressing others was probably normal for doctors such as this one. In fact, Ender saw as he looked over at the unicorn, Serpent Staff wasn’t even paying attention as he used his magic to remove Ender’s fatigues. The unicorn was instead reading a medical chart that was also suspended in mid-air by his magic.

        “That’s incredible… how many things can you move at once?” Ender inquired.

        Serpent Staff turned back to look at Ender, blinking in confusion. “Oh, this?” he asked after a moment’s thought, tapping his still glowing horn with a foreleg.

        Ender nodded as the emerald glow left his body, setting him back on the cold slate floor.

        “It really depends upon the pony,” the unicorn answered, motioning Ender towards the settee. Standing aside so the boy could sit down, Serpent Staff continued. “Usually, young unicorns are only able to lift one item at a time. Some grow up to be,” he paused, thinking, “strong. Yes, that would be the best term for the uninitiated. They can only manipulate one or two objects, but size and weight mean almost nothing to them.” The gray pony circled around Ender, magically lifting bandages and examining the injuries underneath. “Others are more dexterous; they can move many small objects with a great deal of precision, but nothing of any significant mass. Lie down please so I can examine the gash in your leg.”

        “So which are you? I’m not exactly small, and you seemed to be able to move me and my clothing separately without much effort,” Ender observed as he swung his legs up and leaned back.

        Serpent Staff chuckled. “I was always more dexterous than I was strong, but I’ve also had many, many years of practice.” He paused as he examined Ender’s stitches. “This is looking good. I’ll change out your wrappings, but otherwise, you don’t need anything from me.”

        The boy’s breath caught involuntarily as he felt himself lifted in the air again. He watched, wide-eyed as all his bandages simultaneously unwound, only to be replaced immediately by fresh ones that snaked around him and secured themselves within seconds. His clothing floated over, and in less than a minute, Ender found himself fully dressed. The soldier stood and flexed his wrapped appendages experimentally. “You are nothing if not efficient. Thank you, doctor.”

        The unicorn inclined his head gracefully. “You’re more than welcome, Mr. Wiggin.” Serpent Staff’s mustache twitched as a small smile flitted across his face. For some reason, Ender now found the facial hair to be strangely distinguishing.

        Following the doctor around the dressing divider, the boy looked on as Dr. Staff bowed to Luna.

        “Do you require anything else of me, Highness?”

        “No, doctor. Thank you for your help.” The princess smiled graciously from behind a plate well-laden with breakfast pastries. Serpent Staff bowed again before turning to leave.

        Luna levitated a chair away from the table and waggled it back and forth, motioning for Ender to sit. As he complied, the boy couldn’t help but be amazed by Dusty’s work. The maid, who was now changing the linens on Luna’s bed, had turned the otherwise nondescript round table into a work of art. A square white lace tablecloth quartered the dark mahogany and boasted platter upon platter of donuts, fruit, tortes, toast, muffins and eggs. Crystal pitchers formed a rainbow of differently-colored juices set between plain white jugs of milk and what Ender could only assume was cream. Pouring himself a glass of orange juice, Ender found his eyes drawn again to the mountain of food in front of the princess.

 Raising her chin defiantly, Luna preempted any comment. “Stabilizing your subconscious mind has been a drain on even my reserves. I am positively famished,” she said, taking a large bite out of a blueberry muffin.

        “I didn’t say anything,” Ender replied, holding up his hands defensively. The princess only raised an eyebrow in response, chewing through another mouthful of muffin. “And while we’re on the subject, I’ve been meaning to ask you about this… problem.” Seeing that his tone of disbelief elicited a narrow-eyed stare from the princess, Ender immediately changed to a softer approach. “Look,” he said earnestly, “I’m extremely grateful, especially considering the amount of effort you’re making on my behalf.” He waved a hand towards the rapidly shrinking pile of goodies in front of the princess. “But where I come from, bad dreams just aren’t considered an issue. At most, a doctor might prescribe a sleep aid -” he paused, a quizzical glance from the alicorn indicated she didn’t understand something. Was the translation spell not working? With Luna’s mouth full of danish, and no sign of her slowing down, the boy decided to try and elaborate instead of waiting for her to ask the question. “Er… a sleeping drug… medicine?” he tried. That worked; the alicorn nodded her understanding and motioned with a silver-shod hoof for him to continue.

        “My point is, I’ve had nightmares before, and while they’re not pleasant, they’ve never really affected my health. Again, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I think I’ll be fine on my own.” And frankly, I’m not entirely comfortable with the concept of anyone messing around inside my head, especially when I’m not aware of it, he added silently.

        Ender waited through a few moments of silence as Luna swallowed and took a long draught from a glass of milk, nearly emptying it. After daintily wiping her mouth with a silk napkin, she finally responded.

“Please forgive me, I did not realize how very hungry I was until I started.” A light blush touched her ears as she set down the napkin. “As for your concerns…” she trailed off as her eyes unfocused for a few moments while she considered her words, “are you sure that your condition is considered normal? You were comatose when I first brought you here and the reason had nothing to do with your physical health. When I entered your mind, what I saw was no mere nightmare but rather a… a…” she looked down again, trying to put words to her thoughts. “It was like a storm; like your subconscious was trying to tear itself apart.”

        The soldier tried to imagine what Luna described, but found it impossible. He shook his head. “I’m afraid I have no way of answering that,” he told her. “We can’t do what you can. ‘Entering someone’s mind’ is a foreign concept to any human except a few deluded mystics and frauds.” When she gave no response, Ender continued. “All I can say is that, yes, I’ve been having nightmares for over a year now, but they haven’t hurt me so far. Maybe what happened a few days ago was a fluke - I did nearly die, after all.”

        The way Luna described his subconscious triggered a memory that gave Ender pause. While his nightmares had found a sort of consistency after the end of the war, a function of the stress he endured in the last months the conflict, according to the IF shrinks, they hadn’t started then. No, now that he thought of it, hadn’t the worst of the dreams happened right before the war’s end? Then it certainly felt as if his mind was trying to destroy itself. Maybe there was something to what the princess was saying. Ender hesitated to voice these thoughts, though - while he trusted her, he still didn’t want the intrusion into his inmost self.

        “Well,” Luna answered, a look of concern evident on her face, “it goes against my better judgment, but I will respect your wishes. Please promise me, though, that should you regress, you will allow me to do what I can for you.”

        “Of course.” He nodded. “Though maybe you could arrange something other than an endless field of grass? I can only handle so much frolicking in one night,” he added with a smirk.

        Ender narrowly avoided the muffin thrown at him. It bounced off the dressing screen, causing Dusty to squeak and dash after it as it rolled across the bedroom.

        “You hardly frolic, and you should be glad I can muster any kind of dream after what it takes to settle that… malestrom you call a normal subconscious.”

        “Oh?” Ender was genuinely curious. “What do I do, then? Humans don’t always remember their dreams clearly.”

        Luna seemed distant for a moment. “You just sort of sit there, staring into the distance. It is kind of sad actually, most ponies would frolic,” she said quietly.

        A moment passed uncomfortably. What exactly are you supposed to say to that? Ender wondered.

        Clearing his throat, the soldier opted to change the subject. “You know, we never got back to the griffon story yesterday.”

        The princess’ face brightened, both out of relief and genuine curiosity. “Oh! That’s right. You were going to tell me how you drove it away.”

        Ender began to describe his sidearm and flare gun, but when the alicorn’s expression signaled that very few of his words were being properly translated, he went over to his PAC to retrieve them. It was only after he had searched through half its contents that the soldier smacked his forehead.

        “I wanted to show them to you, but I completely forgot,” he said as Luna drew up behind him, “they were knocked away while I was fighting that… what did you call it?”

        “The beast that stung you? A manticore.” She was silent for a moment. “These weapons you lost - how dangerous are they?”

        Ender turned to look up at her. “One wasn’t a weapon. It was a signalling device that will be quite safe without these.” He held up a belt of gyrojet flares. Almost instantly, Luna’s glow enveloped the flares and they floated out of his hand.

        “What are they?” she asked, staring intently at the thin cylinders.

        “Careful!” Ender snatched the belt back, earning a shocked and mildly indignant glance from the princess. The soldier stared back, unflinching. “I don’t know what your magic will do to them, and they burn very, very hot.”

        Luna was abashed. “I am sorry,” she said. Almost instantly, an expression of intense curiosity reasserted itself. “Could you show me?”

        “Not without the flare gun, unless…” he trailed off, glancing around the room. Settling his gaze on Dusty, who was clearing away Luna’s used dishes, he called out to the mare. “Dusty, would you happen to have an ice pick on that trolley of yours?”

        “U-um… of course! I mean, yes. One moment, sir!” Trotting over to her cart, the maid lifted the cloth covering the lower shelves and rummaged around inside. After a moment, she withdrew her head and turned towards Luna and Ender, clenching the utensil in her teeth.

        After taking the ice pick and thanking the maid, Ender withdrew a set of thick work gloves from the PAC and started towards the balcony door. The princess and her maid followed, curious.

        Peering over the side, Ender found a suitably rocky expanse below where the risk of fire would be minimal. Holding the gyrojet loosely in his gloved fist, he positioned the ice pick behind the priming pin. The soldier raised both arms well above his head, checked that both the exhaust and launch path were clear, then turned his head completely away from the flare.

        He jabbed the ice pick into the priming pin. With a whoompf, the flare shot out of the cylinder. Turning back towards the balcony, Ender watched as the magnesium caught and the flare burned brightly, even in the strong light of mid-morning.

        Dusty’s jaw hung loose. “Amazing… it’s like a little firework.”

        “That’s exactly right. It’s just a firework designed to attract attention by burning as brightly as possible,” he replied, causing the gray mare to smile with satisfaction.

        “May I try?” Luna asked. Ender was about to remind her about the unknown effects of her magic when an idea came to him. Instead, he showed her the priming pin on another flare and had her levitate the ice pick into position. The group fired off three more flares with Ender holding the cylinder and Luna and Dusty alternately using the impromptu firing pin to the delight of both ponies.

        The princess’ demeanor grew more somber as the trio re-entered her bedchambers. “While that was enjoyable, Ender, I still need to ask: how dangerous is the other weapon you dropped?”

        The soldier nodded. “I hadn’t forgotten, Lu-your highness,” he added for Dusty’s benefit. “Put simply, it’s very dangerous, especially if handled by someone who doesn’t know what it is or how to operate it. But there’s more to it: I had a second one of these,” Ender motioned towards the silver canister, “and a second sidearm when I first arrived. That one was was knocked out of my hand while fighting the griffon. As best I could tell, it went into the ravine.”

        The dark alicorn looked thoughtful, her eyebrows furrowed. She opened her mouth to speak, but stopped abruptly, turning to face her maid.

        “Dusty, please summon Captain Chaser for me.”

        “Y-Yes ma’am!” The gray maid scurried from the room.

        “Comet Chaser is the captain of my guard,” Luna said by way of explanation, turning back to Ender. “I would like for you explain what these weapons look like, and, to the best of your ability, where you dropped them. I will send a team of my guards to retrieve them so no ponies accidentally come to harm.”

        “I can do better than that,” the boy replied, turning towards his PAC. The alicorn looked on curiously as he withdrew his desk and set it on the partially-cleared table. Curiosity turned to amazement with a small gasp as Ender turned on the data assistant and pulled up a schematic of the standard IF sidearm on the holographic display. Wide-eyed, the princess started to ask a question, but quickly composed herself as Comet Chaser entered the room, trailed by Dusty.

        The Night Guard captain was dressed similarly to the armored ponies Ender had seen outside Luna’s door with the noticeable addition of a crested helmet featuring a tall blue fringe of whisked hair, similar to what a Roman Centurion might wear. The pegasus removed his helmet as he approached Luna, bowing low.

        “How may I serve, princess?”

        Over the next half-hour, Ender explained the purpose and function of his sidearms, and the details of the fights where he lost them. At Comet Chaser’s request, the guard ponies outside Luna’s chambers retrieved scrolls of intricately detailed maps and spread them across the table as it was cleared by Dusty. After Luna identified the location of Ender’s pod, and the direction of the gouge it left in the earth, Ender was able to roughly estimate where the first sidearm went into the gorge. The second was far easier to identify, as the main path into and out of the Everfree was well known.

        Gazing at the location Ender indicated by the San Palomino Desert, Captain Chaser shook his head. “If it went into the gorge, Your Highness, it was probably swept downstream and could be caught anywhere from here,” he indicated the bend in the terrain where Ender fought the griffon, “to here,” he finished, pointing at Froggy Bottom Bog. “We’ll look, but saying this is a needle in a haystack would be generous.”

        “I have full faith and confidence in you and your stallions, Captain Chaser,” the princess replied. “Even so, I would suggest bringing a few unicorns from Celestia’s guard. A spell to locate metal would be helpful in this endeavor.”

        The pegasus nodded. “Of course, Your Highness. I did have one other question, though.” He looked up at Ender. “That… signaling device, isn’t there another one out there? Should we look for it as well?”

The soldier shook his head. “I put it back into the other PAC, and kept the gyrojets from it in that one.” He pointed towards the canister across the room. “I don’t think anyone will find the PAC, and even if they did, I don’t think a pony could open it.”

        Luna looked at him curiously. “Why not, and what happened to the other one?”

        As Ender described how it had saved him from the jaws of the massive snake-like beast, the guard captain’s eyes grew wide. “A Quarray Eel? You, sir, are incredibly lucky.”

        “Is that what it was? Honestly, the only decent view I got was from inside its mouth, and I wasn’t intent on staying there very long.”

        Luna laughed softly, then levitated the PAC over to the table. Waving her hoof over it as she had seen Ender do, she asked, “So is this what you meant by a pony not being able to open it?

        “I think so,” he replied, noting the device’s lack of response. Reaching over, he trailed his hand behind the princess’ hoof, causing the display to activate instantly. “I’m not familiar with its design, but I’m pretty sure it's a capacitive sensor similar to the one in my desk. It’ll only detect an object similar to a hand.” The ponies watched as the display showed no reaction to Luna’s foreleg and winked out after a few seconds of non-activity.

        “I think it will be safe to leave it then,” Luna concluded. “Either there is an eel out there with a horrible case of indigestion, or he spit it out, and it will be somewhere along the river. Captain, retrieve it if possible, but do not worry if it does not turn up.”

“We’ll begin at once.” Comet Chaser bowed again and turned, replacing his helmet as he trotted out. His subordinates quickly retrieved their maps and followed in his wake. In moments, Luna and Ender were alone in the room.

        “It must be nice being royalty,” Ender began, only to turn and find his companion uncomfortably close, staring at him with piercing green eyes. “...er, yes?”

        “What. Is. That?” Luna looked back excitedly at the desk’s holographic display.

        Not quite sure how to interpret her enthusiasm, Ender carefully stepped back and around the table to sit in front of the data tablet. Luna followed close behind, watching intently over his shoulder.

        “It’s called a desk, though I think the term came from what it replaced. How to best describe it… does the word ‘computer’ translate?” The boy looked over at Luna.

        The alicorn wasn’t even looking at him. Wavy starlit hair obscured her face from view as she leaned over his shoulder to peer closely at the device.

        “In a way. I heard the term we use for ethereally powered devices that measure electricity, magical output, or perform basic calculations.” The princess’ horn moved as she cocked her head to the side and looked at the desk from a different angle.

        Ender nodded. “Well, that’s a good start. Desks are powered by electricity, and they perform a number of different functions. Their application is almost limitless, within the bounds of what they can be programmed to do. Primarily though, they’re used to access information from the Grid, and act as control interfaces with other computer systems. For example, when I crashed on your moon, I used this desk to access the escape pod’s systems.”

        “The grid?”

        “It’s a… wow, that’s not a simple concept to explain.” Ender paused for a moment to think. “It’s a means of sharing information universally. I can’t explain how it works, but it lets devices like this communicate with each other, and more importantly, it lets the people operating them do the same. You can share almost anything through it.”

        “Can you show me?” The princess turned back, looking hopeful.

        The soldier shook his head. “I’m afraid not. I haven’t had any kind of connection since arriving here.” He chuckled to himself, “I would have called for help a long time ago if I did.”

        Luna sat back, visibly abashed. “I am sorry - I was not even thinking of-”

        Ender waved a hand in dismissal. “It’s OK, really. As your captain pointed out, I’m lucky to just be standing here - everything else is a bonus.”

        Seeing that his words did little to affect the princess’ expression, Ender turned back to the desk, deftly manipulating the controls.

        “I don’t have much I can show you. I don’t personalize my machine like some people; I rely on access to the Grid instead of storing things locally. However,” he keyed in a final command as the display changed from the pistol schematic to a vibrant landscape, “I do have this. Recognize it?” Ender turned back to watch the alicorn’s reaction.

        A look of wonder returned as Luna gazed into the display. “That’s… that’s your dream! Can this machine enter dreams too? I thought you said your people had no magic.”

        The soldier smiled wryly. “It’s a game, specifically the Fantasy Game or the Mind Game, depending on who you ask. It was the inspiration for the dream you saw.”

        “That was a game?! The snakes and everything?”

        Ender started moving his character through the landscape. “Yes, though you saw only a small part of it. I’d show you more, but without connection to the Batt - well, the rest of the Grid, this local copy will only have the environment, not the other characters or the games themselves.”

        Luna watched as the boy showed her the Giant’s Table, the well, the End of the World, and the castle tower where they had eventually defeated Nightmare Moon and escaped from the dream. She started to ask another question when there was a sharp knock at the door.

        “Come in!” the princess called.

        The broad double doors swung open to admit Dusty, who bowed briefly and trotted over to the table. “Here are the scrolls you requested, Your Highness,” she said as she withdrew a set of parchments from a saddlebag stretched across the back of her frock.

As Luna enveloped the scrolls with her magic and moved to the other side of the table to stretch them out, Ender shut down the desk, grateful for the opportunity to do so without having to explain the International Fleet insignia that popped up right before the display went dark. Powering up from sleep mode had skipped that step when he first retrieved the device to explain his pistol, but there was no avoiding it on shutdown.

        I’ll have to do a little reprogramming when I get the chance. Making a mental note, Ender replaced the desk in his PAC and hefted the canister back to its place on the far side of the room. By the time he returned to the table, Luna had unrolled and arranged several large scrolls across the now bare mahogany.

        “Thank you Dusty, I had completely forgotten with all the excitement this morning. I am going to need some coffee if you would, and perhaps a headache draught later.”

        “A headache, Your Highness? Should I summon Dr. Staff again?” Dusty asked, flabbergasted. Apparently, it was highly unusual for the princess to be unwell.

        “It was a joke, Dusty.” Luna sighed. “Just the coffee, please.”

        “A-at once, ma’am!” The maid tripped over her hooves as she scrambled out of the room.

        Ender watched the pony go in amusement. Turning back to the table, he asked, “What’s all this?”

        Luna didn’t look up from scanning the documents as she replied, “My sister was generous in taking on my workload while you recovered, but there are some burdens I simply do not want to leave to her.” She paused, noticing something that caused her to rearrange the order of two documents. “She carried the entire burden of running Equestria while I was… away, and it is not fair for her to continue to do so while I am here.”

        As the boy rounded the table to peer over the Princess’ shoulders, Luna continued. “Celestia’s techniques when it comes to settling inter-pony conflict are generally hooves-off. Coming from her, a simple reminder about what is truly important in life is enough to nudge even the most obstinate pony towards reconciliation. This problem, however, has proven quite intractable.” The Night Princess gestured to the array of unwound scrolls which now covered the table. “These are a series of complaints that the towns of Appleloosa and Dodge City lodged with the Royal Court. Ever since their founding, the towns have been linked; Appleloosa produces raw goods such as apples and barley, and Dodge City refines, packs and ships those goods to the rest of Equestria. The relationship has been beneficial for both communities; each has supported the other in times of hardship and profited from the other in times of prosperity.”

        “It sounds perfect,” Ender observed. “So what caused all this?” He gestured at the table.

        Luna shook her head. “I don’t know, and strangely enough, neither does my sister. At the beginning of this year, it started with small complaints over seemingly trivial issues like the train schedule between the two towns,” the princess replied as she pointed towards the scrolls at the top-left of the table. Luna moved her hoof to the right and down as she continued to illustrate the conflict. “These complaints escalated to accusations of price fixing and then to outright boycotts of each town’s respective businesses. That is to say nothing of a myriad of  additional complaints concerning issues other than commerce. Celestia has responded with everything from gentle reminders about the principles of kindness and generosity to veiled threats of royal sanction, but nothing has deterred the ponies of these two towns from their bickering. The problem has developed to the point where the rest of Equestria is now suffering from the lack of trade and prices on certain commodities have risen because of it. I offered to take the issue off my sister’s hooves when it began to significantly draw her attention away from the rest of Equestria.”

        Ender sat down next to Luna. “Well, that was certainly kind of you. Have you made any decisions so far?”

        The alicorn sighed. “No, not yet. I took over this problem on the same day my sister received Twilight’s letter about you.” She raised a hoof as Ender began to speak. “Do not even think about apologizing. These stubborn mules brought this situation on their own heads; if they must wait a few days for a royal decree, so be it. Celestia was going to give them a week to think things over before responding anyway.”

        Ender couldn’t help but be intrigued. This seemed like a textbook situation from the courses he had taken immediately prior to his fateful voyage to Earth. The boy had never thought that colonial governorship would come to him as naturally or easily as military leadership had, but the problem-solving aspect was equally stimulating, if not more complex. The problem intrigued him; it had been far too long since he’d used his mind for anything other than pure survival.

“Fair enough. Would you mind if I looked over these with you? I may not be royalty, but I spent a number of months preparing to become a leader of a settlement just like these.”

        Luna waved her hoof dismissively towards the expanse of paper. “Be my guest. Perhaps you can see something my sister and I have missed.” The Night Princess paused. “Although I am curious… are problems like these common among your people?”

        Ender laughed softly, partly at the naivete of the question and partly to give himself time to consider a response. The fact that a ‘reminder about kindness and generosity’ was even considered a state response spoke volumes about the level of conflict normal to Luna and her people, or ponies as it were. Simplicity would be the best way to proceed and avoid difficult topics; the boy did not want to portray himself or his species as monsters.

        “Yes. We have a tendency to first look out for our own interests and the interests of family and close friends. This tribal mindset inevitably leads to disagreement and confrontation with other groups. Collectively, we have a great deal of experience dealing with these problems.”

        To say nothing of how we deal with them, he thought. Ender deflected further questions by pressing ahead.

        “Usually there is some common thread involved in problems like this, some underlying grievance that may go unspoken, but is understood by everyone involved. Tell me, Luna, is there a disagreement between these towns that has gone unresolved? Perhaps there is a old insult, or a even a new one, felt by one side that has never been addressed? The other side may not even be aware of it.”

        The alicorn looked thoughtful. “I cannot think of one, but perhaps it can be found within these documents, or even between the lines.” Luna smiled at the boy. “That is, after all, why I wanted them here. I hoped that by examining the entirety of the problem, a pattern would emerge.”

        After pausing to modify her translation spell so it would allow Ender to read the scrolls, the pair spent many hours pouring over the various grievances leveled by the ponies of Appleloosa and Dodge City at one another. Retrieving his desk, Ender assembled a timeline of the continuing disagreement and added notes and markers when he saw similar issues or themes between incidents. Before long, the points of light denoting incidents began to resemble a long strand of pearls hovering in the air over Luna’s table.

The soldier indulged in the mental stimulation, and he made sure to glean what he could about pony society from Luna’s explanations. Ender was both relieved and troubled to find that his previous intuitions were correct. This was a society almost wholly removed from the day-to-day strifes he considered normal. While interpersonal conflict in Equestria was nearly identical to what he knew of Earth, the socially acceptable responses to these problems were vastly different. Actual violence was abhorred to the extent of not even being considered in normal conversation. Luna’s description of a fight using baked goods was laced with such vehement disapproval that he wasn’t sure she could even comprehend the concept of a real war.

        Intuition, and his natural inclination to privacy had driven Ender to conceal his past before. Now he knew he would never be able to explain it to his hosts. Judging by what he saw, the boy doubted they could even understand the nature of the war that had shaped his life, much less the justification behind it. Hell, even Ender himself still harbored doubts.

        The pair were nearly finished with the massive assortment of scrolls when the sound of flapping wings drew their attention to Luna’s balcony. Silhouetted by the low sunlight, Celestia’s white coat glowed in hues of orange and gold.

        “Good evening, sister. I see you have been busy today.” She stepped forward and nuzzled Luna as the Night Princess rose to greet her. “Any progress?”

        The smaller alicorn turned back to look at him. “Nothing definite yet,” she replied, “but Ender has been an immense help.”

        Celestia smiled at the boy. “Sometimes a fresh perspective can make all the difference.” Looking at Luna, the Sun Princess continued, “Anyhow, I heard you’ve been at it all day and came to see if you’d like to join me for sunset. A break for some fresh air and perhaps a hot meal might help even more than a fresh perspective.”

        At the mention of food, Ender suddenly realized how long it had been since breakfast and his stomach grumbled accordingly. Both royal sisters laughed, though Luna admonished, “If you were hungry, you should have said something! I completely forgot to stop for lunch…”

        “And not for the first time,” Celestia interjected pointedly.

        Luna rolled her eyes and was about to reply when Ender spoke up. “I routinely do the same… it’s the sign of an active mind, right?” He smiled encouragingly as he stood up to stretch. “I could definitely do with a bit of a break - sunset sounds great, especially with the view you have from this tower.”

        The dark alicorn stretched both her wings and neck as she followed her elder sister to the balcony. “It’s a functional design as much as it is an aesthetic one. Powerful as we are, my sister and I prefer a clear view of the sky when performing our primary duties.”

        The perfunctory tone to Luna’s voice piqued Ender’s curiosity. He didn’t think the alicorn was talking about ruling Equestria.

        “Primary duties…?” The boy’s voice trailed off.

        Celestia looked back over her shoulder and smiled. “I raise and lower the sun.” She kept her eyes on his, gauging his reaction.

        “That shouldn’t be possible,” Ender deadpanned.

        The white alicorn took to the air with a laugh. A soft red-orange glow emanated from her horn and spread across her body in a fiery wave as she hovered in the air with her wings outstretched, fully encompassing the distant sun between them. As Celestia drifted, her hair forming a prismatic fan behind her, the orange disk slid smoothly below the horizon. Gracefully, she alighted on the balcony and looked down on the boy with a wicked grin.

        “That should not have been possible,” Ender maintained. His voice was evenly measured, hiding his disbelief.

        Luna, for her part, held a look of genuine curiosity. “Why not?”

        Ender’s eyebrows furrowed as he nodded his head towards the quickly darkening horizon. “Even if your star is substantially different from my own, it has to be more massive than this planet by many orders of magnitude for fusion to take place. There is no way you should be able to move it relative to this planet, magic or not.”

        Neither alicorn made any reply, though Celestia’s grin vanished as she fixed the boy with an inscrutable expression. A moment of uncomfortable silence was broken by Luna’s rich, melodic laughter.

        “Well, Tia, you did say that you’d rather not have him bending and scraping to you like everypony else.”

        The white alicorn rolled her eyes. “That’s true, but I do like the mystique.” She huffed with an air of indignation.

        Looking back and forth between the two sisters, Ender did not quite know what to make of their exchange. “Forgive me, I meant no disrespect… I simply can’t reconcile what I just saw to what I understand of orbital mechanics. Perhaps if you were to explain…?”

        Turning back towards Ender, Luna’s emerald eyes flashed in the gathering dark. “For most ponies, it is enough to say that my sister moves the sun. Few even think to question the notion, and even fewer truly understand the reality of my sister’s job. This world is… oh, which words fit best, sister?”

        “Wave-still?” offered Celestia. Ender shook his head and tapped at his ear, indicating the translation didn’t quite come through. “Ocean-locked?” she tried again.

        “Oh!” Luna exclaimed, drawing the boy’s attention. “Tidally locked. Did that make sense?”

        “Ah,” Ender got it at once. If left to its natural state, one side of Equestria would always face the local star, leaving it to burn while the other side froze.  “You give the planet a push… you keep its rotation going relative to the sun.”

        Celestia’s face brightened instantly. “Exactly! You really do understand. Actually, it’s more of a twist… I anchor my magic to the sun and,” the alicorn made a gesture with two hooves as words failed her, “like so.” She looked over at her sister then back again at Ender. “That was… incredibly fast. It took me nearly a day to explain it to Starswirl, and Twilight refused to believe it until she could confirm everything with her telescope. Do your people do the same thing to your planet?”

        The boy shook his head. “Actually, no… we don’t. I’m surprised you need to.” He looked down, straining to recall a particular memory from his frantic escape to this world. “I’ll admit - I wasn’t playing close attention before I crashed here, but it seemed to me as if your planet orbits at a nearly identical distance to the sun as my own. It shouldn’t be very susceptible to tidal locking.”

        Luna glanced at her sister before speaking up. They shared a meaningful look before the dark alicorn responded. “It used to, but a calamity changed that a long time ago. Perhaps it is a tale for another time; there were other consequences besides Equestria’s day and night cycle.” With that, she turned towards the opposite side of the circular balcony. Ender and Celestia followed in silence and watched the dark alicorn ascend as her sister had done. Silver light swirled from Luna’s horn and spread across her outstretched wings. The world came alive in tones of blue and black as the full moon emerged from the other side of the horizon and completely enveloped the Night Princess’ silhouette within its pale face.

        Instead of returning to the balcony as Celestia had, Luna hovered for a moment before turning to face Ender. “I must alternately speed and slow the moon in its path, else it would crash into us or fly forever into the night. It too was destabilized long ago, and Ponykind has been responsible for it ever since.”

        “I don’t know what to say,” Ender replied honestly. “I can’t fathom the amount of power it takes to spin and move planets.” It was all the boy could do to keep his mouth from hanging open. Ever curious, he wondered aloud, “How long have you been doing this?”

        Each sister gave the other a wan smile. “Long enough,” Celestia replied tiredly.

☽

Dinner was a mercifully casual affair in Celestia’s private dining room. After such a long day dealing with the Appleloosa/Dodge City problem, Luna had no desire to put on the airs required for formal dining in the castle. Celestia had engaged the castle cooks to prepare a wide assortment of dishes for Ender to try in an apparent effort to establish the bounds of his diet, and she doggedly insisted that he sample each one. Luna briefly considered rescuing the boy from his plight, but a full mouth forestalled any questions, and she was still not certain how to explain Discord. While her knowledge of Ender was limited, the Night Princess had seen enough to know that he had an inquisitive mind. To broach one subject was to invite inquiry on any related topic, and she wasn’t sure she knew how to explain her past to one so different.

        And do I even want to? Luna asked herself.

        It was an interesting question, one the princess pondered as she watched the boy grimace his way through one plate after another. At first he kept his expressions muted, but after a while, he couldn’t hide his disgust at some of the stranger recipes. Judging by the look on her sister’s face, there was the distinct possibility that she had allowed a few ridiculous entrees for no other reason than entertainment. Luna made a mental note to inquire about that later.

        The only other pony who knew the entirety of her past was Celestia. Not even Twilight had heard the full story, and it was by no accident that the oldest histories of her people had been allowed to decay into dust. It was a painful subject for the alicorns, and they didn’t want the details taught to schoolfillies for generations.

        It would be nice to share the story with someone who wasn’t her sister. Ender was certainly capable of understanding, and really, what did she have to lose? He would ask eventually; his expression on the balcony when she revealed the effects of Discord’s work said everything. It would be easier to simply tell the truth than it would be to deflect his curiosity or attempt to deceive him.

        “Your Highness,” Ender began rather forcefully, “while I… appreciate your efforts on my behalf, and commend your cooks on their, their… creativity, I can not possibly eat another bite.”

        Celestia’s face drew into a look of disappointment as she replied, but the crinkles around her eyes told Luna a different story.

        Honestly, Tia… you get to step out of your ruler’s shoes for one moment and you turn into a filly playing pranks, the Night Princess groaned inwardly as she watched the exchange between the two. Luna rolled her eyes and resolved to accost her sister later. Oh, Celestia would deny it and play the innocent, but Luna hoped she could at least guilt her into making it up to Ender at some point, and perhaps put a stop to this foalishness.

        Foalishness… the thought made Luna stop short, as the party pushed back their chairs and stood to leave the table. Celestia wasn’t acting like this just to be difficult… she had worn her queenly mask ever since they were foals. The alicorns had been each other’s only outlet when it came to just being themselves for as long as she could remember. A sudden clarity washed over her as she understood her sister’s actions and came to a decision regarding what she should share with this strange newcomer.

        “Ender, would you care to join me for a walk in the sculpture garden? An entire day spent inside has left me with a strong desire for fresh air.” While directing the question to the boy, Luna made sure to catch her sister’s gaze. After a meaningful glance, Celestia nodded subtly, though she wore a concerned expression. 

The human did not respond immediately and judging by his grip on his chair’s back and a hand hovering over his stomach, it was all he could do to keep from being sick. Though the dining room was pleasantly cool, a sheen of sweat had erupted on his forehead.

“Fresh air would be wonderful right about now. Thank you, princess. Urgh.” He immediately brought a hand up to silence what would have been an inglorious belch.

        Celestia’s tinkling laugh attended her departure as the golden aura from her horn encompassed the far doors leading to her quarters. “Good night, you two.” She fixed Luna with an intent stare over her shoulder that undermined her flippant tone. “Have a pleasant walk.”

        As they left through the opposite set of doors, Luna used a stomach calming spell on Ender to alleviate his indigestion. The relief must have been palpable, because the boy stood taller and sighed heavily as the magic took effect.

        “Ugh, thank you. I was almost to the point where I would have welcomed the food poisoning from my days in the forest. At least that clears itself out of your body quickly…”

        Luna would have apologized immediately for her sister’s sense of humor, but she didn’t want to endanger his trust on the off chance the boy had not realized what Celestia had done. Instead, she said simply, “I will take charge of the menu in the future; I feel I have a strong grasp on your preferences.”

        “Thanks.”

        The pair walked in silence down a short corridor and through an archway into the palace gardens. The full moon drifted halfway up the horizon, bathing the otherwise cheerful gardens in a somber palette. The air was comfortably cool, with the barest hint of a breeze.

        Before she began to speak, Luna took a brief moment to consider her words. How does one broach a subject unspoken for centuries?

        “I am sure you are curious about the nature of our world, and why it is… different,” she began.”

        Perhaps it would be best to let him frame the questions.

        The boy nodded. “You seemed reluctant to expand on what you said earlier - I didn’t want to push the subject because it seemed to be very important to you.”

        Luna smiled. “I did not expect the need to do so. Nearly every time my sister and I have had to demonstrate our abilities, the audience has taken it at face value. They are usually too impressed to ask anything.”

        “It must make for a powerful opening to negotiations.” He stopped, suddenly thoughtful. “Are there other nations besides this one?”

        “There are.” Luna stopped to look at him, curious to see how he would take this information.

        “Other pony nations?”

        “No,” the alicorn shook her head. “All ponies are citizens of Equestria; the other nations represent their respective species.”

        “Having one country literally control the ‘sun’ and the moon must make for an interesting power balance,” he noted. Luna did not miss the human’s intonation when he mentioned the sun.

        “It is one that my sister creates very carefully. The illusion of equality is important when it comes to maintaining peaceful relations.”

        The boy looked thoughtful for a moment, then continued along the garden path, scarcely glancing at the statues of ponies on either side of the walkway. “Interesting. Not many would take that approach where I come from.”

        Luna was curious about that and wanted Ender to explain, but she held her tongue, sensing other questions on the way.

        “What I’d really like to know, however, is what caused your world to be like this in the first place. I’ve been thinking about it all through dinner, and the only answers that come to mind would have ended life here quite thoroughly.”

        “You’re not wrong; life almost did come to an end.” She strode ahead of the human, cutting a path through the meandering walkways straight to the center of the garden. “Follow me,” she called over her shoulder.

        After a minute’s walk, Discord’s familiar disjointed shape revealed itself under the moonlight. Illuminated from below by the violet light of newly-installed warding stones, the draconequus’ visage was positively demonic.

        Steady footfalls informed Luna that the human had caught up. Where most ponies would have gasped or commented on what they saw, he merely waited.

        “Nopony has ever questioned the need for ponies to move the sun and the moon - to them it is simply the only reality they have ever known. Even the select few we have informed otherwise have only heard part of the truth. To tell the full story of Discord,” she motioned towards the statue, “is to tell our story, that is, Celestia’s and mine, and it is not a happy one.”

        “Then why tell me?”

        The bluntness of the question took Luna by surprise. She looked back, expecting… what? Some form of challenge? Of antagonism? The alicorn did not know what to expect - nopony would ever say such a thing to a princess.

        But that was the point, was it not? Ender was different - an outsider. Turning back she saw genuine curiosity in his eyes. His was a neutral expression, one that denoted neither contempt nor eagerness. He simply sought to understand.

        Yes… my sister was right.

        “Every living thing on this world owes its existence to my sister and I. Accordingly, we are seen as guardians, guides, and shepherds, but never truly as friends. Over the years, some have ascended and become closer to us, but they have never become like us. Nopony can, because nopony was here before…” Luna trailed off as she looked up at Discord.

        Ender waited quietly.

        “Tia relaxes around you because she innately sees you as something different. You are different because you are not here as a direct result of what she and I created. I don’t think even she understands this, because otherwise she would have said something, but I also believe she is right. We have only been able to truly relate with one another for time immemorial; it is well past time we included someone else, even if it is for a short while.”

        The alicorn took a breath and turned back towards Discord. It would be hard enough to talk about a subject usually buried under millennia of memory; she did not want to have to do so while constantly gauging his reactions.

        “My earliest memories are from The Fall. Only Tia truly remembers what it was like before. In a way, I think I have the easier burden - there is nopony left with whom she can commiserate over what was lost.” Luna’s voice wavered almost imperceptibly as she brought long-neglected thoughts to voice. “Before Discord, the being you see before you, the race of alicorns lived in peace and perfect Harmony for a time longer than even our recorded history. What we have created in Equestria cannot begin to compare with what our forebearers built.”

        She paused, and began to walk in a slow circuit around the statue before continuing. “When I was younger, I often asked my sister to describe it. It was only after I learned how painful it was for her to do so that I stopped. As best as Celestia can remember, the time before was a golden age where every alicorn achieved balance within and without. Lifespans were dictated by an individual’s experience and willingness to move on. Resources were managed to a point where limitations became meaningless. There was no want, no sorrow, no regret… only happiness and enlightenment. Joy was the goal of all, and everypony celebrated its achievement each day.”

        “It sounds like a dream,” Ender said softly.

        Luna resisted the urge to look back at him - she had to press on before she lost her momentum. “It was, and like all dreams, it had to end.”

        The Night Princess steeled herself before continuing. “Even Celestia does not know from where Discord came, and he has never told us. Some of the oldest tomes, before we let them disintegrate, spoke of a grand debate between the masters of the Alicorn Forum. Some believed that for true balance to be achieved, a counterpoint to order must exist. They maintained that it was the struggle for perfection that mattered, not perfection itself. We can only surmise that their side won out, and they either created Discord or welcomed him from wherever he came. We may never know for sure.”

        The alicorn was surprised at how quickly the words came to her, now that she actually thought of those many youthful discussions with her sister. It felt surprisingly good to open up to someone, even if he didn’t have the context to understand everything she said.

        “This was all before I was born, mind you. Celestia says that at first, everything was fine. Discord, a spirit of chaos, began to break up the perfect harmony of our society. The ponies of the time had to work harder to maintain what they had built and consequently, they appreciated it all the more. For the moment, Discord’s existence was an improvement.”

        Luna paused as she reached the other side of the statue. Now Ender was completely hidden from view, and she could look up without the risk of meeting his gaze.

        “But Discord was, and is, insatiable. A little chaos is never enough; he always needs more. He may not have been able to overpower the collective will of the alicorns of old, but he did not have to. Suspicion, jealousy, resentment - these are all the tools of chaos. All he needed was for one alicorn to succumb to his influence. After that, he had the power to start a chain reaction across the whole of pony society. Before long, small differences turned into major disputes, and for the first time in recorded history, the alicorns went to war.”

        Hanging her head, Luna continued her circuit of the statue. “You said you were in awe of our power. Consider this: Celestia and I were never even trained in its proper use. Can you imagine what proficient alicorns could do to one another, and to this world itself?”

        Ender didn’t need to respond. She could hear his sharp intake of breath.

        “The first few centuries after I was born were violent and bloody. My first memories were of Celestia taking me and fleeing as far away from the others as possible. In the end, that is what saved both our lives. When Discord came for us, we knew there were no others left. Rather than fight him directly, and risking him turning us against each other, Celestia flew as far and as fast as she could. I was a mere babe and she was scarcely older than I am now. What hope did we have? Instead, she sought to use the one thing more powerful than either Discord or us.”

        Luna pointed to six runes inscribed around the base of Discord’s statue.

        “Harmony. The single greatest accomplishment of our race. I don’t know the words to even begin to describe it to you, even with the translation spell. Think of… think of virtue made manifest. A physical embodiment of kindness, generosity, loyalty, laughter, honesty, and magic. It was the cornerstone of our society’s perfection and it was immensely powerful. Because it was immune to chaos’s power, and protected anypony nearby, the Capital was one of the first places targeted by Discord. After he caused everypony to flee, he erected a massive magical barrier around the city that prevented their return.”

        Memories flashed through the alicorn’s mind as she continued her walk back towards Ender.

        “Celestia may not have been trained, but she has always been incredibly strong, even for an alicorn. I vividly remember clinging to her back as she forced our way through Discord’s barrier. He may have been howling at us and nipping at our hooves as we broke through the Forum’s ceiling, but Harmony kept him at bay once we crashed into the stone floor. Tia was all but unconscious, but we were safe.”

Luna looked around, but she did not see the sculpture garden. Instead, she stood upon the cracked alabaster stone of the Alicorn Forum and gazed up at the hovering golden artifact that was Harmony. Behind her, Celestia’s ragged breaths reassured the filly that her big sister was still alive. Thunderclaps raged around her as the dome above was torn apart brick by brick. Discord’s slavering teeth flashed between the holes as he snarled in frustration.

        Running back to big sister, Luna took Tia’s pink tail in her muzzle and pulled. “Tia, Tia! He’s coming! You have to wake up,” she cried.

        The gangly white alicorn groaned and slowly pushed Luna away with nose, but the filly was undeterred. “Celestia!!”

        The adolescent groaned again and shakily rolled upright, still not able to get her hooves underneath her. Coughing, she looked up at Luna.

        “It’s… OK… safe here, must...” She sputtered and let her head drop with a sigh.

        With a shriek, Luna turned and dashed madly back toward the central pedestal, hooves scrabbling for purchase the entire way. Almost sliding into the altar, the midnight blue filly made a cursory bow as she gazed up at the spinning golden shape.

        “Please… please save my sister,” she cried. “Please send Discord away, please bring back Mommy and Daddy,” Luna gasped, looked up through tear-stained eyes, “please just MAKE THIS END!”

        Nothing happened. Sharp cracks echoed across the chamber as the beast outside continued to tear away the stones overhead.

        With a cry of frustration, the filly let her head fall. As her tiny horn touched the podium, a blinding white light erupted from the artifact, enveloping both alicorns.

        Luna opened her eyes when the brightness died down enough for her to stand it. She and Celestia were floating on either sides of the pedestal. Their wounds had healed, and all traces of strain and fatigue were gone from big sister. Before their eyes, Harmony shifted and divided, leaving six gray spheres where once there was one glowing rune. Three drifted towards big sister, and three drifted towards her.

        Outside, Discord howled in frustration and redoubled his efforts. Looking back, Luna saw big sister gazing at her, and she knew what it was they had to do. She didn’t know how she knew, but suddenly, it was as if filly had always understood how to use Harmony as a weapon. Both alicorns flared their wings and ascended, turning towards Discord and summoning the power of their fallen race.

        A hand on her shoulder snapped Luna out of her reverie.

        “I..what… oh!” She blinked and looked down at Ender with startled eyes.

        “It’s alright,” he said reassuringly. “I saw it… that’s some trick you have. It’s more powerful than any dream I’ve had - even the one you created when we were running from Nightmare Moon.”

        “That is because it was a memory.” She breathed deeply to let her racing heart slow down. “I did not mean to do that… I just could not help it. I have not spoken of this in - in a very long time.”

        The pair stood in silence for a few minutes. Luna wanted to continue, but she did not know how to start. Fortunately, Ender took the lead.

        “So it was the conflict between the alicorns that upset your world’s rotation and the orbit of your moon?” he prompted.

        “Among other things,” Luna acknowledged. “After it was over, Celestia and I were able to fix much of the damage that had been done, but some of it could not be fixed… it could only be maintained. The sun and the moon were simply the largest of the problems, and it was through working on them that my sister and I got our cutie marks,” she said, looking back at her own flank.

        “I’ve been meaning to ask about that. I thought it was a tattoo or some kind of decoration.”

        The princess chuckled wearily. “One question at a time - that is a whole other topic. I should have thought before mentioning it.”

        Luna continued walking back to where she started in an effort to clear her mind. The boy fell into step beside her.

        “There were other minor issues that needed to be maintained: things like the weather patterns and crop growth were irreversibly damaged. We have since delegated that to the other pony races, but in the beginning we had to do everything.”

        “Where were the other ponies in all this? I can’t imagine them faring well in a war between alicorns,” Ender wondered aloud.

        “I’m getting to that. After defeating Discord, Celestia and I were the only beings left on our world. Fixing everything occupied our attention for centuries, but after a while we began to grow lonely. Creating life was always something theoretically possible for our ancestors - Tia even said that many spoke of it as a next major step for our race. Nopony had ever attempted it though.”

        “So what did you do? It obviously worked.” Ender gestured to the palace and city around them.

