//------------------------------// // Dead Reckoning // Story: Friendship Is Magic - Extended Cut // by AdmiralSakai //------------------------------// (♫) Armed and armored to the teeth, Rainbow Dash strode down the north road to Canterlot. Townsponies and Lunars alike stopped to gawk at her passage, but she paid them no mind as she continued on her way. For fake-midnight it was surprisingly bright, more than bright enough to see by, but she kept her Obsidian flying goggles over her eyes anyway. It was the principle of the thing. “Halt! Thou canst not go this way!” shouted a unicorn in officer’s light plate, standing in the middle of a wedge formation with two skeletal, bat-winged pegasi to either side and the shambling remains of an earth pony and another unicorn shoulder-to-shoulder directly in front of her. Rainbow Dash kept right on walking. The two grounders in front advanced in eerie lockstep, polearms held in teeth and telekinesis with obvious threatening intent. The things that had once been pegasi lifted off into a low hover, moonlight glinting on an assortment of small wearable blades. Their faces, to the degree that any of them still had faces, remained utterly blank, but the unicorn officer’s eyes narrowed and her lips pulled back ever so slightly from her muzzle. “Halt, I say! I shant give thee another warning!” “Heard ya the first time,” Rainbow Dash snapped. She sprung forward, half-bounding and half-flying, ducked under the swing of the unicorn revenant’s poleaxe, and came up to slash one steel-bladed wing hard across its neck. Its flesh felt dry and papery, offering little resistance, and Dash heard the poleaxe slam into the dirt as the telekinetic field holding it abruptly cut off. “A pegasus on the North Road!” the officer called, firing off a bright purple light from her horn, and Rainbow had to roll away as the earth pony revenant slammed a rusted claymore nearly as long as she was into the cobblestones where she had just been. She turned the roll into a jump as soon as her hooves were under her, then beat her wings and pulled up into a tight vertical loop that brought her up and over the other pony, buying her the second or so needed to draw her sheathed charger’s sabre in her teeth. On her way down she jammed the blade into the revenant’s neck just in front of the segmented neckpiece of its armor. Rainbow had expected the blade to once again slice cleanly through the reanimated Lunar’s stringy flesh, but instead she had to bite back a snarl of surprise and pain as instead it caught on something and the mouthgrip twisted in her jaws. Her head was wrenched sideways and her entire body followed, but the revenant was still moving- she barely managed to avoid the ground as the earth pony took another swing at her, abandoning her grip on her sabre in the process. It was an acceptable loss; when all of this was over, she could always order another one out of the back of Soldier of Fortune Magazine. She caught sight of the unicorn officer’s hornlight and ducked back downward, barely managing to dodge the worst of a conical blast of luminous, magical ice fragments. A few still hit, stingingly cold as they froze little circles of mundane frost on her mail, but the quilted padding she wore underneath seemed to hold back the worst of it. A lot more hit the earth pony, but if it was in any way bothered it gave no sign. “Hey! No… fair… usin’… magic!” Realizing she was in a potentially bad situation, Dash flapped hard for altitude while her hoof groped for the flash-and-smoke capsule stashed in her bandoleer, already feeling the weird prickly-slippery sensation of a telekinetic field beginning to pull her back down towards the earth pony’s waiting blade. She abruptly leaned into the field and started what should have looked like a strafing dive just as she tossed the capsule away, but she needn’t have bothered with a distraction- the unicorn didn’t seem to recognize what the capsule was, and made no effort either to catch it or flee the blast radius. Dash still had enough freedom of motion left to wrench her head around away from it when it went off and close her eyes, but the officer wasn’t so lucky. She cried out in what seemed like genuine agony when the flash washed over the street, vanishing into a cloud of thick gray smoke and screaming something about the half-breed spawn of the Tyrant Celestia. “Yeah, it’s not so fun on the other end, huh?!” Rainbow pulled back up, leaving the earth pony revenant behind and tossing a pair of her throwing daggers at it for good measure. She was about to throw two more into the center of the smoke cloud when the first bat-pegasus came corkscrewing at her from her right. She pulled her wings in and barely managed to dive under it, rolling and extending a wingblade to slice open its barrel from sternum to pelvis, but the only reaction it gave was to slam an armored hoof into her helmet. Dizzy and seeing dots, she was almost too late to notice the other bat-pony gliding up on her right- whatever else they were, the damn things were quiet. Wing muscles straining, Dash flew full-out for the center of town, making it perhaps a dozen yards or so, and as soon as her head was clear she realized the revenants were falling behind. Sensing an advantage she slowed down again, flaring her wings out as though to brake, and as soon as the revenant that had tried to flank her blew past she pivoted as quickly as she could and met it wing-for-wing. She felt a moment of solid resistance and heard a sound like canvas ripping, and then watched as the revenant’s right wing and the rest of its body spiraled down to the road below on ever-more-divergent trajectories. A wild blast of ice shards slammed into the cottage beneath her, and Dash realized the smoke she’d dropped was already starting to clear. The other revenant was trying to climb up to her, but its flight was uneven; its plate armor had come loose and started to wobble where Dash had cut the straps, and the blue pegasus held back a retch as it slid off entirely to reveal the nearly skinless, charred backbone underneath. She caught sight of the earth pony still gazing up at her from below, positioned herself, and then pulled into a steep dive. Air whistled past her ears as the bat-revenant’s figure grew larger and larger with incredible speed, then at the very last second before collision Dash flipped herself around so that she was falling hindlegs-first and bucked it right in the wing joints. The feeling was not unlike treading on a canvas sack filled with dried leaves and a few sturdier branches. The revenant crumpled beneath her and she kept on going; its earth pony companion put up only slightly more resistance when she powered into it, but Rainbow wasn’t done yet. Her back legs touched the road only for a moment before she sprung forward directly towards the mare in the officer’s armor, rolling and zigzagging to dodge the quill-thin rays of cold the unicorn fired one after the other. A particularly close call froze a lock of her mane solid, leaving it to break off in the wind a second later, and when the unicorn’s horn glowed again Rainbow didn’t even bother to change course. Instead she brought her left wingblade up across her chest, and watched the frustration on the unicorn’s face turn to shock as her beam reflected harmlessly off the enchanted metal. Then Dash made contact, head-first. The unicorn didn’t have much chance to avoid being knocked clean off her hooves by the impact, sending them both rolling back ten feet or more in a tangle of limbs and equipment- for all of her gear, the officer was surprisingly light, and Rainbow was reasonably certain she had felt one of the other mare’s ribs give way on impact. Hard cobblestones slammed into Rainbow’s wings and back in alternating sequence, but she refused to give up the hold she’d gotten, and when they finally skidded to a halt the pegasus was on top. The officer snarled inarticulately and began charging another spell, but Dash had been expecting that. She slammed an armored hoof into the unicorn’s weird bent horn once, twice, three times in quick succession until its magical glow sputtered and died. The Lunar took a wild swipe at her face with a forehoof after that, but Dash caught it with her wingblade and was rewarded with a yowl of pain and a spray of hot, red blood. She drew back the same blade, aiming for the Lunar’s throat, when the mare’s slitted eyes refocused on something directly behind her and she suddenly called out “Please! I… yield!” Cautiously, Rainbow lowered the blade so that there was about a hoof’s-length of clearance between it and her opponent’s neck. She flicked it upward, motioning for the unicorn