//------------------------------//
// Chapter 13 
// Story: The Witch of Canterlot 
// by MagnetBolt 
//------------------------------//

“Oh, Sunset,” Balthazar said. “I’m not sure you’ve met. This is a friend of mine--”
“Thanks, I already know her,” I said. “I think she’s friends with just about everypony in town, aren’t you, Arch?”
“Arch?” Balthazar asked, looking confused. “But…”
“It’s not her real name, I know,” I said. “I don’t really care what her actual name is at this point. Let me guess -- she’s the one who told you how to get here? She has to know, since she’s been smuggling wishes out.”
“You make it sound like an easy operation,” Arch said, defensively. “All I could ever do is scrape away at the edges. See, when they sealed this bad girl in, they made sure nopony who was a danger could ever get close. This place shows you your past, all the bad decisions you ever made, and it tries to kill you with ‘em. Even the ponies who were supposed to be guarding it all ended up succumbing.”
“The Aretic Order,” I guessed. “That’s why Sirocco couldn’t walk in with me.”
“Something like that,” Arch agreed. “Like I said, Sunset, I’m really proud of you! You being here means you’re, well, I guess it’s sort of like a zen thing, isn’t it? You have to be without want and understanding of your needs. Or something like that, I’m not really a philosopher. Point is, my wishes were too big and too strong for me to get through. I barely got away with those few wishes I stole, and even hanging onto them was a temptation I couldn’t risk.”
“Why? Whatever it is you wanted to do, one wish should have been enough,” I said.
“You’d think that.” Arch smiled. “You want a hug? I sort of feel like a hug.”
She stepped closer, and I let my horn light up.
“Owch, not one for hugs,” Arch sighed.
“You… wanted this?” Balthazar asked. “I don’t understand. You’re working with Shahrazad?”
“Huh? That kid? Nah. Truth is, she’s a total disaster. Can you imagine if somepony that power-hungry came down here? This place would eat her alive!” Arch scoffed. “Why, my reasons are practically selfless!”
“So tell me what it’s all about,” I said. “Tell me your grand scheme, Arch. What is it, some vague promise about making things better for everypony here? Streets paved with gold? A feast every night?”
“That does sound nice,” Arch admitted. “But… no. Not exactly.” Arch rubbed her chin and started pacing back and forth, only glancing once at the Djinn before purposefully keeping her gaze averted. “See, you might not have figured this one out, but I’m actually not from around here.”
“You’re Equestrian,” I guessed. It was an educated guess, though. Her accent, some of the things she’d said.
“Bingo!” Arch grinned. “I guess I bought into the whole Equestrian dream, ponies being free to do whatever they want. A thousand years and it’s still the most peaceful, prosperous place in the world. It’s because of ponies like me that it stays that way.”
“So what are you?” I asked. “Equestrian Intelligence? Some obscure part of the Royal Guard?”
“That sounds awful formal,” Arch said. “I’m just a pony doing what she can for her country. Making friends and influencing ponies.”
“And smuggling wishes out of here.”
“Well, everypony’s got hobbies. See, the problem with Princess Celestia -- and I say this with love because I do love the mare -- she doesn’t let people get hurt even when it would be good for Equestria. If the zebras want to give the griffons a bloody nose, she’ll step in and make peace. That sort of thing.” Arch rubbed her nose. “Saddle Arabia, it’s a tough nut to crack, you know? Lots of secrets. Secrets make a pony worried when they’re as big as a nation. So I came out here, I saw all those ruins and you know what I decided?”
“That they’re not a threat,” I said. “That’s not what you’re going to say, but it’s what you should have figured out. These ponies aren’t some kind of danger to Equestria.”
“That’s one way to look at it,” Arch nodded, not quite agreeing. “The way I look at it, they’re barely hanging on. Something comes along and gives them a push and things are gonna go bad. You’ve seen how dangerous those wishes can be, Sunset! Heck, you’re the only pony I’ve met who looked one in the face and walked away. These ponies have it bad. And all it’s gonna take is somepony getting on the throne and deciding it’s time to change the rules and all Tartarus is going to break loose.”
“If Equestria gives them aid--”
“You’re thinking too much like Celestia,” Arch interrupted, shaking her head. “Makes sense, what with her raising you. You’ve probably heard arguments like this all the time, but you were on the other side of them. The way I see it, these are ponies who have something very dangerous, and at some point that--” She pointed at the Djinn. “--is gonna stop being a way to feed the poor and start being a weapon. And Equestria will suffer for it.”
“You’re crazy,” I muttered.
“I have a longer view of these things,” Arch said, with a shrug. “I’m a little older than you, after all. All I want to do is make sure they don’t have a knife to stab us in the back. They’ll get plenty of Equestrian aid. Heck, if you do end up marryin’ the Princess maybe you can even arrange for them to become part of Equestria. Better for everypony that way.”