        “We left it up to Harmony, or what had become the Elements of Harmony. We prayed for a living world to replace our dead one, and we focused all of our power into the Elements, hoping for them to guide the form and nature of our magic.”

        She paused, the memory of the exertion overwhelming her. “It took far more power than we could have ever imagined. The Elements just kept pulling and pulling - we were so drained by the end of the ordeal that we collapsed into a sleep that lasted for thousands of years.”

        Ender stopped short, surprised. “And everything,” he gestured at the earth below and glanced at the moon above, “kept going while you were comatose?”

        “We were terrified about that as we slipped into unconsciousness. We feared that we would awake to another dead world, or worse, that we would not awake at all. The Elements did not fail us, though. Of the three pony races they created, the unicorns were able to collectively maintain Equestria’s rotation and the moon’s orbit. The pegasi could handle the weather, and the earth ponies could help crops grow and shepherd all the new animals in their annual cycles. Harmony had seen to the balance, though it chose not to create a perfect world as was before. With multiple races and species, there is always conflict and discontent, but my sister and I have worked hard to promote the concepts of Harmony to all. For the most part it has worked. True violence has not been practiced since The Fall and disagreements have been kept to a minimum. That is one reason I find this situation between Appleloosa and Dodge City to be so disconcerting.”

        As she reached the front of Discord’s statue and completed her circuit, Luna looked up and smiled. “It may not be the world into which Celestia and I were born, but it is the one we have made. Maybe our ancestors were right after all, in spite of all the pain brought by chaos. In the end, perhaps striving for perfection is better than achieving it.”

        It hadn’t been an easy subject to broach, but Luna had to admit that she felt better now. Lighter… cleaner, even. The alicorn breathed easier as she turned back towards the castle door. “That may have been more than you expected, but do you now understand why I could not provide a simple explanation?”

        “I do, and I’m honored that you chose to share your story with me.” Ender’s voice sounded distant, causing Luna to slow her pace so that he might catch up. “I just had one more question, if that’s alright.” Turning back, Luna saw that the human hadn’t moved from Discord’s statue, and was instead looking up at the draconequus contemplatively.

        “Of course.” The princess stood still, waiting for her companion.

        Remaining where he was, the human turned and regarded her shrewdly. “The way you looked at this statue… it’s more than just a representation, isn’t it?” By his tone, it wasn’t really a question.

        “You are correct, the Elements of Harmony sealed Discord in stone,” Luna replied.

“Is he alive?” Ender seemed confused. She nodded, not understand the boy’s line of thinking.

        The human looked incredulous. “Why didn’t you destroy him? If he is as powerful as you say, he might escape, and tear apart everything you have created.”

        “Destroy?!” The shock washed over her like a wave. It was the last thing she expected to hear. “I-I-Even if we wanted to, destruction is simply not in the Elements’ nature. How could you even-” She blinked, the concept racing through her mind like an electric shock. On one level, everything about Ender’s words repulsed her. How could she destroy anything, even a creature like Discord? It was simply not the pony way. But on another level it made a perverse sort of sense. When she separated her thought process from the iron-clad prohibition against killing, she saw that it was - logically - the best possible choice. Leaving any avenue for Discord to return was to invite danger back into their world. After all, hadn’t she and her sister just learned that lesson?

        Again, a hand on her shoulder brought Luna back to the here and now. Looking up, she saw an intense look of concern on the human’s face.

“I’m sorry,” he began gravely, “I should have known better than to ask that. From what you just told me, I could have guessed at how your kind perceives life. I was only curious as to how you reconciled the risk of Discord’s return against your values. Please forgive me - I didn’t mean to cause that level of reaction.”

        “It is - no, you are right, actually. He did break free, and for a brief and terrifying period of time, Discord brought chaos back to Equestria.”

        Ender’s eyes widened. Apparently, he hadn’t expected that. “Really?”

        “Yes, the Elements’ new bearers were able to seal him again, but it was a dangerous time, and they nearly failed,” Luna admitted.

        “Even so, your choice to uphold integrity over safety is commendable, and for what it’s worth, I think it was the right one. If you were to kill him, you would invalidate everything your ancestors stood for and undermine everything you have created here.”

        Now it was Luna’s turn to eye him shrewdly. “Then why did you inquire otherwise?”

        “Because I was curious and that can make me an insensitive ass sometimes. I’m sorry.”

        Luna felt it was time to move past apologies, especially when she wasn’t convinced that one was warranted. “Asses in Equestria are known for being stubborn but not insensitive.”

        The boy smiled. “Then I’m glad your spell translated what I said, but not what I meant.”

        This time, Ender followed as she turned towards the castle doors. A comfortable silence surrounded the two until they were nearly out of the garden.

        “Luna,” he began, “out of curiosity, when did Discord escape?”

        “Only a few months ago… why?”

        “Did he, by chance, create rainstorms of chocolate milk?”

        The Night Princess had to think hard to remember the multitude of damage reports that had come in from across Equestria after Twilight and her friends defeated Discord. “Yes, I believe that he did. Oh!” It suddenly occurred to her that Ender was still lost in the Everfree when Discord went on his rampage. Had he been affected?

        Unbelievably, the human started laughing. After registering Luna’s quizzical stare, he got himself under control and said, “Well, you can at least thank Discord for one thing.”

        The alicorn had a hard time imagining herself ever doing so. “...and what is that?”

        “He saved my life.”

☽

        Fatigue caught up with Ender just as he started turning down the quilt on the bed in his new room. Though small, the stone chamber was comfortably appointed with a thickly-stuffed featherbed as well as a dresser, nightstand, and small writing desk. To the left of a tiny hearth, a low door led to a simple washroom. His host had apologized for the pony-sized furniture, and promised replacements in the near future.

        “All I really need is the bed,” Ender had protested, “and it fits me just fine.” But Luna wouldn’t hear of it, and quickly bade him good night.

        She was probably embarrassed about forgetting our discussion from earlier, the boy mused as he settled under the warm bedding and let the heat from the fire wash over him. During their return from the garden, Ender had told the alicorn all he could remember from his time spent lying feverish in the forest she called ‘The Everfree.’ Luna had queried him on a number of details, but afterwards she arrived at the same conclusion: Discord’s chaos had the fortunate side effect of keeping him alive.

        “At least something good came of that nightmare,” she had said as she stepped through her chambers, shrugging off her raiment and levitating it into the waiting hooves of her chambermaid. It was then that the youth had politely enquired about new accommodations.

The alicorn was so surprised that she dropped her tiara, causing poor Dusty to dive after it. The maid was surprisingly nimble; she managed to catch it before it hit the hard floor. To her credit, Luna otherwise maintained her composure. “Of course,” she had replied stiffly, “one moment please.”

The princess had exited swifty, trailed by a bewildered Dusty. The second the doors had closed behind the pair, Ender could hear frantic but unintelligible whispering between Luna, her guards, and the maid. After only a few minutes, Luna had returned alone to escort him to a small door between the entrance to her chambers and the stairway landing.

        It’s probably Dusty’s room, he thought, raising his head momentarily to look at his surroundings. All the furniture was the earth pony’s height, and a room this close to a royal bedchamber should either belong to a servant or else be a lavish guest room. His new quarters’ size and simplicity suggested the former. I wonder where Luna sent her.

        He felt bad for the maid, and resolved to apologize for the inconvenience the next morning. Perhaps he could find a way to work out a more permanent arrangement without calling attention to Luna’s mistake.

        Nothing more came to mind as fatigue overtook him and Ender slipped into oblivion.

☽

        The planet was nothing new. He had seen it countless times in his mind’s eye. Sometimes it held the simulator’s green wireframe outline over the brown smudge of the camera’s static image. Sometimes it appeared in crystal clarity, as if he were drifting in low orbit and looking upon it with his own eyes. Occasionally, Ender even stood on the surface, looking up at the sky as if it were a perverse two-way mirror through the ansible. On the other side, he would always make out his own shadowy reflection.

        Grinning. His face was always grinning.

        And more often than not, there would be a snake’s tail clenched between his teeth.

        Tonight though, was different. Ender knew he was dreaming, and that hadn’t happened since Eros. This time, as he looked down upon the world, there was no bubbling, no plume of debris hurtling out into the void as there had been in every dream before. This time, the world simply fractured and cracked, leaving a spiderweb of bright orange lava etched across its surface. Suddenly, the boy could feel the heat from the rock below and felt pulled towards it. No longer drifting in orbit, Ender felt himself rush impossibly straight down, the rapidly disintegrating atmosphere tearing at his flesh all the way. Through the pain, the boy felt himself gain speed as he was drawn inexorably downward. He couldn’t blink, he couldn’t look away - the surface now occupied his entire field of view as he watched flames dance across it, scorching the land black.

        Magma ripped through the earth in the shape of a skull, and Ender felt his skin burn as it opened its mouth. Between the red-hot teeth was a hollow black chasm that led all the way to the center of the collapsing world.

        If I know I’m dreaming, I should be able to wake up. I always have. He could feel his body lying on the mattress, but to Ender, that was the dream and this was reality. His heart was pounding… painfully so. Was it normal for his pulse to be so fast while asleep?

        The soldier began to feel light-headed as his body continued to heat up.

        Falling even faster, Ender realized he was screaming.

        Why can’t I wake up. I’m screaming here and in real life, why aren’t I awake? The boy felt himself start to slip away as his body plummeted towards the skull’s gaping maw.

        An onyx shape streaked in from the far left of his view. Before he could blink, a set of black wings unfurled and engulfed the boy as he lost consciousness.

☽

        Luna collapsed. Even in the dreamscape, she was breathing heavily. Nothing but darkness surrounded her. In the distance, the vortex of Ender’s subconscious revolved. Its dark green currents were the only feature in this void.

        Never again, she resolved, he stays under the horn until I fix this. I was almost too late.

        “Too late for what?” a voice asked.

        “His mind almost tore itself apart! If I-” The Night Princess cut herself off as a chill ran down her spine. She sprang to her hooves, whirling to face the newcomer.

        “You!! You’re the one responsible for this!” She charged her horn, ready to attack.

        Nightmare Moon’s form wavered in the half-light as she stepped from the gloom.

        “Careful now,” she scoffed, snorting derisively at the smaller alicorn, “you wouldn’t want to hurt your little pet… or yourself.”

        “The only one I’m going to hurt is you.” The void seemed to grow even darker as Luna gathered her strength. She kept her eyes trained on her adversary as she side-stepped slowly and lowered her horn.

        “How? Celestia’s little brats already did away with me.” The flickering visage cast its head to the side and laughed bitterly. “What was that you said? ‘Destruction is simply not in the Elements’ nature?’ I might beg to differ, child.”

        Luna released her power, stunned. The thought that Nightmare Moon had been killed had never occurred to her. She blinked, trying to muster some kind of response.

        “Then how am I talking to you now?”

        Nightmare Moon only laughed. This time it was throaty and mocking.

        “You’re not talking to me. You’re talking to yourself, you little foal.”

        Luna snarled. “You are nothing like me.”

        “Oh, is that so?” She looked down at the smaller alicorn. “You created me after all, didn’t you? How could I have ever been more than the sum of your parts.”

        The Night Princess had no answer for that.

        “No clever response? I should have expected as much. After all, I wouldn’t be here if you could figure it out on your own.”

        “Figure what out?” Luna replied indignantly.

        Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes and strode towards the vortex in the distance. Without much of a choice, the smaller alicorn turned to follow.

        Luna’s mind worked frantically as she traversed Ender’s dreamscape. As the two ponies approached the maelstrom, the tumblers began to click in her mind.

        Inspiration often strikes the sleeping mind. I should know - I have helped countless ponies solve problems in their dreams. Could this be my subconscious speaking?

        Wind tugged at her mane as she drew closer to the base of the whirlwind. Gritting her teeth, Luna pressed ahead, struggling to keep up with the ethereal alicorn in front of her. Despite her larger size, Nightmare Moon didn’t seem to be affected in the slightest. When they reached the epicenter, the black alicorn looked back and shouted over the wind to be heard.

        “Your pet comes from a non-magical race. Why are you having such a difficult time controlling his dreams? It should be effortless for you.” She sneered.

        Some help she is. The young alicorn had no idea; she had been wrestling with that very question for the past two days. “I don’t know!” Luna yelled back, the vortex ripping the words away from her. “The doctors found him resistant to all forms of magic. Perhaps my difficulties are a function of-”

        “Oh please!” Nightmare cut her off. “You have more power in your left hooves than every unicorn in the realm combined. A little ‘magic resistance’ doesn’t mean anything. Think, filly.”

        Luna did her best not to bristle at Nightmare’s - or was it her own? - tone. An idea tugged at the back of her mind. Experimentally, the Night Princess pushed against the vortex with her magic.

        Something about it felt very familiar. The idea began sparking with life.

        “The only pony as powerful as I am with dream magic…” Luna’s eyes widened. “Is me.”

        With a triumphant toss of her head, Nightmare Moon reared up and plunged her front hooves into the floor of the dreamscape. It shattered like black glass and revealed a glowing cobalt mass of stone directly below the vortex.

        The young alicorn was dumbfounded. “How is that possible?”

        “How?” Nightmare responded. “How else could a portion of your power have become embedded in another mind?”

        Luna’s voice came in a whisper as realization dawned. “I put it there. It must have happened when I split the dream back then, back when I was running from…” she trailed off, looking up.

        “...you.”

        But Nightmare Moon was gone.

        Had she ever been there?

        Luna turned back towards the glowing mass and, with a sinking heart, began to understand the full extent of the problem. Snippets of her conversations with Ender slid through her mind, and suddenly all the pieces fell together.

        He said he had been having nightmares for quite some time, but that they were never this bad. It is no wonder: whatever had been troubling his subconscious became inestimably stronger after I supplied it with even a portion of my power over dreams. It must have lay dormant since then, otherwise I doubt he would have survived all those months… but why has it flared up now?

        The answer hit her even as she considered the question.

        My magic… first when I teleported him, then even more so when I infused the translation spell. I may have well given his inner mind a roadmap for how to use my power… and now it is wreaking havoc upon itself.

        But why? That was a question Luna could not answer. Never before had she seen a psyche so self-destructive. Maybe it was just a characteristic of his race?

        No matter. Luna leaned down and touched her horn to the cobalt stone, preparing a spell to to re-absorb her magic and put an end to this once and for all. But, instead of feeling an influx of power, the Night Princess felt the entire dreamscape shudder around her as she attempted the retrieval.

        The alicorn’s eyes flew open. This was not right… why was her magic not returning? Heedless of the vortex swirling above, she dropped down to the stone below to get a closer look. As she neared the edges of the mass, the problem revealed itself to her. Black tendrils snaked around and through the stone, firmly anchoring it to the dreamscape.

        His psyche has grown into it somehow… maybe a defensive reaction? Luna was treading unknown ground here. Were this a pony mind, her power would have sat untouched until she saw fit to retrieve it, but the human’s brain was something else entirely.

        Pacing across the glowing expanse, the alicorn’s mind raced. She needed to do something, lest the problem worsen from her inaction.

        What if I tried a slower process - drawing it out a bit at a time instead of trying to reclaim all my power at once?

        Luna’s horn flared as she readied herself for this second approach. This time as she touched her horn to the luminescent rock, she felt a small but steady influx of magic.

        Yes! Relief flooded over her… at least there was a workable solution.

        Four hours later, the alicorn was not nearly so happy with the process. It was like trying to pull the ocean through a straw, and every time she tried to increase the flow beyond a certain point, she felt the same strong pull against her. Luna had made progress, though, and now the vortex above her was noticeably weaker.

        Exhausted, the Night Princess sat back and prepared to exit the dreamscape. It would take quite a while to reclaim all that she had left inside Ender, but at least she had a path forward.

        Now she just had to figure out a way to explain it to the him...

☽

        When he finally awoke, Luna saw that the human was visibly shaken. Silent, save a muttered ‘good morning,’ Ender never even commented about being moved. It wasn’t until breakfast, another in-room affair meticulously set by Dusty, that he broached the subject.

        “What’s wrong with me?” His flat face was etched with a harrowed look as he clutched a mug of coffee.

        The Night Princess took a deep breath. She was not looking forward to his reaction.

        It took her quite a while to explain. Where he had before casually accepted the effects of magic, Ender was now keenly interested in its inner workings. Luna was unsurprised, given the circumstances. The problem was that while he had a quick mind, and seemed to pick up new concepts at an startling rate, the vocabulary of his language simply did not cover what she needed to tell him. On this subject, her translation spell was barely functional. The alicorn had to make do with the broadest of terms, and even then she had to frequently resort to directly projecting mental images to the human. 

        In the end, they reached a tolerable understanding. Ender was not happy about the process, but comprehended more or less why it needed to be done. Luna wished she could answer his most pressing question of how long it would take, but the truth was that she didn’t know. The magic she left inside him may have been unnoticable to her, but even that small amount of her total power was immense, and could take weeks to retrieve at the rate to which she was limited.

        Dusty’s arrival with the Appleloosa/Dodge City scrolls provided a welcome distraction. Ender offered to help again, and with the aid of his ingenious little device, it took only minutes to pick up from where they left off the previous day. After a couple hours, the events of the previous night were all but forgotten as Ender and Luna stared up at a constellation of points hovering in the air.

        “So this is everything?” Ender asked, rotating the display to and fro, examining it from all angles. One axis represented time, another severity. Two bands of incidents drifted side-by-side: one represented reports from Appleloosa, and the other from Dodge City.

        Luna glanced down momentarily at the table. “That was the last scroll… unless something new shows up in the post today.” The princess glanced at the door, wondering if she was tempting fate.

        The human waved his hand, and lines of text appeared next to each dot. That had been a problem all of its own. While it was relatively easy for Luna to modify the translation spell to allow Ender to read Equine, the reverse turned out to be far more difficult, much to the alicorn’s annoyance. Even now, she had to strain to understand what she was reading.

        “I’ve looked at it every way I can, Luna… and I just don’t see a pattern.” Another wave of his hand color-coded various lines of text, indicating where different factors such as land, trade practices, prices, and even personal relationships contributed to a particular grievance. “If it was one or two groups of ponies that kept cropping up, or a common issue like transportation, we would have something to go on. When you first described the situation yesterday, I had my money on… well, money. But even though most of these complaints are trade-related,” he gestured, removing all the points but the ones with green tags, “there is no common industry or related political issue to connect them.”

        Luna found the human’s color choice for the money issues interesting; she would have chosen gold. The alicorn made a mental note to ask Ender how trade worked for his people.

“There’s also the possibility that the reason we’re seeing so many trade disputes is that it’s easier for them to be elevated to your royal court.” Another wave brought back the other colors and took away the green. “There might be more of these problems that we don’t see because they were kept at the mayor’s level or…” he trailed off. “Do you have another level of government above that?”

The Night Princess shook her head as she stepped forward to gaze into the display, hoping that somewhere a pattern would emerge. She had to give the human credit - this method was an excellent way to analyze a systemic problem. With a little work, Luna was confident she could duplicate the process with her magic.

        Maybe Tia would find this useful.

        “Are you sure that your peo - rather, ponies don’t have feuds,” Ender asked, interrupting her reverie. “That is still the only thing I can think of which would create all this.”

        “Not in the way that you described. Ponies would never harbor that kind of resentment for one year, much less a hundred.” The term, as the human meant it, had not even translated properly the first time and had required extra explanation. “Besides, the… disagreements you described occurred between two families.” Luna pointed with a hoof towards the red text denoting relationships. “There are no consistent ties here.”

        Ender opened his mouth to speak, but stopped suddenly. The princess looked on curiously as he seemed to carefully consider his words.

        “What about a rivalry?” He paused to make sure she understood the term. “It’s not unknown among my kind for two nearby cities to have a simultaneously competitive and contentious relationship.” The boy pointed at a map of Equestria resting not far from his device. “Has this happened before between other communities?”

        Luna shook her head again. “There are many kinds of rivalries across Equestria, and they are merely harmless fun. This is antagonistic, and dare I say… vindictive.”

        Ender had nothing to say to that. They both turned back towards the display, looking at it quietly for a few moments.

        “Then the only conclusion I can make,” the boy started, turning towards Luna, “is that we don’t have enough information.”

        She nodded. “I agree. I also think you were right regarding the types of issues that rise to our level. They mayors of both towns have been summoned to the castle multiple times because of this ongoing problem - I do not think they will be any more forthcoming with the details we need. Perhaps it is time to send an investigator on behalf of the court.”

        The human remained silent, but something about his expression told Luna that he didn’t quite agree.

        “What is it?” she asked.

        “Were I in your shoes, princess, I would go myself, rather than send a proxy. No matter how objective someone else may think they are, they will always filter information according to their own biases and perception. In the worst case, you might send someone… er, somepony looking to advance their own career. If somepony only tells you what they think you want to hear, that might be worse than if you hadn’t sent any...pony at all.”

        Luna almost laughed at his continual struggle with pronouns, even as she considered his words. It was endearing that he tried to adopt her own convention over his, even though he consistently failed at it.

        Could I really go? Ender has a point, but he does not understand how I am perceived. What would the poor townsfolk do if I just showed up one day and started asking questions? What would Celestia do in my place?

        Of course, Celestia would tell her to go, but not for the purpose of actually solving the problem. Her elder sister still wanted Luna to try mingling with the populace again after the debacle that was Nightmare Night in Ponyville.

        She looked down at Ender. There was merit to the idea; what better way to get information than to go to its source? It was worth further consideration.

        “My sister and I do not normally make a habit of dropping into communities for anything other than major holidays or pre-announced state visits, but I like the idea. I shall have to give it some thought.”

        The human genuinely smiled for the first time that day. “Well, if that’s all we can do for the moment, I would love to get outside for a while.” He looked around her bedchamber. “As lovely as this room is, it feels as if I’ve been stuck in here forever.”

☽

        Crisp air wiped away what little traces of open-sky vertigo Ender felt as he walked along the rooftop terrace. To his left sprawled a wider version of the breathtaking vista seen from Luna’s balcony. Now that nothing blocked his view to the north, Ender spied a staggering set of mountains that rose sharply from an otherwise unremarkable plain. Luna informed him that they were called the “Crystal Mountains,” and that they shouldered high glaciers locked in a perpetual winter. Impressive as they were, what truly amazed the soldier was the impossible formation of clouds hovering high over the plain.

        “It looks… I know this sounds crazy, but it looks like a city,” he said, looking back at his host.

        “It is. That is Cloudsdale, home of the pegasi.”

        He remembered the bat-like wings on the guards outside Luna’s door, and the feathery wings of Celestia’s soldiers. Looking back, he thought he could see black specks flickering around the massive cloud formation.

        “So they live up there? Don’t their wings ever get tired?”

        The princess looked confused for a moment until her face lit up in understanding. “I could explain, but I think it would just be easier to show you.”

        With that, the alicorn spread her wings and surged into the air, buffeting Ender briefly with the force of her departure. He watched, intrigued, as she sped towards a nearby cloud and pushed it back towards the terrace. Instead of landing, she settled onto the cloud as it neared the boy.

        At first, the soldier didn’t quite understand what he was seeing, but it clicked into place when he realized that Luna was not using her magic or her wings to stay aloft. “You can sit on clouds!” he observed. It was just like the cloud that always caught him at the End of the World.

        She smiled. “Or stand. Pegasi can also move them, shape them, and create weather with them.” She tapped the cloud, causing a little bit of rain to fall onto the marble walkway.

        “Pegasi and alicorns.” Ender raised an eyebrow.

        “Alicorns as well, naturally.” The princess rolled her eyes as she hopped off the cloud, pushing it towards Ender in the process. It passed around him, dampening his clothes and matting his hair. His brow furrowed as he gave her a look.

        Luna couldn’t help but laugh. “Sorry! I thought it would bounce off you like a pillow. That is the way I shaped it…”

        Wiping his eyes, the boy replied, “Well, it felt pretty much like any cloud where I come from - just a bunch of water vapor.”

        “Here, let me get that.” She enveloped him in a drying aura and within seconds had evaporated most of the excess moisture. “Sorry - I forgot that magic does not always work with you in the way that it should.”

        Ender remembered their conversation from earlier regarding his dreams. “Any further thoughts as to why that is?”

        “No,” Luna replied, “though I do have an idea. There is one pony I could task who excels in magical research. If anyone can find the answer, she can.”

        The pair spent the rest of the afternoon traversing the castle’s rooftop walkways. Ender found the palace gardens to be exceptionally beautiful. When he asked if they could go down to see the animals more closely, Luna responded with a sad smile and a shake of her head.

        “I’m sorry, Ender, but my sister does not think the time is right to expose you to the populace at large. At least… not to the general public that is present right now. The castle is mostly open to the city on a day-to-day basis. That is why I only brought you to the statue garden at night. I could,” she added upon seeing his expression, “close the gardens to the public for today so we could admire them unmolested.”

        He shook his head and laughed softly. “No, it’s alright. That’s generous of you, but I can always come back later. I wouldn’t want the children to be deprived of their field trip.” He nodded towards a group of young ponies entering below with a bedraggled teacher trying to keep them in order.

        As the sun dipped low in the sky, Luna led Ender back towards the main halls of the castle. They came upon a massive glass-enclosed hall which opened into a formal courtyard. The Night Princess seemed surprised to see her sister standing on the roof of the hall, looking over the wall at the ponies below.

        “Good evening, sister,” Luna said formally, “did you come here to lower the sun?”

        Holding a hoof up to her lips, Celestia motioned for quiet and gestured below. Peering over the edge, Ender could see a wide array of ponies, mostly unicorns, wearing fancy clothing and talking quietly in groups. Over the breeze drifted melodic classical music played by a string quartet on the far side of the courtyard. To the right, a group of stallions played croquet.

        It was the most ridiculous thing he had ever witnessed, but Ender controlled his laughter.

        Luna, apparently, was not impressed. She huffed in exasperation. “Tia, is there a reason why you are spying on the Canterlot Garden Party? Shouldn’t you be down there, I don’t know… mingling?”

        The Sun Princess only grinned and motioned behind her. Turning around, Ender peered through the angled glass roof of an immense banquet hall. Below, in a space designed for hundreds, six ponies were clustered around what looked like a fondue pot, dipping all sorts of goodies in the liquid chocolate. The regally-appointed ballroom had been strewn with confetti, present wrappers, a broken pinata, and… was that cake smeared all over the floor? It looked like a six-year-old’s birthday party run rampant.

        A strange feeling washed over the boy as he realized that his sixth birthday party was the last he had ever celebrated. Had there been a party? Now that he thought of it, Ender could barely remember anything outside of Valentine’s cake. It had been a disaster - no one knew how to cook anymore, let alone bake - but he had treasured it all the same. It may have fallen in the oven and burnt a tiny bit, but it was from his sister. That’s what had mattered.

        He was pulled back to the present by fierce whispering between the royal sisters.

        “...give me that look,” Luna was saying, “it’s creepy. Why are you not with them? This is Twilight’s birthday party after all.”

        “She’ll be having a private celebration with her family later. I plan to make an appearance there,” Celestia chided. “Besides, watch.” The older alicorn pointed down through the glass.

        Following her hoof, Ender saw a unicorn he knew. Though the wide-brimmed hat made her difficult to recognize from above, the violet mane and tail, followed later by the voice drifting up through the glass, clearly marked her as Rarity. As he watched from above, the fashion designer quickly dashed through the doors, only to reappear outside in the courtyard with the other unicorns. After a minute or two, she would create a distraction, then sprint back inside to rejoin the other party.

        “What’s going on?” asked Luna suspiciously.

        Celestia gave a cryptic smile. “I think she’s learning a valuable lesson about friendship.”

        The boy didn’t quite know what to make of the exchange, but he looked on as the unicorn madly tried to go back and forth between the two events. Before long, her friends seemed to catch on and decided to join the larger party with her.

        Though he was still grasping the basics of pony body language, Rarity’s reaction was crystal clear. She tiptoed out into the larger group, subtly distancing herself from the other five ponies. Within moments, Ender saw why. Each proceeded to disrupt the quiet affair. Though they weren’t malicious, it was clear that none of them had ever been around the pony version of high society. The boy even had to duck as a violently thrown croquet mallet nearly took off his head; only Celestia’s magic kept it from breaking the glass ceiling behind him.

        Things changed as a stallion started speaking to one of Rarity’s friends. The white unicorn dashed to his side, attempting to divert his attention. It didn’t work, and while Ender couldn’t hear the words being said, he could see that the situation was coming to a head as the refined unicorns started gathering on one side while leaving the smaller party on the other. Rarity was caught in between.

        Status or loyalty? He wasn’t sure that was the choice presented, but it certainly looked that way. Had Celestia engineered these events?

        A gasp of shock erupted from the unicorns as Rarity walked towards her friends. The stallion began to speak, his voice overriding the murmurs of the crowd as he stepped towards the smaller group. Though he never accosted the rest, at least it didn’t look that way to Ender, it seemed as if he was shaming them for their derision of the others.

        Suddenly, Ender understood how the relatively minor problems of the Appleloosa/Dodge City conflict could seem so important to the princesses. At first he had passed the notion off as the rose-colored perspective of royalty, but this really was a society that strove towards interpersonal harmony.

        “Your work, sister?” asked Luna.

        “I may have had a hoof in it, but Rarity and her friends made the right choices when it mattered.” Celestia smiled. Turning towards Ender, she asked, “Did you still want to meet the pony who rescued you?”

        He nodded.

        “I’ll see what I can arrange. Would your quarters suffice, Luna? I believe that crowd will be around for quite some time.”

        “Of course, sister,” the Night Princess said absentmindedly as she continued to watch the party below.

☽

        Dusty had arranged a light dinner by the time Ender and Luna got back to the room. She looked up anxiously as they entered and scurried to greet the princess.

        “Good evening, Your Highness!” She bowed respectfully as the alicorn passed.

        “Good evening, Dusty. Would you set out four extra places at the table? We may have guests.”

        “At once, ma’am!”

        Luna turned to Ender, inclining her head slightly. “Please excuse me, I must attend to the moon.”

        The boy nodded. “Of course.”

        As the princess departed through the balcony door, Ender moved towards Dusty’s trolley. He had been meaning to speak with her all day, and Luna’s absence gave him the perfect opportunity.

        The maid squeaked in surprise as he leaned down to help her set the table, but otherwise gave no protest. He mimicked her actions to ensure that his place settings were correct - it wouldn’t do if she was reprimanded for his mistakes.

        “I’ve been meaning to thank you, Dusty,” he began as she put the finishing touches on the last pieces of silverware.

        The mare’s eyes widened as she looked up at him. “F-for what, sir?”

        Ender smiled, doing his best to put her at ease, though he strongly suspected that nothing truly relaxed the maid. “For giving up your room for me last night. It must have been such a sudden inconvenience.”

        Dusty panicked, her mouth opening and closing rapidly as she glanced towards the balcony door. “Uhh… er… that is…”

        She was probably told not to reveal what happened, he thought.

        The boy winked. “It’s OK, the princess doesn’t have to know that I know. I just wanted to say I appreciated it - it was very kind of you.”

        The earth pony lowered her head shyly and blushed. “T-thank you. Did… did you sleep alright? I saw you were back in here this morning. My bed wasn’t too small, w-was it?” She looked him up and down, as if only just realizing how tall he was in comparison.

        Ender laughed softly. “Your bed was perfect, thank you. The problem is with my dreams. That’s why the princess has been attending to me.”

        Dusty grinned brightly. “Well, you couldn’t be in better hooves… Princess Luna is the-”

        She was cut off by a swell of voices coming from the stairs. Though the door to Luna’s bedchambers was thick, the amplifying effects of the stone stairwell seemed to carry the conversation through the wood as if it wasn’t there.

        “I don’t understand,” a brassy voice began, “why do we have to come up here on our own? Why were Twilight and Rarity sent away?”

        “They weren’t sent away, silly! Rarity wanted to go write a letter to the Princess!” answered another pony in a high lilt.

        “...and Twilight had to go to her family’s private party. I wouldn’t want her to miss that…” Ender could barely hear the next voice.

        “But the guards said said this was important, a summons by the princess herself! When do we ever do anything important without Twilight?!” the first pony practically shouted.

        “Will you pipe down Rainbow?” a fourth voice cut in. Ender barely registered the name as he was still trying to make sure he heard properly. The translation spell was excellent at injecting tone and dialect into the words he heard, but this was the first time he had detected an accent. The decidedly Southern voice continued, “Can’t you see we’re in the residential wing of the palace, and I don’t think we’re going to Princess Celestia’s room.”

        Gasps followed the proclamation along with what sounded like a squeak.

        One of the ponies swallowed hard. “I think you’re right AJ. Those are night guards… you think we’re in trouble?”

        “Girls, they’rerightthereIthinktheycanhearyou…” the quiet pony muttered.

        There were a few moments of silence. Ender looked at Dusty. The maid only shrugged in return.

        Suddenly, the high voice piped up, louder than the rest. “Well, what are you scaredy-ponies waiting for?!” The doors banged opened as a bright pink earth pony charged in, making Dusty jump and stumble into her service trolley. “HI PRINCESS LUNA!” she called, “How have you been?! Did you eat all your Nightmare Night candy yet? Weren’t those Fizzleby Firepops just the greatest? I bought them fr-”

        An orange blur shot from the door and tackled the earth pony. When the bodies came to a rest by Ender’s feet, he could make out another earth pony firmly clamping a cowboy hat over the mouth of the first. “Darn it, Pinkie! Ya can’t just barge into the princess’ room like that,” drawled the Southern voice, apparently belonging to the orange pony. “Yer lucky that them guards didn’t grab you first!”

        Ender glanced up at Luna’s door guards. He guessed that they had been warned about these ponies; the two hadn’t moved a muscle.

        A pegasus entered from behind the other two. Judging by her mane, this had to be Rainbow. As she hovered in mid-air, her violet eyes scanned the room in a matter of seconds, widening as they fell on Ender.

        “Oh, it’s the creature! Uh… wow… you’re so much taller when you’re not all injured and stuff. Umm…” She looked around, suddenly unsure. “Can you even understand me?” She swooped closer, stopping in mid-air right in front of the boy as she looked him up one side and down the other. Ender stayed still and silent, curious to see what would happen. The pegasus looked directly at him and started speaking with exaggerated slowness. “Heeelllloooo, mmmyyyyyyy naaaaaaammmmmme iiiiiis Raaaaaaaiiiinbooooowww Daaaaaash.” She pointed dramatically to herself.

        Ender smiled. “I can understand you just fine.”

        The pegasus shot backwards in a flash. “Then why didn’t you just say so! You made me look like an idiot!” she said accusingly.

        “He don’t need to do anything for that, Rainbow.” The orange pony drew up next to him, hat now squarely back on her head. “Hi there! Name’s Applejack… sorry about her,” she jerked her head towards the blue pegasus who stuck her tongue out in return, “but she ain’t exactly Miss Manners.” Suddenly, the mare’s eyes widened as she glimpsed something behind Ender. “PINKIE! Get out of there! Those belong to the princess!”

        Turning around, Ender saw the pink pony removing pastries from the service trolley. Dusty was frantically trying to take them back, but the thief was just too quick. As soon as the maid reached for one, Pinkie would toss it into the air and snatch it with her mouth, wolfing the goodie down in one bite. She stopped, pouting at her friend’s rebuke. “Awww, you’re no fun! I bet the princess wouldn’t mind if we had some - they’re so good!” She tried to reach for another dessert, but Dusty smacked her hoof away.

        “I would not mind at all, Pinkie Pie,” Luna’s voice carried from the balcony door, “in fact, I wanted to invite you all to eat with us.” Ender turned to see his host closing the door with her magic as she stepped inside.

        Looking back, he saw all three newcomers bowing low to the princess.

        “Please, rise my friends. There is no need to do that here.”

        Striding towards them, Luna inclined her head to each in turn. “Ender, may I introduce Applejack,” the orange earth pony nodded, tipping her hat with a hoof, “Rainbow Dash,” the blue pegasus grinned and waved, “and Pinkie Pie.”

        “Hi!” the other earth pony said as she bounced toward him. She continued bouncing, adding a few new words each time she came up to eye level. “It’s… nice… to meet… you!... I… couldn’t… say… hi… the last time… ‘cause… you were… asleep… so... hi!”

        The bouncing suddenly stopped as both Rainbow and Applejack dragged her away before she collided with him. Turning back to Luna, Ender noticed her looking toward the door.

        “And the pegasus over there is the one who saved you. Ender, I would like you to meet Fluttershy.”

        At first, he couldn’t see her, but then the pony moved, separating herself from the silhouette of a vase against the wall. Ender saw that she had a yellow coat and an extraordinarily long pink mane that hid much of her face as she walked slowly toward him. She came to a stop some distance away and glanced up at him through her mane with a single visible blue eye.

        The pegasus muttered something and looked away quickly, hiding behind her mane.

        Fluttershy, well… she’s aptly named, Ender thought. Battle Schoolers were notoriously Type-A personalities, so he didn’t have that much experience with shyness, but he resolved to try. From what Luna and the doctors told him, he owed everything to this little pony.

        The soldier knelt down, making himself as small as possible. He smiled broadly, and held out a hand to the pegasus.

        “Hello Fluttershy, I’m Ender. It’s nice to finally meet you… they tell me it was you who pulled me out of the woods,” he offered.

        She looked up, then down, surprised to see that he had moved down to her level. Tentatively, she extended a foreleg to his hand and let him grasp it.

        “I… I found you by the stream… you came out of the woods on your own,” she replied softly.

        Well, at least that’s something. “And I was very lucky that I stumbled upon your cottage; I couldn’t have gone another step, and if you weren’t there to nurse me back to health, well… that would have been it for me.”

        The pegasus beamed and blushed, clearly not accustomed to direct praise.

        “So thank you, and if there’s ever anything I can do for you, please… let me know.” He released her hoof and stood, stepping back to get out of her personal space as quickly as possible. To Ender’s surprise, Fluttershy stepped forward, then pushed off the ground to hover in front of him.

        “So… um… are you feeling better?” she asked, looking him up one side and down the other. “You were so still after we patched you up… I wasn’t sure if you would make it.”

        The boy smiled softly, a little surprised by her quick change in demeanor. “I’m feeling just fine.” He lifted his fatigues, showing the bandages. “The palace’s top doctor himself said he could not have done a better job.” Ender didn’t think it prudent to mention the rest of his health issues. 

        The display drew the attention of the other pegasus in the room. Joining her comrade, Rainbow Dash asked, “So you really went one-on-one with a manticore? You must either be really crazy or really tough, mister.”

        Ender laughed. “Considering your friend had to put me back together, it’s probably Option A. Besides, I’ve been called crazy a few times in my life.”

        Luna took the opportunity to herd the group towards the table. “Crazy or not, I’m sure Ender is starving… we haven’t eaten since early this morning. I won’t have all of Miss Fluttershy’s hard work going to waste just because I can’t keep him fed.” She winked at the pegasus, who blushed and smiled shyly in return.

        At the mention of food, both Applejack and Rainbow Dash turned a little green.

        “Uhh, beggin pardon, Your Highness… we really don’t want to be rude, but we just ate a whole lot of cake, fondue, and other stuff at Twi’s birthday party. I don’t know if we could handle dinner right now,” the orange pony said, glancing off to the side.

        “Speak for yourself!” Pinkie’s voice was muffled by a mouthful of cake as she sat munching on a slice while Dusty looked on in horror. Somehow, she had managed to seat herself inside the lower compartment of the maid’s trolley… how, Ender couldn’t begin to guess.

        Fluttershy gave the pink pony a look that apparently meant business, because she quickly vacated her perch, leaving a trail of frosting in her wake. Dusty sank to her knees as she watched it smear across the previously pristine bedchamber.

        The Night Princess merely shook her head. “That is quite alright, Miss Applejack. Perhaps we could host you for brunch tomorrow morning? That way, the rest of your friends could join us before you return home.”

        Applejack grinned broadly. “That’s a great idea, Your Highness! We’d be honored, right girls?”

        “Right!” the pegasi agreed. Dash glanced furtively over her shoulder. “Um… I think we’d better catch up with Pinkie before she manages to steal Princess Celestia’s cake too.”

        Considering how both of the other ponies paled at the thought, Ender surmised that it was a distinct possibility. Luna seemed to give it serious thought. “My sister does have quite the sweet tooth, and I do know she is not happy when she is deprived of her desserts. I think that would be wise, Miss Dash.”

        The ponies glanced at each other momentarily, then took off. Only Fluttershy paused and turned back before leaving. “Goodbye Princess Luna… and goodbye Mr. Ali - I mean, Ender. It was nice meeting you, and I’m glad you’re feeling better!” With with a small wave, she was gone.

        Ender and Luna glanced at Dusty before turning and looking at each other.

        “Ahem,” the alicorn cleared her throat. “Dusty, would you care for some help?

☽

        Luna gazed about Ender’s dreamscape as she took a short break from reclaiming her magic. Thankfully, the human had been easy to put to sleep this time, allowing her to start work almost immediately. Three hours of maintaining a single incantation was taxing, but it did have one benefit. The long-term spellcasting kept her mind clear and enabled the alicorn to examine the problem from different angles. Now, she thought she had a better solution.

        I will still have to remove my magic, but perhaps I can stop his nightmares first.

        Bad dreams always had some kind of underlying cause, be it current anxiety or past experiences. When the alicorn first entered Ender’s mind after his return, she could barely even stabilize his dream state. Now that she had removed some her power, the maelstrom of the human’s subconscious was noticeably calmer. Luna believed that with enough effort, she could enter it and hopefully address the root of the problem.

        Even so, a tiny bit of doubt lingered at the back of her mind. The idea of delving into an alien consciousness was risky, but at the same time held the allure of exploration. Besides, she told herself, you’ve already entered one of his natural dreams. The underlying subconscious should not be much more difficult.

        Still, Luna lingered, hovering alongside the rushing green storm. The massive funnel cloud twisted all the way from the remnants of her magic below to as far up as she could see.

        With a shake of her head, the alicorn plunged inside.

        She regretted her action almost immediately. All around her, the wind howled, its pitch like a blade between the ears. Luna felt it tear at her very form. While the outside may have looked calmer, the inside of the storm still raged as strongly as ever.

        Focusing all her power into her horn, the Night Princess pushed a shielding bubble outwards. Effectively working against herself, it was a difficult spell to maintain, but she was able to create one just large enough to cover her entire body.

        Now that Luna could see, she cast about, looking inside the storm for what powered it. In ponies, memories were like little windows through which she could watch the events of their lives. Anxieties usually manifested themselves as antagonists in dreams.

        For Ender, however, memories seemed to be like pearls suspended in space. At the center of the vortex was a still area where they merely drifted. Given what she saw, Luna had no idea what might represent the human’s emotions.

        The storm itself? she wondered. No, he seems quite calm and level-headed. I don’t think that’s correct. The storm is the manifestation of whatever is trying to tear him apart.

        The alicorn descended through the vortex’s smoother center, looking for the driving force behind the storm. As she approached the floating pearls, they expanded. Instead of the windows of a pony’s mind, this was like looking through a crystal ball. Luna saw other humans, and heard distant voices, but she was moving too quickly to comprehend them.

        There! At the bottom were a set of five pearls. Angry and red, four spun about one in the center. The moving memories seemed to be connected to the vortex; lighter lines of green radiated upwards from each one, creating a spiral pattern through the storm.

        Weary of the constant buffeting, Luna pushed her horn towards the pearl in the center, wanting to put an end to this as quickly as possible. Before she could reach it, though, one of the moving memories spun into contact with her.

        Suddenly the Night Princess was inside the memory. Her momentum made her stumble momentarily, but Luna soon regained her bearings. She stood on a carefully manicured lawn outside of a long, low white building. The late afternoon sunlight cast long shadows behind a group of children waiting near steps that led up to the entrance. They all turned in unison towards the door as it opened and a small figure emerged. It was Ender.

        This must be an old memory. He’s barely a foot shorter than me now, but here he looks positively tiny.

        Luna watched as the other children blocked his path. Though she was too far away to make out their words, the tone of their voices was easy enough to understand… taunting and ridicule. It was a scenario she had seen plenty of times, especially in the dreams of smaller fillies.

        What followed, however, was nothing the Night Princess would have ever expected. Luna’s heart went to her throat when the other children grabbed the boy, but then, when she witnessed his reaction, her eyes widened in shock.

        She could not look away. She wanted to look away, but the horror paralyzed her.

        The alicorn felt sick. The ground caved underneath her and she fell, fell, fell out of the memory, through the vortex, and out of Ender’s mind entirely.

        She awoke, shaking. A cold sheen of sweat clung to her body. Looking down she saw that the same was true for Ender.

        His face brought the memory back to her mind, vivid as ever.

        Luna bolted in blind panic.

> Game, Part 1
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: MinCol@ColMin.gov
To: demosthenes@hushcom.nl
Subj: It’s time
Attch: Summary Report (Auto-Shred on Closure)
Encryption Alg#: 6532187945NGE

Ms. Wiggin,

        It pleases me to report that we have made a small amount of progress in the search for your brother. Details are included in the attached document.

        I want to thank you again for your cooperation and restraint in this matter. Eros is not the easiest place to live, a situation made worse, I’m sure, by the inability to communicate with the rest of your family.

        In return for your patience, I would like to invite you to join me on the Argyris. I promised that you would be present if we ever found Ender - by the time you arrive, I believe we will be very close.

        Tug #871 has been re-tasked to transport you. Contact Lt. Mathers on board when you are ready.

Graff

☽

Ender struggled to consciousness. Eyes heavy with fatigue, he felt as if he had spent the last few hours in the battle room rather than in bed. Groaning, the soldier sat up and rubbed his eyes. The room felt decidedly colder than usual.

        That’s strange… normally I have to move Luna’s horn out of the way... Ender’s thoughts trailed off as he opened his eyes and tried to comprehend what he saw.

        Six of the Night Princess’ armored guards stood around the bed, looking down at him steadily. At his movement, the two near his feet turned to look behind them as Comet Chaser approached.

