Twilight Sparkle waved her horn over the scrying bowl. This spell hadn’t been successfully used for 2907 years. After all, who needed a human locator spell in the Celestian era?
There was some sort of ruckus going on further downtown. She’d heard some explosions, some wet, viscous sounds, and a lot of shouting and cursing. It was probably something Pinkie Pie and her other friends could get out. They’d let her know if something was really serious and needed a big Friendship Lesson to solve it, or some kind of advanced magic. Right now, she had her own advanced magic to do.
She rubbed her hooves together. “Spike? Could you please get me that coffee I asked for?”
“It’s right next to the inkwell,” Spike said, rolling his eyes.
Twilight Sparkle frowned. She pulled her quill out of the coffee mug. That explained the funny taste.
“Are you feeling alright, Twilight?” Spike said.
“Fine! This is coming along perfectly. And they said the Anthromancy Tablets were just an old pony’s tale.” She chuckled and took a sip of ink. “Sure, I haven’t slept for twenty six hours,”
“Thirty-six,” Spike corrected.
“More or less, but my thoughts are keener than ever! I am going to remake unicorn history!”
“Didn’t you kind of already do that when you redeemed Nightmare Moon and defeated Discord?” Spike said, scratching his scales.
Twilight waved the notion aside. She was finally reaching a breakthrough.
She could see fog swirling in the water. No, not fog, clouds, and in the cloud was an arch of multi-colored light.
“A-ha! Spike, fetch me the book-lover’s book of book spells for bookish unicorns!”
#
Applejack stared at the map of ponyville and took a deliberate swig of middle-grade moonshine. Her hooves were still, but her heart was trembling. All the red spots on the map represented unicorn households and places of business. The blue marks were earth pony areas. There was a lot of purple on the map.
She never thought she’d have to do this. If somepony told her ten years ago, or two years ago, that she’d have to mark out ponies she worked and played with all her life like dragon lairs or goblin hoards, she’d have spat in their eye.
“Are the pie-cannons ready?” Applejack asked, unwilling to look up from the map. There was a big, red mark right at the Boutique, and one at the Library Treehouse.
“Eeyup.”
“How about the throwing bolas?” She reckoned Jamal was her friend too, after a fashion, but what do you do when friends want to eat other friends alive? Did dragons ever have to deal with problems like this? This was plum crazy. She knew these ponies!
“Eeyup.”
She thought she knew them.
“Seed bombs?”
“Eeyup.”
Applejack took another swig. Her hooves were still steady. It wasn’t a good idea to drink moonshine before lunch. She shouldn’t really be making big plans like this. Then again, she knew her limits, and she really, really, really didn’t want to have to deal with this sober as a club soda.
“How about…about the beanbag canons and the onion gas?” She really hoped it didn’t come to that. She’d dropped a fermenting bottle of onion gas once, when they were getting a shipment ready for the frontier on the border of Draconia, and she’d been coughing and teary-eyed for days.
Maybe it wouldn’t come to this. Maybe it didn’t have to all careen out of control. Maybe she could talk her friends around to the right point of view, and then they could all sort his out and laugh about it later.
It might be easier if she had, well, another one of the gang on her side. There was one person you could always count on. That lightning bolt necklace had to count for something, didn’t it?
“You can sort the rest out. I’m headin’ out to pay a visit to Rainbow Dash.”
#
Lyra wasn’t thinking about giving up exactly. She never gave up. Not when it was this important.
The Nandi Bear hadn’t been as filling as she’d thought. She’d gone over a day without proper food now, and her water was running low. She’d faithfully followed the spell-charged tooth, even though it flickered and changed direction sometimes, and the source was getting weaker and weaker. Sympathetic magic would always pull through in the end.
Parasprites buzzed around her. Inedible ferns and dry brambles clutched at her legs.
Then it happened. The sky…bulged, somehow, what she could see of it. The air split open from end to end and turned inside itself. She could smell the colors of the forest, taste the sounds of untamed animals, and feel the darkness brushing against the inside of her bones.
“-lying jailbait slut!” her wildest dream shouted, before falling down in front of her.
Its skin was furless, except for a thick mane on the head. It’s teeth and claws were blunt. It wasn’t wearing the dragon-hide shield or holding a spear, and instead of owlbear skin its artificial hide was some thin, grey fabric and worn blue jeans. A strange medallion hung around it’s neck.
She looked closer. The name “Max” was written on it, followed by a very rude word for a castrated bull, the strange word “Bronycon” and what looked like-
“No way,” she gasped. It was a picture of a pony.
On the human’s shirt was a much bigger image of a pony. It was Rainbow Dash.
“They know,” she whispered. She pulled the human up on its awkwardly balanced legs, squeezed it between her forelegs, and drank in a smell richer than the finest apple wine.
“What the hell?” the human shouted.
Lyra locked eyes with it.
“Tell me everything you know.”
#