“I won’t let you do this,” Balthazar said. “Saddle Arabia isn’t just some animal for Equestria to tame!”
“How about it, Sunset?” Arch asked. “You’re gonna have to pick a side. Equestria, or Saddle Arabia.”
I shook my head. “There aren’t just two choices. And it doesn’t matter. You’re outnumbered three-to-one.” I pointed behind Arch. “Looks like my guide finally stopped having cold hooves.”
Sirocco Mandala stepped into the dim light. She glanced up at the Djinn and I saw the disgust wash over her face.
“Three to one isn't good odds for you," I warned.
“Aretic Order, put this mare under arrest,” Balthazar said, pointing at Arch. “She’s committed high crimes against Saddle Arabia.”
“I’m bound by my oaths,” Sirocco said. She reached into her uniform and grabbed a glass orb the size of a hoof, throwing it at Balthazar before he could react. Black, glassy stone flashed over his body, turning him into a statue with a frozen expression of shock, still pointing at Arch. “Otherwise I would have killed every member of the Royal Family for making pacts with this creature.”
“The way I see it,” Arch said. “It’s really more like two to one, with the advantage on my side.”
“What the buck?” I whispered.
“The Djinn needs to be destroyed,” Sirocco stated. “The Great Hunt was never completed because the Royal Family forced us to seal the last Djinn down here. My comrades lost their lives binding that thing in silver chains and spells and even its own wishes. I swore on their memory that I would finish things.”
“See?” Arch asked. “Making friends. How else do you think she knew where to go to clean up all those messes? Before you showed up I was trying to feed this thing one granted wish at a time until it could shake some of these chains free.” Arch kicked a broken length of chain lying across the floor. “That would have taken decades. We came up with a plan that was gonna keep ponies from being hurt because, hoof on my heart, I hate hurting ponies. Never a fan of violence. Don’t even like hurting griffons, and I still feel bad about how the Idol of Boreas thing played out.”
“The what?” I felt totally lost.
“Long story. Just another little threat to Equestria that got nipped in the bud. So how about you step aside and let us take care of this?” Arch nodded towards the Djinn, still not looking at it. “Tia likes you a whole bunch and I’d hate to have to send you home with extra bruises, kid.”
“I…” I hesitated and looked back at it. Ruby Drop was there. I mean, she wasn’t really there. It just looked like her because it knew it’s what I wanted to see. It made it look helpless. In a lot of ways it was helpless.
“If you don’t stand aside, I’ll kill you,” Sirocco said. “It’s not a threat or a bluff. It’s just a fact.”
“She’ll do it, Sunset, and you know it,” Arch said. “Don’t do anything stupid, you hear? I consider you one of my best friends, and I mean it. You’re a good pony and I don’t want you hurt none.”
“No deal,” I said.
“Why?” Arch asked. “What are you doing it for? Princess Shahrazad? That pony is crazy! She ordered those assassins to go after her, you know. They were just members of her personal guard too stupid or in debt to say no. If there’s any pony that’s a threat to Equestria here, it’s her. Don’t fight for her, Sunset, she’s not worth it.”
“What are you-- I know she’s dangerous!” I snapped. “She’s been playing me and Balthazar against each other because she wanted me to end up killing him! You think I’m an idiot that couldn’t see it?!”
“A little bit, yeah,” Arch admitted. “I underestimated you a little there.”
“I’m not going to let either of you near the Djinn.”
“I’m going to destroy it, not make a pact with it,” Sirocco stated. “You have nothing to be worried about. We have to act quickly. Look at this.”
She reached into the dust and sand on the ground and pulled up a broken length of chain.
“The djinn’s bonds have been weakening with every unrestricted wish that has been made. It won’t stay here forever. It might already be able to worm its way free even if we do nothing, and then it will escape and cause unimaginable chaos.”
“Some of that’s my fault,” Arch admitted. “It was sort of my plan A. Feed it until it breaks out on its own.”
“I’m aware,” Sirocco said. “Even so, this has to be brought to an end and we can do it cleanly now.”
“You live in the palace. How many ponies get life-saving medical care, or food, or water, or whatever else because of the wishes the King drags out of this thing?”
Sirocco frowned, not answering.
“Dozens every day?” I asked. “Hundreds? Even if the royal family bit down their pride and asked for help today there isn’t enough to keep this place together. They’ve been using wishes to give ponies just enough to get through the day. And that’s why you haven’t gotten rid of them before, isn’t it?”
“Get out of the way,” Sirocco warned.
“Make me.”
This was the wrong thing to say, because Sirocco was more than willing to do exactly that. She charged almost as fast as I could think, either because she was really quick and I wasn’t at my best or because she was really, really quick and I was in even more trouble than usual. I snapped a shield up between us, and she jumped and shoulder-charged into the wall.
Most ponies who charge at a magical shield just sort of bounce off, but she smashed through it like it was made of balsa wood. If I hadn’t put it up she would have smashed my bones the same way, but instead she only hit me with enough force to lightly bruise my skeleton and throw me across the room.