        “V’ha nees, zhyet,” the captain intoned.

        “What? I don’t-” Ender stopped. She’s not here, he realized as a feeling of unease formed in the pit of his stomach. It had not occurred to him that in the days since applying her translation spell, Luna hadn’t left his side, at least while he was awake. The boy had forgotten that it wouldn’t work if she wasn’t nearby.

        “V’ha nees.” Comet Chaser stepped back and pointed towards one of the couches near the bed. Peering over the guards’ backs, Ender could see his dress uniform laid out.

        He must mean ‘get dressed.’

        As he stood, the guards stepped back. Rather than turn to leave, they stayed with him in a rough circle, always standing just out of arm’s reach. Ender couldn’t be sure, but as he looked into their eyes, he saw a mixture of distrust and, yes, even fear.

        The boy was crushed. He had never given these ponies a reason to be afraid. He could only come to one conclusion. She must have seen something in my head… seen something and told the others.

        He almost laughed at their reaction. After the details of his life were made public, he had expected this very look from from the colonists on Eros. Instead, they had cheered him, felt sorry for him, or made excuses for him. It took intelligent horses on an alien world to finally show a reasonable response.

        Ender bent over in the cold air, conscious of the now seven pairs of eyes staring intently at his every movement. It was as if they expected him to lash out at any moment. Despite his discomfort, the soldier couldn’t help but notice how his uniform had been laid out in precisely the fashion he would wear it. Every angle and crease had been ironed perfectly and there was not a single speck of lint to be found. Ender looked around, and sure enough, saw Dusty’s face peeking in through the door to the balcony. Following his gaze, Comet Chaser noticed the maid and stomped angrily. A short command sent the poor mare scurrying across the room and out the main door.

        Eyebrows furrowed, Ender caught the captain’s gaze as he turned back, looking down on the pony with a narrow glare. Comet Chaser seemed unphased at first, but after a few moments, he glanced away with a muttered, “V’ha nees, duhna.”

        Exhaling sharply, Ender pulled on his uniform, stretching some parts carefully over the few bandages that remained. Standing to his full height, he looked down at the guards and pointed emphatically at the restroom. Chaser seemed to understand and nodded. Mercifully, the pegasi did not follow him in.

        They were waiting for Ender as he emerged, arrayed in a semicircle. Without a word, the captain turned and began walking towards the door, clearly expecting the boy to follow. As he obliged, the escorts closed in behind him, again forming a ring just out of his reach. Dusty’s door opened slightly as they passed it, but Ender couldn’t see anything beyond the dark crack.

        Where are they taking me?

        The spiral stairs were a bit awkward. The guard ponies could not comfortably fit abreast of Ender, so they settled into a pattern of four forward and three behind. As they descended to the castle proper, the soldier evaluated his circumstances.

        Luna is powerful. She could have easily dealt with me herself, without involving the guards, he mused. The retinue, and their insistence on his dress uniform, indicated some kind of formal proceedings, perhaps a trial. After all, he reasoned, they could have seized me while I was sleeping and simply frog marched me to a prison cell in my underwear. Or, one of their unicorns could have teleported me there. Ender had seen the horned ponies on Celestia’s staff perform similar feats, such as magically summoning a cook from the kitchens so the Princess could express her thanks after a sumptuous meal. There was no reason they couldn’t do the same to him.

        Or could they? he wondered. A number of unicorns, and even Luna herself, had remarked on his resistance to the ability they called magic. Ender wasn’t immune; the unicorns just had to put more effort into what they wanted to do. Perhaps he could use that to his advantage.

        As the party emerged from the stairway and the guards again formed a circle around him, Ender started to memorize the path they took. The castle was confusing, and if he needed to make an escape, he reasoned that his first priority should be to recover the PAC from Luna’s chambers.

        But would I even be able to overwhelm the guards?

        He glanced down at the ponies surrounding him. Though he was about a head taller, the ponies were thick and well-muscled. Their armor posed another problem, as did their wings. Years of training in Battle School left Ender strong, nimble, and fast, and the months he spent surviving in the forest had only improved those traits. Even so, how long could he evade opponents who could fly, and drop down on him with metal-shod hooves? The soldier could move quickly, but he didn’t know how fast these guards could run, and as far as he knew, there wasn’t a man alive who could outrun a horse.

        My only chance would come from surprise and savagery, he concluded. The guards’ armor did not cover their noses, and Ender seemed to remember something about a horse’s nose being sensitive. He had no desire to harm these ponies, but if he had to run for it, he’d have to stun at least one of them. Turning around would put him face-to-face with the rear-guard. Ender hoped that a hard punch to the nose, followed by a kick to the back as he vaulted over the pegasus would be enough to drop him. Given what he’d seen of the ponies’ interactions, the soldier suspected that their first move would be to tend to their comrade instead of giving chase. That would allow him just enough time to get around a corner or through a door and hopefully break their line of sight.

        But then what? Even if he somehow made it to Luna’s room and recovered his PAC, he’d be cornered. He would *maybe* have enough time to pull the jump rig out of his gear and make a leap off the balcony, but what next? He’d be in the middle of a city filled with unicorns. Who knows how many of them would have the capability to hold him in place until the guards arrived?

And who’s to say that one of the unicorn guards or the even the Princesses themselves wouldn’t catch up to me before I even got that far?

        Ender grimaced, realizing that his chances of escape were slim. He was only considering it as an option of last resort, but he’d be more comfortable knowing that it was at least a viable out.

        I’ll need to play along, and hope I can talk my way out of whatever trouble awaits me, he concluded.

        Comet Chaser led him down resplendent corridors he had never before seen, and though it was the middle of the morning, the party never encountered another pony. The soldier figured that other guards must have cleared their path.

        Seven of Celestia’s Day Guard stopped Ender’s escort as they approached a massive set of gilded doors. A unicorn approached, his unique purple armor and crested helm marking him as an apparent counterpart to Captain Chaser. The captains exchanged a few hushed words, glancing back at Ender as they spoke. Finally, Comet Chaser nodded and walked away, followed by the other pegasi who had escorted him. They were soon replaced by three white pegasi and three gray unicorns, all bearing golden armor. The captain approached, the lighter streaks in his otherwise dark blue mane catching the sunlight that streamed through the windows on the opposite side of the hallway.

        “You are about to enter the throne room and the presence of Her Majesty. Conduct yourself accordingly, or there will be trouble. Do you understand me?” The unicorn’s eyes narrowed as he looked up at Ender.

        “Yes,” the soldier replied. To his shock, he did understand. Luna must be nearby, he thought, surprised that despite the circumstances, the notion filled him with hope.

        The captain nodded and turned, his horn glowing as he enveloped the massive double doors in a blue aura. As they swung open, Ender was momentarily blinded by the bright light streaming through dozens of stained glass windows on either side of the immense room.

        Looking up, the boy couldn’t help but gape as his eyes adjusted to the light. If the rest of the palace was opulent by his standards, Ender couldn’t even think of a word to describe the throne room. The wide hall soared nearly thirty feet high. Stained glass windows of every hue flanked both sides, separated by tall ionic columns. Stretching floor to ceiling, the windows cast prismatic shadows across the marble floor.

        A prod from the captain’s hoof broke the boy’s stare and started him down a blood-red carpet that ran the length of the room. Ender resisted the urge to turn back towards the unicorn captain; the last thing he wanted was to show agitation or weakness in front of what he assumed to be Celestia’s court.

        As they moved down the long hallway, the soldier realized his assumption was incorrect. He spied a few shapes near the throne, but otherwise the vast room was empty. The sound of the guards’ golden horseshoes echoed freely as they marched in step beside him.

        The throne itself was as imposing as the rest of the room. An immense installation of what looked like solid gold, the arching structure featured a three-tiered base that stretched into an equally-broad ceiling fixture. Backed by a vast mauve curtain, twenty-foot blue and violet tapestries flanked the fixture, their dark colors making the seat appear even brighter by comparison. Drawing closer, Ender noticed a massive stylized sun inlaid in lighter gold set over a comparatively small band of night sky.

        No question who the dominant power is in this room, he noted. I wonder if Luna has her own seat, or if she has to share this one with Celestia?

        As the guards came to a halt in front of the carpeted ramp leading to the throne itself, Ender took note of the other ponies before him. In the center sat Celestia, her large form nearly dwarfed by the massive golden arch above. Six other ponies were arranged two to a tier on either side of the princess. The boy was relieved to find that he recognized most of them.

        Applejack and Pinkie Pie sat at his own level, each one in front of a small reflecting pool pressed into the marble floor. On the second tier, next to burbling fountains that fed the pools, he saw Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. The blue pegasus was struggling not to fidget, and his rescuer looked downright scared. She flinched at his glance, hiding behind her mane.

        She did the same thing when she first met me, he recalled sadly. After the guards, Ender expected this kind of reaction, but it hurt to actually see it from her, especially after she had started warming to him the evening before.

        Two unicorns sat before Celestia on the top tier. Rarity he knew, but he had never seen the lavender unicorn to Celestia’s right. She looked down on him intently, her eyes moving back and forth in short, quick motions, as if she she were taking in every detail.

        This must be Twilight, Ender realized, recalling Luna’s descriptions of her sister’s protege. I could understand her presence here, but that doesn’t explain the rest, he thought, glancing quickly around the otherwise empty throne room. They hardly seemed like adults yesterday, much less important government officials.

        It was then he saw the golden jewelry, five necklaces and one tiara, on the otherwise unadorned ponies.

        Those symbols…

        “Kneel.” The captain’s youthful voice interrupted his train of thought.

        Ender almost balked, but quickly contained any outward show of indignation or hesitation. Making his movements as controlled and graceful as possible, the soldier sank indifferently to his knees, as if the act hardly mattered. Keeping his shoulders squared and head up, the boy looked Celestia calmly in the eyes. Though he was surrounded by the trappings of her power, he wasn’t about to let it show in his body language. 

        At least this carpet is thick. Kneeling on the bare stone would be agony.

        Celestia’s visage was completely still as she looked down on Ender. Gone were the good-natured smiles and warm beneficence to which he had grown accustomed. Now the alicorn’s features seemed to be carved from cold marble.

        The retinue of guards moved back, out of the soldier’s peripheral vision. He heard the clicks of their horseshoes recede until all sound was swallowed by the echoing slam of the throne room’s main doors. Still, the princess remained silent and motionless. When at long last she spoke, it was in a deeper, stately timbre the boy hadn’t yet heard from Celestia.

        “Ender Wiggin, we are convened today to determine if you are a threat to Equestria and her ponies.” The alicorn’s voice resonated across the empty hall.

        Does she mean the royal ‘we,’ or is she referring to Fluttershy, Rarity, and the rest? Ender wondered. Except for Twilight, the others did not look like they belonged near the throne. Most were glancing around uncomfortably, and Pinkie Pie seemed to be paying attention to something in the far back of the room rather than listening to her ruler.

        “While my sister was… treating you,” Celestia hesitated over the word, “she discovered a memory most disturbing. Her understanding of the events she saw is limited, however, and we will not pass judgment with so few facts. You have been brought before us to clarify the matter.”

        She paused, perhaps expecting him to reply, but Ender remained quiet. This was her game, and he was not about to make a move until he understood the rules, and saw as much of the alicorn’s strategy as he could. Met with silence, the princess furrowed her brow and glanced behind him.

        “Because of the unique language barrier between us, Princess Luna will be casting a variant of the translation spell on you throughout these proceedings,” she began. Ender turned to look for the younger alicorn, but she was nowhere to be found. His spirits dropped; he was hoping for at least one ally in the room.

        Assuming she still is an ally.

        Celestia continued, ignoring his movements. “We will see your memories, as you witnessed them, projected above you. The spell will both verify the accuracy of what you say, and ensure that nothing crucial is lost in translation. The potential consequences are too dire to chance on a misunderstanding.”

        The unsettling prospect of having his memories put on display evaporated from Ender’s mind as the alicorn’s words triggered a sudden realization. The symbols on the base of Discord’s statue leapt into his mind as he looked again at the jewelry worn by the ponies in front of him.

These must be the Elements, and they must be the ‘new bearers’ Luna mentioned. That means…

        “Am I to be turned to stone?” he asked, keeping his voice level and his face neutral.

        If Celestia was surprised by the question, she hid it well. The other ponies, however, looked at each other with varied expressions of shock or surprise. Fluttershy and Applejack each started to speak, but a furtive glance back at the princess stifled their words. The small gasps and murmurs were ended abruptly by the alicorn’s response.

        “I hope not, Ender.” For an instant, a hint of warmth crept back into the princess’ voice, but it vanished as quickly as it appeared. “Luna and I no longer command the Elements of Harmony. They now answer to Twilight and her friends, and I will not simply command them to take such drastic action. That is why they are here - they must decide for themselves what is appropriate after seeing the facts.” She paused, looking down at the smaller ponies before her. “Young though they may be, it is a responsibility only they can bear.”

        If they’re really that young, then at least I’m getting a jury of my peers, Ender thought wryly.

“Let us begin.” Celestia glanced above and behind Ender, nodding slightly.

The soldier’s head swam momentarily as he felt a warmth encompass the top of his head. Dizziness overcame him for a few seconds, a sense of vertigo rising and falling within before it drained away. The warmth, however, remained.

“Let us begin, Mr. Wiggin.” Celestia’s voice cut through the haze, causing him to open his eyes. Everything looked the same as before, but now all seven ponies before him were bathed in a soft cobalt light that was clearly not coming from the windows on either side of the hall. Ender tried looking up, but the source seemed to always drift just beyond the upper edge of his sight.

“You will not be able to see the spell, Mr. Wiggin, though your memories should be much clearer when you try to recall them. Whatever seems clearest to you will be what we are also seeing.”

        Valentine’s face was the first thing to come to mind.

Ender gasped at the power of the spell. Without even closing his eyes, he could remember every detail, down to the pattern of her irises. It wasn’t the same as seeing her in front of him - he was still looking at the princess, after all - but it felt like he had a desk’s crystal-clear holodisplay inside his head.

        Celestia cleared her throat to silence the oohs and ahhs from the smaller ponies. “Let us start with something simple to make sure the spell is working. Who are your parents?”

        The images came unbidden as he responded: his father’s stoic face, his mother waving from the front door. “John Paul and Theresa Wiggin.”

        Ender could even hear their voices echo across the throne room.

        The ponies’ coats shifted slightly in color as the images changed in his mind. It’s like they’re watching a giant screen, and the program is my life, he realized. Sure enough, the room was soon filled with the hiss of static and a flickering of black-and-white patterns as he remembered an old-fashioned television.

        Celestia’s voice drew his attention again. “For the record, what is your name?”

        “Ender Wiggin,” the boy replied, but as he did so, he felt a haze press in on his mind. It wasn’t painful, but it was persistent.

        “Hmm,” the alicorn admonished, “not a lie, but not fully the truth either. Please remember, we will know if you try to deceive us. Again… what is your name?”

        Ender bristled, but did his best to conceal it by looking down at the carpet between his knees. “I did not mean any deception. I have gone by ‘Ender’ for as long as I can remember. My given name is Andrew Wiggin. ‘Ender’ was how my older sister pronounced it when she was small. She and I were very close, so I preferred her way of saying it over everyone else’s. After that, ‘Ender’ stuck.”

         The soldier raised his head and looked Celestia directly in the eyes. “Does that answer your question?” he challenged.

        The princess nodded, an inscrutable expression crossing her face. “Very well, then. Luna?”

        A small rush of vertigo overtook Ender. He felt like he was flying, skimming over a landscape of images. He blinked as the sensation departed, and he found himself picturing an often-recalled memory.

        I should have known, was his first thought.

        Stilson.

        He felt a twinge of shame as the memory appeared to him, as fresh and sharp as it was on the day he experienced it. Back then, the bully had been huge, at least compared to Ender, but now he looked small. Had it really been seven years ago?

        Stilson and his friends had been waiting for Ender as he left school. He had waited, had tried to avoid them, but they were too intent on their prey. That was the day Ender had lost his monitor, and their first opportunity to do what they wanted without an adult knowing about it. Luna’s spell brought forward details that had long since faded from the soldier’s natural memory. The late afternoon sunlight had cast long shadows behind Stilson and his friends, making them seem even more sinister than they already were.

He watched the ponies as they observed his memory. All but Fluttershy looked on with wide-eyes and gaping mouths. Only the butter-yellow pegasus seemed to see what was happening. She had drawn her wings up over her head, peering through the long pinion feathers.

        Stilson accosted him, despite his attempts to ignore the group. Within seconds, they surrounded Ender-that-was.

        “Are you going to let me through?” The soldier found himself mouthing the words he had said so long ago.

        Laughter. “Sure we’ll let you through. First we’ll let your arm through, then your butt through, then…”

        Ender shuddered. It was one thing to constantly return to a particular memory throughout your life. Hearing Stilson’s voice as if he was standing nearby was completely another. The rest of Fluttershy’s friends seemed to catch on, and their faces showed a ranging mixture of worry and unease. Rainbow Dash visibly squirmed.

        Soon the boy was being pushed back and forth by the group. He made a grab at Stilson, but was seized and held in place by the rest of the gang.

        Ender-that-was laughed. “You mean it takes this many of you to fight one Third?”

The soldier remembered how hard it had been to manage laughter through his terror, but it had worked. Stilson’s sarcastic rebuke and dismissal of his stature caused the gang to let Ender go.

        He knew what came next. The ponies didn’t. They all gasped in shock as the little boy kicked high and hard, catching the other one in the chest. Stilson crumbled to the ground.

        Ender had no desire to see what came next, but the memory marched relentlessly onward. He saw himself stalk forward and viciously kick the downed boy again and again in the ribs, the gut, and even the crotch.

        Ender-that-was looked up with the coldest eyes he could muster. “You might be having some idea of ganging up on me. You could probably beat me up pretty bad. But just remember what I do to people who try to hurt me. From then on you’d be wondering when I’d get you, and how bad it would be.”

        He couldn’t believe how soft and high his voice was then. Had he really been that young? Ender shut his eyes as hard as he could. He heard the gasps of his audience as he saw the rest of the memory play out in head.

        “It wouldn’t be this bad.” The younger boy turned and kicked Stilson in the face as hard as he could. Blood sprayed in an arc across the cement. “It would be worse.”

        The warmth dissipated around his head as the spell faded. Ender exhaled and slumped forward, drained.

        The ponies lay still, eyes wide and unmoving save for Fluttershy who had now fully buried her head under her wings. Her body quivered slightly.

        Celestia was the first to recover, her violet eyes transitioning from shock to sadness. Blinking, she opened her mouth to speak but quickly stopped herself, looking down instead to the others in front of her.

        She seems serious about letting them take the lead, Ender thought, taking notice. While he was glad that this wasn’t a show trial, a mere pretense for Celestia to make whatever decision she felt appropriate, it complicated his own position. The boy was confident he could reason with her; Fluttershy and the rest were mostly unknown variables. He would have to think on his feet and change his approach based on their reactions.

        The orange-coated pony to his left was the first to find her voice. “Why’d ya have to keep kickin’ him after he was down? That just ain’t right, even if he was roughing you up.”

        She held the perspective of fairness and justice. I can work with that.

        “Was it right for him, a bigger kid, to show up with all his friends?” Ender asked.

        The mare looked thoughtful. “Well… no, I s’pose not, but he was out. You’d won. Why’d ya want to hurt him so bad?!” Applejack’s tone rose as she fixed the boy with a glare.

        There was no point in agitating her, so he kept his voice level. “You’re right. I had won. But you heard what I said… I wasn’t fighting him anymore. I was was fighting them.”

        His memory of the other kids standing before him, slack-jawed and frozen, leaped to the forefront of his mind. Ender knew from the ponies’ expressions that the spell was still working and that they saw the same thing.

        Interesting… the spell works both ways. I can show memories independently of their questions or direction.

        The soldier pressed on. “I shamed them into letting me go, and surprised them by attacking. Any other kid, or at least the kids Stilson picked on, would have either tried to run or just stood there and taken it. But that shock would have changed to anger if I stopped. They might have jumped me then, or they might have waited a day or two, but eventually the whole group would have taken their revenge and beaten me to a bloody pulp. I could not let that happen.”

        The blue pegasus to his right chimed in with a sarcastic tone. “So you’re saying you didn’t want to hurt him? It looked like you were enjoying it to me.” She huffed, rainbow forelocks flying up with the rush of air. “He may have been a bully, but what you did was… was,” she flailed for words as she gestured down at him, “you’re a monster!”

        That’s perfect, Ender thought as her accusation spurred another memory from that day. He saw himself walking away calmly from the scene as Stilson’s friends clustered around the prone figure, commenting in wonder at what they had just seen.

        “I needed them to think I was crazy,” he narrated as Ender-that-was continued to walk away, “so that they would never even think about trying to hurt me. And for that, I had to act crazy, so they’d believe without a doubt that even with their size, strength, and numbers, they’d be hurt if they tried to come after me.”

        The boy remembered walking towards the bus stop, turning a corner, then looking back to make sure he was out sight. Only after he was sure that he hadn’t been followed did he let himself collapse against the wall. Ender-that-was stayed there, crying steadily until the bus came.

        As his sobs echoed through the airy room, the ponies watched, entranced. The soldier softened his voice, forcing them to look down at him and strain to hear what he was about to say.

        “I never wanted to hurt anyone, but Stilson left me no choice.”

        Rarity blinked. “No choice?” she asked indignantly. “You could have, no, should have told someone. I-” the unicorn faltered, doubt creeping into her voice as she spoke over the sobs coming from his still-audible memory, “I can see that you weren’t trying to take revenge, but surely there was another option.”

        They clearly hadn’t expected to see that. Ender focused on something else, silencing the memory. I think I’m getting the hang of this spell.

        Looking up at the unicorn, he asked evenly, “How would that have helped me if they decided to respond then and there? With five of them, I’d have been lucky to tell anyone anything through a broken jaw.”

        Rarity looked down, clearly not comfortable with that line of thinking. “But surely-!”

        A purple hoof settled on her shoulder. Ender shifted his gaze to see Twilight looking down at him intently.

        “Why did they attack you? Did you do anything to make them want to hurt you?” she asked.

        It was a potentially difficult question. Ender wondered how much he should explain, and how much they would even understand.

        “It wasn’t anything I did,” he replied. “They disliked me for what I was.”

        The unicorn didn’t miss a beat. “A ‘Third?’”

        Ender nodded and a rush of memories involving taunts, teasing notes, and jabs from his childhood rushed through his mind. Young voices echoed across the throne room.

        “Dirty Third!”

        “Stupid Third, why do you even…”

        “Go home, Third!”

        “Third!”

        “Third!”

        The ponies shifted uncomfortably and remained silent, leaving Twilight to continue.

        “Forgive me for bringing up such memories, but I need to ask… what do they mean by ‘Third?’” She ducked her head apologetically.

        Ender wasn’t sure how this would play out, so he answered as reticently as he could. “They mean ‘Third’ as in ‘third child.’”

        His audience blinked and looked at each other, not quite understanding. Applejack was the first to respond.

        “You mean like the third child to be born?”

        The boy nodded.

        “Well what’s wrong with that?!” she asked indignantly. “There’s plenty of third children in the Apple family, and ah don’t know what’s-”

        “Applejack!” Twilight hissed.

        “Wha-?”

        The unicorn blushed as she cleared her throat. “I mean to say,” she glanced back at Ender, “it could merely be a cultural taboo. We don’t want to be disrespectful. Am I right, Mr. Wiggin?”

        This one was quick, and insightful. If my fate lies with these six, the soldier mused, she’s the one to reason with. She’s also given me a way out without having to explain more. He didn’t want to raise the subject of the war if he didn’t have to.

        “You’re exactly right. Having more than two children carries a strong cultural taboo on my world.”

        The orange pony was not deterred. “Well, ah still wanna know what’s wrong with havin’ a third child!”

        Twilight opened her mouth to respond but then closed it. Judging by her expression, she wanted to know too.

        Ender thought carefully on how to frame his response.

        Remembering a vid of New York City he once saw in class, he brought it to mind, showing streets teeming with humanity. Pulling back, the boy pictured the endless skyscrapers as you could see them from space: hundreds of miles of steel, glass, and concrete stretching from Manhattan Island all the way to Maryland in one continuous expanse.

        “My world struggles with overpopulation. Decades ago, nations banded together to support a decree limiting the amount of children a couple could have. It took a long time for everyone to come into compliance, but when the realities of resource shortages became impossible to ignore, even the most stubborn communities gave in.”

        Twilight’s jaw hung open. “H-how many pon, er… how many people live on your planet?” she asked, staring in amazement at the image Ender presented.

        He answered casually. “Last time I saw the figure, it was somewhere north of eleven billion.”

        That drew the unicorn’s attention back to him. “Billion? As in… one-thousand million?”

        “That’s a real number?! I thought the translation spell just hiccuped…” Rainbow Dash looked up at the unicorn, surprised.

        Ender nodded.

        The group fell silent, absorbing that fact.

        Celestia spoke up, her voice drawing the attention of the other ponies. “What happens to third children when they are born?” she asked with a small amount of trepidation.

        The soldier looked up at her. “Nothing, your Highness, though their families suffer harsh economic penalties such as higher taxes and exclusion from state-provided education and health care. There is also the cultural taboo, which you’ve seen, that evolved from the legal prohibition against third children.”

        She blinked. “And your people agreed to this?”

“Yes, given that the alternative was mass starvation.”

        Silence reigned for a time as the ponies looked at each other uncomfortably. In the end, it was again Twilight who took control.

        “So… if I am to understand this correctly, the others attacked you because you were a Third?”

        “Yes,” Ender replied, but as he did so, the pressuring haze from before set in while other memories flashed by. The only reason Stilson and his gang had come out on that day was because Ender had finally lost his monitor. They had been holding themselves back for years, enduring a Third constantly showing them up in every activity at school. After he lost his monitor, they could finally act without restraint.

        But explaining the monitor meant explaining everything else, and that would lead to things Ender didn’t want to show the ponies. He bore down, trying to push the memories away, but that made them appear even more vividly.

        “What is this?” Rarity asked, her white coat reflecting different colors as the images shifted rapidly. “I can’t make anything out.”

        Dash stood, her eyes narrowing as she looked down at the boy suspiciously. “What aren’t you telling us?”

        Ender regained control, focusing on a single sight: the Earth, as seen from one of the viewing ports at Battle School. Breathing steadily, he looked up at the blue pegasus. “Nothing that changes what I’ve already said: I was attacked because I am a Third Child. I acted in self-defense.”

        “No, Mr. Wiggin.” Celestia’s deeper voice cut off Twilight and Rainbow Dash as they started to respond. “We need to know everything; the consequences are too dire.”

        The other ponies looked back towards him and nodded.

        Ender sighed. Fine. If they want to know everything… so be it. Let the chips fall where they may.

        Sifting through the previous jumble of memories, he selected one and focused on it. The agonized screams of Ender-that-was echoed across the throne room as he recalled the removal of his monitor. The doctor’s office had been such a pristine shade of white.

Letting the sound reverberate into silence, he began to explain. “The reason I was attacked so violently is because that was the day my monitor was removed.” As if on cue, the haze lifted. Blinking, the boy waited for the obvious question.

        “Your monitor?” prompted Twilight.

        “A device that allows others to see through your eyes and hear through your ears. I was being evaluated,” Ender continued, heading off the next obvious question, “by the government for my potential as a soldier, or more specifically, as a military strategist.”

        Surprisingly, it was Rarity who spoke next.

        “But you were - ARE - a child! Why in the world would they do such a thing to… how old were you then?”

        “Six,” Ender answered.

        “My word...! Why would they do such a thing to - to…” She faltered.

        This is the moment to explain it from the beginning, the soldier realized. As foreign as conflict is to their society, this perspective could be the best way to get them to understand mine.

        “Because my people… all of humanity… had been at war for decades.” He paused, letting the fact sink in. “Almost a hundred years ago, we were invaded by a hostile race.” Ender recalled the vids from his earliest memories at home: a Formic ship destroying dozens of mining craft in the asteroid belt, Formics assaulting the science ship at Eros, cutting into the hull and tearing apart the crew, the Scathing of China. They were easy images to conjure. He had seen the vids nearly every night as a child.

        Ender remembered one famous sequence - a shaky vid from the helmet cam of a deep-space miner as he and his crew fought a Formic hand-to-hand on the hull of its pod. Dismissed as a hoax at the time, it had turned out to be humanity’s first hard evidence of extraterrestrial life. The boy froze on the image of the ant-like alien as it attacked one of the miners.

        “The scientists called them Formics. The rest of us called them Buggers. For everyone, they meant death.”

         Silence reigned. Ender realized too late that he should have avoided some of the more graphic images of crewmen dying. He was used to them, but poor Fluttershy was curled into a tight ball. The other ponies sat frozen and wide-eyed.

        “Did… did they ever say what they wanted?” the princess ventured.

        Ender shook his head. “No, never. There were many attempts to communicate with them, but they never gave any sign that they even noticed.” Even at the bitter end, he added silently.

        The soldier focused on a less bloody, but equally impactful image of China after the Scathing. Seen from orbit, the descent path of the three Formic landers made it appear as if a giant claw had raked the lush countryside, spreading a dark blight across the wound. In the end, hundreds of thousands of square kilometers had been rendered lifeless by their enemy’s first attempt at terraforming Earth.

        “What we called the First Invasion was no more than a vanguard… one ship, which we barely stopped at great cost. I said we had a population of around eleven billion. Back then it was closer to thirteen.”

        Twilight groaned in disbelief.

        “At the time, space flight was in its infancy. We were only just able to move around our own solar system with enough efficiency to make asteroid mining cost-effective. Our survival of the First Invasion was nothing short of a miracle.” Moving forward in history, Ender pictured the IF flotillas as they always appeared in the tiger flicks: shining gunmetal behemoths in ordered rows advancing bravely into the abyss of space. As he predicted, the ponies looked up with hope.

        “But we banded together after the invasion and learned quickly. We hadn’t even discovered the areas of science so casually exploited by the Formics, but we adapted as fast as we could. Within a few years, we had hundreds of ships deployed to the comet shield with the best weapons we could muster.” Ender remembered the formations and arrangement of the original International Fleet with crystal clarity. He had spent hundreds of difficult hours gleaning the information from propaganda vids, after all.

        To illustrate his point, Ender shifted his thoughts immediately to scenes of the aftermath. The IF crest burned slowly in plasma fire as the gutted hulls of cruisers and dreadnoughts drifted lifelessly into each other. “In the end, our attempts at high strategy were laughable at best. The Formics brought thousands of ships in the Second Invasion, but even without numerical superiority, the way they fought was simply too different from our concept of warfare. The Formics seemed to place no value on individual lives. They would gladly sacrifice hundreds of their own for a temporary strategic advantage, oftentimes shooting through their own ships if it meant destroying an equal number of ours. Our entire fleet was not even a speed bump in their march towards Earth.”

        Ender took a moment to look over his audience. They were transfixed, and even Fluttershy had lifted her head over her outstretched forelimbs to see the outcome.

        “All remaining ships,” he continued, “had been ordered to regroup behind the asteroid belt. But one junior officer disobeyed, hiding behind Saturn - a large gas planet - with his strike force until the Formic fleet passed.”

        Mazer’s attack may have well been burned into the boy’s brain for the countless times he had watched it in Battle School, trying to discover exactly what the man had done to defeat the Buggers. Ender showed his audience the entire sequence as he had eventually seen it years later.

        “The officer, Mazer Rackham, saw something that no-one else did. He found the eye of the Formic fleet, the “I” of the fleet, as it were.” Ender tapped his own chest to emphasize the point. “There was one ship about which all the others moved, from which he could tell that all decisions were being made. It held the Formic queen, for lack of a better term.”

        In his mind, Mazer’s tiny force jumped out from behind Saturn’s rings, dodging a continuous hail of plasma as they cut between the Bugger formations. Rackham’s ship fired on the queen’s vessel, and it disappeared in a flash of light. Within seconds, the entire Formic fleet went dead, continuing on momentum without any further maneuvers. Most either collided with each other or with the rocks in Saturn’s rings.

        “One man had the insight to see what everyone else missed, and the initiative to disobey orders and do what needed to be done to save humanity.” Now was the time to drive home his point. “The purpose of the monitors,” he flashed a memory of the device when it was still in his neck, “was to evaluate brilliance and tactical acumen from an early age so that the IF - the International Fleet - could find and develop as many Mazer Rackhams as possible.”

        “But,” Twilight motioned at the air above his head, “Why? You had already defeated them.”

        Ender shook his head, recalling a map of known space. “For the billions of us the Formics killed, we had only killed one… one queen. Once we knew what to look for, our astronomers discovered that the Formics had nearly a hundred worlds. For all we knew, each one had a queen and countless more drones just waiting to descend upon us.”

        While the unicorn sat back trying to comprehend this, Applejack spoke up.

        “Now wait just a darn minute here,” she said rather heatedly. “All this happened before you were born, right?”

        He nodded. “Long, long, before I was born.”

        “Then how do we know any of this is true?!” She motioned emphatically to the rest of the ponies. “Ah’m no expert on magic, but the princess said that this spell would show us memories. How could you remember something that happened before you were born?”

        Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie nodded their assent.

        Ender looked up at Twilight. “Do you have cameras? Did that word even translate?”

        “Yes, of course we do.”

        Ender recalled some of the Second Invasion vids again, this time from his perspective watching them at the dinner table in his old house. “Everything you saw was recorded, and rebroadcast to the public frequently. It was important to keep the memories fresh as the time between invasions lengthened. Even at the speeds the Formics could travel, it would take years to travel between star systems… from the government’s perspective, complacency was just as dangerous as the enemy.”

        “It’s like a movie, Applejack. Just a lot… clearer,” Twilight explained.

        “Oh.” The earth pony looked crestfallen. Apparently, she had been hoping the whole thing was a fabrication.

        The purple unicorn cleared her throat. “Well, my apologies, Mr. Wiggin. You were right about one thing: as… important… as those events were to your people, the reason for the monitor does not really change the circumstances of the attack on you. We should not have doubted you, but we wanted to be sure.”

        “Of course.” Ender inclined his head respectfully.

        She glanced around at her compatriots. “If that is all, then I think we’ll step outside to discuss-”

        “What happened to him?” a soft voice broke in.

        All present looked at Fluttershy, causing the pegasus to flinch.

        “To…?” Ender prompted.

        “The boy who attacked you. What happened to him?”

        Flashes of Graff’s trial shot through Ender’s mind before he reigned in his memory. He had hoped to avoid this detail, but now that it had been asked, there was no way he could lie about it. The soldier managed to maintain a sober expression but he cringed inwardly as he answered the pony.

        “I killed him.”

        His audience gasped. Even Celestia looked on in shock.

        “I never meant to, and I didn’t even know that I had until many years later. If the incident had happened later, after I had been trained, I may have been able to protect myself without doing permanent damage. If I had that option, I certainly would have chosen it.” He sighed. “But back then… the only way I could have safety walked away from that confrontation is by doing what I did. Believe me, I’ve been over that day hundreds if not thousands of times in my head. I had known those children for years. The only other alternatives would have resulted in me either being permanently injured or just as dead as Stilson, and I could not allow that to happen.”

        Twilight stared down at him, opening and closing her mouth as she tried to speak but stopped short.

        Finally, she sputtered, “Are - are you saying that you are… somehow alright with his death?!”

        This will have to be handled delicately, he thought. Ender had only recently come to terms with his actions… how well could he explain his motivations to individuals who didn’t even share the same psychology?

        “I am…” he started slowly, “responsible for Stilson’s death, but the blame - the fault - is his.” Glancing around, Ender saw that none of his audience had turned away or otherwise shown dismissal or disgust. At least they’re listening.

        “I never sought the fight, and I never once provoked conflict with them.” Ender remembered the various pranks and other incidents with the Ground School children over the years. Hopefully the ponies would see the truth in his words through their spell. “Stilson sealed his fate when he approached me with his gang. Had he been alone, or had he simply berated me instead of threatening to beat me, I would have acted differently. Does that make sense?”

        Ender couldn’t predict whether his logic would be understood. Luna herself had only fleetingly grasped a similar train of thought when they were in the statue garden with Discord.

        The ponies looked from one to another, disquiet etched on their faces. They murmured back and forth, voices too soft for Ender to hear.

        “It does.” The statement was made softly, but it carried through the throne room and silenced the others. Once again, they all looked over at Fluttershy.

        “If Mr. Manticore tried to eat a deer and the deer bolted, kicking him in the head, who’s fault is that?” she asked, looking up at Twilight.

        “I…” the unicorn trailed off, looking down. Celestia, Ender noticed, was examining her protege closely.

        Rainbow Dash cut in. “How… how could you not have known you killed him for years?” A rasp distorted her voice slightly, as if she was holding something back. Clearing her throat, the pegasus continued, “Didn’t you go back to school? Wouldn’t his parents have… I don’t know, said something?”

        Looking up at Twilight, the soldier considered asking if the question was even relevant to their decision, but refrained. Doing so would only draw suspicion, and it wasn’t as if he could hold anything back from the spell’s effects anyway.

        Just how much will they demand to know, and how will they react if they hear everything? Ender tightened his jaw to hide his discomfort and steel his nerves.

        “I was selected for Battle School and taken by the IF the next morning. I was absent for any fallout from the event, and like I said… I wasn’t told.”

        He remembered walking into the parlor on that sunny morning. Motes of dust had filled the sunbeams as his parents accosted him for putting Stilson in the hospital. Graff had merely stood behind them, silently watching.

        That’s right, Ender remembered ruefully, he didn’t even have the decency to lie to my face. Instead, he lied to my parents so he could better watch my reactions as they questioned me about the incident.

        The soldier heard himself explain his actions to his parents and the then-unknown officer. As his past self broke down and began to cry yet again, Ender remembered his shame at the time and tried to bear down to stop the memory. An uncomfortable warmth pressed down around his skull, forcing it to continue.

        “You took away the monitor,” he heard himself say accusingly. “I had to take care of myself, didn’t I?”

        “Ender, you should have asked a grown-up for help,” his father started.

        “Exactly!” Rarity exclaimed. She was shushed by Twilight.

        The soldier ignored them, witnessing again the time Colonel Graff had first introduced himself and asked him to join the IF.

        “But the monitor-” he had protested, thinking that its removal had meant failure.

        “The final step in your testing was to see what would happen when the monitor came off. We don’t always do it that way, but in your case-”

        “And he passed?!” His mother had always been reserved, polite, and gentle, but there was steel under that exterior, and this was one of the few times the boy had seen it bared. She glared openly at Graff. “Putting the Stilson boy in the hospital? What would you have done if Andrew had killed him, given him a medal?”

        It was darkly funny in hindsight. As it was, they gave me quite a few medals, he thought. Ender had never read the citations - one of them could quite easily say, “For exemplary performance in defending yourself against a gang of elementary schoolers.”

        “It isn’t what he did, Mrs. Wiggin. It’s why.” Even then, Ender noted, Graff’s voice had been gravelly. He had never known the older soldier to smoke - it was forbidden in the oxygen-rich atmosphere of space stations, anyway - but his voice certainly sounded like he did.

        Graff handed his mother a sheaf of documents. “Here are the requisitions. Your son has been cleared by the IF Selective Service. Of course, we already have your consent, granted in writing at the time conception was confirmed, or he could not have been born. He has been ours from then, if he qualified.”

        At the time, those words had startled Ender, bringing the whole purpose of his life into focus. It was common knowledge in the family, but like the proverbial elephant in the room, it was almost never said openly. Now though, he wondered why Graff had even brought it up - it certainly wasn’t news to anyone present. He probably wanted me off-balance for the discussion we had next.

        “Wait, I don’t understand.” Twilight’s voice interrupted Ender’s train of thought, dissipating the memory and returning his attention to the throne room. “He said ‘... or he could not have been born.’ Didn’t you just say that nothing happened to third children except the restrictions put on their families after their birth?”

        What she’s really asking is ‘Are you able to lie through this spell?’ Ender noted. Nothing gets past this unicorn.

        “Normally, yes, if the family disobeys the law or the child is an accident. I was a different case. The government specifically requested my birth, and granted my family an exception from the normal proscriptions against thirds,” he replied.

        “...in exchange for your service.” Rarity sat back, disquieted by the notion. The white pony looked off in the distance, her eyes unfocused.

“Did… did you even have a choice in the matter?” Fluttershy ventured hesitantly.

        Graff’s voice answered her from Ender’s memory before the boy could. “Conscripts make good cannon fodder, but for officers we need volunteers.”

        “Cannon...fodder?” Rainbow Dash turned the words in her head for a moment until the realization of its meaning caused her to sit down abruptly. He guessed that the translation spell rendered the words literally and that the phrase didn’t carry the same meaning here.

        Pinkie laughed. “Well that’s silly! Why would a cannon need food?”

        Applejack was quick to reach across the carpet to silence her. “Forget about it, Pinkie. It’s not a joke.”

        “But-” An orange hoof appeared in her mouth, stopping any further words.

        In his mind, Ender saw Graff separate him from his parents, electing instead to continue their conversation outside. Would I have still agreed had they been there?

        The boy didn’t know.

        The force guiding his memories, presumably Luna, was absent. Rather than share the accurate, but nevertheless brutal, dissection of his family life that Graff had used to convince Ender to leave, he pushed forward to the part they would understand.

        Graff took the hands of Ender-that-was. For the life of him, Ender could not remember the former colonel doing that, even though he could “see” it now clearly. Was Graff ever that personable?

        “Ender Wiggin, if it were just a matter of choosing the best and happiest life for you, I’d tell you to stay home. Stay here, grow up, be happy. There are worse things than being a Third, worse things than a big brother who can’t make up his mind whether to be a human being or a jackal…”

        “What’s wrong with jackals…?” Fluttershy started asking before Twilight shushed her.

        “...Battle School is one of those things. But we need you. The buggers may seem like a game to you now Ender, but they damn near wiped us out last time. They had us cold, outnumbered and outweaponed. The only thing that saved us…” Graff went on to make the same argument he had just presented to Celestia and the others, the one every kid in Ground School heard whenever they questioned the need for the ever-present monitors. Mazer saved the day, Mazer made all the difference, and humanity’s best hope was to find and train as many Mazers as they could for the upcoming war.

        Even now, Ender could not find it in his heart to fault the old man. What would have happened had he said no that day?

        “...if there’s a chance that because you’re with the fleet,” Graff continued, “mankind might survive and the buggers might leave us alone forever - then I’m going to ask you to do it. To come with me.”

        How shrewd he was, Ender mused, never lying, but always presenting the truth in a way that would elicit only the desired response.

        “I’m afraid,” Ender-that-was said quietly. “But I’ll go with you.”

        “Tell me again.”

        “It’s what I was born for, isn’t it? If I don’t go, why am I alive?”

        “Not good enough.”

        “I don’t want to go, but I will.”

        Even now, Ender couldn’t have said it better. I never really wanted any of it, did I?

        As the memory dimmed, the ponies remained silent, turning their eyes back down to him. The soldier took the opportunity to finish making his point.

        “Graff didn’t want me to find out what I had really done to Stilson for fear of how it would affect me,” he said, looking straight at Rainbow Dash, “and I never returned to that place. That’s how I went so long without knowing what really happened to him. Does that answer your question?”

        She nodded quickly. Shifting uncomfortably, she looked back towards Twilight. The rest of the ponies followed suit, expecting her to take the lead. The unicorn balked momentarily, blushing at the attention, but soon recovered and cleared her throat.

        “As I said before… I think we’ve seen all that we need to see. If Princess Celestia doesn’t have any objections,” she turned around to face the alicorn, “then we will excuse ourselves for deliberation.”

        “I…” the princess cut herself off as she suddenly stood, looking intently above and behind Ender. After a moment’s pause, she blinked, then gazed critically at the soldier as she returned to her seat.

        “You have done a commendable job, Twilight, but my sister feels that there is something missing. Forgive me, but I must inquire further.”

        Rainbow Dash, to Twilight’s horror, let out an audible groan. The other ponies only glanced at each other nervously. Even Pinkie seemed upset.

        The princess looked to the side momentarily, collecting her thoughts. Turning back to Ender, she asked, “My sister has explained your condition, has she not?”

        He nodded. “To the best of my understanding, yes, though I’ll admit that I still don’t grasp it fully.”

        “Then I will summarize for the benefit of Twilight and her friends. Your subconscious is under extreme stress. Though this wouldn’t be a problem under normal circumstances, the power left behind by my sister has given it the ability to literally tear itself apart.”

        Twilight opened her mouth to ask a question but immediately clamped it shut with her own hooves.

        “Luna found this memory of… Stilson, as you call him… when she was searching for the reason why your mind was so self-destructive. If you are as accepting of your actions as you appear to be - and I see no indication that you are lying - then something else is driving the turmoil in your mind. That is what we must now discover.”

        The warmth seized his mind again, and Ender began to feel the crushing sense of entrapment that had dogged him since Eros. One part regret, one part guilt, and two parts despair, it stemmed from his fundamental inability to answer the only question that mattered anymore:

        Why did they die?

        In his mind’s eye, Ender fell through a whirling vortex. At the core he saw five red orbs, four outer spheres orbiting one central. One by one they whipped in front of him. As if from a distance, Celestia’s voice carried over the wind.

“Luna found five memories at the base of the turmoil. One was the incident we just discussed; the others are unknown to her, but I suspect they are also involved.”

        At once, the obs spiraled into him. Ender caught only flashes, but he knew immediately what they were.

        Stilson. Bonzo. The final exam. The trial. The ship.

        Suddenly, the boy’s eyes were open, and he found himself staring rigidly up at the alicorn.

        “If a murder,” Celestia continued, “even one committed in self-defense, isn’t the reason behind this distress, then something worse must be. We must know what it is before we can decide your fate. ”

        She raised a foreleg and the warmth receded. Ender still felt horrible, but now that his mind wasn’t being forced onto that particular subject, he was able to regain his thoughts.