to get up, but the Lunar just winced and rolled over onto her side, breathing fast and ragged. Looking up from her, Rainbow Dash found the road to be packed with townsponies, all of them staring at her as though she’d just sprouted a second set of wings. “These Lunars aren’t so tough,” she yelled, then forced out some laughter that she hoped didn’t sound too nervous. “C’mon, who’s next?!” “That would be I,” came a voice from above her. The stallion it belonged to was unmistakably a Lunar- his freakish, bat-like wings didn’t allow him to be much else- but that was where the similarities to his brethren ended. Instead of the ubiquitous astral steel armor, he was clad in a form-fitting purple coverall of some flexible, elastic material that left only his muzzle and ears exposed, putting Dash in the mind of a cruder version of the starspider-silk suits worn by dedicated maneuverability fliers. A harness and belt of thin leather kept any number of deadly little sharp things close at hoof, and his eyes were hidden behind a pair of yellow-tinted goggles given an aggressive downward slant. He just hovered there at about rooftop level, over the Canterlot end of the road, and Rainbow Dash developed the strangest sense that if she just stayed on the ground and walked out of town he wouldn’t raise of hoof to stop her. The other Lunars even now shouldering their way through the crowd very likely would, though, so once again she beat her wings and took to the air. The two pegasi began to slowly circle each other perhaps a body-length apart, trading little jabs and half-kicks without making any serious attempt to connect. Idly, Dash noted that however she turned, the Lunar always kept himself between her and the way out of town. “What are you, anyway,” she sneered, “Some kinda’ Nightmare-knockoff Wonderbolt?” “Oh, is that the name the Sun-Tyrant’s given us? I see the passage of a thousand years has done little to dull her arrogance.” “Hey, you’re the one who’s dressing up like some of our best and bravest, you bat-winged freak.” The Lunar just shook his head slightly, then almost managed to catch Dash with a right-hoof jab at her wing before pulling back at the last second. “They truly have told thee nothing of thine own history, have they? A pity, but perhaps when this is all over thou will understand that the Shadowbolts were, indeed, the first.” “The… uhh… only pity here’s what you’re gonna look like if you don’t get outta my way,” Rainbow snapped. “Enough.” The stallion calling himself a ‘Shadowbolt’ began to pull his wings in and tilt forward, in preparation to dive at her. Rainbow didn’t give him the chance, and threw herself towards him with a rapid-fire series of kicks, punches, and more complicated strikes she’d been practicing ever since Physical Culture ran that article on lost Zebrican martial arts. He was able to dodge most and block the rest, but they kept him busy, and before long he brought his right forehoof up just a fraction too slowly to stop Dash’s own from slamming into his shoulder. She pressed the brief advantage and powered herself forward, catching the Shadowbolt in a four-leg tackle, the both of them thrashing wildly to try to stay in the air. “Guess… ya… ain’t… such… hot… stuff… after all…” Rainbow snarled through gritted teeth as she fought to keep a hold of him and get him into a position where she could put a wingblade between them. The Lunar just laughed, reared back, and headbutted her right under the brim of her helmet. Dash reeled back in pain, feeling blood start to pool in her mouth, as her vision was covered in a spiderweb of white cracks and the green glow of her goggles’ night-vision enchantment guttered out completely. Half-blind and dizzy she felt the both of them tumbling increasingly out of control, but refused to let go of her quarry. Instead she redoubled her struggles, and slammed her free left front hoof into his shoulders and throat over and over again. Then, impossibly, the pony she was holding onto seemed to soften and lose solidity, leather and flesh alike becoming hazy and insubstantial, even as she tightened her grip with a fury borne of desperation. First Rainbow’s hooves and then her entire body slipped into what felt not unlike a dense raincloud, if rainclouds were oily and cloyingly, coat-crawlingly warm. The sensation vanished a moment later and Dash realized with a shudder of disgust that she had just, somehow, fallen through the Shadowbolt. Her hooves fumbled with the quick-release catches on her helmet, finally managing to rid herself of her ruined flight goggles just in time to catch a purple, vaguely equine shape compacting and solidifying right next to her right flank. She tried to turn her rapidly-increasing downward velocity into a barrel roll out of the way, but the Shadowbolt seemed to anticipate that and drifted sideways with her, extending a bladed wing of his own and drawing a long, shallow slash down her unarmored right hock. The blue pegasus howled, more in fury than in pain, and dove full-out for the street below. She pulled up with only a yard or so to spare and quickly backpedaled, watching the other pony gently descend to her level and spitting out the blood that stubbornly refused to stop accumulating in her mouth. He didn’t draw any closer and the both of them gradually rose back up above the rooftops, breathing heavily and struggling to match each other’s altitude. Thinking quickly, Dash reached into her bandoleer, extracted the last two throwing daggers she had, and tossed both of them directly at the bat-pony. Just once he flapped his wings a little harder, rose slightly upward, and watched disinterestedly as the daggers embedded themselves in the thatched roof below. “Thou knowest that targets move, dost thou not, Imperial?” he asked, as calmly as he might’ve inquired about the next week’s weather. Rainbow Dash was about to reply when the Shadowbolt’s right wing flicked outward and he hurled an arc of brilliant blue-white lightning directly into her barrel. She fought the horrible burning, tingling sensation and brought herself into a sideways motion that was only partially a controlled dive, narrowly managing to avoid a second and third bolt hurled her way. He dove after her and kicked out with a hoof that thunked against her heavily-armored back, then pivoted and held both wings together as she spun around and tried to arrest what was now backward momentum. A glowing ball of energy took shape between them, and launched towards Dash with a muffled ‘pop’; she snapped her right wing out in front of her and met its corkscrewing trajectory just in time. The ball glanced off the enchanted metal, spiraled out again, and detonated against somepony’s chimney, scattering fragments of smoking brick a good ten feet. With his goggles still down over his eyes it was difficult to determine the Shadowbolt’s expression, but Dash chose to interpret his lack of an immediate followup as shock. Pressing the temporary advantage she once again swooped in with her blades at the ready, aiming for his center of mass. She almost made it, too, before at the very last second he dipped down underneath her and slashed at those very same blades with impossible finesse. “Enough of this. I am suitably impressed, Imperial. Now, thou shouldst yield.” Rainbow felt the straps of her blades come loose from her wings, along with more than a few primary feathers. She flapped frantically to try to maintain altitude, but the Shadowbolt was right overtop of her, raining quick, fast blows on her armor as he sought out weak points in the unfamiliar metalwork; when she squirmed away and rolled upwards to get her hooves between them, she could feel herself slowly but surely starting to accelerate down. With clarity born of desperation she spotted the way he was favoring his left wing and shoulder, no doubt thanks to the drubbing she’d dealt him earlier, and twisted to that side. Stretching to the limits her aching muscles allowed she wrapped a hoof around his bad wing and pulled him into another lock with the blade pressed in between them. Now they were both falling- falling, and struggling for a single blade hoof against hoof, the Shadowbolt’s flight muscles all but useless in the awkward position he found himself in. Bit by painful bit, Dash pressed both her front legs forward against his. He gave a strangled gasp, the first emotional reaction Rainbow had seen all night, and she could finally see his slitted eyes growing wider and wider behind his mask as the blade edged closer to his own jawline. She couldn’t stop her own muzzle from pulling back into a savage, predatory grin. “Nuh-uh…” she ground out through gritted teeth, “’M thinkin’ you