Twilight sighed as she continued to look back and forth between the griffon and the unicorn. Eventually she let her gaze settle on Damien. “I was just in the marketplace. Daisy, Rose, and Lilly have all fainted, Lemon Zest’s cart had two of its wheels shattered, half the shopkeepers are hiding in the alleyways and whatever houses they could get into, there are dozens of small hoof shaped craters in the streets, several patches of blue fire still smoldering on the ground and not going out…” her voice trailed off and she glared at him. “What the hay is going on!?”
To her surprise it wasn’t Damien that responded but the other unicorn. “I am sorry my lady. When I found Damien alone and unprotected in the marketplace I let my emotions get the better of me,” he apologized with a slight bow. “As the usurper said I am Gallus Blueflame, disciple of Arkus and last living descendants of the noble kings of Holdshire.”
Twilight was taken aback by the stallions sudden politeness as well as his claims of status. “A pleasure to meet you,” she replied as she rallied herself and noticed he was waiting for her name. “I am Twilight Sparkle, Bearer of the Element of Magic and personal student of Princess Celestia.”
Gallus’s eyes widened in slight surprise when she was able to list off titles that he assumed were at least comparable to his own. “It is a pleasure to meet such an august personage. If your skill with the arcane is as considerable as it appears to be I feel I must ask for your assistance in dealing with the abomination,” he said as he pointed a hoof at Damien, who waved back with a smile. “I am not foolish or strong enough to test his power on his chosen ground but with your assistance-”
Twilight sighed and held up a hoof, motioning for him to stop. “Damien may not be a model citizen but he is a citizen of Ponyville and of Equestria. I can’t let you… ‘deal’ with him.”
Gallus’s eyes hardened at her words. “Surely you know who, and what, he is?”
“Yes I do. I also know that both Princess Celestia and Princess Luna have decided to let him stay here,” Twilight told him. “Whatever he may have done in the past is in the past. It is something that he has left behind when he came here.”
“But- He- Usurper! Monster!” Gallus sputtered.
“According to Princess Luna the only actions he has taken in the last two hundred years have been ones of self-defense.”
“He is a snake and a liar!”
“As true as that is I doubt that he could hide anything from Luna while she was in his mind.”
“Actually,” Damien interrupted. “I could. It would be pretty difficult but that’s neither here nor there.”
“You’re not helping,” Twilight hissed.
“Fully aware of that my dear but so long as I am on my property I have nothing to fear from Gallus and he strikes me as the type of hero that won’t harm those that aren’t part of the problem,” Damien replied as he inspected his talons thoughtfully.
“You have to leave sometime,” Gallus growled.
“I’ve actually been stockpiling supplies ever since I bought this house. I could easily live out the rest of the year without leaving the house,” Damien supplied helpfully.
“I will-!”
“You will do nothing,” Damien asserted. “In fact I can pretty much guarantee that you can do nothing. Whether simply because I am living here as a peaceful citizen and am therefore protected by the law, or because one of the diarchs and I are in regular contact, or possibly because the other one recognizes me as a useful tool should the need arise.” His expression grew thoughtful as another thought struck him. “There’s also the fact that my house would be rendered… uninhabitable on my death and Gilda would kill you for making her lose such a cheap place to stay.”
“Uninhabitable… how exactly?” Twilight spoke up. “It’s not going to explode is it?”
“Not explode per se,” Damien replied with a wink.
“Is he always like this?” Gallus whispered to Twilight as he looked at he glanced apprehensively towards the smiling griffon.
“Shouldn’t you know?” she asked. “You came from the same place right? You should know this stuff!”
“All I’ve ever heard are stories! Why do you think I attacked him right off the bat? I wanted to kill him before he managed to do any of the things he’s famous for!” he hissed back. “Supposedly when he overthrew my ancestors he killed the entire army with a wave of his hand!”
“And you were planning on fighting him?”
“Yes! For the honor of my family and my god!”
“Oh, yes,” Damien drawled. “The honor of your family. Do you know why I chose to take your ancestor’s castle?” He didn’t even wait for Gallus to answer but forged ahead. “Your ancestor was a tyrant. He may not have used dark magics or contracted fey entities, he may not have slaughtered his peasants or led his men to meaningless war but he was a tyrant all the same. His people feared and hated him. Merchants travelled around his kingdom rather than through it. Even other rulers only called upon him when they had no one else to turn to. Taxes were high and those that crossed him were dealt with brutally, his dungeons…” Damien chuckled darkly. “Let’s just say that even I had never seen a number of those implements before.”
Gallus glared at him. “My family would never-”
“Of course not!” Damien interrupted with a laugh. “No one ever believes their oh so honorable family would be guilty of the sorts of things that are expected of creatures like me.” He shook his head ruefully.
“Then you claim that you were the hero and my family the villains?” Gallus sneered.
