I'd not thought this far ahead, and I was unashamed to admit it. "The other wardens," I said, thinking aloud, "will be returning in some few hours with Hope Springs and Violet Peony as well as Currycombs and Anisette."
Starlight's ears flickered, but she didn't gainsay my last point. Whatever her opinions might've been on the matter, I knew absolutely and unflinchingly that Currycombs would somehow convince this group of desperadoes that she held the key to their every dream coming true. I refused to think otherwise.
"When they arrive," I continued, "it would be best if we could see them without being seen."
"Easy." Starlight tossed her mane. "With that awful grinding magic gone, I can cast my invisibility spell over both of us. We could stand right beside them, and they'd never know."
Shaking my head, I kept my voice gentle. "Until they started casting their abrogation spell again."
Her face fell, but only for a moment. "How 'bout this? Where I come from, there's these things called duck blinds. You build them so they look like a pile of leaves or something on the outside, but inside, they've got space for hunters to hide and wait for—" She stopped and blinked. "Uhh, I'm guessing you folks don't eat a lot of meat around here..."
Images of the horrors I'd seen while on patrol in the frontier wanted to flash through my memory, but I forced them aside. "You mean a place of ambuscade," I said, "somewhere along the canyon wall where the shadows lie more thickly. We can dig back into the cliff face a bit, cover your cloak in dust and stone chips, and drape it across the opening. My camouflage magic can do the rest." I started for the door. "Let's get that set up, then if we still have time, we can scout about the rest of the buildings for some sign of the mirror you came through."
"The mine," Starlight said absently, following me out into the cool night air. "The mirror's down in the mine."
I turned to blink at her.
She was blinking at me. "Didn't I mention that?" She gestured with her snout toward the small sets of rails that ran deeper into the canyon. "I can feel it like a cold shiver off in that direction."
Differing plans of action scuffled for primacy within me, and I once again missed Currycombs and her decisiveness. "But you also said, if I'm recalling correctly, that your emergence triggered some sort of alarm with a wall sliding down over the mirror and a variety of other defensive mechanisms."
Her nod decided the matter to my mind. "Then, yes," I said with a firmness I didn't actually feel. "We'll construct our bolthole before trying to locate the mirror. Having a place of safety into which we can withdraw once the guardians return will serve us best in the long run, I should think."
Starlight agreed with me, and we set off beside the tracks, the light from the building behind us growing scanter and scanter. The mouth of the mine loomed dark and roughly square at the base of the rock wall ahead, and several lesser shadows suggested themselves as good spots for our hiding place. I pointed them out to Starlight, and she nodded toward one about halfway along between the buildings and the mine entrance. "That way," she noted, "we'll have a chance of hearing whatever's going on in both places."
The shadow resolved into an outcropping of rock as we approached the spot, providing an even-better bulwark against our being observed, and we set to work. The digging went much more quickly than I'd thought it would: I used the entrenching expertise I'd picked up during my time in Her Majesty's cavalry to create a space behind the outcropping, and Starlight cleared the detritus away with a teleportation spell so crackling with energy, I again found myself shaking my head to think that she came from a world where magic didn't function...
Once we'd cleared an area that seemed well suited to our needs, Starlight slung off her cloak, and I employed a quick seam-sealing spell to attach one edge to the cliff face. It draped well to cover our workings, and apologizing to Starlight, I dashed sand and rock chips against it. "Sympathetic magic," I said by way of explanation. "It's easier to create an illusion when one involves a certain amount of reality."
She laughed. "The best lies always stick close to the truth." Her last word stretched into a yawn, and she shook her head. "And the truth is: I'm gonna need a nap when this is all over."
I puffed noisily through my lips. "One of the hazards of leading a life of constant adventure, I fear." Focusing, I tapped my horn against her dusty cloak and set the first harmonic resonances of my camouflage spell to vibrating through it. "Can you feel that?" I asked.
Motion in my peripheral vision told me she'd stepped closer. "Yes. It...it hums, maybe. Like a circuit that's waiting to be closed."
My rudimentary knowledge of electricity let me nod. "Now, if our foes arrive, don't wait for me. Get here as quickly as you can and complete the last phase of the connection."
"What?" Her lavender hide went grey again. "I'm not leaving you behind!"
Bumping her shoulder with mine, I gave a grin. "In a perfect world, yes. But should the situation devolve to the point where we're both in danger of being caught, see to it that you get yourself away so that at least one of us will be free to plan a rescue."
The wrinkles around her mouth showed her distaste for the idea, but instead of arguing, she sighed. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that." Her head swung toward the mine entrance as creakily as a rusty gate. "And let's hope we can find the mirror before the guardians get back."
