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// Page 13: Changeling 
// Story: A Unicorn in the Clover Kingdom 
// by LordBrony2040 
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Cadance’s ears were still ringing from the welcome ceremony's song as she followed Princess Celestia down the hallway and up the stairs. Her cheeks were actually starting to hurt from keeping her smile going as she passed another maid in the hallway at the top of the incline. The house she had bought and moved into upon reaching eighteen looked much like what she remembered, despite being home for the first time in six years. It was good that the staff were keeping things in shape.

“How was your journey?” Celestia asked as they turned into the hallway of the oversized mansion to head towards her bed chambers.

With there still being ponies in the hall, Cadance gave a giggle. “Oh, you know how it is with airships,” she said in a happy tone. “A nice, relaxed pace that just lets you look at the scenery for hours and hours on end while finding things to keep yourself busy.”

The smile Celestia wore ticked up a little bit. “That’s good,” she said. “By the way, I’ve already arranged a party pony to plan for your wedding, and you should be meeting with the dressmaker two days before the festivities.”

“Oh Auntie, it’s so thoughtful of you to arrange everything without telling me,” Cadace told her in a cheery tone while giving Celestia a bright smile as they passed into her personal living space. “Because when I proposed to my fiancee a week ago…” She shut the door behind them and turned on Celestia with a snarl. “I actually thought I would be able to plan my own wedding!”

Celestia frowned down at the mare. “Perhaps if you had informed me of your intentions-”

Not even letting her finish, Cadance rolled her eyes and snorted. “Why? So you could try and outright deny me the right to marry whomever I bucking wanted?” she asked before trotting over to the couch in front of the room’s fireplace to lay down. The ancient Canterlot home had four of the bloody things. “If you had your way, I would have been sold off to the highest bidding nation! Oh, that reminds me, we have been been forever barred from entering Yakyakistan.”

“WHAT?” Celestia yelled as she took a step back before getting herself under control. “What did you do?”

Cadance gave the other pony a half-lidded stare. “I stepped off the airship with my left hoof, which is apparently the wrong hoof to use. And you know how much those creatures love their perfection! Well, that little thing made one of the yak musicians gasp and lose the tempo. So, after beating him half to death and breaking the poor creature’s instrument right in front of him, Rutherford banished all ponies from Yakyakistan forever. Looks like he’s even more crazy than his father was.”

As usual, the nonchalant attitude ruffled Celestia’s feathers. She completely did away with the mask of calm as she looked at Cadance with a flat expression. “You were sent there to help foster friendship and cooperation between our species!”

“Yes, which I failed at miserably. But you still seem to like sending me on these stupidly long journeys that have been agreed upon months in advance without my knowledge or consent. Which I would never agree to, except I never hear about them until a week before, and by then, it’s too late to alter everyone’s plans,” Cadance said before rolling onto her back. “Now, if you would please get out of my home that I haven’t been allowed to enter in nearly nine years, I need to unwind before we start shouting at each other, again.”

After several seconds of silence, Celestia let out a long sigh. “Cadance, why do you have such animosity towards me?”

Cadance’s mouth dropped as she studied the mare for a moment. “Are you kidding me?” Cadance asked before she turned her head just a little to look at Celestia out of the corner of her eye. “I sent you that book on dealing with senility as a joke. But if you’re seriously asking me that, I’m thinking you really do need to be hauled off to the old mare’s home!”

“I have done everything I could to mend our relationship!” Celestia told her.

The attempt to make herself look like the poor and abused victim of some unjust crime got a snort from Cadance. “Uh huh, sure. That’s why you sent me all around the known world for the past nine years, talking to a dozen different kinds of creatures that want nothing to do with us.”

“You have responsibilities, Cadance,” Celestia countered.

Cadance raised a hoof to forestall any more words on that particular argument. “Responsibilities that keep me out of Canterlot and away from anypony who is even remotely acquainted to me for years, as I get to float around in what is quite possibly the slowest means of travel in Equestria!” she spat. “No decisions to be made, no real authority since all the creatures I talk to want to know your opinion on whatever agreement we reach before they’re willing to sign off on it. I wouldn’t have even seen Shining Armor after graduation if he hadn’t gotten worked into my guard on a clerical error! You do remember how we were dating back then, right? Because I’m legitimately starting to wonder if your brain is working at all these days!”

After a second of silence, Celestia took a deep breath. “His talents would have been wasted in your personal guard,” she told the younger alicorn. “In case you haven’t heard, he was promoted to captain of the guard.”

“Yes, a month ago,” Cadance countered. “Which I only found out about from him after I proposed. Which I’m guessing your spies told you about, since I read on the way over here about how I was getting married in less than a week.”

Celestia took in another deep breath, and sighed. “Those ponies are your guards Cadance,” she said. “If you’ve decided to marry, then it’s best not to let the information linger. Unless of course, this all some big stunt of yours, like with the mirror.”

The mention of the first big incident that began the widening rift between the two alicorns got a frown from Cadance. She remembered it like it was yesterday. After two-and-a-half years of waiting, Cadance had the palace staff prepare the biggest welcome back celebration in all of Equestria. Cadance had bought presents, moved the crystal mirror into the palace ballroom and hired the premiere party pony in all of Equestria to decorate things.

Thanks to Celestia screwing things up, she hadn’t been able to get in contact with Sunset for over two years. So she wanted to show her big sister that somepony had been waiting for her to come home all this time. Even Celestia came.

Only...the mirror didn’t open like it was supposed to.

Cadance had waited in that room for three days, and then a week after that just to be sure, but the portal to whatever world Sunset had been thrown into didn’t appear.

When what she had been waiting on didn’t happen, the teenage filly tried a different approach. She went to Celestia’s school and enlisted some of the best teachers in an effort to make the portal open. A month of research later, they found what could have been an answer. Using something mystically connected to something else on the other end of the portal, a smart unicorn could theoretically force the mirror to forge a connection between itself and its exit point in the other world.

Only, when Cadance came to her with the solution, remembering a book Sunset had taken with her that was linked to one like Celestia’s, it turned out that Celestia had lost the journal over two years prior. Probably, during her rush to get rid of anything that even remotely reminded her of Sunset. Even the curtains of the castle had been changed from their original red with gold tassels to a tacky purple.

