This Platinum Crown

by Capn_Chryssalid

Chapter Sixty-Three: If I Had a Heart

Just so you all know my last update wasn't a one-off thing. No, you won't have to wait another 2 years for a chapter.
TPC is my priority, over all other non real-life-work stuff.

As an aside, while looking around for things, I found what seems like a playlist for TPC that someone made! I wish I knew who, or when, but with the name and the three lists (Rarity, Blueblood, Chrysalis) what else could it be for?
If you want, you can check them out here:
https://8tracks.com/explore/this_platinum_crown/hot/1

. . .
(63)

. . .

“Found you!”

Shining Armor grinned as wall caved in before him.

Going underground had not been his preference, but one of his new comrades had a tracking spell, and it was best to let her do what she did best: track magic, while he did what he did best. The guard drilled ponies in specialization and Shining knew when to let another take point on patrol. As long as it led them to his very particular prey, he was happy as a colt in a candy store. Sure enough, a little patience, a little prudence, and the universe had rewarded him!

In the chamber up ahead, amid a gaggle of changeling drones, one stood out as taller and more menacing than the rest. It had to be a Princess!

Except…

There were other Princesses, too? Collapsed on the floor? There were a few ponies on the other side of the cavern, and what looked like a squad of diamond dogs in armor and livery, three diamonds on a blue field. The changelings were sandwiched between the two forces, Shining and his team in the rear, these other ponies at the front, but that didn’t explain the extra Princesses. From what Shining Armor recalled from his previously lost time, there were only five true daughters of Chrysalis.

“More intruders?” the Changeling Princess hissed. “No. No. Not now! Not here!”

“Curious,” Shining Armor said with a rumble, exiting the hole in the wall and resting his wings along his sides. He made way to allow two other aethereal ponies to join him, flanking his left and right; they were his companions for this little hunting trip, and it was cramped in that hole in the wall. Before ascending, the pony to his left, Purple Rains, had been a pegasus, and Lucky Star on the other side had once been a petite unicorn mare. She was still relatively petite, but what they were now had no name, at least as far as Shining Armor knew.

“Meddlesome equines!” the changeling Princess snarled, and magic rippled across her body alongside a high-pitched trill. To Shining’s surprise, several of the smaller changelings began to grow and warp, turning into duplicates of the larger Princess.

“That’s new,” Purple Rains growled, flexing his starry black wings. “Is it an illusion?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Lucky Star’s soft voice was nonetheless cold as ice crystal. “At least one of them is the Princess, right?”

“So, we just kill them all,” Shining finished her thought and grinned even more broadly. “Elegant in its simplicity.”

They took their time advancing on the changelings, especially since they also seemed to be fighting the group on the other end of the cavern. Those changelings who didn’t turn into Princesses themselves could not transform at all, thanks to some sort of blanketing city-wide interference magic, and instead had to rely on their natural talents in the form of poisonous fangs, sharp chitin hooves, and an assortment of melee weaponry.

The most dangerous, Shining had learned, were the ones with enough drill and discipline to form up in squads or larger squares for defense. This was a classic Equestrian Guard maneuver. It had been a bit of a surprise to see changelings using pony tactics, but they had likely been stolen from captured equestrians… stolen like so much else. Other changelings, though, simply rushed in to use ferocity and fear to their advantage. Most of what they faced here were the latter.

Purple Rains scoffed, horn and wings glowing as he pulled together moisture to form a cloud. Cloud control was elemental pegasus magic, and though their new bodies seemed to possess all the power of the three pony tribes, and then some, what it did not do was grant any extra experience or knowledge. Rains knew pegasus magic, and so he used Pegasus magic…

Unleashing the cloud, it violently expanded, the fluffy white turned a darker stormcloud grey, infused and enhanced by a faintly sparkling aethereal light. It thundered like a stormbank ten times its size, unleashing sharp jagged cracks of electricity. Most changelings were wise enough to go out of their way to avoid it, but a few, either too impetuous or unable to maneuver, ended up caught. Not a one that entered emerged from the dark roiling storm.

“Below us,” Lucky Star grunted, a moment before the ground cracked and a changeling lunged upwards at her throat. It was a clever move, Shining Armor thought, and the changeling had been well situated to lay her ambush. It would’ve worked on a normal unicorn, too, especially as the changeling knew to strike for the neck and clip the horn at the same time.

Lucky Star was quicker, though, simply by virtue of knowing where the changeling was even before it broke cover. Juking her head to the side, she avoided the slash to her throat, and with a hiss of her own opened her mouth wide. Her dentition, like his, was mostly equine… mostly. Their new transformation had given them a double pair of canines, and Lucky Star put them to work when she bit down on the changeling in an ironic inversion of exactly what the shapeshifter had planned.

Shaking her neck like a terrier catching a rat, Lucky Star whipped the changeling left and right, violently enough the limp body hit the sides of her barrel. Her starry mane became a brief blur until, just as swiftly, she let the changeling go. It spun in midair, hitting the ground in a boneless sprawl of limbs.

“Now there’s a flavor you won’t find at Joe’s.” Lucky Star spat. “Nasty.”

“You haven’t had one kiss you,” Shining dryly commented, frowning as a changeling rushed him. His horn flashed, just momentarily, and the mid-air changeling became locked in a maroon-red bubble. It fell to the earth with an unceremonial thud.

Shining continued his steady advance, sparing the trapped changeling a mere look. It hissed at him as he passed by, beating itself against the confines of the bubble. Shining paid it little mind, instead catching a second in the same trap, and then a third.

“Princess,” Star warned, motioning forward with a nod of her head.

“I see her,” Shining replied, forming a barrier around himself as green fire splashed against the shield. The Princess and two drones were laying down alternating fire, and when Lucky Star shot a quick blast at them, it was deflected by a green-hued shield of their own. Given the burst of light from the bigger changeling’s horn at the same time, it was the likely culprit.

“Three for one, then,” Shining Armor said with a sneer, dropping his shield and re-focusing his magic. One of the green blasts hit him, straight on the chest, but hardly did more than sting. This new aether-enhanced body was far stronger, far superior, to his old one. Signing that contract had been the smartest move of his life, and not just because it had saved his actual life!

Chuckling darkly, he watched as a larger shield enveloped not just one but all three changelings as a group: the Princess and her two drones. The creatures hissed in sibilant tones and tried to break through, but their green fire did little but singe themselves.

“Give it up,” Shining said as he trotted by. “You’re already dead.”

Two more changelings needed to learn the same lesson, one throwing a spear and the other pouncing like a cat. Shining deflected the spear with his starry hoof, even as his magic caught the two offenders. Just like all the others, they fell to the ground, trapped in their bubble shields turned prisons.

By then, the battle had clearly turned.

“Kyyraah!” a piercing cry split the air, and one Princess in particular fell from the air to land in a smoking heap. “Noo! Not again!” She struggled to get back up, only for a hoof to plant itself on her throat. “H-how?!”

“You’re hardly the first creature to think my eyes are my worst weapon.” The mare pinning the Princess to the floor glanced down at her with a half-lidded stare. “But that is an interesting trick, allowing others to mimic you instead of mimicking them yourself. It even bypasses Twilight’s spellwork.”

“You! I know you,” Shining announced over the dim of battle, approaching the mare.

“And I you,” the mare answered, looking up at him, her eyes still at half-mast. On some mares, the look would have almost seemed seductive, but on this one…

“Lady Antimony,” Shining said, smirking.

“Captain Armor,” Antimony returned the greeting. Yes, it was her alright. Shining remembered that day, years ago, when the main line Rares of the Bismuth house had summoned all the branch families and cousins to attend to the naming of the new successor. He had just been a colt at the time, and Antimony a young filly, but even then, he remembered her being intimidating. She had more of the swanlike Princess-figure than her sisters or cousins, and even now, her long two-toned purple mane was done up in intricate braids only partly ruffled by combat.

For just a moment, she reminded him of a darker, more sinister Cadance… but that was just a superficial physical similarity. Antimony wasn’t nearly so thin, and then there were the eyes. Even partly covered, they seethed with something distinctly unnatural and off-putting.

Shining grinned again.

It seemed they were on more even hoofing, now.

“Is that the real one?” he asked, pointing to the pinned changeling Princess. “I believe this one was… Ecdysis, right?”

“This is the real one, yes,” Antimony replied, conversational but guarded. “This is my second time dealing with her little trick. More importantly, what are you doing here and how are you free? Your entire body is… changed… and I know they don’t teach dark magic at the academy.”

“Me?” Shining lifted a hoof and casually waved it back and forth. “The Queen of these bugs had me under her hoof for a while. I was dying, actually, but couldn’t do anything about it. Then Cadance freed me, and this nice little contract spell appeared just in the nick of time. I’m not exactly up to Twily’s level when it comes to esoteric magic, but I’d guess it taps me into the aethereal firmament.”

“Did you know that at the time?” Antimony asked and shot a look to her left in time to catch a changeling with her telekinesis. It hung for a moment in the air, until an enchantment clicked into place over its wings. The changeling hissed as a suddenly massive weight caused it to drop out of the air like a lead anchor. It hit the ground with a thud, hard enough to kick up dust.

Antimony returned her eyes back to their normal half-lidded stare.

“I was half dead at the time,” Shining explained, ignoring the interruption. In the corner of his eye, he saw Lucky Star wrestling another changing down to the ground with her new strength and blasting it, point-blank, with magic from her horn.

“Either way,” he continued, “I’m not complaining. I feel like a million bits! And I want to share this feeling with Chrysalis’ nearest and dearest.”

“Ah. I see.” Antimony blinked, her voice and expression level. “Well, you can have the others, but I need this one. She and her ilk have been planting demolition charges under Canterlot. Some sort of a much larger scorched earth plan.”

“Then hurry up and find out what you need to know, cousin,” Shining stepped closer to the noblemare. “Because I’m taking her. Sooner. Not later.”