With a nod, I tossed my hat into our redoubt, suggested Starlight do the same, and we then made our way through the sandy gravel toward the spot where the narrow-gauge tracks vanished into the tunnel. Those tracks at least meant that the opening stood wide enough for us easily to enter side by side; I summoned silver light to the tip of my horn at the same instant as hers began to glow with lavender, and we stepped into the darkness.
A side branch opened almost immediately on our right, but Starlight shook her head. "It's like..." Her voice sounded muffled, the spongy rock around us absorbing the sound. "Like there's light reflecting all blue and shimmery off a pool somewhere in the distance, but I'm not seeing it. I'm...I'm smelling it all warm and salty, but with my horn instead of my nose." She shook her head. "Every time I think I've gotten used to how weird this place is..."
A part of me wanted to begin talking about how the thaumocrine system did have certain links to the respiratory system, but fortunately that part was small and easily ignored. Besides, with fatigue settling firmly along my shoulders the farther into the tunnel we went, I began to feel the atmosphere becoming more oppressive, the air seeming to thicken with cold and damp as I sucked it in and heaved it out along my own respiratory system.
Starlight appeared to be having no difficulty, taking a side branch after some minutes, then another, then another. I followed along as best I could, but after a number of minutes, I finally had to gasp out, "The ventilation. Do...do you suppose it's...not functioning?"
"Oh!" Starlight turned to point her horn at me. "I'm sorry, doctor! I've been casting this anti-magic spell on myself all night, so I didn't even think—" A flash of lilac-colored magic blinded me, and opening my mouth to gasp in surprise, I found myself taking the deepest breath I had since we'd entered the mine.
It took some effort not to smack myself in the forehead. Of course the guardians would have enchanted these tunnels against trespassers! "The fatigue," I mumbled more to myself than to her. "If I'd taken more time to sleep on the train, I'd be of more help to you now."
The immediate touch of her shoulder to mine warmed me. "If it weren't for you, I'd still be stumbling around, completely lost in an alien world. But now, I—" A shudder ran through her so strongly, she stumbled; I pushed myself more closely against her side to steady her. "It's here!" she cried, lurching away and practically leaping down a side corridor just ahead and to the right. "I'm sure of it! I can—!" Her shudder this time was accompanied by a gasp, her hooves slipping and propelling her sideways into the roughly rounded stone wall beside the tunnel opening.
"Starlight!" I stepped forward, uncertain what might ail her, but she was already spinning, her eyes wide and staring past me into the darkness.
"The spell!" The light of her horn flickered. "The awful one that wants to peel my skin off! It...it's started again!"
Glancing back up the tunnel, I found myself unable to reliably calculate how much time had passed since we'd seen the guardians heading across the desert. Sufficient for them to return, apparently: my anesthetizing spell would render its subject unconscious till dawn, and I couldn't believe it had gotten that late.
With a swallow, I returned my gaze to Starlight. "Can you guide us back to our redoubt?"
She was blinking more rapidly than I liked to see. "Maybe," she said without an ounce of conviction. "I mean, I'm sure I could, but...wouldn't we be safer here?"
Again, I was torn by indecision. Starlight's hide had already turned ashen, her breath already deepening and quickening into gasps. A trip back up these wretched tunnels was very nearly the last thing she needed right now, but staying here... "After finding their colleagues unconscious," I said, keeping my voice gentle, "they must suspect that you've breached the perimeter. And I imagine they'll want to check the mirror as quickly as they—"
"Steady on, now!" a voice brayed from somewhere off in the darkness, the sound distorted and echoing from who knew how far up the tunnels.
Nonetheless, my ears practically leaped from my head. For it was Currycombs speaking! Unmistakably!
"Some of us," she was going on, "are still a bit fatigued from galloping halfway across that foul desert! And now we're expected to spelunk?"
The echoes died away, and leaning forward, I thought I could just catch the whispery sort of hissing that might signify an equine speaking in an ordinary tone of voice near the cave mouth. But Currycombs had employed her ringing contralto to let us know that she was alive and in the company of our enemies. It was a warning I had no intention of ignoring.
Starlight had gone completely still. "Was that—?"
"Yes." I glanced back at the tunnel she'd been about to enter when the abrogation spell had struck her. "The mirror's down here?"
"It must be," she panted. "I mean, I can't really sense it anymore with all this buzzing in my head, but it was so clear a minute ago."
I nodded. "That's where they'll be heading, and it's where we need to be as well for whatever scheme Currycombs has planned." I pressed my shoulder to hers. "Lean against me if necessary, but we must get moving."
A moment, then her weight shifted into me; with careful steps, I started forward, and she remained alongside, her hoofs scuffling against the rocks. Knowing that Currycombs was nearby firmed my knees considerably, and I guided Starlight through the opening and down the tunnel beyond, the soft silver glow of my horn reflecting back from the various flecks of the mineral deposits that filled the walls.
