Twilight wasn’t sure when the smoke finally cleared. She didn’t fight nearly as long as some of her friends did—mostly she just wanted to get out of the way. Some part of her mind raged at the destruction of her territory—priceless tapestries burned, and a few thrones broken in various ways.
All the time we’ve been together, and I’ve never seen the girls fight like that. There was an obvious cause for all of it—their instincts. Instincts powerful enough that good friends could resort to… was it even fair to call it physical violence?
The destruction left behind in its aftermath hardly seemed like they’d been biting or scratching or whatever else foxes did when they were upset. Huge shards of ice had collected on one wall, piercing through the crystal half an inch or so. Leaf-litter piled up on the ground not much further, and that faint pink mist was only now starting to clear.
What kind of creatures are we? Earlier today, Twilight had barely been able to keep the instinct at bay enough to put up with Starlight’s experiments. But now—if foxes like them were as dangerous as the kirins, but with much less self-control, she needed to add some urgency to their return-transformations.
Twilight rose from her shelter behind a broken table, sensing the movement of every creature within the room. There was something cold not far away, with Rarity’s disdain and shock. Something pink and apparently unhurt was already cheerful again, and seemed to be heading back to the kitchen. Then there was something else, a void in the room where her new powers didn’t work. That would be Luna—impervious to her emotional senses, for reasons she didn’t understand.
None of them feel mad at me. I can probably get out without more attacks. That was proper, anyway. The struggle was over. Applejack had apparently been driven off, or at least Twilight couldn’t sense her clearly. She wasn’t the only one who was gone. Where were those little foxes?
She looked around the room, wincing at the size of the rubble. Little creatures their size probably wouldn’t have survived for long if they were the targets of violence like this. But she could see no sign of unfortunate canines crushed anywhere. Hopefully they’d done the smart thing and run for their lives.
Twilight rose to her paws, almost daring the others to stop her. This was her territory, after all. She should probably be punishing them for making such a mess of things.
Focus, Twilight. Get to Starlight. Nothing else matters.
She took a few steps forward, as though she didn’t have a care in the world. She felt a few skeptical eyes on her, and heard a few groans of pain. Then she darted off, dodging around the corner and towards the stairs. Obviously Starlight would be in her lab—nothing else really made sense. With such an important princess of Equestria transformed, the entire world would grind to a halt.
She was surprised to see guards waiting at the steps down, though they weren’t in terribly good shape. A few of these had been in the room with them when the fighting began, judging by their uniforms.
They were much too big for them to wear anymore, it seemed. Cloth and metal piled uselessly on the floor, with stunned-looking creatures either resting beside it or just now crawling out from within.
They were foxes, mostly. Her pony self probably would’ve had trouble telling them apart—but now Twilight had no trouble at all, and she could size them up by age and health and sex without even seeing them. A few were interesting, but not long enough for her to look twice. She slowed anyway, lifting her tail and turning her nose in disdain. They needed to know just how uninterested she was.
Wait a minute. She stopped beside one—a poor stallion whose fluff overflowed from his breastplate, and seemed to have trapped him inside. Orange and yellow, like Applejack, with heat to match. “Officer, how did you get like that?”
“You can talk?” He rolled to one side, the most he could manage from inside. “How the… right. I guess you always could.”
“Yep,” she said. “You just couldn’t understand. So answer, please. How did you get like that? Did Pinkie do it?”
“What? Err… I have no idea, princess. Once you all started fighting… I ran. Couldn’t get away fast enough, as you can see. None of us did.”
Twilight nodded curtly. “This is concerning news. I’m going to, uh… check on Starlight.” She slid past them. Probably these guards would’ve stopped her before—but there was no chance of that now. They didn’t even pretend to move, letting her reach the steps and hurry down a level into the more secure laboratory area.
She knew something was wrong before she’d gone halfway down. Princess Celestia’s glow, which should’ve lit the crystal even from most of the way up—wasn’t there.
She sped up, as much as she could without resorting to an undignified sprint. She hopped from step to step, careful never to let her tail drag on the floor.
Soon enough she reached the lab, and she saw what she’d been afraid of.
There were no ponies left in the lab, yet Twilight had no doubt that she’d found both of the creatures she’d been looking for.
She recognized both of the fox types by now—one was like her, a cat with a slightly pinker coat and a stature almost a full head taller than she was. The cat reclined on one of the chairs, as though whatever she’d been doing before was suddenly beneath her dignity.
The other creature looked more like Pinkie, a more elegant fox with little bows and blue ribbons. She’d surrounded herself with books, probably the same ones she’d been studying earlier, though now they were spread on the floor.
She looked up as Twilight approached, and finally smiled weakly. “Oh, thank Celestia. Please tell me you can understand me, Twilight.”
She nodded, stalking right up to the books before turning to look Starlight over. “I can’t help but notice you’re… not looking yourself.”
Starlight slumped onto her haunches, one of her ribbons closing the nearest book with a definitive click. “You could say that. I wouldn’t call it the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. I thought for certain that an animal mind wouldn’t have the complexity to support my personality and memories. But that’s not the problem at all.”