Antimony stood at her full height, and she was tall for a mare, but still had to look up to meet his nose. All the same, she did not back away or cringe. As Shining would have expected, from the successor of the notorious Bismuth Rares. They were a fearless lot, and dark enough that this was unlikely to be Antimony’s first exposure to aether magic.

“And how am I supposed to--”

“Use those gorgon’s eyes of yours,” Shining interrupted her, poking her on the horn with his hoof. “Twilight told me a little about them in a letter. Chrysalis’ magic made whole tracts of my memory hazy, but she wanted me to preserve certain details to pass onto her. Some things, I remember clearly.”

“My duel with Rarity,” Antimony stated. With a grimace, she grumbled, “Twilight.”

Yes, Twilight. She’d mentioned her before, too.

“Are you really working together?”

“We are,” Antimony replied. “We’ve put aside our differences, for now, all of us.”

Shining Armor tried to imagine it. Tried and failed. “Hard to believe.”

“Your sister Twilight, Lady Rarity, Pinkie Pie…” Antimony almost seemed about to say more but cut herself off. “I don’t know if we’re friends, certainly, Rarity and Twilight are both obstacles to my taking Canterlot, but we aren’t strictly enemies either. I… I like them.”

Shining Armor barked out a single, mocking laugh. “Isn’t that sort of thinking kind of soft, for Arsenic’s successor?”

At that, Antimony finally narrowed her eyes dangerously. “Push me any further, Captain Armor, and you’ll find out how soft I really am.”

“I think I’d almost like that,” he whispered in response, almost nose-to-nose with her. Antimony glared right back at him, arrogant and defiant, but she kept her evil eyes in check. For all that she did, though, there was something intoxicatingly dangerous about her. Shining was almost a little struck by it when he realized his own excitement. Was it frustration? The desire for a good fight? The need for a good fuck?

Shining Armor looked away at that thought, that disgusting, taboo thought, and shook his head.

“Captain,” Antimony said, as if sensing his thoughts, “The magic is warping your mind, you--”

“You have sixty seconds!” Shining Armor snarled, cutting her off and turning around. “Do what you have to do. Sixty seconds!”

“I can’t…”

“Fifty-nine!”

Shining didn’t immediately turn back around. He continued to count down, but he didn’t turn around. His head was still spinning slightly, not enough to impair him, but enough to be a little vexing. In all his life, he’d certainly never had… thoughts like he just had. Not that noble families didn’t marry cousins often enough, but he loved Cadance. He loved Cadance. He hadn’t even thought of another mare in years. Even in private fantasies. Only Cadance.

He loved Cadance.

And yet… when he thought of her… he longed for her, pined for her, but something felt… missing. Some … thing that slipped through his mental hooves, like grains of sand.

“Ugh,” he groaned and tried to pick up where he’d paused. “Fifty. Fifty.”

Turning back around, feeling more in control, he saw Antimony had used her front hooves to force Ecdysis’s eyes open. The changeling was on the floor, her legs kicking weakly, blood streaming from her tear ducts. Antimony’s eyes, meanwhile, were wide open and blazing with an orange ingot-hot malevolence. As she worked, the braids of her mane came undone, whipping in the air behind her head and neck like an angry bed of snakes.

She truly was as much a monster as a pony.

It wouldn’t surprise in the least if her mane could turn into a literal nest of serpents.

“What sort of magic is that?” Lucky Star asked, delicately wiping ichor off her star sworn horn.

“A couple generations back, an ancestor of ours tore out the eyes of a catoblepas… a type of gorgon, like a giant fire-breathing bull,” Shining explained, counting down in his head. “This one here somehow inherited them.”

“Her foalhood surge must’ve been…”

“Terrifying? I’d bet. I heard she killed her first pony when she was still in diapers,” Shining recalled, his grin now comfortably back in place.

“There’s something else, though,” Lucky Star said, peering more closely at the Terre Rare successor. “I can almost see it.”

“See what?” Shining tried to see it too, narrowing his eyes but not seeing anything else amiss. Lucky Star was the tracker who had led them here, though, and Shining knew she had superior magical senses compared to his own. Senses that had been magnified by their transformation.

“Magic… like ours,” Lucky Star murmured, cupping her chin and pausing to think. “But all bundled up and buried. There’s a bit of it around her cutie mark, too. Skin-deep, like a brand.”

“But she isn’t like us,” Shining argued, gesturing towards the mare. “I mean, just look at her.”

“You said our magic came from… what was it?”

“The firmament,” Shining explained, and it was weird that he had to. Lucky had better senses, but no Canterlot learning. “The space between our world and the sun. That’s my guess anyway. I only took Intro to Esoterica back in the Academy, but I am a Captain of the Guard. I know enough.”

“The buried magic in her is like what we have, but with…” Lucky struggled to find a word. “Consciousness, maybe?”

“Interesting.” Shining ‘hmm’d. If it was what he suspected it was, it was getting him excited again. Maybe even it was why he had gotten excited before. Certainly, it was more comfortable to ‘blame it on the cosmic.’

“Twenty!” he barked, then.

Antimony twitched, clearly hearing him, but continued her work on Ecdysis.

“Fifteen, fourteen, thirteen…”

“You know, I’m hungry,” Lucky Star thought aloud. “Anypony want to get a hayburger after this?”

“Where are you going to get a hayburger?” Purple Rain returned from the fighting, shaking green ichor off his left wing. “I don’t think there are a lot of working diners in Canterlot right now.”

“Eleven, ten…”

“I can make a hayburger,” Lucky argued, ignoring the countdown. “I’m not helpless. I just need to find some ingredients.”

“Will you make me one?”

“What, for free?”

“Seven, six…”

“I didn’t exactly transform with my wallet on me, Lucky.”

“Alright, alright, fine. I saw a ruined Five Mares topside. We’ll hit it up after this.”

“Two, one!” Shining announced with a stamp of his hoof. “Hope you’re done in there!”

Antimony looked up from her victim, eyes still ablaze, only to quickly close them behind her eyelids. “I need more time. She fought me every inch of the way; I don’t know if I got all of them.”

“I’m sure you did fine,” Shining said with a shrug of his withers. “Now for my turn.”

“Where? Back here?!” Ecdysis came to her senses extremely quickly, quickly enough to kick Antimony away from her with her back legs and roll onto her hooves. “It can’t end like this! I have to tell--”

“Chrysalis?” Shining suddenly appeared, blocking her way. She tried to go around him, but the big stallion batted her down with one of his new wings. Like a flyswatter, he thought.

“Ugh!” Ecdysis grunted, forcing herself back up. Tenacious bug.

Her horn flashed, a moment before Shining’s right wing battered her into the ground again.

“Armor!” Lucky Star warned.

Shining armor grunted, seeing the attack. One last pair of drones had come to the defense of their Princess, and mid-attack, Ecdysis’ magic kicked in and enhanced them. They expanded, becoming copies of her, growing in both size and power. Shining’s dark-hued horn blinked, twice, with magenta magic, and the pair of attackers were caught in shield bubbles.

One bounced harmlessly off his side before hitting the floor.

“That was actually rather close,” he noted, and grabbed Ecdysis’ throat with his hoof, lifting her easily off the ground. “You’re one of Chrysalis’ daughters, aren’t you? The third one, am I right?”

“Ecdysis,” the Princess hissed, trying to cut his foreleg with her own chitin hooves. “You’re… Shining Armor… I… I came from you…”

Shining’s eyes lowered into a glower.

“I’m… I’m your daugh--"

Ecdysis slammed back into the floor, her sentence turning into a pained gurgle. Shining Armor mantled her, legs spread wide, lifting her inches off the ground and then slamming her back down by the neck. Again, and again, he struck, his eyes going wide and wild and a savage roar escaping his throat. The two other aether ponies simply watched on with amusement as their leader lost himself in an aethereal rage.

“Cousin!”

Shining lifted his prey off the ground one last time, holding her there. He turned to the voice. Antimony was watching him, standing close by, a look of disapproval on her face.

“Is there a problem?” he asked, baring his teeth at her. “Hmm?”

“We are nobles,” Antimony stated, simply. “Or have you forgotten that?”

“Yeah, thing is… I never really bought into that noble pony attitude, cousin,” Shining said, but let Ecdysis go. The battered changeling fell to the ground with a weak gasp.

“Always acting reserved, always composed, unflappable,” he continued, turning to her. His horn shimmered and a magical orb enveloped the beaten Ecdysis. “Don’t you ever get tired of it?” he asked, walking up to and past Antimony. “It’s all so pretentious! All so pointless!”

“We must set an example,” Antimony argued, watching him warily as he trotted around her.

“An example of what… exactly?” Shining asked, as one of his legs hooked over her back and rested on her left shoulder. He slid up next to her, leg over her back, like an old friend leaning on a drinking buddy. Antimony felt an involuntary shiver run down her neck and her jaw clenched.

Her eyes turned to him, smoldering behind her eyelashes. “You’re being overly familiar, Captain. Unhoof me. Now.”

Antimony interestingly stressed his rank rather than their admittedly somewhat distant blood relation. But then, as Shining Armor thought about it, it made sense. Antimony was noble, through and though. Rank and decorum mattered to her. It was worse for a pony to behave inappropriately relative to their station in life than it was for cousins to metaphorically kiss.

Shining felt that uncomfortable feeling from before, and quickly removed his leg.

“This will clearly take some getting used to,” he said, to her, and to himself. “But I got what I wanted. Time to go.”

“Good,” Antimony’s voice was even, unflappable, but he imagined there was just a bit of relief mixed in there, too.

“Oh, I almost forgot!” Shining Armor clucked his tongue and concentrated, his horn glowing hot, reconnecting with his existing shield bubbles. “Shrink.”

Across the battlefield, his shields from before began to constrict. It hadn’t been so long since he made them, so the changelings inside hadn’t passed out from lack of oxygen. One by one, as the barriers shrank, their hisses and cries turned to screams…

And then just cracking, crunching sounds.