The tunnel stretched straight for a good dozen paces, then a circle of non-reflective darkness appeared ahead. This proved to be an opening, and we staggered through it into a larger chamber. Quickly, I sent the light of my horn sweeping the walls as I'd been taught in the service, my senses attuned to any magical cantrips or caltrops that might've been set to entrap the unwary.
I felt sconces along the wall, their ignition spells ready and waiting to illumine the cavern, but the other magic that rustled in the background set the hair at the base of my mane to shivering. Not wanting to touch anything off, I made a point of brushing over those spells as lightly as I possible. After all, something had rendered Starlight unconscious when she'd first emerged from the mirror, and the vague impressions I sensed looming over this place told me in no uncertain terms that I wanted nothing to do with whatever had been cast here.
Starlight gasped, and I nearly leaped out of my shoes. "The mirror, doctor!" she said, raising her nose and inhaling. "I...I can smell it again!"
Directly ahead of us, several heavy dark velvet drapes hung from the ceiling, and it was toward these drapes that Starlight thrust her snout. And as they provided the only cover in the room, I propelled us toward them as quickly as I could. "Be prepared for anything," I murmured to Starlight, then I shouldered the curtain aside so we could slip behind them.
A very narrow space lay between the drapes and the wall of the cavern, and in the darkness that enveloped us as I let the drapes fall back into place, I felt nothing especially magical. Not that I had time to make a full appraisal of the area: reaching out with my hornglow, I deadened the sway of the curtains just in time, Currycombs's voice once again echoing along the rocks.
"Confound it, Springs! We've no reason for stealth! The creature has undoubtedly passed back through the mirror into her own realm again!"
"Damn you!" a stallion unfamiliar to my ears roared. "You can't possibly know what that monster will do!"
"On the contrary." I could exactly picture the smug look that must've been adorning Currycombs's face. "I tangled several times with this Starlight Glimmer when she rampaged through the streets of Ehwazton, and I've come to understand—"
"Rampage?" This was a mare's voice, and though I'd only heard Violet Peony speak on the one occasion back when this entire adventure first began, I was almost entirely certain that this was she. "You said she was behind the disappearance of Epona's Column, but I hadn't heard any other—"
"Of course not," Currycombs said, all their words becoming clearer with each passing second, the clatter of several sets of shoes against stone now audible as well. "Shetland Yard kept a tight lid on events once I informed them that we were dealing with a criminal unlike any other Hevosenvalta had ever seen. And that was before I learned what she'd told Anisette here while holding her captive in her—"
"Damn you!" the unknown stallion shouted again, but another stallion interrupted him:
"For the Sun's sake, Bolide! We're trying to be quiet!"
"Damn you, too, Hope! If we'd killed these two in the desert—!"
"Please, Mr. Bolide!" Anisette's voice sounded strained, but it was unquestionably her speaking. "We only want to help remove Starlight Glimmer from this world before anything else terrible happens!"
For a long moment, only the hoofsteps echoed, growing louder. Then— "Fine," the gruff stallion more grunted than said, and light flared on out in the cavern, the barest traces of it seeping in around the edges of the curtains. "If I'd followed my instincts when that thing first crashed through our mirror, I could've saved us all a lotta bother. But without our hierophant, we couldn't be sure—"
"Yes, yes," Ms. Peony cut in. "And while I will admit that I'm interested in reclaiming the position that my parents decided I ought not to hold, I must further admit, Mr. Bolide, that I'm somewhat dismayed by the way in which Hope's description of this place apparently contained a few, oh, let's call them 'embellishments,' shall we?"
"Meaning what?" this Bolide fellow growled. "You want to abandon your birthright helping contain the forces of madness and horror that constantly threaten to consume our world just because the place isn't fancy enough for you?"
"Please," Anisette said again, and again, the sincerity of her tone seemed to sweeten the mine's cold, damp air. "We all want the same thing right here and right now, so can't we put aside our differences until we've dealt with Starlight Glimmer?"
Another moment of silence passed, then Hope Springs said, "She's right, Bolide. Ms. Currycombs was smart enough to track me down out of every equine in the whole of Ehwazton, so if she wants to go through the mirror to confront Starlight Glimmer and stop her from leading her ravening hoards against us, then I say let her go. The prophet appointed our ancestors as guardians, after all, so it's our duty to guard, not to go into the realms beyond and fight whatever's plotting there."
The outline of Currycombs's plan had slowly been coming together in my mind, but I couldn't say I had a complete picture of it yet. She'd evidently convinced Springs and the other guardians that she'd come here to defend Hevosenvalta against Starlight, but what was all this talk about going through the mirror? Did she mean to—?