It was shortly after that, Cadance found herself off on her first visit to a forgien dignitary, if the head of another nation that was just under Equestria’s purview forgien. She stayed in Saddle Arabia for nearly half a year before coming home for a week, only to be sent off again to Maretania. Eventually, the pace of the visits increased to the point that Cadance didn’t even get a chance to come home.

Which meant she missed the last two thirty moon cycles. Celestia had said nothing had come of them, but the pink princess wasn’t sure how much she could be trusted anymore. Celestia had even rewritten the interactions with Sunset she had in her mind. Now, she said that the unicorn had ‘chosen a different path’ rather than what actually happened.

“Get out,” Cadance told her evenly.

Celestia sighed. “Cadance-”

“You stole my wedding from me. What was supposed to be the happiest day of my life is now going to be a bunch of political posturing,” the pink mare told the larger alicorn before she rolled off her couch and onto her hooves. “Do you honestly think I want to be in the same building as you, right now? I don’t care what you say, I don’t care who you lined up to make the dresses and plan the party, or what kind of ponies you put on the guest list. Because I sure as hay don’t know anypony in this whole bucking city aside from Shiny’s parents and a few foals I sat for years ago!

“Now, I’ll smile for the ponies and play my part, because the last fight we had caused a panic that nearly burned the castle down,” she said. “But in private? I want to be around you as little as possible! So, you better be featerhing sure what you need to talk to me about is worth it! SO GET OUT!”

The big horse gave Cadance one last reserved look, then turned to leave. Once she was gone, the pink princess took a moment to breathe. Maybe she should just grab Shiny and gallop off somewhere to elope. It would certainly make a point, leaving Celestia in a room full of snooty nobles to explain where the bride had gone.

But...there were things expected of a princess.

And she did want to see Shining Armor’s family again.

A quick glance at the luggage that had been moved to her room before her arrival got a sigh from Cadance. Locking spells kept ponies from going through her things, but it also meant she had to put everything up by herself.

So, like every time she came home, Cadance unsealed her bags and began to go through them. Most of the things, she just tossed on the floor for the maids to clean up. She had enough dresses in her traveling gear for three ponies, especially since she preferred to be naked. Even her regalia was worn more out of necessity than any other reason.

Makeup was brought into the bathroom and placed where it belonged, then came the other essentials a mare used for personal hygiene, followed by her combs and numerous mane-care products. Then came the most important things. Another pack was opened and a picture frame was pulled out to let Cadance look at the photograph that showed her and Shiny posing with a little Twilight in their forelegs.

It had been so long since she had heard from the filly. Cadance knew magic school was time consuming, but it hurt the alicorn that not a single one of her letters ever received a reply. What made it worse was that she had only learned of the Nightmare Moon incident from the papers.

Cadance understood it had been Twilight’s destiny to clean up Celestia’s first big mess. But she still resented the nag for not telling her anything about it until long after things were over. But then, that was par for the course when it came to Celestia. Despite the fact that they both had a Princess in front of their names, Celestia knew she was the mare in charge and Cadance was nothing more than a goodwill ambassador she sent around the world to keep out of her mane.

Then came the next picture. The only one of its kind, since Celestia had all the others even remotely like it removed and probably burned. On it, a little pink alicorn filly was hugging an obviously reluctant unicorn mare that placed one of her forelegs across Cadance’s back while rolling her eyes away from the camera and looking like she wanted to be anywhere else.

The fair had been too loud and flashy for Cadance’s tastes, even as a filly. And she had quickly picked up on Sunset’s dislike of the place as well. But the fact that she had been willing to take her was all the proof Cadance needed that Sunset really loved her. So, she had gotten the young mare to take a picture to commemorate the day, and then they left not even an hour after arriving.

After setting both of the memories down on the stand by her bed, Cadance went back into her bag to pull out a box wrapped up and tied with a pink bow. Inside was a collection of magical gems that played various music, all of which had come out in the last decade. She took the box to the back of her room and into the walk in closet to slide back another door, revealing a collection of eight different similarly wrapped presents on various shelves. 

A very small part of her mind told Cadance that what she was doing was pure foolishness as she moved Sunset’s ninth missed birthday present up to join the others. That Celestia was right. That Sunset was never coming home.

That thought was quickly crushed underhoof as Cadance slid the not-so-hidden door closed.

Just because she hadn’t come back yet didn’t mean she wasn’t coming back at all. Although, it would be several months before the thirty moon cycle was up again, this year would be different!

A strange sifting sound out in the bedroom drew Cadance’s attention, causing her to leave her closet and look around. On top of the dull pink carpet, she saw an envelope with her name on it.

Her actual name that most ponies didn’t even know about.

Curious, she opened the door to look around the hallway to see who might have left it. Or paid the staff to have delivered it. All of her mail went through the Royal Guard, who then reported every word in those letters to Celestia. But after seeing nopony around, she looked back to the letter with a cautious frown.

There were spells that worked as a delivery system, but most ponies powerful enough to use them didn’t bother. The mail was a far safer means of getting the mail than letters that would simply float through the sky for anypony to just pluck and read.

Growing even more curious, Cadance checked the envelope for some kind of trap. Finding none, she opened it and began to read through it. “Hey Cadenza,” she mumbled. “As much as it galls me to ask you for help, I find myself running out of options. I’ll be in the caves beneath the mountain tonight for an hour after midnight. Don’t tell anyone I’m here. Directions on how to get here are on the back.” She moved her eyes down to the signature. “Sunset Shimmer.”

After a long pause to collect her thoughts, Cadance reread the entire letter from start to finish. Excitement surged in her heart, followed by caution, and then confusion. It certainly looked like something Sunset would send her, all demands and not much else. 

The horn-writing...Cadance sighed as she pulled herself away from the paper. She wouldn’t have known Sunset’s horn-writing if it came up and smacked her in the face. 

But...Sunset had vanished through the mirror. She couldn’t have been sending Cadance letters.

A very disturbing thought ran through Cadance’s mind. Has Celestia been lying to me? she wondered. Could it be that Sunset had not disappeared at all, as Celestia claimed?

No, the pink alicorn told herself. Celestia’s grief over Sunset’s disappearance had been genuine. She might have been younger at the time, but Cadance had seen the pain on the old nag’s face plain as day for a week afterwards and knew that it still affected her to some extent.

Even though Celestia was an idiot, she was an honest one.