“Of course not!” Damien said disgustedly. “I merely hoped that killing him and taking his kingdom would pass with little comment beyond his old ‘friends’. But no one was willing to forget what I was and continuously tried to kill me and return the deposed royal family to their ancestral home. Turns out all you need to get everyone’s sympathy is get your ass kicked by someone everyone else hates more,” he added sourly. “I even only killed the king! Not a single other person was hurt there!”
Gallus gave him a calculating look while the griffon continued grumbling under his breath about ‘unfair treatment’ and ‘Pit damned heroes’. “Do you think he’s telling the truth?” he asked the unicorn beside him.
Before Twilight could respond a new voice split the air. “Damien!” screamed a familiar turquoise unicorn. “What did you do this time?” she demanded as she marched up towards the pleasantly surprised griffon.
“Is this about the incident over in the badlands last week or…?” He left the question hanging in the air with a mischievous smile.
“Your-” she cut off the sentence with a clack of her teeth as she glanced towards Gallus and Twilight before continuing on a much lower whisper. “That portal you used to get here opened up again,” she hissed. “What. Did. You. Do?”
“I merely created a spell that allowed me to come here, provided that I was scrying your world at the time. Since I am no longer there I can’t really do much about it now can I?” he said graciously. His smile grew wider as he watched Lyra’s glare deepen.
“Do you really expect me to believe that you didn’t know your portal was used?”
“Since I didn’t place any wards or alarms around it I do expect that. After all, I didn’t think that anyone would be able to pick out which of the multitude of worlds I chose to retire to.” He felt a smirk twist his beak as he uttered the completely true yet undeniably false statement.
Lyra’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “I may not know much about your past but I thought you’d be a little more on edge hearing that someone from your old home is here, most likely to try and kill you.”
Damien spread his forelimbs to encompass his yard. “As long as I’m here the only things that could really touch me would be your princesses and Discord. The only things comparable to them from my world would be the various gods and goddesses. None of which would be willing to leave their seat of power with no guarantee that they would be able to return. Of course there is no guarantee that anyone would be able to return to that world. Quite likely whoever came through the portal will be stuck here forever,” he intimated in a much louder voice than was appropriate for a private conversation.
Off to the side Gallus’s face drooped, not having contemplated that he might be unable to return to his home after completing his mission. Some small honest part of him also saw fit to remind him that he had not even been entirely confidant that he was going to succeed in the first place.
Seeing the crestfallen look on his face Twilight turned her attention away from Lyra and Damien. “You didn’t realize that you wouldn’t be able go home?”
Gallus nodded quietly. “I may not have thought this through completely,” he admitted. “I actually was granted the power of the Blue Flame only two years ago.” He laughed ruefully. “I grew up listening to my grandfather and father telling me old stories about what our family used to be, what we used to have. So I decided to do something about that. To at the very least get the revenge my forefathers have desired for centuries.” He cast a dour glance towards the griffon and unicorn, still arguing about what did or didn’t constitute something Damien should consider to be his problem. “I was given this magic by Arkus in exchange for two years of service. Two years spent honing my skills against his enemies. As soon as my service was over I left for Damien’s keep, where he had been last seen. I had hoped to find where he had vanished to, it wasn’t the first time he had managed to disappear from the world’s view.” He laughed weakly. “Guess I found him.”
Twilight felt for the stallion, she wasn’t unfamiliar with getting so lost in something that she didn’t think things through completely. The less his blood boiled the more introspective and depressed he seemed to become. It seemed that now that he had seen Damien he had lost most of his fire and was slowing to a stop. Before she could think of something to say in order to console the other unicorn her ears swiveled towards Damien in time to hear him mention Gallus.
A massive claw of stone suddenly shot up from beside Damien and lashed out towards Gallus, quickly grabbing him and bringing him before Lyra. “-and here is your outsider,” Damien finished saying as he shot the surprised Gallus an evil grin. “You didn’t really think that I’d do something so stupid as let anyone with sense enough to step off my property to recline in perfect safety did you? Just because my spells need to originate here for maximum effect does not mean that they have to stay here.”
Before Gallus could explode in rage Twilight teleported over to his side and started in on her own tirade. “Damien! You can’t just attack somepony like that!”
Damien actually took a step back as the unicorn’s rage washed over him. Between the lessened effects he had built in to the wards for the denizens of the town, Sparkle included, and her own innate power he doubted that he would be able to deal with her both successfully and non-lethally. “Given that he has professed his desire to kill me I am sure that I can dispense with some of the normal social niceties,” he said, attempting to pacify the fuming unicorn before him before deflecting the issue away from himself. “Besides, Lyra is looking for Gallus so she can try to acclimate him to Equestria. I’m just doing my part to help her out.”
“What?” Twilight asked, curiosity overtaking anger with ease. “What is he talking about?” she asked the other mare.