"Fine," Bolide said, interrupting my thoughts. "The Word given to us by the great prophet Starswirl and the Promise our ancestor made all have to do with keeping this blasted thing closed, so whatever happens next, Hope, will be on your head."
"Of course, Bolide." Springs's teeth were clenched, I could tell. "But with our proper hierophant here, we'll be able to open the mirror and send Ms. Currycombs through. And with the entire rest of the Order gathered at the entrance to the mine, if any of Starlight Glimmer's fiendish brethren attempt to escape, they won't survive the experience."
"But—” Violet Peony's voice shook. "I know nothing about any of what you're talking about! How am I to open this Starswirl's mirror?"
An orangish glow sprang up along the top of the curtains, and they began to draw open. "You're the hierophant." A calmness seemed to have seeped over Bolide, a calm that made me think of a patient under the effect of narcotics. "The Word of Starswirl says that your presence is enough to activate the deep magics within."
And indeed, as the curtains bunched towards Starlight and myself, huddling in the rough corner of the cavern, I could feel something like a breeze kick up around me. Not a breeze that ruffled my ears and mane, however, but a breeze that sent alternating bands of cold and warmth scattering up and down my horn.
Several gasps came from the other side of the curtain followed by Springs's voice: "It's never looked like that before!"
"Behold the power," Bolide intoned. "Behold with awe. Behold and bow down before the legacy of the great prophet Starswirl."
The breeze that wasn't a breeze kicked up more forcefully, and Starlight, shuddering beside me, began to slide forward as if the ground had suddenly changed to ice.
"Umm..." Violet Peony said, the unsteadiness growing in her voice, "why is it...pulling on me?"
"Close it!" Springs shouted. "This must be Starlight Glimmer's doing! She dragging us all into the hellish world that spawned her!"
"Not exactly." Currycombs's smirk come through quite clearly in her tone. "According to Starlight, we should find ourselves first in something of an intermediate area."
And indeed, my hooves had also began inching along the stone toward the edge of the bunched curtains.
"One with the prophet," Bolide was muttering, the force increasing its tug against me. "One with the prophet. One with the prophet."
"No!" Springs and Ms. Peony yelled at the same time, but then the pull became completely inexorable, Starlight and I very nearly flying from our place of concealment. I caught the briefest glimpse of a large, smooth, shiny surface, my own startled face reflected back at me with five or six other equally shocked equines arrayed at various distances—all except Currycombs, of course, whom I could see grinning like a madmare.
And then I was smashing headfirst into the mirror.
Neither I nor it shattered, however. Instead, a cool and silver flow both thick as butter and airy as mist surrounded me for the space of an indrawn breath. Then I was stumbling forward, a solid surface swarming up to tangle with my hooves. I pitched sideways to land hard on my shoulder, cries and thumps smacking my ears and at least one body tumbling across my left rear leg.
Blinking, I raised my head. Around me, Starlight, Anisette, Ms. Peony, Hope Springs, and a fire-orange unicorn who had to be Bolide lay scattered over a smooth, bluish stone floor upon which Currycombs alone still stood upright. Her hooves firmly set, her head turning rapidly from side to side, her red mane seeming to puff up like a cloud, she was unmistakably the equine I'd gotten to know so well over the last several months, but—
But she also looked completely different, her eyes larger, her snout blunted, her stature more compact, her whole person rounder, softer, less angular, and her hooves completely gone, her ash-gray hide covering her strange new legs from top to bottom without a break. The others, I saw with my next blink, had undergone a similar transformation, and I recalled the phrase Starlight had used when describing her initial journey through the mirror: she'd become like a cartoon drawing, she'd said, and now the entire group of us seemed more like living illustrations from a foals' book than anything else.
The tunnel surrounding us also possessed a certain painterly quality. The bluish stone curving up and above us to form the ceiling seemed to glow with a diffuse and directionless light, and along the walls, side by side both to my right and to my left, stood mirrors, all of them rectangular, all about twice the shoulder height of an equine, and all again just as Starlight had described.
"It worked," Starlight whispered beside me, and she leaped to her not-quite hooves. "It worked!" She cried it aloud this time, the words not echoing at all somehow from the rocks, then spun to look at me. "Doctor! We—!"
"Uhh, Twilight? Starswirl?" someone else said from behind me, and jangled as I was, I felt certain that these words were also spoken by Starlight. "You might want to come take a look at this."
Starlight's already large eyes went even wider, and pushing myself upright, I turned.
Another Starlight Glimmer stood staring back at us from the mouth of a cross-tunnel a few paces away. She sported a slightly different mane style, but her coloring, her bearing, even her eigensigil matched in every detail the Starlight I'd gotten to know.
"Of course," I heard Currycombs mutter. "Using mirrors in the spell would inevitably lead to a certain level of duplication..."