...most of the time.

So, that left ...what? Cadance wondered.

It could be a trick of some kind. But the name on the envelope made that unlikely. Even so, what would be the point of it all? Some sick joke for Cadance to pin her hopes on?

She went back to the option of the letter being genuine to better figure out what was going on. Okay then...let’s say...Sunset is back...somehow, Cadance thought as she began to pace around her room. But...that how is the question!

Cadance began to review everything she knew about Sunset’s disappearance.

Sunset had fled through the mirror, cutting off any hope of Celestia or Cadance ever finding her. Then, when it came time for the mirror to open again...it didn’t work. Then Celestia had waited for a second time and told her for a third that the mirror failed to open while she was outside Canterlot.

It wasn’t really a failing on anypony’s part. It just didn’t work.

It didn’t work, Cadance thought to herself as a realization dawned in her mind. It didn’t work!

If the mirror hadn’t worked the first thirty moons since Sunset left, then why would it have worked the first time when she fled to another world?

Unless...it didn’t.

Unless it never worked.

“Oh...you horse!” Cadance cursed at the letter, as if it was actually Sunset herself. She glared at the piece of paper that her big sister had sent as if trying to make it burst into flame with her gaze alone. “You tricked us! You bucking little-and I know you’re little, I know I’m bigger than you now! I’m going to...I’m going to…”

Cadance stomped around the letter, not sure how to finish that sentence. She wanted to laugh, to cry, to throttle Sunset and break her legs so she couldn’t ever run away again.

The question of why she had run away was no longer an issue. Cadance didn’t care. Anything could be forgiven, provided the mare was willing to make amids.

How she was going to make amends, however…

Cadance put her muzzle up to the paper. “I am going to dress you in the ugliest bridesmaid outfit I can find and drag you to my wedding!” she told the letter with a laugh that went from joyous rapture to cackling evil and back again.

“Oh, this day is going to be be perfect,” Cadance sang as she imagined Sunset standing with some flowers clutched in a fetlock, covered in the most hideous green dress anypony could ever hope to come up with. “Everypony will gather round, see you in your hideous gown-” she paused as the clock in her bedroom hit four in the afternoon. “Hmmm...I better take a nap. Don’t want to miss the rendezvous because I fell asleep.”





Noelle groaned as she was led out of the hideout by Sunny and into the woods. Today was the eighth day in a row that they were practicing magic with little success. Which wasn’t to say that she hadn’t improved some. But being able to hit something ten feet away when the water Noelle created took up one of those feet on its own was hardly an accomplishment worthy of royalty.

Why was she so useless?

Unfortunately, it was a question she had asked Sunny once, who had given her an actual answer.

An answer that didn’t make sense in the slightest, because it was all about how grimoires were supposed to be readable as some kind of weird math with feelings. Which was where Noelle got absolutely lost.

Math was math.

Feelings were feelings.

That was it.

“Okay so, back to magic practicing,” Sunset said once they had gotten far enough away from civilization that Noelle wouldn’t smash anything to bits.

The feeling that this was an utter waste of time became the forefront of her thoughts before she pointed her wand at the nearest tree a good thirty feet away and let her mana build up in front of her, transforming into water before she launched it at the target.

Only to watch it swerve aside a few seconds before it would hit. Then, just to mock Noelle, it swerved away from another tree to splash some bushes. The next blast was even worse. And the one after that reminded her of what her family always said as it wobbled around, refusing to do anything.

“Useless.”

“Worthless.”

“Murderous scum.”

Noelle grit her teeth and gripped her wand tighter before- “Okay, hold up,” Sunset told her before reaching out to grab the girl’s wrist.

“Hey!” she said before looking over to glare at the redhead while coming up with a reason to just make her give up and go away so Noelle didn’t have to keep failing in front of her friend. “You use a whole different system of magic! Why in the heck would you be giving me instructions?”

After letting out a sigh, Sunset let go of Noelle’s arm to rub the bridge of her nose. “Noelle, I know your magic system probably better than anyone short of that little monster on Yuno’s shoulder,” Sunset told her. “So quit just throwing magic around and take a breather to calm down for a minute.”

Noelle blinked before she pressed her lips together and grumbled. “What happened to magic is all about emotion?” Remembering how much her family hated her made Noelle plenty emotional!

“Controlled emotions,” Sunset told her. “The reason you can’t hit anything is because-”

There was a rustle in the bushes, and Noelle found herself turning around so Sunset stood behind her as she looked in the northerly direction while a monster emerged from its hiding place of a large bush. It had red hair atop its head and nothing else covering the rest of its body. The very sight of it made her freeze up for an instant as Noelle’s brain tried to process the horror in front of her.

“Hmm? Fanzell?” Sunset mumbled in confusion.

“Excuse me, could I see your thing real quick?” the nude monster said before it approached them. “I just need to touch it for an instant to see if it’s what I’m looking for.”

With the completely naked man coming after her thing, Noelle screamed and quickly acted to protect herself, launching a ball of water into the man’s chest to knock him onto the ground.

Sunset looked over her shoulder and patted the girl on the back as the naked pervert was laying on his own. “Hey, that’s at least thirty feet! Good job Noelle!”

“Good job?” she asked before rounding on the redhead. “WHY THE HELL ARE YOU JUST STANDING THERE WHEN A WEIRD PERVERT IS JUMPING OUT OF THE BUSHES?” 

After taking a step back, Sunset held up her hands and gave the girl a disarming grin. “Uh...because I...kind of know him?” she replied before looking past the woman to rub her chin as she gave the unconscious pervert another look. “Yeah, I definitely know him. Red hair is pretty distinct among your kind.”

“Red…” Noelle paused, her eye twitching as she gripped her wand tightly before she began grumbling again, her anger rising despite trying to tell herself that Sunset still had some more...horse traits about her. “Look Sunny, I know that these clothes things are a new concept for you an all since you used to just prance around naked, BUT PEOPLE GOING AROUND WITH THEIR THINGS HANGING OUT AND ASKING TO SEE OTHER PEOPLE’S THINGS IS A DEFINITE SIGN THAT THERE’S SOMETHING BAD ABOUT THEM!”

Sunset sighed and rubbed her head for a few seconds before locking eyes with the royal again. “So uh...I take it this means you’re not going to help me carry him back to the hideout?” she asked nervously.