oughta’-” Then her back and head both slammed into the cobblestone street at almost the same time. The whole world went hazy and red for a little while after that, and when her vision cleared Rainbow Dash realized she was flat on her back and staring up at the Moon. She made a couple of failed attempts to suck any air back into her lungs, and it was only when she finally succeeded that she realized the Shadowbolt was no longer on top of her. She struggled to push herself up with her wings, and when that didn’t work struggled to roll herself over. Then a familiar shadow fell over her and a blade made of cold astral steel pressed against the fur of her neck on the edge of a leathery, bat-like wing. “I did warn thee, did I not?” the Shadowbolt muttered. The entire affair had taken a little under three minutes. But by the time the Lunars pulled Dash off the pavement and set about shackling her fore- and -hindlegs together with thick steel manacles, Twilight and the rest were already long gone. (♫) It had taken Twilight longer than she probably should have to realize it, but the unnaturally prolonged night of the Lunar Republic wasn’t, in fact, all that dark. Even in the deep woods that made up the border of the Everfree proper it wasn’t at all difficult for the scholar to read her maps or locate the five ponies walking with her. It was possible, she supposed, that removing Nightmare Moon from the Circle of the Moon had somehow altered its luminance, although she was unable to imagine a mechanism that would do so without purposeful equine intervention of some kind- it couldn’t be as simple as the removal of the Mare effect having exposed more of the Moon’s luminous area, could it? Perhaps, instead, the Nightmare had conceded that ponies would require at least basic illumination to operate under her rule? When she had the time, she’d have to reanalyze the most detailed accounts of the Lunar Rebellions in order to determine whether or not the same phenomenon had been reported during the chaotic day-night cycles of that era as well. All told they made good time, and after perhaps ten minutes under Applejack and Fluttershy’s guidance the forest around them began to change. Having studied the logs of previous expeditions to the Everfree, Twilight had some idea of what to expect from its anomalies great and small- the shifting, twisting, almost mobile qualities of the plant life, the sudden spots of hot and cold and unexpected wind, the pools of filthy wetness that appeared unaccountably on otherwise dry trails and couldn’t be detected until one’s hoof was in the middle of them- and if the others were in any way bothered they gave no sign of it. More troubling was the omnipresent, unaccountable feeling of being watched by something not quite intelligent and not quite animal either- watched, pursued, and judged. Ponies didn’t belong here, the presence seemed to want to communicate, or perhaps the Everfree simply didn’t fully belong to the rest of the world. Twilight kept her eyes on her map, and on the beacons still sporadically visible through the shifting treetops, aware perhaps too acutely for her own good that if they wandered off the course she’d set it might not be possible to get back again. Visually, all of the beacons were still in front of them, but already every so often her hearing caught the sounds of some kind of struggle- raised voices and the sizzling of spells and steel slicing against things she’d rather not try to characterize. It all sounded far-off and strangely muffled, and came from directions that didn’t make much sense- sometimes behind the group, sometimes directly overhead. Somewhat more rarely hoofprints, hacked-through vegetation, and even bloodstains or bits of discarded Lunar equipment provided more tangible evidence. At one point, at a particularly trampled patch of undergrowth, Pinkie Pie even fished out what proved to be the entire left front hoof of a revenant, still clad in its steel sabaton, and severed at the ankle by something that had generated a great deal of twisting, pulling force but hadn’t left behind visible claw- or toothmarks. Some of the hoofprints were relatively clear and led along wider paths than the one the Ponyville group was following, but nopony bothered to suggest changing course. With a few notable exceptions, they were trying to avoid the bulk of the Lunar forces. It was after about twenty minutes of walking, subjectively, that Fluttershy suddenly pulled to a stop, and held up a wing with one primary feather raised over her muzzle. The five of them stopped immediately, Twilight carefully and quietly stepping her way to the head of the group. “What’s going on? Did you see something?” the unicorn whispered. “Lunars,” Applejack hissed back. (♫) Twilight fell silent, straining her eyes and ears, and after a moment she too began to perceive the glint of astral steel through the undergrowth and the faint crunching of foliage underhoof. Quickly, she pulled out her compass and ruler, sighted along the two beacons that were still visible, and scribbled another geodesic that would, hopefully, circle around the patrol entirely. Off what had until now passed for a trail, the forest seemed to darken and curl around them, pressing ever closer on either side like a soggy, rotten cloak. Before too long, the five of them had been forcibly condensed down, from a loose diamond formation to a single-file line with Twilight at the fore. The scholar tracked her head nervously from side to side, hyperaware of every dripping leaf and shadow that didn’t shift quite the same way the others did. There was no pattern to any of it, at least not that she could consciously identify, but the impression of somepony- or something -moving alongside them just out of sight was positively overpowering. Twilight’s heart began to beat a little faster and she tore her gaze away from the darkness in front of her just long enough to ask Applejack behind her “Do you… you think there’s somepony in here with us?” “Ah was just workin’ up the nerve to ask ya’ the same thing…” the farmer muttered, before her eyes widened. “Whoa up there, what in tarnation?!” The clearing in front of Twilight was familiar- muddy but not a proper bog, festooned with bizarre purplish vines and a disgusting slime-covered variant of Caballish moss she’d observed nowhere else in the Forest. She peered at her map, then the five sets of hoofprints preserved with incontrovertible clarity in the mud in front of her, and then back at the map again. “How are we back here?” Rarity asked, a tinge of panic creeping into her voice, “How are we back here?” “Space is warped and time is bendable!” Pinkie Pie muttered, as though that was the only explanation required. “One might choose to describe the situation thusly, yeah.” Twilight peered at her map with renewed focus and began sketching out yet another course. Curiously, the three beacons she’d used to triangulate her position earlier were now absent, replaced with two at entirely different angles. “But I did something really wrong if we’ve ended up in a loop.” The scholar jumped a little as something brushed past the moss on the other side of the clearing, and started to edge closer. “We oughta’ get movin!” Applejack whispered. They set off again, moving just shy of a proper gallop now, as Twilight’s heart threatened to hammer its way out of her chest. There was somepony, or several someponies, keeping pace with them, she was sure of it- she could hear hoofsteps just at the edge of her awareness, but the cadence was off somehow and she got the strangest impression that there weren’t always a multiple of four. Twilight veered off to the left, trying to get herself and her fellows away from the bizarre sound, hastily checking and re-checking her map. She searched the treeline desperately for a beacon but not a single one was visible, and now somehow whatever it was was closing in on them from the left instead. This time she caught a brief glimpse of patchy, scabrous hide and an equine silhouette that didn’t move the way anything equine should have. She broke into a gallop, barely conscious any more of the others keeping pace with her, checking and re-checking her map as the figures seemed to melt and shift before her eyes. The whole forest seemed suffused with a damp rottenness that invaded her lungs with every breath and brought tears to her eyes. Whatever it was, its creaking, stumbling, out-of-sync hoofsteps had somehow reappeared directly behind her. Its uneven, putrid breath washed over her back and something fast and sharp whistled through the air; Twilight ran full-out and then dove to the side, rolling in an awkward jumble of cloth and