“No! No!” Ecdysis was the last of them, and the strongest. She held out longer than the rest. “Father! Don’t do this!” Desperate, barely holding the shield back, she turned to the only other pony who could possibly help. “My Lady! Lady Antimony! I surrender! I submit! Please! I was only following Mother’s ord--”

Antimony winced but didn’t turn away as Shining’s last shield constricted with a crunch.

“One Princess down!” Shining Armor announced, waving to Lucky Star and Purple Rains. “Let’s get to work finding another one!”

“But I wanted a hayburger!”

“Yeah, we’re going to hit up a Five Mares after this.”

“Seriously?” Shining asked, sounding hurt and annoyed as the trio trotted casually back together. “Come on. Work with me here.”

“I’m helping out as a favor, Mister ex-Captain.”

“Fine, fine.”

And then they vanished in a blink of teleportation.

Left behind, Lady Antimony let out a sigh of relief and brought a strong but delicate hoof to her lips. A quick glance over her shoulder confirmed that many of her guards, and even some of Rarity’s diamond dogs, were still watching her uneasily. Others were retching at the mess Shining Armor had left behind in his wake. Antimony felt her own nausea rise, but all the same forced it back down. It was unbecoming and unwise to appear weak in front of one’s subordinates.

“Compose yourselves!” she commanded, turning around to address them. “Summon the sapper unit commanders and get me a line with the outside! We must move quickly! Canterlot is still in great danger!”

. . .

“You call that a kick?” the starry alicorn laughed, effortlessly catching Applejack with her magic and lifting the earth pony into the air. She lowered her front hooves, having just used them to absorb a fierce buck of the apple farmer’s hindlegs, seemingly none the worse for wear.

“Let me go, con-sarin’it!” Applejack struggled against the twinkling star field that ensnared her. “Let me go and fight like an earth pony!”

“But I’m not an earth pony! Not anymore, anyway!” the mare announced, sticking out her tongue as she concentrated on her newfound magic. “I’m getting a hang for this nifty unicorn magic! Multi-tasking is pretty hard, but it seems intuitive enough.”

Applejack twisted in the air, angling her hooves and trying to get a feel for the magic around her. It wasn’t that long ago when Yumi, Shigure, and her bunch had passed on a few tricks when it came to tusslin’ with troublesome unicorns. It’d only take a minute…

“You were an earth pony?” Applejack asked, narrowing her eyes at the starry mare she’d been fighting a moment ago. Her opponent had a dark yellow coat and what must have once been a pink two-toned mane, the color now shifted to the outline. A pair of bows in her starry mane had once supported ponytails. The mare’s wings, though, and her new dark horn, made her original tribe impossible to discern. The transformation seemed to erase the original pony before adding in the alicorn bits.

“You sound surprised!” the mare announced, looking up at the suspended Applejack. “The name’s Prickly Pear.” She pointed with a wing to the flower cutie mark on her flank, though it seemed to be framed by cracks in the skin. “What? Did you think I was a warrior? Or a fighter? Almost all those types got sent to the surface to hunt changelings. I’m a gardener. But now? Now it doesn’t matter!”

The former earth pony stood up on her hindlegs and laughed, triumphantly.

“It doesn’t matter at all, anymore!” she crowed. “Thanks to Lord Brass, we’re powerful! More powerful than changelings! More powerful than royal guards! More powerful than you, Miss Element of Harmony! We’re invincible, now!”

“Shucks, invincible, ya’ say?” Applejack sighed, defeated, and ran a hoof through her mane.

“Close enough to it,” the starsworn mare amended, still grinning in triumph. “Now, let’s see how your friends are doing. The Princess might be trouble but…”

Prickly Pear turned her head for just a moment.

She did catch sight of the other fights going on around the terrace: the seamstress turned Baroness, the Princess Luna, the pegasus with the rainbow mane… but there was no time to really digest what was going on. Movement in the corner of her eye set off an alarm bell, but she barely had time to turn her head back towards the source of the movement. It shouldn’t have been possible.

Applejack’s hoof had pushed free of the star field, indeed, about a fourth of her body was out of Prickly’s telekinetic hold. Applejack was visibly straining to do so, but that she had pushed through it at all was remarkable. Her hoof just barely brushed Prickly Pear’s forehead.

“Ehhh?” Prickly stepped back, away from the apple farmer. “You got free a little bit? Don’t know how you did it, but it won’t help--”

Prickly concentrated on her unicorn magic, but it abruptly evaporated, dropping Applejack back to the ground. Sputtering in shock, she felt something constrict around her horn, and reached up to remove it. Applejack, meanwhile, landed easily on her hooves. Her mane hung loose over her withers, and Prickly Pear realized the thing stuck around her horn was the red ribbon Applejack had been using for her hair. She’d got it loose when she ran her hoof through her mane.

“It… it’s not coming off?” Prickly muttered, pawing at her entangled horn. Magic sputtered out of it, unfocused and unrefined. “What’s going on?”

“First rule of fightin’ unicorns don’t seem different than the first rule of fightin’ alicorns,” Applejack explained, pointing to her head. “Ya go for the horn, first.”

“So… so what?” Prickly Pear snarled, snapping her wings out and starting to take to the air. “Even without a horn, I still have the powers of an earth pony and a pegasus! That’s twice what you’ve got!”

Applejack’s response took the form of a lasso clenched between her teeth. Prickly Pear’s eyes caught the movement, however, and she intercepted the lasso’s ring with her foreleg, preventing it from catching around her neck or barrel. The knot of the lasso tightened, catching her foreleg, but otherwise leaving her unimpaired. The false alicorn’s starry wings flapped, kicking up great gusts of wind as she tried to take flight.

“Come on!” Prickly yelled, gritting her teeth and flapping her enhanced wings even harder. “Come on!!”

Applejack took a step forward, wrapping a length of rope around her own hoof and foreleg. She bit down on the tense rope a second time, holding it firmly, and allowing her another step forward to repeat the process. With her jaw otherwise occupied, she had little to say, except to advance, bit by bit, against the gale-force winds Prickly Pear kicked up beneath her.

“How… are you still holding on?” Prickly yelled, starry sparkles scattering from her wings with every mighty flap. “Just blow away already!!”

Applejack coiled another loop of rope around her foreleg, reeled Prickly in another half meter, and bit down on the lasso again. Around her, pieces of plants, bits of debris, chairs, tables, and even loose bricks tumbled through the air, blown away by Prickly’s aether enchanted wings. Her hat, at least, flew off, but the farmer herself seemed to be rooted to the ground.

“Blow away!” Prickly yelled, as Applejack drew closer and closer. “I’m stronger than you! Why can’t I blow you away?!”

Applejack, finally drawing her opponent back into hoof’s reach, gave one last titanic heave, pulling Prickly Pear down to the ground, and then into a buck from her right hindleg. The false alicorn took the blow clean to the torso, but then curled in her legs to protect her body. Applejack let some slack loose in her lasso, took a step back, and then pulled Prickly back in for another hoof-strike. Like a yo-yo, she repeated the process, methodically letting go and reeling back in, bouncing Prickly Pear off her hooves, front and back, over and over.

It took dozens of blows, but Prickly Pear finally deflated and fell to the ground, landing on her rump. She still had her forelegs up, including the one caught on the lasso, trying to protect herself. When the blows paused, she let her forelegs fall to her sides, revealing a broken nose and a black eye.

“I don’t… understand,” she groaned, holding her head. “I have all the powers…”

“Of an earth pony, pegasus and unicorn,” Applejack interrupted, lasso wrapped almost entirely around her right front leg. She looked exhausted, but she was also unhurt. “Ah know. You’ve said as much a bunch’a times. And it’s true, ya got all those abilities… ya can hit hard as mah big brother, flap those wings harder than Rainbow Dash back there, and yer magic ain’t no joke either.”

“You’re just an earth pony,” Prickly groaned, glaring at Applejack with one swollen eye.

“But ah’m better at bein’ one than you are at bein’ an alicorn,” Applejack replied, looking down at the starry pony with a sad expression in her green eyes. “Ya don’t even realize it, but pegasus ponies and unicorns got weaknesses, too. Yeah, you’ve those powers, sugarcube… and all those weaknesses, too.”

“Weaknesses?” Prickly shook her head. “No. No… I, I don’t…”

Applejack took a step towards the fallen pony, and a little reluctantly, brought back her hoof to knock her out. Not that it was easy with this one. Prickly Pear had already absorbed a dozen blows. It wasn’t just her having the powers of an earth pony, pegasus and unicorn, either. Applejack understood her own constitution. If their places had been reversed, she wouldn’t be conscious enough to mutter to herself about her loss.

And then… there was something else, too.

Applejack, hoof still drawn back, froze. It took a moment to even realize why, as her brain caught up to her body. It was fear. Her body was screaming an instinctive warning. Prickly Pear still had her head lowered, her wings deflated, her horn sealed by red ribbon. She looked beaten, but there was something unnatural hiding behind the façade.

In a flash of memory, Applejack remembered once, years ago… when she and Winona had strayed too close to the Everfree Forest. It was near the farm, after all, and she’d gone exploring looking for wildflowers. By pure bad luck, they’d run across a wounded timberwolf. Winona, of course, had run after it, barking, and Applejack had followed to try and call her back. The wounded timberwolf, with a blighted front leg, seeing the dog approach, backed up against a tree and started to quietly snarl in warning. Applejack had managed to call Winona back before her curiosity caused a fight, but that look, the look of a cornered beast, stuck with her. And something about Prickly Pear was reminding her of that.

“mmrrrRRRAAAHHHH!!”

Applejack yelped in shock and fright, instinctively throwing her foreleg between her neck and the blur that jumped up at her. It was well she did. Prickly Pear’s teeth bit down hard on her leg, and to Applejack’s growing dismay, the former-pony’s jaws drew blood. Before she knew it, Applejack was on her back, fending away murderous hoof strikes and snapping jaws. It was like a frenzy – like a monster attack – nothing like how a pony would fight.

