Assassinate Princess Celestia!

by D G D Davidson


Chapter 2: The Jump

Assassinate Princess Celestia!

by D. G. D. Davidson

Chapter 2: The Jump

I sat across from Granddam in her chambers. She stared at me over a broad, oaken desk empty except for a single tallow candle, the room’s only light, which cast her lined muzzle in deep shadows. Her eyes never left my face, but I watched them twitch back and forth, no doubt marking every slight change in my expression. Granddam was working to see through my false face, just as I was working to see through hers.

“Outline your plan,” she told me.

“It’s simple,” I answered. “I slip in, I kill the princess, I slip out.”

“It’s not that simple.” Her mouth turned downward, her eyes narrowed. Displeasure.

“It’s always been that simple before.”

Her eyes dilated slightly. Incredulity. “You’ve never had a target like this before.”

“She isn’t expecting it. It’s merely a matter of--”

Granddam cut me off. “She is the ruler of all the country. She understands politics. She is always anticipating foul play.” Her lips narrowed. Annoyance.

“For over three thousand years, she has ruled the kingdom in peace. What cause has she to expect--?”

Granddam rose from her seat. “Perhaps you are not as prepared for this as I thought. Princess Celestia is in the habit of eliminating her enemies. Do you think she is unaware that some of her enemies might try to eliminate her?”

“She has us, but her enemies do not.”

Granddam shook her head. Disappointment. “She uses us, but she does not trust us. Whatever else she is, Princess Celestia is not stupid. You cannot go ahead with this mission if you insist on underestimating your target.”

“I will not underestimate her,” I said. In spite of my effort to remain calm, I detected frustration in my voice. “But if I examine her security, I am sure I can find a vulnerability to exploit. From there, the matter is simple.”

“What weapon will you use?”

“My sword.”

“Even though she can teleport, levitate, cast solar rays--?”

“Not while she’s asleep, she can’t.”

Somepony coughed behind me. I leapt from my seat, spun, and drew my blade.

Mules learned from an early age never to sit with their backs toward doors, yet Granddam forced any mule who visited her chamber to sit facing away from the room’s only entrance. It was a subtle way of telling us that, no matter how much Power we possessed, we were all vulnerable in her presence. When I turned around with my sword at the ready, I saw a wrinkle-faced molly leaning against the doorframe.

“I am busy, Mulia Mild,” Granddam said. “What do you want?”

I knew of Mulia Mild, but I had never before met her face to face. By day, she worked as a pâtissière, and she was quite good at it. She was also one of the most effective assassins in the Order: once, she had slain a target by choking him with a strategically placed cherry pit in a clafouti, thereby employing her two chief skills while making the death look like a freak accident.

“Oh, Granddam,” Mulia said, “I am so terribly sorry that I was, mmmnh, out of town during your latest meeting, but I heard all about it, and it sounds most interesting.” She spoke with an oily, obsequious voice that grated on my ears.

“You don’t have to talk that way in here,” Granddam said. “We’re all hybrids.”

Mulia grinned and spoke normally. “Sorry. It becomes habit. I’ve just returned from Canterlot, where I was part of a dessert competition--”

I snorted. “A dessert competition? Yet another excuse for Celestia to stuff herself.”

Mulia’s grin grew wider. “Oh, yes. You should have seen her drooling over the entries. It was positively revolting.”

“She’s out of control,” I said. I turned back to Granddam. “You must let me act soon.”

Granddam raised a hoof to silence me. “Since you barged in here, Mulia, I assume you want to tell me something important.”

“Yes, three things. Two unusual events occurred on the train trip to Canterlot. Do you know that pink pony who works at Sugarcube Corner? She brought a cake for the competition, and somepony vandalized it during the trip. She accused me.”

“Did you do it?” Granddam asked.

“Of course not, but when she made her accusation, she accurately described our methods.”

Granddam sat down again and leaned her chin on a hoof. “Hmm, we’ve had an eye on her for some time. She evinces certain unusual abilities . . . did anypony take her seriously?”

“No. She made other accusations, but they were obviously outrageous. Still, we should kill her.”