        There was no way he could tactfully omit portions of the truth. To explain that feeling, he would have to explain everything, and there was no way to lie with the memory spell in place.

        Ender heaved a sigh of fatigue.

        Well it’s about time someone judged me for what I’ve done, he thought ruefully, and it’s not like I have another choice in the matter.

        “Very well.” He looked from one pony to the next, then back to Celestia. “Are you sure you want them around for this?” he asked flatly, letting all the warmth bleed from his voice. After seeing the younger ponies’ reactions, Ender had no desire to drag them through anything else they would find unpleasant. “They may find the rest of my story more disturbing than what you’ve already heard.”

        All save Twilight looked up with hope, clearly wanting out of the room.

        Ender pressed on before Celestia could reply. “I’m sure they would defer to your judgment on the matter, and I would not object to you being the sole arbiter.”

        ...not to mention that you and Luna may be the only ones in the room capable of understanding what real war is, and the things one must do to survive it, Ender added silently, remembering Luna’s description of the fall of her race.

        The alicorn shook her head resolutely, to Ender’s dismay.

        “I’m sorry, Ender. While I share your sentiment, that doesn’t change the fact that I cannot command them to carry out a sentence without knowing the reasons why. One way or the other, they will need to live with their actions today, and the only way they can do so with a clear conscience is to see the facts for themselves.”

        “Then imprison me,” Ender replied, extending his arms to either side. “You know what my abilities are; I don’t pose any kind of danger, especially to a unicorn who could just as easily pick me up without breaking a sweat.” He looked around again for Luna, frustrated at his inability to see her, even though he knew she was nearby. “Your sister said she was trying to find a way to send me home. If she does - great, I’m no longer a problem. If not, then I stay in prison and I’m still not a threat. There’s no need to continue this, your Highness.”

        Celestia tilted her head to the side, a small smile playing across her features. “An admirable offer, but you assume Equestria has prisons, and that we would consent to hold a living being captive.”

        The boy raised an eyebrow. “Petrification is somehow better?”

        “As a measure of last resort, and an alternative to killing - yes. Most importantly, it does not require the continual involvement of ponies in a penal system. That would create… undesirable societal effects.”

        Ender blinked. Trapping Nightmare Moon for a millenia is right and proper by her standards, but a penal system isn’t? He didn’t buy it, but now was not the time to challenge Celestia’s method of rule.

        The presence returned, pressing against his skull; it was hot, almost to the point of pain. Memories began to stir, unbidden.

        “Will you show us?” Celestia asked, her gaze unwavering as the images swirled in the boy’s head.

        ...or will we have to look? The threat went unspoken.

        “Alright!” Ender said forcefully, clutching at his ears. In an instant, the feeling retreated completely, leaving him dazed. Shaking his head, he looked back up toward the princess, only to see her attention directed towards Twilight. The unicorn wore a puzzled expression and seemed to be asking a question, but Celestia silenced her with a glance and turned to meet Ender’s gaze. Admonished, the unicorn looked back as well, her head hanging slightly.

        The boy looked from one pony to the next, considering how to proceed. To his right, Rarity sat primly on her haunches. She kept her head still and her features neutral, but the unicorn’s drooping ears and furtive glances toward Twilight and the princess betrayed her real emotions. Below her, Rainbow Dash had stood up and was shifting her weight back and forth. She seemed anxious, and by the small shivers rippling through her wings, Ender guessed she wanted nothing more than to fly off and be done with this whole affair. Across from Dash, Fluttershy was the polar opposite of the blue pegasus. She lay completely flat against the floor with her forelegs pulled up over her head. Fluttershy’s hair nearly hid her entire face from view; a glint of blue from behind the pink cascade was the only indication that she was even looking at him. Below Fluttershy, Applejack sat restlessly. Though she sat back on her haunches like Rarity, the orange pony looked to be anything but relaxed. She stared downward, a look of intense contemplation etched across her features. Applejack looked up and opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something, but as she locked eyes with Ender, she exhaled forcefully and looked away, her momentum lost.

        Looking to his right, the soldier saw that of his entire audience, Pinkie had undergone the most radical change. Ender had almost forgotten about her presence, and now that he looked he was taken aback. Gone was every vestige of the carefree, energetic personality he had briefly observed the day before. Now Pinkie sat like a statue: a mirror of the unicorn above her, but with no sign that she was even paying attention to her surroundings. The pony’s eyes were unfocused, staring through Ender as if he wasn’t there. Strangely, her mane hung in an absolutely straight line from her head to the floor, though the boy could have sworn that it was a mess of curls before.

        For better or worse, this is my jury, he thought as he looked back up at Celestia. Ender didn’t understand her true purpose, and that bothered him. If neutralizing any potential threat from him was her only concern, she could have easily done it without anyone else even knowing. Reservations against a penal system aside, Ender was sure she had the power to build and maintain any manner of prison without involving her subjects. Alternately, she could have told Luna to simply keep him asleep. Celestia’s denial of his offer only strengthened his suspicions. She wanted him here, and she wanted him to tell his entire story to these particular individuals… why?

        The answer would be the key, and to his frustration, Ender could not find it.

        Was it a love of procedure and rule of law? He could buy that explanation, but it didn’t seem to be her style. From what Ender had seen of the princesses, that sentiment would be more characteristic of Luna than of Celestia. Was that it? Was Luna the driving force behind this inquiry? She had initiated it, after all.

        No, Ender concluded. He had put in enough time with Luna on the Dodge City/Appleloosa case to know that if she wanted to see these proceedings receive their due diligence, she would be conducting the inquiry herself.

        The seconds stretched on, and Ender sensed the need to start talking before Luna went back into his mind. One last idea surfaced before he launched into his story.

        Twilight is Celestia’s protegee - could this be for her benefit?

        But he didn’t have the time to continue that line of thought.

        “To properly explain… all that,” he made a wide gesture with his right hand, indicating the emotion brought on forcibly by Luna’s spell, “I’ll have to cover about six years of my life.” It was a last ditch effort to get Celestia to relent.

        “Time is not an issue for us, Mr. Wiggin,” Celestia replied patiently.

        Ender exhaled slowly, steeling himself.

        “Five memories...” he began, then drifted to a stop as he collected his thoughts. “You’ve seen the first. The second was-”

        ‘’Another killing?’ Another act of self-defense?’ If I heard that, even *I* would doubt my own credibility. Despair shifted quickly to hope as he remembered the effects of the spell. It doesn’t matter if it sounds incredulous or not, they can see what happened for themselves!

Ender looked up at Celestia and her retinue, who looked back at him expectantly. ‘...and the truth will set you free,’ indeed, he thought with a wry smile.

        “The second memory was this:”

The sound of falling water surrounded him as he remembered that day. The bathroom had been unusually quiet - the result of his choosing to clean off rather than to go to lunch that day. Ender’s Dragon Army had just finished beating Badger in an arduous battle that had been weighted strongly in favor of Pol Slattery, the opposing commander. It was the instructors’ latest attempt to defeat him by bending the rules of the game, and though he prevailed, Ender was exhausted both physically and mentally.

        A mass of footsteps was the first signal that something wasn’t right.

        Ender-that-was turned around to see seven boys sneering at him from the other side of the room. Fully clothed, it was obvious they were not here to use the showers. In his memory, Ender was bigger - nine years old instead of six - but that didn’t make much of a difference. The others were all older and bigger still. Bonzo, the bulky Spaniard, loomed at the head of the group.

        “Ho,” the younger Ender ventured while the older mouthed the word.

        Silence.

        The boy in the shower turned off the water and turned to face his adversaries.

        “Your move.” His voice was neutral… calm even.

        “This is no game,” replied Bernard, his speech stilted with a French accent. “We’re tired of you, Ender. You graduate today. On ice.” 

        Twilight’s voice interrupted the soldier’s train of thought. “Wha-what’s happening?” she asked hesitantly. “I don’t understand, why are they threatening you with graduation?”

        Ender opened his eyes to look up at her incredulously. He thought the unicorn was joking until he saw her genuinely confused expression. Twilight’s friends looked at each other uncertainly, mirroring her unease. They knew something was wrong, but couldn’t understand what it was.

        What about ‘on ice’ doesn’t… oh. Remembering some of the small societal differences he had encountered so far with Luna and her subjects, the boy realized what might be confusing them, and briefly wondered about the ponies’ funeral rites.

        “We keep the dead cold until such time as they can be buried,” he said quietly. “Graduation ‘on ice’ was their way of threatening to kill me.”

        “What is it with you po-po… you people,” Rarity spat, “and killing?!” Everyone, Celestia included, looked over at the unicorn, wide-eyed at her outburst. “Is that just your go-to response to everything?” She stamped two forelegs into the golden pedestal for emphasis.

        Ender didn’t know what to make of her reaction and kept his voice as even as possible to avoid further agitation. “Not at all, no. This,” he waved ineffectively at the space next to his head as he searched for the right words, “this… altercation came about after years of bad blood, and specifically because of something Bonzo - he’s the ringleader in the middle - perceived as a slight against his honor.”

        “A slight,” Twilight repeated skeptically. “What did you do to insult him so badly?”

        These were questions that required complicated answers, but Ender did not think that they wanted long, drawn-out explanations at the moment.

        Simple is better; stick to the truth.

        “I beat him badly in a game he should have won. It made him look incompetent”.

        “That’s what this is over? A game?” Now it was Pinkie Pie’s turn to get upset. Ender was taken aback by the sheer amount of venom in her voice. He didn’t think she had it in her, and moreover, he did not understand what was upsetting the group. “Games are supposed to be fun!” she continued. “Why does he want to kill you over it?”

        Ender held his ground, masking his unease as best he could by keeping his voice level and metered. “The battle room was more than a game. It was everything in Battle School. To a commander like Bonzo, it was even more important than most. He viewed his performance as his primary means of maintaining face...” The boy faltered, wondering if that concept would translate. He added, “...of maintaining his personal status among everyone else.” 

        “So, did everyone just go and hurt one another if they were beaten in this… in this game?” Rainbow Dash asked amid rising murmurs as her friends started whispering back and forth to each other. Her use of hurt instead of kill wasn’t lost on the boy.

        “As I said, not at all.” Ender raised his voice slightly, trying make himself heard. “This was a unique circumstance that was-”

        Celestia cut in, her voice a resonant wave that rolled over the others, bringing order and quiet. “Perhaps it would be best to start from the beginning.” She looked meaningfully at Ender.

        Context. It hit him all at once. No wonder Twilight and the others were becoming agitated. Seeing his memories wasn’t enough - they had to understand them. I should have known better, he accosted himself. I saw what one violent memory did to them and I rolled right into another one. Of course they would react accordingly.

Truth was a matter of perspective. Twilight and her friends did not even have the frame of reference to account for Bonzo’s attack, much less adequately judge Ender’s actions. The boy remembered the level of explanation they needed for the Stilson incident, and bullying was a concept they already seemed to understand.

        Ender bowed his head in agreement. “Of course, of course. Let me just think of how to go about this…” he trailed off as he reexamined his audience. Thankfully, Celestia’s words had calmed the others.

As he spoke, the boy examined his past, looking for a way to explain his actions to individuals with such a different perspective. On their own, his memories offered little help, but when he considered Graff’s point of view, based on what he knew of the man’s motivations, the soldier saw something: a framework he could use to help them understand.

        The princess is right, I need to start from the beginning.

☽

        One universe and fifty million miles away, Valentine Wiggin moved swiftly down the main axial corridor of IF Tug #871, a small luggage set in tow. Behind her, the ship’s pilot followed nervously, struggling to keep up. Ignoring the man’s stammered insistence that she wait, Valentine palmed open the nearest passenger room door and slung the hovering baggage inside.

        “Um, that’ll be fine, ma’am. I guess you can have any cabin you’d like since you’re the only passenger.” The short lieutenant wrung his hands. “Is… is there anything I can get you?”

        The teen’s hair swayed behind her as she turned her head to fix the officer with an intent stare. “Unless it’s something that gets us out of here any faster, Lt. Mathers, no.”

        The man blinked, not expecting such a harsh answer. “Of… of course. I’ll be on the bridge then, if you need me. He turned away, shaking his head as he retraced his steps down the corridor.

        Stepping into her cabin, Valentine closed the door and breathed a sigh of relief.

        Finally… finally Graff had made some headway. The former colonel wouldn’t expend the resources to bring her all the way back to Earth for nothing. For the first time in months, she allowed herself a small sliver of hope. Now there was a chance, however remote, that she would see Ender again.

> Game, Part 2
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: jackandthegiant@hushcom.nl
To: demosthenes@hushcom.nl
Subj: So it begins.
Encryption Alg#: 3104815378*IYAIDYABD

        Demosthenes,

        We corresponded only briefly before you left, but though you might not recognize this address, you know who I am. I was one of your brother’s inner circle. I’ll leave it to your powers of deduction and knowledge of fairy tales to discern which one.

        Your brother gave me an e-mail address before he left, one that would reach him through the ansible, even as you both traveled through relativistic space. I have now tried reaching him four separate times and can only come to the conclusion that his communications are being blocked. For us, it has been six months since your colony ship’s departure. While I know that you are barely on the fifth day of your voyage, I also know that your brother would not casually ignore a message from me, especially considering the code words I used.

        Things have gone bad here. Now that the Formics are gone, the nations of Earth are gearing again for war, and the children your brother trained are the most dangerous weapons at hand. Save myself, every member of the jeesh has been kidnapped, and I know who is behind it. Though I sorely miss his insight and support, the only good part about this whole mess is that your brother is not involved in it. We have you to thank for that.

        I am considering turning to your brother… your older brother. Yes, I know what he is, and what he is capable of, but believe me when I say that our enemy is much worse. Locke at least wants to be seen as a good person. Imagine what he would be like if he didn’t care.

        Now make him ten times worse. That is the kind of person we’re up against. Desperate times/desperate measures, the lesser of two evils, and all that.

        I need to know how to handle Locke - how to use him to open the doors I need opened. Relativity will not be our friend: entire battles could be fought in the time it takes you to relay this letter to your brother. I am sorry to put this burden on you, but I have no other choice. At least from your perspective, it will all be over quickly, for better or for worse.

        I’m burning this identity after this message sends. My new address will be the number of soldiers in my toon followed by cold stew’s nickname for me. Your brother will know it. I can only hope your mail is not being intercepted either.

☽

        The princess is right, I need to start from the beginning.

        The gears in Ender’s head clicked as he assembled his argument. While one part of his mind stepped through the monumental task of explaining his actions to beings who might not possess the perspective to understand them, another worked frantically to quell the rising tide of anger and resentment at his situation. Hostility would only seal his fate, of that he was sure. Clamping down on the burning fire inside, Ender refocused it on something productive: analyzing the creatures that were analyzing him.

        The soldier knew fear when he saw it: fear of the alien and fear of the unknown. Now that he really looked, Ender saw that even Celestia, though she spoke and acted from a position of power, showed signs of trepidation. He had seen enough of the alicorn to know that momentary pauses, meant here to look like careful consideration, were not natural to her. She was working very hard to control her emotions.

        Fear he understood. Fear he could use. Fear made even the most rational beings irrational, and unless you wanted outright confrontation, calm, steady measures and maybe a little distraction were the only ways to alleviate it.

        I can suffer the ignominy of having my memories put on display if it gives me a way to humanize myself in their eyes. The boy chuckled inwardly for a moment. Or, I guess in this case, de-humanize myself.

        A sobering thought occurred to him. How many lives would have been saved if the buggers could have done this? Or if we could have?

        Ender really did not want to think about that.

        Viewed from another light, this memory spell of Luna’s was a powerful tool, if not a double-edged one. Yes, the others could catch any lie or obfuscation, but like the data from an all-seeing surveillance camera, the spell lent incontrovertible truth to his words. Now that he thought of it, a suitably motivated investigative reporter with access to Battle School surveillance records could probably give Celestia all the answers she wanted. Most of his life was a matter of public record - Graff’s trial had demonstrated that. At least this way, he could control the way the information was presented.

        Truth was perspective, after all.

        Taking a deep breath, Ender steeled himself, and plunged forward.

A loud roar startled the ponies as Ender remembered the launch from Earth. Twenty boys comprised his launch group, some of them destined to become just as famous as he. Had Alai really been at the end of his row? Of course he had been on the shuttle - Ender just hadn’t known him then. 

        “This was when it all started,” he explained. “We left Earth - our name for our world - not long after Graff came to my home.”

        Now all seven sets of eyes were locked over his head. Even Fluttershy looked up, entranced. Wonder, Ender realized. Maybe he could foster that emotion and use it to soften some of the harsher blows he would have to deliver.

        The image in his head flipped as Ender remembered his first mental experiments with gravity orientation.

        “Whoa!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. “What happened?”

        “In orbit, you are in continuous freefall because you are flying high enough, and fast enough, that the Earth curves away from you at the same rate you are falling.” It was a highly simplified description, but Ender didn’t want to get mired in irrelevant details. “From your own perspective, there is no gravity. I had just realized that up and down were a matter of choice.”

        Celestia looked at him suspiciously. “I may have said ‘the beginning,’ Mr. Wiggin, but you look much younger here. What connects this memory to the one we just saw?”

        “This.” Ender closed his eyes, bringing the intended recollection to the fore. Not minutes after he had discovered the trick with re-orientation, Graff had emerged from the pilot’s cabin, crawling along the ladder backward. Backward, at least, from orientation the launch group used on the ground. He then “stood up” at a perpendicular angle, his feet hooked on the ladder. While that change in perspective had been too much for some of the others, causing them to retch, Ender found it funny and laughed.

        Graff had accosted him for laughing in front of the other launchies. It was the standard military gruffness Ender expected after years of watching war vids. He had expected a tongue lashing, but what he received had been much worse.

        “To you I suppose it is funny. Is it funny to anybody else here?” the colonel asked the other boys.

        “No, sir.”

        “No, sir.”

        “No, sir!” The rest murmured assent.

        “Well why isn’t it?” Graff turned on the rest. “Scumbrains, that’s what we’ve got in this launch. Pinheaded little morons. Only one of you had the brains to realize that in null gravity directions are whatever you conceive them to be. Do you understand that Shafts?”

        Shafts. Ender had completely forgotten about him. He idly wondered what happened to the boy. Wasn’t he in Rabbit? Did he graduate with the rest? Did he even graduate at all?

        Shafts nodded to Colonel Graff.

        “No you didn’t,” Graff replied. “Of course you didn’t. Not only stupid, but a liar too. There’s only one boy on this launch with any brains at all, and that’s Ender Wiggin. Take a good look at him, little boys. He’s going to be a commander when you’re still in diapers up there. Because he knows how to think in null gravity, and you just want to throw up.”

        “Well!” Rarity huffed, interrupting Ender’s train of thought. The memory dispersed above him. “While I don’t approve of such harsh language directed at children, at least he gave you proper recognition. I don’t think I would have made such an observation at that young of an age.”

        “No, he didn’t…” Twilight said quietly before Ender could replied. She looked on with dismay.

        She understands, the soldier realized. Before he had only suspected that she would be his greatest ally. Now Ender was sure.

        He looked up at the white unicorn. “Your friend is right, watch.”

        Cognizant of the other ponies’ sensitivities, he consciously held back the sound to the rest of the memory. Watching the loathing stares and snide expressions of the other boys would be enough. Bullying seemed to be a touchy subject with Fluttershy.

        “Graff’s intent wasn’t to praise, but rather to foster isolation by turning the others against me.”

        “That’s terrible!” Applejack chimed in. “Why would he do that to ya?!”

        “His goal was to foster in me absolute self-reliance, and his methods caused other events that contributed to this… turmoil Luna found. Princess Celestia is right: to explain that, I need to start at the source, and this is it.”

Ender tried to stop the memory before Bernard’s attack, but the warmth sat heavily in the back of his mind, forcing him to continue. Apparently, he had the freedom to pick and choose which memories he showed, but Luna was taking some measures against self-censorship.

        His audience murmured discontentedly as they saw Ender repeatedly struck in the back of the head by the boy sitting behind him. Ender-that-was remained still, taking the abuse.

        “Are all human children this… abusive?” Rarity asked. The hits continued.

        “No,” the soldier replied, “Bernard was just particularly nasty.”

        “He was in the bathroom with the other one, wasn’t he?” Fluttershy asked.

        “Bonzo.” Ender nodded. “Yes, he was there. That was much later, though.” The hits continued in his memory.

        “Why ain’t that Graff fella doin’ anything about it? That just ain’t-” Applejack was cut off by the collective gasps of the other ponies as Ender-that-was reached up and grabbed onto Bernard’s arm as he struck and pulled down on it. He had meant to trap it, forcing the boy into the back of his seat and maybe knocking the wind out of his chest, but the momentum had launched Bernard up and out of his seat. The boy sailed into the opposite wall and careened wildly about the cabin. Ender may have been playing the memory silently, but the ponies needed no sound to read the pain etched across Bernard’s face as his body smashed his mis-positioned arm into a bulkhead, breaking it. He howled wordlessly as Graff emerged within seconds and dragged him back to his seat.

        “Graff was there the entire time?!” Twilight was shocked. “Applejack was right, he could have stopped it - why didn’t he?”

        The warmth released its hold and Ender put a stop to the memory. “Again, self-reliance. Had he rescued me, I would have counted on his doing so again. He wanted me to believe that no matter what, I had to solve my own problems.”

        “Even the ones he created?” Rainbow Dash had sat down again, her shoulders slumping.

        This was a better road to take, Ender thought as he relaxed inwardly. Maybe they would understand after all.

“Especially the ones he created. That was only the first of many.”

        “To… to what purpose?” Twilight asked.

        The soldier suppressed a smile. Curiosity and engagement meant investment, and hopefully a little support.

        “That’s what I’m getting to.”

        The soldier recalled his early days as a Launchy in Battle School. Images of the Launchy Barracks, the mess hall, the obstacle course, gym, and the many uniform corridors of the space station blended together in his projected memories. He pictured his bunk on that first day. The shuttle incident drove the other boys to band together, forcing him to the worst spot in the room: the bottom bunk by the door.

        Ender may have started as a pariah, but he had no intention of staying that way.

        “Bernard had natural charisma. That, coupled with an unusual accent and attention from the shuttle incident gave him everything he needed to become an early ringleader in our group. Like Stilson, he was also a bully and drew like-minded kids into his inner circle. For the average Launchy, staying on his good side meant staying out of trouble.”

        The soldier recalled a myriad of little torments for the ponies’ benefit: trips and shoves in the hallways, the theft of some personal items, as well as shunning and isolation in class and at meals.

        “All this for… the thing on the shuttle?” Twilight asked. “Didn’t you ever apologize to him?”

        Ender laughed to himself. “Of course I did, but he wasn’t the sort who cares about an apology.” Twilight opened her mouth to object, but the soldier continued, cutting her off. “His broken arm just made me a convenient target, but Bernard was a sadist - he would have eventually chosen someone for his cronies to pick on.”

        “Wait, what was that?” Rainbow Dash looked up in surprise. Glancing around, Ender saw a similar look on the other ponies’ faces.

        “What was what?” Ender asked.

        “I-I think the translation spell completely dropped. I think we heard your natural language for a moment,” Rarity replied, looking at the others for confirmation.

        “The word… say, saaaayyyyd…” Twilight struggled to mimic Ender’s natural pronunciation of Common.

        “Sadist?”

        “That one.” The unicorn nodded.

        So much for reaching common ground. This isn’t going to be fun to describe. Ender grimaced.

        “It means someone who enjoys inflicting pain on others,” the boy explained.

        His audience looked back and forth at one another with expressions of shock and disgust. Celestia finally took the initiative.

        “Is this… is this a common trait among your people?” She looked genuinely worried.

        Ender shook his head. “Thankfully, no. I’ve just been unlucky to have known quite a few.” An image of his brother Peter flashed through his mind. The boy was sure it was visible to the others and hoped they wouldn’t ask.

        Pressing on before they could, Ender continued.

        “As I said, apologies didn’t matter. The only way to deal with someone like Bernard is either through fear and intimidation, or ridicule and humiliation. I was not about to repeat what happened with Stilson, so my only recourse lay in taking away his power to abuse others. My opportunity came when he started messing with another Launchy.”

        “I hate to sound like a broken record,” Rarity interrupted, “but couldn’t you have simply told a teacher?”

        Ender shook his head again. “I had already seen that, at least in my case, they didn’t care. Lieutenant Dap, our primary instructor and caretaker, knew exactly what the others did and never made any motion to stop it.” The young man flashed into Ender’s mind. “I thought it was simply a part of Graff’s specific push to isolate me, but when Bernard continued to go unpunished after he started targeting others, I realized that all of Battle School was like that. They wanted us to solve our own problems.”

        Rarity was abashed. “I simply cannot conceive of a school that does not look out for the welfare of its children!”

        Rainbow Dash was also upset. He wings flared angrily and she started to speak, but Applejack beat her to the punch.

        “Yeah!” she cried. “What in tarnation were they thinking?!”

        Ender paused, stilling his thoughts so the projection would stop and they would look at him. His audience was clearly missing a very important point.

        “Please realize,” he said plainly, “that Battle School served one function, and one function only: to produce humanity’s finest officers and military commanders. Anything else was extraneous, even the academic program to some degree.”

        “The classes were extraneous?” Twilight wondered aloud. She never raised her eyes, making the boy unsure if she was really asking the question.

        Rarity was far more forceful. “So they didn’t care if you were hurt?”

        “Oh, there were rules against fighting and all sorts of other things, but even the best supervision has its limits, and a dedicated mind could found a way around them. So long as you weren’t overt, you could get away with all sorts of things. In the end, I’m sure that was part of the program too. Subterfuge is an important part of warfare.”

        Ender paused, seeing if there were any more questions.

        “As I was saying, I got a chance to change things for the better when Bernard started messing with another kid, Shen. Shen had a bit of a funny walk, which earned him the nickname ‘Worm.’”

        He let Bernard himself take over. The boy’s voice echoed through the throne room as Ender recalled that particular memory.

        “...because he’s so small, and because he wriggles. Look at how he shimmies his butt when he walks.”

        The smaller boy, Shen, stormed off amid the laughter of Bernard and his cronies. The Launchy group was in math class, not that they were paying much attention. Everyone had long since mastered calculus, though the Indian and Chinese boys dutifully poked and prodded the equations floating above their desks in spite of their obvious boredom. The instructor hardly looked back towards the class, busying himself instead with the massive instructional holodisplay on the far wall as he presented the material. Ender never knew if the inattention came from simple neglect or careful design, though neither would surprise him. Either way, it left the group free to chat and message each other through their desks. Bernard didn’t exactly have to laugh quietly.

        Ender-that-was glanced down as Shen passed.

        “I didn’t reach out to him directly because that would have only made him more of a target,” Ender narrated. “Instead, I saw a chance to rob Bernard of some of his power. Those desks, the surfaces projecting the equations and such, could message each other silently. Under normal circumstances, the system would attach your name to the end of each message, but by then I had found a way around that.”

        The boy remembered catching Shen’s eye before he sent the message. Within seconds he laughed, followed quickly by the rest of the classroom. The text was set to vanish quickly, so it took a few repetitions before Bernard caught on. “Who did this?!” he shouted, drawing the teacher’s attention down upon himself.

        The words “COVER YOUR BUTT. BERNARD IS WATCHING. - GOD” marched around every students’ screen.

        “He never could prove who did it, and I never admitted it, but Bernard had to re-establish his dominance,” Ender continued as the memory shifted from the classroom to the hallways and eventually the showers. He was pushed and shoved even more brutally, and a trip in the shower ended with a knee to the gut from one of Bernard’s circle. “There was nothing he hated more than laughter directed at him.”

        “So the bully couldn’t take it? Big surprise.” Rainbow Dash huffed.

        Ender smiled. “They usually can’t. I set the coup de gras to go off later that day, when I wasn’t even in the room.” The rows of beds in the Launchy barracks appeared in his mind. Bernard was raging about, kicking over desks and yelling at everyone as Ender returned.

        “I didn’t write it! Shut up!” he shouted.

        “I LOVE YOUR BUTT. LET ME KISS IT. -BERNARD” danced in the air over every desk in the room, and this message wasn’t going anywhere.

        After a few minutes the commotion finally summoned Lieutenant Dap. The officer shut down the situation but Bernard, not knowing when to stop, accosted the man and demanded to know who sent the message. Dap’s dismissive response left the room in laughter.

        “Yesterday someone sent a message that was signed GOD,” cried Bernard.

        “Really?” asked the lieutenant, “I didn’t know he was signed onto the system.”

        “After that,” Ender finished, shutting down the memory, “Bernard’s power over the room was broken. A few stayed with him, but the rest of the boys were free to do as they wanted… and I had earned my first friend.”

        Twilight muttered something, but the only word Ender could make out was ‘letter.’

        “Who’s God?” Fluttershy asked innocently, her breath moving the mane away from her eyes slightly.

        Ender blinked. That wasn’t a question he expected.

        “He is… not relevant to the story. If you’d like to talk theology, ask me later.”

        Assuming there is a later, the soldier grimaced.

        “Point being, this was my first major success against Graff’s efforts to isolate me, and it laid the foundation for a number of other events - one of which Princess Luna discovered alongside the incident with Stilson.”

        Celestia nodded and motioned for him to continue. Ender shifted, his knees beginning to ache.

        Ender’s mindscape opened on the battle room, drawing gasps of the ponies looking on. The sight still sent a shiver down his spine, though he found it odd to see Launchy colors on flash suits. Had he grown so accustomed to the gray-orange-gray of Dragon?

“They showed us the battle room for the first time not long after the desk incident. This is the game I mentioned earlier,” he began. “I should clarify: it wasn’t intended for recreation, though some of us did enjoy it. Rather, the battle room was a combat simulation designed to teach us the basics of three-dimensional warfare and test our abilities in a controlled environment. It was the core of the Battle School curriculum,” he said, glancing at Twilight, “not the classes.”

        “Wow! Is everypony free… free…?” Dash asked, fumbling for the word.

        “In freefall?” finished Ender.

        “Yeah. It looks like they’re just flailing around.”

        The soldier couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, it was our first time. We got better.”

        “How did this ‘game’ work?” Twilight inquired. She tilted her head to the side as her eyes followed the children’s movements.

        Closing his eyes, Ender focused on his memory of the room. He pictured the the vast white sides of the cube from the perspective of the north wall, with one gate to the left and the other to the right.

        “Two armies, each with forty soldiers, start on opposite sides and press towards the enemy gate.” Ender pictured a battle between Rabbit and Condor armies he had seen once as a spectator. It was from the early days, so instead of shooting out of the gate like bullets, each army took its time forming up. Soon enough, lights began to flash as the formations turned towards each other.

        “Each soldier is armed with a pistol that, when fired at another soldier, would freeze an enemy’s suit depending on the severity of the hit. Hit an arm or leg, and the enemy’s suit freezes over the appendage, preventing motion. Hit the head or the chest and the entire suit freezes while the helmet clamps down over the enemy’s jaw, rendering him completely disabled and unable to communicate.”

        “Simulating injury and death, I would assume?” Twilight deadpanned as she watched the lead formations of the two armies meet with a fierce volley of laser fire. Frozen soldiers collided and spun away from each other abruptly, their bodies entangling friend and foe alike.

        “Exactly.” Ender nodded. “It added an element of realism to the game - a damaged commander could still call out orders to his soldiers, and damaged soldiers could still provide intel to their comrades. In certain scenarios, you could get away with playing dead and try to catch a sloppy enemy unawares.”

        He ended the memory of that particular battle and returned to his first experience in the battle room. Younger shouts of joy replaced the frantic orders and battle cries of the older boys. Ender-that-was drifted near one of the walls, experimenting with his gun. Looking up, he spied an Arab boy hovering nearby and pushed off towards him

        “That’s Alai,” Ender explained. “To be honest, I didn’t know what I was going to say to him - he was one of Bernard’s friends, after all. But when most of our classmates were flailing around in zero-gravity, he was one of the few who hung back and tried to understand the equipment.”

        “Ya mean they didn’t mention all that stuff about the guns and suits and whatnot?” Applejack was surprised.

        The boy shook his head. “No. I suspect they wanted to see who was smart enough to figure it out for-”

        “Here, snag my hand!” Alai called out from the past, interrupting him. The other boy grabbed Ender-that-was and helped him make a soft landing against the wall.

        “That’s good.” the younger Ender replied. “We ought to practice that kind of thing.”

        “That’s what I thought, only everybody’s turning to butter out there. What happens if we get out there together? We should be able to shove each other in opposite directions.”

        “Yeah,” Ender agreed, and the boys set about testing their theory.

        As the pair clumsily navigated across the battle room, the boy explained the reason he chose to show this particular memory to his audience, his jury.

        “Alai may not have been my first friend, but he became one of my closest, at least for a time. Most importantly, he had once been an enemy, the first of many who would eventually become allies and friends during my time at battle school.” Ender paused, noticing that he had the ponies’ undivided attention. Something he said must have sparked their interest, because they all looked at him intently. He continued hesitantly, not quite understanding what had changed. “The ability I had to win the hearts and minds of others helped me become a good leader, but at the same time it alienated the few who viewed those relationships as betrayals and subversions of old loyalties.”

        Above, the boys had regrouped on the far side of the battle room and Ender was showing Alai what he had learned about the gun.

        “The white button makes it a lamp, and the red button makes it grow warm and fire kind of like a laser…”

        “...but not,” Alai finished. “Didn’t the lieutenant say they weren’t lasers?”

        “Yeah, but then what are they?”

        “What does it do when you aim it at a person?” the Arab boy wondered.

        “I don’t know.”

        “What don’t we find out?”

        “We might hurt somebody.” The younger Ender shook his head no.

        “I meant why don’t we shoot each other in the foot or something. I’m not Bernard, I never tortured cats for fun.”

        “What?!” Fluttershy shrieked.

        Ender held up his hands. “He’s joking!”

        I think, he added silently. Bernard could have bragged about it for all he knew.

        The pony still seemed visibly disturbed. “That’s a horrible thing to joke about.”

        “There were no cats on the station, so for us it was an obvious exaggeration. Alai was just trying to make me feel comfortable by separating himself a bit from Bernard. It was his way of letting me know that doing something together was OK, even though his friend didn’t get along with me.”

        That seemed to placate her, and by the time Ender and his audience returned their attention to the scene, the boys were prodding at their now frozen legs.

        “After testing the guns on each other, we each gathered a friend - Bernard and Shen respectively - and turned on the rest of the group.”

        Sure enough, the four boys were soon firing with abandon into the defenseless mass in the center of the room. In minutes, they alone were left mobile, laughing hysterically and cheering each other’s marksmanship.

        The soldier ended the memory and looked back up at the ponies. “It may not seem like much, but that day changed things. Everyone assumed Bernard and Alai had been behind the whole thing, but Bernard knew better, and more importantly, so did Alai. It gave him confidence, and that subtle shift helped Alai became the dominant personality of the group. Bernard still acted like he was in charge, but Alai’s friendship became what mattered. Because he *wasn’t* a bully, Alai was soon able to unite the launch group, and he was soon elected as the group leader.”

        “Because of you.” Rarity chimed in.

        “Not entirely. I was just trying to reach out to another person that day, but I ended up giving him the push he needed, and it ultimately saved the group.”

        “But it made Bernard dislike you even more.” Twilight said thoughtfully.

        “I don’t know,” Ender answered honestly. “He never said anything about it to me, but it makes sense. Had things not changed, he would have continued to rule his little roost, butt-watching notwithstanding. After that, Bernard had to follow Alai’s lead.”

        Silence fell, prompting the soldier to continue.

“For a time, I was happy. Launchies don’t really have much to do: go to class, work out in the gymnasium, run the obstacle course, and learn how to fight in the battle room. Usually you get a year or so before you’re promoted to a real army and start Battle School in earnest. I only got a few months.”

        He remembered sitting on his bed and trying to open his locker as Alai came up behind him. That’s right, I was going to help him with the security system on his desk. Instead of opening, the locker flashed a warning: “Unauthorized Access Attempt.” Ender-that-was stood up in frustration.

        “Ender,” Alai said, grabbing a piece of paper from the bed and glancing at it. “Don’t you know? This was on your bed. You must have sat on it.”

        The soldier remembered the words clearly.


ENDER WIGGIN


ASSIGNED SALAMANDER ARMY


COMMANDER BONZO MADRID


EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY


CODE GREEN GREEN BROWN


NO POSSESSIONS TRANSFERRED


        “Just like that?!” Rarity huffed. “They wouldn’t even allow you to take your things?”

        “What would be the point?” The boy shrugged. “They issued everything I owned. Besides, a launchy uniform would be laughed at in a real army.

        “Why send you to an army so early? Didn’t you have more training, more classwork to do?” Leave it to Twilight to ask the important question.

        “Graff didn’t want me to sit idly by. I had overcome the challenges he had set out for me among the launch group, and there was nothing to be gained by letting me grow comfortable in my position. This wouldn’t be the first time he’d do this, either.”

        The unicorn didn’t relent. “But what about learning,” she hesitated for a moment, “learning how to fight? What would be the point of sending you to an army if you were a year behind everypo-everyone else?”

        Ender smiled slightly, glad that she was catching on. “That was exactly the point - the next obstacle he set out for me to overcome. It also set the rest of the stage for the memory you saw earlier. Bonzo Madrid is the big guy from the bathroom.

        The soldier purposely skipped over his the painful goodbye with Alai. Like the memories of the Mind Game he had avoided, it was far too personal and had no bearing on what Celestia wanted to know. Either Luna didn’t notice the omissions or she was being lenient. She had seen at least part of the Mind Game in his dreams… maybe she already understood that part.

        How do I introduce Bonzo? he wondered. The Spaniard had been a complex boy, not nice, but certainly not a simple villain either. Would his audience even understand the concept of personal honor as Bonzo saw it?

        Let’s see how they react to this.

        Ender-that-was stood before the open bay door of Salamander Army Barracks, watching the boys banter back and forth about some recent exploit in the battle room. The boy balked. Most everyone in the room dwarfed him; even the youngest soldiers were nearly two years older. More importantly, they interacted with a casual familiarity that was completely alien to the boy. This was more than a group of friends or schoolyard acquaintances, this was an honest-to-goodness team that had been forged through years of common experience. It would be hard enough to approach them as an equal, but as he was now? Impossible. Uneasy sounds from the ponies told Ender that they understood his predicament.

        He was accosted the second he crossed the threshold of his new home. Showing the doorguard his assignment slip, Ender held it back from the larger boy’s grasp, asking instead to see Bonzo Madrid.

        “Not bahn-zoe, pisshead,” a voice interrupted as a smaller boy came up behind the younger Ender. “Bone-so. The name’s Spanish. Bonzo Madrid. Aqui nosotros hablamos espanol, Señor Gran Fedor.”

        “I didn’t understand it then, either.” Ender pre-empted the question as a few of the ponies opened their mouths. “So I don’t think your translation spell will work. The phrase was Spanish - a different language than the Common I am speaking. Despite my time in Salamander, I never picked up more than a few phrases, and those were mostly curses.”

        “You must be Bonzo, then?” Ender-that-was asked while his older self spoke.

        “No, just a brilliant and talented polyglot. Petra Arkanian. The only girl in Salamander Army. With more balls than anybody else in this room.”

        “That’s a girl?!” Rarity exclaimed. “Poor thing, she looks just like everypony else.”

        “Mother Petra she talking,” one of the other boys continued over her interruption, “she talking, she talking.”

        “...and another thing…” Rarity continued.

        “Shit talking, shit talking…” another joked to the laughter of the room. Ender stopped the memory since it seemed like the unicorn wasn’t going to stop.

        “Did no one teach you manners at this school? Such a crude thing for a girl to say…”

        Twilight steadied her friend with a hoof on the shoulder. “Rarity, we don’t know what their cultural norms are, and besides, is that really relevant to-”

        “No, it’s alright,” Ender broke in, drawing the ponies’ eyes back to him. Minutiae like this might be distracting, but it also helped them get to know his situation and those involved. This was the much-needed context he had missed earlier.

        “I might as well talk about Petra now - she ended up becoming one of my closest friends and allies,” the boy continued. Rarity looked over at her fellow unicorn and gave a self-satisfied ‘hmpf.’ Twilight rolled her eyes.

        “No, Rarity, etiquette was not high on the list of priorities at Battle School,” he said, raising an eyebrow, “but at the same time, Petra isn’t a good example of an ‘average girl.’ She was so aggressive that the staff genetically tested her twice to confirm that she wasn’t really a boy.”

        The white unicorn was shocked. “How… how insulting!”

        “And what’s wrong with being aggressive?” Rainbow Dash demanded. “And why was she the only girl in the army? Now that I think about it, we haven’t seen any other girls at this school.”

        Ender answered each in turn. “She wasn’t insulted, Rarity. The only reason I know that fact is because Petra bragged about it more than once, usually whenever her gender came up.”

        He glanced at the blue pegasus. “There weren’t many girls in Battle School because the candidacy requirements included a level of combativeness and aggression that most females among our species don’t possess. The tests didn’t discriminate - males could be disqualified just as easily for lacking the trait - it’s just that boys are generally more aggressive. On average, one girl was admitted to Battle School for every ten boys.”

        Twilight looked thoughtful for a moment, then raised a hoof. “If that is true, then why haven’t we seen any girls before now?”

        Ender couldn’t help but laugh softly. “You have… it’s just that at six and seven, boys and girls look very much alike if you take away the different clothing and hairstyles… which is exactly what they did at Battle School.” He pictured the shaved heads and identical light green jumpsuits of the average Launchy to illustrate his point.

        “Oh…” Twilight sat back.

        “Ah still don’t get it,” Applejack looked up at the boy. “Just ‘cause they ain’t as aggressive doesn’t mean gals can’t fight. I’ve had to fight plenty of times to keep mah farm an’ family safe!”

        The soldier thought about that for a moment.

        “I’ll admit, I’ve only been here for a short time, but every guard I’ve seen has been male, at least as far as I can tell. It’s the same with us. Protecting hearth and home is not the same as fighting and dying in the cold black of space, even though the end effect may be the same. In the end, the powers-that-be set a bar for what kind of person they wanted, and it just so happened that more boys met that bar than did girls. They weren’t going to move the bar just to ensure an even mix.”

        Rarity and Applejack both opened their mouths, poised to argue, but Twilight took the initiative, shooting them both a look as she jumped in. “Though this is fascinating, I don’t think it’s very important to the story. Please continue, Ender.”

        A swell of laughter rolled through the throne room as the memory continued.  Suddenly, room grew quiet when a tall boy stepped forward. Dark eyes and aquiline features gave him a unique sense of refinement compared to the rowdy group.

        “Who are you?” The slender youth asked, his voice soft against the silence.

        Ender-that-was answered that and many more questions from the quiet boy, each more pointed than the last.

        “This is Bonzo,” Ender explained. “He could be quite charismatic when he wanted to - they didn’t make him a commander for nothing.”

        The Spaniard regarded him coolly as he finished his assessment of Ender’s skills and experience.

        “I see,” he said, raising his voice slightly so the entire room could hear. “As you will quickly learn, the officers in command of this school, most notably Major Anderson, who runs the game, are fond of playing tricks. Salamander Army is just beginning to emerge from indecent obscurity. We have won twelve of our last twenty games. We have surprised Rat and Scorpion and...”

        As the dark-haired boy continued to speak from the past, his voice rising slowly and incrementally to rouse his audience into a fervor, Ender glanced at his audience, hoping they saw what he wanted them to. True, most Battle Schoolers loved the game, but few were as devoted or single-minded as Bonzo. Twilight and the others needed to understand that, at least to him, the game was worth killing for.

        “...we are still-” Bonzo paused.

        “Salamander!” chanted the boys.

        “We are the fire that will consume them, belly and bowel, head and heart, many flames of us, but one fire.”

        “Salamander!” they roared in response.

        “Even this one will not weaken us.”

        All eyes turned to Ender, in the present as in the past.

        “I’ll work hard and learn quickly,” Ender-that-was said earnestly.

        “I didn’t give you permission to speak,” the older boy replied coldly. “I intend to trade you away as quickly as I can. I’ll probably have to give up someone valuable along with you, but as small as you are you are worse than useless. One more frozen, inevitably, in every battle, that’s all you are, and now we’re at a point where every frozen soldier makes a difference in the standings. Nothing personal, Wiggin, but I’m sure you can get your training at someone else’s expense.”

“He’s all heart,” Petra scoffed.

        Bonzo turned, almost calmly, and backhanded the girl across the face.

        The ponies gasped in shock at the casual violence.

        The commander of Salamander Army turned back without a second thought. “Here are your instructions, Wiggin. I expect that this is the last time I’ll need to speak to you. You will stay out of the way when…”

        The Spaniard’s voice was soon drowned in a wash of protests, and Ender gave up on trying to continue the memory.

        “How could she just stand there an’ take it?! I swear, I’d a…”

        “The brute! What kind of stall… er, what was… how could anypony hit…”

        The soldier could see the others reacting with distaste, but couldn’t hear them over Applejack and Rarity, who were decidedly the loudest. It took Ender a measure of self control to hide his smile. This was exactly what he needed from them.

        Holding up his hand for quiet, the boy waited until they settled down. He didn’t fail to notice that while Celestia looked upset, she remained still and withdrawn, choosing to instead observe the others.

        “Such was Bonzo’s method of leadership. As bad as it looks, it wasn’t simply an expression of cruelty. From his viewpoint, his authority was the keystone to his army’s success. Winning meant everything to him, and he would do whatever it took to maintain his authority over the others.”

        “But that doesn’t make it - “ Applejack started to object, but Celestia’s rich voice broke through her protest.

        “Did it work?” she asked.