When Noelle’s glare intensified, Sunset took another step back. “Right,” she mumbled before looking back at the guy. “So uh…guess I’ll carry him then.”

Noelle cringed at the idea of her friend having to handle a naked molester. “Ugh,” she groaned. But, try as she might, Noelle couldn’t come up with the strength to offer any assistance. “Can’t you just...poof him there, and us?”

“This close to lunch?” Sunset asked.

A surge of magical power conjured up a cloud of smoke as it altered the shape of Sunset’s body, increasing her total mass as her limbs changed. A moment later, Noelle was looking up at an altered version of Sunset’s unicorn form, something of a mix between a real horse and what she really was. Not that anyone who looked would have mistaken Sunset for a real horse. Her eyes were too close together and expressive, her hooves matched her coat to such a degree it was hard to tell where they started, and the extra long, but thinner horn was a dead giveaway as well.

When she looked at the naked man and started to levitate him, Noelle quickly spun around while her best friend secured him to her back. “You know, for someone who’s been hiding her real species and was terrified of someone finding out, you’ve been practicing a lot with Gray’s magic these past few days,” Noelle pointed out before she heard Sunset start to move and quickly stepped ahead of her to avoid looking back.

Luckily, Sunset’s neck was long enough to reach forward without Noelle having to look at the naked guy she was carrying. “Does this...disturb you?” she asked cautiously.

Noelle glared at the not-horse for a moment. “Of course not!” she told her before getting a bit more indignant. “Not you anyway. But the way you keep wanting to bring it up makes me wonder if you want you not being human to bother me.”

“I…” Sunset looked down at the ground as she thankfully kept pace with Noelle. “It’s just...hard to process for me, is all.”

The comment made Noelle roll her eyes. “Well, I’m sorry that me not being bothered by your species is such a pain.”

Sunset gave her a half-lidded stare. “When you say it like that, you make it sound like I’m the one with the problem.”

“Because you are,” Noelle told her frankly. “It’s like you’re looking for a flaw in our entire species that you can point to that will make you think you’re better than us or something. Just give it up already, Sunset.”

The big pony that was currently much too large to fall into such a category took a deep breath to let out a long sigh. “Huh...is that what I’m doing?” she asked.

Noelle bit her tongue. Any more talking along such lines might lead to an argument, and she had no interest to lose her best friend over something so silly as a ‘my species is better than yours’ contest on the grounds of morality. “By the way...what’s up with the half-pony body?”

Somehow, despite her face being covered by hair, Sunset managed to blush. “Uh...I was just...trying something out is all.”





Asta made his way into the hideout from the rear entrance with Magna behind him. Thanks to Secre finally opening her mouth, she had been able to inform other mages just how the Demon-Dweller Sword actually worked, which meant Asta was finally able to get some practice in with it.

The results were pretty mixed.

With its smaller size and subsequent lighter weight, Asta could swing it around easier . But it was also a good deal shorter than his first sword and couldn’t be used to reflect attacks like it could. There was also the fact it didn’t seem to cut through anything other than magic either.

Secre said that was because of something to do with his own willpower.

Although Sunset argued the point, claiming that it had more to do with the makeup of the sword’s anti-magic power than anything to do with Asta.

“Come on now, this is all just a big misunderstanding!” a familiar voice called out from the base’s main room, making Asta quicken his pace to see what was going on.

When he got there, the boy saw a man with red hair and dressed in some of Yami’s clothes sitting on one of the couches with his hands bound by glowing thread as Luck stood a little off to the side, his own hands crackling with electricity while Gauche glared down at him with a mirror floating in front of him. Yami was there too, standing in the middle of the two as he looked down at the bound man. “Ms Understanding works at the local tavern, I think,” he said before taking a drag on his cigarette.

“Sunset! Tell them what happened!” the man Asta recognized as Fanzell cried out.

Sunset sighed and rubbed her head. “Like I was saying, this guy walked up to us without any clothes on-”

Four of the other Black Bulls cut her off, their mana flaring. “That’s enough for me,” they all said at once.

Asta looked around, wondering what was going on. “Hey guys, what’s up?” he asked before turning his attention to the naked redhead. “What’s Zell doing here?”

Yami snorted. “Harassing young women while naked,” he said before frowning at the man. “You got a lot of nerve, buddy.”

“I’m telling you, I was robbed!” Zell countered. “They took everything, even my clothes!”

Sunset raised an eyebrow. “And by robbed, do you mean you were fishing while naked and someone took all of your stuff you left at the bank, despite something like this happening to you once already?”

After bowing his head, the man raised his hands in an apologetic way. “It’s the best way to fish. Clothes slow you down too much while in the water.”

“Why not just use your magic to knock fish onto the shore?” Asta asked. It was what Yuno did when they were heading to the capital from Hage. The method proved to be quite effective, too.

Fanzell snorted. “That’s dirty fishing. There’s no challenge in it,” he said before looking over to Noelle. “Now, miss. I know this might sound a bit odd, but...can I see something of yours?”

A frown quickly formed on the girl’s face as she held up her wand, water beginning to gather around it. “Suck brine and die,” she told him evenly.

“No wait, please! Your wand, I just need to get a good look at it!” he said before she could fire.

Although Asta wasn’t sure how, the water dispersed a few moments later without getting anything wet. “My wand? What about it?” Noelle asked as she lowered what had effectively become her weapon instead of a simple training tool.

Fanzell let out a sigh of relief. “I think I might know its maker,” he told her. “A woman by the name of Domina Code.”

“Um…” Noelle looked down at the wand. “I think that was her last name, but I’m not sure about the first one,” she said before turning her attention back onto the wind mage. “Why’re you looking for her?”

As a smile began to break out onto Fanzell’s face, Sunset looked up at the ceiling and tapped her chin. “Wait...isn’t that your wife, or something?”

Fanzell nodded his head enthusiastically. “Yes! We were separated awhile back, but haven’t been able to find each other since,” he told her before looking back to Noelle. “Please, tell me where you found it. I have to find her!”

As Noelle blinked at the attention, Asta remembered something else about the whole thing. “Hang on a second, didn’t she die?” he asked. “I thought that Mariella said she died.”