“There are, inevitably, ponies who know of the Order,” Granddam said. “Fear keeps most of them silent, but it’s possible one of them talked.”

I remembered that Pinkie Pie was often in the company of Rainbow Dash. My stomach clenched, and I felt sweat bead on my crest.

Granddam leaned back in her seat. “We’ll do nothing yet. Pinkie is close to the librarian, and the librarian has connections in Canterlot. Killing her would be inconvenient right now. What else happened on your trip?”

Mulia pushed herself away from the doorframe and walked in. “I discovered a sophisticated, miniaturized recording device in one of the other bakers’ desserts. I considered that somepony might have planted it there to monitor my movements, so when the train entered a tunnel, I took advantage of the darkness and destroyed it, though I had to destroy the dessert in the process.”

“Did anypony find you out?” Granddam asked.

“Yes. Pinkie did. Fortunately, two bakers took the darkness as an opportunity to devour other entries, so everypony assumed I only ruined Donut Joe’s so-called ‘Donutopia’ to feed my baser appetites.”

Granddam’s mouth twitched in a smile. “It sounds like your trip was a disaster.”

“We made do. We combined four half-eaten desserts into a single entry.”

My stomach churned. “That sounds disgusting.”

“It was rather. Still, we won first prize.”

I snorted. “Ponies have no taste.”

Mulia laughed. “Especially the princess. As I said, you should have seen her.”

“I’ve seen enough of Celestia’s digestive habits,” I answered, tapping a hoof against the pommel of my sword. “Now I’m ready to get a look at her digestive organs.”

Granddam cleared her throat. “This recording device concerns me; I may assign some mules to keep a watch on Donut Joe. But you mentioned a third thing, Mulia.”

“Ah, yes.” Mulia rested a hoof against the hilt of her own weapon. “I of course snooped around the palace while in Canterlot, and I learned that Celestia’s niece, Mi Amore Cadenza, will be getting married in a month.”

Granddam sat forward, placed both her knees on her desk, and leaned her chin on her hooves. “Interesting.”

“It’s the perfect time to strike,” I said. “The palace staff will be distracted. The guardsponies will have their hooves full.”

“Wrong again,” said Granddam. “The Royal Guard will be on full alert.”

I felt a sharp pang of annoyance, but I struggled to suppress it. “Yes,” I said, “they will be, but we can manipulate what they are alert to.”

“Tell me what you have in mind.”

“Let’s openly threaten Canterlot.”

Granddam raised one eyebrow.

“It will be an anonymous threat,” I said, walking to her desk and leaning on it, “untraceable to us, suggesting a large-scale attack from without. By the time the Royal Guard receives the threat, I’ll already be inside.”

Granddam raised her chin and brought her hooves down to the desktop. “So they’ll be on the lookout for infiltration only after it has already occurred.”

“Too busy watching the walls to watch the halls,” Mulia said.

“It’s an interesting suggestion,” said Granddam, “but you still need to develop a surer means of reaching Celestia and killing her.”

I have an idea for that,” said Mulia.

Angrily, I turned to her, a fetlock wrapped around my sword. She gave me a smug glance and rubbed her hoof against her hilt, an insolent challenge.

I glanced again at Granddam, who glared at me. Seething with rage, I composed my false face and moved my foreleg away from my weapon.

“You know I’ve developed unique methods of assassination,” Mulia said. “Some of them are, I think, ironically appropriate for Princess Celestia. Have you heard of death by chocolate?”

“She should die by steel,” I muttered through clenched teeth.

“She should die, period,” Mulia answered. “We don’t know if a sword can kill her--”

“We don’t know if poison can kill her either.”

“Wrong. We’ve sat with her at tea, and she’s careful with her cup and teapot. She fears poison.”

Granddam nodded. “Tell me your idea, Mulia.”

Mulia cackled. “It’s simple. If the princess wants cake, let’s give her cake. Lots of cake. Enough cake to choke a horse.”

“You want to sneak a poisoned cake into the palace?” I asked.