“It’s the instincts,” Twilight finished for her. “Yes, they’re powerful. Enough for ponies to do crazy things, apparently. My throne room was just about destroyed. Some of the guards who were nearby, uh…” She patted her own head with a paw. “Well, they’ve lost some stature as well. I don’t know how far the effects spread.”
“I don’t think that’s what caused it.” Starlight muttered, pawing angrily at the ground. “It was us. The princess and I… we were getting desperate.” One of the ribbons moved on its own, curling and pointing backward at one of Twilight’s most complex experiments.
Or what was left of it.
Twilight felt a brief surge of anger, fury that rose in her chest as fast as anything Applejack had done. Her eyes blazed, and for a moment she almost did something stupid. Then she took a few deep breaths, pawing up to the ruin.
This was going to be her greatest work, one day. Her own mirror portal, without any of the restrictions that bound Star Swirl’s own creation. No stupid rules about the moon, and no restrictions to just one realm either.
Now it was broken thaumium and shattered crystal, occasionally sparking around its melted edges. Flames had licked the side of the crystal walls around it, leaving a thin layer of ash behind.
“What. Did. You. Do?” Her tail whipped around behind her, fur raised high on her neck and back. Without meaning to, she’d exposed her sharp teeth as well, though of course she had no intention of using them. Physical violence was beneath her.
“There was no magic on anypony, no spells,” Starlight said, hurrying past her to the broken portal. She lifted a few of the broken gears in those weird ribbon things, trying to shove them back into place. Ineffectually. “But I was able to trace… something. I think maybe this thing probably opened on its own, only a few atoms across. Portals are unstable like that.”
Twilight followed her over. She had no way of sensing the magic that was probably raging from around this machine. She could feel the parts of it that were still moving, but that just wasn’t enough information to do anything useful with. “I checked it every few days, Starlight. But… sure, let’s say that could’ve happened. Why did you blow it up?”
“I didn’t! Err… okay, technically we did. But that wasn’t the point!” She pointed at a pile of shattered crystal nearby. “I prepared a thaumic pocket-compression, like the one I used to store my emotions. I figured I could grab a little of whatever had changed you all, then study it in its raw form.”
Not the worst plan in the world. “Except that… the thing that changed us was powerful enough to change an Alicorn. Three of them now, I guess. It looks like your bottle wasn’t strong enough.”
“Not even close.” Starlight brushed up the pieces of broken crystal into a pile, but it all slid away as soon as she lowered the ribbons. “But on the bright side… Celestia and I confirmed your portal was connected to wherever made us change like this! The bottle only held for a few seconds, but… when it broke, this all happened.”
She gestured at herself, then the princess. “I don’t know how far it went. Whatever it was, it moved so fast even Celestia couldn’t shield it.”
The princess finally stirred, opening one eye. “Far,” she said. “It was… highly concentrated. It might have crossed all Equestria. I don’t have the magic to check anymore.” Celestia sure had the poise and confidence thing figured out. She didn’t even get up from her comfortable spot on Twilight’s study chair, even when talking about powerful unknown magic.
“I don’t mean to be the one with bad news…” Twilight began. “But if you’re a fox, and I’m a cat, and Celestia’s a cat… we’re three fourths of the ponies likely to be able to figure out how to reverse the spell. If the magic reached Star Swirl…” She trailed off, expression turning bleak. “Equestria is doomed.”
“Probably,” Celestia said, closing her eyes and rolling sideways into a more comfortable spot. “I’m going to sleep on it. See if I get any other ideas.”
Starlight stared up at her for a few more moments, eyes wide with horror. But she wasn’t about to question the princess. Twilight couldn’t blame her for that.
“Okay, so…” Twilight made her way through the broken ruins of her portal. “Suppose… you’re right. It’s not the worst theory. The portal opened just wide enough to let in some kind of energy. We’ll call it… concentrated Eevee.”
Starlight raised an eyebrow. Somehow her skepticism and indignance was visible even on an animal face. “Where’d that come from?”
“The little ones say it. And it feels like the little ones are going to grow up into us. They’re the white light, so it makes sense to name the energy after them. Don’t nitpick, Starlight, I’m thinking.”
“Okay, okay! Sorry.” She held up her ribbons in front of her. “I was just asking.”
Twilight ignored her. “I think there’s… a chance, that we might’ve just helped build pressure between Equestria and whatever was on the other side. Think of it like… emptying all the air out of something. The atmosphere around it crushes it, and new air wants to rush in. Maybe if… if we can get the portal open again, we can suck all the Eevee back out. Wherever it came from.”
“Except… I broke your portal,” she said. “Unless we… recreate the time-travel spell? If we jump back a week, then break the portal before this happens…”
Twilight shut her mouth with a paw. “Both the creatures who can cast that spell don’t have magic anymore, remember?”
“Oh, right.” Starlight sighed, flopping onto her side. “What do we do then, Twilight? We can’t just… give up. Can we?”
“No!” Twilight levitated one of the pieces of her broken portal into the air. “We just have to fix… the most advanced piece of thaumic engineering that was ever constructed. And somehow get it to open with whatever magic we can find stored in the crystals around Equestria. How hard can it be?”
“Oh.” Starlight groaned, covering her face with her ribbons. “Mildly impossible.”