“Well...not really,” Fanzell told them before he reached back for something that wasn’t there. “Right...got robbed.” After letting out a sigh, the man looked back to Asta. “Do you remember that wand Mariella delivered to me? It had a message in it from Domina in it. She used an illusion to fake her death so she could...lose some of the bandits that were chasing her. That’s what Mariella gave me. She had to know that there was a message in it and got it to me.”

Asta was going to tell Fanzell that was great news...until something occurred to him. “Mariella, the same girl I introduced myself to at your place?” he asked evenly as he recalled the girl’s face clearly.

Blinking at the boy’s change in tone, Fanzell nodded. “That’s right. That’s her. She gave me the rod to show me Domina was okay.”

Asta’s gut twisted in anger. “Right before she gave her boss a recording of me telling her where my home village was,” he told the man with very little emotion. “And a few days later, her boss’s boss showed up to murder me and every single member of my family.”

“Oh, I get it,” Sunset said before crossing her arms. “Since they lost the woman, they gave you something they might have thought was a clue to her location so that you would keep searching for her. Hell, they’re probably still on your damn tail...if there wasn’t some kind of tracking spell on the wand.”

Luck suddenly sat up and snapped his fingers. “That’s what I’m feeling!” As everyone in the room turned to look at him, the boy with the blonde hair giggled. “There’s some guys with some pretty wimpy mana running around at the edge of my detection range. I didn’t even think much of it until you said that.”

After taking another drag on his cigarette, Yami frowned. “How many is some?”

“Eh, maybe four or five,” he said with a shrug. “They’re at the limit of my senses, so some keep fading in and out.”

Yami looked back at the redhead. “What the hell did you do to get so many guys after you and your girl?”

The question made Fanzell give a nervous grin. “I said the Diamond Kingdom sucks, then got away from them when they tried to shut me up,” he told the man. “You know how it is there. If people like that don’t stop everyone from escaping, then it just creates more hope for the ones that are left to do something about the people in power. And if I had to bet, one of those guys is a spatial magic user, meaning that he can call for backup at a whim.”

“Okay you guys listen up,” Yami suddenly called out. “This is how we’re gonna do things. Since I don’t think they’re stupid enough to actually attack our home base, we’re going to be taking the fight to them. But first…”





Using a trick another assassin had shown her, Mariella looked through a circle created by her finger with one eye, eliminating distractions and clearing her sight up as she spied on the manor below. The place was an absolute hovel of a building, but...by all reports about the particular area of the Clover Kingdom that they were in, it had to be the base for the Black Bulls.

“I think we may have a problem,” she said to the man standing on the branch of the tree beside her. “From all reports I’ve read, that’s a command center for a squad of the Magic Knights. The Black Bulls.”

Galleo, the head of the Diamond Kingdom’s assassination corps snorted. “You mean, the weakest of the Magic Knights? They aren’t even supposed to have twenty members in total. We have more than twice their number just waiting in reserve. I could call them in and crush the lot of them.”

While she had no desire for the scarred man to continue breathing, charging in blindly was a death sentence for the lot of them. “I remind you, sir. A squad captain of the Magic Knights is easily the equal to one of our own Shining Generals. Even if we were to attack with all of our forces, he alone could probably wipe us out.”

“Feh,” the older man replied. “All of you dying would be worth it if we accomplish the mission. Prepare for a multi-directional assault. We’ll come at them from all sides and-” the man stopped talking when the front door to the building opened up and Fanzell walked out in his normal green jacket and pants. “Or, perhaps we should just shadow Fanzell some more to wait for a more advantageous moment to capture him.”

Mariella frowned as her former teacher waved goodbye to someone inside the house before rising up into the air on his wind magic and begin flying away. Something strange was going on, but she wasn’t quite sure what.

After his clothes had been stolen by some bandits, the man had run into a pair of magic knights that knocked him out before one of them used transformation magic to turn into some kind of freaky unicorn. Then, they carried him to their base, where they gave him some fresh clothes and let him go not fifteen minutes later?

The Black Bulls burned down towns, they didn’t just let someone who was an important member of a rival country walk away.

But… Mariella watched her former master fly off into the sky, unable to place the cause of her unease.

Galleo grit his teeth. “Our new patron isn’t as forgiving as Ragus was, girl. If we don’t bring Fanzell into him alive soon, he may decide we aren’t worth keeping around.”

The mention of Galleo’s new mysterious overseer made Mariella tense. She knew nothing about the man, but seeing her superior’s reaction to him as well as the fact he had been in the field far more than usual had the young woman worried. This wasn’t some older mage that had made a bunch of backroom deals to get to a comfortable position. Whomever was calling the shots these days wanted results.

There was also something else that worried her. The results their new boss wanted were very different from the results their old one demanded. The search for Domina had been called off entirely and Fanzell was now to be brought in alive only.

“We’ll wait for Fanzell to get away from this place, then rush him with all the men we have,” Galleo told her as the redhead flew overhead before he pulled out a magical communication device. “This is A-One, reporting in. I have located the target and am preparing to intercept.”

“What is his location?” the monotone voice of the communicator chimed in.

Galleo gulped. “We’ve found him in the woods, close to a magic knight outpost. Once he’s far enough away that our mana won’t be detected, we’ll begin the retrieval operation.”

There was a long pause of several seconds on the other end of the line before the voice returned. “Negative. These are your new orders,” the voice said before telling them what to do.

Galleo gulped. “Understood,” he replied before cutting the transmission.

Less than a second later, the two diamond mages went after the man with the three members of their support team following close behind. As they moved through the woods at top speed, the bad feeling in the back of her mind continued to eat at Mariella. Something was definitely wrong, but she still couldn’t figure out what it was.

With her teacher in the air, it was easy for them to keep sight of him while maintaining a safe distance from his mana detection range as he moved. Then, he suddenly stopped and descended.

The group moved quickly to catch up with him and found that Fanzell had landed in a small clearing in the middle of the woods, maybe three hundred paces across before he sat down on the grass. “This is what Finral thinks is a good spot for a date?” he mumbled. “There’s nothing here but trees!”

Galleo led the men into the clearing. “Which is good for us, since we won’t be attracting any attention from outsiders,” he said as Mariella came up behind him. “Now, our master would like to have a word with you, Kruger.”

A red spatial portal opened up several feet off the ground and a good distance to Galleo’s left.

It was then, staring at the man in the green coat that she noticed what had been wrong with Fanzell this whole time. “Your clothes,” she said while pointing to the man. “They’re the same as the ones you lost!”