hooves. (♫) She came up panting in a clearing perhaps fifty yards wide, surrounded by a dense and impenetrable grove of gnarled, twisted, ancient-looking trees. They were bathed in an uneven pinkish-red glow that seemed to emanate, to the degree that it had a source at all, from the Cairn-like structure in the center- although this one was broader, still mostly above-ground, and built of rough-cut black stone swaddled in… Twilight wasn’t sure if it was a plant, or a fungus, or something in between that stretched out along the ground to the treeline in thick, gently-pulsing webs of indeterminate color. Her breath caught in her throat as she realized the detritus was moving. On some unheard signal, twisted and misshapen things made themselves known within it and began stumbling and scuttling and squirming towards her- here an equine skull and spinal column still wrapped in stringy muscle and hauling itself forward with a Lunar’s pair of bat-like wings; then the gutted husk of a blue mare with woody thorns jammed into her hooves, and puffy growths that might have been gilled mushrooms or rolled-up fronds sprouting from suppurating lesions where a pegasus’s wings would have been; beside her a hideously bloated, pale thing with naked skin that split open whenever it moved on its stumpy bowed-out legs, trickling pus and some kind of fuzzy white seeds that squirmed aimlessly on their own. Involuntarily the young scholar backed away, fighting nausea and panic in equal measure, then whirled as she sensed unsteady movement immediately behind her. A giant, headless, scorpion-like thing of blackened bone and rotten meat was waiting for her, a long, grisly tail composed of dozens of equine skulls arching up over its back- some ancient and bleached white, others recent trophies still shrouded in rotting cheeks, their jellied eyes rolling madly in their sockets. Beside it the withered corpse of a unicorn hung inverted in the air like some sort of bizarre trophy, suspended by the eight sharp-tipped, jointed legs of reddish woody material that extended from its ruptured barrel. Its inverted head scanned back and forth at the end of an unnaturally long neck, dozens of tiny black eyes crammed into the space behind its swollen purple tongue and chelicerae as large as Twilight’s horn flicking from its eye sockets. In a blind panic she turned back around and began firing kinetic bolts with lethal force. One of them struck an odd, stumbling, only vaguely equinoid thing that seemed to be covered entirely in rustling, leathery leaves- they scattered all at once in a cloud, leaving behind a pony skinned like an anatomical model still wearing golden Guard sabatons that sobbed and gurgled in the mud before it sank, thrashing, out of sight. Beside her Rarity slashed at a mass of charred, greasy flesh within which only the vaguest suggestions of equine facial features were occasionally visible, her rapier drawing great gouts of purplish ichor with each strike but failing in any way to slow it. Applejack bucked down a white monstrosity with three unicorn horns protruding from its fleshy head, its spine bent upwards to stand it on two legs like a minotaur and its forehooves sliced open in a grotesque parody of griffon talons, only for half-a-dozen more pony-headed, griffon-bodied bipeds to rise out of the webbing around her, roaring and clawing like wild animals. Fluttershy flapped desperately to gain altitude above a twisted knot of what could have been entrails or vines or possibly a little of both, but held just shy of the treeline lest she give their position away. One of the things that had clung to the flayed Guardspony swooped down at Twilight from above, revealing itself to be a single sheet of leathery skin, half-filled with blood like a tick, topped with the putrefying skull of a newborn foal. She batted the thing away with her telekinesis as it snapped at her muzzle; only to find Citrine Sparks lurching towards her, the militiammare’s ruined foreleg torn off at the shoulder and her mouth and eye sockets sliced open to accommodate a mass of sickly blue flowers. Twilight realized she couldn’t see Pinkie Pie, and began to suspect the worst. Then she heard the baker laughing. “These have to be the stupidest illusions Nightmare Moon could ever come up with,” the earth pony babbled from behind Twilight where the spider and scorpion had been. “Illusions?” Applejack asked, eyes going wide even as she dug her forelegs in for another powerful buck. “Yeah, you didn’t think any of those were real, did you?” Utterly unperturbed, the pink mare strode forward even as the things surrounding them began to converge on her and Fluttershy reached out a wing to try and haul her back to safety. “Not… real?” Twilight stammered. She was backed up alongside the others now, surrounded by a shifting wall of rotten and twisted flesh. And still the baker continued on. “Look, their eyes are sliding around on their heads like billiard balls in watered-down pudding! And the shadows don’t move when they do! I thought the Princess of the Night’d get that right, at least, but I guess it’s more important to rub Twilight’s failures in her face or something. How were Citrine and that guard supposed to get here so fast, though? Did Nightmare Moon teleport them just to mess with us? Can you even teleport things in this forest? I don’t think you can! None of the others are even anything a necromancer would ever make, either! What’s so fun about just cutting open a pegasus and taking all her organs out? I mean, I guess you could tell her jokes or something, but they’d have to be really good jokes and even I don’t know if I have that kind of material ready to go for hours on end, so it’d probably just be a bunch of lame organ puns and the whole thing’d get really boring. And spiders and scorpions are terrible designs for siege engines, what, are we going to have to fight a giant turtle next? And the two-legged things are just silly. Who even needs three different horns, anyway… what’s he compensating for? Why is having no eyelids and a big fish mouth scary? Why is any of this scary? They’re so overdescribed they bleed purple, for Shor’s sake!” (♫) Surprised, Twilight felt the physical signs of her panic evaporate with bizarre speed. As Pinkie kept speaking the horrors in front of them began to look less and less detailed- or, rather, more and more detailed, and at the same time less and less real. There was no definite fading or transition, but nonetheless when Twilight looked around the clearing again there was no Cairn, or smothering vegetation, or monstrous necromantic constructs; just broken rocks and splintered trees outlined in the light of the Moon. She could remember that being all there ever was in the clearing – herself firing a kinetic blast at a pile of leaves and downed branches and knocking them into the air around her; Rarity’s rapier slicing strips of bark from a rotten stump- even as she remembered simultaneously the horrors she’d thought she was fighting. It was disorienting her just thinking about it, and she too laughed as she sat down on the ground and closed her eyes in exhausted relief. Not long after she could hear the others starting to join her. “Was that… I thought… but…” Fluttershy stammered, and Twilight opened her eyes again to see Pinkie Pie gently cuff the yellow pegasus on the shoulder. “Hey, the more you think about it the more it’s gonna hurt your head, so cut that out, OK?” “That stuff is gone, though, right?” Applejack asked, shifting awkwardly from hoof to hoof. “Ah mean, y’all’re really here and all?” Twilight reached out with one hoof and picked up her map from where it had fallen into the grass beside her. The calculations remained intelligible, the markings remained stationary, and looking back up at the sky she saw there were still three Lunar beacons in a recognizable pattern. Throughout the entire ordeal, they had in fact traveled less than thirty meters. “I… think it’s over? I mean, I don’t think we could even be asking that question if we were still… if the Nightmare was still influencing us.” “Why bother, though?” Applejack asked as she re-seated her brown leather hat. Twilight hadn’t even noticed she’d lost it. “It ain’t like ponies can actually die of fright… can they?” “Maybe… she was trying to get us lost?” Rarity suggested. “Or trick us into hurting each other?” Fluttershy added. “Oooh, or keep us in one place until her real ponies could show up!” Pinkie Pie cut in. Twilight nodded. “Pinkie’s right. We should probably get moving.” She checked her map one last time and turned around to find their hoofprints leading back to a very familiar marshy glade. “I don’t think we’re too far