"Starlight?" another mare's voice called from down the side tunnel, and with a jingling of bells, two more figures stepped out: a purple winged unicorn mare whose pretty yet unadorned demeanor bespoke a royalty that seemed tinged with friendliness itself, and an older, white-bearded stallion, his wide-brimmed hat fringed with the bells that were—
"No!" Bolide shrieked, lurching into a crouch. "What blasphemy is this? You dare appropriate the name and likeness of the prophet?"
The princess—for her obvious youth precluded me from thinking of the winged unicorn as a queen—and the duplicate Starlight both folded their ears and turned in unison to regard the stallion.
His mouth shifted sideways among the curls of his beard, his eyes narrowed, and he said, "Ah. From one of those mirrors, are you?"
"Blasphemy!" Bolide shrieked again, and he charged up the tunnel toward the three newly arrived equines.
"Bolide!" Hope Springs shouted, still huddled on the floor. "No!"
But by then, the older stallion had already taken a wider stance and lowered his head, a silver-white blast coruscating from his horn to envelop the onrushing Bolide. "Behold," he said, his words rustling the air around me, "and know that you have entered into the presence of your prophet Starswirl."
Bolide froze the instant the older stallion's magic touched him, balanced on two legs in the act of galloping. His voice taking on that same slurred, breathy quality that I'd first heard back in the cave, he murmured, "One with the prophet," before tipping slowly over sideways, the cloud of the older stallion's magic lowering him to lie once more upon the floor.
Springs's jaw gaped. "It can't be! You— Starswirl— It— That was over a thousand years ago!"
"Yes. Well." The older stallion gave a little snort. "Time can so easily get away from one."
The duplicate Starlight cleared her throat. "Speaking of things getting away..." She nodded toward our Starlight. "Since Twilight's safely met one of her mirror selves, I'm guessing we don't have to worry about anything unpleasantly exothermic happening here, but still—"
"The mirror!" our Starlight blurted beside me. "It was in my grandmother's basement! She said someone named Starswirl had left it for our family to take care of generations ago!"
"What?" Springs cranked his head around to glare at our Starlight. "You're no guardian! You're one of the monsters Starswirl warned us about!" He pointed a shaking hoof at Currycombs who was examining one of the nearby mirrors. "Ms. Currycombs said you kidnapped Ms. Anisette and committed all sorts of mayhem in Ehwazton! She said she'd followed Violet and me so we could team up and stop you!"
"Actually?" Currycombs said almost lazily, her attention focused on the mirror and the one front hoof she was tapping against its surface. "Nearly everything Anisette and I told you in the desert was a lie." She turned a very sharp smile toward Hope Springs. "In truth, Mr. Springs, I had two reasons for pursuing you and Ms. Peony: first, to trick you into showing us the mirror so that we might get our version of Starlight Glimmer back to her own universe, and second, to exact some sort of justice against the two of you for the murder of Ms. Peony's father Collier."
Several bits of pandemonium sprang up at this, the young princess exclaiming, "Murder?" as if she wasn't quite sure what the word meant while both Starlights leaped toward each other with grins on their muzzles and near unison cries of, "You're me!" Springs and Ms. Peony leaped up as well, their expressions twisted with fury and the word "Lies!" prominent in the outraged denials they lobbed back at Currycombs. Anisette had also risen shakily by this time and had backed away from the two miscreants till she stood at Currycombs's side.
For her part, Currycombs continued placidly gazing upon the two excoriating her, but Starswirl's deepening scowl concerned me. He seemed very much the sort whom Currycombs's usual insouciant manner might rankle, so I was not at all surprised when he stomped a hoof, flared his horn, and roared, "Enough!"
Springs and Ms. Peony dipped their ears and squeezed their mouths shut, both Starlight Glimmers snapping their heads over to stare at him.
Currycombs, however, stepped forward into the sudden silence and nodded to the old stallion. "Quite right, sir," she said briskly. "For the sooner we get this nonsense settled, the sooner you can match the magical signature of our friend Starlight Glimmer with the mirror out of which she originally came, and the sooner the rest of us can return to—"
"Enough!" This time, Starswirl snapped the word more than shouted it, his eyes narrowing at Currycombs. "Now, which of you are from the same mirror as this fellow?" He jerked his horn at Bolide, still lying on his side and murmuring quietly.
"I see." Currycombs looked past him to where the princess stood. "Well, since this fellow apparently has no way of matching us to our mirrors, I'll ask you, Your Highness, if you have the magical power to tell which of us goes where."
"What?" Starswirl's beard bristled. "I'll have you know, young lady, that I constructed every one of these mirrors myself!"
"And yet?" Her voice dropping into something of a growl, Currycombs waved a hoof at the rows of looking glasses. "If you knew how to operate them correctly, none of us would find ourselves in our current predicament!"