“Hey it’s you,” Fanzell said before he raised his hand into the air and let loose a burst of fire magic that exploded like a firework once it was well above the treeline. “Good, I was hoping I would run into you again. That means everyone who needs to be here is attending the party.”

The impossibility of what she just saw had Mariella standing mute. That wasn’t a magic item he just used, it was genuine flame magic! How in the world had Fanzell used flame magic?

Before she could state the obvious, someone dropped out of Galleo’s portal. Although she had never actually seen the man before, Mariella knew who she was looking at on sight. The spiky white hair and diamonds in his head were a dead giveaway.

Mars, the newest member of the Eight Shining Generals, stepped forward. “Hello, Teacher. It’s been a long time,” he said in his overly calm voice. “I have some questions I’ve been wanting to ask you.”

“Oh, it’s...you,” Fanzell replied as a look of surprise crossed his face. Next to him, a spatial portal opened up, showing a dark interspace before a pair of men walked out. One was that incredibly short boy Mariella had seen running around outside of Hage. The other was far more terrifying, what with him being a match for the picture of Yami Sukehiro Mariella had seen, the captain of the Black Bulls. “Yeah well, you’re going to be a bit disappointed, I’m afraid.”

Fanzell disappeared in a puff of smoke, to be replaced by the redhead Mariella had seen outside that little cabin in the woods over six months ago.

Despite the fact that he was supposed to be an emotionless killing machine, Mars actually looked stunned at the development. “What is this?” he demanded as he turned to frown at Galleo.

Yami took one last drag on his cigarette before dropping the smoke stick to step on it. He drew the odd sword that rested on his hip, with the single-sided curved blade and long handle. “I believe the phrase is, it’s a trap!” he said before looking at the redhead. “Cut off their escape route, kid.”

The girl, who Mariella remembered was called Sunset, raised her hand before a giant shimmering dome appeared all around the open area, sealing them in. A second later, the portals that had been created began to crackle and flicker.

“Hey, I thought you said this spell of yours stopped spatial magic,” Yami said.

Sunset frowned back at him. “No, I said it stops teleportation from going through it. I don’t know what the crap it’s doing to those things.”

There was a cry of fear from one of the diamond mages standing behind her. “Screw this, I’m not fighting a captain!” he yelled before running to the portal behind Mars and jumping in it with a boost given to him by enhancement magic. The second he hit the flicking portal, there was a very brief scream before the lower half of his body fell back down to earth...detached from the top.

“Yeah...probably shouldn’t touch those things now,” Yami said.

After giving his own portal a wide berth, the boy with the headband pointed at Mars. “Hey! YOU’RE THAT GUY FROM THE DUNGEON!”

Mars didn’t even acknowledge the boy before he looked over to the redhead. “I thought I recognized you,” he said. “Tell me, how is it that you are able to use multiple forms of magic?”

“Yeah, I didn’t hear a please coming out of you just now, so…” she balled her fists and flames surrounded them a second later as she raised them in a crude fighting stance. “Not gonna say.”

After the standoff continued for a few more seconds, Mars looked over to Yami. “Why are you protecting Fanzell Kruger?”

Yami blinked before resting the back of his blade against his shoulder. “Wait...that guy was Fanzell Kurger? Are you kidding me?” he asked before looking over at the other two Black Bulls. “You two seriously just let Fanzell Kruger waltz into our base and hitch a ride to the capital?”

“Uh...yeah,” Sunset told him.

“What’s wrong with that?” Asta asked.

The expression on Yami’s face twisted into a strained grimace. “Okay...I’m out,” he said before putting his sword away to pull out another cigarette before walking away from the two teens.

“SAY WHAT?” Asta demanded as the man turned his back to walk away from them all.

“Hey, I agreed to this little setup because you guys were needing some closure,” he said before lighting his cigarette. “But after letting someone with that much intelligence slip through our fingers. I think you kids can clean up your own mess. I mean, you’re only up against a spatial magic mage that can’t use spatial magic, his remaining three goons, and some guy you already beat before. This’ll be a good measure to see how you’ve grown.”

Sunset looked back to glare at the older man. “From last week?” she demanded. “I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in the area of zero inches.”

After snorting at her, Yami got to a tree in the distance to lay down against. “Then you just need to surpass your limits.”

“THAT DOESN’T EVEN MAKE SENSE!” Sunset shouted at him before looking back to Asta as he took out his grimoire to draw a short black sword. “Cut the portal. I don’t want to go stumbling into that thing.”

Asta did as he was told, slicing through the spatial magic and completely removing it from the world with his weapon. “So uh...which ones do you want?”

Once her gaze had moved across all of the group, Sunset sighed as she settled on Mars. “Guess I’ll go with the big fish. You okay taking the rest of the small fry?”

“Fine by me,” Asta told her before slowly moving forward. “They’re the ones I would have picked, anyway.”

As Sunset pointed to an area off to the side, Mars took a moment to nod before walking away from the other members of his group. As he did, Galleo leaned in to the woman. “What do you know about that boy? He disabled that portal, but I can’t sense any magic coming from him. Some kind of assassination magic that hides his presence?”

“I’m not sure. During our last encounter, he reflected all the attacks sent against him, but the sword he’s using now is different,” Mariella told him.

Galleo snorted. “Whatever. We’ll capture him and use him as a hostage so that that girl will drop her spatial magic...wait, if the portals I make can do that...then…” He threw out his hand and...nothing happened.

“IDIOT!” the redhead yelled from across the way. “I may not have counted on portals that were already open. But there’s no way you can make another portal to the outside while you’re inside this field!”

After the young mage’s admission, Galleo smiled. “Well in that case…” he threw out his hands, opening up dozens of portals all around him, which had their end points situated inside the dome that had been created around them. They surrounded the Asta boy. “Fire into the portals! Hit him from all sides!”

Hearing the man’s orders, Mariella and the two mages that were still alive sent a mix of ice, fire and rock shards through different gateways before they sprang out from all around Asta. A second later, the boy had his larger sword out and crouched behind it to take cover from two of the projectiles before cutting the third with his second sword.

“Hey shorty, is the only thing you’re gonna do is block?” Yami asked.

Asta looked back at the man. “HEY! IF YOU WANT TO SAY SOMETHING, COME OVER HERE AND DO IT!”