“Ow,” I muttered, from the floor.
“Stay down and you’ll live,” she said, with the same tone my moth- the same tone Celestia  used when she knew I wasn’t going to listen to advice. “I’m more than a century older than you and I’ve spent that whole time fighting.”
I got up and glared at her. “You look pretty good for your age. What’s your secret? Spa visits?”
“For one thing, I was smart enough to avoid fights I couldn’t win,” she said.
“Up until now,” I countered, before throwing a stun spell into her face. It was strong enough to take out a buffalo, and that was an empirical fact proven in an unfortunate incident involving sacred burial sites, an archeological dig, and differing ideas on the differences between grave robbing and research.
She took it on the chin, stumbled, and kept going despite the fact that the spell should have put her down for hours.
I threw another one at her, and she actually dodged it, dipping out of the way and moving faster than my eye could follow. She was in my face in half a second and I had the kind of unfortunate reaction you get when you surprise a pony who was really good with fire spells and not good with self-control.
The fireball went off at point-blank range and blasted us apart from each other. It was more concussive force than actual heat, but the air was still filled with the stink of burning hair.
I landed and rolled to my hooves relatively unharmed. Sirocco was more or less the same, if a little more singed around the edges.
“Okay. So much for nonlethal force,” I said. At least the fire seemed to do something, so I threw more at her.
Sirocco grabbed one of the broken chains from the ground, whipping it out of the ground and knocking my firebolt out of the air. The silver went right through the spell and shattered the magic, then she spun on her hooves and cracked it down towards me. I tried to grab it with my magic, and it was like it wasn’t even there.
The chain hit my side and I felt ribs snap. If I hadn’t had my saddlebags on it would have killed me. I landed in a heap with my cloak ripped to shreds and the saddlebags torn apart. I felt like a puppet with its strings cut, like I wasn’t even connected to my body.
Sirocco dropped the chain and took a step towards me. I couldn’t stop her. I couldn’t focus enough to cast anything.
Arch stepped between us.
“Come on, Sirocco,” Arch said, quietly. “You don’t have to kill the kid. She’s an idiot, not evil.”
I tried to get up, but couldn’t quite manage it. Every breath felt like I was being stabbed in the side.
Sirocco shook her head. “She had her chance. Too many chances.”
“You sore just because she got a couple good hits in?” Arch asked. “That ain’t like you. How about you just take your win gracefully and let me take her out of here and patch her up?”
Sirocco’s eyebrow shot up.
“She’s my friend,” Arch shrugged. “I meant it when I told her that. Besides, she’s Celly’s daughter. I owe Sunbutt a couple favors. Even if I didn’t, I couldn’t just go and take out her kid without a good reason.”
“This is a good reason,” Sirocco said. “If you don’t step aside, I’ll have to kill you, too.”
Arch sighed. “Have it your way.” She stepped to the side and motioned to me.
Sirocco walked up slowly, and I started thinking about what I could say for really cool, dramatic last words.
A swirling sphere shattered against her side, and she turned to stone before she could react. I sighed in relief because I hadn’t come up with anything cool, and also because I wasn’t going to die today.
“I hate having to do that kind of thing,” Arch muttered.
“Thanks,” I groaned.
“Yeah,” Arch sighed. “You know, this is gonna set me back years. I might not get this close to fixing up this little situation for decades, and if Princess Shahrazad does anything really stupid again, and she will, she might end up with one heck of a weapon and not a lot of judgment on where to stab it.”
“I know,” I said. I got up, which was more a matter of using telekinesis to lift myself than the fading strength in my legs. “But we have to give them a chance to do things themselves. I’m tired of ponies jerking me around, and I won’t let it happen to a whole country. They’ll make mistakes, but if we’re friends with them we can help when they stumble.”
“Yep, you’re definitely her kid,” Arch sighed. “That’s the kind of thing she’d say. Then she’d meddle anyway because she has a bad habit of saying one thing and doing something else.”
“That’s Celestia in a nutshell,” I agreed. “So what happens now?”
Arch took a deep breath. “We get these two statues out of here so they’re not stuck down in this mine for a thousand years. Then… well, this place only opened up because it couldn’t get a hold on you. You leave, it’ll close up again.”
“But what are you going to do?” I asked. “Give out more wishes?”
“Nah, you’ve got the last one,” Arch said. “I’ll give you a chance to prove me wrong. It’s the least I can do for a friend, right?” She smiled.
“Thanks. You know, you’re not going to be very popular around here,” I said. “Why don’t you come back to Canterlot with me? You don’t need to hang around here, right?”
Arch laughed and patted me on the back. Carefully. “Sister, even you ran away as fast as you could! Don’t try and sell me on that. But tell you what, I’ll visit when things cool down. Just make sure you go and apologize to your friends first. You’re a lot more fun when you’re not down in the dumps.”