Lyra was taken aback by the sudden shift in the conversation’s balance. Although her position was by no means public, her public persona being one of a lyrist and music instructor, she was under no orders about how to deal with others learning about her side job. She shot an acrid glare at Damien as he edged away from the group slightly, attempting to remove himself from the brewing confrontation. “I’m part of a group in charge of acclimating outsiders to Equestria and helping them lead normal productive lives.” Seeing Twilight’s sidewise look at Damien she added on, “Damien did not undergo our program. Apparently he was watching Equestria and learning about us for at least a year before he came here, allowing him to circumvent normal procedures.”
Damien thought about protesting the implied insult about him not leading a normal and productive life but quickly thought better of it. Better to have Twilight and Lyra focused on each other after all. Although he doubted that anyone there was distracted from him enough to allow him to duck inside his house and leave them to each other.
Fortunately for him Twilight’s curiosity filled eyes were almost completely blind to him, fixated instead on Lyra and Gallus. “So are visitors from other worlds common?” she asked eagerly.
Lyra was silent for a moment as she tried to determine how best to answer the mare’s question. Twilight’s curiosity was legendary even among those ponies in town that knew very little about her. For one like herself, who knew of her in far greater detail due to their mutual connections with the princesses, Twilight’s curiosity was a fact of existence. “We get a couple every year,” she admitted. “There’s an interdiction shield that catches incoming outsiders, changes their form to fit more with our world, and places a translation spell on them so they can be understood by whoever they run into. That way anypony that runs into them just ends up thinking of them as crazy or sick.”
Twilight nodded slightly as she processed this new information. “How does it decide what to turn them into?”
“I’m not really sure,” Lyra admitted. “It depends on the outsider in question. Mostly they’ll be turned into ponies but I’ve also seen a few zebras, a couple donkeys, a cow, and even a few buffalo.” Before Twilight could ask the question that Lyra knew was coming she added on, “normally they don’t turn into griffons, diamond dogs, changelings, minotaurs, or the other less equine races. Another way Damien cheated,” she muttered.
“How many have you met?”
“Quite a few, I’ve been working with the group for… well ever since I came to Equestria.”
“Came to…” Twilight’s voice trailed off as her eyes widened. “Then are you…?”
Lyra smiled slightly. “That’s up for you to decide,” she replied quietly. “But that’s not the point here.” She turned to Gallus, still clutched in Damien’s stony talon. “I’ll need you to come with me to Canterlot,” she told the restrained unicorn.
“What? Why?” he asked.
“So you can start your acclimation lessons and start learning the Equestrian language and customs. I doubt you’ve been watching us long enough to be able to live here without causing a misunderstanding.”
“What if I don’t want to stay?” he asked with narrowed eyes.
“Then we’ll try to reopen the breach tha brought you here but in the meantime you will still need to learn how to live here.” Her expression brokered no argument from the bound unicorn. “Damien, let him go so we can get ready to leave.”
“But how long will that take?” Gallus asked desperately as he fell from the now loose stone claw.
“Depends on the breach. Yours was artificial so we might have to get a team of unicorns together to study it and figure out how to force it open again, it’ll still probably take years. If it was a natural breach it would probably take us decades to figure out how to open it.”
Gallus blanched at this but responded gamely. “Is there any way for me to get out of going to these acclimation classes?”
Lyra nodded slowly. “You would have to be able to learn from someone else. They would have to help you learn the language and the local customs, ideally they would be from a similar world to your… own…” her voice trailed off as she saw Damien perk up at her words.
Gallus followed her gaze and the color drained from his face. “No,” he whispered.
“Leave him with me!” Damien cried. “I already know the language perfectly and could teach him all he needs to know! Why between me and Gilda I’m sure we could get him acclimated to Ponyville in no time!” He leapt over to Gallus’s side and slung a forelimb over his shoulder. “Best way to bury the hatchet right there! Cooperation! Betterment of one’s self! A new victim to torment!”
“I would never stoop to placing myself under your-”
“I’m the best chance you have at reopening that breach aren’t I?”
Gallus froze.
“I created the spells that you copied in order to come here. I am one of, if not the, most knowledgeable practitioner of the arcane arts in this world. Without my help I can almost guarantee that you will not return home. It took me nearly a decade to create the spell that brought us here and I doubt that even with the backing of the princesses and their organization they will be able to return you home with any real speed. No offense,” he added as he turned to Lyra who merely rolled her eyes at him. “Of course, if you stay with me I’d require that you pay for room and board. One vial of blood a month for both. Or you can just pay me a hundred bits a month and chip in when I go grocery shopping.” Damien smiled magnanimously and removed his forelimb from Gallus’s shoulder. “So what do you think?” he asked spreading his arms wide.
Gallus glared at him for several minutes before the glare melted into a look of resignation. “And if I don’t decided to stay with you?”
“Well I have no reason to help someone that isn’t under my care now do I?”
Gallus looked between Lyra and Damien several times. “What am I getting myself into?” he asked himself wearily.