After dying in a train crash, Twilight finds herself offered a deal by the Reaper: a game of chess for her soul. Twilight accepts, but there's something off about the game. Something she can't put her hoof on.

But the answer to that question is just perfect for who she is.

Cover art is from the Poets of the Fall album Clearview.

This story is a sequel to Duties

Sometimes everything goes smoothly. Most of the time there are complications, especially when it comes to royal weddings.

Blank Page and Princess Luna's wedding is getting closer and with it comes trouble and it has brought it's friends.

Nothing is ever easy, is it?

Betaing by Fan4tic
Cover art by Sipioc

This story is a sequel to Earth Ponies Are Overpowered

As Twilight works to improve her life infusion treatment, Maud stops by to offer her expertise. There's just one problem: Maud isn't as thrilled as Twilight and her friends about using earth pony magic to make everyone immortal.

This story is a sequel to Good Trooper Gilda

Gilda has been a fugitive, a refugee, a prisoner of war, and a bat-hen to Equestria's fussiest unicorn. But it wasn't until she took 'the Princess's bit', that she began to know something about what it meant to be responsible for the welfare of others, even if the others in question happened to be the pack of imbeciles, blackguards, con-ponies, and bat-ponies who had been fool enough to answer her captain's call to the standard.

A crystalline standard which had not been seen in the living world for over a thousand years.

And although Captain Gleaming Shield and her motley band of raw recruits and shifty bat-ponies aimed to do nothing more exotic and dangerous than put a foreign princess on her proper throne, there are other things stirring in the shadows.

Like calls to like, and the revival of ancient battle-colors may lead to the revival of other, darker memories upon which the rays of Celestia's sun lay lightly and infrequently.

Gilda only wanted the humble things in life. Cheap rent, copious bits, the respect of her peers, the occasional juicy field-mouse.

Being captured by the Equestrians and dragooned into the Territorials wasn't quite what she'd dreamed of, but at least the rent was free.

And the rats were nice and plump.

This story is a sequel to Sunset Shimmer is not an Alicorn

During the events of Between Dusk and Dawn Twilight delegated some monster-busting to the EUP. The EUP, not equipped for the job, delegated further. Now, Sunset Shimmer has been drafted into Equestria's forces to deal with the prophesied return of a dread monster. She's going to need to bring everything she's got to fight off the latest threat to Equestria, and the keys may lie in the ponies she hurt before she left.

I had a pretty good life. They called me Spit Shine, I worked in the palace, cleaning this, doing that. Hell, I even got to talk to the Princess, and learned all sorts of interesting stuff. It was stimulating, prestigious, and hey, call me weird, but I liked the work.

Shame I was also secretly a changeling infiltrator with a name too annoying to pronounce in polite society trying to observe and potentially subvert your nation state.

I mean, these things happen.

Of course, you'd be surprised what you can learn about a pony when you have a different perspective.

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Original Concept by SoloBrony

Grammar-Less-Suckification by CarcinoGeneticist

Vector by Ackdari

Brand new Spanish Translation by Spaniard Kiwi!

Every week, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy play a game. And every week it’s the same, predictable result.

Fluttershy doesn't seem to mind. But when she confesses that she doesn't really understand why winning is so important, Rainbow Dash’s world almost explodes. Now Dash is on a mission. Not only to explain to her friend why winning is so awesome, but to prove it too. Because by the end of the day, come hay or high water, Fluttershy is going to win something!

Fluttershy just wants to play their game together next week, like always.

A story of two ponies and their friendship, past and present. Of winning and losing, the games we play and why we play them.

This story is a sequel to Discord Teaches Philosophy

Warning: The following is currently unedited and contains a significant amount of Philosophy.

After deciding on taking up the role of a Substitute and finding out that the main Philosophy teacher is boring his students, Discord decides to step in to take up the responsibility of teaching. And he will do it by teaching it in plain Equestrian, in a way that these young students would understand. As well as in his own unique way.

Lesson Plan (in no particular order):

Socrates: His Method and How We Ought to Live ✅

Plato: Allegory of the Cave ✅

Marcus Aurelius: How Stoicism Deals with Hardships ✅

Confucius: Who is Ruling Whom? ✅

Kintsugi: The Art of Imperfection ✅

Machiavelli: In Defense of the Prince ✅

Montaigne: Usefulness of Humility ✅

Rousseau: Of Savages and Civilization ✅

Kierkegaard: Subjectivity and Truth ✅

Nietzsche: Of Suffering and Happiness ✅

In this one-shot idea, Fluttershy asks her friend Discord if he would be interested in taking up the job as a teacher at the new School of Friendship. Discord agrees to teach them something if he were given a chance to test-drive it by having a few students to see if he would take up the job. What follows is a lesson on the meditations of Reniegh Haycartes.

A special thank you to DuskHeart13, The Hat Man and SashimiPony for taking the time of proofreading this.

Note: this and its sequels were written before "Matter of Principles."