        “To an extent, yes. His iron-clad control was Salamander’s greatest strength, but also its greatest weakness. Bonzo was a competent strategist, but if he missed something, or if one of his toons became isolated, his subordinates were lost without him.”

        “His toon?” Twilight wondered.

        “A smaller unit within an army. Most had four,” Ender answered.

        The princess took over again. “And this was the the boy from earlier?” When Rarity and the others noticed her insistence on moving forward, their visible signs of outrage started to slowly melt away.

        “Yes,” Ender said sadly. “This was the start of the conflict that ended in the bathroom - the memory I showed you before.”

        He moved forward briskly, showing flashes of memory where needed. Luna seemed to be granting him great latitude into what he did and did not show the others. Either she was starting to trust him, or else she was somehow watching and verifying everything the others did not see.

        “The best thing about my time in Salamander was that I met Petra. Though she was the best sharpshooter in the army, her status as the only girl made her as much of an outcast as I was.”

        Petra had come to him almost immediately after he found his bunk at the back of the Salamander barracks. An Armenian, the dark-haired girl would grow into a unique and striking look. Back then, however, her deep brown eyes and wide olive cheekbones barely differentiated her from the other Battle School children.

        “I’m a girl, and you’re a pissant of a six-year-old. We have so much in common, why don’t we be friends?” she asked Ender-that-was.

        “...and we were,” Ender continued, showing snippets of his time under Bonzo’s command. “She showed me the ropes when it came to being a rank-and-file soldier in Battle School, taught me all the things that I would have learned as a launchy, and gave me the backstory on all the armies, their commanders, and their relative place in the great game that consumed our lives. But most importantly, she taught me how to fight in the battle room.”

        He remembered that first day of practice, watching Petra throw a cluster of practice targets hard across the room. Seeing them ricochet every which way across the massive arena, Ender had doubted she would hit two or three. It took the girl barely two minutes to tag them all - all while in a controlled drift across the room.

        The ponies were as impressed as he had been.

        “Wow… that’s some sure-shootin’ right there.” Applejack whistled. “Still don’t know why she let that bone-guy get away with hittin’ her.”

        “She knew how to pick her battles,” Ender replied. “If it makes you feel better, Petra rose above him eventually, and her army became better than Salamander ever was.

        The boy remembered returning to his old Launchy barracks, the colors of his Salamander uniform contrasting sharply with theirs.

        “Petra was happy to help me whenever we could find time throughout the day, but insisted on using the nightly free time for her own purposes. I needed every bit of practice I could get, so I turned instead to my old group. It was unheard of for a soldier to spend time with Launchies, but the way I saw it, I was barely more than one myself. I couldn’t train alone, so we agreed to work together. I’d show them the bits and pieces I could pick up from watching Salamander train, and in return I’d get the practice Bonzo forbade.”

        Laughter drifted across the throne room as Ender recalled that first practice session with his old group. Poor Shen had become stuck in the middle of the battle room after mistimed push off another Launchy. After realizing that flailing wouldn’t get him anywhere, he resigned himself to his fate and pantomimed an exaggerated swimming motion to the delight of the others.

        “Bonzo found out about it though,” Ender continued, and the memory shifted. Ender-that-was, dressed for bed, was speaking to Bonzo in the corridor outside Salamander barracks.

        “He ordered me not to practice with my launch group anymore. This time, I had a plan and asked to speak with him privately. It was one request that all officers were supposed to honor.”

Ender stopped, letting his younger self speak for him.

“...but I’m going to practice, and I’m going to practice with the only people who will practice with me, and that’s my Launchies.”

        “You’ll do what I tell you to, you little bastard.” Bonzo stepped forward, using his height to force the smaller boy to look up at him.

        Ender was undeterred. “That’s right, sir, I’ll follow all the orders that you’re authorized to give. But free play is free. No assignments can be given. None. By anyone.”

        The Spaniard’s eyes tightened and his face grew red, but Ender-that-was pressed on.

        “Sir, I’ve got my own career to think of. I won’t interfere in your training and your battles, but I’ve got to learn sometime. I didn’t ask to be put into your army, and you’re trying to trade me as soon as you can. But nobody will take me if I don’t know anything, will they? Let me learn something, and then you can get rid of me all the sooner and get a soldier you can really use.

        Bonzo brought up a hand, but stayed it. He paused, grimacing, before he answered. “While you’re in Salamander Army, you’ll obey me,” he spat through clenched teeth.

        The younger boy didn’t even blink. “If you try to control my free play, I can get you iced.”

        Bonzo shook his head slowly, glaring daggers at Ender. He turned away momentarily, balling his free hand into a fist and moving it behind his head as if it was all he could do to resist the urge to strike out.

        “Bastard,” he growled, looking back.

        “It isn’t my fault you gave me that order in front of everybody,” Ender said. “But if you want, I’ll pretend you won this argument. Then tomorrow you can tell me you changed your mind.”

        The older boy rolled his eyes. “I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”

        Ender-that-was pressed on. “I don’t want the other guys to think you backed down. You wouldn’t be able to command as well.”

        Something broke behind Bonzo’s expression. His face remained still, but it was the paralysis of rage, not the calm of appeasement.

        “I meant to be kind,” Ender said sadly, “by giving him a way out without losing face. All I saw was the logical solution to give us each what we wanted, and to me that’s what mattered most. I mistakenly believed that once he saw it the same way, he would agree.”

The boy sighed. “Had I been older, had I known him better, I would have realized that to Bonzo, such an act was a grave insult after injury. Obedience was what mattered to him, and anything less was an assault on his capabilities as a commander. To Bonzo, it seemed that beating him wasn’t enough, that I wanted to rub it in his face in it by allowing him to treat it as a victory with the others.”

        “I’ll have your ass someday,” the Spaniard said quietly. It was a promise, not a threat.

        “Probably,” Ender replied.

        The memory vanished. “We were both right, as you saw earlier. While we were at odds from our first meeting, it was this humiliation that put Bonzo on the path of vengeance. He could not abide by such a slight against his honor.”

        Applejack scoffed. “Honor… hmpf! Was bein’ right really that important?”

        “Really!” Rarity agreed. “He had to have known he was in the wrong - he didn’t even challenge you on that. Then he had the nerve to be offended when you offered to cover for him?”

        “B-but, look how young he… they both are.” Fluttershy’s quiet voice surprised the others and she shrank back at their glance. “Oh… nevermind.”

        Twilight leaned down to encourage her. “No, what is it, Fluttershy? Go ahead - we’d like to hear what you have to say.”

        “Um,” the pegasus looked back at Ender. “To be a commander like him, didn’t it take a lot of work?”

        Ender smiled, glad that she understood if not a little surprised. “Yes. Only the best were selected to be commanders.”

        “And…” she glanced around at her friends, “he looks so much older than you, so wouldn’t he have been in that school for a long time?”

        She is getting it. The boy was impressed.

        “Almost six years. Nearly half his life by that point.”

        Fluttershy blinked. “Wow… I didn’t think of it that way.” The pegasus first looked up at the unicorn then down at the earth pony. “Rarity, Applejack… wouldn’t you feel threatened if someone challenged and insulted your skills at design or farming?”

        “Well, I… I…” Rarity sputtered.

        Applejack sat up and stomped a foreleg. “That’s not remotely the same! I’ve been farming all my life and ah’m darn good at it! This brute’s gettin’ all worked up about meaningless things!” She waved a raised hoof towards the air over Ender’s head.

        “Isn’t it the same?” Ender asked. “Being a commander meant everything to Bonzo; he effectively spent his life working to become one. I assume it’s much the same with your professions.”

        “I-” Rarity began, but she stopped, brow creased in thought. The farmer looked much the same.

        Fluttershy broke the silence. “Still, I don’t think what he did was right. He… attacked you, didn’t he?” The pegasus sat up and looked intently down at the boy. It was a welcome change from her earlier cowering.

        Ender nodded. “He did, but before we get there, I’ll explain fully why he did.”

        He remembered the early battles when he wore the green-green-brown of Salamander, his mindscape shifting from one view of the battle room to the next. From his position near the door, the only thing that really changed with each memory were the colors of Salamander’s opponent.

        “Over the next few months, I trained with Petra and my old Launchies, sat through class, and did my homework while the rest of Salamander practiced during their allotted time in the battle room. While Bonzo could exclude me from practice, he had to bring me along when Salamander was called to a real game. He had ordered me to not participate in any of the battles - to only enter and wait for it to be over. It was boring, true, but I learned a great deal from watching those early battles.”

        A view of the giant leaderboard in the mess hall came into focus. Soldiers from many different armies formed a rainbow of color below it as they marveled at an oddity, alternately cursing and laughing.

        Ender’s name topped the leaderboard in the individual rankings.

        “Almost immediately, Bonzo’s policy drew him unwanted attention. Our very first battle with me on the roster resulted in a defeat. As ordered, I had done nothing and the opposing team passed me by. I had blocked the only shot sent at me with my legs, and the soldier who froze them must have assumed he disabled me because I wasn’t firing back. When the final score came in, Salamander had 39 soldiers disabled and one damaged - a then-unheard of tally. I never said anything, but word spread about Bonzo’s order from the other Salamander soldiers, and he was treated to the incredulity of his peers.”

        The boy shook his head. “He never changed his mind though.”

        Looking back up at Celestia and the ponies around her, Ender continued. “Bonzo, much to his chagrin, also was responsible for my initial notoriety around Battle School. At first, I was just a strange fluke, a Launchy promoted well ahead of his time. After that first battle, though, the order to not do anything caused me to top the all-important leaderboard for individual stats. I had never fired a shot, so my hit rate was perfect. I had only ever been damaged and never disabled, so my survival rate surpassed the vast majority of Battle School veterans as well. It was a fluke, and everyone knew it, but it did even more to highlight Bonzo’s foolishness. For a boy who cared so much about his reputation, you can imagine how he felt about it.”

        The ponies looked at each other and nodded. Rainbow Dash murmured something knowingly.

        “It was something that Bonzo had to deal with constantly while I was one of his soldiers. Mercifully, I wasn’t with Salamander long. Not long after I turned seven and finished my first year at Battle School, my army met its match against a new commander and his unconventional army. To this day I don’t know why I did it, but right as they were about to pass through the gate and win the game, I finally disobeyed Bonzo’s orders and disabled five of them before they were able to take me down. It was just enough to force a draw.”

        “Good for you!” Rainbow Dash cheered, the lights of the laser fire from the memory flickering across her face. “Did that good-for-nothing finally come to his senses?”

        “Not quite.” Ender figured this would be a good point to show a memory in full.

        “Wiggin,” Bonzo’s voice echoed across the barracks as he stormed back to the boy’s bunk, “I finally traded you. I was able to persuade Rat Army that your incredible place on the efficiency list is more than just an accident. You go over there tomorrow.”

        Ender-that-was stood up from his bunk, coming to attention. “Thank you, sir.”

        The ponies winced as the sound of Bonzo’s open-handed slap bounced around the empty throne room. The smaller boy skidded into the metal of his bunk right as the Spaniard caught him in the gut with a closed fist. Ender-that-was went down wheezing with tears in his eyes.

        “You disobeyed me,” Bonzo said, raising his voice to the entire barracks. “No good soldier ever disobeys.”

        “Ugh!” Rarity cried in disbelief. “Please tell me somepony did something about him. I can see the rest of those boys are just as disgusted as I am.”

        Ender shook his head. “They were, but not because he hit me. That was normal for Bonzo. I saved them from defeat, and they thought he should have been grateful. It was a foolish move on Bonzo’s part, though - he was eroding the very discipline he worked so hard to create.”

        “You mean nobody stood up to him, ever?” Twilight was incredulous. “The teachers, at least, should have had some issue with what he was doing.”

        “At that time, no, no one stood up to him,” Ender replied. “That event did motivate me to enroll in hand-to-hand combat classes, though. I did not want to ever be on the receiving end of that kind of abuse again.”

        “It should have never been a possibility to begin with,” Rarity muttered.

        “Nevertheless, it was over. I reported to Rat the next day. The only downside to my departure was that I had to stop training with Petra. We might have been able to pull it off, but I asked her to stop. She already lived at the edge of Bonzo’s temperament; training with a soldier in another army might have sent him over the edge.”

        Ender wondered momentarily how to proceed. The framework he conceived earlier had seemed so clear when he started. Dealing with the ponies’ tangents and the unexpected emotions raised by these memories had muddied the waters.

        How long has it been, anyway? The boy shifted, relieving some of the tension in his knees and back. The shadows, he noted, had grown longer as the sun settled off to his right. Is it afternoon already?

        “It would be three years before the incident with Bonzo - the next memory you wanted to see. Though I wasn’t in his army anymore, other things happened that contributed to what occurred that day.”

        If Salamander barracks was the model of order and quiet military efficiency, Rat was its polar opposite. Raucous laughter drew the ponies’ attention overhead as Ender remembered his first day with his former army’s chief rival.

        “Rat was… not what I expected. They were both respected and loathed in Salamander as worthy opponents. Having only experienced Bonzo’s leadership style, I didn’t know what to make of my new home.”

        The memory played silently as Ender-that-was reported in to his new commander, a lank, dark-skinned youth who didn’t even bother to get up from his bunk. In the throne room, the soldier smirked at the sight in his head, remembering Ariel Rosen far more warmly than he expected to. Inept as the Israeli boy was by Battle School standards, he had done well after graduation, winning himself a position on the Polemarch’s staff as a junior officer. Unlike many others who had treated him poorly, Rosen had sent a letter of apology after they both had left the school. Apparently, he had followed Ender’s career and was thoroughly impressed by the younger boy’s accomplishments.

        “The boy here, Rosen, may have been the commander, but the truth was that Rat’s success came from the brilliance of one of his toon leaders: Dink Meeker.” Ender’s memory flashed forward to his first time meeting the boy who would later become one of his top lieutenants. “To say he was different than the average Battle School student would be a gross understatement. He viewed the game for what it really was: just a training tool to make us better soldiers for the real war. He didn’t really care about winning and losing - at least not for the same reasons everyone else did.”

        Dink drifted in the battle room, alone and sans flash suit. It was the day Ender had learned just how different he was.

        “Well, now you know why I’m not a commander.” Out of the past, the Dutch boy’s voice returned with crystal clarity. His memory sped forward to their conversation in Rat’s barracks.

        “I do?” he asked.

        “Actually, they promoted me twice, and I refused.”

        “I thought being a commander was what everyone wanted…” Fluttershy murmured, curious. Ender waved a hand to silence her, pointing upwards at the memory.

        “The second time they took away my old locker and bunk and desk, assigned me to a commander’s cabin, and gave me an army. But I stayed in my cabin until they gave in and put me back into somebody else’s army.”

        “But… why?” Twilight was perplexed.

        “Because he saw the bigger picture,” Ender responded, electing to explain rather than let the memory play out. “Dink knew who the real enemy was, or at least he thought he did. He saw the teachers as our adversaries, pitting us against each other while they sat back and took notes. To him, we were like rats in a cage, fighting until the victors emerged on top of the pile, only for the teachers to scoop them up and pit them against the other winners until only the most capable fighters were left.”

        “Whaaaa-” Fluttershy began to cry but Ender quickly interrupted.

        “-only a metaphor! I’m sorry, I should have used a different one. No one was making rats fight.”

        Twilight shot him a look and the meaning was clear: Then why would the expression come so easily?

        “My point, and what matters,” Ender pressed on, “is that Dink was the only student in the entire school who saw beyond the armies, classes, and games. To him it was meaningless.”

        “They why didn’t he just quit? You could do that, couldn’t you?” asked Rarity.

        The boy let the memory answer. He heard his younger self mimic the unicorn. “So why don’t you go home?”

        Dink grinned sadly. “Because I can’t give up the game. Because I love this.” 

        “Why are you telling us this?” Celestia’s richer tones cut to the heart of the matter.

        Ender looked up at her. “Because while Petra taught me how to shoot, Dink taught me how to think and how to lead.” He recalled one of his first formal practice sessions with Rat, when Dink called on him to teach some of the new techniques he had developed with his launcies to his other toonmates. They resisted at first, balking at the notion of a tiny newcomer teaching veterans, but when they saw Dink was serious, the group quickly shut up and started listening. The Dutch boy’s quiet and confident manner carried more weight than Bonzo’s bluster ever did.

        “I eventually defeated Bonzo in the arena he valued most: the battle room. That was the tipping point - the event that pushed him over the edge. To understand how we came to that point, though, you need to understand how I became a commander, and how my rise was viewed throughout Battle School. My time in Rat played a key role in this.”

        The princess nodded, indicating for him to continue.

“I didn’t agree with everything Dink said. He believed, for instance, that the Formics were no longer a threat - only a ploy for the IF to hold onto their power. Even so, his perspective broadened mine. Though I still focused on Battle School and the game, I kept the bigger picture in mind and tried my best not to destroy relationships that we would all need later in the real war, even as I fought against rivals. I stopped blindly trusting the word of our instructors and weighed everything against what little outside information I could gather. Most importantly, I learned the interpersonal skills required of a leader, and how to balance the need for strict authority with lenient understanding, and how to move between the two without seeming weak-willed or tyrannical. Command is a tightrope, and few could walk it better than Dink Meeker.”

        “But… surely your teachers wouldn’t lie to you.” Twilight seemed distressed at the notion.

        Applejack laughed. “Of course they would! Look at what that Graff fella has already done. What’s more dishonest than settin’ up Ender here for failure and making all the other kids dislike him?”

        Twilight shook her head. “But he seemed to be doing it to push him, to make him better. It may not have been fair, but he had his best interests in mind.” She pointed down at the boy.

        Ender smiled briefly. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Twilight. The teachers were lying to us, but not in the way Dink suspected. I’ll show you how in a bit.”

        Rat Army stood in front of the battle room gate as Rosen wordlessly accosted the younger Ender. As soon the gate disappeared, the younger boy launched himself through, rocketing to the other side as the enemy was forming up. He flashed nearly a dozen Centipede soldiers before they realized what was happening and froze him.

        “Rosen wasn’t happy when he found out that my standings weren’t anything more than a fluke, but when he stupidly tried to sacrifice me out of anger, we happened to stumble on a very useful tactic. Dink was brilliant enough to see its potential and build on it. Between regular practice with his toon and extra practice with my Launchies, I was able to start devising new and innovative strategies that would revolutionize the way the game was played. Of course, not everyone saw it the same way.”

        Older boys stood outside the gates of the battle room, mocking Ender’s little group as they practiced their strange maneuvers.

        “The old guard started reacting with hostility, angry that some little upstart was not only leading the standings but also acting like a commander of his own private army after hours. Fewer boys started showing up to practice, and I heard word that there were both subtle and overt threats against them.”

        “That’s mean and terribly petty, but I guess by this point I shouldn’t be surprised,” Rarity said caustically.

        “Wait, didn’t you say your standings were a fluke? Wouldn’t you have gone back to being normal once you started playing the game like everyone else?” Rainbow Dash wondered aloud. “You did get to compete when you were in Rat, right? Isn’t that what we just saw?

        As much as they don’t like violence, she seems enthralled by the concept of the game, Ender mused, noting the pegasus’ expression.

        “I did drop at first, but mind you I was in the best toon of one of the better armies in Battle School. Between Dink and Petra’s training, I eventually earned the top spot legitimately, holding it for the rest of my time in Battle School.”

        Rainbow whistled appreciatively.

        “I don’t say that to brag.” Ender shook his head. “But to highlight another reason why Bonzo and his friends were determined to take me down. I started there because of his clumsiness in command and I’m sure he would have enjoyed watching me fall to where he thought a disobedient soldier like me belonged. Having to see my name highlighted every single day in the mess hall would have been a constant reminder of the bad blood between us.”

        “Oh,” she said somberly. The others nodded in realization.

        The memory continued. Now the older boys were jeering, distracting the launchy group.

        “Listen to them,” said Ender-that-was. “Remember the words. If you ever want to make your enemy crazy, shout that kind of stuff at them. It makes them do dumb things, to be mad. But we don’t get mad.”

        The Launchies laughed, and turned it into a game, repeating back the insults thrown at them by the veteran soldiers. It was a simple grade-school annoyance, but it had an effect. Before long, the older boys pushed off from the student gate, ready for a fight.

        “Half of us were frozen, and even those that weren’t couldn’t move as easily as the older boys who weren’t wearing flash suits. Even thawed, our suits were stiff and we were no match for soldiers who were experts at maneuvering through the battle room,” Ender explained.

        “So just because of a few words they were going to fight you? They’re twice your size!” Pinkie piped up angrily.

        “Have you been watching this, Pinkie Pie?” Dash asked from above and behind her. “It’s what they do - lash out.”

        “Not always, but yes. They were coming to ‘teach us a lesson.’”

        Ender-that-was gathered his group into a corner while the veterans advanced, undeterred. As an opening move, he and Alai threw a frozen soldier directly into the bulk of the advancing boys. The helmeted Launchy careened into the uncoordinated mass, striking one kid in the chest. His pained cries echoed across the battle room of the past and the throne room of the present. The incensed veterans launched forward in earnest, but Ender’s attack had forced them to scatter in a confused mess.

        “At the edge of the room we had the advantage of maneuver - it’s easier to change course in zero-g when you have something to push off of. I had my group scatter around the bigger kids and rebound for the exit door while I went to rescue the kid we had thrown.”

        Sure enough, the Launchies pushed off from each other and effortlessly sped around the hapless veterans. Ender, meanwhile, shot directly towards the frozen Launchy and kicked him towards the rest of the group now assembling at the door. Unfortunately, the maneuver used up most of his momentum and left the boy drifting slowly in the middle of the room. In seconds, the older boys started to rebound towards him.

        The ponies gasped, catching on to what was happening. Fluttershy ducked again behind her hair.

        Looking down, Ender-that-was saw their faces looming larger, twisted in rage. The closest one was Stilson.

        “Wha-” began Twilight, but her voice cut out as the face shifted, to show a Salamander soldier.

        I had forgotten about that. Ender shuddered.

        “Sometimes the mind plays tricks on you. Fear did that to me sometimes.”

        As the first boys reached him, it was clear that no one knew how to fight hand-to-hand in zero-g. Punches only pushed and transferring your weight became a lot harder when there was no surface to use as leverage. Out of the corner of his eye, though, Ender saw the approaching boys make motions to each other, indicating they should grab his extremities and pull/twist to break them.

        Rainbow Dash and Twilight cringed, catching on.

        “I wasn’t about to let them get their hands on me.”

        The Launchies were forming up for a rescue attempt. “Stay there!” the younger Ender shouted at them. As one of the veterans grabbed his foot from below, the boy stomped down, tearing the attacker’s ear. He drifted free, only to face three more boys, two coming from below and one from in front. Waiting for them to grab on so he’d have leverage, Ender-that was took the one in front by the shoulders and headbutted him, breaking the kid’s nose with his helmet. Blood spurted around the group as he threw the screaming soldier into the two below who were trying to twist his legs and break them at the joints. The collision freed one leg which he then used to smash the last hold and tear free.

        Silence reigned as most of the audience watched in slack-jawed shock. Only Celestia maintained her composure, though her eyes were wide.

        Ender landed to the cheers of his group.

        “Practice is over for the day.” It was the understatement of the year.

        “They’ll be back tomorrow.” Shen looked worriedly at the furious mass of veterans, many wearing Salamander green.

        “Won’t do them any good. If they come without suits, we’ll do this again. If they come with suits, we can flash them.”

        “Besides,” Alai added, “the teachers won’t let it happen.”

        “Why did they let it happen this time?!” Twilight practically shouted. “Wasn’t there anypo-anyone around to stop such… such…?”

        Ender shook his head. “Graff had a keen interest in letting me solve my own problems, as you’ll soon see.”

        The unicorn was flabbergasted.

        “Hey Ender!” shouted a familiar voice from among the mass of older boys, drawing the ponies’ attention. “You nothing, man! You be nothing!

        “My old commander Bonzo,” said Ender-that-was. “I think he doesn’t like me.”

        “Ya think?” Applejack rolled her eyes.

        “He was involved in that?” Fluttershy asked.

        “Of course he was!” Dash responded. “Probably planned the whole thing, right?”

        “I never found out.” Ender shrugged. “Knowing him, he just took advantage of an opportunity that presented itself, but it shows what he was willing to do, even at this point. That’s the reason why I showed you this memory - again, I’m sorry for the violence, but it’s necessary context for what happened down the road.”

        “It’s OK,” Fluttershy stood up resolutely. “If you could handle it at that age, I… I should be able to now.”

        “I was scared too,” Ender admitted honestly, “but I couldn’t let it paralyze me. My story might have ended there, otherwise.”

        The others looked at each other thoughtfully.

        “After that day, other commanders either came to me directly or sent representatives to say that they approved of my evening practice sessions, and that they would take steps to make sure nothing like that would happen again. That next evening, our group doubled in size - a number of armies sent older soldiers who needed the extra practice to not only benefit from the training but also discourage any interference. You can take a wild guess which army didn’t participate.”

        The ponies nodded.

        “The years passed. I went to class. I practiced. I improved and continued to help those who chose to attend my evening practices.” As he spoke, Ender’s eyes unfocused and he saw brief flashes of his life as a Battle School soldier. Though he knew the others were watching, he didn’t bother to slow them down or sort them out. Let Luna stop him if she wanted.

        “I rose in the ranks. By nine, I was a toon leader in Petra’s Phoenix Army and we were unstoppable. My evening practice sessions still focused on helping launchies, but now included each army’s elite soldiers, those hand-picked by their respective commanders. Even a few Salamanders were willing to defy Bonzo, now a senior commander near graduation.”

        Try as he might, Ender couldn’t keep his mind from focusing on the crushing isolation he felt during those years. All the respect he earned drove a wedge between him and everyone he would have called a friend. Over and over, he saw instances of Shen and Alai becoming serious whenever he entered the room, Dink cutting off a joke when he joined the conversation, or Petra deferring to his judgment even when she had the final authority as commander of Phoenix. He knew where his thoughts were going and try as he might, he couldn’t hold back the memory of Valentine’s letter.

        Choked sobs echoed across the chamber from Ender-that-was even as the present version struggled to withhold tears. In his memory, the other boys of Phoenix Army looked away in shock as their finest soldier broke down crying.

        “What… what’s happening? ...Ender?” Twilight ventured.

        The boy paused until he was sure his voice would not break.

        “A painful memory. This has nothing to do with what you need to know. Will you believe me this time?”

        Twilight looked up at the princess, clearly lost. Celestia raised a hoof to settle her pupil and glanced towards the back of the throne room.

        Looking back, she said gently, “Ender, perhaps it would help to speak of it, whether the memory relates to this inquiry or not. If you will speak, We will listen.”

        The royal ‘we.’ Ender felt that her intonation carried significant importance, but he was too focused on controlling his emotions to analyze it.

        He appreciated the princess’ intentions and decided to at least give a conciliatory answer.

        “My sister means everything to me. She was my friend, my mentor, and my protector. My brother was far worse than Stilson, Bonzo or any of the Battle Schoolers. He was rejected from Battle School because he was too cruel and too aggressive. As smart as Valentine and I were, he could easily hide his actions from our parents. That left her as my only defender when I was too young to defend myself from his torments.”

        The boy paused, taking a shaky breath. The ponies looked at each other, a wide range of emotions crossing their faces.

        “Battle School would always stop students’ letters home, but they never told us that. They let us think that our letters went unanswered.”

        “That’s horrible!” Rarity and Pinkie Pie cried out in unison.

        “...and necessary, when training children to be soldiers. Cruel as it is, prolonged homesickness just interfered with training. Besides, nearly everything they taught us was classified - a state secret,” he added when he saw their looks of confusion. “They didn’t want us leaking it to the public.”

        “Still…” Applejack trailed off.

        “The only thing more cruel than cutting off communication was letting it through again for their own purposes. Even though I was performing beyond all expectations, I had stagnated and was no longer pushing myself or advancing. They used my sister… convinced her to write a letter that they would deliver, just to spur me on.”

        “I…” Twilight was dumbfounded. “I don’t know what to say…”

        The soldier shook his head. “You don’t have to say anything. The letter had the desired effect.” Ender held out against his related memory from the Mind Game - the very room that had defeated Nightmare Moon in his dreamscape. Mercifully, Luna allowed him to push it away and didn’t force the issue.

        One image did slip through, though. He saw it only briefly, but judging by the looks on the others’ faces, they saw it too.

        Ender and Valentine stood hand in hand before the mirror in the tower. Instead of reflecting their images, it showed a dragon and a unicorn, the latter vastly different than the ones sitting above him.

        Taking a deep breath, he continued. “I moved on. When he thought I was ready, Graff summoned me. It was the first time I had seen him in years.”

        “Dragon Army?” he heard himself ask. “I’ve never heard of Dragon Army.”

        “That’s because there hasn’t been a Dragon Army in four years. We discontinued the name because there was a superstition about it. No Dragon Army in the history of the Battle School ever won a third of its games. It got to be a joke.”

        Ender-that-was raised an eyebrow. “Well, why are you reviving it now?”

        “We had a lot of extra uniforms to use up.”

        The boy elaborated. “That turned out to be a lie. After I graduated, I checked out of curiosity. They created Dragon Army out of thin air and fabricated all the uniforms and flash suits overnight. I never could find out why, though.”

        “Everyone expected me to be promoted early to commander,” he continued, “but not this early. I was nine - it was unheard of for someone to make commander before eleven.”

        Ender saw himself walking down a corridor, following the light thread of gray-orange-gray that would lead him to his new barracks. Remembering the butterflies he felt in the pit of his stomach as he made that walk, the soldier realized something.

        Where did they find the barracks space if they invented the army overnight? Did they disband another unit? No, I would have heard of that. Maybe they simply kept extra bays available.

        He made a mental note to investigate if he ever got home.

        Spying his new barracks, Ender squared his shoulders and entered, taking command from moment one.

        “Bunking will be arranged by seniority. Veterans to the back of the room, newest soldiers to the front.” He projected his voice but was not overly loud. Even so, all conversation came to an immediate halt as his army scrambled to sort themselves out. Three out of every four was a Launchy, and the rest wore a rainbow of colors from other armies.

        Opening his eyes, the soldier silenced the memory and explained the situation to his judges.

        “Graff changed some of the rules when he gave me command of Dragon Army. First, my army was comprised of mostly launchies with a few mid-level veterans from other units, not an even mix drawn from across the school. Second, I was not allowed to make any trades.”

        “Well, that’s not fair!” Rainbow Dash pointed out. “How were you supposed to win with a bunch of newbies?!”

        Ender laughed softly to himself. “It wouldn’t be the last time the instructors were ‘unfair’ to Dragon Army. Officially, the reason he gave was that my years of private practice sessions earned me a following. If trades into and out of my unit were allowed, those soldiers would pressure their commanders to trade them into Dragon. It was a valid point, but not the real reason.”

        “What was it then?” Twilight asked.

        The boy remembered the framework from which he started, and started connecting the dots for the ponies. “At first, the colonel wanted to see how I would handle isolation. I overcame the divide in my launchy group, but at the cost of making Bernard an enemy. Then Graff wanted to see how I would deal with early advancement combined with a lack of formal training and a hostile work environment. I overcame the limits my commander placed on me and found mentors like Petra and Dink. My efforts, however, ignited Bonzo’s intense hatred while making me a polarizing figure within the entire school. I may have been doing well, and I may have been respected, but just because someone respects you doesn’t mean that they like you. Every part of this chain of events led to the memory you saw earlier - the fight in the bathroom.”

        Ender paused, judging the expressions of his audience. They all seemed to follow, and even Pinkie Pie was looking at him seriously.

        “Now Graff was evaluating how I would do when separated from the support structures I had already built. I didn’t know a single soldier in my army; none of them had ever been to my practice sessions, even though the majority were Launchies and my sessions had always been open to them. I didn’t even recognize the veterans - they were so unnoticable in their previous units that I didn’t know their names until they wound up in mine. Graff did me one favor though: inexperienced as it made them, none of my soldiers were older than I was. A group of six-to-nine-year-olds was about to take on the rest of Battle School, to include commanders that were being held back.”

        “Held back?” Twilight asked worriedly. The tone of her voice made it clear she didn’t like the concept.

        “The veterans I received from other armies had to be replaced by Launchies, above and beyond the normal number assigned each month to an army. To ‘make up for the difference in experience,’ Graff held back most of the commanders, even ones that would have normally graduated by then. Most notably, this included senior commanders like Bonzo Madrid.”

        “I’ll bet he wasn’t happy about that,” Applejack muttered.

        “And what difference would that make?” Dash scoffed. “Your team had mostly new guys.”

        Ender agreed. “Not much of a difference at all. I’m positive Graff did it to ensure I faced tough opponents: seasoned armies with seasoned commanders to lead them.” He looked at the earth pony to his left. “And while you may be right, Applejack, I don’t think Bonzo knew that he had specifically been held back for me. There weren’t graduating classes or anything… no specific date when Battle School ended. When the teachers thought you were ready, you simply received orders to one of the follow-on schools. That said, under normal circumstances, Bonzo should have been long gone by the time we faced each other.”

        The soldier’s mindscape opened up on the battle room. Dragon Army was practicing assaulting a wall feet-first, firing through their legs in a kneeling position.

        “Inexperienced though they were, my army turned out to be anything but dull. What they lacked in training, they made up in attitude and a willingness to learn. Even the veterans, who I assumed were simply cast-offs from the other armies, turned out to be great thinkers who were just misunderstood. See this kid?” He focused on Bean, the small boy at the furthest edge of the pack.

        “The little one?” Rarity asked, squinting.

        Ender nodded. “That’s Bean, the best ally I ever had in Battle School. Young, brilliant, and brash, he was as much of a challenge to me as I ever was to Bonzo. Fortunately I had learned from my old commander’s bad example, and though I was tough on him, it was for the purpose of making him better, not breaking him down.”

        He remembered his first conversation with Bean in the corridor outside the battle room: Bean against the wall with Ender’s hand clenched around the front of his uniform. It eerily mirrored his earlier confrontation with Bonzo outside Salamander’s barracks, only with the roles reversed.

        “I later learned that Bean was my replacement, in case I failed to fulfill Graff’s expectations or… didn’t make it through training. I’m not ashamed to admit that Bean was the better strategist; as good as I was at thinking outside the box and coming up with unconventional tactics, he was better. That said, I was better with people. My gift was the ability to know my subordinates, and my enemies, completely. I could then use that knowledge in battle to respectively form effective teams and exploit weaknesses. Together, our strengths made Dragon Army unstoppable.”

        Ender’s mind settled on a view of the Dragon Army barracks after the unit had begun to coalesce into a real team. Han Tzu and Fly Molo were arm wrestling while their respective toons cheered them on. Crazy Tom officiated, taking bets and changing the odds real-time as the other three toons weighed in on one side or the other.

        “4:6 against me?!” The Chinese boy blinked. “The-that math doesn’t work… eight more just placed with-”

        *Wham*

Down went his arm as Fly took advantage of the distraction. “You think too much, Hot Soup!” The Filipino laughed while his opponent fumed.

        The group’s laughter faded into the background. Ender’s voice again drew the others’ attention. “For the next three weeks, I showed them everything I knew - the result of every observation I had ever made over three years in Battle School. My unique orientation of the battle room that designated the enemy’s gate as “down,” the technique of using one’s legs as a shield against enemy fire, and many others I had picked up along the way. I even reorganized my army into five toons of eight instead of the standard four toons of ten. Some my methods were known to others in Battle School, I had discovered and implemented many of them in Rat and Phoenix after all, but Dragon Army was built with these tactics from the ground up. While everyone else was still fundamentally rooted in the old way of doing things, my group was unique. This was the core reason behind our success.”

        Practice session flowed into practice session as the ponies watched in wonder. Memory by memory, Dragon Army improved. After a few minutes, the formerly green recruits were drilling with greater precision and more flexibility than any of the veteran armies from earlier recollections.

        “Normally, a new commander is given three months to prepare his army before joining the scheduled games in the battle room. After three and a half weeks, we entered our first fight against Rabbit.”

        Five columns of Dragon Army soldiers lined up in crisp formation behind Ender, waiting for the battle gate to open. When it did, he raised a fist, delaying their exit as the opposing army poured out of their gate.

        In the throne room, the soldier explained, “The rest of the school took the wrong lesson from my suicide attack on Centipede back when I was in Rat. Everyone started jumping out of the gate to grab positions before their adversary could do the same. Now that I commanded, I intended to do the opposite: I took the time to size up my enemy’s strategy and trained my toon leaders to be flexible and intuitive to compensate for poorer positioning.”

        “Spread to the near stars,” the younger Ender said calmly, indicating the cube-shaped obstacles placed randomly throughout the room. “C try to slide the wall. If it works, A and E will follow. If it doesn’t, I’ll decide from there. I’ll be with D. Move.”

        Dragon Army silently followed, toon leaders and soldiers all understanding their commander’s intent. They deployed as one, only splitting as the various toons split up once under zero-g. As they exited, all forty children rotated backwards, bringing up their legs and kneeling in the direction of the enemy’s gate.

        The half-light of this particular game gave way to piercing laser fire. Flash suits on both sides started to go dark as the soldiers found their marks, but most of Dragon’s damage was contained to its soldier’s legs. Firing from between their frozen limbs, Ender’s army found their Rabbit counterparts to be easy marks. Oriented to gravity as it had been at their battle gate, their torsos were fully exposed.

        Within two minutes, C toon had torn through the Rabbit opposition and established themselves behind a star on the other side of the enemy’s formation. The confused Rabbits were torn between evicting the enemy behind them and pushing for position to flank the enemy in front. Han Tzu saw the way forward immediately and tapped Ender on the shoulder.

        “How about flipping off the north wall and kneeling on their faces?” he suggested.

        Ender explained what was happening to the audience, many of whom, he noted with a smile, watched with open-jawed amazement. “It was a good idea, basically adding additional arms to the pincer that C toon - the ones behind Rabbit - started. All I had to do was expand on it.”

        His past self took over. “Do it. I’ll take B south to get behind them.” Raising his voice, Ender-that-was directed his remaining soldiers into position then flipped down off the star to join the other group. As one, Dragon Army rebounded off the walls around Rabbit’s position, providing too many targets for them to engage at the same time. Once in position, the flanking fire cut the opposing team to shreds. The battle was over in minutes.

        “We completely froze every Rabbit while only getting one flashed and five disabled on our side. Moreover, we set a record that day for fastest win. It would not be Dragon’s first.”

        The scene shifted. The brown-gray-white of Rabbit’s flash suits gave way to the red-white-orange of Phoenix.

        “Most armies got two weeks between battles. I faced my previous commander the very next day.”

        “That’s not fair…” Fluttershy noted, “but I suppose we should expect that by now, right?”

        The boy nodded. “As I said before, almost nothing done to my army was ‘fair.’ Graff had already tested my ability to build a team; now he wanted to test my endurance.”

        It was a pitched battle, but in the end, Petra stood before Ender as he thawed her soldiers - part of the ritual for the victorious army. Anger burned in her eyes as she glared at him.

        “Petra was my toughest opponent. Phoenix flashed three of ours and disabled nine before it was all over. It was the most any army would ever score on us, but that was little consolation to her. She felt angry and humiliated, and I was worried that I had lost her as a friend. Unfortunately, she wasn’t the only one.”

        Moments flashed past of meetings with Alai, Shen, and Dink Meeker. All were cordial, polite, but it was clear that a wall of reserved guardedness had formed between Ender and his closest allies. 

        “Wait a minute!” the blue pegasus interrupted angrily. “What kind of baloney is this?!” Her term raised one of Ender’s eyebrows, but he said nothing. “Just because you’re on opposite teams doesn’t mean you can’t be friends. They should have been cheering your victories!”

        “And they would have,” Ender nodded sadly, “had they come in the usual way. Most commanders go for months before their first victory, and even then it would probably be from a very close game. When they first enter the commander’s dining room - a privilege reserved only for those who have won a match - they’re usually greeted with rousing applause. My overwhelming wins from out of nowhere shocked everyone. I was a threat, an upset to the natural order of things at Battle School. Everyone’s ego was tied up in their standings and in their armies, except for Dink’s. The effect my success had on Bonzo’s ego was an extreme case, but even my friends weren’t immune to it.”

        Ender thought for a moment, realizing something.

        “Now that I think about it, this is another factor leading up what happened in the bathroom that day - if my friends were so shaken by what was happening, imagine how my enemies felt.”

        Fluttershy looked at the others, thoughtful, but didn’t offer any other comments.

        His memories shifted from one battle to the next. The colors of his opponents’ flash suits changed, but the outcome did not.

        “After seven days, Dragon stood with a perfect 7-0 record. We defeated some of Battle School’s top armies in ways that had never been seen before. On the individual rankings, you had to go halfway down the list to find a name that didn’t belong to Dragon. In a school where the game was everything, surprise, respect and awe turned quickly to shock and fear.”

        Understanding seemed to dawn on the group. Ender hoped that the notion they earlier rejected out of hand - the willingness to kill over a game - would now at least seem fathomable to them.

        It was almost time to return to the point where he started, but Ender wanted to bring up one more memory for them to see, considering the other memories they wanted him to explain.

        The commander’s mess, with its massive, room-dominating scoreboard appeared in his mind. A small group sat eating around Ender while a much larger group sat huddled in the opposite corner.

        “Some wanted to learn from me, to attempt to adopt my strategies. Most of the commanders took the opposite course, pooling their ideas, experience, and resources into trying to find a way to finally defeat me. Dragon Army owed its success to its soldiers as much as its tactics, but our revolutionary way of fighting would only stay revolutionary for so long. Already others were adapting our techniques. I knew our edge would only last for so long, but I faced a problem - as innovative as we were, I had already learned the sum total of what could be learned from the other Battle School soldiers.”

        He recalled Bean experimenting with a deadline - a monofilament cable used for tethering astronauts in space - in the Battle Room. By utilizing varying amounts of slack in the line, the boy was able to fly tight arcs, changing direction zero-g that no untethered soldier could follow. “We tried adapting tools for other uses, like the line you see Bean using here, but those provided nothing more than flashy tricks. What I needed was tactical instruction. So I turned to our enemies, the Formics.”

        “The aliens?” Twilight was surprised. “How?”

        Ender’s mindscape shifted to the cramped vid room in the corner of the Battle School library. “There were precious few recordings of the battles outside of the carefully scripted classroom lessons. There were, however, all the propaganda vids I had grown up watching.”

        Patriotic music filled the throne room as he recalled some of the scenes he had shown earlier. “While they weren’t designed to teach anything, these videos had a few segments each that were actually useful - control panels depicting enemy formations, shots of Formic ships maneuvering, things like that. It took me a long time, but I pieced together the fundamentals of their strategy bit by bit.”

        Twilight seemed impressed. “Did you learn anything?”

        “Nothing helpful,” Ender admitted, “but what I did learn became important later. At the time, though, my back was to the wall, and the games were only going to get harder.”

        Ender’s army slogged through the corridors of Battle School, pulling on their flash suits as they jogged. Though their stoic faces presented a confident front, even the ponies could see the fatigue in their movements.

        Bean broke formation and pulled up beside Ender. He motioned for the taller boy to lean down so he could keep his voice low.

        “They really told you ten minutes ago?”

        “Yeah.” Ender nodded.

        Bean shook his head in disbelief. “Fly was right, no army has ever had two battles on the same day before. That’s bad enough… but not giving us enough warning to make it to the gate on time? What kind of kuso is that?”

        “The same kind that got us battles every day this week. They know we can’t be beaten the normal way - now they want to see how far they can bend us before we break.”

        The younger boy started to respond, but by then they had rounded the corner to the battle room complex and started up towards the gate. It was already open, but the battle room was empty.

        “My heart,” Crazy Tom said, catching his breath while leaning on the gate’s frame, “they haven’t come out yet, either.”

        Ender-that-was held a fist over his own mouth, signalling silence.

        In the present, Ender silenced the memory so he could explain the details his audience needed to know.

        “Salamander Army. Graff finally put me up against Bonzo, and he did it in one of the worst ways possible. As you heard, it was our second battle of the day, and we were intentionally given late notice so we would arrive to the battle room after the gates had opened.”

        “That’s outr-!” Rainbow Dash began, but Rarity silenced her from behind with a firm hoof on the shoulder.

        “Yes, I know it is, and it’s only going to get worse. Please understand that ‘fairness’ was never a part of Graff’s plan.” Ender’s knees were starting to ache and he sorely hoped for fewer interruptions.

        “Bonzo may have not been the best strategist in Battle School,” the soldier continued, “but there was no way even he would miss an opportunity like this. If we couldn’t see him, then it meant his army was deployed on the same wall that held our gate. The instant we went through, we’d be hit simultaneously by fire from his entire unit.”

        Twilight watched intently as Ender-that-was communicated to his army through hand gestures, having some of the larger boys kneel in an L-shape while smaller ones crouched behind them. “What did you do?” she asked.

        “Formed shield pairs,” he replied. “We flashed one bigger boy and gave his weapon to a smaller one. Throwers would deploy them with the shooter’s back towards the enemy’s gate and the shield’s front towards us so he would take most of the hits. Once they were through and Salamander was concentrating on the boys floating below them, the throwers would deploy on their wall and take them with flanking fire.”

        The unicorn nodded appreciatively at his strategy’s simplicity and brilliance. Twilight did not move her eyes from the memory above as she watched Dragon Army silently put the plan into motion. A single command broke the silence, triggering a light show that danced across the ponies’ upturned faces.

        “Move!”

        By the time Ender-that-was drifted through the door, it was all over. Forty Salamanders clung to the upward wall, frozen. Dragon’s commander barely spared them a glance as he looked south to the teacher’s gate through which a teacher was emerging.

        “That’s Major Anderson,” Ender explained, “Graff’s right hand and the designer of the battle room scenarios.”

        His past self was not nearly as calm. “I thought you were going to put us against an army that could match us in a fair fight!” he shouted, venom laced throughout his words.