Starswirl sucked in a breath, and I have no doubt that he would've employed it to expel a number of words in Currycombs's direction if the young princess hadn't said, "Maybe I could have a moment, please, Starswirl?"
For a stretch of seconds, I felt certain that he was about to ignore his sovereign. But instead, he blew out the breath he'd pulled in and said rather grumpily, "Oh, by all means, Twilight. Perhaps you can find something in your Friendship Journal to cover the situation..."
The princess gave a grin. "Introductions, first." She touched a hoof to her chest. "I'm Twilight Sparkle, and, well, you apparently already know Starswirl the Bearded and Starlight Glimmer."
"Parallel dimensions!" our Starlight breathed out—her dusty hide and frazzled air differentiated her from the other even more distinctly than did the cut of their manes. "And so many mirrors! Do...do they all go to weird magical horse worlds?"
That got the princess's ears perking. "You're not usually a magical horse, then?"
And the smile that spread over Currycombs's muzzle nearly lit up the whole tunnel. "Princess Sparkle, you have hit upon the very heart of the matter." She bowed ever so slightly. "Currycombs at your service, Your Highness, and—"
"Yes!" The word fairly burst from our Starlight's mouth. "That's Currycombs and that's Dr. Scalpel and that's Anisette! Currycombs is the greatest detective ever! Better than Churchill Downs, even!"
"You—" Princess Sparkle blinked at Starlight. "You know about the Churchill Downs books?"
Currycombs moved quickly to our Starlight's side. "Before we lapse into a literary discussion, might I suggest, Starlight, that you describe your usual appearance to the princess and her companions?"
"Oh, please." The princess waved a hoof. "Just call me Twilight." She leaned forward, her scent spicy with eagerness. "And since Starswirl only ever found one mirror that didn't lead to a world of magical horse folk, I'm going to ask if you were, by any chance, bipedal and had these things called hands and fingers on the ends of your front legs."
Our Starlight's expression became one that I can only describe as gobsmacked. "Wait," the other Starlight said beside her. "You mean she's me from Sunset Shimmer's world?"
The princess—or Twilight, rather, since she'd asked us to call her that—Twilight held up a hoof to the other Starlight, her gaze fixed on our Starlight. "Are you familiar with a place called Canterlot High?"
"Yes," our Starlight whispered. "It...it's across town. I attend Crystal Prep." She sucked in a gasp and took a step back. "Wait! You said you were Twilight Sparkle! But she—! And after the Friendship Games—! And all the weird stories lately about—!" Her voice dropped to a whisper again. "Magic..."
Twilight's smile shone with reassurance. "We know exactly where you come from, Starlight." She turned to Starswirl, her smile clouding up. "Except, of course, that the only known mirror between your world and ours is currently sitting in my library at home. Which makes me wonder how you ended up down here."
If Starlight had looked gobsmacked, Starswirl looked as if he'd had every other part of himself smacked. "Of course!" He shook his head, his bells clattering. "After we sent the Sirens away, I thought it would be prudent to have a secondary access portal to that place. I entrusted the far end to someone I met there who was fascinated by magic, but with Stygian and the Pony of Shadows and Limbo and all, I never had a chance to use it." A wave of silver mist wafted from his horn to settle over all the mirrors, and one of them just up the corridor began to glow. "It had slipped my mind completely."
"You mean—?" Our Starlight's eyes wavered, and she leaped over to wrap her forelegs about my neck. "Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!" She practically burst from me to Anisette and then to Currycombs, and while Currycombs's face betrayed her discomfort at the embrace, she still allowed it. "I can't believe it's all almost over!"
"Now, now," Currycombs said. "Few things are ever truly over, as this whole blasted case continues to remind me." She pushed Starlight gently away, then gestured with a hoof toward the indicated mirror. "Still, let me recommend that you step through the mirror ready to spring back in case Starswirl's magic proves as shaky as his memory."
Without even looking, I could hear Starswirl's beard crinkling in outrage.
"In fact," Currycombs went on, a flick of her ears telling me she knew very well the effect her words were having, "if you don't return within, say, sixty seconds to tell us that you've indeed reentered your family's cellar, Scalpel and I shall come charging through in pursuit." She raised her gaze to mine. "Are you amenable to this plan, Scalpel?"
"Most amenable," I answered heartily.
"Now see here!" Starswirl began.
But Twilight cut him off. "It's not a bad idea to take precautions." An edge entered her voice. "Wouldn't you agree, Starswirl?"
He merely grunted.
"See?" Currycombs's smile, still focused on our Starlight, was about the sunniest I'd ever seen from her. "Now, we'll all wait here while you scamper through the mirror. Once you've ascertained that it leads to the correct place, simply return here to tell us, and you'll be back to your normal life."
