Untold luxury and wealth. A place in high society. A life full of the finer things. All this and more await Fleur, but at what cost?

Now, Fleur must decide: Is love worth nothing, or is it a secret worthy of sacrifice? Can she be the mare she is and the mare she has to be?

A cipher, after all, can be anything— Or nothing at all.

Edited/Preread by Xepher, Winston, Noble Thought, and Jade Ring
Featured by The Royal Canterlot Library, EQD, The Royal Guard, & The Pleasant Commentator-Review Group
Cover art commissioned from Raikoh-illust

With a live reading by ABagOVicodin!
Also read by CrunchyMonkey!

Humans... humans are such a bizarre race. Capable of the greatest benevolence and the worst atrocities. And yet, they're so very predictable. For you see, while societies may die, and nations may crumble, one thing will remain constant: the desire to survive.

I should know. I was there when everything fell.

When Twilight and Celestia have an argument about the existence of leap years, there’s only one possible way to settle their differences: a race around the world!

With the full benefit of hindsight, there may have been other ways.

An 80 Days crossover, written as part of Horizon's writing challenge. Edited by Ether Echoes, Soge, Giant Hat, and Tormented Dragon, who are all amazing.

When I first met Princess Twilight, she was confused, lost. Adrift in an alien world. I thought of her as a rich eccentric, certainly a foreigner. I humored her as much as I believed her, really. Even when she dragged me to the very ends of the world in her mad quest for a mythic well, I really did it all for her. I figured it would help her find some closure, and we could go home.

I was right, in a way.

Based roughly on the game 80 Days.

Fluttershy has been called away on an adventure. An adventure without Rainbow Dash.

My entry into The 3rd Flutterdash Writing Contest.
Thanks to alt-tap for editing and feedback.

“When writing gurus talk about ‘show, don’t tell,’ this is the sort of thing they mean.”

“This felt like the literary equivalent of a well-painted landscape ... Its biggest strength is in the way it chooses tones and contrasts to create depth. But all of the characters are also individually great, especially Spike, and their concerns are so real and wide-ranging that this piece is bursting with life.”

— Royal Canterlot Library

After a harrowing and dangerous quest, Twilight Sparkle and her friends have recovered Excelsior's Ecstatic Codex from an evil zebra cult intent on ending the world. The Codex, one of the greatest works of dark magic ever forged, carries within its pages a limitless collection of vile, twisted spells, all specially devised for anypony who opens the cover.

What do you do with a book of dark magic? If you're Twilight Sparkle, you put it in your library. Because that's where books go.

After all, books are for everypony.

On one day each year, Celestia and Luna turn control of the sun and moon over to a group of the most powerful unicorns in Equestria. Twilight is finally old enough to take part.

But she can't.

*****

Winner of the Princesses Not Included Writeoff event. Thank you to all of the participants for both your support and your help in bringing this to its current form.

Cover art courtesy of the wonderfully talented CosmicUnicorn.

Now available in Spanish, courtesy of SPANIARD KIWI.

In a nearly empty library, a librarian tears pages out of books and tosses them out an open window.

Twilight studies in the same library, alone.

They exchange words and a dance.

Fluttershy visits Rarity in the middle of the night. She's white as a sheet.

To Twilight Sparkle and Princess Celestia, it is a simple surprise visit to Canterlot. To the ponies of the Equestrian Civil Service, it is twenty-four hours of chaos, politics, weaponized dessert, politics, underhooved manipulation of media, politics, and things batrachian and tentacular. Who said bureaucracy isn't exciting?