        “Congratulations on the victory, commander,” the officer answered placidly.

        “Bean!” Ender called. The view snapped over to the younger boy, floating at the other side of the room. “If you had commanded Salamander Army, what would you have done?”

        The other boy had to shout to be heard across the distance. “Keep a shifting pattern of movement going in front of the door. You never hold still when the enemy knows exactly where you are.”

        Nodding, Ender-that-was turned back towards the major. “As long as you’re cheating, why don’t you train the other army to cheat intelligently?!”

        The soldier froze the memory, allowing Rarity and Twilight’s sudden intake of breath to be heard clearly across the room.

        At least those two get it.

        “That is what pushed Bonzo over the edge,” Ender said plainly.

        “That?” Dash said doubtfully. “You were angry with the teacher for making it an unfair fight! What’s unclear about that?” Twilight only shook her head. She seemed ready to respond, but Ender decided to do it for her.

        “Think about it from his perspective. Not only did I utterly defeat him when he should have had the upper hand, I ridiculed his army twice in front of both his troops and mine. Did I mean it that way? No. I was talking to Major Anderson before the fight and sarcastically asked when he’d give me an opponent who could defeat me. That’s when he informed me of our no-notice fight with Salamander. My remark was a continuation of that conversation and had nothing to do with Bonzo himself. But without knowing that, the only way Bonzo could have taken it was as a grievously personal insult.”

        The pegasus stared as she began to understand the implications.

        “My involvement of Bean made it even worse. I wanted to make a rhetorical point to Anderson, and picked Bean because I knew he’d give me the right answer. To Bonzo, though, it looked like I picked my youngest and most inexperienced soldier to publicly ridicule his plan. How could he have known that Bean was the best strategist in the school?”

        “Oh…” Applejack’s eyes were wide, suddenly comprehending the seriousness of the situation.

        Ender looked at Twilight directly. “Now can you see why he wanted to kill me?” His voice was plain.

        “I…” She trailed off as her eyes unfocused, looking through the boy and into the blood red carpet behind him.

        She did not answer, but her expression told the soldier everything he needed to know. The rest of the ponies remained silent as the sun dipped lower in the sky, casting the room in a deep orange light.

        The sound of falling water enveloped the throne room as Ender brought the ponies back to the confrontation in the bathroom.

        “We’re tired of you Ender.” Bernard again. “You graduate today. On ice.” This time, no one questioned the term.

        Ender-that-was ignored him, choosing to look at his old commander instead.

        “Bonzo, your father would be so proud of you.” Harsh words, but the boy said them softly. They got the desired reaction.

        Cruelly, the smaller boy continued. “He would love to see you now, come to fight a naked boy in the shower, smaller than you, and you brought six friends. He would say ‘Oh, what honor.’”

        Twilight squinted her eyes as her mouth moved wordlessly, a look of dawning realization spreading across her features. She sees what I was doing, or at least she’s starting to piece it together. He pressed forward, not wanting her to interrupt him. This memory had the potential to go over even harder than the fight with Stilson; Ender had to make sure it was presented in the best way possible.

        Bonzo remained silent, but the banter went back and forth between his group and Ender in much the same way as it had in the schoolyard with Stilson. Bernard and the rest of them might as well have been interchangeable. Throughout, Ender-that-was kept his eyes on the Spaniard, gauging his non-verbal reactions.

        Finally, Bonzo had enough.

        “You shut up,” he said to his boys, “shut up and stand out of the way.” The thirteen-year-old swept the others back with a long arm and, stepping forward, began to shed his green and brown uniform.

        “Naked and wet and alone, Ender, so we’re even. I can’t help that I’m bigger than you. You’re such a genius, you figure out how to handle me.” Bonzo looked back at Bernard and the rest. “Watch the door. Don’t let anyone else in.”

        Ender-that-was watched the other boy look around at his surroundings while adopting a fighting stance. Following Bonzo’s eyes, Ender’s mindscape shifted wildly as he took in the various fixtures in the shower room: pipes, valves, mounting brackets and other protruding pieces of exposed metal.

        “The others may have been along for a ride,” the soldier explained, “maybe expecting to see me roughed up a bit, but I watched Bonzo’s eyes the entire time. He was there for blood. I knew him well enough to see his plan written across his face: he was going to bounce me off of all the sharp metal in the room and bludgeon me until I stopped moving.”

        Half the ponies started to object, but the words died in their mouths. Their expressions said everything: as much as they wanted to disbelieve what Ender was telling them, they couldn’t ignore the reality they had witnessed and the situation now staring them in the face.

        “What… did you do?” Applejack asked hesitantly.

        “I analyzed him. His stance told me that I wasn’t the only one taking self-defense classes. Bonzo was bigger, stronger, and had a greater reach. Worse yet, we were fighting in a confined space. Even if I was quick enough to dodge him, I couldn’t do so for long. The longer the fight went, the better chance he had of winning. I had to end the fight quickly and decisively to have any hope, and to do that, I had to have a way to get out of his grasp.”

        The younger boy backed up, turning his showerhead to full hot and pointing it outwards. Without taking his eyes off Bonzo, he reached behind him, felt for the other controls on the same wall and did the same with the rest of the nearby faucets.

        “I’m not afraid of hot water,” the Spaniard said calmly as he advanced.

        “Stop it!” came a voice from the doorway.

        “Finally!” Rarity said. “It’s about time one of the adults did something useful. “Shouldn’t they have come when they first saw these bullies enter? They were watching, were they not?”

        But it wasn’t an adult, it was Dink Meeker. Unfortunately for Ender, he was alone, and within seconds, Bernard and his friends had the recently promoted Rat Army commander pinned to a wall.

        “Stop it, Bonzo!” he yelled, thrashing against them. “Don’t hurt him!”

        The Spaniard was amused. “Why not?” he asked casually.

        “Because he’s the best, that’s why!” Meeker spat. “Who else can fight the buggers? That’s what matters you fool, the buggers!”

        Bonzo’s face stilled in rage as silence reigned for a few moments.

        “Didn’t… didn’t he believe they were fake? Not a threat anymore?” Twilight asked, grasping at any facet of the situation that wasn’t related to the fight ahead.

        Ender smiled sadly. “He was a true friend trying to stay Bonzo’s hand, whether he believed in what he was saying or not. I never did find out how he got there before anyone else. Bean had figured it out when Bonzo and his friends didn’t show up to the mess hall, but he wasn’t able to make it in time.”

        Dink continued loudly, drawing everyone’s attention. “If you touch him, you’re a buggerlover! You’re a traitor, if you touch him you deserve to die-” the boy was silenced as they slammed his head into the door. Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie gasped as the rest quivered.

        “It’s OK - he was fine, just knocked out,” Ender reassured them. His words did not have much of an effect. “Brave as he was, Dink unwittingly sealed Bonzo’s fate and mine. The last thing Bonzo wanted to hear about was my importance. After that, he was moved past rage. I don’t think anything would have stopped him at that point, not even the teachers.”

        Steam swirled around the two boys as the others looked down at Dink and laughed. Ender-that-was backed up towards the streams of water. “Bonzo… don’t hurt me,” his voice shook, “please.”

        No emotion flickered across the larger boy’s face, not disdain, not smug victory, not even pity. The plea merely started him forward.

        “D-did you think he would really stop?” Even Dash was incredulous.

        “No, I just needed him to make the first move. Hearing fear in my voice would do the trick.”

        The pegasus’ jaw swung open. “So you weren’t really afraid?”

        Ender scoffed. “Terrified. I just didn’t let it show until then.”

        Bonzo lunged forward, making a grab for the smaller boy’s shoulders. Ender stooped low and stepped in so he would overreach. Bonzo’s hands came down hard on his back, the slick soap on his skin made them slip free, just as Ender had planned.

        Dragon’s commander skidded down in front the larger boy. Bonzo thrust his hips back, expecting a blow between the legs, but Ender stood up quickly instead, the back of his head connecting hard with the Spaniard’s nose. Bonzo staggered backward, his eyes wide and unfocused.

        Ender stopped the memory, his mindscape frozen on the boy’s lifeless eyes.

        If they want so badly to see these memories, I’m going to make sure they get a damned good look, he thought bitterly, caught up in his emotions from that particular moment in time.

        “I didn’t know it then, but that was the instant I killed Bonzo.”

        “W-wha…?” Applejack was genuinely shocked. “You barely touched him.”

        The soldier tapped the bridge of his nose. “The bones behind our faces aren’t nearly as sturdy as yours seem to be. Break them the wrong way, and in the wrong direction, and it means instant death. It’s a million-to-one shot, even for trained and experienced fighters, but I was just lucky that day. Or very unlucky, as it were.” Ender could barely keep the venom out of his voice. Pausing, he turned away and took a breath.

“At the very least, he didn’t suffer. I was told much later that Bonzo died before he even felt the blow.”

        He let the memory continue. “But at the time I didn’t know that. I thought that I had just given him a bloody nose - something most Launchies would shake off without a second thought. I considered running when I saw him just standing there, but his friends were still blocking the doorway. It was Stilson all over again. Either they would hold me until Bonzo came to his senses and beat me into a pulp, or else I’d get away and have to worry about when and where he would find me next.”

        Ender-that-was pulled back and took a running leap at Bonzo, kicking him in the chest with both feet. It was a testament to the Spaniard’s size and bulk that he absorbed the blow with barely a stagger. Ender spun, landed smoothly, and finished by drilling his opponent between the legs.  Even his all-female audience winced at the shot.

        Bonzo collapsed into a stream of scalding water, not even flinching. His lack of response seemed to unnerve the ponies more than even Ender’s brutal attacks.

        Within seconds, the bathroom was a hive of activity. Adults appeared as if out of nowhere. Strong hands seized Ender and he turned to see Dink leading him away. Bernard and the others scrambled to turn off the hot water taps as medical personnel flooded the room and descended upon Bonzo. The memory collapsed in a cacophony of light and sound as Ender was half carried away by Dink.

        “You-you-you mean…” Twilight positively vibrated with anger, her mouth opening and closing as she sought the right words. “You mean to say they were RIGHT THERE and they did NOTHING to stop it?”

        Rarity looked at her, stunned. “S-surely they were running from somewhere, and only just arriv-” her voice cut off as she saw Ender out of the corner of her eye, shaking his head.

        “You mean THEY KNEW what was going on, and let it happen?” Twilight’s right eye twitched slightly as her voice grew shrill.

        “What about you?!” Rainbow Dash asked. “He could have killed you too. Your friend was right - you were important. Was that officer guy… Graff… didn’t Graff want to protect you?”

        “Not as much as he wanted, no… needed, to teach me a lesson,” Ender replied levelly.

        Both unicorns cried out in disbelief and frustration. The rest only stared blankly, unable to accept what they were hearing. Celestia hadn’t moved an inch since he had finished the memory, her face fixed in stone-like stillness.

        This has definitely affected her, Ender noted. She’s doing all she can to contain her reactions.

        Twilight was the first to recover. “What… POSSIBLE… lesson was worth your life, and Bonzo’s life for that matter?”

        The soldier looked her directly in the eye and drove his point home. “That no matter what I faced, I would always be well and truly alone. That no one was ever going to come and bail me out. That I would always have to devise my own solutions and be the instrument of my own salvation. Graff’s own words,” Ender added as he marked the increasing look of disbelief on the unicorn’s face. She stared back at him, unmoving.

Moments passed. Twilight finally let loose a snarl of frustration that drew everyone’s attention.

        “How is THAT even a valuable lesson, much less one worth somepony’s LIFE?!” she all but screamed. The others, even Celestia, nodded in agreement.

        “Because absolute self-reliance was something I’d need for what came next. To them, it was worth the potential life of one soldier… one more casualty in a war that had already claimed billions. They didn’t intend for Bonzo to die any more than I did, but it was a risk they were willing to take. The survival of our species was at stake.” 

        “The survival of humanity hinged on your self-reliance?” She asked sardonically.

        “It did, as you’ll see in the third memory you asked for. Are you ready to move on?” Ender replied resolutely, defiant even as he knelt in the deep amber light of the setting sun. Shades of violet touched the edges of the ceiling as night began to fall. 

        “Yes,” Celestia and her protegee answered simultaneously, the princess finally regaining her composure. Twilight looked back, deferring to her ruler, but the alicorn only nodded back, indicating that she should go ahead.

        Maybe she wasn’t trying to rein in emotion, Ender realized. The sun just set - she could have been focused on rotating the planet.

        “Yes,” Twilight repeated, turning back to challenge the soldier. “I want to see what was worth all this pain and tragedy.” 

        Her friends didn’t appear to share the unicorn’s sentiments, but they dutifully turned back to look at him, disquiet plain on all their faces save one. Pinkie Pie seemed to have checked out. She sat still, her now completely straight hair falling to the floor on either side of her face. Her ears twitched slightly when Ender started speaking again, but other than that she just sat still, ignoring the world around her.

        Ender bowed his head. “Bonzo was my second fight of the day. Just that morning, we had an excruciating match against Badger.”

        His memory opened on the battle room. The chamber’s lighting was dim for this contest, blending perfectly with the descending gloom of the throne room. As light sconces and chandeliers flickered to life in the real world, seemingly of their own accord, the ponies strained to make out the elaborate three-dimensional maze forming in Ender’s mindscape.

        “Anderson built a maddening labyrinth out of stars, and it was damn near impossible to see. We won, but it was a near thing. Midway through the fight, we realized that while our flash suits still worked the usual way, Badger’s were thawing out after a few minutes. I should have expected something like that after the first time the teachers threw out the rulebook, but it was still a cruel and surprising twist.”

        Ender’s memory shot forward, coming to a halt in the boy’s sparse, but private, commander’s quarters. He lay on his bunk, smears of soap scum and blood still evident across his chest.

        “When I came to after the fight with Bonzo, I thought it was the next day because there was another summons to the battle room waiting for me.” He sneered at the memory. “But why should I have expected leniency? The previous day had two battles - so would this one.”

        In his mind, the boy picked up the slip of paper that had been pushed under his door.


WILLIAM BEE, GRIFFIN ARMY, TALO MOMOE,


TIGER ARMY, 1900


        Ender expected some kind of outburst, but he was met with only silence. His audience stared at him numbly, merely along for the ride.

        “I can’t do this,” the nine-year-old said to himself.

        “We did do it,” Ender finished. This time, the battle room was stark white, and Dragon’s gate opened into a solid wall of stars.

        “Anderson’s set-up forced us to deploy blind, and he gave our opponents a ring of stars around their gate for cover,” the soldier narrated as he moved the viewpoint outward to what he had later seen was the configuration for the arena.

        The boy saw that the others really weren’t interested in the details. They had stopped caring about the game, much like he had by this point. He summarized, not wanting to try their patience.

        “Since the instructors had thrown out the rulebook, I decided to as well. Using tricks that weren’t outrightly forbidden, but not specifically allowed either, we managed to win.”

        A mass of boys tied into a tight block floated amidst a crushing amount of fire from the combined opposition of eighty soldiers. Suddenly, the block split apart, drawing the attention, and fire, of the other armies. Unseen, a handful of small Dragon soldiers shot towards the enemy gate and, touching their helmets to the corners, performed the victory ritual, technically winning the game.

        A spark of life showed briefly in Dash’s eyes, and she opened her mouth to say something. But, after glancing quickly at the others, she closed it again and ducked her head.

        “It was a stunning victory, but I didn’t care,” Ender commented, intentionally echoing the emotions he saw on their faces.

        His younger self walked sullenly among Dragon soldiers who were whooping and hollering loud enough to be heard throughout the entire school. Laughing, Crazy Tom grabbed his shoulder and asked “Practice tonight?” as if it was the funniest thing he had ever heard.

        “No.”

        Tom sobered a bit. “Tomorrow then?”

        “No.”

        Now the toon leader was serious, if a little concerned. “Well, when?”

        “Never again, as far as I’m concerned.”

        That brought the rest of the army to a sudden halt. Murmurs of protests started up. They fell silent instantly when Ender slammed his hand into a nearby bulkhead.

        “I don’t care about the game anymore!” His voice reverberated off the metal deck, alternately booming and fading away as it split down different passageways. Everyone stopped in the halls, even soldiers from other armies on their way to practice. Every head nearby turned in shock to look at school’s top commander.

        Ender took a breath. Though his voice was soft, it carried clearly through the absolute silence.

        “Do you understand that? The game is over.”

        The memory faded into nothing.

        “They graduated me that day, but I didn’t care. The manipulation of the game… Bonzo… I had enough. The minute Graff took me away from Battle School, I quit.”

        THAT got their attention.

        “You… you quit?!” Rainbow Dash asked incredulously.

        “Then, all that… Bonzo, Stilson… everybody and everything else was for nothing?!” There was a manic edge to Twilight’s voice.

        “You forget,” Ender shot back vehemently, “I didn’t know - then - that they were dead. All I knew was that I had hurt them badly. Graff told me himself that Bonzo was in a hospital. I never wanted to hurt anyone again. THAT is why I quit.”

        “Oh!” the unicorn deflated, realization plain on her face.

        Ender closed his eyes to calm himself. Hostility would get him nowhere. The others remained silent until he was ready. 

        “They just let you walk away?” Rarity asked when he looked up again. “I’m surprised you had the option to quit.”

        “What was Graff going to do? He said it himself: for officers they needed volunteers. How effective would I be if I chose not to lead? Even so, you were right. They couldn’t just return me to my family. I had seen too many things that they didn’t want released to the public.”

        Twilight rolled her eyes. “You think?” she said under her breath.

        “So… what did they do?” Fluttershy asked hesitantly.

        “Kept me at an IF property on Earth.” His memory settled on a picturesque white mansion overlooking a large lake. “On and off for three months, Graff and his team of psychologists and doctors tried everything to get me back on board. Eventually they just gave up and left me to my own devices, hoping I would come around. When I didn’t, they turned to the one person they knew I couldn’t turn down.”

        This time Celestia answered. “Your sister.”

        Ender nodded. “Exactly. At first, I refused their offer to bring Valentine, knowing what they were trying to do. But soon I turned ten, making it just under four years since I had seen her. I couldn’t hold out forever and they knew it.”

        The boy didn’t want to show them this memory, it was too private. But even though Luna wasn’t forcing it, the image of his sister still formed over his head. Try as he might, Ender couldn’t turn it away - he wanted to see her again now as much has he had back then.

        Ender looked up from where he floated on the lake. Bright sunlight streamed through the surrounding trees and turned the grass to a mix of dappled shadows. The raft Ender built was still tied to its dock, so his vision was relatively steady as she came down the hill towards him. The boy’s heart leapt. Though the gangly twelve-year-old before him was markedly different from the dimpled child he had left behind, it was still Valentine, his beloved confidant and protector. She smiled shyly.

        “You’re bigger than I remembered,” the girl ventured.

        “You too.” Despite his feelings, Ender’s voice came out flat, deadened. “I also remembered that you were beautiful.”

        The ponies gasped, staring in horror at the boy in front of them.

        Not even a shadow passed across Valentine’s face. “Memory does play tricks on us.”

        “No.” Ender shook his head. Try as he might, he couldn’t bring any emotion into his voice or his expression, no matter how much was bottled below. “Your face is the same, but I don’t remember what beautiful means anymore.” It had been a terribly blunt thing to say, but it was the truth, and Ender hadn’t felt the need to maintain any tactfulness during his forced vacation on Earth. He was long out of practice.

        The soldier clamped down on the memory before it went any further. As much as he wanted to lose himself in the crystal clear recollection, their discussion was nothing he wanted to share. The spell, or Luna herself, he wasn’t sure which, didn’t force the issue.

        Recovering some sense of his purpose, Ender explained, “I’m showing you this for one reason and one reason only: I chose as I did for the sake of my sister. The Formics could have burned the rest of the world for all I cared. I went with Graff to save her.” As he said this, the boy raised his head, looking Celestia and the others in the eyes. Most of the ponies nodded in affirmation. This was something they understood.

        His mindscape reopened to the lounge of a tug not unlike the one from which Nightmare Moon pulled him. Graff and Ender were chatting amicably, much to the ponies’ surprise.

        “Even with the fastest transport available, the trip to Command School took two months. On the journey, Colonel Graff and I had no responsibilities - it was amazing how much the man changed when unburdened. More importantly, now that we were on our way to the top secret base - never to return until the war’s end - Graff was free to answer any question I had. It’s hard to let military secrets slip when you have no one to tell them to.”

        Applejack blinked. “But the war had been going on for so long - what if you never came home?”

        “That was the understanding,” Ender said evenly. “As it turned out, I never did.”

        There was an uncomfortable silence as the equines looked at each other. Even Celestia had the decency to glance away.

        “As angry as I had been with Graff, my curiosity was stronger. My studies of the buggers in Battle School had only scratched the surface of what was known about them. I grilled the colonel constantly for any detail he could provide on my enemy. If I was to one day fight them, I wanted to know them as intimately as I had known my opponents in Battle School.”

        Ender imagined a map of known space. Formic worlds, marked in red, spread in a wide arc on one side while a single blue Earth sat on the other. “The most startling revelation, though, had nothing to do with the Formics.”

        He focused on Earth. “Everyone believed that the IF had deployed a massive force to the edge of the Oort Cloud, a region of space far away from Earth, as we had during the Second Invasion.” A gray speckled orb surrounded the blue dot. “They thought we were adding to it every year, sending out our newest ships with our brightest minds. ‘This time,’ they thought, ‘it will be enough to stop the Formics.’ They couldn’t have been more wrong, and the IF never corrected them. The public felt safer that way, and happier people work harder and protest less.”

        “I… guess that’s a good thing?” Twilight was confused.

        “Were they lying?” asked the orange pony.

        “Only by omission. Remember when I said that the teachers were lying to us earlier? This is what I meant.” The image skewed to the right, nearly the entire way to the red dots. Small flecks of white light fanned out towards them.

        “The size of a sphere increases exponentially the further you travel from the center,” Ender explained. “It’s basic geometry, and I should have realized the truth the second I really thought about the notion of defending a planet in space. To put any reasonable buffer between your home and the enemy, you’d have to cover an area of space that we couldn’t fill in a thousand years, much less a few decades. Even knowing the rough direction from which the attack would come doesn’t help - just a quarter or an eighth of the sphere would spread your forces too thin to be effective. We got lucky in the Second Invasion - we knew the exact attack vector and engaged them at a fraction of the distance. A competent enemy would not let that happen again.”

        The boy realized he had lost most of his audience, but at least Twilight was still following. She squinted her eyes, trying to wrap her head around what he was saying.

        “So, if you weren’t waiting for the Third Invasion...” she trailed off, her eyes widening.

        “Then we were the Third Invasion.” Ender finished. “Even as the fires from the Second cooled, we were launching ships against the furthest of the Formic worlds. As time went on, we sent progressively faster ships towards the nearer planets - the idea was for them to arrive at around the same time.”

        “You… were attacking them?” Applejack wondered. “What… what if they attacked you and your ships didn’t find them on the way?”

        “Then we would have been wiped out,” the soldier answered. “It was a huge risk, but it was the only move we could make. The Formics could afford to lose worlds, they had spread to a hundred of them after all, but one wrong move and we were finished. We couldn’t afford to fight on our home turf. By taking the war to them, we hoped to keep their focus away from it.”

        “A hundred worlds.” Celestia shook her head. It wasn’t the first time Ender had mentioned the size of their enemy’s holding, but it seemed to finally sink in for the alicorn.

        “That’s… that’s…” Twilight sat back on her haunches as she thought about it. “Those ships were traveling for decades, right? In all that time you never saw their ships coming for you?”

        Ender shook his head, confident that he knew what she was about to ask. He had asked Graff the same thing.

        “No. Are you wondering how we knew they were still fighting us?”

        “Yes.” She looked down at him intently.

        “We didn’t. But would you have risked it?”

        The unicorn lowered her eyes, not knowing what to say.

        His mind turned back towards the lounge on the tug. Ender and Graff stared at a holodisplay of the same stellar chart the group had just observed.

        “I also finally learned Graff’s intentions for me. Why he was so hell bent on getting me through school… why he felt it necessary to do the things he did.”

        Ender didn’t elaborate, but even so, a somber pall fell over the group. Twilight stiffened, reminded of her anger mere minutes before.

        “When I completed my training, I was going to be assigned as the battle commander for the invasion force.”

        “You?” Twilight said, surprised. The rest of the group echoed their sentiments.

        “I realize you far outperformed everyone else,” Rarity began, “but surely they wouldn’t turn this massive… effort,” she struggled at the word, “over to - forgive me - a child.”

        “That just don’t make any sense,” Applejack added. “It’s no question that you were great, but why would any grown-up ever listen to a young’un, especially with something like this?”

        “A fair question, and let me assure you, it was one my people struggled with for years.”

        He recalled scenes he had shown them earlier from the Second Invasion, specifically the Formics shooting through their own ships just to decimate the IF.

        “Collectively, the IF invested millions of hours of research into the problem of how to fight against the Formics and win,” the soldier explained. “At the end of the day, they are bugs. Only their queens are sentient beings, at least as far as we could tell through examination of the corpses. The enemy commanders - the queens - felt no more remorse when sacrificing a soldier than you would clipping a fingerna-” he paused, realizing the analogy wouldn’t work. “Um, shedding hair?” Ender ventured.

        Twilight nodded, understanding what he meant.

        “Point being, the way they fought was fundamentally different than the sum total of humanity’s entire understanding of war. Where every human instinct pushed for the preservation of individual life to the maximum extent possible,” the equines looked at him askance, given what they had recently seen, “the formic mind, as far as we could tell, worked the opposite way, seeking only the surest route to victory no matter the cost and independent of past strategies and tactics.”

        Ender recalled some of the Battle School informational vids from his early days in Ground School. Boys flew about a battle room while men in white lab coats watched.

        “Countless tests and simulations showed that younger minds were more adept at this kind of warfare. We think faster, are better at adapting to unexpected changes, and are more willing to abandon previous assumptions when presented with new information. While an adult will have more experience to draw upon, that experience can work just as well against him when faced with this kind of enemy, prejudicing him towards strategies that have worked well in the past, regardless of how applicable they are in the present.” 

        The view shifted to Ender’s arrival at Command School. Admiral Chamrajnagar, the tall Indian officer in charge, had greeted him personally.

        “I, and the rest of my peers at Battle School, never thought that principle would be applied literally. We thought that by starting us young, Battle School ensured everyone, from the senior leaders at the top to the new officers at the bottom, would be able to take on the Formics when the real war came. It wasn’t until after I graduated that I learned the IF really intended to use their most able commander in the field, no matter how young.”

        “...and out of your entire military, that was you?” Twilight still had a hard time believing it.

        “Graff certainly thought so.”

        “That place looks really strange,” Fluttershy observed. “Where is it?”

        It took a moment for Ender to realize what she meant. “Oh, Eros? It was an asteroid far out in our solar system. The Formics used it as a forward operating base during the Second Invasion - that’s how we knew roughly where they were coming from. Anyhow, they were the ones that hollowed it out and designed the bulk of the layout. The interior conforms to their body type and what little aesthetic sensibilities they had. It always felt wrong to us, and that’s probably why it looks strange to you.”

        “Us?” Rarity picked up on the word.

        “While I was ‘vacationing’ on Earth, they had taken the best commanders and toon leaders from Battle School - all the ones that worked well with me - and fast tracked them through Tactical School so they could support me in Command School. I didn’t know they were there yet, but I would soon.”

        The view shifted to the simulator. Ender’s face glowed green in the dark bubble of the massive holodisplay.

        “I was a fast learner, but even so, the training was relentless. The simulator - this tiny room you see me in - was built to mimic the command stations on IF ships. As in Battle School, the teachers here could design scenarios in the simulator to teach and test me while constantly evaluating my capabilities. At first they started with a single fighter, the small ship there.” He indicated the outline in display by zooming in on it. Almost immediately it shrunk, only to be replaced by more and more. “then they started working me up to larger and larger groups. When it came time to practice with an entire fleet, I was introduced to my squadron leaders.”

        For the first time, Ender-that-was put on a set of headphones in the simulator. Almost instantly, he was greeted by very familiar voices.

        “Salaam.” The ponies heard it as ‘peace.’

        “Alai.” Ender smiled.

        “And me, the dwarf.” 

        “Bean.” The soldier’s grin grew wider.

        “And for a change of pace, someone’s who’s actually competent in battle,” came a brassy voice. Petra sounded a little deeper now than the last time Ender had heard her, but she was still easy to recognize.

        “...and many, many more,” he finished, fondly remembering his friends. “In all I was assigned thirty-six of Battle School’s best, all soldiers that I knew and respected.”

        The scene in the simulator shifted from one battle to the next. Ender-that-was talked continuously into the microphone, and while the ponies could not see his friends, they could tell by the rich timbre of his voice and the smile on his face that he was glad for their company.

        “We practiced for months, at first just learning how to work together, then adapting to increasingly difficult and more complicated battle scenarios. I never was allowed to see the others - Graff and the instructors always kept me separate - but to be honest I hardly noticed. Though they were only voices in the dark, I grew closer to them than I ever had at Battle School. We were a team, a jeesh; dozens of brilliant minds acting as one. We were invincible...” Ender sobered, “... or at least we thought we were.”

        “Why did they keep you separate?” Applejack asked. “Yeah, they’ve been cruel before, but that just seems pointless.”

        Remembering his small room within Eros, Ender saw himself approach an old man sitting serenely in the center of the chamber.

        “They wanted me to spend all my time with my teacher,” the soldier replied.

That drew Twilight’s interest. “Your teacher?”

“I met him not long before I was reunited with the other Battle Schoolers. He simply appeared one morning in my room without explanation, and I stupidly did not recognize his test for what it was.”

        Twilight stole a glance at the princess before looking back.

        Ender remained quiet, letting the memory speak for him. Failing to elicit a response from the strange elderly man, and after finding his room locked, the boy decided to start an exercise routine. When the old man had the opportunity, he grabbed Ender’s leg, flipping him to the ground with ease. Surprised, the ponies looked at each other in confusion, but remained quiet.

        The boy shot up in anger but stopped short of attacking. Shaking his head, he returned to his exercises. When Ender finally grew bored he sighed in frustration and went towards his desk, turning his back on the older man in the process.

        In a matter of seconds, the man had Ender pinned painfully to the ground, his knee pressed into the small of the boy’s back.

        “All right!” he choked out in pain. “You win!”

        The old man’s voice rasped with age, hissing with the disdain of long experience. “Since when do you have to tell the enemy when he has won?”

        He cocked his head to the side when the boy failed to answer. “I surprised you once, Ender Wiggin,” he continued, stressing the syllables of the name oddly. “Why didn’t you destroy me immediately afterward? Just because I looked peaceful? You turned your back on me. Stupid. You have learned nothing. You have never had a teacher.”

        “I’ve had too many teachers,” the boy spat, “how was I supposed to know you’d turn out to be a-”

        “An enemy, Ender Wiggin.” The raspy voice again said his name in that peculiar way. It took a moment for the boy to realize it was an accent, one he had never heard before.

        The man continued. “I am your enemy, the first one you’ve ever had who was smarter than you. There is no teacher but the enemy. No one but the enemy will tell you what the enemy is going to do. No one but the enemy will ever teach you how to destroy and conquer. Only the enemy shows you where you are weak. Only the enemy tells you where he is strong. And the rules of the game are what you can do to him and what you can stop him from doing to you. I am your enemy from now on. From now on, I am your teacher.”

        With that, he let the boy’s body go. It impacted the hard metal floor with an audible crack. Groaning, he rose to a kneeling position. Then, to the gasps of Twilight and the others, Ender lunged at the old man.

        They fought at a speed which was hard for the audience to follow. Ender was fast, but his elderly opponent was improbably faster. Rolling away, the boy recovered to a standing position near the door.

        The old man knelt in his original position, smiling. He wasn’t even breathing hard.

        “Better, this time, boy. But slow. You will have to be better with a fleet than you are with your body or no one will be safe with you in command. Lesson learned?”

        Ender nodded as his older self stopped the memory.

        “That was your teacher?” Twilight queried in disbelief.

        “The first adult I ever respected,” Ender affirmed, “the first who had anything to teach me, and the only one I ever called ‘teacher.’”

        The unicorn looked as if she wanted to say something, but thought better of it.

        “We spent every available moment together. Outside of the simulator, he was my only companion. I learned from him constantly, about warfare, about strategy, about the IF and its capabilities, and most importantly about the Formics.”

        “Who was he?” asked Rarity.

        “...and why wasn’t in charge instead of you?” Twilight wondered. “If he was selected to teach you, wouldn’t that make him more qualified to lead?

        Ender chose to let his memories answer instead.

        “Teacher,” he had asked that day, his cut lips red with blood as he smiled. “Do you have a name?”

        “Mazer Rackham.”

        “Wait a minute… wait just a gosh darn minute! Didn’t ya say he fought the Buggers all those years ago?” Applejack was confused.

        “I remember that too,” Rarity added. “Just how long do your people live?”

        “It varies greatly based on health, but to answer your question more accurately, no, normally there would have been no way for me to ever meet him. He should have died before I was ever born. Mazer Rackham was there only because he made a deeply personal sacrifice for the rest of humanity.”

        The white unicorn’s brow furrowed in concern. “How so?”

        “We learned many things from the Formics. Two of the most important were the Alcubierre Drive and the ansible. The former allowed us to travel at very near the speed of light. The latter enabled us to communicate instantly with one another from any distance.”

        Both Twilight and Celestia blinked in surprise. “That shouldn’t be possible,” Twilight said, awed.

        “If you told me a year ago that a living being could move planetary bodies,” he nodded at the princess, “I would have said the same thing.”

        The unicorn sat back, looking thoughtful.

        “The point is, we could. One reality of near-lightspeed travel is that time slows down from the perspective of the traveler. How, I can explain later,” he added quickly as she leaned forward and opened her mouth to ask a question, “but what’s important now is that by using relativistic speed, the IF had the ability to extend Mazer’s life so that he could teach future commanders how to fight the Formics.”

        Twilight shook her head. “So, what, he just took off in a ship and turned around to come back when you called him on the... ansible, was it?”

        “Exactly.”

        Rarity jumped in. “I don’t see what’s so difficult about that. So he took a trip.”

        “Alone,” the other unicorn realized with sudden sorrow, “and when he came back…” she trailed off, now understanding the implications.

        “Everyone he had ever known and loved had grown old and passed away,” Ender finished solemnly.

        Everyone was quiet for a moment.

        “That is an incredibly noble and selfless sacrifice,” the princess said respectfully. The soldier wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard a catch in her voice.

        “Even so,” Twilight ventured carefully, “that still doesn’t explain why he didn’t just lead the invasion. After all the trouble your people went through to keep him alive, and after he made such a large sacrifice, why not put him in charge? He had already beaten the Formics once, right?”

        Ender let his memories answer. “You’re still alive, aren’t you? Why not you?” he asked his teacher.

        The old man shook his head no.

        “Why not? You won before.”

        “I cannot be the commander for good and sufficient reasons.”

        Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. “Well, that sure answers everything.”

        Ender couldn’t help but smile. “That was pretty much my thought as well. I’ve already told you some of the reasons, though. All of the problems adults faced when fighting formics counted doubly for Mazer at his age. Even his brilliant and insightful mind had to overcome the ravages of time. Age had made him too cautious for command in the war to come, but the experience that would have been a liability against the Formics was be a huge asset when it came to training me.”

        The boy again let his memories explain. “I will program your battles now, not the computer,” Mazer said, fixing him with steely blue eyes. “I will devise the strategy of your enemy, and you will learn to be quick and discover what tricks the enemy has for you. Remember, boy. From now on the enemy is more clever than you. From now on the enemy is stronger than you. From now on you are always about to lose.” The old man’s grin was at once terrifying and playful - the grim humor of a lifelong soldier.

        As quickly as it formed, Mazer’s smile vanished. “You will be about to lose, Ender, but you will win. You will learn to defeat the enemy. He will teach you how.”

        The old man’s face melted away, only to be replaced by the simulator again. Light vanished from the ponies’ coats as the green dots reflected off their eyes.

        “Mazer wasn’t kidding. Though the next round of simulations started off simply enough, their difficulty and complexity grew by leaps and bounds each time I came back. My jeesh and I were pushed to the limit, not just mentally, but physically as well. At first it was one battle a day, with free practice in between, but then the pace increased. Battles happened randomly - sometimes early in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon, sometimes in the middle of the night. Some would be over quickly, others would drag on for hours and hours. Free practice stopped eventually - any time we didn’t spend in the simulator was used for sleeping. We never knew how much we were going to get before the next battle started. Fighting fatigue soon became harder than fighting in the simulator.”

        “But… why?” Rainbow asked, surprising Ender. He had expected Twilight to pipe up. “How can you train if you’re not even awake? You don’t gain anything from it.”

        Rackham’s voice answered the pegasus. “In a real war, boy, you don’t always get to pick when you fight! Your enemy does that just as often as not. You must always be ready to defeat your opponent, even when he thinks he has the element of surprise.”

        “You’re right though,” Ender assured her, “We really weren’t learning anything at that point. I thought he would let up eventually, but the program only became harder. They pushed us to our absolute limit, and soon we started breaking.”

        Red lights flashed around parts of the display, indicating damaged and destroyed ships. Voices called out in confusion and surprise before Ender started issuing orders, getting the situation back under control. After a few minutes the battle was over, but instead of the usual victory cheers, all they could hear was Petra crying over the comms.

        “Tell him I’m sorry, I was just so tired… please, please, please, just tell Ender I’m sorry!”

        The soldier sighed. “Petra was the first to break, and not through any fault of her own. Alai was my left hand. I could give him half my forces and an objective and know that it would be done. He was a weapon you could fire and forget. Bean was my troubleshooter. When faced with the unknown he was the best at clandestine reconnaissance. If I encountered a particularly difficult obstacle and had to direct my attention elsewhere, I could rely on him to either neutralize it or find an alternate solution before I got back. But Petra, Petra was my right arm. No matter what my top priority was in battle, she was the one I chose to execute my plans and achieve my primary objectives. She knew how I thought as well as I knew how she fought. Together, we could do more with a squadron than Alai could do with five.”

        Ender sighed. “In the end, I relied on her too much. She didn’t want to disappoint me, so she never complained, never said how much it was wearing her down. It caught up with her in the end though; Petra passed out mid-way through a battle and the rest of us didn’t catch it until it was almost too late. When she eventually recovered, she was a shell of her former self. Doubt made her too careful, robbing her of the aggression and daring that made her great.”

        The boy paused, thoughtful. The others were quiet, not sure how to respond to that.

        “Petra may have been the first, but no matter how careful I tried to be, others broke too. Even I wasn’t immune. The lack of sleep started to catch up, and eventually I began to live the nights. I dreamed of the simulator, I dreamed of Bonzo, Stilson, and the others. I dreamed of my family, but mostly I dreamed of the Formics. I don’t know how or why I saw them so clearly, but they were there next to me in my dreams, looking at me, judging me, examining my memories like so many stills on a film strip. And still the battles came.”

        The disjointed dream images flashed past as he described them, alternating with even more time in the simulator. In his memory, the boy’s face and hair became more and more haggard as time progressed. The transformation troubled the others, even Celestia. Fluttershy, who had crouched farther and farther down as Ender spoke, finally gave up and hid behind her mane again.

        Now is the moment of truth, Ender thought. Full night had fallen, and the silver light of the moon started to show through the windows. Did Luna have any inkling of what was coming? Could she look ahead in his memories? If so, what did she think? The boy felt raw, like a string plucked to the point of fraying. His knees ached, and he just wanted this to be over. Reexperiencing most of his life over the course of a single day was almost too much to take, even for someone has hardened as he.

        Ender’s mindscape opened on the simulator room. The doors to the black hemisphere lay open and waiting for him, but Mazer blocked the way.

        “One morning I awoke on my own - for the first time in over a year at Command School. My door was unlocked, and for once I could go anywhere and do anything.” He shook his head. “Not knowing what else to do, I went to the simulator room. My teacher was waiting for me, but that day was to be different.”

        A group of strangers had gathered in an observation room nearby. Graff and Anderson stood among a group of dignitaries arrayed with the bright insignia and crisp uniforms of high-ranking IF officers.

        “He told me that it was my final exam. If I won this battle, if I passed this test, I would finally graduate. It would all be over - I would join the fleet.”

        The ponies listened with bated breath. In spite of all they had heard, all that had shocked and disquieted them throughout the day, they wanted to know the outcome of the boy’s trials and tribulations.

        “Before I entered the simulator, Mazer explained that there would be one major difference with this battle: it would be staged around the planet. A true test of my prowess wouldn’t be complete, after all, unless they introduced a new element that required adaptation.”

        “Of course they did,” Rarity huffed, “after all that pressure, what’s a little more?”

        Suddenly, Ender realized that he had not explained the Little Doctor. I must be more tired than I feel, he sighed internally. How the hell did I miss a detail like that?

        The realization spurred a memory. “Does the Little Doctor work against a planet?” Ender noticed that his voice in the memory was now nearly identical to his current tone.

        “The Little Doctor?” Of course Twilight would ask.

        “Our one trump card against the Formics. After two wars spent fighting with weapons far inferior to theirs, we finally had something that, we hoped, would prove overwhelming. ‘Little Doctor’ was a nickname for the ‘Molecular Detachment Device,’ and it did exactly what the name implies. Two beams, focused together on a point in space, create a field where molecules cannot hold together. The power released from breaking apart one set of molecules in turn powers the formation of another field. That process repeats until there is nothing left to detach.” Ender paused, waiting for the inevitable question that he really did not want to answer.

        Thankfully, Twilight’s friends turned to her. “Uh…” Applejack asked. “Little help here?”

        The unicorn shook her head. “It sounds about as reasonable as the whole ‘flying nearly as fast as light’ part, but if it is true then you could destroy… well… everything.” Her voice trailed off in horror as she realized the implications of such a process. “This was… a standard weapon for your ships?”

        “Every fighter we sent towards the formic worlds was equipped with one. The weapon’s effects were more or less transparent to us in the simulator. Enemy ships tended to be too far apart for the chain reaction to spread beyond more than one or two at a time. Functionally, it was just a more effective version of the weapons we used in the Second Invasion. A ship gets destroyed by a nuclear explosion just as easily as it is pulled apart by the Little Doctor.”

        Celestia balked. “Are you telling me that you use-” The word was lost to the translation spell. Seeing Ender’s confusion, the princess tried a different term, only for it to be rendered in equine as well. Finally, as frustration started to show across her face, she finished with, “-use nuclear fusion as a weapon?!”

        The soldier nodded. “Used. Near the end of the Second Invasion, the Formics adapted one of our technologies and repurposed it to greatly reduce the effectiveness of our nukes. That was the main reason we developed the Little Doctor.”

        The alicorn was dumbstruck.

“What is it princess?” her protege asked worriedly.

        Shaking her head, Celestia answered. “One of the processes that powers the sun, Twilight. I can’t even imagine using it as a weapon, but apparently even that wasn’t strong enough for them.”

        “We may have well thrown rocks at the Formic ships for all the good it would have done. No, the Little Doctor was the primary weapon used by our fighters.”

        “So what was the test?” Twilight asked. “Did you pass?”

        Asked like an eager student. It was all Ender could do to not shake his head.

        Instead, he pictured his first look at the battlefield. The audience was bathed in the green light of the countless Formic ships.

        “Where… where are your ships?” Rarity asked, her eyes scanning fruitlessly back and forth.

        “Here.” Ender focused on twenty small dots at one far edge of the display.

        “Is that some kind of sick joke?” Dash was incredulous. “How were you supposed to beat all that?” She motioned vaguely at the mass of opposing ships.

         “I didn’t know,” Ender admitted. “I was tired, I was irritated, and I was sick of them continually making the game harder and harder as I went along. It was just like that final fight in Battle School.”

        “Except a hundred times worse.” Twilight was upset at the unfairness of it all.

        “More like eighty thousand - that was the closest estimate the computer could give me on the size of the enemy fleet. I thought it was a bad sign that the program couldn’t even crunch its own numbers. In all, I had eighty fighters and twenty carriers. What was I supposed to do? In the end, it was Bean who snapped me out of it.”

        From the past came the younger boy’s voice. “Remember, the enemy’s gate is down.”

        In the memory, everyone laughed... Ender included.

        “And with that,” he explained, “I didn’t care anymore. Like before, if they were going to cheat so blatantly, so was I.”

        “Against that?” Dash said incredulously.

        “I gathered my fighters, not to attack, but to traverse as much space as possible. Up until that point, I was forced to always fight a war of conservation - every ship was precious, every loss mattered. Given how the real war would play out, it was a perfectly reasonable restriction. We would only have the supplies, ships, and materials we brought with us. There was nowhere to retreat and no reinforcements behind us. Mazer, I noticed, reacted accordingly when programming the enemy. They knew they could get away with hit-and-run tactics for example, because we would never overextend our forces in pursuit.”

        Ender’s eighty fighters gathered into a tight cylinder and dove into the thick of the enemy formation.

        “Those lessons served them poorly in the end, though. They assumed that resources mattered more than objective and foolishly waited to entrap my fighters and ensure their destruction rather than simply trying to blow them out of the sky at range.”

        In the thick of the Formic cluster, the human formation suddenly broke, scattering hither and yon in seemingly random flight patterns.

        “There were countless Formic ships, but precious few queens. As close as I could tell, there were no more than five or ten commanding the enemy ships in range of mine. One mind, even a Formic mind, can keep track of four, five, maybe even six targets, but eighty? For once, their hive mind was a liability rather than an asset.  I lost most of my forces, but enough made it through to the other side.”

        Twelve of Ender’s fighters came together again, streaking directly for the planet. The Formic ships followed, but only a few were in range. One by one, the rearguard was picked off, but each ship that was destroyed blocked fire from two or three in front of it. In the end, five entered the atmosphere of the planet.