"Thank you," our Starlight said, then her ears shot straight up. "My parents! I've been gone a month! They—!" She spun, galloped up the corridor, and very nearly dove into the still-glowing mirror.
Several silent seconds crept by before Starlight's head emerged from the mirror's surface. "It's my basement, all right! I've got to get back, but I don't know—!"
"Sunset Shimmer!" the other Starlight called. "She's at Canterlot High, and since she's met me, she'll recognize you!"
"Exactly!" Twilight added. "She's got a book that sends message to me, so once everything gets settled down, we can decide what to do with your mirror."
Our Starlight's eyes wavered again. "Thank you! And thank you, Currycombs, Anisette, Dr. Scalpel! I'll see you again! I promise!" And she vanished once more from sight.
Another bit of silence stretched before Currycombs turned away from the mirror, all humor gone from her face. "Now," she more growled than said, "we can get down to our actual business."
"No." Starswirl's horn began to glow, his words cold and sharp. "You can all get back to your foul world, and I can shatter that mirror the way I should've over ten centuries ago."
Twilight's mane nearly swallowed her folded ears. "Starswirl! What're you—?"
"All worlds," the old stallion said, his gaze locked on Currycombs's, "have a potential for unhappiness, a potential for betrayal, a potential for tyranny and madness, neglect and abuse and various other evils. But some worlds, some very few and far-between worlds, also have a potential for murder: purposeful, cold-blooded, premeditated murder. On those worlds, when I found them in my explorations, I established a caste of guardians for whom I was the great prophet. And my single commandment to them was that they keep their mirrors closed."
"One with the prophet," Bolide muttered from his heap on the floor. "One with the prophet."
"My goal," Starswirl went on, "was to keep their contagion from spreading into our Equestria while still allowing me access to study—"
"That's crazy!" It was the remaining Starlight who shouted this, though judging from the wrinkle-browed expression on Twilight's face, she'd not been far from a similar pronouncement. "I mean, Sombra! Nightmare Moon! Chrysalis! Tirek! The Storm King! Even Cozy Glow! Sure, maybe they didn't actually kill anypony, but they were definitely headed in that direction!"
"And me," Twilight said so quietly, I wasn't certain I'd heard her correctly. Judging by the startled reactions of Starswirl and Starlight, however, I could only think that they were as shocked as me. "The Storm King," she went on, her eyes downcast. "In that last battle, Tempest caused his magic to backlash and turned them both to stone. But when they fell from the balcony, I...I only grabbed her with the Staff of Sacanas. I let him shatter to shards in the courtyard below."
Starswirl and Starlight continued staring at her, but I had to speak up. "In battle, Twilight, the world operates under different rules." I'd been avoiding any thought of my scars since seeing the physical transformations we'd all undergone in this place, but now I flicked the folds of my blanket aside to reveal bone-white, puckering lines crisscrossing my forelegs. Their cartoonish quality somehow made them even more awful to my eye than they regularly were, but I left them uncovered despite the gasps of the three equines native to the realm.
"It leaves scars," I went on, "both external and internal." Glancing at Currycombs, I didn't have to force my smile. "We must find ways to live with them, however, learn from them, never forget them, but nonetheless move on with our lives."
"My school." Twilight swallowed, but she nodded as well. "After how I behaved when we were fighting the Storm King, I needed to relearn what friendship meant, needed to show myself that I really did know how it worked, needed to teach it to others so I could make sure that I hadn't forgotten it or abandoned it or—"
Starlight threw an embrace around her. "Twilight! You've been feeling like this since then and didn't mention it? I mean, come on!" She took a wide-hoofed stance in front of the princess. "Don't you know that that's the best thing about having a friend and student who used to be an evil genius? I'm right here whenever you need to unload the deep, dark secrets festering inside you!"
That got a twitchy little grin from Twilight. "Thanks, Starlight." She looked past Starlight to meet my gaze again. "And thank you, Dr. Scalpel. I don't know what your world is like—"
This time, Currycombs's snort cut her off. "It's like every other world, Twilight, in direct contravention to Starswirl's theory and practice, something I believe you and your resident Ms. Glimmer were just pointing out."
Starswirl gave a snort of his own, but it lacked heft to my ears.
Currycombs held up a hoof. "We've had one murder in the past forty-six years." She leveled her hoof at Hope Springs and Violet Peony, the two still standing with ears folded and eyes wide as they had been for some minutes now. "And the perpetrators are these equines right here."
"It's not my fault!" The words shot from Ms. Peony's mouth as quickly as air from a punctured tyre. "Father refused to let me go fulfill my destiny! If he'd been more reasonable—" She aimed a glare at Mr. Springs. "Or if you'd never shown up and told me about my rightful place as hierophant—!"