I nodded. “I will.”
“Good! Now let’s get them back to the castle before I come to my senses. This is why I couldn’t deal with my old teacher’s buddies. They were always dragging me into weird stuff. Heroes, am I right?” She laughed.





“I am so glad you returned unharmed, my beloved,” Shahrazad said, leaning in and kissing my cheek.
“I’ve got like three broken ribs,” I said. The doctors had patched me up a little. I was still sore but it was amazing what a lot of really strong willow bark tea could do, and the thing they’d wrapped around my chest was halfway between bandages and a corset and was doing wonderful things for my figure and also keeping my organs from being stabbed with my own bones.
Shahrazad paused. “Relatively unharmed? Alive? I apologize. I’m still processing the events. Actually I’m not even sure I’m entirely clear on what happened. You returned to the palace with my uncle and the head of the Aretic Order turned to stone.”
“Speaking of your uncle, we need to talk,” I said.
She sighed and nodded. “You were forced to fight him because he was trying to seize control over the nation.”
“Well, some of those words are true,” I agreed. “I almost had to fight him. Can we not do the thing where you lie or tell half-truths and I get flustered because you’re really attractive and don’t ask the important questions I should be asking?”
“I hope you’re not asking me not to be attractive.”
“Also let’s skip the deflections,” I said. “I know what you tried to do, Shahrazad. You wanted me to take him out.”
“And you did. You saved Saddle Arabia!”
“I didn’t take him out. There was sort of a complex web of betrayal and intersecting plans,” I said. “There was my plan to try and do a good job so I could come back as a hero instead of a pathetic loser. Arch had a plan to free the djinn -- there was a djinn down there by the way in case you didn’t know -- and Sirocco had a plan to kill it and they sort of started working together. Then there was your plan.”
“My plan?” Shahrazad asked.
“The one where you were trying to use me to get rid of your uncle. That plan.”
“Oh, yes,” Shahrazad sighed. “Let me tell you a story."
"Shahrazad..."
"Trust me, my beloved, this is a very important story. After all, it's about the most important pony in the world! I'm speaking about myself, of course." She smiled. "It sounds as though you think you've found me out. Will you give me a chance to speak for myself?"
"I... okay." I sighed. It was probably stupid, but I'd had a bad day and she wasn't trying to murder me, so I was inclined to listen.
She cleared her throat. "Countless years ago, when the world was younger and wilder than it is now and the great old magics that had forged the sky and sea had not yet gone cold, Saddle Arabia was already old. It was a center of learning and discovery and a bastion of civilization.”
Shahrazad settled down at my side, leaning into me.
“Before the birth of your Princess, before the great winter that drove ponies out of the lands of Hyperborea and Olde Unicornia, the Royal Family was a nation unto themselves. We lived a world apart from our ponies, in walled gardens and palaces where the common folk could never tread. Princes and Princesses grew up without ever seeing a pony who wasn’t a servant or a member of their own family.
“We might say they were imprisoned in a golden cage, but they had no real concept of freedom. Have you ever seen an animal born and raised in a zoo? Even the wildest creatures become tame and timid and can’t survive in the wild, and that is what the Royal Family was like. Every moment of their lives was spent in ceremony. Rarely, perhaps once or twice a generation, somepony from the outside, some hero or diplomat, would be allowed to see them from a distance, to watch the dance of tradition and pageantry, and that was as much contact as the royals had with the world outside the walls.
“My great grandfather, though truly there are a number of greats in that title I am leaving out, was a prince in those days. Every day, the servants would usher him through his life and he lived it without agency. He would sign and stamp papers without knowing if they meant thousands would be sent to their deaths in war, or if he was rewarding a pony for curing a plague, or if he was simply agreeing to set the price of Zebrican tea.
“Gifts were also part of the daily routine. They would be displayed, a servant would tell him how fine the gift was, and he would sign whatever papers accompanied the gift. It was naked bribery, of a sort. One could debate if it was truly bribery when he would have signed anything put in front of him without question and did not value the gifts.
“One day, a gift arrived without a missive or begging a favor. There was no sender, no waybill, just an anonymous gift. Nopony knew how it had ended up with the others, but it seemed harmless and nothing was being asked of the Prince, so it was presented to him. It was a simple glass bottle, weathered and ancient and tightly corked. Something about it awakened the buried curiosity and sparked something inside him that seemed to wake the prince from a long sleep. He decided to keep it with him until the mystery could be solved.
“That night, when the prince was finally alone, he found it difficult to sleep. The strange bottle had been placed in his room, and he knew it, the disruption of his routine, was the reason he couldn’t rest. He picked it up, tried to see through the frosted glass, and finally shook it in frustration. To his surprise, the bottle complained.
“‘Don’t shake me so roughly!’ it said.