        “We were committed - I didn’t even know if my idea would work. With so few ships left, command fell directly to me since it was pointless to divide five fighters among thirty-seven commanders.”

        Ender Wiggin leaned forward and issued one final order.

        “Fire.”

        At first nothing happened, but then the surface of the planet, a green grid in the simulator’s display, began to bubble. Explosions erupted across the surface faster and faster until all at once, the entire world tore itself apart. As the last of Ender’s fighters vanished in the chaos, the view switched back to the carriers at the far edge of the battle field. The soldier looked on with fascination as the Little Doctor’s fields propagated throughout the entire Formic fleet, eventually leaving behind nothing but swirling masses of dust.

        “Ha!” Applejack cheered. “I’ll be darned. Ya did it! I guess they picked right after all. I’ll bet that Mazer fella was shocked.”

        But Ender didn’t smile. “Yes… I did it.”

        The scene brightened as Ender remembered exiting the simulator. Where he had expected solemn nods and heartfelt congratulations from the officers, he saw unrestrained exultation. Grown men were crying in joy and some were even praying. In a society where outward demonstration of religion had been banned for decades, it was a shocking sight.

        Graff, tears streaming down his face, came up and wrapped the boy in a fierce embrace.

        “Thank you, thank you, Ender. Thank God for you, Ender.” The colonel was actually shaking.

        Twilight and Celestia were still, sensing that something was off. The rest looked at each other, confused.

        “Wow,” Dash commented, “I’ve had a lot of ponies cheer for me, but they’re really happy. They must not have expected you to pass.”

        “What’s wrong?” asked Fluttershy, seeing the boy’s expression. The memory continued silently overhead as other officers came up and hugged him or shook his hand. Mazer came up, smiling, and said a few words. Ender’s unheard response took the smile from his face.

        Ender looked up at Celestia and the rest. “The third memory you wanted to see. The one at the core of it all.” He brought the sound back as Mazer knelt in front of him, looking the boy dead in the eye.

        “Ender, for the past few months you have been the battle commander of our fleets. This was the Third Invasion. There were no games, the battles were real, and the only enemy you fought was the buggers. You won every battle, and today you finally fought them at their home world, where the queen was, all the queens from all their colonies, they all were there and you destroyed them completely. They’ll never attack us again. You did it. You.”

        The soldier closed the memory completely.

        “Wha-” Celestia opened her mouth, but nothing came forth as she processed what had been said. Even Twilight was speechless.

        “Six thousand, three hundred and eleven,” Ender said. The room remained silent.

        “Six thousand, three hundred and eleven,” he repeated. “That’s how many men and women I ordered to their deaths, including the eighty fighter pilots who participated in the final assault. Every last one of them left Earth before I was even born.”

        He noticed that Rarity’s eyes were moist as they flicked back and forth, as if the edges of the room offered some kind of rationale to what she was hearing.

        “Zhang Yan, Jacob Argyris, Raina Saxena, Xu Jun, Manel Braga - the five pilots who made it to the Formic homeworld. They knew there was no going back. They even heard my voice - a child’s voice - issue the final command, and they never hesitated. I would have seen any pause, any misstep, but no, they acted as swiftly and as surely as the computer simulations I thought they were. Would you believe that no one outside the IF even knows who they are? Everyone celebrates my name. ‘The savior of humanity,’ they call me.” he snorted derisively. “But do they even bother to learn about the ones who sacrificed their lives for our victory? No - to the rest of the world they are long dead; young men and women, most of whom lost their entire families in the First Invasion, that left Earth generations ago.”

        Applejack had taken off her hat and was now looking down into it.

        Ender raised his hands, palms upward. “Stilson, Bonzo, Zhang, Argyris, Saxena, Xu, Braga, six thousand, three hundred and six other IF pilots whose names even I couldn’t even begin to memorize, and every last Formic who lived or ever will live. Those deaths are on my hands, whether I intended them or not.”

        Slowly, even the princess dipped her head.

        Twilight finally recovered enough speak. “Why didn’t they tell you? Didn’t you have the right to know?” She asked in a choked voice.

        “They needed commanders who could match the Formics - in other words, people willing to do whatever it took to win. Had I, or any of my squadron leaders known what was happening, we would have fought differently. Even with our training, we would have acted more conservatively to protect our people’s lives. We wouldn’t have taken as many risks knowing that every last fighter carried a human pilot. We would have agonized over mistakes more than we already did, and we would have destroyed ourselves with self-doubt later on.”

        The unicorn looked like she wanted to object, needed to object, but she couldn’t find fault in what he said.

        “How…” Celestia croaked. She paused, swallowed hard, and regained control of her voice. “How are there still two memories left? What could possibly be worse than this?” she asked with dread in her voice.

        Ender shook his head. “Not worse, just… important.” A courtroom appeared in his head as he recalled the vids from Graff’s trial. “The colonel was tried for what happened in Battle School under his watch,” he began.

        “Good!” Applejack looked up, putting her hat back on. She seemed to want to latch onto something, anything other than the staggering death toll. “About time he got his comeuppance.”

        “At first the rest of the IF staff tried to keep the details from me, but the very fact that they were trying to hide it told me most of what I needed to know. Applying pressure here and there, I finally got them to relent and let me watch the proceedings. That is when I learned of Stilson and Bonzo’s true fate.”

        “So you found out on top of everything else?” Pinkie Pie came out of the trance she had held for the last few hours. Ender did a double-take; her silence had made him forget that the earth pony was even there. Apparently she had been listening, at least to some of what had been said.

        Ender nodded, too worn out to even phrase a response. One memory left - it was simultaneously the least and most important of them all.

        Suddenly, Twilight turned on her teacher, startling the others with her outburst. “Princess Celestia! I can’t do it. I just…” she trailed off as the larger alicorn fixed her with an intent stare. Swallowing hard and regaining her courage, the unicorn continued. “As bad as it seems, as much death and destruction as we’ve seen today, I just can’t hold it against him. I won’t speak for the others, but I know for a fact that I will not use my ele-”

        “Wait!” the soldier interrupted. All eyes turned to him, as surprised by his interruption as they were by Twilight’s.

The unicorn blinked. “Wait… why? I’m about to..”

        Ender shook his head. “You haven’t heard everything. The last-”

        Twilight’s reaction was swift and stern. “No! I don’t care what it is, I’m not about to condemn you for something you were tricked into doing.”

        “Was I? Would you have felt the same way had it really been a simulation, then I had gone off and knowingly waged and won a war against the Formics, killing them all?”

        “Yes! No… maybe?” She wavered, frustrated. “It depends! What if they had attacked first instead? I don’t know…” She stomped a hoof, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know.” She looked at him helplessly.

        He smiled sadly, sympathetically. “Frustrating, isn’t it? Not knowing. I’m in the same position.”

        The unicorn was utterly lost. “What do you mean?”

        “Intellectually,” Ender continued, “I can understand that, at least with all but Stilson and Bonzo, I was no more than a weapon. I was forged, sharpened, and used by the IF. They killed the Formics and I was merely their tool. I’ve come to grips with that. But what I cannot figure out is why I won.”

        Applejack was struggling to follow, but she spoke up nevertheless. “Hon, I didn’t understand most of it, but I saw it with mah own eyes. You beat ‘em fair an’ square. Heck, less than fair an square. They should have had you.”

        “Yeah!” Dash agreed. “And besides, who cares? You won!”

        “The last memory,” he began.

        “I don’t care!” Twilight stomped a hoof again. “It’s not going to change my mind!”

        “Please,” Ender replied. “This is a memory I want to share. No one, not even the old members of my jeesh have understood - but maybe that was because they couldn’t see it…” he gestured above his head. “this way.”

        Twilight looked at him in disbelief. “What could be so difficult to understand?”

        “They let me win.” Ender said, a rush of emotion discharging through him as he finally gave voice to the thought that had been haunting him for over a year. He had mentioned it to last remnants of his jeesh, those still on Eros after the others had returned to Earth, but they were all focused on their futures. What did they care of the past, especially since the Formics were dead and gone?

        “Beg pardon?”

        “What?!”

        “Huh?”

        “The last memory.” The soldier’s mindscape tore open once more. Ender-that-was, now nearly identical to the boy kneeling in the throne room, stood in the engine room of an IF colony ship. A device which could only be described as an overly large egg drifted in the center of a containment field.

        “Rank commensurate to my achievements, duties commensurate with my abilities - that’s what I was given after the war was over. So, I became an admiral with nothing to do; there weren’t any more Formics to fight. Eventually, they came upon the idea to set me up as the governor of our first  colony - it’s a long story, but what matters is that they gave me a tour of a colony ship. For the first time ever, I was shown the inner workings of an IF vessel like the ones I had commanded during the war. This one in particular had been retrofitted from the newest line of carriers.”

        A middle-aged man, dressed in a uniform much like the one Ender currently wore, was lecturing the younger boy on how the engine worked. Not impressed with his technical jargon, the boy interrupted him.

        “What you’re saying is that the field generated by this device takes all the molecules and objects it runs into in the direction of movement and uses the nuclear strong force to make them move in a uniform direction at lightspeed.”

        If the captain was shocked at the youth’s acumen, he hid it well. “Touche. But you’re an admiral, sir, and so I was giving you the show I give all the admirals.” He grinned. “Most of them don’t have a clue what I’m saying, and they’re too stuffed to admit it and ask me to translate.”

        Ender, however, wasn’t smiling. “What happens to the energy from the breaking of the molecules into their constituent atoms?” he asked seriously.

        “That, sir, is what powers the ship. No, I’ll be more specific. That’s what actually moves the ship. It’s so beautiful. We move forward under rockets, and then…” as the captain continued to speak glowingly about the capabilities of his ship, as line officers are wont to do, Ender’s eyes became unfocused, his face utterly still.

When a pause in the man’s speech told the boy he was finished, Ender asked only one question, though he was sure he already knew the answer. “And we got this from the Formics?”

The captain nodded, and began to explain how they had reverse engineered the technology from a Formic ship.

        The memory faded, but Ender remained silent.

        “Uhh,” Rainbow Dash prompted. “Think you could explain that? We’re not all eggheads here.” She looked up at Twilight.

        The “egghead,” however, seemed to understand. “It’s the same principle as the weapon you used. The Doctor… this is just more controlled, isn’t it?”

        Ender nodded.

        Twilight still didn’t understand, however. “But what does that matter? You learned a great deal from the Formics, didn’t you?”

        “We did, but I always thought the Little Doctor was different. A human invention, something that would take the Formics by surprise, circumvent all their defenses, and help us win the war. It made sense, after all. We had a mining device called a ‘glaser’ that worked in much the same way. It was extremely helpful against the Formics during the First Invasion. I had always assumed that the Little Doctor was merely an improvement on that concept.

        Realization dawned in Celestia’s eyes, but she remained silent. Twilight still did not understand. “But the weapon did all that, right? Why does it matter who invented it?”

        “Because if it was their technology,” Ender said gravely, “they - they should have recognized it the second we started using it during the Third Invasion. They may have been simple in their tactics, but the Formics were never stupid. They had to have known that our revolutionary weapon was nothing more than a retooled version of their own engines.”

        Twilight, Rarity, and even Applejack started to catch on, unease showing on their faces as they started to understand the implications of what the boy said.

        “And yet, they never once turned the Little Doctor against us. Our tactics wouldn’t have made us particularly vulnerable to it, but even so, it could have turned the war in their favor. In the final battle, particularly, they could have vaporized my fighters long before they reached the planet.”

        Ender’s back sagged as he finished airing thoughts long pent up inside.

        “Even if they couldn’t figure out how to do what we did with their technology - which I doubt - their overall strategy was self-defeating. I see it now, and have seen it ever since I learned that the battles were real.”

        Raising his head, he looked to each of them in turn.

        “The Formics fought me for every inch of their territory, but each time I beat them, they all retreated toward their homeworld. Yes, that gave them the advantage of numbers, but they had to have known that defeat was a possibility, especially as I kept winning. We had the Little Doctor and were willing to use it, and yet they gathered their remaining population on one planet. At any point, they could have spread to dozens of other star systems without even losing a tenth of their force for that final battle. Had they scattered, we would have been hard pressed to find them much less destroy them. They could have hid for however long it took to regroup and send a fleet to destroy us once and for all.”

        Twilight looked down at him silently, her face showing that she understood it as little as he did.

        “...and yet, and yet, and yet… they didn’t.” Ender strained to keep his head up, utterly exhausted. “They massed in one place, giving me the ability to kill them all. I may have won all the battles, but they lost the war, and I do not. Know. Why.”

        The unicorn’s voice wavered. She sounded lost. “But why does that matter? You won.”

        “How we win matters,” Ender heard himself say. The boy didn’t know whether it came from his mouth or his memories, and he was too tired to care. Had he said it to Graff, to Mazer? Did I say it at all? His mind spun, not sure of anything.

        “I knew them better than anyone, even better than Mazer. That’s how I beat them… no, how I destroyed them, wiping out their entire existence. I should at least understand why they did it, what they were thinking. If they can’t speak for themselves, who will speak for them? I can’t, and if not me, who?” Ender’s voice faltered as he let his head fall, staring instead at the intricately-patterned carpet between his knees.

        Frustration and resignation warred for dominance in the boy’s mind. The memory spell had left him drained and emotionally raw. Ender knew he wasn’t entirely making sense anymore but didn’t know how else to convey what he felt. He just wanted it to end.

        “So cast your judgment,” he said bitterly, his voice echoing across the cavernous throne room, “Condemn or forgive me as you wilI - it doesn’t matter. As you can see,” Ender twisted the word as he gestured above himself, indicating the spell that had opened his mind to them all day, “I can’t even forgive myself.”

        He closed his eyes, waiting for their response. Would there be some formal decree, or would they simply carry out their sentence?

        Will it hurt? Ender thought briefly of the statue garden, wondering if Twilight still wanted to spare him.

        Celestia and the others said nothing. The room was shrouded in silence, save for the slow, measured clip of steps behind him.

Metal against stone, the sound had an oddly bell-like quality.

The soldier opened his eyes, expecting to see the gold-shod hooves of a Royal Guard. Instead, an expanse of midnight blue feathers extended across the periphery of his vision as he felt a wash of warm breath over his right ear.

        “Then simply know that I forgive you.” Luna’s words carried a power that cut through him, and Ender shuddered to his core. His chest tightened and his vision became blurry, even as he felt her forehead touch his own.

        Am I crying?

        Ender had no tightness in his chest and no sobs racked his lungs, yet he felt warm trails on his face. As he looked down, the soldier could see teardrops on the back of his hands, though he couldn’t feel them. It was like he was floating, disconnected.

        Forgiveness. Being forgiven. Could it really be something so simple? Ender doubted it, but even so, he felt… not better, but it was a start. For the first time in nearly a year, he thought he could feel better. It was like balm on a wound, taking away the pain so healing could start.

        Luna’s wings closed over the boy. Darkness descended, blocking out the silvery moonlight from the windows as she whispered, “I am sorry, Ender, so very sorry.”

> Ice
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: MinCol@ColMin.gov
To: demosthenes@hushcom.nl
Subj: Re: Mutual Friend
Encryption Alg#: 341596DRG

Ms. Wiggin,

        I’m sorry, but we’ve lost contact as well. I still have reason to believe, however, that our mutual friend is still free. If he attempts to contact us, we will pass along your message.

        Regarding the plans of the International Fleet, I cannot speak for the Polemarch and the Strategos. You know as well as I do that the IF is bound by its pledge of absolute neutrality. While the fleet may not intervene on Earth, rest assured that its individual members are not happy with the abduction of their former comrades. Should, say, a group of especially zealous IF Marines happen to take personal action on the matter (wearing civilian clothes, of course), I’m sure the resulting courts-martial would prove inconclusive.

I will keep you updated as the situation progresses. MinCol may not have much in the way of boots on the ground, but we have eyes and ears everywhere.

Graff

☽

“Going straight for the expensive stuff, sir?” Lieutenant Martin smirked as she sidled up to the bar. Minister Graff looked over at her, halfway through pouring himself another drink. She wasn’t an expert, but judging by the label and the remnants of bottle’s seal on the bar, the minister had already burned through 180 credits’ worth of a 300-credit scotch.

        “The scientists sure as hell aren’t drinking it.” He motioned behind him at the now-empty lounge. Holo-displays sat idle while the computers continued to run data analysis in the researchers’ absence.

        Sarah looked across the empty room behind her. The moon loomed in the lounge’s floor-to-ceiling observation window. At this range, the sun cast its cratered face in sharp relief between light and shadow. Without Earth’s atmosphere to blur and soften the light, the rocks shone with the harsh white of a bleached skull rather than its usual pearly tone. Shivering involuntarily, the young officer turned back towards the bar.

        “So where are they anyway? I’ve never seen them all gone at once,” she asked Graff.

        “Sent ‘em away,” he replied, motioning vaguely behind him. “Westfall’s had them on a round-the-clock schedule for weeks now, and while I appreciate the effort, the folks working on the mid-shift looked damned near dead when I came in here. They weren’t doing anything the computers couldn’t do on their own, and no one should be up at 3 AM without good reason.”

        Martin raised an eyebrow. Was Graff getting soft?

        “So why are you still awake?”

        The minister swirled the dark liquid in his glass. “Why else? Couldn’t sleep. Why are you up?”

        “Same.” Sarah tossed her desk on the bar. An e-mail sprang into view in the holodisplay.

        “It seems that you’re important enough to merit the personal attention of the Prime Minister of Australia. Congratulations, lieutenant.” Graff toasted her with one hand while pouring her a drink with the other.

        She rolled her eyes. “Everyone’s in a panic now that Ender’s jeesh has been kidnapped. They’re reaching out to anyone with Battle School experience in the hopes of shoring up their defenses. It’s a bloody arms race, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let them treat me like a weapon to be fought over and horded.”

        Taking the offered glass from the older man, she tossed it back without a second thought. “It’s not as if they gave a damn about me before all this went down. A third-rate Pre-Command washout like me wouldn’t even be a blip on their radar unless everyone else suddenly vanished,” Martin said venomously as she slammed the stout crystal tumbler down on the bar.

        Graff chuckled, reaching over to pour her another. “Don’t sell yourself short. You just went through school about ten years too early. I’m also pretty sure that scotch of this caliber is supposed to be sipped and enjoyed, not shot.”

        The lieutenant glared at him before pounding the second glass. “I’ll enjoy it when I’m drunk, and we’re going to need a lot more before that happens. And what the hell do you mean ‘I went to school ten years early?’” she asked as she leaned over the bar, fishing for a bottle of her own.

        Twenty years ago, Graff might have taken the opportunity to appreciate the view as the younger woman dug through the cabinets on the other side of the counter. Now he simply looked down into his drink, lost in its shifting colors. “Ender would have known what to do with you. When we built his army, we gave him students we had long ago written off as lost causes - even more lost than you, if you can believe that.”

        Martin huffed indignantly but the noise was lost amid clinking glass as she rifled through the ship’s liquor selection. Suddenly, she let out a whoop of delight.

        “Ha! Dalmore!” She grinned as she swung back into her seat, prize in hand. “You can keep yours, sir, I’m set for the night.”

        “Professional courtesy from Sarah Martin… I could get used to that.” Hyrum smirked as he tipped his glass again.

        The lieutenant already had the bottle open, but before she started to pour, she reached for a new glass. Don’t want to ruin the taste… who knows when I’ll be able to do this again, she thought to herself. Martin’s face sobered as she measured her next drink.

She thought about the soft-spoken young man she had known so briefly before he mysteriously disappeared. His disarming manner had cut through her defenses so easily… maybe he could have been the leader she needed back then. Her own commander wasn’t a bad guy, but he wasn’t terribly bright either. He respected Martin enough to give her a toon, but that was small consolation for a girl who knew she’d never make commander herself. Sarah’s ferocious reputation did earn her a nickname, though: The Bitch of Bobcat. 

        “You really think so?” she asked Graff. “That maybe things would have turned out differently if he had been around back then?”

        He nodded. “I know so. Yours was wasted talent. The boy could have figured out how to use you… Ender or any of his closest friends for that matter. You would have liked Petra. The only difference between the two of you is that she could keep her mouth shut for about half the time she needed to.”

        Sarah frowned. “The name sounds familiar. She was abducted with the rest, wasn’t she?”

        Graff’s face hardened and its usually inscrutable mask slipped. For a moment, Martin was genuinely afraid of him.

        Then the man exhaled, and the moment was gone. “She was.” Despite his calm demeanor, the minister’s knuckles were white against the tumbler.

        Martin sighed, looking at her drink. “What’s going to happen if - when,” she corrected herself, “he gets back? Are you hoping Ender can straighten this mess out?”

        Graff jerked back as if he had been slapped, fixing her with an incredulous look. Had he not been gripping his glass as tightly as he was, Sarah was sure it would have fallen to the bar - a waste of very expensive alcohol.

        “Are you kidding me? The first thing I’m going to do when he gets back is hand him over to his sister and put both their asses on the next colony ship leaving the system. I should have done it with the rest of them before they even started thinking of home again… then we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

The lieutenant was horrified. It was all she could do not to throw her drink in the man’s face. No, she realized as anger surged through her gut, it was all she could do to not smash the heavy crystal over Graff’s head.

        “And what about their families?” she hissed, “‘Oh, I’m sorry, it wasn’t enough that we took your children from you, but we have to go and send them hundreds of light years away, and you’ll be lucky to even be alive when they get there?!’”

        Graff was unmoved. “You mean those same families that are now frantic with worry, wondering who abducted their children? How about the lucky ones whose sons and daughters have merely been seized by their governments, rather than some third party. ‘Oh, don’t worry… it’s just for their protection?’”

        Martin realized he was right, but she couldn’t let it go at that. Unable to defend her point, she instead went on the attack. “So why the hell didn’t you protect them? Biggest fleet in existence, could wipe out life on Earth a thousand times over, but can’t defend a few dozen teenagers? Bloody useful, that.”

        The older man just rolled his eyes, turning back to the bar and his drink. “You know as well as I do why we can’t do anything. You think I like sitting out here watching while my kids are treated like pawns in the great international chess game?” Ignoring his own advice, Graff shot the rest of his glass - 80 credits, Sarah guessed.

        ‘His kids’... The young woman never would have thought Battle School’s grand architect harbored such feelings. His tools, soldiers, students, yes, but not his kids. She felt surprised and ashamed.

        “I’m-I’m sorry.” Martin hated saying it, but it had to be said.

        Graff shook his head. “No, I earned your resentment. I intentionally pushed all of you to your limits, and I broke many of you in the process. I don’t apologize for that - it had to be done. But I’ve come to realize that each time I fired the crucible that was our happy little community, I left a bit of myself in each and every one of you. Now I only wish I could have protected you from the world we collectively saved.”

We? The woman knew it was the wrong time to pick a fight, but she couldn’t help but say what was on her mind. “We? I don’t remember any of us ‘write-offs’ being involved in the Third Invasion.” Long-soured pride burned in her voice.

Graff turned a sad glance her way as he refilled his glass. “Ender may have been the final product, but every Battle School soldier who went before contributed to his creation and training. With each new class we got a clearer picture of the type of leader we were looking for; the exact skillset and psychological profile needed to defeat the Formic hive mind.” The former colonel stared down into his glass, suddenly much older than he looked minutes before. “You may not have been there at the end,” he said softly, “but your hardships were not in vain. I can say with confidence that Petra would not have made it through Battle School were it not for the lessons we learned from you, and without Petra, Ender wouldn’t have become the commander he was.”

        Martin blinked, stunned by the man’s words. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she squinted away the tears that sprang unbidden to the corners of her eyes. Merited or not, she would not cry in front of this man.

        “I’d like to meet her then, someday,” she managed.

        The man sighed. “Hopefully, you will. One thing at a time though.” He spun around on the barstool to regard the Anomaly, depicted in green wireframe on the main holodisplay.

        Desperate for anything else to talk about, Sarah returned to Ender and the current situation down on Earth.

        “What if he doesn’t want to go to another colony?”

        “Beg pardon?”

        “Ender. If he hears about the situation down there, I’m sure he’ll want to save his friends.” At least, I hope he would. Sarah didn’t want to imagine that his personality was a facade, that deep down he was as cold and calculating as Graff had always seemed.

        The minister stared straight ahead. “If I have anything to do with it, he won’t hear about the situation back on Earth until his new colony ship has shifted up to speed.”

        Sarah’s mouth fell open as she looked back at the man in surprise. It seemed too cruel, even for him. And if that’s what he thinks, then what was all that other crap about ‘my kids’ before?

        “So what, he gets to agonize over the news while he’s powerless to do anything about it?”

        “At relative speed, even a war lasting an entire year would be over in under ten days by his reckoning. It would be finished before he could even start to process it. Yes, there would be grieving, but it’s far better than the alternative.” Graff did not turn his head, instead choosing to sullenly address the empty room. His eyes seemed fixed on the Anomaly as it shifted in the holodisplay.

        “Better than saving the only people outside his family who mean something to him?!” Martin didn’t know Ender’s exact relationship with the others, but she knew from her own past that the best friends are made in hell. She was confident that Ender’s experiences were far more hellish than hers had been.

        Now the man turned his gaze to meet hers, his gray eyes unmoved. “And what about the friends he’d have to fight?”

        Sarah blinked, not comprehending. “What do you mean? Of course they wouldn’t fight him. What possible reason would they have?”

        Graff exhaled sharply. “Come on, Martin, you’re better than this. Think. This isn’t the League War. The Warsaw Pact isn’t trying to take over the Hegemony - the nations of Earth are collectively ignoring the Hegemony and each trying to carve out their own piece of the international pie before the balance of power settles again. It’s a damned free-for-all.”

        “So what?” she shot back. “Just because the nations want to rip each other apart doesn’t mean that Ender’s group will lead their armies, especially if they know they’re going up against old friends or even Ender himself.” Even as she said them, the lieutenant started to doubt her own words. What if they never knew a comrade was on the other side? What if they were just charged with designing strategies? The Battle Schooler deep inside of Sarah knew that she’d leap at the opportunity herself in that situation - it was what they were trained to do, and the challenge was invigorating. Who wouldn’t want to take on the world if given the chance?

        The man looked at her searchingly, seeming to have picked up on her distress. “And what happens when they have no choice?”

        “But-”

        Graff pressed on over her interruption. “Have you noticed, despite the rest of the world losing its damned mind recently, that the Islamic nations has been unusually quiet?”

        “Not really, but yes, it does sound very odd.”

        In any other situation, the man might have smirked, but now he was deadly serious. “I happen to know why. For the first time in hundreds of years, the Muslim world has a Caliph, one that all sects agree upon. Who do you think they chose?”

        Sarah remembered bits and pieces of a newsvid from long before she had ever left Eros, another one of the propaganda pieces celebrating the return of Ender’s inner circle. Since the media outlets knew they’d never get to welcome home the hero himself, they had made a big deal out of the arrival of his friends. They always asked the same questions… ‘How is he?’ ‘What’s he like?’ ‘Doesn’t he want to come back?’ before finally asking about the kids themselves. Ender’s jeesh never seemed to bristle at being asked about their commander first - a sign of their esteem of the boy. Every last one had voiced their support of him and asked, on camera, for the powers-that-be to bring him home.

        One particular boy with liquid-brown eyes caught her memory. Though his pronunciation of Common was perfect, heavy eyebrows and an olive complexion hinted at his nationality. To Martin’s recollection, he had been a senior commander, even among the brilliant echelons of Ender’s group.

        “Alai,” she answered Graff. “He’s Saudi, isn’t he?”

        “He is,” the man responded, “and you’d better believe they’re doing everything they can to bring him back. He would have been installed in Damascus, their new capital, within a matter of days… now that I think of it, that might have been the driving reason behind the timing of this mass abduction.”

        The lieutenant mulled the idea over in her head. “Wouldn’t he just be a figurehead though?”

        Graff shook his head. “Not at all. The reports I’ve seen indicate that the League is willing to do whatever it takes to regain power in the world, if not supremacy. In the months since the end of the war, they’ve gone so far as to broker not only peace but a full military alliance with Israel. If they’re willing to do that, I don’t think they’d have any problem following the decisions of a teenager, especially if they believe Alai will bring them victory.”

        Sarah was shocked. “Peace? With Israel? There’s no way - we would have heard it all over the news.”

        “Ha!” the minister laughed harshly. “Had America brokered the peace, you’d better believe they’d be broadcasting it, but as it is, they’ve just lost their closest ally in the region and they don’t want to worsen their already tenuous position on the international stage.”

        “Still, we should have heard about something as monumental as this. Are you sure they’re really working together?”

        Graff nodded. “The League doesn’t want to be seen as a threat until they’ve got Alai calling the shots. What if India gets its Battle School graduates back before they do? The threat of a unified Muslim League might just be enough to trigger a preemptive attack.”

Cold fear settled into the pit of Martin’s stomach. “It’s really that bad? I can’t imagine India ever starting a war.”

“They might when they begin seeing Israeli-made fighters in Pakistan, flying the green crescent of the Muslim League.”

        It was too much to comprehend. The world had been in a constant state of fear ever since she was born, but at least it was a peaceful fear. Wars between nations were just something you read about in the history books. The only real war that mattered was the one that would happen in the cold black of space. Now, it was as if all the old nightmares had raised their heads at once.

        “Still, if Ender can stop it, wouldn’t that be better?!” she asked the man. “Nobody, not even another Battle School graduate would willingly stand on the wrong side of an army led by him.”

        “But at what cost?” Graff took a drink, swallowing hard. “And who’s to say the members of Ender’s jeesh would even have a choice? Do you think even Alai could turn to the 2.5 billion people of the Muslim League and tell them no? And even if he could, what about China? India? The New Warsaw Pact?”

Sarah’s head dropped as she considered the implications. She wanted him to stop, but Graff continued, his voice boring into her ears.

“Some of these nations are not above threatening families to coerce individuals to do their bidding. How long before Han Tzu, Crazy Tom and the rest are forced into taking the field? All it takes is for one of them to break, and then the rest have to consider fighting a defensive war. When faced with the choice of fighting a friend or protecting their families, what do you think they’ll do?”

        Martin saw the scenario unfold, much as she tried to deny it. The old man was right, it would play out exactly in this fashion. Sure, there might be some frantic attempts at negotiations, hell, the kids would probably try to call each other directly, try to work something out. But then there would be that one wrench in the works, that one incident to put everyone on the defensive, and then the world would go to hell.

        Graff sighed. “Now put Ender into that situation. Even if he didn’t end up tied to the United States - which is a long shot by any means, given that’s where his family lives - he’d end up on one side of the conflict sooner or later, most likely trying to halt the aggressive party or parties. What do you think he’ll try to do to minimize the bloodshed?”

Martin considered this. “Cut the head off the snake - disable the enemy’s ability to direct the conflict or eliminate the agitating elements of the government completely.”

“Exactly.” Graff said with finality. “And what do you think will happen then? War is never a sure thing - even if you’re just trying to disable a headquarters or command facility, accidents and collateral damage are a common occurrence. You tell me, what happens when Ender finds out that he’s killed one of his friends in an attack he ordered? What happens to Ender when he finds out Alai, Bean, or even Petra died at his hands?”

        “They’d never fight against him.” Sarah felt lost, not knowing what else to say.

        “...and if they didn’t have a choice?”

        She had nothing to say to that.

        Graff turned back to the bar, emptied the bottle into his glass, and drained it in one long pull. 160 credits.

        “That is why Ender can never know what’s going on down below until he’s well on his way to a colony. That is why he can never go home.”

☽

Celestia shivered involuntarily as she entered her chambers, even though a fire cheerily blazed from the hearth behind her bed. Thank goodness Featherduster is so fast, she thought, spying a table heavily laden with food set in the center of the large, circular room. The princess had hastily ordered a spread of ‘everything’ from her hoofmaiden as she exited the throne room with Twilight and her friends in tow. The gray pegasus had more than delivered.

        A pink and white three-tiered cake dominated the table - how Featherduster arranged them so quickly, the alicorn would never know. Celestia was beginning to suspect that she simply had a number of them set aside in the kitchens at all times. The rest of the table was divided into quarters, each section loaded with a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, and grains respectively. The final quarter boasted pastries, cupcakes, and pies that looked nearly as delectable as the cake itself. To the side of the table, a trolley held plates, silverware, napkins, a tea service, and a tall pitcher of water.

        The princess turned as the other ponies entered the room. Twilight and the others moved as if in a daze, though their dull expressions brightened considerably when they saw the food.

        “My little-” she interrupted herself, thinking of all they had seen and heard that day. “My friends,” Celestia decided, thinking nothing else more appropriate, “today has been trying for all of us, and I cannot even begin to apologize for what you have been through. Know that you have all done Equestria an incredible service, and you have my personal gratitude as well as my sister’s.”

        Their ears pricked up slightly, but the group remained still. The sight pained Celestia - normally Twilight or Applejack would have waved a hoof, saying it was nothing. Rainbow would have swelled at the praise, and Fluttershy would have just blushed. Even Pinkie just stood there, lost. 

        “I never expected for the,” she paused, picking her words carefully, “proceedings to take as long as they did, and I certainly did not mean for you to go most of the day without food or drink. You must be absolutely famished. Please… eat, rest, and care not about the time. I insist that you stay with me tonight.”

        That got their attention. These ponies weren’t strangers when it came to lodging at the castle, but staying with the princess herself? That was unheard of.

        They moved as if in a daze, the food drawing Dash, Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie Pie onward. Applejack hung back, confusion on her face.

        “Weren’t… weren’t we supposed to give some kind of decision back there? A verdict?” She shook her head, fatigue clearly etched on her face.

        Celestia stepped forward, ushering the stalwart Apple on with a wing. “I think we can consider the charges withdrawn. Luna certainly doesn’t consider Ender a danger anymore, and I agree with her.”

        Applejack nodded tiredly and drifted to the table, heading towards the apple basket on the fruit side almost by instinct. The alicorn couldn’t help but notice that the basket was from the mare’s own farm.

        The alicorn felt Twilight’s presence behind her. Of the group, Celestia’s protege was the most alert, and she was not happy.

        Pre-empting the questions she knew were coming, the princess addressed her student without turning around. “Twilight, would you please join me on the balcony?” Levitating two bottles of apple juice from the table, Celestia turned and opened the double doors leading out. She embraced the cool night air as it enveloped her, lifting her mane as she stepped outside.

        Softer clicks tapped behind her as Twilight followed. Closing the doors behind them, the princess offered one of the bottles to her student.

        The unicorn took the offered drink with her magic, but only looked at the amber liquid  even as Celestia took a long draught from her bottle. Only then did she realize just how parched she was.

        “Princess,” the unicorn ventured, distress clear on her face, “what was that? Why did… were we wrong to do what we did?” She motioned a lavender hoof vaguely downward in the direction of the throne room.

        Celestia frowned. She had been thinking through this conversation during the long trip up to her chambers, but that did not make it any easier to start.

        Normally, the alicorn built lessons for the younger ponies around her by creating experiences through which they would learn on their own. It is so much better, after all, to learn something for yourself than to have somepony else simply tell you. After her colossal miscalculations today, however, Celestia reasoned that if there was any time to spell things out for Twilight, now would be it.

        She sighed heavily. “Twilight, you never did anything wrong. If there is any lesson for you to learn today, it is that even princesses can make mistakes, and I’m not talking about little things like what happened with Luna a few weeks back.”

        The unicorn would usually be full of questions, interrupting her at every turn, but now she just stood there, levitating her drink and looking up blankly. She must be more tired than she looks, the alicorn noted.

        “I…” Celestia turned away, not wanted to meet her pupil’s gaze. “My first mistake was not believing my own sister. I am ashamed to admit it, but I thought Luna was simply overreacting.”

        Silence stretched for a few moments as the princess regarded the silvery landscape before her. Luna’s moon was bright tonight, so bright that not a single star shone across the sky.

        “My sister came to me in the dead of night, flustered, her words tumbling over one another. I could barely understand what she was saying, but she wouldn’t stop until I agreed to call upon you, Twilight, and your friends. Luna wanted a full inquiry - she was scared that she had brought something truly evil right into our midst.”

        Celestia glanced back at her student. The unicorn had set down her drink, untouched, and was looking at her with full focus. 

        “Naturally, I thought she was overreacting as, I am afraid to say, she was wont to do, especially in her younger days. Yes, she had told me what she had seen - that first memory, the one when Ender was very young - but stars help me, it just didn’t register. I’ll admit that I don’t know the human as well as she does, but he did not strike me even as a threat much less an evil entity. I am not often wrong with my assessments of others.”

        Finally, the unicorn broke her silence. “So why didn’t you clarify the matter before moving forward?”

        The princess smiled to herself, happy that Twilight would have chosen that course of action.

        “I should have done that, or more precisely, I should have told Luna to do it herself before coming to me and insisting on such a drastic course of action.” She paused, knowing she needed to tell her student the rest, but not wanting to explain her methods to a pony who still benefited from them. Twilight over-thought things as it was, Celestia didn’t want her looking for a test or lesson in every one of their interactions.

        “But…” her student prompted.

        There was no choice - she needed to understand this, if only to sleep well at night.

        “But the truth is that Luna has not been taken seriously since her return.” She paused, thinking, then added, “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you this, but that fact stays between you and me.” The alicorn looked back again to make sure that this point was understood.

        “Yes, ma’am.” Twilight nodded dutifully.

        Celestia turned back fully so she could look her student in the eyes. The unicorn deserved that much, no matter how ashamed the princess felt.

        “The castle staff and the members of my court have doubted Luna constantly, second-guessing her decisions while always looking to me for final approval. It grates at her, I can tell, but she has matured to the point where she can understand why this is and why it won’t change anytime soon. Equestria has gone on for over ten generations without her, and our subjects won’t change their outlook overnight. Many in Canterlot still view her as an interloper, an upset in the delicate tapestry of power and privilege the nobility have woven for themselves, no matter how ridiculous it may be. I can command them to show her deference and respect, but I cannot command them to feel it in their hearts.”

        Twilight looked surprised at this as the alicorn expected. Her pupil had always viewed her sister with the same admiration she reserved for Celestia herself.

        “After the pushback and doubt she gets from all other corners, the last thing Luna needed was for me to turn her down out of hoof. I agreed to her request for an inquiry because I thought it would be a good lesson for her. I honestly believed it would be a simple misunderstanding that would clear itself up in an hour or two of frank discussion. Luna would feel silly for getting so worked up and making a big deal out of nothing. We’d laugh about it, have lunch, and she’d learn to get all the details first before rushing headlong into a decision.”

Twilight looked to the side momentarily, the gears turning in her head. “So if it was a lesson for Luna, why were we there?”

“I didn’t want to get you and your friends involved, but if I didn’t, it would show Luna that I wasn’t treating her inquiry with the gravity it deserved. She’d have known in an instant that it was created for her benefit, and I didn’t want her to feel patronized. At the same time, I thought it would be beneficial for you to see this aspect of my court in a situation that wasn’t a national emergency, like the incident with Discord - a bonus lesson, if you will. As for the others, it would not be a complete waste of time. Your friends bear the Elements, after all, and may some day be called upon to do this very thing again. I never expected it to become… what it did.”

        “So what did it become? We were going to let it go after that first memory, at least… I was ready to do that. Then you insisted that we see the rest of his memories as well, and you even made us stay there when he said we could… that we should go!” Twilight’s voice wavered in hesitant anger, as if not sure whether or not she could adopt such a tone with her monarch.

        “You are right to feel upset, Twilight.” Celestia bowed her head. “Even well-meaning mistakes can cause pain, as mine have today.”

        The unicorn blinked, shocked at herself. “I’m sorry, princess, I-I…”

        “It’s quite alright, my faithful student. If our roles were reversed, I’m afraid I would have started with yelling and accusations, and it would have gone downhill from there. Though it may be hard for you to believe, I was once a student too.”

        Twilight said nothing, only opening and closing her mouth in silence. Apparently it was too difficult of a concept for her to imagine.

        Smiling softly, Celestia continued. “Consider this: before we began, I only knew of the first memory, the one Luna described in haste in the middle of the night. She didn’t tell me about the others until you started down the path of dismissing Ender. I don’t think my sister was trying to hide them from me before; rather, she didn’t realize their importance until it was clear that the first incident wasn’t the cause of the human’s distress.”

        The unicorn blinked. “But… how did Luna tell you, princess? I never saw her until the very end.”

        Celestia glanced up at the moon briefly. “My sister and I can communicate our thoughts to each other when necessary. It is a very difficult spell, and unless we are close, we can only share the simplest of emotions. Mostly, I can only sense her presence and well-being.”

Twilight stared intently, surprised by the revelation and eager to learn something new about her mentor.

        “It was difficult for me to grasp everything she implied, but the message was clear: ‘there is more to this than we know.’” Celestia paused. “You like to take time and think through matters before making a decision, Twilight. Normally, that is a good trait but sometimes you won’t have the luxury of time. There come occasions when you will need to make a split-second decision, and sometimes you will make the wrong one through no fault of your own. What makes a good leader is her ability to recover and make the best of a bad choice.”

        The unicorn thought about that for a moment. “So if you had to do it over again, you would have sent us away?” Her voice wavered a bit, as if the concept no longer sat well with her.

        “To save you the shock and horror that ensued? Yes. But can you see why I chose as I did?” Celestia held her breath, hoping that Twilight would be able to see past her usual adoration and learn what she needed to from this.

        Her student’s jaw worked back and forth as her ears slumped forward, signifying deep thought. 

        “Well,” she talked through the problem, “it would have invalidated what you were trying to achieve with Princess Luna. If we - the Elements, that is - weren’t needed for the more serious revelations, then we wouldn’t have been needed for the first one, either. That would have hurt her feelings and ruined the lesson you were trying to teach her.”

        Celestia remained silent, mentally urging her to delve further.

        “...and… and… it would have sent me a message too. As much as I wanted to leave, your letting me go would have been tantamount to saying that I couldn’t handle it. And you…” the unicorn trailed off as the realization brought tears to her eyes.

        “...you thought that I could.”

        The alicorn draped a wing over her student as she turned them both toward the balcony railing and the magnificent view beyond. “Exactly right, Twilight, and more importantly you did handle it. I never expected what came next, but you did better than I could have ever hoped. All of you did, considering the circumstances.”

        Celestia pointedly ignored the quiet sniffle that came from beneath her wing, saving Twilight the embarrassment and allowing her to compose herself.

        “There is one other reason you couldn’t possibly know,” she said, giving her student something else to focus on. “A small part of me wondered if perhaps my sister had the right of it all along. What if we were dealing with something truly dangerous, something alien in every sense of the word - so different from my knowledge of others that I completely misjudged his character. That he could be dangerous did not scare me; you’ve seen many deadly creatures even in your lifetime.” Celestia paused to cover a stutter, having very nearly said ‘even in your short lifetime.’ “What scared me was the possibility that he could be dangerous and yet hide his nature from me. I had no idea what to expect, and that, Twilight, is an extremely rare event.”

The alicorn glanced down only to see an expression of shock and surprise in her student’s moist eyes. “I hoped I was wrong. I wanted to see the best in him, but for a little while, I was very glad the Elements were gathered… just in case.”

        It took a while for Twilight to form her response. “Would… would you have told us to use them on him, if he had turned out to be evil or dangerous?”

        Celestia raised her head and looked out at the dark horizon. There it was, the crux of the matter. Did she even know the answer herself? Cognizant of the fact that the unicorn was hanging off every word she said, and would likely remember this conversation for the rest of her life, the princess proceeded with utmost care.

        “I meant every word I said to Ender about letting you decide for yourselves. Today may have started as lesson for my sister, but had events turned down that path - and if we ever find ourselves in that position - know that the decision shall always be yours. I have wielded the Elements twice in my life and each time it carried terrible consequences. I would never force others to do the same against their will, regardless of the stakes.”

        The alicorn’s eyes unfocused, memories of long-ago swirling past her in the starless night.

        “Had we discovered that Ender was truly a threat, and if the Elements were the only way, yes, I would have recommended that you use them.”

The pair stared in silence for a while, looking out over the shadowy landscape. A soft, crisp breeze ran through their manes.

        “Why lie to him then?” Twilight asked.

        Celestia blinked, unsure what she meant. “Hm? About why he was there?”

        The unicorn shook her head. “No, about prisons in Equestria. I tried to ask you this morning, but you stopped me.”

        “Oh.” Everything clicked in Celestia’s mind. “Well, for one, I did not exactly lie. Something told me - most likely Luna’s own link into his thoughts, now that I consider it - that his kind does not use imprisonment the way we do. Tell me, if a town sheriff or one of my castle guards has to make an arrest and lock up a pony, how long does that pony stay locked up?”

        “Umm…” the unicorn began uncomfortably, taken off guard by the sudden question. “I really don’t know.”

Her mentor smiled despite herself. “Take a guess… this isn’t a test, Twilight.”

        She scrunched her face, clearly not comfortable with the idea of proceeding without hard facts. “Er, just long enough for a judge to determine their punishment? Maybe a few weeks at most?”

        “What if the imprisonment was the punishment? That’s the impression I had of what Ender meant.”

        Twilight looked back at her in confusion. “What do you mean... just... sitting there? Locked in a cell? What would that accomplish?”

        The alicorn shrugged. “I don’t know, but it seemed normal to him. I admit it would have been a workable solution, just locking him away until such time as my sister could send him home. But what if that day never came? What kind of ponies would that make us, forcing him to live his life in a cell?”

        “But, it’s what he wanted…” Twilight trailed off. “Was forcing him to reveal his past to us any kinder?”

        As much as the question hurt, the princess was immeasurably proud of her student for asking it.

        “It may not have been, which is why I am teaching you this lesson today. Sometimes we make mistakes, myself included, and we must do our utmost to rectify them.”

        She paused, taking a moment to frame her words. Sometimes how you taught a lesson mattered as much as the lesson itself, and this was especially true with Twilight.