Not a normal pony, anyway.

“Gah!” Applejack barely juked her head to the left, avoiding another snap. She managed to tuck in her hind legs, pressing the hooves into Prickly Pear’s torso. “Get offa me!”

The kick that followed wasn’t elegant, driven more than a little by fear and desperation, but it worked. Just so. Prickly flew through the air, only to land on her hooves, crouching low like a tiger. A pale glow in the back of her eyes burned behind the retinas, leaving an eerie trail as her head swayed left and right.

With an inarticulate charge she pounced—

Only to be caught in midair, first by a familiar magical aura, and then by midnight blue legs that wrapped around her neck. Princess Luna’s own wings flapped, bringing her opponent down to earth in a choke hold. Prickly Pear roared in rage, struggling against the princess and the magic, her horn sputtering fire and her wings kicking up violent wind. Applejack watched in morbid fascination as the pale alien light behind her eyes dimmed and the former earth pony turned starsworn at last slipped into unconsciousness.

“At last,” Princess Luna said with relief, letting the body go to fall limply to the floor.

“Thanks, Princess.” Applejack wiped a bit of nervous perspiration from her brow, still sitting on her rump. That hadn’t been normal. She turned to look around, to check on her friends, and saw Rarity and Rainbow Dash. The two seemed fine, but they were also standing over an unconscious star pony, looking a mixture of relieved, exhausted, and terrified that it would pop back up.

“You are most welcome,” Luna replied, and offered her hoof.

“Ya know, she said her name was Prickly Pear,” Applejack said, taking the Princess’s hoof and getting back on all fours. “First Pear I think I’ve ever met. Granny always used to talk about our feud with ‘em.”

She looked down at the unconscious pony. “Ah wonder if… ah, shucks, nevermind. Just a flight’a fancy.”

Princess Luna tilted her head slightly, not quite following, she quickly moved on. “There is little time to dally. We must…”

Then, the Princess of the Night’s eyes widened.

“Wait!” she gasped, narrowing her turquoise eyes in suspicion. “Something comes. I know this feeling, this sense of--”

The dour Princess craned her neck, focusing her attention on a doorway to the terrace. As if to punctuate her glower, the oak doors shook with a sudden thud, the hinges cracking under the impact. Something was coming. Another thud, and the doors visibly strained on their steel hinges, screws popping and flying through the air from another impact.

“Whatever it is, it sounds big!” Rainbow Dash said, landing near Luna in a fighting pose. “Boss battle time!”

“My word, can’t we get a break?” Rarity bemoaned, trotting up alongside her Princess. She tossed her mane and a roll of linen cloth circled her protectively.

“No rest for the weary, ah guess,” Applejack added, rolling onto her back and then flipping onto her hooves with a flourish. She held up a hoof as she walked, snagging her Stetson and another red ribbon out of the air – courtesy of a certain seamstress – using it to tie back her mane as normal. Together, the four mares braced themselves as the doors finally broke, falling to the ground with a loud crash.

“LU-NA!!” a huge white shape leapt out from the darkness, wings spread and radiating light. “I found you!”

“Ah, sister,” Luna deadpanned. “I thought it was you.”

“P-p-princess…?” Dash stuttered.

“Celestia?” Applejack finished, also aghast.

“When? How?” Rarity asked, and seemed poised to say more, when her mouth froze. More ponies were emerging from the room, partly obscured by Celestia’s great white wings.

“Hey! Applejack! Rarity! Rainbow Dash!” Lyra Heartstrings trotted forward, emerging from behind Celestia and waving excitedly. A strange yellow claw of magic also waved at them. “What’s up?”

“Such a dramatic entrance, I--” the third pony was Rarity’s stallion, Blueblood, and he also seemed momentarily at a loss for words. Instead, he smiled contentedly, his eyes to Applejack’s right, where Rarity also seemed to be smiling slightly. “Hello there, my dear.”

“Blueblood? Is it truly you?” Rarity asked, trotting forward. “Really and truly you this time?”

“I was replaced, I know,” the foppish Prince replied, also picking up the pace to close the distance between them. “My dear, I hope it didn’t…?”

“It didn’t,” Rarity answered quickly, and the two seemed to say as much unspoken as they did spoken. The first of their two groups to meet up, both ponies slowed slightly, lowing their heads to gently touch horns. Applejack blushed a bit at the intimacy, rather unique to unicorns, but universally understood. It was like earth ponies touching noses or pegasus ponies holding wings. Rainbow Dash, naturally, tried to find something interesting in the opposite direction, while still sneaking quick stealthy glances at the couple with her red eyes.

“I was worried for you,” Rarity whispered. “The real you.”

“There is no real me without you,” the Prince whispered back.

The muzzles of the two seemed to inch closer, only for both ponies to fly apart as if burned.

“Oh!” Rarity gasped. “One moment, please!” She whirled around like a dervish, erecting a black screen with her magic. Her silhouette was the only thing visible, and Applejack could see her frantically trying to fix her mane.

Worse, she wasn’t the only one.

“Ah, same here!” Blueblood also seemed to be muttering to himself as he fixed his appearance, a cosmetics case materialized and held in a magical field as he quickly rubbed some sort of crème over his cheeks and forehead. A mint popped into his mouth as he rapidly tried to make himself presentable.

“Yeah, those two are clearly gonna need a minute,” Dash noted, straight-faced.

“Sister.” Luna meanwhile held out a hoof. “We are most relieved to see you yet live…”

Princess Luna’s eyes widened as her big sister swept her up with her white wings, hugging her briefly but still long enough to dangle the smaller Princess of the Night in the air, off all four of her hooves. Luna, clearly taken by surprise by this, chuckled uncomfortably, but with genuine amusement.

“Sister, we are not a foal,” Luna admonished, tapping her sister on the head with a hoof.

“I know,” Celestia replied, letting her fellow alicorn go but still grinning broadly. “It just… I’m just so glad we’re all together again. The whole family.”

“Indeed?” Luna inquired, seeing another alicorn emerge from out of Celestia’s literal and proverbial shadow. “Our niece, too? We are glad to see her in the flesh, this time.”

“Auntie Luna,” Cadance greeted her elder with a polite dip of her head. Applejack had seen pictures of the youngest princess in Equestria, but especially with her being replaced by a changeling, had never seen her with her own eyes. She definitely looked like a Princess, with that stately alicorn princess-look, but she also seemed weary and even more physically and emotionally exhausted than the other ponies on the terrace.

Applejack didn’t know any of the details, but she could imagine some of what the poor mare must’ve been through. She must’ve been rescued, or maybe escaped, but changeling captivity sure enough wasn’t going to be a trot in the park. Whatever had happened, she looked like she was near some sort of emotional breaking point…

“How’s it going, Dash?” Lyra asked, to Applejack’s left, amiably bumping hooves with the weathermare.

“Fighting monsters, cracking jokes, same-old same-old,” Dash replied with a grin, and followed up by pointing at the strange magical hand in the air. “Since when did you have that thing? And what is it?”

“Handy’s my new magical buddy! Apparently, I signed a contract that gave him my soul.”

“Uh... huh. What?”

Applejack was about to ask the same question. WHAT?

“My Dear! You are a sight for sore eyes!”

“Darling, you look wonderful!”

Applejack turned, and sure enough, Blueblood and Rarity had finished their 11^th hour preening, fixing manes, cleaning teeth and freshening breath, whitening their coats, and all the other frou-frou stuff the pair seemed to go nuts for. The two dignified ponies then spent a moment admiring and complimenting one another’s appearances before Rarity jumped into her special somepony’s forelegs, sending them both to the ground in a pile of nuzzling and kissing, quickly undoing all their work fixing their manes and coats.

“Aw, shucks,” Applejack muttered, quickly lowering her hat to cover her eyes.

Not that other ponies had as much respect for privacy this time.

Dash whistled, hooves in her mouth and wings flapping, and Lyra hooted with a goofy grin on her face. Even the two elder Princesses seemed to agree to pause in their reunion to stare, Luna with wide eyes and Celestia hiding a grin behind her gilded hoof. The third Princess, Cadance, meanwhile… she carefully walked around the scene, a perplexed expression on her face.

“Amazing. It really is true,” she said, just loud enough for Applejack to overhear.

“What is?” the farmer asked, raising her voice to let the pink Princess know she’d been overheard.

“Blue. Up until now, a part of me still suspected…” Cadance shook her head, pursing her lips and refusing to continue that sentence. “I guess, maybe, I just haven’t felt real love in a long time. Not this kind of love. Not outside the dream realm. I’m just in a bit of shock.”

“Yeah, well, not a lot of time for lovey dovey stuff with a war on our doorstep, sugarcube.”

“No,” Cadance agreed, but there was a deep note of sadness and resignation to it. “I’m happy for them. Feeling it… actually makes me feel a little better.”

“You can feel love?” Applejack asked, confused. “Like a ch--”

“Not like one of them!” Cadance interrupted, her burgeoning smile fading, but her temper still under control. She exhaled, calming herself again. “Please, understand, I’m not like them. I am the Princess of Love. If I can’t feel love around me, it… its…”

“Like me not having mah family or mah farm around, ah understand,” Applejack said with a nod of her head. “Ah know that empty feelin’.”

Cadance lowered her eyes, a flicker of some repressed emotion in her violet eyes. “Yes. That’s it exactly.”

“Nephew, if you are quite finished?” Celestia’s voice recaptured Applejack’s attention, and she saw the Prince and Ponyville’s new Baroness were both on their hooves again and looking rather bashful. Well, more Rarity than Blueblood. He was grinning and wiping lipstick off his muzzle with a disposable serviette.

“Finished? No,” the stallion replied with a sly wink. “Satisfied for the moment? Yes.”

“Uncouth,” Rarity murmured, elbowing him on the front leg. She bowed her head in due deference. “Princess. My apologies for the spectacle.”