“Or poison her food. Either way, it’s only a matter of getting through her security undetected. If she collapses dead at the wedding reception--”

“That would be most satisfactory,” said Granddam. “We can pin the murder on the republican movement. Control of the government will fall to Luna, and if she refuses to create a constitution providing for fair taxes and an elected senate, we can consider killing her as well.”

“Granddam,” I said, “all the major officials will be at the reception. Let’s kill Celestia and take the rest of them hostage.”

Granddam scowled. “Your youth partly excuses your brashness, but such a move would require us to reveal ourselves. No. We work from the shadows, as we always have and as we always will.” She glanced to Mulia, glanced to me again, and said, “Mulia, you’re more sensible; I want you to take charge of this mission. The two of you will work together. That is all. Report to me when you have a concrete plan.”

My rage flared and almost overwhelmed me. Of its own accord, my hoof went back to my sword, but I managed to stop myself before I drew. Mulia looked insufferably smug as she watched me fighting openly with my emotions. Granddam merely looked down at her desk, pretending she didn’t notice, though I knew she saw everything.

Struggling to control my voice, I said, “Well, Mulia, shall we go?”

Mulia nodded. “Of course.”

Staring daggers at her back, I followed her out of Granddam’s office.


Mulia and I walked down a narrow passageway toward the room that served for our library. Sensing that we were alone, I took my scabbard from my belt, shoved it against her neck, and slammed her into a wall.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I demanded.

She smiled. “Helping you, you foal.”

“I work alone.”

“This job is too big for you. I was doing this while you were still wetting your diapers, and I can see right through you. Perhaps Granddam’s age is clouding her judgment, or perhaps she simply likes you too much, but I know what you’re really after. I know all about you.”

I leaned forward and glared in her eyes. Still, she kept her easy smile. “I know about you, too, Mulia,” I said. “I know you’re not really a mule.”

Her expression cracked. Her smile wavered. “Get your hooves off me unless you want to lose them.”

I pressed my luck. “You’re a hinny, aren’t you?”

Her lips spread, exposing clenched teeth.

“The Power isn’t as strong in hinnies as in mules. Isn’t that why you need all your poisons and deadly foods?”

“I’ve more than enough Power for you,” she said.

A sharp pain in my abdomen doubled me over. Mulia had kicked me. I dropped the scabbard and returned the favor. She grabbed me and swung me into a wall, and the hard stone crunched against my ribs. I used the momentum to swing her into the wall opposite. She came at me with a low, sliding kick, so I jumped into the air, flipped, landed behind her, and aimed a double back-kick toward her head, but she twisted around, slid under me, and landed a series of thudding strikes on my barrel, touching sixty-two different pressure points in less than a second. While my hind legs were still in the air, she knocked my front hooves out from under me, rolled to the side, and came to her feet. When I collapsed to the ground, she held a hoof against my left shoulder.

I lost my composure. “Don’t!” I yelled.

“I take it you’re familiar with this maneuver?”

I was. Her hoof was hovering over the final pressure point of the complex series she had just executed. If she touched it, it would produce a cascade failure of all my major organs.

She lifted her hoof from my shoulder and planted it against the back of my neck, slamming my face to the ground. “How about this one, hmm? With one twist, I can shatter your entire spine.”

I could taste acid in the back of my throat. I swallowed my anger and embarrassment. My lips were mashed against the rough stone floor, and I felt them scrape raw as I spoke. “I yield. What are you after, Mulia?”

Still clutching the back of my head, she turned my face toward hers and planted a fierce kiss on my mouth. I didn’t respond, but I didn’t pull away, either: she was my senior in the Order, and she had certain privileges.

She released me and backed away. I could see some of my own blood on her lips. “Yes,” she said, breathing hard, “I’m a hinny. My sire was a Manehatten stallion. He thought he could have his way with my dam because she was only a donkey. The pony police wouldn’t do anything about it, so he got away and my dam had to carry both his child and her own shame.”

Her smile was gone now. In her eyes, I saw intense anguish. “After the Order inducted me, I tracked my sire down, and do you know what I did to him?”