After taking a drag on his cigarette, Yami put both of his hands behind his back. “Nah, I’m good. By the way, left, right, back.”

The strange words made Asta blink before the three attacks the diamond mages sent at him, a shard of ice, fireball, and a rock came at him from behind, his left and his right, forcing him to dodge out of the way.

“Right, right, forward,” Yami told him.

As Asta moved out of the way again, he turned and looked at the man. “HOW THE HELL ARE YOU DOING THAT?”

Yami let out a laugh. “I’ll give you the explanation...for five-hundred yul.”

“YOU’RE CHARGING ME FOR AN EXPLANATION?” Asta demanded.

Mariella focused her magic and got ready to launch another volley.

“Ice chick is fixing to throw something at you through the portal to your left,” Yami called out.

The warning made Mariella freeze for a second before deciding on a different target.

“Now it’ll come out the portal behind you,” Yami warned him.

Without even looking, she got ready to throw it in a new- “Now she’s going to toss it through the one slightly above her right, which is going to come out right above you,” Yami said when Mariella didn’t even move.

The woman blanched.

“Nevermind,” Yami told him. “Now she’s gonna stand there for a second, in awe of how awesome I am.”

Mariella turned-“Now she’s gonna get all pissy and yell at me.”

“YOU SHUT UP!” the woman yelled at the lazy captain. What the hell is this? Can he read my mind, somehow? she thought with a frown.

Asta looked back at the captain. “Okay, fine! You got a deal. Five-hundred yul!” the boy agreed.

Slowly, the man stood up and began to walk towards the boy. “So listen up,” Yami told him. “There’s this thing in my country we call ki. It’s like the living energy that surrounds a person’s body. It’s not mana, that’s a totally different thing. This is something you can detect if you push all five of your senses towards a single task. If you can read someone’s ki, you can predict their movements. But mages that have spent all their time learning how to detect mana and only mana screw it up. Considering your little problem, it should be something you can still do.”





“When we get out of here, let’s go see the world, okay?”

Mars reached up and rubbed the side of his head. Ever since his battle in the dungeon a few days ago, he had been getting...flashes of his childhood. If what he experienced before getting his grimoire could be called that.

“Is our training getting to you?”

Born with a high level of mana and magical potential, he and several other children, mostly the illegitimate children of nobles, had been taken from their homes to be raised in a military installation that had been built for the purpose of creating a new type of mage. Since the age of ten, everything Mars had done was to prepare for the day when he would go to the outside world as one of the Diamond Kingdom’s new generation of soldiers.

“When things get tough, just close your eyes and think about the people you love.”

At age fifteen, he and every other child had been taken to a tower to receive their grimoires, then sent back to the military base for another year of training.

“This is the only way...now die.”

At the age of sixteen, he killed his best friend in a final exam that left her body on the floor.

And after that...things became blurry. He was operated on, had magical items implanted in his body. His grimoire had been remade, using the book that the girl he had grown up with as its other half.

The girl he had killed.

Those same memories played over and over again in his mind. Both when he was awake, and when he got what little sleep he could. He couldn’t stop them from coming.

He didn’t want to stop them.

Didn’t deserve to stop them.

The ache in his head began to subside and Mars looked across the field, to where the girl was staring at him. The hair was different, as were her eyes and face. Body...everything. She didn’t look anything like the girl that he had killed in the slightest.

Yet…

The blow from the black sword shattered his defenses, forcing Mars to crash into the far wall without anything to soften the blow. Breath left his lungs as he plummeted down into the water, only to be replaced by the liquid that quickly surrounded him.

Darkness came, and then...light…

A girl was looking down at him.

For a moment, he saw a face of short pink hair and sky blue eyes.

Mars grunted as he shook off the memory. “Just tell me where Fanzell is, that’s all I want.”

The girl, Sunset, he thought she was called, made a fist surrounded by fire magic. “What do you want with that pervert?”

Fire. That makes...what? Three types of magic she can use? What type of magic does the barrier we’re in fall under? Mars didn’t understand the reason for the insult, but that didn’t matter in the big picture. “I just need to ask him some questions,” he told her. “And while we’re on the subjects of questions. I’ll ask you again, how is it that you have so many different affinities?”

“When things get tough, just close your eyes and think about the people you love.”

Mars reached up and massaged his head again. This was not the time to be thinking about such things as dead little girls that he had killed in cold blood.

“Is our training getting to you?”

“Hey now, you didn’t say please,” Sunset taunted him.

Despite the childishness of such behavior, Mars found himself taking in a breath. “Please, tell me how it is that you can wield three different types of magic,” he said before his eyes moved to the grimoire at the girl’s side.

Sunset blinked and stood up for a moment, giving the man a surprised look. “Huh...I didn’t actually think you’d ask,” she told him before standing there, motionless for several seconds.

“So, you won’t tell me, then?” Mars asked, perturbed over such a waste of time.

Taking a moment to think it over, Sunset shrugged. “Guess it can’t hurt,” she said before looking back at the man with the white hair. “You see...I’m really a test subject from the Diamond Kingdom’s mage labs. Mind if I ask you something now?”

The obvious falsehood had Mars frowning at the girl. “You’re lying. There’s no way that you could have been in the program.”

Sunset blinked. “Really? What makes you say that?” she asked.

“For starters, you’re far too young,” Mars told her.

Instead of admitting to her deceit, Sunset snorted and waved it off. “Yeah, that. I’m actually the first attempt at making a mage like you. Multiple elements, and a spatial mage’s ability to use magic without having to read a grimoire. As a side effect of all those experiments done on me, my body stopped aging. I’m really a twenty-year old woman, trapped in the body of a perky fifteen-year old girl,” she said before sighing and raising her shoulders in a shrug. “This whole permanent puberty thing really sucks.”

Mars found himself actually considering the girl’s claim for an instant before throwing it away. “You’re lying.”

“Really?” Sunset replied before snorting. “What makes you say that this time?”

The question had Mars’s anger rising. “If you were part of the program, then why are you here? You should be serving the Diamond Kingdom.”

“We’re here so we can protect this country that we love.”

Sunset snorted. “From what I understand, the guys who put those things in your head and chest took you from your family, practically raised you in a cage, forced you to kill everyone you grew up with, all while they murder anyone who speaks up against them, but I’m the one who doesn’t make sense,” she said. “Buddy, you need to get your priorities straight.”