“He was shocked! The Prince dropped the bottle, and it shattered, releasing a cloud of billowing smoke. It twisted and tried to turn into things, halfway assuming forms and then letting them dissolve.
“‘Why can’t I sense what you want?’ it asked. ‘Tell me what you desire.’
“‘Oh, I see,’ the Princes said. ‘You are a servant.’ And in that instant, it took on the form of a palace servant, because it was how he thought of it. This wasn’t an unusual form for a djinn, as many ponies thought of them as friends or slaves or otherwise just a type of powerful pony, even though they are nothing like that.
“‘I can grant you any wish,’ it said.
“‘That’s nice,’ the Prince said. He returned to bed and started going back to sleep. The djinn was perplexed. It had never seen a reaction quite like that.
“‘What are you doing?’ it asked.
“‘I couldn’t sleep because I didn’t know what the bottle was. Now I do.’
“‘You can’t go to sleep when I’m offering you anything you want!’ the djinn was annoyed. It had arranged to be given to the Prince and thought it would have fun, and now it seemed it wasn’t going to get any enjoyment out of it.
“‘A wise man once said that to want is to suffer,’ the Prince said, quoting from one of the many lessons he had been given when he had asked why he wasn’t allowed to leave.
“‘Three wishes,’ the djinn said. ‘I will give you three wishes, and then I will let you sleep. There must be something that can tempt you. Beautiful mares? An army to do your bidding? Riches beyond compare?’
“‘I have all those things, I think,’ the Prince said. ‘I’ve never had much use for any of them. Others use them in my name.’
“‘Come now, you are wise, aren’t you?’ the djinn smiled. ‘There must be something.’
“The prince sat up and thought for a while. He really was little more than a bit player in an elaborate show, but like anypony who has been on the stage he gradually learned the other parts. He knew the way things were now weren’t the way they always had to be, and he could change them if he tried.
“‘Then I wish that you would listen to what I have to say, because there aren’t enough ponies who actually listen, and I wish that you would understand me even when I express myself poorly, because I know I am not wise enough to always say what I mean, and I wish that you would give me what I need instead of what I ask for, because in asking I am limited in what I think will happen and not what actually will.’
“And with that the djinn was bound, and its form as a servant became the truth, because as long as the Prince chose his words carefully, it had to follow the intent behind them and could not claim to misunderstand. Since it was bound to listen it couldn’t simply leave, either, and ended up granting him many wishes over the years, though it grew weak and hungry as he kept it from causing much trouble. Later, the Prince would become the King, not just because he could make wishes safely but because he was wise enough to wish for what he needed instead of what he wanted.”
“So only members of the Royal Family can make wishes safely,” I said, when she’d finished. “Anyone else who sits on the throne can’t get anything out of it.”
“Even you wouldn’t be able to make it work,” Shahrazad confirmed. She started rubbing my shoulders. “But I can make wishes. Ones my father wouldn’t. I can make them on your behalf, beloved, once I am crowned queen.” She rubbed harder. “You’re all knots.”
That’s because I’d tensed up a lot.
“My uncle is a statue and while we’ve been sitting here enjoying ourselves, it seems his assassins have had one last terrible success,” Shahrazad said.
“His-- you sent assassins after your own father,” I stated. I tried to stand up and she pushed me down. Gently. It didn’t take much with how exhausted I am.
“Don’t bother,” she said, still smiling, though there was more iron to it than I’d seen before. “I sent them on their task before I even visited you. By now, it is already done and we are just awaiting the tragic news.”
There was a knock on the door.
“Ah, and there it is. Would you get that?”
I pulled open the door with my magic. Flash Sentry stepped in. Shahrazad looked confused.
“Hey, Flash,” I said. “So I’m guessing it went just like you predicted.”
He nodded. “Yeah. The same bunch of assassins from the parade. We got them with their pants down. Literally. They were changing out of their royal guard uniforms and into their assassin costumes and gave up without a fight.”
Shahrazad gasped. “You… you…”
“Yeah, before I went to get Sirocco I told Flash everything,” I said. “He told me you were definitely evil and you were gonna try to take care of everypony in one fell swoop. I was kind of hoping he was wrong, but now he gets to say ‘I told you so’.”
“I told you so,” Flash said, smiling.
“How could you do this?!” Shahrazad yelled, getting up and backing away from me. “I could have given you everything you ever wanted! I would have had absolute power!”
The snarl on her face made her look like a different pony entirely. I’d seen it before, though. It was quickly replaced by shock when royal guards, ones that she hadn’t bribed or made promises to, stepped in and surrounded her.
“This must be just what Celestia saw when I was being a brat,” I said. “No wonder she didn’t think I was ready.”
“What are you talking about?!” Shahrazad demanded
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I really did like you. You’re smart and ambitious. You just need to grow up a little. I did. It wasn’t easy.”
She glared at me. “You weren’t even supposed to be here. I was supposed to ensnare Princess Cadance.”