off-course… I just hope Dash can hold out a little longer.” (♫) They’d bound Rainbow Dash hoof-and-wing, although not tightly enough that she was in pain or for that matter had too much trouble moving as long as she did so slowly. They’d also trotted her in front of a scowling bat-pegasus healer who’d bandaged the gash in her right hock, briskly felt around her barrel, scrubbed the blood off of her muzzle, and given her some herbs to chew for her still-pounding head. The herbs didn’t do much for the pain and made her just the slightest bit sick to her stomach, but she figured that was more likely due to a lack of anything better available than any real malice- if the Lunars wanted to make her suffer, they had a lot more effective ways of doing that. That damn Shadowbolt had remained practically glued to her through the entire process, for reasons that weren’t immediately obvious- bound and surrounded, even Rainbow Dash wasn’t going to be a serious threat to them anymore. He didn’t speak to her of his own initiative, and Dash didn’t ask him anything. After a few dozen minutes spent awkwardly standing around, two other Lunars – a little wisp of a bat-mare with a funky helmet, and a wiry unicorn stallion with a seemingly permanent thousand-yard stare – fell into step beside her and they all started to walk. At first, Dash thought with a tinge of panic that they were going to bring her to the Town Hall, or possibly the big hospital tent out in front, but then just as that weirdo Twilight Sparkle had predicted they passed through the square and out the other side, to one of several roads that passed through Sweet Apple Acres and then on to the thick, dark forest. The path they followed was strange and wandering, apparently determined by retracing a series of hoofprints leading back to Ponyville which were at times all but invisible, and despite her best efforts Rainbow Dash quickly found herself hopelessly disoriented. Twilight had insisted that Dash swallow a tiny, rune-inscribed gem before setting out, and had mentioned being able to track it somehow, and then a lot of geometrical gobbledygook that the weathermare had mostly tuned out, the upshot of which was apparently that they were already on their way to rescue her from the captivity her diversionary stunt had placed her in. With each hoofstep into the unfamiliar woods, however, she found herself growing less and less certain that was even possible. They stopped, several times, and she was told to keep quiet and still as the Lunars drew their weapons and searched unsuccessfully for the source of noises in the foliage, but nothing ever came of it. “What happens if you get killed or need to run away, and I’m still tied up? Do I just sit here and let some horrible monster eat me?” she’d asked, after one particularly tense almost-encounter. None of the Lunars had given any indication that they’d heard. Then, after what might have been half an hour of their bizarre forced march- or two hours, it was next to impossible to tell in this weird, static not-quite-morning -the Shadowbolt turned his head to look at her. “Imperial,” he asked in that smooth, level voice, “what is thy name?” Underneath her bonds, Rainbow’s wings reflexively tensed. “Why do you wanna know?” His muzzle showed, just for a moment, the faintest ghost of a smile. “So that some fine night, when all of this is over, I may properly tell my grandfoals the tale of how narrowly I bested one of the old Sun-Tyrant’s finest fliers.” The weathermare paused for a moment, and decided there really wasn’t any harm. “Uhh… I’m Rainbow Dash.” He nodded. “Hmm. Fitting.” There was a long pause in which the sound of dripping water became audible off to their left and then faded away again. “I… am called Vortex.” “I think I’m gonna stick with calling you Bat-Winged Freak, actually.” He bobbed his head, and that ghost of a smile took on a little more clarity. “I would expect nothing less.” They kept on walking in silence again, although now Dash noticed that the other two Lunars had spread out a little bit and were no longer looking so frequently in the direction of her and the Shadowbolt- her and Vortex, rather. They weren’t interrupted for a good long while, and her mind began to wander, replaying the fight that had gotten her into this position. Twilight had been honest about her role as a distraction to buy the others time- that, after all, was what the gem was intended to get her out of -but Dash had at least been expecting to do a good bit more damage to the Lunars before her prearranged surrender. If she was being entirely honest with herself, the pegasus supposed, it hadn’t even been any great skill on her own part, but rather her compound armor and flash pellets that had prevented the Lunar troops from outright wiping the pavement with her. Or, at least, delayed the Lunar troops in wiping the pavement with her. And now all of her gear had been confiscated. “So… uhh… one a’ Celestia’s finest fliers, huh?” she mused. “Aye.” Vortex slowed his pace slightly until he was directly beside the shackled pegasus. “Somewhere deep inside thine thick skull, there is a soldier’s mind, calculating tactics and weighing options. With thy tricks, and what little experience thou hast, thou nearly bested me. But imagine what thou couldst become if thou werest properly trained.” Rainbow scoffed, to hide the fact that her initial reaction had been to wince. “Not much chance for that now, is there, freak?” Vortex seemed to retreat back into his own thoughts for a little while after that- although perhaps that was just the natural result of his inscrutable tinted glasses. “Was there chance before, Rainbow Dash?” he finally asked. “Thou art skilled, clearly, but thou carriest thyself with the empty bluster of a green recruit. How didst thee come to be here?” Dash didn’t answer. Vortex was the enemy, but that didn’t mean his low measure of her didn’t hurt. If anything, the fact that he’d so perfectly sniffed out her failures without having even heard of the camp in Cloudsdale made his dismissal even more damning. After a little while, though, he ducked his head and briefly tapped a forehoof against his leather-clad chest. “Forgive me, I meant no insult. Thou hast lived thine whole life under unchallenged Solar rule… t’would be cruel of me to imply that thine meager station was reached through any fault of thine own.” Rainbow Dash considered herself as patriotic as a mare could be, in every sense that really counted, at least, and felt a brief impulse to contradict him, but the words died in her throat. The… Incident hadn’t been her fault, and Vortex knew it, damn him. It wasn’t fair- he could read her like a filly’s picture book, and she still couldn’t figure out anything behind those goggles. The walk dragged on, and so did the silence. The bat-pegasus in the funny helmet flew off, briefly, and then returned, and muttered something to Vortex. The wiry unicorn fiddled with Dash’s wing-bonds where a knot appeared to have been coming loose- Dash herself hadn’t even noticed it. Then, Vortex fell back to her position once again. “So tell me, Imperial. From where dost thou hail?” “Cloudsdale,” she answered. All of his questions had thus far seemed harmless enough, nor did there seem to be any great urgency behind them, so presumably one of the reasons she was being brought deeper into Lunar territory was to meet with a more proper interrogator. It then occurred to her that she had virtually no memory of the lessons she’d been given as a schoolfilly on the sky-city’s history. “They, uh… Cloudsdale was around back then, right?” “Aye, indeed, I was born and raised there! Perhaps, when we’ve wrenched it from the Tyrant’s iron hooves, thou wouldst be willing to lead me to a few of thine favorite taverns…” his expression suddenly turned downcast, “… I doubt many of those I remember are still open.” “You just keep on saying that, freak…” Rainbow Dash muttered, just loud enough that she knew Vortex would hear. “’Tis odd, I say,” the Shadowbolt continued, his melancholic tone fading away now that a challenge was put in front of him, “How little of a fight we faced in town- thine own efforts excluded, of course. Didst Tyrant Celestia perhaps abandon thee to thine fate?” “What? No!” Dash shook her head. “Look, I know things were a lot rougher back in… uhh… whatever the time you grew up in is called, but nowadays the militia’s more than enough to keep the local monsters in line and we can get help from the Army whenever we need them. So, uhh, you all’d better look out!” Vortex seemed, as near as Dash could tell, to be genuinely surprised by that. He cocked his head to one side and looked at her dead-on. “But… with