"Oh, no!" Springs stomped a hoof. "I'll not take the fall for you again, not now that I know you! I mean, by the Sun, Violet! We coulda just left! Coulda just turned around, and there wouldn'ta been nothing your Pa coulda done to stop us! But no! You had to start levitating knives and getting into arguments!"
"How dare you?" Her lips pulled back and her horn flared—
But dark purple bubbles of magic surrounded them, Twilight stepping forward as gingerly as a cat crossing damp grass. "Actual murderers." A salty trace of fear came into her scent, but she fixed a steady look on Currycombs. "We have a place here called Tartarus where we keep those monsters who don't seem capable of coexisting with the rest of Equestria. You said you were pursuing these two, so I'm assuming you've nowhere back in your world to hold them?"
"Oh, we have." Currycombs's brow clouded. "But even though I'd trained myself for years to follow the evidence and only the evidence, when confronted with an actual murder, I can only say that I flinched. My deep-set conviction that no equine would ever commit such a foul offence twisted my intellect away from the truth and led me to a plethora of incorrect conclusions that allowed these villains to escape justice." Her eyes closed, and she bowed to the princess. "So if I could transfer them to your custody, I would be eternally grateful."
"But—" It was barely a hiccough, but the sound drew my attention to Anisette, her wings clenched where they jutted out through the slits in her cloak. "You...you mean simply to imprison them?"
Twilight sighed. "It's all we can do sometimes."
"But," Anisette said again, "you...you said you had a school? To teach friendship? I taught classes at the orphan asylum, and I...well, I don't know how I could help, but I...I'd like to." Sparks seemed to flash in the depths of her eyes. "If there's anything I can do, I'd very much like to do it." The air sizzled against my horn, and a glow arose from her cloak's tail.
Her eyes went wide, and she flicked her cloak aside to reveal an eigensigil fading into existence along her flank: a bank of clouds frozen in the act of parting to reveal a heart behind them.
"Did—?" Astonishment filled Twilight's face. "Did you just get your cutie mark?"
"Eigensigil," I said, my expression undoubtedly as astonished as hers. "But...how?"
"Come now, doctor." Currycombs shook her head. "It was the only possible conclusion."
I turned my astonishment toward her. "I beg your pardon?"
Currycombs sighed. "Starlight's tale revealed the existence of other worlds. Given that Anisette had been unable to acquire her eigensigil in the ordinary course of her life in our world, when Starlight insisted that Anisette accompany us on this journey, it seemed only reasonable that Anisette's sigil would be awaiting her in whatever extraordinary world we would find ourselves entering."
"Reasonable?" I repeated. "Is that truly the word you mean to use here?"
Her mouth went sideways on her stubby little snout. "The train of logical inferences led inexorably to this point. And had you seen how Anisette's heart-felt pleas kept Bolide and his more blood-thirsty colleagues from killing us in the desert, I daresay you would find yourself in complete agreement with me. Although..." Uncertainty—a rare sight—flickered in Currycombs's eyes, and she turned to regard Anisette. "Are you honestly convinced that your destiny lies here, trying to rehabilitate these two—" She seemed to consider for half a heartbeat before finishing with, "—individuals?"
Anisette had been looking back and forth between our conversation and her new sigil. "I am," she said. Facing forward, she touched a hoof to her chest and bowed to Twilight. "If you'll let me stay, Your Highness, and help you make a difference?"
Twilight opened her mouth, closed it, and looked back at her two fellows. The remaining Starlight Glimmer nodded vigorously, and while reservations showed clearly through his snow-white beard, Starswirl nodded as well.
"Of course, Anisette." Twilight reached out a hoof to touch her shoulder. "You'll be most welcome here in Equestria." Looking at Hope Springs and Violet Peony, she stopped the purple glow around her horn, an action that dispelled the bubbles surrounding those two individuals, as Currycombs had put it. "You're welcome, too." Something sad and serious came over her, then, tinged with a hardness I hadn't quite thought her capable of. "But you have some work ahead of you. All of us here will help you with it, but it's work that only you can really do."
White showed around their eyes, their scents awash in sour trepidation, but neither of them made a single sound.
Returning to face Currycombs and me, Twilight brightened. "I hope we can make arrangements to call upon each other in the future? I'd very much like for you to see more of Equestria than this tunnel."
I bowed to her. "And we'll be honored to show you Hevosenvalta, Twilight."
"Hevosenvalta." She seemed to roll the word around on her tongue, then did a quick little high-stepping dance in place. "I can hardly wait!"
"Yes," Currycombs drawled. "There's just one final problem that I can see."
Blinking, I turned to her.
She blew out a sigh. "We must inform Mr. Trencher that he's lost another apprentice."