“Mules do not take personal revenge on anypony,” I said.

She threw her head back and brayed with laughter. “But you just said I wasn’t a real mule, didn’t you? Oh, you stupid foal. No wonder Granddam likes you--you parrot all her little platitudes. I’ll tell you what I did to him: I cut a slit in his belly, slowly unraveled his intestines, and wrapped them around a spool. He impressed me by living afterwards for a full three days.”

I grunted. She was trying to shock me, but she failed. Had I been in her position, I would have done the same thing. Wiping blood from my muzzle, I rose to my hooves and struck a series of pressure points on my body to neutralize Mulia’s uncompleted killing strike. Then I struck a few more to deaden pain. Her lips curled into a sneer.

“Don’t do that too often,” she said. “When you truly learn to be a hybrid, pain will only sharpen your mind. You’ll hunger for it as you hunger for hay. To be a hybrid is to live with pain.”

“I don’t need your advice, Mulia.”

She snorted. “Maybe not, but you do need my help. I forgot to mention that, while I was in Canterlot, I drugged a guard and acquired the castle’s latest security plans.”

I nodded. She had beaten me. I felt profound irritation as I watched the smug smile return to her face.


In the library, we pored over diagrams of the royal castle, which mules had smuggled out of Canterlot over a hundred years before. Covering them were red annotations marking additions, alterations, and corrections. Mulia leafed through her set of stolen documents and added annotations of her own.

“Celestia’s private chambers are called the ‘Golden Palace,’” Mulia said. “They cover a full quarter of the northern wing. They earned the name from the gilded ribbed ceilings painted with elaborate quadratura.”

“Spare me the details,” I answered.

“The devil’s in them, you know. The Golden Palace hangs over the edge of Canterlot Cliff, held up by heavy cantilevers. It has only three entrances, all of them guarded by pegasi and extensive magical wards.”

“You’re forgetting the windows, each three feet across and only twenty feet above the floor. That’s no problem for us. We can jump onto the Golden Palace from the astronomy tower, slip in through a window, and make the kill.”

“The jump’s certainly possible, but it’s a little far.”

“We could fire a zip line if you think we need to, but I like to keep things simple.”

“There’s another problem--she almost certainly has wards on the windows as well.”

“Then we just need an amp-horn with a pre-loaded neutralizer.”

Mulia shook her head. “If we were dealing with an ordinary unicorn, that would work, but this is Celestia, and that changes all the rules.”

“You don’t think any other unicorn could break one of her security spells.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. If we’re going to do this, we have to avoid dealing with her magic.”

I sat back and crossed my forelimbs over my chest. “I prefer to be direct.”

“Then you’ll get yourself killed.” She reached out a hoof and stroked my mane.

I pushed her away; she was my senior in the Order, but her privileges only went so far. “I also prefer not to mix business with pleasure.”

She laughed. “Forget the Golden Palace: what we really need to break into is the kitchen.”

I glared, saying nothing.

“Listen,” she said, “all the food for the wedding reception will be prepared in the castle’s kitchen. The portions will be served at random to the guests--”

“Exactly,” I said. “So you can’t poison Celestia without poisoning everypony.”

“Not true. Few ponies know that Celestia has her own portions prepared in a private and supposedly secret kitchen, so if anypony ever tried to use poison at an event--”

I nodded. “She would actually be the only pony who wasn’t poisoned.”

“Precisely. But the care she takes with her food makes her more vulnerable to us.”

“Isn’t this kitchen warded like the Golden Palace?”

“Of course not. Other ponies have to get in and out, so, with a little work, we can acquire the proper spell for an amp-horn.”

“Acquire it from whom?”

“Probably her chief of security, Captain Shining Armor.”

I chewed my lower lip as I gazed down at the plans. Acquiring a spell for an amp-horn was not difficult; the amp-horn itself was a horn gouged from the skull of a living unicorn and attached to a receptacle. If another unicorn fired a spell into the receptacle, the amp-horn would absorb it, and we could then release the spell in another location. A high-level member of the Royal Guard like Shining Armor would never willingly perform a security spell for us, of course, but we had certain chemical concoctions that could persuade even the most recalcitrant ponies.