what force does the Daybreaker suppress her detractors? Without conscription, how does she raise armies to fight in her wars?” Very suddenly, Dash felt as though she were trying to explain the basics of Equestria’s defense to a madpony, or perhaps a very small child. “Look, freak, in the time you’ve been gone there’s been wars, sure. Dozens, even. But they’re small, they’re… whadda they call ‘em these days, ‘police actions’?” She tried to use her wings to represent the quotes, remembered they were bound, fell back on gesturing with her hooves and realized they were shackled too, finally setting for rolling her shoulders and hoping Vortex would understand her sarcasm. “There’s always enough ponies like me who want to sign on because we like adventure” -unfortunately, more than enough, in fact- “so they don’t have to… to force anypony to fight! It’s not like…” Rainbow cast her mind back to grade-school Equestrian History, trying in vain to locate an appropriate example and coming up largely empty. “It’s not like Trot or some shit,” she finally finished. There was a long pause, in which Vortex presumably mulled over what she’d just told him. For all Dash knew, he might have been figuring out the best way to thicken rainclouds. “So,” he finally asked, “Did we… ever win?” “Win against… who, freak? I’ve got a thousand years of bad guys to pick from!” “I do not know!” For the first time since they’d gone hoof-to-hoof, genuine frustration entered his voice. “Who didst the Tyrant offend, and in what order?” Dash shrugged, as best she could through the uncomfortable tension building in her wings. That unicorn had tied the ropes binding her a lot tighter than they'd been originally, and it was starting to hurt. “Well, the Griffon Empire finally gave up the ghost about a hundred years ago; we can count the number of dragons still on the continent with just our hooves; and the Frozen North’s kept those stupid yaks out of our business for… Boreas, I don’t even know how long. I mean, the Minotaurs are always making trouble, but they’re really only dangerous to sea navies, and we don’t even really use boats for much anymore, and the Abyssinians are trying to cozy up to us. There’s always gonna be monsters and criminals and stuff, but… Celestia and most of the other creatures are friendly, or at least not trying to kill each other all the time.” She thought back to the ‘situations’ beyond Equestria’s borders reported in the big newspapers she almost never read, which Soldier of Fortune Magazine only covered when they devolved into open fighting. “Oh yeah, and I think Klugetown’s gonna get wiped off the map soon too. That answer your questions?” “… what is this… Kluge-town?” “Stupid place full of stupid pirates. Don’t worry about it.” “Hmmph. ‘Tis almost a shame we missed such battles.” They walked on in what might have passed for companionable silence for a good while after that, before Vortex spoke once again. “The Lunar Army could use soldiers like thee, Rainbow Dash. Think about it.” “You’re not serious.” “I am never anything but serious.” Dash considered the offer – really, genuinely considered it – for just long enough for the fact that she was doing so to consciously register. Then, the little-used rational part of her brain assured her that in no way was it a good idea. She shook her head. “I don’t think so.” “’Tis thine own choice,” Vortex reassured her, before the expression on his exposed muzzle became grave. “But… thou dost understand why thou art being brought this way, yes? The Lunar Army needs to know if there are more of you to fight, and how commonly we may find thine armor and weapons. These maker’s marks, this… Trotter, and Equestrian Apparel… ‘twould be better for all concerned if thou wouldst tell us of their location of thine own free will.” She didn’t think they knew about the purpose of her now-destroyed goggles, or the enchantment on her wingblades. They definitely didn’t know about the gem. Rainbow Dash wanted to keep it that way. “No.” “No?” “No.” Vortex shook his head and raised a wing, motioning for Dash and her guards to come to a halt. “Then I shan’t force thee,” he said, low enough that only she could hear. “But know that Our Sovereign is not as patient as I… especially as of late.” Dash’s eyes narrowed, and she turned to face him head-to-head. “Is that a threat?” “Nay. Only a warning.” “Answer’s still no, freak.” Vortex sighed, and reached up a leathery wing to push his goggles away from his muzzle. His eyes were the same weird, slitted, yellow ones all the Lunars had. Dash was suddenly unsure why she had expected anything else. “Then… when Our Sovereign has finished with thee… I will at least see that thou dost not linger.” “Uhh… thanks, I guess? ”Rainbow tried to put up a tough front, but the memory of veteran Guardsponies screaming like newborn fillies on the floor of the Town Hall wouldn’t quite leave her. They kept walking. (♫) They were starting to close in on Rainbow Dash’s position when Twilight saw the light cutting through the trees. The five of them crouched down in almost perfect synchrony as the pale yellow beam passed overhead. As the sound of somepony moving through the vegetation became audible, Twilight wormed her way over to Rarity’s position. “Can’t afford to go off-course again,” she whispered to the tailor, “D’you think everypony can hide?” Rarity nodded, and slunk off into a particularly dense clump of brush to the side of the trail, disappearing completely. Twilight joined her as without being prompted Applejack and Pinkie Pie vanished off the opposite side, and Fluttershy slipped into the thick canopy up above. The noises of hoofsteps and rustling leaves were definitely closing in on their position; Twilight forced herself to ignore the sudden chill of condensation soaking into the outer layers of her tunic and remain perfectly still. It was odd. From what she’d seen so far, the Lunar troops tended to be… well, not undetectable as they moved through an area, but certainly stealthier than this just by force of habit and their general nature. Thus, Twilight wasn’t overly surprised when a plum-colored earth pony stallion in golden Royal Guard armor stepped out onto the trail proper, with a bullseye lantern hung around his neck and the handle of a small machete clutched in his teeth. Survivor from the Princess’s security detail? Twilight wondered, But what’s he doing out here? Recalling the stories Shiny had told her about his training at Hurricane’s Green, Twilight inhaled and made two sharp clicks with her tongue against the roof of her mouth. The Guard paused and looked around, his pale blue eyes widening in surprise under his helmet, then he tucked his machete into a loop on the front of his armor and clicked right back at her. Twilight turned to Rarity. She mouthed “Stay here for now,” and the white unicorn quietly nodded. Then she began charging her horn and stepped out into the open. The Guard twisted in place to look at her, then reached a forehoof up to his barding and extracted a small flip-open notebook. “Twilight… Sparkle, right?” he asked, “Everypony’s out lookin’ for ya!” “Wait,” the scholar commanded, as she continued to feed power to her horn. Keeping one eye on the earth pony, she scanned the forest around them for an object of sufficient mass and settled on a small boulder off to her right. “I’d like you to pick up that round rock in front of the bush with the orange flowers and carry it over here.” The Guard bobbed his head, confused. “Uhh, Doctor Sparkle, why-” She began mouthing the first lines of a disjunction spell powerful enough to dispel- or at least visibly affect- even the most sophisticated illusions; it was also more than powerful enough to do serious, lasting neurological damage to a living pony. “Please, just… do what I’m asking you.” “Umm… all right?” He stowed his notebook again and, with some effort and no small amount of muttering, managed to heave the stone up onto his armored back and carry it over to Twilight, letting it roll off and hit the muddy trail with a muffled splat. Twilight unloaded the disjunction spell into it, inflicting nothing but a small scorch mark, then charged and fired another at the hole from which it had originally been removed for good measure. The rock remained a rock and the hole remained a hole. All the while, the Guard looked on, bemused. Illusion spells could look, sound, feel, and smell utterly real. If somepony were foolish enough to lick one of the monsters in the grove, in fact, it probably would have tasted utterly real as well. But the sole absolute limitation on that sort of magic was that illusions could not physically affect the real world. Nightmare