“She’s not blind, her pupils are responding normally, despite her protestations to the contrary she is responding to ocular stimuli completely normally, and all of her activity appears unimpaired, your grace,” A sickly unicorn the color of rotted corn in dirty hospital coveralls sighed heavily, “She’s not suffering from any illness or magically induced ailment that we can discern. Sister Greater Purpose simply seems to have suffered a mental breakdown, it happens to the best of us… The disappointment gets to you after a while, we’ve been trying so hard, for so long, one day we will bring a new dawn to the Empire… the flawed ones are always the most heartbreaking though. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s simply pretending that she can’t see as a coping mechanism.”
“I see, then there’s really no point in not just letting the little ingrate walk away,” The sickly grey priest smiled cruelly. “I’ll recall the guards we have following her and let the waste have her.”
“Wouldn’t it be kinder to just end her outright, your grace?” The medical pony looked at his superior in shock. “A flawed queen, particularly of her sort, newborn and alone in the ash won’t last the night!”
“Kinder to who?” The priest snapped. “The ungrateful wretch whose first words reborn were blasphemy and rebellion? Or perhaps kinder to our own loyal young guards who have to wash her blood from their hooves. She is worse than useless. Her failure borders on heresy. But I won’t put her burden of any more of our little ponies. As you said, these things can get to a pony after a while.”
“Y-yes your grace…” The medic stammered thoughtfully.
“Do see that Sister Greater Purpose is comfortably taken care of.” The priest sighed. “Give her to Queen Royal Velvet, tell her majesty that the Sister needs the leadership of a caring and *nurturing* queen such as herself. She’ll like that.”
“You’re both quiet back there,” Discord grumbled, “don’t tell me this little trip is boring you already…”
“Twilight, is that…” Thorax swallowed hard, and stammered on, “Is that how alicorns happen? Because that doesn’t look like how alicorns should happen…”
“No, Thorax… I don’t know what that was,” Twilight admitted weakly, “Even assuming different laws of how magic works, I can tell you that some of that was functioning spell work, just like some of that scientific equipment was clearly functioning and doing something. The again, some of those supposed glyphs were just fancy calligraphy of spooky nursery rhymes, and I’m pretty sure all the black lights did was make the spooky letters glow in the dark. The piles of treasure might have had some actual spell components in the somewhere, it’s hard to say. But I don’t think the ponies who did that even knew what was really part of the process, and what was just random… mumbo-jumbo.”
“I don’t think I like these ponies very much.” Thorax admitted saddly.
“I despise them.” Discord scowled. “They are the worst kind of little pony. But it’s not my prime material plane to play around in. You’ll notice this sort of thing never happens in OUR universe. You’re welcome by the way. Now I think if I turn left here that should take us back to…”
“I-it ain’t fair!” The frustrated human clown kicked the dirt, a deep scowl etched behind his cheerful face paint.
“Oh come on, your jealous of an orphaned colt, Ziggs.” Yakko bit back a laugh at his friend's expense. “Dude, I mean, seriously... dude… I know you got a crush on the twins, and I mean… you’re not wrong to point out that your not that much older than her… them... but…”
“What my brother is trying to say,” Dotty rolled her eyes, “is stop making it weird. Having crush on a younger filly is one thing, a thing that I assume is perfectly normal for an adolescent human clown, on the other hand and or hoof, getting all jealous when she meets a colt her own age…”
“You’re making it weird Ziggy!” Wakko burst in. “Just stop making it weird.”
“You know,” Dotty wiggled her eyelashes and swayed her hips suggestively, “if it’s just that you got a thing for ponies, I’ve got all the pony flank you need, and all the fun bi-ped pieces up top.”
Wakko began to create a beat with raspberry noises as his sister began a ridiculously obscene dance while Yakko sang, “Milk, milk, lemonade, around the corner fudge is made…”
“Straighten up, clowns!” A thunderously deep voice boomed. “Franklin is in position. I want three watch shifts with two of you to a shift.”
“Y-yes sir, Mr. Atlas sir!” Ziggy stammered, broken from the the unspeakable trance of Dotty’s very questionable “dance of seduction”, a sight he would never unsee.
“Ziggy, you’ve got first and last shift with Dotty and Wakko respectively, you work out amongst yourselves who’s on second,” the no nonsense giant proclaimed with a huff, before focussing the gaze on the lone human, “I’m trusting you to keep watch and keep my little filly safe, Ziggy, you better not let me down.”
“Y-es sir!” Ziggy grinned and flashed his best attempt at a real salute.
“And Ziggy,” The pale horse chuckled as he left, “You’re a good kid, and I like ya. So back offa my daughters. I’d actually feel bad if I had to break your arms.”
-=-=-=-=-
“Marg, what in the nine hells are we supposed to do?” Atlas Deadlift shook his massive head.
“I’m thinking a respectful mass pyre made from what’s left in the caravan. Let them return to the ash beneath their own tent.” The matronly bearded cow-pony nodded sagely.
“Well, yeah, that, I mean about the colt,” the giant sighed, “I mean, he’s carnie folk, that’s all the family he probably had.”
“We will let him take what he can carry of what the raiders left, and we will take him in, and we will accept him as one of our own,” the bearded mare gestured as if it wasn’t even a question, “Just like we took in Magpie and Daisy. It will work. One more mouth to feed is one more set of hooves to perform. We will make it work.”