My hopes of meeting Celestia face-to-face were slipping away, but I still saw a chance of killing her in a way that would satisfy me, even if it was not precisely what I wanted. “We’re not thinking big enough, Mulia. The windows and doors of the Golden Palace may be warded, but there’s still a vulnerability.”

“What’s that?”

I slapped a hoof down on the table. “The cantilevers. With enough explosives, we can send the entire Golden Palace crashing down the Canterlot Cliffs with Celestia inside.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Amusing, but hardly foolproof. She can fly, you know, and teleport. Besides, we’d have to sneak hundreds of pounds of dynamite into the city.”

My anger bubbled up again, but I pressed it back down. “How about this? We drill a hole in the wall, we inject knockout gas while she’s in bed, and then we set off detcord right under the bed, blowing open the floor and dropping her down the cliff face.”

Mulia looked disgusted. “You’re bold, but too crude. Didn’t Granddam teach you any refinement?”

I could feel my right front hoof creeping toward my hilt again, so I clutched it in a fetlock to hold it still. Around clenched teeth, I said, “Then let’s do this--let’s plant the detcord at the Golden Palace first as a backup plan in case the poison we put in her food is ineffective.”

“That more than doubles our chances of being detected.”

“It also doubles our chances of killing Celestia.”

She sighed and shook her head. “Very well. I’ll compromise with you on this. Now here’s another question: how are we sneaking undetected into Canterlot, the city perched on a cliff a full mile above the valley floor, unapproachable except by a narrow passageway?”

I smiled. “For that, you need my bold, crude thinking.”


We spent most of the following month in preparation, training, study, and simulation. When the wedding was less than a week away, Mulia and I were ready to assassinate Princess Celestia.

Because of the poisons and explosives we had to carry, taking the train to Canterlot was out of the question, since there was always the chance of being searched by a guard. Besides, Celestia undoubtedly received reports of any mules who entered the city. We had briefly considered scaling the mile-high cliff behind the Canterlot Falls, but the cliff was infested with quarray eels. Although we were more than capable of killing such monsters, it would have been difficult to fight them while clinging to a vertical rock face and carrying our equipment, at least if we wished to escape attention. We chose to enter the city from the air instead.

To do that undetected, we had to steal a weather balloon.

Cloudsdale’s pegasi managed all of Equestria’s weather, generating clouds and sending them out across the country. Local weather teams used those clouds as the raw material to create storms and deliver rain or snow. However, even pegasi could not fly above the troposphere unaided, so every weather station maintained high-altitude balloons, which ponies used both for scientific research and as a means of manipulating the stratosphere to ensure that wild weather from the surrounding world did not encroach on Equestria’s orderly patterns.

If we flew an ordinary hot-air balloon or dirigible over Canterlot, even in the dark, the Royal Guard’s night patrol or the airship dock’s observation tower would almost certainly see it, but if we used a weather balloon, we could fly high enough to go unnoticed.

Firefly Memorial Weather Control Station stood on the outskirts of Ponyville near Rainbow Dash’s floating house. After the sun dipped below the horizon and the sky darkened, Mulia and I leapt the high cyclone fence and, keeping to the shadows, sprinted in a low crouch toward the weather station’s hangar.

The station had only one night watchpony. He was an earth pony, which meant that, aside from a certain physical robustness, he had no special traits that could frustrate a mulish assault. Having memorized his nightly routine through two weeks of covert observation, I flattened myself against a corner of the hangar and waited for him to walk by on his rounds.

The watchpony shuffled around the corner, a pair of headphones over his ears and a flashlight in his mouth. He didn’t see me. I leapt behind him, reached out, and touched a nerve in his neck, dropping him to the grass. As he fell, I tapped several pressure points to leave him paralyzed for three hours. He would never know what hit him.

While I dealt with the guard, Mulia found a fuse box and disabled the hangar’s simple alarm system. Then I picked the lock on the hangar’s maintenance door, and we walked inside.