I shrugged. “I think you’d be disappointed. She’s already involved with somepony, and you’re not her type.”
She scoffed and rolled her eyes and walked out of the room with the kind of poise and grace that could make a pony think she was doing it under her own power and not being taken away under arrest.
“Are you going to be okay?” Flash asked.
“The doctors said it’d be a few weeks before I’m completely healed, but--”
“That’s not what I mean and you know it,” he said. He walked over to where I was sitting and knelt down to get on my eye level. “This hasn’t exactly been easy on you.”
“Are you kidding?” I grinned up at him. “I feel great! Buck, Flash, I was getting jerked around this whole time and finally -- finally -- I got to be the one doing the jerking. You know what now that I’ve said that it sounds kind of perverted and I wish I’d phrased it differently.”
“No, it’s perfect,” Flash said, very seriously. “I’ll note in my official report that you jerked them all.”
I giggled. “Don’t make me laugh! My ribs are broken, you jerk!”





I managed to go almost a whole hour before disaster struck again, catching me in the middle of writing a letter to my friends and trying to explain everything that happened. When I say the middle, I mean the middle of the third try, the first two crumpled up and thrown across the room where the stupid words wouldn’t affect my third attempt.
Flash burst into the room, and he looked scared.
“Horrible magic accident or ponies being stupid?” I asked, before he said anything.
“Sirocco Mandala escaped from the palace hospital,” he said, helping me to my hooves and leading me down the corridor.
There were guards with weapons all looking in the same direction, which was also the direction we were going, so at least Flash was smart enough to be taking me into danger instead of trying to make me run away from it.
“She attacked the medics after she was… depetrified? What’s the word for it?” Flash asked.
“Vivified,” I supplied.
“She’s still weak, but she grabbed a guard’s weapon before anypony could stop her. Most ponies in the palace still don’t know what happened,” Flash said. “She got up to the Princesses’ room before word could spread. The guards just let her walk in.”
“Of course they did.” I groaned. “That’s the problem with these big plots. There’s so much trouble going around nopony can keep track of it all!”
“The good thing is she didn’t seriously injure anypony,” Flash said. “I mean, aside from you. The doctors found her standing over Balthazar but she didn’t attack him.”
“She didn’t?” I frowned.
“Maybe they got the drop on her before she could do anything?” Flash suggested. “He was unconscious, so it’s not like they were chatting.”
“Maybe. She’s still in there?”
“Out on the balcony,” Flash confirmed. “She’s threatened to kill Shahrazad.”
“Stay here,” I whispered. “I’ll try to talk her down.”
“Do you know anything about hostage situations?” Flash asked.
I paused. “One or two things, yeah. I can handle it better than the guards, and if I go alone, maybe she won’t panic.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Flash admitted. “Good luck.”
I opened the door the rest of the way.
“I’m unarmed,” I said, loudly, walking out to the balcony.
Sirocco was holding a blade. It seemed like overkill since she could probably have ripped Princess Shahrazad’s head off with her bare hooves.
“Sunset,” Sirocco said. “You keep showing up when you’re least wanted.”
“It’s a bad habit,” I agreed. “I won’t let you kill her.”
Sirocco looked at the Princess, then back to me. “Why?”
“We’ve already done the moral discussion thing, right? The one where you’re obsessed with… I think it was revenge for your fallen comrades? Honestly, it seems more like you just sort of want to burn the whole world because you’re unhappy.”
She glared at me.
“Hey, I get it,” I shrugged. “I’ve felt like that too! I know this isn’t what you really want. You’re just mad and making a bad decision.”
“Stabbing me would be a very poor decision,” Shahrazad hissed. “If the royal family ends--”
“The djinn you keep under the palace would come unbound. Or at least be sealed away forever.” Sirocco pressed the blade into her skin.
Shahrazad tried to squirm away from the edge starting to bite into her. A drop of blood welled up along the edge. “It would cause untold chaos!”
“Shahrazad,” I said, slowly. “That’s what she wants. Please stop telling her how to get it.” I looked into Sirocco’s eyes. “But she doesn’t really want to kill you. I can tell.”
“And how can you tell that?” Sirocco asked.
“Because you’re hesitating,” I said. “I’ve never seen you hesitate. You don’t immediately use violence, but you aren’t afraid to use it. That means part of you thinks there’s a way out of this without having to kill anypony else.”
“There is no way,” Sirocco whispered.
An idea hit me. A really bad idea. It would either work perfectly or backfire badly. The good thing was that I was sort of counting on some backfiring to happen.
“If you wanted to end the royal family you could have killed Balthazar in his bed. You didn’t. You came here because you thought if you could morally justify killing any of them, it would be her.”
“If she dies, the bloodline ends,” Sirocco retorted. “If there is no heir, my work will be done.”
I held up a hoof. “You don’t want to do that,” I said. “In fact, I can prove it.”