“No apologies necessary,” Celestia assured her, still grinning behind her hoof, a twinkle in her eye. “I hear you’ve managed to keep our noble houses from splintering. It must have been like herding cats!”

“They are not so much trouble, Princess,” Rarity replied, but stood tall and puffed out her chest with pride at the compliment. “I merely had to remind them of their duty… and that rivals can still be friends, at the end of the day.”

Celestia turned briefly to Luna, who nodded.

“Baroness,” Celestia said, returning her attention to the former dressmaker. “Luna says you have her trust. Now, let me say you also have my blessing. You have more than earned it.”

Applejack tilted her head slightly, not quite understanding. Blessing for what now?

Rarity’s eyes watered, though, and she dipped her head again in a polite bow. “Thank you, Princess. I know what it means, now, to have you say that, and I am humbled that you would place your lives in my hooves.”

“What’s that mean?” Applejack whispered, hoping at least one pony would have a straight answer.

“The Platinum Crown,” Cadance explained, but also didn’t really explain. “It is at the heart of all this.”

“All well and good, Auntie, but we need to find the blasted thing first,” Blueblood interrupted, his napkin winking away in a puff of magic. “It may not even be intact.”

“It was broken before,” Luna reminded him, and stamped a hoof for emphasis. “But they fixed it, reforged it, though I thought such magics lost in this modern era. It exists, nephew, minus two signatures on the fine print.” Luna gestured to herself and Celestia. “We must find their Aether Forge.”

“I agree,” Celestia added. “We must renew our connection to the Sun and Moon, and we must find a way to save our little ponies.” She turned to look over the other mares present around her. “You have all seen what this transformation is doing to them.”

“Can we reverse it?” Dash asked, gesturing with her hooves. “You know, switch ‘em back?”

Celestia opened her mouth to reply, but hesitated.

“Perhaps,” she answered.

“No, it is unlikely,” Luna disagreed, ignoring her sister’s frown. “There is no point clinging to false hopes and impossibilities, sister. Our best-case scenario is a form of damage control. Our worst case is that every pony affected must be sealed… except even Tartarus could never hold so many.”

“I will not condemn tens of thousands of ponies to Tartarus, simply for wanting to feel safe,” Celestia told them, but clearly directed most of her ire at her sister. “I will not, Luna.”

“You may have no choice, Celestia,” Luna replied, and not to be cowed, she met her sister’s glare with one of her own. The showdown lasted only a moment before Luna trotted away from her elder sibling. “It is wise to entertain all possibilities.”

“At least we’re all together again,” Applejack said, trying to look on the bright side. “Well, almost all of us.”

“Yeah,” Dash agreed, trotting slowly over to an open space. “It sure would be a SURPRISE if Pinkie Pie were to show up right now!”

She then held her hoof up to her ear.

“She ain’t gonna just appear ‘cause you say her name,” Applejack groaned, massaging her head with her hoof. “That’s just silly.”

“You think so? Pinkie Pie, Pinkie Pie, Pinkie Pie!!” Dash quickly kicked over a piece of rubble.

Revealing nothing.

“See?” Applejack chided.

“Hmm. I guess.” Dash turned around with a sigh. “I thought for sure I had this thing figured out by now.”

“Oh, hi Dash.”

“GAH!!”

The rainbow Pegasus all but jumped out of her coat, leaping into the air at the unexpected voice. Applejack boggled, too, but with a little forewarning she wasn’t entirely shocked. Dash spun around, coming face to face with, not a pink earth pony, but a butter yellow pegasus.

“Fluttershy?” she flew over to give the shy pony a hug. “Where’d you come from?!”

“Oh, I uh, I flew in when I heard all the noise.” Fluttershy pointed back to the end of the terrace that was basically a balcony open to the air. “Pinkie said to hide near here last night.”

“Of course, she did,” Dash grumbled.

“Where’s Pinkie Pie now?” Applejack asked, and her ears twitched as she heard Rarity also trot over to welcome their demure friend.

“So good to see you, darling,” Rarity said, taking Fluttershy’s hooves in her own. “It must’ve been dreadfully frightful hiding here.”

“I had some animals to keep me company,” Fluttershy said with a warm smile of thanks. “But it was scary. All the ponies here… turned. Even a griffin transformed, down in the kennels. Everypony but me.”

“A griffin became one of those things?” Dash asked, incredulous, pointing at one of the three unconscious star ponies on the terrace. “I thought it was only ponies? What did she even look like?”

Fluttershy shuddered. “Scary.”

“I need details!” Dash protested. “Details!”

“Pinkie Pie?” Applejack repeated, hoping to steer the conversation back to something productive.

“Oh, she went down to the surface with Vinyl Scratch,” Fluttershy answered, while Dash fixed her with a betrayed look for want of scary-transformed-griffin details. “She said she was going to throw a party for Euporie and that if she didn’t die, we’d know.”

“Well, that’s helpful!” Dash shook her head. “How would we know?”

“I think she’s fine,” Fluttershy assured her fellow pegasus. “I don’t know how, but I’m sure of it.”

“I have faith in her, too,” Rarity spoke up then. “I’m absolutely certain she’ll pop up again when we least expect it. But what about Twilight? The three of you were together, weren’t you?”

Fluttershy nodded. “Yes. We crossed Canterlot and got to the radio tower, but a changeling princess was there, and she blew it up. We, um, we came here to use the Gardens instead.”

“You turned into a stallion, right?” Dash asked, suddenly sliding up to Fluttershy and playfully wagging her eyebrows. “What was that like?”

“Oh, um.”

“Were you a cutie?” Dash pressed, ribbing her. “Huh? I know I was super-hot.”

“Like yer pops,” Applejack couldn’t help but add.

“That was a slip of the tongue!”

“Of course, it was, sugarcube.”

Fluttershy, meanwhile, seemed to have turned beet-red.

“You were adorable, weren’t you?” Rarity leaned in to whisper.

Fluttershy didn’t respond, but she did hide her face behind her pink mane.

“I shan’t pry further,” Rarity assured her, though she clearly had her answer. The shy Pegasus had obviously been irresistible. “What was the rest of the story?”

Fluttershy happily changed the topic. “The spell worked… and Pinkie Pie used the confusion to leave. Nopony was sure who anypony was anymore, so it worked out well. I stayed. Twilight, though, other ponies were saying she vanished and ascended after the spell.”

“Ascended?” Luna inquired, trotting over with Celestia and Cadance.

Fluttershy nodded again. “That’s what I heard, Princess.”

“I suspected as much,” Celestia confirmed. “I felt it back when we were hiding underground. I don’t know how she learned the secret, but that spell of hers had to be five alliterations. That’s far from a guarantee of ascending, raw power alone can’t do it, but Twilight always had the potential. What I worried about was her getting trapped in the Vault.”

“Oh, no, she’s back.” Fluttershy looked up at the two Princesses. “I heard talking.”

Celestia sighed in relief. “That’s good to hear. So, she’s here?”

Fluttershy nodded once more. “Um. I think so, yes.”

“You’re wrong,” Luna said, then, a frown on her face. “This is not good news, sister.”

Celestia narrowed her one visible eye. “How is it not good news? Twilight is… oh.”

“Oh?” Cadance asked. “I don’t see how that isn’t good news. If we can find Twilight--”

“If Twilight Sparkle is here, then why isn’t anypony worried about her?” Blueblood seemed to have also figured it out, perhaps being a bit more attuned to pessimism than his sister. “To hear Miss Fluttershy talk about it, the ponies here were looking forward to her return, and when she did return?”

“They were happy to welcome her back.” Applejack also saw where this was leading. “You don’t mean…?”

“Aye. I do,” Luna answered, her ears folding back in dismay. “It may be that Twilight Sparkle did not come here just to use her mega-spell. It is likely she had a hoof in this transformation, and indeed, she may be here not as an ally but as an--”

“Don’t say it,” Celestia interrupted, turning away from the group with a swoosh of her wings and tail. Both were looking faded, far from their usual resplendence, but they were not gone just yet. “We will find her.”

“Sister?” Luna muttered.

“We will find her,” Celestia repeated, her back to them and her face hidden from view, “and we will set all this to rights. We will set Equestria to rights. By the Stars as my witness.”

“You have an idea where to go, Auntie?” Blueblood asked, and Celestia’s wings lowered slightly. It was clear she didn’t. They could wander for hours and not find this Forge they were looking for.

“Actually,” Fluttershy peeped, clearly hesitant to re-enter the spotlight.

“Um, well,” she gulped, as everypony, from Princess to weathermare turned to her. “I… think I can help with that.”

. . .

“Lady Twilight!” “Lady Twilight.”

The two guards standing outside Alpha Brass’s quarters saluted as Twilight Sparkle turned the corner. Like virtually everypony else in the Gardens, they were enhanced by aether – the ‘Starsworn’ she had heard the name making the rounds. These two mares in particular had already been quite tall even before their transformation, with long legs and necks but more muscular and solidly built than the usual princess-like physique. Now starsworn, they were even more imposing, standing like sentinels to either side of the carved oak doors.

Yet both dipped their heads respectfully as Twilight and Chalice approached.

“Lady Chalice,” one added, respectfully, but almost as an afterthought.

A floating eye became increasingly distinct, drifting in midair on unseen currents. Around it could just barely be seen parts of the socket and face, belonging to Eunomie Mosaic. This was her familiar, or rather, one of her many familiars, a magical homunculus called Galen.

“They are expected,” Eunomie’s voice came from the floating eye. “Lord Brass wishes for privacy.” The eye turned to Twilight and Chalice. “Chalice, would you remain outside with me, please?”

“That’s fine,” the soft-spoken Chalice agreed. “Twilight…”

Twilight already had one hoof on the door but paused before pushing it open. She glanced back at Chalice, and the other mare stared down at her hooves, avoiding eye contact.

“I hope things go well,” Chalice finally said, barely raising her voice. “I think my brother… needs you more than even he knows.”

Twilight’s smile was wan, but she nodded. “I think you may be right.”