Muted, blue-tinged moonlight angled into the vast hangar through greasy skylights mounted in a wide trapdoor in the roof. Dust motes danced in the beams. The frame of a half-completed dirigible hung in the gloom like the skeleton of some prehistoric monster, and beside it squatted a truck trailer holding a long hydrogen tank. Somewhere in the darkness, water, perhaps from a leaky condenser, dripped steadily against the concrete floor with a rhythmic slap.

My heart drummed hard in my ears, and a delicious thrill of fear ran down my spine, sharpening my senses. This was something new, something that would test my skills to the utmost. We were about to do something that, as far as I knew, nopony had ever tried before: a few daredevil pegasi had jumped from high-altitude balloons, but no non-fliers had ever done it, and nopony had ever jumped over a city in the dead of night.

After a quick search, we found a locker containing pressure suits. Most were too small for us, but some were designed for large stallions, and they could fit mules, albeit with a great deal of discomfort. It took us almost an hour to get dressed. Over my suit, I cinched on a pair of saddlebags containing tools, explosives, and a canister of sleeping gas, as well as a vial of an exotic chemical called hypno-serum, an invention of the zebras. Mulia put on a saddlebag containing a set of exotic poisons, an amp-horn, and her own vial of serum. We both wore our swords strapped to our belts.

The weather balloon’s gleaming white gondola, shaped like a giant teardrop, sat in the middle of the hangar beneath the trapdoor. The balloon itself lay nearby.

I found the crank to open the roof. It creaked as I turned it, and blue light poured in, illuminating the hangar’s vast but dingy interior.

Mulia walked around the gondola and peered through its thick, rubber-lined door. “We can’t pressurize it,” she said. “Not if we’re going to control the direction the balloon moves.”

“That means we have to rely entirely on the air in the suits,” I answered. “If we take all the oxygen cylinders from the locker, we should have enough.”

I hooked up a hose between the hydrogen tank and the balloon. As the balloon filled, Mulia and I squeezed into the gondola’s cramped passenger compartment, checked our oxygen cylinders, double-checked our parachutes, donned night vision goggles, and clamped on our helmets.

The balloon elongated, stretching up into the night sky, and the gondola lifted. It rose until its tethering ropes went taut. I climbed out onto the side of the gondola, shimmied up a load cable to the balloon, clamped the intake valve closed, and dropped the hose. Then I unsheathed my sword, dropped back onto the gondola, and cut away the tethers. We shot into the air and my stomach dropped into my rear hooves.

We had monitored the weather schedule for both Ponyville and Canterlot in order to choose a cloudless, windless night. With barely a breeze to alter our course, we rose almost straight up.

Carefully, I climbed back into the gondola’s interior and watched out the open door. The night was deathly silent; all I could hear was my own pounding heartbeat. Several minutes passed, and the ground below us receded into a mass of darkness punctuated by the twinkling lights of towns. Canterlot, in the distance, showed up in my goggles as a faint outline. We quickly rose past it, but I followed it with my eyes, afraid to lose it in the haze.

The helmet of the pressure suit had a built-in clock and altimeter, each with a glowing dial. Tensely and silently, I watched them for almost two hours, regularly changing out my spent oxygen cylinders.

I flicked on the suit’s radio with my tongue. “We’re high enough. Can you use your Power to move us over Canterlot?”

“Of course,” Mulia answered. Like many of the most experienced hybrid assassins, she could concentrate her Power into her hooves and project it in blasts of energy. She squeezed past me, leaned out the gondola’s open door, and moved her forelegs through a set of forms designed to heighten the energy flowing through her body.

She made the same moves several times, but nothing happened.

“Is something wrong?” I asked.

Her voice, though rendered tinny by the radio, sounded frustrated. “I can’t produce a force blast. I think the pressure suit’s preventing it.”

I felt a knot of tension form in my stomach. I looked again toward the dark mass of the land below. I could see the rim of the world as a fuzzy, curved green band in my goggles. We were in the stratosphere now; the longer we waited, the higher we would climb. The balloon overhead had already expanded to almost four times the size it had near the ground, and, eventually, it would burst.