Moon could simulate an illusionary Guardspony moving an illusionary rock, or make Twilight think that it had been moved when in fact it was right where it had always been, even creating the sensation of empty space at that location… but if it had been real at the start, and was real at the end, then there was nothing she could have done. There were other methods of lifting objects remotely, of course, and there was no reason on the level of basic magical principles why Nightmare Moon’s telekinesis couldn’t reach this far out, but if she could generate that much force at such a distance, there would have been no need for her to bother with illusions at all- she could have just as easily wrung Twilight’s neck. “Girls? I… think he’s the real thing!” As the others cautiously stepped out from their hiding places, the Guard began counting under his breath. “Four… five… great! That’s all a’yous!” he finished at a more normal volume. Twilight looked him up and down a second time. He was on the young side, chubby for a soldier, with a dun-colored mane and the sort of broad, homely, expressive features that made it hard not to immediately take a liking to him. “Who are you, and what are you doing here?” the mage asked. “Oh! I’m, uhh, Private Beaten Track-” “Private Beaten, eh? Bet he had a hard time in Basic…” Pinkie Pie muttered, just loud enough for everypony to hear. “Uhh, yous can just call me Track, OK?” He chuckled quietly, more to himself than anypony else. “Anyways, I’m part a’ the search party that got sent out to look for the six a’ yous after we kicked Nightmare Moon and her zombies outta Ponyville.” Applejack blinked, confused. “Kicked Nightmare Moon…?” “Yeah,” the Private suddenly became animated, trotting in a small circle, “It was awesome! They had a bunch of us grunts go in and draw her out inna the open, then the Warm Light of Dawn came out from behind a cloudbank and shelled the blue offer hide!” “Luna’s… dead?” Fluttershy whispered. “Her and a buncha’ those weird slit-eyed skeleton guys, yeah. Most of ‘em dropped just as soon as the big mare got hit, and we’ve just about rounded up all the rest. Been a busy couple days, otherwise we’d a’ been out here a little sooner.” Rarity jerked upright as though struck. “A couple of… days?” she stammered. Track closed his eyes and nodded. “Yeah, there was this kind of a siege for a little while, we had negotiations over hostages, and… yeah. It’s been about three days since you all went in here.” Twilight and Pinkie Pie looked at each other, then back to Track. “Everfree,” they said, near-simultaneously. “So,” Track continued, “I… reckon we should prob'ly get a move on, link up with the rest of my squad, and get the lot a’ yous back to civilization.” “What about Rainbow Dash?” Rarity asked, “Those Lunar brutes got ahold of her and dragged her in here, we can’t just leave her behind…” “Yeah, we know, we know” the stallion nodded, “I got a message… I dunno, five minutes ago or so that another group managed to spring her. That was pretty clever of yous with the gem and all, you know. Probably saved her life.” He turned around and waved a hoof down the trail. “Now, c’mon, we gotta move before somethin’ bigger and hungrier than us comes along!” (♫) Slowly, cautiously, they started walking. “Ya know,” Track continued as their pace picked up, “We got a whole loada’ Academy mages back in town workin’ to pull back Princess Celestia. Couldn’t make much sense outta’ most of it, but I get the sense that more than anything theys could just use somepony to tell ‘em all what to do, ya' know?” He scoffed. “Yous shoulda seen their faces when Commander Shiny told ‘em off for not taking Twilight’s work seriously back before alla' this hit the propellers.” Applejack stepped past Twilight and made her way closer to the front of the procession. “Ah think it is awful funny runnin’ inta’ ya out here… our run a’ luck’s not been nearly this good ‘fore now.” The stallion shook his head. “I dunno, we’re not outta the woods yet… uhh, so to speak. Probably gotta head up to Canterlot a couple times before this is over, too. Interviews with the Day Court and so on.” He turned briefly to face Applejack head-on, never once slowing. “Don’t worry, we’ll run yous up there free of charge,” He flashed a reassuring smile at Fluttershy, “and we’ll make sure the press gives everypony a wide berth. Have the whole town back to normal in no time.” “That’s awful nice of you to think a’ Fluttershy, seeing as ya’ve never met ‘er before…” the farmer responded, awkwardly fiddling with her leather cowmare hat- Twilight wasn’t entirely certain how she’d gotten it to stay overtop of her full-face helmet. “Oh,” Track’s ears shifted back and a faint pinkness appeared under his plum-colored fur. “The Lieutenant asked for a volunteer to keep an eye on the cottage, make sure it stays just like ya left it. Took the liberty of carting out mosta’ that armor and stuff that was piled up, our ranger didn’t think it was all that safe.” He turned to Rarity and flipped another page in his notebook. “Thought that armor looked pretty neat, though. Are you really the mare who owns that fancy workshop? I caught some a’ the higher-ups from Canterlot drooling over it a couple times.” “This all just gets better and better…” Applejack muttered. His ears tucked down completely now. “Well, we were gonna win this whole mess eventually, weren’t we? Either that or die, right?” The farmer shrugged. “Ah suppose…” The canopy above was growing ever denser, and without the light of Track’s lantern Twilight didn’t think she’d’ve been able to see more than six feet in front of her. “Are you sure we’re not going in even deeper?” she asked. “Everfree.” Private Track rolled his eyes, then waved at a solitary line of hoofprints matching the shape of Royal Guard sabatons heading the opposite way along the damp ground, “so it might not be the most direct way, but I know we’ll get back eventually.” A momentary break in the canopy allowed brilliant purple light to shine through. It was hard to tell from such a brief glimpse, but they seemed to be heading more or less directly for the source. “’Zat one of the beacons?” Pinkie Pie asked, “What are they doing still up?” “Every camp’s got a mage or two working pretty hard to keep ‘em up. They make this place a lot easier to get around and those old Cairns are good bases. We might finally make some headway in getting through here, now; the eggheads were all pretty excited about it.” He whistled, “There’s gonna be some celebration for yous when we get outta here…” He flipped open his notebook once again, “Hey, uhh, Pinkie Pie, right? This thing says you work at the bakery, any chance you could set me and some a’ the others up? I’m 'bout hungry enough to eat my own helmet…” Another page flipped up onto the chapboard backing. “And… Applejack, you probably already know this, but your whole family’s been out lookin’ for ya. Lieutenant had to talk ‘em outta comin’ along on the search, and I don’t think it really stuck, so it’s good for everypony involved I found ya now before any of ‘em did somethin’ drastic…” The farmer nodded. “Yeah, Ah reckon so…” For the first time since they’d met, Track’s expression darkened. “What’cher deal, exactly, anyways? You’s been breathin’ down my neck ever since we ran into each other.” There was a long, tense silence. “Ah don’t got a… deal,” Applejack finally said, “Ah’m just… havin’ a hard time wrappin’ mah head ‘round alla’ this business. How’s a’come you know so much ‘bout all of us, anyways?” “Oh.” The stallion smiled again, and patted his notepad. “Well, they did tell us everything they knew about’cha so’s we could try’n figure out where's yous woulda’ gone. We interviewed yer pals and families, that kinda’ thing.” Applejack nodded, ears folding back slightly. “So… uhh… is Applebloom doin’ all right? Ah reckon them Lunars gave ‘er quite the scare, and Ah ain’t had the chance to sit down an’ talk to ‘er as Ah’d’a liked.” Once again the notebook was produced. “Oh, Big Macintosh’s lookin’ after ‘er.” “And Fluttershy’s rabbit?” “One a’ the rangers minding the cottage’s been leaving food out for it.” He laughed, rather more loudly than Twilight thought was entirely appropriate given the situation. “Me, I think that thing needs to be locked up someplace far away from decent ponies, but… ours is not to question why, and all that.” “What about that little filly who’s always hangin’ round with the weatherponies?” “The orange one? She started pesterin’ us too, you know. Wish her folks were around more, they’d be gettin’ a piece of the Commander’s mind about it.” Applejack nodded, “Well, ya sure do know a lot about Ponyville for somepony who’s