The door opened before her, and Twilight entered.

Alpha Brass’ personal study was adjacent to his actual quarters: a circular room with mahogany walls decorated with inscribed alcoves of gilded gold. Three large windows, the middle one larger than the two flanking it, dominated one side of the room, looking out over a flowering garden of greens, whites and purples. Potted plants framed each window, jutting upwards with thick aloe-like leaves. Will o’wisps in red and yellow danced around the leaves, suggesting a less than mundane origin for the faintly glowing plants.

A ticking grandfather clock dominated the wall directly to Twilight’s right as she entered, the color of the wood much darker brown than the walls around it. It, too, was lined with etched gold and electrum. A half dozen paintings were on the wall to the right of the clock, the largest reaching from the floor to the ceiling, and the smaller paintings arranged three on one side and three on the other.

The largest painting was of a younger Celestia and Luna banishing King Sombra, notable in that it depicted Luna as the one striking the final magical blow, while a wounded Celestia recovered. Usually that was reversed, indicating that those was likely a very old painting indeed, perhaps second century, given the more simplistic proto-realism artistic style.

Next to it was a classical painting of a unicorn pony, her body limp, being held up by another pony, her face contorted in grief, while a third pony tried to shoulder the first’s weight. In the background, several tall graves loomed like black towers, and the sky churned in wrath. Twilight was unsure what event it depicted, but it was clearly a scene of great loss and grief, as the ponies struggled with what had to be a fallen loved one.

Another painting, this one an oil painting, was of a crowded hall, where a unicorn in a stately robe was teaching magic. Given the colors and clothes, Twilight guessed it to be the famous Prench astronomer and mathematician, Laprance. They had translations of his treatise on the magic of celestial mechanics in the Royal Canterlot Library, but it was a rare tome; her own library didn’t have a copy. Laprance was dictating to a crowded hall of unicorns, gesturing while his horn burned with orange magic. The ponies in the hall were watching him, talking, looking to him and to one another, one checking a book, and more. It was a lovely piece of scholarly art.

Twilight also recognized in the next painting an interpretation of the famous “Pegasus Bound,” wherein Pegasus – the mythical mother of ponykind – was punished for her gift of magic to her children by being dragged away in the talons of an eagle. According to legend, ponies were eternally cursed to search for their mother, but no matter how close they came, the eagle would always drag Pegasus away. In this version of it, a small group of ponies are struggling to reach Pegasus, hooves out over an abyss, or holding other ponies back from falling as they strained to reach her, while Pegasus struggled painfully against the Eagle’s cruel talons to almost brush her hoof with theirs.

Another piece Twilight recognized, in part, was a surrealist painting that looked to be by Silver Draylí. In it, misshapen limbs reached up towards the sun in the sky, even as they melted like wax. Next to it was what seemed to be a stencil, done without ink and instead sealed permanently onto the parchment with magic, depicting three ponies tending to a sick stallion. Two were mares, one trying to feed him soup, the other praying, while a stallion doctor looked on with an expression of helplessness and dismay. The sick stallion, meanwhile, seemed to be pleading with his last bit of strength, and Twilight got the impression it was for something much stronger and more final than a bowl of broth.

The next painting was less overtly macabre: oil on canvas, depicting a Saddle Arabian being startled by a lion half-in and half-out of the grass. The pony, though Arabians were tall ponies, seemed shocked and terrified, rearing on her legs and dropping her saddlebags. The lion, however, seemed only half awake. It had likely been napping when the pony came across it. There was a strong sense of irrational emotion in the piece, and Twilight guessed it to be a product of Canterlot’s Romance period.

It was quite a collection… as one would expect of a gentlecolt of Brass’s station in life.

The rest of his study, however, was less ostentatious and more functional. By an ornate marble fireplace were two comfortable looking couches, and further down the wall she saw a pair of alcoves turned bookcases, the books themselves kept safely in place behind glass along with a number of bronze and obsidian busts. A coffee table with neatly arranged flowers dominated the middle of the room, with two more couches, until one came to the desk to the left of the windows. It was plain wood, sturdy and engraved, but with no gold or other rare metals – earth pony craftsmareship. Alpha Brass stood behind his desk, not in his chair, his back to her as he examined a large map of Equestria and the world around it.

“Brass?” Twilight asked, hooves muffled as she trotted across the soft carpet.

“Welcome back, Twilight,” Alpha Brass replied, looking back at her with a warm smile. Like everypony else, he was changed, imbued with aether magic and in possession of new starry wings to go with his altered horn and hooves. His golden mane was now starry like the night, except for the outline, where the colors blurred. He was different, transformed, but still handsome to her eyes. He always had been, even back when he was just a picture in a book (maybe even more when he was a picture in a book) and he had the same small smile.

One other thing was different, too.

“You shaved!” she exclaimed, picking out one detail in particular.

“Well, I remembered you preferred me without the chin-warmer,” he explained, tapping his jaw with a hoof. “Too scratchy, right?”

“Beards make stallions look old,” Twilight told him, reaching his desk and resting her hooves on it. “My father grew one once. Shining tried to grow one, too! Emphasis on the tried.” She giggled into her hoof, remembering her brother’s fondness for his wispy little chin hairs.

“You must forgive us stallions a bit of experimentation,” Alpha replied, and rounded the desk. “You’ve become an alicorn, Twilight. A true alicorn. You’re beautiful.”

The compliment immediately brought a hot blush to Twilight’s cheeks, and she suddenly found her front hooves very interesting in the way they clopped together. “W-w-well, that’s not surprising, I guess. Princess Celestia has been the standard of beauty for a thousand years, and, and I remember reading in a book once about how she set an unreasonable standard for mares. It was – it was kind of critical towards her, so I disagreed, but it made some good points too, and, uh, yeah.”

She felt a little more adventurous back in book territory, so she looked up at him. “Have you read any books on that… sort of stuff?”

He shook his head, leaning a bit closer to her. “I’m afraid not.”

“You wouldn’t prefer if I looked like…” she motioned to one of his dark starry wings.

“No,” he assured her, placing a hoof on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t want you any other way than you are now. You are still you, all the aspects of you, in harmony. That’s what’s so beautiful. What I have, what I’ve given to others, is an imitation of what you achieved.”

The praise warmed her heart and when he dipped his head, she carefully brushed her horn against his. The contact was electric, as it had always been in the past, and set her heart beating a mile a minute. A part of her had worried that there might be some violent rejection or reaction, with the way his magic was now, but it was still the same as before: strong and steady, like an iron column, like a mighty rock, offering shelter against the crashing storms of an uncertain future.

It also reminded her… that they had to talk.

“Brass,” she said, savoring his smell for a moment before pushing away. “Now that I’m back, we need to talk about some things. Some things that aren’t right.”

“Yes. We do need to talk,” he agreed, and slowly made his way back to the map behind his desk. “But before we do, I have to ask: do you know who made this map?”

Twilight tilted her head slightly. “No…”

“You actually know him,” Brass answered, grinning over his shoulder. “It was our very own fifty-second Blueblood. He provided it to the crown just a few months ago, based off the newest surveys and other data. It is actually quite a superb piece of work, not just in terms of accuracy, but artistry as well. It has become my favorite map, of late.”

“It is a pretty nice map, big, too,” Twilight agreed, though she didn’t quite see what was so important about it. Blueblood was the Grand Veneur, the equivalent of a crown huntsman in other kingdoms, but for Equestria it mostly meant he handled the crown’s lands and saw to their sustainable use and preservation. Twilight had seen Blueblood at work a few times, mostly when he dealt with the Everfree or other nature preserves.

This map…

This was a much bigger map than usual, in both size and detail. It covered all of Equestria proper, with Canterlot in the center, Cloudsdale to the west, and all the many earth pony cities and settlements from east to west, connected by rails and roads: Fillydelphia, Baltimare, Manehattan, being the Big Three in the east, and Vanhoover and the semi-terrestrial Los Pegasus in the west. Approaching the Old Country in the northeast were the Duchies of Prance, Germaney and Whinnychester, and further still to the north she saw the Nhorse lands of Scandineighvia and Bugbear country, all the way to the Old Country itself, now an abandoned frozen wasteland, save for the Lost City of Tarpan, where an ancient tribe of ponies was said to dwell even today.

To the south, there was Bitaly, the lone duchy there just as Neighpon was the sole duchy in the west, off the coast. The map covered that and more: the southlands were even more of a mystery than the Old Country and the lost realm of the Crystal Empire, also far to the north. There were jungles and deserts in the south that ponies were ill prepared for (and disinterested in) mapping out. She saw Saddle Marabia, of course, and the distant Zebra lands across the sea, most of them unmapped except for the coast. Serpents and other strange creatures filled in the unknown regions, while dragon migration routes were plotted with meticulous chronological detail.

“This struggle begins with the changelings, Twilight,” he began, “but it doesn’t end with them.”

Alpha Brass used his magic to highlight parts of the map, starting with an area in the south.

“It isn’t on the map, but I know Chrysalis keeps her primary hive cluster here, in the wastelands, protected by an anti-magic field. Our victory in Canterlot will mean only a token force remains. We can capitalize on our momentum and crush them there!” He stomped a hoof, not hard, but just enough to emphasize his point. “Seizing the throne for ourselves. It will make for an excellent weapon against any future cosmic threats, like Discord.”

“After that? Look here,” he continued, lighting up another spot. “This one is on the map. Do you see this little trading city in the south, Klugetown? I have eyes and ears there. My network employs more than just ponies. According to them, the Mountain City of Aris, here to the south, has fallen, its Hippogriff inhabitants vanished without a trace. See here? Abyssinia across-the-sea? Also fallen. A warlord of the south called the Storm King is the one responsible. I don’t know what he’s after, but we must prepare for a confrontation.”