“I’m going to open my suit,” Mulia said.

“What?” The radio crackled as I yelled into it. “You can’t breathe, and it’s almost a hundred degrees below zero. If you open your suit--”

“I can hold my breath, and my Power can warm my body. With just a few seconds, I can produce a force blast that will be enough to send us sailing toward Canterlot.”

Before we undertook the mission, I had read about high-altitude weather balloon accidents, some involving decompression. “Listen, Mulia. An earth pony can go about fifteen seconds in vacuum before losing consciousness. A pegasus can go two minutes. Let’s suppose a hybrid can last twice that. You still can’t get your suit opened and closed in four minutes.”

“Not the whole suit,” Mulia answered. “Just the forelegs. They detach.”

“Only if you take off the parachute and oxygen harness.”

“Fine. Then I’ll take them off.”

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a moment. It occurred to me that, if Mulia died, it would solve one of my problems. “All right. Hyperventilate first, and then exhale before taking off the suit. Holding your breath will damage your lungs. And you’ve a good chance of getting a bad case of the bends.”

Through the green haze of my night vision goggles, I could faintly make out her grin inside her helmet. “Pain only sharpens the mind of a true hybrid.”

“You’re about to get one hay of a sharp mind.”

“Enough talk. Let’s do this.”

Mulia sucked in air and blew it out until her helmet fogged. Then she unstrapped her saddlebags and parachute, yanked the oxygen hose from the plug on her barrel, and unbuckled the harness holding her oxygen cylinders. I grabbed the catches on her left sleeve and yanked them. A blast of air blew out and Mulia’s suit deflated like a popped balloon.

After I pulled the sleeve off her left foreleg, I went to the right and opened it as well. Mulia’s legs bloated hideously, and in her helmet, I could see her face puffing.

She reared onto her hind legs and slid her forelimbs through the motions to heighten her Power. Then she thrust her hooves out the gondola’s open door.

From her hooves erupted a burst of white light. Mulia used her Power to hold steady and prevent herself from flying backwards, but the balloon rocketed to the southeast toward Canterlot.

She held the blast as long as she could as her swollen face contorted with pain. She wavered. Her forelegs slowly lowered. At last, she sank to her hocks and collapsed sideways in a heap.

I gazed down at her unconscious form for a few seconds and contemplated. It would be the easiest thing to leave her there and let her die. I remembered how she had scoffed at me, how she had embarrassed me, how she had upstaged me in front of Granddam. My anger boiled up again, and I made a decision.

Watching her die of asphyxiation would not satisfy me. When she died, I wanted her to look me in the eyes.

I forced the sleeves of her suit back over her legs and sealed them shut. Then I buckled the oxygen harness around her shoulders and plugged in a fresh cylinder. The suit expanded, and it took Mulia only a few seconds to regain consciousness.

She rolled over and looked up at me. Her smile appeared strained. “Piece of cake,” she said.

I glanced out the door. “Friction with the air is minimal at this height, so we’re still moving. We’ll be close enough to jump soon, so get your gear back on.”

Staggering a little, Mulia fumbled with her saddlebags and parachute. Once she had donned them, I double-checked to make sure she had them on right.

The time came, and I jumped first. The air was so rarefied that it didn’t even rustle my suit or bags. Except for the faint lights below me, the waxing moon overhead, and the hazy curve of the world’s rim, all was black. A great void enveloped me. I could not even sense the terrible speed at which I plummeted: so thin was the air and so long the descent, I would come close to producing a sonic rainboom before friction would arrest my acceleration.

After several seconds of free-fall, I raised my head and saw a flash of green in my night vision goggles. Something bit into my left shoulder, tore the fabric of my suit, and sliced my skin. Blood streamed out, my suit deflated, and the air ripped away from my lungs.

With my right foreleg, I grabbed my sword and pulled it from my scabbard. Mulia was falling beside me, her sword raised over her head.

I blocked as she attempted a second blow, but my movement was sluggish due to the pressure suit, the blood loss, and my own flesh, which began to bloat from decompression. Gray spots floated into the edges of my vision.