I reached into my saddlebag. Sirocco watched me carefully.
“What is it?” she asked.
I pulled out a small silver box and held it up where Sirocco could look into it, then opened it. Bright light spilled out of it, and she gasped in surprise. I threw the box into the air, and her gaze followed it. I used a transposition spell to swap myself with Shahrazad, taking her place and getting her away from Sirocco.
Sirocco reached for the box as it arced overhead, and I shoved her, making her drop the knife and knocking her off-balance. She stumbled toward the falling box without taking her eyes off it, which was the definition of a fatal mistake.
I don’t know what she saw, but I couldn’t grab her - whatever protected her from my spells in the mine kept me from getting a grip on her and pulling her to safety. She went right over the edge of the balcony with a hundred floors worth of empty air below her.
“I don’t know what you saw, but you probably should have wished for wings,” I said, looking over the edge. There was enough dust and haze in the air I couldn't see where she landed. Probably a good thing for my dreams. “It’s what I would have done.”
“You… you saved me,” Princess Shahrazad whispered.
“Again,” I pointed out.
“Yes, but this time it was real!” She touched her neck. “She cut me!”
“You’ll be fine,” I assured her. “Maybe it’ll stick around and you’ll remember all this plotting and scheming doesn’t mean much if you’re not making friends. You made enemies out of your whole family.”
“I didn’t…” She hesitated, trailing off.
“Yeah. You should hope they’re better ponies than you are. If your uncle or dad get the same ideas you did, you’re in a lot of trouble.”
I walked out, and found Flash at the door.
“When’s the next boat back to Equestria?” I asked. “I think I’m ready to go home.”





“...and then I spent a few days healing up on the way back,” I said. “My ribs are still a little tender but--”
Celestia swept me up into a hug, and I groaned.
“That’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” I mumbled, my side aching. “Ow.”
“I was so worried about you,” she whispered. “Every time you leave you end up getting hurt.”
“You should see the other guy,” I joked. “I’m fine, mom. I promise. I’m just sore.”
Celestia let me go and gave me a stern look. “You could have died!”
“Yeah. It was stupid,” I admitted. “I’m sorry for worrying you.”
“If Luna hadn’t kept me updated I would have flown over myself to bring you back,” Celestia said.
“If it helps, I think I saved Saddle Arabia,” I said. “They didn’t seem sorry to let me go, though. I think even if I saved them I ended up causing a lot of trouble and learning too many secrets they didn’t want known.”
“It’s an unfortunate part of helping some ponies,” Celestia assured me. “You sometimes end up hurting them a little to make things better later.”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “And I still don’t know what the deal is with Arch. Not that it’s her real name. Some of the things she said, it made me think that she knew you personally.” I looked up at Celestia. “Be honest. Do you have some kind of secret police?”
Celestia laughed. “Sunset, if I had secret police, I would have sent them to bring you back.”
“That… isn’t an answer.”
She took a deep breath. “No, Sunset. I used to have a covert group dedicated to dealing with monsters and threats across Equestria, but I closed the service down after Luna’s return. Now the Night Guard protects Equestria in that way. And before you ask, no, none of them are in Saddle Arabia.”
“Weird,” I mumbled. “Maybe she was a former student?”
“Before you and Twilight, I hadn’t had a student in centuries. The last time I had anypony with real potential it was just after Star Swirl vanished.”
“That long ago?”
“Yes. I did it mostly as a favor to him. He was fond of having… well, he called us students, but we were more like assistants. Star Swirl barely spent any personal time with us. He’d send all of us out on missions or quests just so he could have an excuse not to deal with things himself.”
“I remember you sending me to some far-off places. And if I recall correctly, Twilight has complained about the same thing.”
“I do it in the name of helping you learn!” Celestia scoffed. “Besides, you were always jumping at the chance to go out into the field.”
“I was jumping at the chance to make you proud of me.”
She coughed politely. “Even so. Clover the Clever was… different. She was--”
“Clover was a stallion,” I said.
“Not this again,” Celestia sighed. “It’s just like Commander Hurricane all over again.”
“Everypony knows Clover was a stallion,” I said. “I can go get a textbook right now and prove it.”
“I can do even better than that,” Celestia boasted. In a flash of golden light, a scrapbook appeared in front of us. It was ancient, and when she flipped through the first few pages, I saw things that could have made a historian’s entire career. Scraps of cloth from before recorded history. Drawings and diagrams of things that were supposed to be mythical. And then, finally…
“A photo?” I asked.
“They didn’t call them photos back then,” Celestia said. “It was called a heliograph because the intense light required for the exposure required the sun, which meant I was personally involved in the creation. And it took about an hour.”
“I can see why it didn’t catch on at first.”
“It took a few hundred more years for ponies to discover something that could capture something more lively than a statue. This image is a little blurred because holding my breath for an hour proved too difficult.”