only been there three days… or, well, less, actually, since ya spent some a’ that time in here lookin’ for us.” Track almost physically glowed. “I take my work very seriously!” “Yeah, Ah reckon you do…” Applejack shifted the warhammer on her back ever so slightly. Track didn’t seem to notice. It was probably just an attempt to get the heavy weapon situated in a more comfortable position, Twilight decided. The farmer was walking quite close to Track, actually, closer than was entirely proper, and seemed focused on him far more intently than the others. “Hey, Ah know this is kinda’ a weird question, but… can Ah see them notes a’ yours?” (♫) “You really better not, there’s personal information in there,” the Guardspony said immediately, and moved to tuck the pad back into his armor. Applejack was faster. Her right front hoof snapped out and connected with Track’s, knocking the notepad into a high arc over his back. Twilight reached out towards it with her telekinesis, but for whatever reason couldn’t get even the faintest hint of a grip, nor did she see or hear where it hit the ground. “Hey! That was my Lieutenant’s!” Track cried out, bewildered, but Applejack wasn’t done with him. She brought her hoof around and slammed it hard into the Guardspony’s unarmored chin. He staggered backward. “Eeeeow, hey, what was-” With a terrible, sick feeling Twilight saw Applejack twist around and grab her warhammer in her teeth. The scholar cried out, charged forward and lit her horn, the others right behind her, but her telekinetic field slid off Applejack's heavy, spellforged Landsknecht armor like quicksilver on cold glass. The hammer met Track’s barrel with a meaty thud and a pulse of earth magic that Twilight could feel vibrating in her bones- the stallion didn’t even have the breath to cry out as he was launched clean off his hooves, skidding to an awkward stop a good yard or two further down the trail. Twilight, Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie all slammed into the bigger mare at about the same time, Twilight trying to wrench the hammer away with her jaws and telekinesis, as the others simply piled on and tried to immobilize the farmer through sheer weight of bodies. “What… in Tartarus… were… you… thinking?” Fluttershy demanded through gritted teeth. Applejack seemed to be having little if any trouble staying upright or keeping her grip on the hammer, but after a moment she relented and released the handle from her jaws. The others looked to Twilight, and when the scholar nodded they all climbed back to their hooves. “What Ah’m doin’, is killin’ another one a’ them damn illusions.” Up ahead, Track had managed to roll onto his uninjured side and lift his head up far enough off the muddy ground to speak. “What… wha… no…” he paused, wincing in pain, “Forest musta’ gotten to her… she’s… no, I’m not…” “Applejack.” Twilight struggled to keep her voice calm and level, but internally her thoughts were chasing themselves in circles. “Illusions can’t manipulate physical objects. You saw me check him.” “Ah believe ya, Twilight,” Applejack strode closer, green eyes fixed on Twilight’s purple. Her voice, too, was flat and perfectly level. “But if he’s for real… how’s he still talkin’ after Ah put a hammer right in ‘is ribs?” Twilight set the warhammer down by the side of the trail and carefully advanced on Private Track. The stallion was struggling to move himself now, eyes wide and unfocused in panic. The armor over his ribcage was warped and dented, blood oozing from underneath to darken his plum-colored fur, the skin around it already beginning to bruise. It was possible she hadn’t seen exactly where the hammer had hit, and was mistaken in believing it had been lower- just as it was possible she hadn’t seen where his notepad had landed, and possible that the outside world had experienced three days in what was for her almost certainly less than an hour. “Don’t try to get up,” Twilight said in what she hoped was a reassuring, authoritative tone. “I’m just going to run a few medical divinations on you.” “No, no, come on, look,” he stammered, “My name’s Beaten Track, I was born on the Upper East Side’a Manehattan, I joined the Guard right outta’ high school, went through Basic at Marris Island, I can put Rainbow Dash on the Sending-spell for you if you-” Twilight began repeating the chant of a high-powered disjunction spell, slowly playing the cone of silver light up and across Track’s hoof. “Hey, what are you… ow, OW, hey, that feels weird, cut it out!” The stallion cried out as his leg began to twitch. Twilight wrapped it in a telekinetic field and upped the power. “What is that, what is that, you tryin’ ta’ shock me to death or somethin’?!” He demanded. “Cut that out!” He was sweating now, and thrashing in the dirt as he struggled to free himself. Willing herself to ignore both countless hours of magical-safety training and the headache building up just under the base of her horn, Twilight upped the power once again. “Seriously, stop that!” Track panted, “Doc, c’mon, you’re really hurtin’ me bad, aww, please, just stoaaaAAAAGH!” The semicircle of hoof exposed to her spell dissolved into a vaporous blue absence-of-material, through which shone thousands of tiny, cold stars. Twilight backed away and cut the spell. “Y’all… might not wanna watch this,” Applejack said as she advanced, but when the farmer slammed her hammer down directly into Private Track’s skull, Twilight didn’t look away. Even when she’d been expecting the transition, she couldn’t even begin to properly identify the point where golden armor became blue, muddy plum-colored fur became desiccated hide, and blood and brains became fragments of pulverized bone- only that ‘before’, she remembered the corpse of a Guardspony laid out in front of her, and that ‘after’ it was and had always been just another revenant. “Hmm,” she muttered to nopony in particular, “Project a major image or something similar directly over a physical substrate she also controls, so it can interact with the real environment. Neat trick, but it must be hard to keep the two synchronized…” “Umm… Applejack?” Sidling up beside the two of them, Fluttershy’s soft voice broke Twilight from her thoughts, “How did you know that pony was… that he wasn’t real?” The farmer calmly pulled her hammer out of the mud and gave it a few experimental swings at nothing in particular. “Shucks, reckon that was the last a’ the charge, ‘m afraid… no surprise since it’s been up on a shelf since Ah was a little filly,” she said, then slid the weapon into its designated loop and turned back to the pegasus. “Well, ah saw that funny little book a’ his disappear inta’ thin air when Ah knocked it away from ‘im, and the first time Ah slugged him, there was just a moment where my hoof went through ‘im an’ Ah felt somethin’ dry an’ bony. And ya know them dead Lunar things never really do have a proper barrel.” “We mean, before that, darling,” Rarity cut in. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to hit everypony you meet from now on just to make sure that they’re really alive!” “Naw, don’t be silly, Rares,” she paused, adjusting her hat. Twilight suddenly realized she never had bothered to learn what the thing was actually called. “But, well… his whole story… Ah mean, he had an answer for every single question Ah could ever ask ‘im. An’ they all made perfect sense. Fer the Sun’s sake, he even got all a’ y’all’s names right the very first try!” “And… that’s bad?” Pinkie Pie asked. The farmer shook her head. “Real ponies… ain’t perfect. We forget things, we contradict ourselves, we… uh, what’s it called, umm, con-fab-u-late eight diff’rent kindsa’ nonsense without ever meanin’ to. Ah didn’t reckon he was a revenant right away as such, but as much as Ah wanted alla’ this to be somepony else’s problem I had ta’ face the facts that he was hidin’ somethin’. He was just… too good to be true.” That seemed to be enough for the others. Pinkie Pie nodded and waved a hoof further up the trail. “I bet they’re waiting for us up where that beacon is. And somehow, I don’t think they’re gonna have a chariot back to Ponyville.” “Pinkie’s right, darling. We should probably keep well away from that place.” “I think I can manage that, yeah.” Twilight was already fiddling with her theodolite and compass. The signal for Dash’s gem had moved about thirty degrees since they’d run into what they’d thought was help- assuming a constant velocity of travel, that meant they had to be getting close. In fact, it was entirely possible the Lunars were leading all of them to the same fortified Cairn- and if that was the case, they didn’t have any more time to fool around chasing apparitions.