        “Ender’s offer - to have us simply lock him up rather than be exposed to the horrors of his past - seemed genuine, but Luna could not fathom how he had come to terms with such a brutal memory. She feared she had brought something dangerous and unknowable into the very heart of Equestria and wanted to see for herself what experiences drove the turmoil in the human’s mind. After seeing the first… killing” she stumbled on the word, “I confess that I was of the same mind. In hindsight, I should have excused you and your friends, no matter what that would have meant for my sister. But in that moment I felt committed, and I decided to continue as we did.”

        Twilight started to say something but stopped herself. Silence fell as the unicorn considered this.

        “So how do we make things right?” she asked resolutely. The fatigue was gone from her student’s voice; now that Twilight had a problem to focus on, she would see it through regardless of the cost.

Laughing softly, Celestia reined in the unicorn. “We don’t do anything. I’ll not have you taking responsibility for my mistakes.” The alicorn lifted a wing and pointed at her sister’s tower, indicating shadows moving across the glow from the windows. “Luna will take care of Ender. I will see to you and your friends and do whatever I can to help you all understand and process what you saw today.” She paused, the horror of the past few hours washing over her suddenly. “Though to be honest,” the princess spoke seriously, “I’m not entirely sure I can comprehend it myself.” She hadn’t meant to say it, but the need to confide in somepony else was overwhelming, even if that pony was Twilight.

        The dull black of the starless sky was much too similar to the simulator she had seen in Ender’s memories. Unbidden, her mind conjured images from that final battle, projecting them into the skies above Canterlot. Where the human had only seen green lines representing a planet, Celestia saw an entire world, much like her own, stretched across the night just beyond her reach.

        The blue and green globe cracked. Orange fissures appeared, spreading fire and smoke wherever they touched. The cracks raced outward in a spider-web, and where they met, the globe’s surface collapsed in upon itself, leaving nothing but ash and dust.

        The Goddess of the Sun visibly shuddered.

        “Princess, are you alright?” Twilight’s voice was etched with worry.

Celestia scowled, angry at her own weakness. Her student needed reassurance even more than she did. This was no time to indulge in fear, but she so dearly wanted to - no, needed to voice the thoughts that raced inside her own mind.

        “It’s just… an entire planet, an entire race of sentient life. I cannot even begin to fathom it, and if I cannot, then how can your fr-”

        Then it hit her: the alicorns. My own kind, she realized. It wasn’t that Celestia couldn’t imagine a race being wiped out; she was violently resisting the notion because she had seen it happen. I have my far-flung descendants from those days, she thought of Blueblood with a wry smile, and a precious few have ascended in the last few centuries, but none of them are truly like us. For all intents and purposes, our race is as dead as the Ender’s Formics.

        Understanding dawned, and the new perspective left the princess feeling immeasurably better if not a little lost in terms of how to proceed. Pre-fall Alicorn history was something she had only mentioned to Twilight in passing, and now was not the time explain her feelings by delving into it. 

The unicorn ended up providing the answer. Twilight had turned around and was looking through the balcony doors at her friends.

        “I don’t think you’ll have to worry about them, Princess Celestia.”

        The princess blinked, at first not understanding what her student meant. It clicked when she turned and followed Twilight’s gaze. While she had been consumed with introspection, the unicorn had remained focused on her friends.

        Clustered around the table, the other ponies munched happily at the buffet. Applejack rolled her eyes at something Rainbow Dash said while elbowing the orange mare. Fluttershy blushed, smiling softly as she looked down into the mug of tea she held between her forelegs. Pinkie’s eyes slowly came to life as Rarity levitated an assortment of cupcakes around her head. After a few seconds her long pink tongue shot out, snaring one with such blinding speed that the unicorn dropped the rest in surprise. To the delight and quiet laughter of the others, Pinkie caught the rest in her mouth before they hit the floor.

        A little subdued, maybe, but they looked almost normal. Celestia couldn’t believe it.

        “How…?” she began, gaping at the group of ponies.

        Her student looked up and smiled. “I think they’re a bit more resilient than you give them credit for, Princess.”

        She still couldn’t quite believe it. “Even after all we saw? I don’t know if I could act so… so... ” Celestia trailed off.

Twilight looked thoughtful. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think they understand it in the same way we do. I don’t even know that I understand it. Like you said, Princess, it’s just too much.”

        Celestia looked down at her student, simultaneously surprised at her insight and immeasurably proud of her for it. The unicorn blushed slightly when she noticed her gaze, but continued nevertheless.

        “I-I have only known them for about a year, but I’m pretty sure that they’re just letting it all go, and focusing instead on the things that are familiar - the food and each other for one.”

        The princess nodded. It was a coping mechanism she knew all too well. Celestia had all but thrown herself into the affairs of state in the centuries immediately following Luna’s banishment. That part was worrisome.

        “That is an astute observation Twilight, but it isn’t necessarily a comforting one. They might be fine now, but things like this have the tendency to come back when we least expect them. I do not want your friends to wake up to nightmares of blood and death days or weeks from now, or have memories of today come crashing down after an unexpected reminder.”

        Something sparked behind the unicorn’s eye and she suddenly stood up straight, looking back at her friends.

        “I think I have an idea, Princess,” she said with an eager resolve and confidence that Celestia envied, “but I might need your help…”

☽

        When Ender came to his senses, he had a soup spoon in his hand and was staring down into a bowl of deep brown broth. The youth sat hunched over the main table in Luna’s room, and he had no idea how he got there. Tasting barley, and realizing he felt far less hungry than he had before, Ender surmised that he must have been eating, but couldn’t remember it at all. He looked up and noticed Dusty sitting across from him, staring intently.

        She waved a hoof hesitantly in front of his face. “Are-are you back, sir?”

        “Back?” he croaked. His voice was thick from overuse.

        The maid breathed a sigh of relief. “Oh, thank goodness! When the princess brought you here, you just sort of stood still, staring off into space.”

        He looked back down at the bowl. “Have you been feeding me?”

        Dusty blushed. “Oh, no! No, no. I helped you to your seat, but you did the rest on your own, just all… woodeny I guess. Mistress tried talking with you but… oh!” The earth pony sat up, wide-eyed. “Oh, right, I was supposed to…” She looked over to the closed balcony doors.

        Following her gaze, Ender saw a large form pacing behind the glass. Luna stalked back and forth, the silver moonlight doing little to soften her jerky, agitated gait. Every so often she would stop and shake her head, causing her star-speckled mane to billow outwards and fill the otherwise starless sky.

        “I was supposed to tell her the moment you started responding again, but…” she trailed off, looking nervously toward the balcony doors.

        As tired as he was, Ender couldn’t help but be amused. He smiled at her. “Should I go out instead?”

        The maid shook her head resolutely. “No, you are supposed to keep eating. That’s what she said. I’ll… I’ll go.” Dusty stood up slowly.

        Ender watched as she gingerly opened one of the glass doors and stepped through, closing it silently behind her. It took Luna a few passes before she noticed her maid, but as soon as she did, the princess rushed inside, magically flinging both doors open before her. Dusty trotted dutifully in her wake.

        Large emerald eyes urgently fixed with his own. “Ender… are you… how…” she started, multiple questions pouring out at once. “How do you feel?” she finally asked.

        Numb. Shellshocked. Tired. All of these came to mind, but one seemed to override all the others.

        “Blank,” he answered honestly. “Hollow. I don’t know, I just feel spent, like there’s nothing left.”

        Her face fell, then twisted angrily as Luna looked down and away. Ender suspected he had just confirmed something she had been worrying over outside.

        “I knew I shouldn’t have kept the spell up. I should never have cast it in the first place, and now it’s my fault that you’re-”

        She stopped herself, closing her eyes with what seemed to be great effort. He could see her expression shift as she reined in her emotions, ostensibly for his sake. When Luna opened them again they were moist, but her voice did not falter as she spoke.

        “Ender, I can not even begin to apologize for what you went through today. Please know that it is my fault, not my sister’s and certainly not Twilight or any of her friends. I was the one who demanded the inquiry, and I was the one who insisted it continue. I will not ask for your forgiveness, but only that you allow me to make amends, and continue to treat the damage that my magic has caused.” She tapped her horn while nodding at his forehead.

        “Luna, I-,” Ender began, but the princess continued over him, either not hearing or not wanting him to speak yet.

        “Of course,” she raced ahead, “I would completely understand if you want nothing more to do with me, or any of us. I-I’ve thought about it, and I could try to teach my sister or even Dr. Staff to cast the same spell I’ve been using to remove my magic. Anypony you feel comfortable with, really.” She looked to the side, rambling. “Of course, it would have to be a unicorn, but there are certainly many of them here in Canterlot… they would have to have the magical aptitude to cast such a spell, though, and then there’s the translation spell…”

        “Luna,” he interrupted more forcefully, jarring her attention back to him, “you don’t have to find anyone else. It’s your magic, and you’re the expert on dreams. I’m sure training someone else would be a waste of time and effort.”

        The alicorn looked at him incredulously. “But surely you must be angry with me. How could you bear to spend more time in my pres-”

        Ender held up a hand, shaking his head. “Luna, I’m too exhausted to feel anything but tired right now, and even if I wasn’t, I don’t think I’d be angry.”

        She blinked, completely at a loss for words. Apparently, this was not a turn of events that occurred to her while she was pacing outside.

        The silence stretched for a few seconds, then uncomfortably for a few seconds more. 

Ender took the initiative. “Look, can you just tell me one thing?” He paused. “Why?”

        “I was afraid.” The answer came immediately and she continued without hesitation. “No, I was terrified, Ender. I was afraid of you.”

        He should have expected that, but it still hurt a bit. “Why?”

        The alicorn’s gaze fell. Her eyes unfocused as she looked somewhere into the middle distance of the table between Ender and herself.

        “The part of Nightmare Moon that scared me the most wasn’t the amount of control she had over me, but rather how willing she was to hurt everypony else. She wanted to bring eternal night to Equestria, no matter what the consequences. She would have killed, and she would have done it using my own hooves. That… that never left me, and when I saw that first memory… your willingness to hurt others, I… I…” she trailed off again, shoulders slumping.

        “I saw in you the worst parts of myself, and I lashed out, afraid that I had put Equestria at risk again.” Luna looked up at him, eyes cringing. “I should have asked you, I should have done anything except what I did, but I let my fear rule my actions, and I ended up hurting you in a way nopony ever should.” She glanced out at the balcony. “It is hard enough reliving your bad memories on a day-to-day basis - I could not imagine someone forcing me to do so, and yet that’s exactly what I did to you.” The alicorn hung her head again, unable to meet his eyes. “That is why I don’t ask for your forgiveness.”

        “And yet you gave me yours… for all the things I had done.”

        Luna looked back up at him, anger and surprise etched on her face. “How could I not? You were tricked, and you acted in self-defense. I allowed my pride and bitterness to rule me.”

        “But for all that, you never actually killed, did you? So which of us, then, is more of a monster?” he asked quietly.

        She blinked. “I… I don’t see how that matters.”

        “It matters because you haven’t taken a life. It matters that you, someone who cares so much about the safety of your subjects that you took the actions you did today, could also find it in your heart to forgive me, even though I have.” He exhaled sharply as he looked down at his bowl. “Silly as it sounds, I think I needed to hear it.”

        Ender shook his head. “I’m still working through it all, but no matter how it happened, I think that what happened today needed to happen. Like purging a wound - it’s painful and ugly, but it has to be done before healing can begin.”

        “Still,” she responded in a low voice, “what I did…”

        “Is nothing worse than what I would have done, had our situations been reversed.”

        “I don’t believe that.”

        “You don’t? You saw into my mind, princess. You know what I do to enemies… those I perceive as a threat to me or to my friends.”

        Luna held his gaze and started to respond but suddenly stopped. Realization seemed to dawn.

        “Like what you did to Nightmare Moon in your dream. You had no way of knowing what it would do to her in the real world.”

        Ender nodded.

        “And if she had somehow broken through to your world rather than pulling you into mine?”

        “I would have probably seen her in the same way that you saw me last night, and I sure as hell wouldn’t have wasted time with an inquiry.”

        Luna smiled wanly, but the expression disappeared as soon as she realized what he meant. Had Nightmare appeared in his world he was sure it would have come down to a fight… and there was only one way his fights ended.

“Even so, I hope you understand if I still feel badly about today.”

        “I’d be more concerned if you didn’t, but...” Ender hesitated, trying to frame his response in a way that she would understand.

        Why wasn’t he furious? After having his life laid bare for judgment, the soldier knew he had every right to be angry. At the end of the day, though, it just wasn’t in him. From the monitor to Battle School, his whole life had been lived in front of a camera in one way or the other… what difference did eight more sets of eyes make? Most importantly, behind the veil of fatigue he felt lay a sea of catharsis. For better or worse, the day had alleviated emotional baggage Ender hadn’t known that he carried. Now that he considered it, that was probably the reason: he couldn’t be moved to anger simply because he felt too good.

        Well, maybe not good per se, but certainly better.

        Less bad is good, right? Ender asked himself tiredly. He wasn’t sure, but he could live with that.

        It was only then he noticed the alicorn looking at him. Right, I trailed off in the middle of a sentence. He was more worn out than he realized.

        “...but it really is alright. I understand your reasoning, and the end result - at least for me - is positive. Could it have been handled better? Of course it could, but what’s done is done. It’s not like you can go back and undo the past, right?”

        Luna was very still, appearing to seriously consider the notion.

        “You… can’t go back and undo the past, right?” Ender really hoped she wasn’t going to start talking about magic and time travel - he didn’t know if his brain could take it at this point.

        “...not without the possibility of very dire consequences. As much as I may want to, but… no, no, I cannot go back and undo my actions.”

        The boy nodded, waving his spoon absent-mindedly. “Then my point stands.”

        Lacking anything else to say, Ender turned back to his soup. It had chilled considerably.

        “Oh, let me get you a new bowl… Dusty!” she called.

        The main doors to Luna’s chambers opened, and the maid stuck her head in from where she had apparently retreated after the pair began their conversation.

        “Yes ma’am?”

        A fresh tureen was provided, and while Luna was content to simply watch him eat, Ender insisted she join in after an embarrassingly loud rumble came from the alicorn’s stomach. After that, the pair ate ravenously. Though he was still exhausted, the food energized the boy, especially after a whole day without.

        As Dusty cleared the table, an idea brightened Luna’s eyes.

        “Ender… it’s not nearly enough to make up for today, but I just thought of a much better use for the memory spell - there’s still enough of it lingering for this to work. Would you…” She looked at him hesitantly. “Would you like to arrange the stars?”

        The soldier blinked. “Come again?”

☽

        They stood side by side on Luna’s balcony, looking up at the starless sky.

        “I can accept… barely… that you have the power to move the moon. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief that far. I’ve seen it happen after all. But the stars? Your sister doesn’t even move the closest one, she simply keeps your planet from tidally locking to it.” Regardless of how tired he felt, or how much he had endured through the day, Ender’s interest was piqued. Arranging the stars? This he had to see, especially since Luna seemed to think that he could do it.

        A grin flashed briefly in the night. The alicorn was apparently enjoying this too. “Pegasus magic,” she replied, flexing her wings momentarily before tucking them back in along her side. “I can’t move the stars, but I can manipulate the atmosphere just enough to either deflect or magnify their light. There are so many that I can make any shape I want, though I normally keep the major constellations the same so as not to confuse pony astronomers.”

        So that’s why they never made sense when I tried to use them for navigation, he realized.

“That they change at all would confuse the hell out of human astronomers, but go on.”

        “That’s all there is.” She lifted her head at the blank canvas of sky. “I wasn’t paying attention earlier because… well… you know.” Luna sighed. “All I did was raise the moon. I can do that in my sleep, but the stars take effort and special attention.”

        “So where do I come in?”

        “I stopped casting the memory spell hours ago, but the link between our minds still exists. I’ll use your thoughts to direct my magic… just think of what stars you want to see and I’ll make them appear.”

        It sounded easy enough, but as he thought of it, Ender realized he needed a frame of reference.

        “Stupid question, but which way is north, and are we on the northern half of your world?”

        Luna nodded and pointed behind her tower. Apparently the view he was used to was a southerly one.

        A late autumn-early winter sky in the northern hemisphere… he could do this. Looking in the direction indicated as north, Ender envisioned Polaris.

        And suddenly it appeared. The boy blinked in surprise, looking back at Luna.

        “Go ahead,” she encouraged warmly.

        So he did. From Polaris, he moved on to the Big Dipper, then expanded it to Ursa Major. Ender began to smile as Ursa Minor took shape and by the time he finished Draco - or Dragon as Luna called it, he was filled with childlike wonder. Constellation by constellation, he brought out the stars. It was no wonder that his navigation computer thought that Luna’s world was Earth - the constellations were in the same relative space. The alicorn recognized them all, though their names did not always match. The differences were interesting, though the similarities were even more so. Lyra was the same, but to Luna, Hercules was called Minotaur, and included two smaller “horn” stars. Lynx kept its name, but Perseus became Deer and Cassiopeia became Hawk.

        As he neared the end of all the constellations he could remember, Ender asked, “They don’t have to be the same, right? I can make my own?”

        He saw her nod out of the corner of his eye. “I do it almost every night. Some astronomers treat it like a game, seeing who can keep track of all the new ones.”

        Ender turned towards the moon and blanked out a section of sky to the south. Around it he traced a large crescent.

        It was a crude depiction of her mark, the one she wore on her coat, but it was the best he could manage without an existing template. When he envisioned these stars, he noticed they didn’t always show up exactly where he looked. It made sense given that Luna wasn’t creating the points of light, only working with stars that already existed. Ender could tell that the impromptu constellation had the desired effect, though, as he heard the alicorn’s sharp intake of breath. She remained silent as he filled in the shape, lighting as many stars as he could.

        The boy turned to her when he was finished, and could see the shape reflected in her luminous eyes - a crescent moon of stars enveloping the natural moon in the night sky. She blinked away tears.

        You’re forgiven, Luna. He thought, confident she could still understand him.

☽

        “Good morning, Governor,” chirped a synthetic voice. The dulcet feminine tones roused the boy from a deep sleep. “Time is now zero-seven hundred. You are due for council meetings in one and one-half hours. Appointments for today include-”

        “Standby,” Ender groaned, sitting up groggily and rubbing sleep from his eyes. The voice cut out immediately, leaving him to examine his surroundings.

        Monotone off-white prefabricated walls and modular furniture were broken up only sparsely by what seemed to be homemade decorations. Holodisplays ticked off a steady stream of data on a nearby desk at one of the bed’s two end tables. The soldier blinked in sudden sunlight as a previously unseen window transitioned from the opaque white of the rest of the room to a perfectly clear panel. Beyond, a tiny blue-white star rose over an alien landscape marked by feathery violet trees swaying in the breeze. Floating robotic tenders pruned an orchard of them, scooping nearly invisible fruits into holding tanks as they went.

        A door to the right swished open. “Silencing EVIE won’t make your meetings go away you know.” Steam and a familiar voice followed a tall woman out of what Ender assumed was a bathroom. The boy stared, wide-eyed. The newcomer was dressed in only two towels - one wrapped around her body and the other barely containing a mass of rich espresso-colored hair. The knot holding the towel around her head had come undone, and the woman was keeping it in place with an upturned hand.

        Seeing his intent stare, she looked at him curiously. “What’s wrong?” she asked, gesturing with her free hand. The movement caused the sunlight to glisten off a wedding band. She held his gaze, liquid brown eyes filled with concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

        Ender blushed fiercely, looking down. What the hell is wrong with me? I’m staring at somebody’s wife.

        The boy tried to apologize, tried to think of some way he could explain that it was wasn’t anything personal, just that he hadn’t seen another human in months. “I…” he began, but was brought up short by the sight of his own body.

        He was taller, broader. When he raised his arms they felt… longer. Ender stared in amazement at his hands, no longer rough and calloused from months spent surviving in the Everfree. Most startling of all was the solid gold band on his own ring finger.

        “I…” He looked up, confusion plain on his face.

        “Ender,” the woman’s tone shifted to dead seriousness, “what is it? Did… did the dreams come back?” She climbed onto the bed as she scrutinized his face. The boy could feel the heat radiating from her body.

        It was then that he knew who she was. Her face may have changed, her voice may have deepened, but those eyes that were now so close, that expression she wore… she may have grown but it was unmistakably-

        “Petra.”

        She blinked. “Yes…?”

        Ender had no idea where to go from there. With Petra merely staring at him, eyes narrowing by the second, he felt pressured to say something, anything to forestall the sense of dread he felt building. He asked the only question he could think of.

        “How… how are you here?”

        He would have expected mocking disbelief from the Petra he knew, but this woman’s face fell to worry with a hint of panic. “Ender… I… I live here.” She held up her left hand, clearly showing the ring he glimpsed earlier. “You do remember, don’t you?” Her eyes searched his desperately, and the boy found himself wanting nothing more than to reassure her that yes, of course he remembered, even if it was a lie.

        But instead, his mind reached the next obvious question.

        “Where is here?”

        Petra’s face remained still but a small, sharp intake of breath betrayed her fear. She struggled to keep her voice even.

        “Shakespeare, the colony.”

        Instantly, everything fell into place. Even as Ender looked around, the room was beginning to fade. Solid white gave way to incorporeal darkness. Petra sat up, startled at the sudden change.

        “What’s happening?!” she cried, casting her eyes about the gathering gloom before turning them back on Ender.

        Seeing her like this made him sick, but there was nothing else he could do. Once he realized the truth, he couldn’t continue to believe in the illusion.

        “You could never have been on the colony ship Petra - you went home.”

        She looked hurt, betrayed even, but before Petra could reply, she was gone.

        Ender found himself sitting on a dark plain of unbroken slate. Below him, the rock sheared away into a broad fissure, out of which shone a deep cobalt light.

        The boy groaned as he stood up, shaking his head to cast off the last lingering remnants of the dream. It felt so real, so… solid. That was the only term he could think of as he looked about at his surroundings.

        The dark plain was somehow dimly visible, even though there was no obvious source of light. It disappeared into a gloomy horizon broken only by a light green shape in the distance. Squinting, Ender could make out a tall, narrow V-shape that undulated gently as if swayed by a breeze. It almost looked like…

        … a tornado. With that realization, the soldier knew where he was. I’m still dreaming.

        The vortex seemed a lot less menacing than Luna’s description had him believe, but the dark plain and a fissure to his left exactly matched what his mind’s eye had envisioned.

        If this is my dreamscape, then how am I here, and for that matter, where is Luna? he thought as he walked towards the side of the fissure. Looking down, he saw a smooth mass of energy that glowed with a soft cobalt light - the same as the magical aura that encompassed Luna’s horn whenever she used it. As he examined the substance more closely, Ender noticed that small tendrils had branched off, working their way into the dark slate like tree roots.

        That can’t be good, Ender thought. He had no idea how magic worked or what everything represented in this place, but the sight of those snaking blue lines set him on edge.

        The soldier cast about, looking again for the princess. This whole place felt real, just the way the dream-version of the Fantasy Game had when they fought Nightmare Moon. Luna was the one who could create dreams like this, so where was she?

        As the thought crossed his mind, the substance below reacted. More tendrils rose, twisting past him into the dark. Ender watched as they split apart into tiny strands, no bigger than a thread. The threads multiplied over and over forming a conical weave that stretched into infinity.

        That way? Is it pointing me in the right direction? the boy wondered, moving towards the shape. Instantly he felt a pull on his whole body, not unlike the sensation of a teacher moving him with a hook in the Battle Room. Before he could react, the threads shifted from dark blue to white and Ender was yanked bodily into the abyss.

        Darkness closed around him and the boy felt as if he were being forced through an aperture entirely too small for his head much less his body. He tried to scream but there was nothing around him, not even air to inhale. There was no space. No…

        In a second it was over, but the terrifying claustrophobia was replaced by paralyzing cold. Ender’s first ragged breaths chilled him to the core and brought the soldier to his knees. Shuddering violently, he looked back in desperation and saw nothing but swirling snowflakes.

        Gritting his teeth against the frigid air and fighting back what he suspected was his own impending unconsciousness, Ender forced himself to look again.

There. Barely visible against the snow were the last ragged threads of the weave that brought him here. Ender reached out but failed to grab them. Fighting back panic as his vision began to darken into a tunnel of white flecks, the soldier tried one last time, lurching forward with his entire body.

        Blissful warmth spread through Ender’s body even as he felt himself come to rest on a thick blanket of snow. Cracking his eyes open, the boy saw that he clutched a tiny cluster of white threads in his outstretched hand. He breathed slowly, embracing air that no longer stabbed at his lungs on the way down. Ender lay still, assessing the situation and giving his heart a chance to slow down.

        The first thing he noticed as the shock wore off was that he wasn’t exactly warm as much as he was less cold. The boy’s breath fogged in front of his rapidly clearing vision and the stiff breeze carrying the snow flurries raised goosebumps on his skin. Careful not to lose hold of the threads, Ender raised himself first to an elbow, then to his knees.

        Below the packed snow lay cobblestones worn flat by long use. Raising up on his haunches, the soldier noticed that the weave didn’t seem to have any tension. It moved with his hand and seemed to vanish into the air a foot or so away.

        A link back to the other place, perhaps? Ender wondered. If so, why didn’t it take him like it did before?

        Luna. The realization hit him suddenly. The shock and cold had driven it from his mind - these threads, whatever they were, had appeared when Ender wondered where she was. Had they brought him to her?

        Still, the boy mused as he looked at his surrounding and wondered if he was right, it’s all I have to go on, and at least they’re keeping me from freezing to death.

        Keeping a strong grip on his lifeline, the boy set forth. In the vague half-light of this snowy world, Ender couldn’t see very far, but by using his tracks in the snow as a guide, he pressed forward in as straight of a line as possible. After only a couple dozen steps, he was brought up short by waist-high wall hidden beneath a berm. Propelled by his momentum, Ender lurched forward, barely catching himself as he struggled to hold onto the tenuous threads.

        Snowflakes spun around him and vanished into a black abyss below.

        As he shivered, skin crawling with the realization of how close he had been to falling over the edge, the clouds parted to reveal the brightest moon Ender had ever seen. Silvery light pierced the gloom and illuminated the landscape thousands of feet below.

It was Equestria, covered in ice.

        Though many features were nearly unrecognizable beneath massive snowdrifts, Ender was still able to piece together the larger landmarks. He was looking at nearly the same view he remembered from Luna’s balcony, only from a much lower vantage. A quick glance behind him confirmed that yes, he was standing in the little plaza beyond the castle’s main gate.

        Looking back out over the moonlit landscape, Ender noticed a smattering of golden domes dotting the landscape. As he examined them more closely, trying to understand what he was seeing, one began to flicker before it started collapsing. It switched back on and expanded again almost immediately.

        Strange, he thought.

        A few seconds later, a smaller dome began to flicker. This one continued strobing on and off, the interval becoming faster and faster until it finally collapsed and winked out. Ender watched and waited for another dome to replace it, but nothing happened - that part of the landscape remained dark.

        Leaving the mystery for another time, the boy turned back towards the castle. He had never been here before, but it wasn’t hard to find his way through the main gate. It seemed the castle, this part anyway, had been designed more for petitioners than for any kind of defense. The gate was wide and welcoming - at least the portions of it that were left. There was rubble everywhere, and many of the tapestries and murals showed scorch marks or other signs of damage. Looking up, Ender could see the moon through a large hole in the entry foyer.

        His attention was yanked away from the scenery as he stumbled into a guard.

        “Oh! Sorry, I-” the words died on Ender’s lips as he saw that the stallion was frozen solid, his face locked in a grimace of pain.

        As the boy’s eyes adjusted to the relative gloom of the grand entrance hallway, he noticed similar figures ahead of him.

        The guards seemed to have been frozen instantly in place - their forms encased in clear sheets of ice that formed long spikes behind them. The others were… not so fortunate. The further he pressed into the castle, the more civilians he found. Ponies of all kinds had collapsed, only to slowly freeze where they lay. He didn’t know what colors they were in life, but now they all shared a mottled blue-white sheen of powdered snow and ice that glittered in the half-moonlight. Ender was no stranger to nightmares. He had seen his friends and family burned alive and he had been torn apart by grotesquely monstrous versions of his tormentors, but this… this was somehow worse.

        He passed a unicorn foal who looked like he was reaching out ahead, calling to another. Following his gaze, the boy found a mare who had pressed on, clutching an even smaller babe. She hadn’t made it very far.

        Ender stopped looking closely after that.

        The path wasn’t hard to follow. Most of the side passageways were either filled with debris or choked with the bodies of those who had sought shelter in the alcoves. The soldier made his way to the throne room without much difficulty.

        The hallway where, just yesterday, Luna’s guard had handed him over to Celestia’s was almost unrecognizable. The massive windows across from the main doors were nothing more than sharp fragments of glass glittering on the floor. The moon hung large in the sky as a cold breeze stirred flurries of snow across the marble. Ender could not move the frozen doors on his own but one hung slightly askew, allowing him to squeeze through the gap.

        A bright light greeted the boy as he emerged into the tattered remnants of the throne room. Ender suddenly understood the nature of the domes he had seen earlier. In the middle of the hall stood a slender white unicorn with a pink and white mane. She strained visibly with the effort of channeling magical energy into a golden hemisphere that surrounded herself and roughly two dozen other ponies. Haggard and weary, the others crouched around hastily prepared firepits feeding whatever they could into the meager flames. Broken furniture and torn books were amassed in a central pile of fuel for no fewer than six other fires. Even the beautiful crimson carpet had been cut apart to make crude blankets.

        Suddenly, the white unicorn’s knees buckled and the golden shield began to flicker. The other ponies looked up in horror.

        “Help me!” she screamed in a high soprano voice, “I can’t hold it!”

        Ender rushed in, mindful not to lose hold on the threads he grasped. Perhaps they could grant these ponies the same protection they gave him.

        A group of unicorns looked at each other, then at one bulky stallion with a long golden mane. He stared back in wide-eyed panic. “I-I’m not ready yet!” he protested.

        “It’s your turn!” one of the others cried, “if you don’t then-”

        The dome began to collapse, forcing the ponies on the edge to backpedal quickly. The rest began to whimper in terror. One of the outermost fires winked out the second it was outside the shield.

        The ponies seemed to pay no attention to him as Ender charged in. It was only after he accidentally stumbled through a gray earth pony that he remembered that it was all a dream, and he might not actually be able to interact with it.

        “Please! Anypony!” The pink-haired unicorn strained against an unseen weight.

        “I’ve got it!”

        Another white unicorn, a stallion with a blue mane, rose up from behind her. His horn sparked to life as he channeled energy into the shield, expanding it back to its original borders. The tatters of a dress coat whipped about him in response to his magical aura.

        The first unicorn collapsed entirely as the others breathed a sigh of relief. The nearest group of ponies stared angrily at the stallion with the golden mane, causing him to hang his head with a muttered apology. “I’ll take it as soon as I can. I’m sorry.”

        “‘Prince’ my flank,” scoffed another.

        The stallion seemed to draw into himself, but surprisingly, the mare came to his defense. “Leave him alone - he held it longer than any of us.”

        Yet another unicorn opened his mouth to respond, but they were all interrupted by harsh laughter from the far side of the throne room.

        The knot of unicorns in the center of the shield looked up angrily. One red-headed colt stomped his hoof as if he were about to shout something, but he was quickly silenced by fearful looks and murmurs from the others.

        Ender moved through the group towards the throne, trying to spot the source of their fear. That laugh sounded very familiar, and he had a strong suspicion as to who he would find. Sure enough, as he passed through the opposite edge of the bright gold light Ender was able to see through the gloom of the long hall. Nightmare Moon sat exultantly upon Celestia’s throne.

        Except, he noted, it couldn’t really be called Celestia’s throne anymore. All the sun sigils had been burned away, as had most of the gold. Instead, silver and violet runes glowed menacingly upon the black rock that comprised the throne’s understructure. Beautiful cobalt moon-and-star tapestries fluttered from the high rafters around this side of the room - they were the only feature of the hall to remain pristine amid the decay and destruction.

        The soldier expected a taunt or challenge as he ascended the tiers and approached the dark alicorn, but she acted as if he weren’t even there.

        She must be as much a part of this dream as the rest. So where, then, is Luna?

        Suddenly Nightmare’s head moved as her eyes tracked something behind him. Turning around, Ender saw that the pink-maned unicorn had come to the edge of the golden shield.

        “Your Highness, please,” she said, bowing low, “bring back the sun, if only for a little while. We will surely freeze.”

        “Your kind never ceases to amaze me,” the alicorn replied loftily. “After all this time, you still cannot think to beg for anything other than the sun. Even in the face of death, you insist upon your sun worship. Why did I even bother with all this? I should have just wiped all of you miserable creatures out at the start. In fact…” She charged her horn, readying a spell.

        “Please wait, your Highness!” interrupted a refined voice. The other unicorn, the stallion with the blue mane who had relieved her, hurried to the mare’s side. If he was here, Ender reasoned, that other unicorn must have recovered enough to take over. “My lady here is simply tired - she worked so very hard to keep us alive. She simply wishes to be warm.” The unicorn bowed low and added a regal tone to his voice. “Of course we all revere your moon, my Queen. Perhaps if you would cast a warming spell like ours, one over all of Equestria, then we might be able to enjoy it properly, without having to focus so much on staying alive.”

        Nightmare Moon rolled her eyes, chortling as she shifted to lay on her side across the throne. Lazily waving a foreleg in the stallion’s direction she replied, “Oh, yours is a silver tongue, isn’t it? You may know how to pick your words, but I know they are false. Your heart still yearns for the light and the warmth - they yearn for her don’t they?!” The stallion’s eyes widened as he saw the alicorn charge a spell. He grabbed the other unicorn and started to retreat, but he was too slow. In a flash, Nightmare froze the two of them. Both unicorns now looked liked the guards Ender passed on the way in.

        “Let’s see how long you ponies can keep up your charming little shield now that there are two fewer in the rotation.” The black alicorn laughed in delight.

        Resisting the urge to stare at the icy statues below, Ender instead drew closer to the throne. His own nightmares often forced him to watch similarly painful events. Considering this experience, the boy now had a pretty good idea as to where Luna was.

        As he approached, the threads in his hand began to grow warm even as the spectre of Nightmare Moon started fade and become translucent. Below was Luna, encased in the larger pony’s body. She seemed much smaller, and it took Ender a few moments to realize that she appeared as she had when they first met, back when Luna was running from her other self. The short-cropped blue mane made her seem so… diminished.

        We are all children in our nightmares. The words sprang unbidden to Ender’s mind, and he wondered briefly who had said them.

        Laughter sounded around him, but Ender ignored it, knowing Nightmare Moon to be no more real than the rest of this place. He had had enough of this dream, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to let Luna endure any more of it. The soldier leaned in, reaching through the very form of Nightmare Moon to grasp at the smaller alicorn inside.

        Luna did not make any movement in response to him. Not even her pupils tracked him as he reached toward her. As he drew closer, Ender saw she was crying. A trail of tears ran from the corners of her eyes, only to freeze as they reached her jawline. An inch-long column of ice had already formed on the soft hairs of her cheeks.

        “We’re getting out of here, Luna,” he tried to say reassuringly as he pulled ineffectively at the yoke about the pony’s neck. Nothing moved no matter how much force the boy applied. The collar did not even shift in place. It was as if he was trying to move a solid block of stone.

        Ender thought about using his other hand, but he did not want to risk losing the threads. Only then did the idea hit him.

        They didn’t bring me back, but what if I brought them to her?

        Even as he was bringing his other hand forward, the threads surged forward and encompassed them both in a bright pearlescent weave. Ender grimaced against the oncoming squeeze, but it was over before his mind could fully register it. He blinked in sudden darkness, the bright light of the threads having been replaced by the gloom of his own dreamscape. The boy looked down to see the last of the weave disappear into the pool of blue light.

        “HaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaAAAAAAAHHH!” A feral scream startled the soldier. He twisted around, stumbling and falling to his hands and knees in the process. Luna, fully restored to her regular form, glowed with the same cobalt light. She continued to shout, her voice growing louder and louder as she hurled massive spheres of energy into the dark. They disappeared into the same single point into which the weave had pulled him. Something shuddered in the distance, strongly enough to make the ground below Ender vibrate in response. She finally stopped, the glow fading from around her horn and body. Before the boy could say anything, the princess collapsed to the ground and curled into a tight ball.

        “Luna?” he called softly as he crawled over to her. She gave no reply as Ender approached, but by the time he gently placed a hand on the back of her neck, the alicorn’s body had started trembling, racked by the occasional sob. Luna buried her face under her forelegs, curled herself even more tightly, and cried

        The boy did his best to comfort her, but she was utterly unresponsive. Before long, steady breathing indicated that the alicorn was soundly asleep. A tendril of magical energy drifted from the pool behind him and began to flow into her, but other than a small shudder as it made contact, Luna made no other motion.

        Asleep inside of a dream. What does that even mean? Ender wondered as he looked around at his dreamscape. And come to think of it, I’m still here. What am I supposed to do now?

        The green vortex twisted silently in the distance, marking time

☽

        Bright sunlight knocked the last vestiges of sleep from Ender’s mind. Shielding his eyes, he sat up and looked for the princess. Luna was curled up tightly on the far side of the bed in the same position, he realized, that she had maintained in his dream.

        Calling her name softly, Ender tried to rouse the alicorn with a gentle shake. Worry began to gnaw at him when she gave no response. The boy headed for the stairway when progressively louder and stronger attempts had no effect.

        “Guards!” he called, flinging open the main doors to Luna’s chambers. “There’s something wr-” Ender’s words died as he registered what was on the other side of the entrance.

Instead of the pegasi he expected, Ender found Celestia herself, a look of surprise on her face. One gold-shod hoof hovered in the air as if she were about to knock.

        Hardly missing a beat, the soldier gestured for her to follow. “Princess, it’s your sister. I think something is wrong.” As he led her to Luna’s bedside, the boy gave a brief synopsis of what had transpired in his dreams the night before. Celestia cut him off part way, her manner suggesting that this was not the first time she had heard of that particular nightmare. All she wanted to know was how it ended.

        After he related their departure from the dream, the Sun Princess swept past him, enveloping her sister in the warm golden glow of her magic. Lifting the covers of the massive bed, Celestia stretched the smaller alicorn out lengthwise and gently tucked her in. As the aura washed over her, Luna’s face visibly relaxed and she seemed to slip into an even deeper sleep.

        When Celestia’s magic withdrew and it appeared that she was finished, Ender ventured, “Is she going to be alright?”

        The larger princess looked back and gave him a small, tired smile. “Your concern is appreciated, but unnecessary. Luna will be fine. She is simply drained from…” a darker look crossed Celestia’s face, “from all of her exertions yesterday. I am nowhere near as competent with dream magic as she is, but I suspect that she simply collapsed from fatigue while she was in your dreamscape, trying to reclaim her magic as she has done for the past few nights. I think that’s how you were able to enter her dream.”

        “She has that dream often?” Ender remembered how familiar Celestia seemed with it.

The Sun Princess nodded. “I sensed her distress last night, but I was so deeply asleep that by the time I woke up, it was gone. I suspect that was your doing, and for that I thank you.”

        “It was nothing she hasn’t already done for me.”

        She looked back at Luna briefly before turning fully around and walking past him. “Be that as it may, I came here for another reason. May I speak with you on the balcony, Mr. Wiggin? I would like to leave my sister in peace.”

        “Of course.” Ender turned to follow.

☽

The day couldn’t have been any more perfect if Celestia had arranged the weather herself. Sunlight streamed through sparse altostratus bands and cast long shadows on the landscape below. Rather than mar the vast plains of Equestria below, the contrast of the darker lines made its colors all the more vivid. The princess took a moment to soak in the warm light on the balcony before turning to the human.

        She spread her wings and bowed formally. “Mr. Wiggin, I must apologize…” she began.

        Once she began, Celestia did not slow down, lest she stop and be unable to continue. Carefully and methodically, the alicorn explained her actions regarding the inquiry to Ender the same way she did for Twilight the evening prior. Curiously, she found it easier this time around. Perhaps it was because she did not have to be concerned with what he thought of her, or what he took away from this meeting; she simply had to make amends.

        The human’s lack of response was troubling her, though. He didn’t seem angry, but at the same time he was showing almost nothing when it came to nonverbal cues. Even with the differences in physiology, after yesterday’s marathon Celestia was confident of her ability to read at least his basic emotions. Now though, he gave away nothing. Well, there wasn’t anything else she could do. The princess would make her case and let the rest play out.

        “I don’t presume to ask your forgiveness,” she concluded, “I only ask that you try to understand my reasons.”

        He scoffed, a short guttural burst that rolled over his shoulders as the boy looked out over the balcony railing. “... and yet you have it,” he said after a half second’s pause.

        Celestia blinked, not sure she had heard him correctly. He was… forgiving her?

        “Beg pardon?”

        The human turned around fully, leaning back against the balcony. “I said ‘you have it.’ I forgive you.”

        He keeps surprising me. The princess was at a loss, again, because of this… this person. “I… I’m sorry, but after yesterday, everything we had seen, I thought for sure that you would be angry, and that - rightfully so - you would hold it against us. That’d you’d hold...” she fought for the word “... a grudge.”

        Ender held up his hands in an exaggerated shrug. “To what end, princess? How exactly would that be productive?” he asked. His voice came across casually, but she picked up on just an edge of fatalism. That worried her more than anything else.

        At a loss for how to answer, Celestia fell back on her tried-and-true method of poking at a problem with questions. “What do you mean?”

        The boy turned around and gestured at the wide landscape below. “There are not exactly many others out there who could help me get home. I’m not about to pick a fight with the only ponies who can.”

        Somehow, that hurt her even more than any angry rebuke or insult. “I - I hope your forgiveness is based on something more than simple utility. As different as we are, that’s still a terrible way to live.”

        Ender sighed, shaking his head. “No, that’s not it at all. I’m just being an ass.”

        She didn’t understand what a donkey had to do with it, but his tone conveyed the gist of what he meant.

        The soldier turned to face her again and leaned back against the balcony. “Honestly, I do forgive you. I’m not just saying that because I want you to get me home.”

        “Why?” Celestia legitimately asked. It wasn’t often that she posed a question to which she did not already know the answer.

        Ender looked down. “Because I do understand your reasons. No matter your choices and actions, your intentions were good and just.” He raised his eyes and met her gaze. “My people have a saying: ‘the road to hell is paved with good intentions.’ I personally think that’s a load of bull. Actions may determine consequences, but they’re not decided in a vacuum. Intentions do matter. Intent is what separates me from every other murderer and war criminal in my people’s history.”

        Again, the princess had to rely on the context of the boy’s words to understand him. Loads of steers aside, Celestia had walked the path to Tatarus... many times in fact. She didn’t understand how it related to one’s intentions, but she thought she understood his reasoning.

        Ender continued, oblivious to her internal musings. “If I were to judge you by your actions alone, then I would have to judge myself by mine. As you’ve already seen, that wouldn’t lead to a good place.”

        The alicorn nodded in understanding. It was a different perspective, surely, but not an incomprehensible one. She was relieved.

        “For what it’s worth, your sister said the same thing about forgiveness.” The boy smiled to himself. “And on top of that, she insisted the blame was hers, not yours or Twilight’s or anyone else’s.”

        Celestia rolled her eyes. “Of course she did. She’s right, to an extent. I’ll admit she started this, but it was always in my power to stop it. I should have, and never did.”

        Ender stepped away from the railing and placed his hands in his pockets. His dress pants were now very wrinkled, presumably from sleeping in them. “Well, it’s good to know that no one is perfect here, not even you.”

        She smiled. “I’m sure perfection would make for a very boring existence.”

        He returned the smile, but she couldn’t help but notice an edge of weariness to it. “So what happens next?” he asked.

        “That is entirely up to you,” Celestia replied, “though I will say there are six anxious ponies on the other side of that door who would like to see you.” She pointed through Luna’s room toward the broad double doors leading to the hall.

        “To see me?” Ender repeated, a shadow crossing his face. “I would think that after what they witnessed, they would want the exact opposite.” 

        “They very much want to make up for yesterday,” she explained, “but to be honest, this is as much for their sakes as it is for yours. You are partly right: they were affected by your story. For now they seem to be taking it in stride, but Twilight believes that spending time with you - seeing you in a different light - will help them come to terms with everything else.”

        “And what do the others think?”

        “Ah…” The princess looked away briefly. “The others aren’t really thinking along those lines. It wouldn’t even occur to most of them. As far as they are concerned, they’re here to do something nice for you and to have fun.”

        He seemed to consider that for a moment before looking down.

        Celestia pressed on, not wanting to lose him. “I’d completely understand if all you wanted to do was spend the day alone. Frankly I wouldn’t blame you. You don’t owe us anything, but a few hours with the girls could do them a world of good a few days or weeks from now.”

        Ender glanced back up. “Oh, no… I just realized I slept in my clothes. No, that’s fine - just let me get cleaned up first.”

        The princess laughed as the tension rolled off her back. Everything had worked out as she wanted. Who knew, maybe today would even be a complete success.

        Well, Pinkie Pie is involved. I won’t hold my breath. On that note...

        “Just a small word of warning, Ender,” she said, following the boy in from the balcony, “Twilight’s friends can sometimes be a bit, er… enthusiastic. If things become uncomfortable for you, just mention it to Twilight, and she’ll either bring them back in line, or simply call it an early day.”

        “Oh?” He looked a bit surprised. “Alright, thanks,” Ender said absentmindedly as he stepped quietly past Luna’s bed and into the washroom.

        He really has no idea. Celestia thought about it and very nearly called him back to say she had changed her mind. Then she remembered Twilight’s determination the night before and chided herself. The others have been more than sobered by yesterday’s events. Besides, Twilight will have this well in hoof. Even so…

        Before moving to her sister’s bedside, Celestia called in Dusty and gave the hoofmaiden instructions for the day’s events.