Enough air remained in my helmet for me to hear Mulia as she cackled over the radio, though her voice sounded faint and thin. “Say goodnight, foal! From here, I go it alone!” Then I felt the saliva in my mouth boil as my helmet depressurized, and everything went silent. Mulia brought her sword down hard against my helmet, sending me into a spin.

Turning head-over-hooves at almost the speed of sound, having no air, and rapidly losing blood, I should have fallen unconscious, but Mulia’s betrayal enraged me as nothing else ever had. I felt the Power burning in my heart like a bright ember; I stoked it, and, within a moment, it had filled my body with its fire. My left foreleg was feeble, but I could still move it. I kept my grip on my sword with my right front fetlock and arched my back, holding my legs even. It took almost three minutes, but I at last regained control and the spinning stopped.

The fabric of my torn suit began to whip in the wind and the stream of blood from my foreleg slowed. The atmosphere was getting thicker. Soon, I would be able to breathe.

Mulia banked toward me from my left. Ducking my chin, I turned head-downward and dove below her. Then I flipped over onto my back, spread my limbs to slow my descent, and aimed my sword for her belly. She parried and replied with a slice toward my neck. I blocked and then angled my body, turning sideways in the air. Making an arc, I allowed her to fall past me, and then I struck downward toward her withers.

I missed, but my sword tore her saddlebag. A heavy cylinder of steel fell from it and spun away.

That was the amp-horn. I pointed my head and front hooves and dove for it. On my radio, I faintly heard Mulia snarl in frustration as she followed close behind.

Even with my night vision goggles, I could barely see the amp-horn tumbling out in front of me, a faint green streak. It was hard to judge distance, and my body was rapidly weakening, but I called on my last reserves of Power. Sheathing my sword, I reached out with my right hoof, grabbed the amp-horn, and hugged it to my chest.

Pleased with myself, I took a deep breath, and that’s when I realized I could breathe again, though the air was thin and very cold. It stung my lungs like needles.

I banked and turned, only to find Mulia speeding toward me, so I raised my head, flipped over backwards to get out of the range of her sword, and pulled the cord to open my chute. The flaps on my harness gaped, releasing the parachute bag. One after another, rubber bands snapped off and the lines holding the chute snaked out. The parachute whipped open, and the harness tugged hard at my undersides as the chute caught air, slowing my descent while Mulia continued plummeting toward the ground at full speed.

Taking gulps of the thin air, I looked down and tried to assess my location. I had dropped farther than I had thought. Canterlot, gleaming through the dark, was far to my left. While fighting each other in midair, Mulia and I had neglected to direct our descent toward the city.

Mulia opened her chute and banked hard for Canterlot. I pulled my steering toggles down and attempted to follow after, but an unexpected gust caught me and, unpracticed in the art of skydiving, I drifted away.

I tried to fight the wind, but I failed miserably. Each muddled attempt only made me angrier, and my anger led to more mistakes. Canterlot’s high spires, appearing as sickly green spikes in my night vision goggles, slid past my eyes. I glimpsed Mulia as she made a hard landing on the end of an airship pier, but I continued dropping toward the rocky base of the mountain.

The Canterlot Falls tumbled into a broad lake, the outlet of which was the river that meandered through Ponyville. I glided down to the surface of the lake and skimmed across it with my rear hooves before I finally made a graceless, noisy, and inexpert landing, tumbling into the brush on the shore.

I was so weak I could barely stand. I fumbled until I managed to pull the helmet off my head. The night air was fresh and smelled of lilacs. Taking deep gulps, I yanked off the rest of the pressure suit and assessed my situation.

I had five days until the wedding in Canterlot, but Canterlot was now a mile above me. I had lost a great deal of blood, and my left foreleg was nearly useless. My equipment, however, was intact, and though Mulia was now in Canterlot, she no longer had the amp-horn she would need to carry out her plan.

That meant that Mulia needed to find me--but I intended to find her first. As far as I was concerned, I now had two targets to kill on this mission.