Brass’s magic spread to cover the southern regions of the map, blotting out nations and foreign cities. They were far from Equestria’s borders, though Twilight knew ponies lived in many foreign realms far from Equestria itself. Could this threat in the south really be a menace to them here, in the temperate north? They had mountains and seas and deserts protecting them. And then there was what he had said before, about the changelings. Brass had never before spoken about future threats after the changelings. Was it really that bad, out beyond the borders of Equestria proper?

“That isn’t all,” Alpha assured her, and his magic sparked anew to color the frozen northlands. “My astronomers, and others as well, are estimating that we are approaching the hundred and first northern convergence since the banishment of Sombra and the Crystal Empire. I have sent teams to map the leylines in the former kingdom, and douse for magic.”

There was a tremor in his voice, and he braced himself against the wall with a hoof.

“Just as I feared, just as I thought, the ambient levels of magic are increasing!” He pointed, accusingly, this time with his hoof. “The Crystal Empire will return. The signs are all there. That means a second Crystal War, not just within our lifetimes, but in a matter of years. Years!”

“That… that can’t be,” Twilight said, eyes going over the map.

Enemies to the south and the north? Equestria would be squeezed between them!

“There’s more, still, always more,” Brass promised. His horn lit up another area. “Yakyakistan. The Hermit Kingdom. Smugglers speak of a new Prince, and a desire to end their isolation. We must prepare to confront them on the border. It was more than six hundred years ago when the Yakish Khan invaded Equestria, and that was when we were arguably at the height of our magical power. Yaks are notoriously prone to declaring war at the literal drop of a hat, and I would rather strike first than wait to be struck. If they attack while we are already engaged on two fronts, it will be a disaster.”

“And here! Maretonia and the Griffins are realms in flux,” he continued, highlighting two more regions on the map. “They are our allies, for now, but Maretonia has a separatist movement that needs to be dealt with, and the griffins are divided… as always, squabbling like feathered foals. Equestria must incorporate them, as it did the duchies. Otherwise the instability will spread. We can cut them up into two duchies and a march, I think: Crown Roc… Griffinstone… Winter’s Fall. Shouldn’t be too difficult, but the sooner we act the better.”

By this point, Brass’s magic had spread across half the map, painting enemies all around Equestria, growing, closing in, like a lasso or a noose around their collective necks.

“And last, but not least, I hear that the reigning Dragon Lord is soon to look for a successor,” he seemed to be talking to himself, now, lost in his own world. “This is not good. It won’t do. The three most likely dragons to claim the Bloodstone Scepter are all potential enemies of Equestria. We have no choice but to--”

A hoof on his shoulder cut him short.

“Brass,” Twilight said, pulling him away from the map. “Just, stop a moment.”

“Stop…?” he scoffed, looking back at her with a cold fire in his emerald green eyes. “Stop? I can’t stop. This is all I have left in me, Twilight, this is why I exist. This is what I was made for. This is why Canterlot is on fire, below us. This is why so many have died! Ponies I knew. Ponies I respected. I killed them, crossed their names off a list, so many of them, and it was for this! This is our world, laid bare, naked, and without pretense! Enemies within, enemies without, and us… helpless… praying in the dark…”

He turned around completely, and there was a hardness, an unbending determination in his eyes, a dark parallel to the steadfastness and resolution she so admired in his magic and in his keen mind. Yes, this was a stallion who would stand against a storm, but he was also one who would always look for that storm… who needed the storm.

“Celestia never told her little ponies,” he all but spat the words, as if being a little pony was a slur, “the truth, of just how close we all are to extinction! Of just how precarious our place is in this world! Of how our weakness invites attack, like blood in the water. But I know.” He slammed a hoof into his chest, hard. “I know! And I did something about it. No More Little Ponies.”

Twilight lowered her eyes and exhaled, a shiver running down her neck that left her hair standing on end. No more little ponies. Brass had said that this was what he was made for, why he existed. Twilight suspected it was one of the few things that still felt right, that still felt good, after the changelings tore out his ability to love. But life couldn’t just be an endless struggle, lurching from one conflict to the next. Even if there were more threats out there, and she didn’t discount that there were, this was…

This wasn’t healthy, or right.

“I think my brother… needs you more than even he knows,” Chalice had said. Twilight understood, too, what Chalice had left unsaid.

“I saw Celestia and Luna’s thrones in the Empyrean Vault,” Twilight raised her voice and looked up, still standing close to her intended, but across a growing chasm. “Is this really why?” she asked, her voice growing softer, quieter. Her ears folded back against her head. “Why you didn’t fix their connection? Because you… hate them?”

‘Because you hate that you’re a pony?’

Brass didn’t answer, and that said all Twilight needed to hear.

“We have to save the Princesses,” she told him, holding her head higher. “Brass, listen to me! We need them. Celestia…” She struggled for the right words, to reach him, to make him understand. “Celestia is a good pony. She’s The Princess. If you just talked to her--”

“She’s just a Princess, not the princess, a princess,” Alpha Brass argued, his voice conversational, but without mirth or amusement. “Equestria existed without her before, it can do so again.”

“The Sun and the Moon--”

“You’re afraid of them running wild?” Brass asked and Twilight flinched. That wasn’t it. “You can’t imagine a world without an artificial sun and moon. But it existed once. This world is far older than Celestia and Luna. Far older than unicorns. It was unicorn pride, unicorn hubris, unicorn vanity… that is why we move the sun and moon! The world doesn’t need it. We do it for our own pleasure! For our own convenience! The celestial clockwork ticked before us, and it will tick long after we are gone.”

“Let the nights darken; let the sun burn hot,” he argued, raising his hoof to his face. “The Fourth Tribe can weather it all. I’ve come to think it actually may be for the best, to let some things return to a natural state. But...” He lowered his hoof and sighed. “I agree: the shock may be too much for ponies right now. I don’t want widespread starvation or chaos.”

“But make no mistake,” Brass clopped a hoof onto the side of his desk for emphasis, this time harder, with a lack of control he hadn’t shown before. “This is a New Age. The Starsworn will protect Equestria, and Equestrians! No more unanswered prayers! No more fear! They will be shield and spear, a guiding light in the darkness. In generations, when all ponies are star sworn, then…” He let out a breath, calming himself. “Then unnecessary trappings like micromanaging the sun and moon will be completely irrelevant… relics of the past.”

Twilight shook her head.

“Brass, no. No tribe can just replace the others,” she argued back, trying to make him see. “We are all ponies, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Even these new ponies. And we need Princesses. We need The Princesses! You don’t know Celestia like I do. I’m not afraid of losing the sun and moon. I’m afraid of losing her! And all she represents. All she’s given us! You say this is a New Age, but it sounds like the Old One we left behind, a thousand years ago!”

“All things begin and end, Twilight. All things.” Brass reached for her hooves, taking them in his own. “And it is the nature of things for children to replace their parents, for new ideas to supplant old ones; new generations may stumble, they may make mistakes, but they inherit, and they adapt, and they grow. Without this change, without the old making way for the new, all you have is a dollhouse, frozen in time. That’s not life. That’s not living. Worse: it’s weakness. It’s stagnation. And we have stagnated.”

“It is time for a new generation of Princesses,” he stressed, squeezing her hooves gently. “Twilight, I mean you. My Princess of Magic.”

“I know, but…”

“But not you, alone. Cadance. Chalice. Eunomie. Breaths of fresh air. Ask yourself: what is a Princess, and more importantly, what kind of Princess would you be? Do you think even Celestia herself wants more subjects, or more equals?”

Twilight thought, not for the first time, about that cursed question. She had told Antimony, back when that mare first posed the question, that to her a Princess was a problem solver. Of all of Celestia’s traits – her kindness, her patience, her generosity, her intelligence, her diligence, her beauty – it was her ability to see and solve problems that Twilight most admired. When she reduced the role of a Princess to first principles, the one indispensable factor of leadership and responsibility was that the pony needed to be able to see a problem, analyze the problem, and then solve the problem. Like checkmarks on a list, that was what a Princess was to her: the mare everypony looked to for help.

“You are Celestia’s student, but you aren’t her copy or her clone,” Brass’s words prompted her ears to flick, and she realized he was right in his own way.

She wasn’t Celestia. She admired Celestia, she loved Celestia, but she wasn’t her. For all her flaws and failings, she was Twilight Sparkle, not Celestia come again. She wasn’t Celestia, or Luna, and… and she didn’t want to just be a copy of either of them.

That aside, though, could they be… replaced, like that?

It seemed wrong. Wrong on every level. To imagine an Equestria without Celestia. But, looking back at nature, children did take the place of their elders in time. What would Sweet Apple Acres be like if Granny Smith ran it, forever? What would Applejack’s future be then? While Applejack didn’t plan to radically change the farm, not like when she was younger, she had spoken about some changes she planned to make when she inherited it. And she deserved the chance to make those changes someday, for good or ill. Applejack loved her grandmother, but she still expected to step out of her shadow one day.

For all that Twilight thought about her mentor, she’d never really thought before about Celestia’s immortality and what affect it might be having on Equestria. It was always just… there… an indelible and intractable part of being. A pony didn’t think about the sun vanishing in a puff of smoke. She didn’t think about the air burning away. It was always there and always would be there.

“I don’t know,” Twilight muttered, eyes downcast. “This sort of decision… I can’t… Celestia is…”

“Twilight, you’re an academic, aren’t you?” Brass asked, leaning in and lifting her snout so they were eye to eye. “That’s one of the things I most admire about you: your intelligence. Think about it. Why are ponies weaker now than they were a thousand years ago? Why are you the first in generations to use five alliterations? It isn’t just unicorns, either. All the tribes have gotten weaker. Why are we less magical than our forebears?”

The question stabbed Twilight in the heart like a spear. Why indeed? She’d wondered the same, back when she’d begun planning her mega spell, and again when she learned more about Arsenic. Even back when Rarity had her duel with Antimony. Why? Nopony knew. It was something of a taboo even to talk about in most scholarly circles.

“You can’t think…” Celestia? Twilight shook her head, violently, rejecting the very notion. “No! No, she wouldn’t. I know her!”