“It’s also so faded I can barely see it,” I mumbled, squinting and trying to make it out. There were patches of light and dark but it was more like somepony had let silver tarnish and I was trying to make out a face in the blotches.
“Sunlight and magic made the image, and it requires sharpening from time to time,” Celestia explained. Her horn lit up, and gradually the image came into focus. It was like watching a magnet pull iron filings into alignment, dark and light shifting and gaining contrast and details.
Then I saw that face, and the smirk, and I swore loudly.
“That bucking--” I said a few words here I won’t repeat, because while Griffonese is great for accounting and contracts it’s even better for swearing. “Of course she’d use a bucking fake name! No one would believe her anyway!”
Celestia looked confused for a few moments, then surprise and understanding dawned across her face.
“She’s alive?”
“Not if I get my hooves on her,” I said. “Clover the Clever more like Clover the bucking annoying. Why is she alive? She’s got to be like a thousand years old!”
“Plus a century or two,” Celestia agreed. “There were always rumors…”
“Are you seriously trying to tell me she was your student and you just lost track of her?”
“She drifted away from me after… Luna,” Celestia said.
“And you didn’t go looking.”
“The whole world was falling apart around me. It took years before ponies stopped worrying that the sun wouldn’t rise in the morning. Decades before they’d leave their homes at night. Almost a century before I was able to get a decent night of sleep.”
“So what is she? Undead?”
“I’m a little worried you jump straight to the forbidden arts as an explanation,” Celestia noted.
“Well I’ve never seen a fountain of youth and I’m pretty sure if you asked a djinn for eternal youth it’d do something to twist it like… turning her into a foal, or a statue, or something like that. So unless...”
“Before you ask, she isn’t an alicorn. I’d know.” Celestia was firm about that, firm enough I knew she was telling the truth.
“One more mystery for the pile,” I sighed.
Celestia vanished the book in a flash of light back to whatever vault she kept it in. “There are always mysteries. Life would be boring if we got all the answers in advance, wouldn’t it?”
I thought about that. “I’d still like some answers once in a while.”
“Let’s look on the bright side,” Celestia said, perking up. “You’re back just in time to help with the wedding!”
“Wedding?” I stumbled, and Celestia caught me with a gentle hoof. Then it hit me. “Oh! Did Shining Armor finally pop the question-- no, wait, let me guess, Cadance just got fed-up enough to ask him herself? I warned her she’d end up doing it.”
“Unfortunately, Captain Armor is still working up his courage, though I’m told he’s been caught rehearsing his lines on more than one occasion.”
“Then who?” I frowned.
“Oh Sunset, you should know better than anypony!” Celestia smiled, one of those evil smiles that says she’s plotting something. “You got the first boat back, but the mail service is even faster. Do you know who was on the second boat out of Saddle Arabia?”
I swallowed. “Ambassador Vuvuzela?”
“Not quite. Apparently Princess Shahrazad is coming to stay with us. The rumors say she has fallen out of favor with her father, and after listening to your story I can see why she’d also decide to bring along, oh, everything she owns.”
“You’re joking,” I groaned. “You can’t be serious!”
“Oh, I’m quite serious,” Celestia said. “And ever since the news hit the papers I’ve received a number of letters from your friends.”
I winced.
“Some of them have been writing every day,” Celestia continued. “If it wasn’t for the fact they were being sent by dragonfire I expect the postage would be quite expensive.”
“So I should probably… write them back, huh?”
“Yes. And they’ll want feedback on their ideas.”
Celestia lifted her horn, and a portal opened up over my head, dozens of scrolls raining down on me until there was a pile knee-deep around me. One final, tiny scroll bounced off my forehead and landed on top of the rest.
“You can’t be serious,” I said.
Celestia smiled. “The heaviest ones are from Rarity. They’re largely dress designs and fabric samples. Twilight’s are the long ones with a list of numbered questions. You’ll want to sort those to find the most recent revision. Fluttershy’s have surprisingly nice hoofwriting. There’s one or two from Applejack, though she was patient enough to wait for you and leave it at that. Be careful with anything that looks suspiciously pink or colorful because it might explode with glitter.”
I sighed. “And Rainbow Dash?”
“Is included as a postscript in most of the other letters, because, I presume, she was too cool to write her own,” Celestia said. She lifted the smallest scroll. “This one is from Ruby.”
“I’ll talk to her myself,” I said. “She deserves more than a letter.”
“I’m glad we agree,” Celestia said. “But before that, might I suggest… a bath?”
I looked up at her and frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
My hooves left the floor as she swept me up in her aura. I didn’t even try to fight it.
“Sunset, from the smell I can tell that not only have you spent the last week on board a ship without running water, I can make a fair guess at what spells you are using to try and cover up how long it’s been since you saw a bar of soap.”
I sighed and let her carry me, going on about how worried she was.
It was nice, to have somepony worry about me. To be loved. 

I wouldn’t have wished for anything else.