“Do you?” Brass wondered, letting Twilight go and stepping back. “It may never have been anything malicious, but it is what it is. This happened under her tenure. If a pony never stands on their own, what happens to their legs? They atrophy.”

He turned around, back to the map, before slowly making his way around the desk.

“War is coming,” he promised, sweeping a hoof over the map. “From the north. From the south. From within. From all sides! The truth is that nothing has changed in a thousand years. All the world is our enemy… and we are more vulnerable than we’ve ever been.”

Reaching into his desk, he pulled out a plain iron circlet, ringed with platinum and twinkling with ice crystals. He dropped it onto the hardwood with a thud, betraying the weight of the crown, physical, magical, emotional. Twilight knew what it was the moment she saw it. Brass left it on his desk for her taking.

“This is Our Platinum Crown,” he said, sitting back in his chair for the first time.

Twilight reached for it, but hesitated. This was what they’d been working for…

But Celestia and Luna? That had not been part of the plan. And the Fourth Tribe… there was something wrong with them. It was hard to say exactly what, but for all that they cheered her, her alicorn senses were telling her they were… wrong, somehow. She needed to double-check the research papers from before, from the short- and long-term studies done using torcs.

“Celestia and Luna are coming here, aren’t they?” Twilight asked, hooves resting on his desk.

“They are,” Brass confirmed, watching her with emerald eyes. There was curiosity in his eyes and in his tone, but also anticipation. “They are coming to stop us. To stop me. Maybe even to kill me. I don’t blame them; I’d do the same. But what are you going to do, Twilight Sparkle?”

Closing her eyes, Twilight thought back, recalling the faces of her friends and family. She’d been drawn into this whole mess, first when she trained Rarity to magically duel, and then when her family were threatened by the main branch Rares. Blueblood and that night in his study came to mind, and Celestia’s secret message back then, a mix of jocular and insightful, saying exactly what Twilight needed to hear in her most vulnerable moment.

The face of Twinkling Star Light appeared, an immensely powerful unicorn but utterly lacking in social or even family skills, looking to solve every problem with ever more excessive displays of magic. Twilight saw the dread pool that contained what was left of Arsenic, the tendrils of it snapping out to consume and possess her chosen successor, the result of one mare’s inability to come to grips with life’s twists and turns. She remembered her own breakdowns, her fears of failure and her inability to reconcile her cutie mark with her situation in life. She recalled, just hours ago, finding her earth pony and pegasus counterparts in the Empyrean Vault, arguing over the fire that was her soul.

All of it came down to this, and what she did now.

“Well, Twilight?” Brass asked, eyes closed as if prepared and at peace with whatever came next. “The choice is yours. What are you going to do?”

“I’ve decided,” she answered. “I know what to do.”

Twilight took the Platinum Crown.

. . .

“You’re being awfully quiet, darling.” Rarity gave him a gentle nudge as they walked. “Was it something I said?”

Blueblood exhaled in a not-sigh; his thoughts troubled. “Partly.”

The hallway before them stretched out, welcomingly, without any opposition since leaving the terrace. The long hallway soon descended into a gently curving gallery area, where somepony had a rather exhaustive museum of wax sculpted body art. There were ponies and griffins, hippogriffs and manticores, donkeys and dragons, all stripped of their hides and scales and reduced to red muscle and white cartilage and fat. The wax sculptures were posed, some by themselves, some with each other. There were scenes of lovemaking and scenes of fighting, pegasi in flight and earth ponies wrestling.

It was raw and primal and beautiful and terrifying, all at once, seeing what they all were on the inside. The exhibit went on and on, and though there was the occasional flap of wings outside, nopony and nothing attacked them. They were left entirely alone to continue on their way. Celestia and Luna took the fore in this, leading their group, and behind them followed Lyra, Princess Cadance, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Applejack. Rarity and Blueblood kept to the rear, which allowed them a bit of relative privacy.

It gave them time to talk, to catch up, and to trade stories.

“Partly?” Rarity asked.

“Well, I truly am struggling to imagine all those noble mares not at each other’s throats,” he admitted, a small smile on his snout. “Antimony, Sand Dune, Yumi, even Ritterkreuz… it isn’t just their own ambitions and animosity, these are families that have feuded on and off for generations. I can’t quite imagine them all getting together after this to model for you, my dear.”

“I’ve already made quite the fabulous dress for Lady Antimony,” Rarity countered, smiling wistfully at the thought of all those noble ponies in her hooves, so to speak. “She has a lovely frame, and such grace. It reminds me of Fluttershy, just a little. Lady Yumi has this severe look that would be just delightful to play around with, and Sand Dune… well, her reputation precedes her.”

“Yet the only one of them I ever really knew was Ritter,” Blueblood mused. “And I cannot imagine you subduing her long enough to get a dress on.”

“I think she has a certain… purity to her,” Rarity closed her eyes, clearly lost in a brief imagination-spot where a snarling pegasus mare wore a pure white gown. “Ferocious, but guileless, and true to herself, no matter what the world says. I find that beautiful, too!” She sighed. “But you’re right, I’m afraid. That one really isn’t the dress wearing type. Perhaps if I strapped some sequins on it and called it armor?”

The Prince chuckled, shaking his head. “Perhaps.”

“Now tell me truly, what is on your mind,” Rarity ordered, giving him a serious look. “I can read you like a book, and something bothered you when I told you about my dealings with those mares.”

“You really can tell, can’t you?” Blueblood did sigh this time. For a moment, he allowed himself to be distracted by a wax sculpture of a unicorn, without skin or coat, but holding up a mask over her face. It was an eerie juxtaposition.

“Alright,” he explained, dispelling the strange sight from thought. “I suppose I was thinking… before all this, that I really did want to spare you having to deal with those mares at all. I never really intended for you to be ennobled… to lose your old life… to burden yourself with the byzantine machinations and ambitions and greed of it all.”

He turned to her with sadness in his voice.

“You were so happy, back in Ponyville. I thought I’d have been perfectly content giving up my own titles if it meant being with you, there. But that was never truly an option; just a foolish flight of fancy. And I do enjoy being a Prince, but… but I hate that all this caused you to uproot your life. You’ll never be able to run a boutique, you’ll never see your fashion lines on sale in Mareis or Manehattan, and I wonder if you’ll still be happy without that.”

“It was my choice to become ennobled, Blueblood,” Rarity answered, using his name for a little added effect. He glanced back up at her after a moment lost in thought. “My choice, and I don’t regret it.”

Rarity faced forward, thinking back on all that had led her here: meeting Antimony, facing that challenge, becoming ennobled, struggling to be a Baroness of Ponyville worthy of her friends and family, and fighting, always fighting. Not just the duels, but the fight to prioritize her friends’ visions on the future of the town. The fight to do what was right, rather than what was easy. The fight to put aside one’s differences. Ruling was fighting, always fighting, for ponies, for causes, for funding, for allies, for legitimacy, even just to be heard.

Yet, she didn’t regret it.

“Blueblood,” she explained, having sorted and wound her strands of thought. “Listen. The boutique was important to me, truly, it was, but it was just a means to an end, not an end in and of itself. I can’t make money off making dresses, but I can still make them, still give them out as gifts, and still make waves in the world of fashion.”

“It is true, I’ll never have a fashion line,” she admitted, and it did hurt, even now, just a little to come to terms with it, “but the clothes I make, worn by ponies I call friends and allies, will inspire others. The boutique and the business, it was there to support the creativity and expression… the art. More than anything, I just loved the feeling of seeing others wearing what I made, and how it made them feel beautiful, or confident, or special.”

“And yet this sweet mare is also a wily negotiator?” Blueblood wondered, and Rarity shared his smirk with one of her own. “I will have to see it to believe it.”

Rarity fixed him with a vixen’s gaze, her smile more than a little predatory. “I think I’ve shown you my negotiation skills many a time, my Prince. When was the last time you denied me, again?”

“A totally different sort of negotiation,” he argued, coughing into his hoof and walking briefly on three legs. “A stallion like myself is all but held hostage.”

“Excuses, excuses,” Rarity giggled, also covering her mouth with her hoof for a moment. The pair walked side by side, trailing behind their companions, a light up ahead finally hinting at their destination. It occurred then that they were walking down, again, leaving the wax sculptures behind and descending somewhere new.

“I’m worried, too, though,” she continued, narrowing her eyes at the approaching end. “Not about myself, really, or about those noble mares or my boutique. I just have a bad feeling. I’ve had it since this morning. Twilight and I made so many plans… some have panned out, other went awry, but I worry about her, and the moment I saw this Sky Palace rise in the sky… I…”

Rarity shivered. “I had such an ominous chill. I wanted to tell somepony, but…”

“You didn’t want to appear vulnerable,” Blueblood guessed, and Rarity nodded.

“You must be strong… for them, even when your knees shake and every muscle you have wants to turn you around and run,” Rarity explained. “Because if you run, then who will be left to stand?”

“Mm,” Blueblood murmured, but nodded in agreement. “You know, you mares don’t get the credit you deserve, not just for being Elements of harmony, but for being brave. Even in the face of evil, you have a courage that defies reason.”

“Don’t let Rainbow Dash hear you say that; I don’t think her ego can take more inflation.”

The two unicorns chuckled, a bit of shared laughter that only intensified when Dash – paces ahead – turned back and gave the duo a sour glare and a hint of pink tongue. Rarity’s giggles were infectious, though she tried to mutter some apologies after her whispered, ‘oh dear, she heard us!’ and his ‘Heard you, you mean.’

“Rarity, this is it,” Blueblood whispered, as Celestia and Luna stepped down from the light, over what must have been a flight of stairs leading down. Somewhere up ahead, a pony was singing. It was a sad, haunting melody with no words, giving the impression of the chamber ahead being nothing less than another world.

“This is it,” Rarity agreed, and angled her horn slightly towards him. “Whatever happens next, we meet it together.”

Blueblood touched his horn to hers, even if only briefly. “Together,” he promised.

. . .