The mention of being forced to kill everyone caused another sharp headache to hit Mars’s mind.

“This is the only way...now die.”

Mars bit the inside of his lip, the pain helping to draw him back to the moment he was living in rather than the past. Once his mind was focused again, he called his grimoire and pointed towards the girl. “Indeed,” he told her. “I’ll bring your corpse back to Diamond, so it can be properly dissected and studied.”

“See...stuff like that really makes we worry about being honest with people,” Sunset replied before Mars sent a barrage of crystal shards at her.





Asta cleared his mind, doing his best to focus his five senses on the task assigned to them. He concentrated on his surroundings. There was a disturbance beside him and two of the attacks came from the left, letting him use his larger sword as cover while he slashed through the rock that flew in from the right. “I did it-” he managed to say before a boot struck him in the back of the head to knock him forward a few feet before he hit the ground.

“That’s not using your ki,” Yami told him while Asta was on the ground. By the time he picked himself up, the man had taken another drag on his cigarette and held it in his hand. “You were just using your ears. You’re supposed to use your whole body.”

The ‘encouragement’ had Asta gritting his teeth before he jumped onto his feet. “HEY, GIVE ME A BREAK. I JUST LEARNED ABOUT THIS A FEW SECONDS AGO!”

Yami snorted. “Where I come from boy, we’ve got a saying. A man never goes back on his word,” he said. “You’re supposed to become the Wizard King one day, right? Well if you can’t even do this as you are now, then you might as well just go back home.”

“Him? The Wizard King? Don’t make me laugh!” the guy who looked to be in charge of everyone shouted.

Hearing the old taunts that had surrounded him for his entire life, Asta picked himself back up and took in a deep breath. Focus and concentrate, the boy told himself. Notice everything with everything that you have.

He focused on the three mages behind the boss. That guy wasn’t important since he couldn’t run away. The other three mages, they were the ones he needed to deal with. To help him focus on everything else around him, Asta took in another deep breath to hold it as he closed his eyes.

There was a slight change in the air and a very slight whistling sound that he could just barely detect, coming from behind him. “There!” Asta shouted as he turned around, using his larger sword to knock the rock with the flat of his blade. The magical attack was sent back through the hole it came out of and Asta didn’t even need to look to see that the guy who sent it had been struck in the mouth to the point that all of his teeth had been knocked out, with the stone still sticking out of his mouth.

While the other two lackeys stood motionless at the result of Asta’s counter, the boy raised his sword in victory. “I DID IT!” he shouted before turning around to grin at the large man that had moved back a ways. “Captain Yami did you see me?”

The expression on Yami’s face was like he was looking at a leaper. “You actually managed to pull it off. Man, you must be some kind of freak.”

WHAT KIND OF COMPLIMENT ON MY SUCCESS IS THAT? Asta demanded mentally before he noticed a change in the air. Spinning to his right, he knocked the fireball attack through a different portal, causing it to strike the other robed mage in the back of the head.

“AHHH! MY HAIR, MY BEAUTIFUL HAIR!” the man screamed before Mariella encased his head in ice. The man dropped to the floor and started beating on the block of frozen water, his strikes getting weaker and weaker until he stopped moving completely.

Asta’s mouth dropped as he watched the woman casually murder one of her teammates. “HEY! WHAT THE HELL, LADY?” he demanded before pointing his smaller sword at the woman. “He was your comrade!”

The expression on Mariella’s face became twisted with disgust. “Don’t talk about things you don’t understand, boy.”

“I UNDERSTAND YOU SHOULDN’T KILL PEOPLE YOUR SUPPOSED TO BE FIGHTING ALONGSIDE!” Asta yelled back at her. Then, he noticed a change in her body, a tensing of muscles that told him she was getting ready to attack. The ice projectile she sent through a portal was easily shattered by his smaller sword.

Mariella took a step back, “Galleo, sir. It appears that we need to make a contingency-”

“Wait, you’re actually the head of the Diamond Kingdom’s assassination division?” Yami suddenly asked as he pointed to the spatial mage.

The man that was obviously in charge gave a look to the barrier surrounding the clearing before looking back at Yami. “That’s right, what of-” was all he could say before Yami casually tossed a rock through one of his portals with a flick of his wrist that impacted the man on the side of the head.

Galleo went down a second later, and all of his portals quickly closed. “I may have missed out on Kruger. But turning you into headquarters should net me a few stars. Hurry up with the last of the lackeys, kid. I feel a dump coming on and it’s never a good idea to fight when you could shit your pants.”

“Hey!” Mariella shouted at the man before an ice sword formed in her right hand. “Don’t call me a lackey!”

After taking another dragon his cigarette, Yami gave her an even look. “So, would you prefer? Minion, goon, mindless follower, what? You can’t just tell me something like that without providing some kind of alternative. Or maybe you’re just that guy’s little bitch.”

After creating a series of ice shards without the use of her grimoire, she sent the weak magic at Captain Yami, who didn’t even bother reacting to it. Asta jumped in front of him and sliced the things apart with a single strike before running at the girl with both of his swords ready for combat. “Doing what you do, that sounds like a lackey to me!” he yelled at her before swinging the larger of his swords at the girl.

Mariella jumped out of range. “You shut up! You don’t know what happened to me!” she yelled. “If I didn’t help these people do their dirty work, then they would have killed me!”

For a fraction of a second, Asta actually felt some sympathy for the woman. But then, he remembered just how that Diamond Kingdom guy had found out that he was from Hage and all the people who had died because of it. “And how many people did you kill for them so you could keep on living?” he demanded before pulling his larger sword back as he went in with the smaller one.

As the girl continued to retreat to the edge of Sunset’s barrier, Asta hurled his big sword at her. “Zell told us how you people operate!” he shouted while running towards Mariella when she tried to deflect the anti-magic sword with the one made out of ice that she had created. Although the force of the attack knocked Asta’s blade away, the anti-magic also shattered her own weapon. “You kill families! Mothers, fathers and children!”

Asta came in with his sword as Mariella held up a hand to fire off another blast of frozen mana since she didn’t have enough time to recite a full spell. He cut through the misshapen daggers with his sword, then decked her in the side of the jaw with his free hand. “JUST HOW MANY CORPSES ARE YOU STANDING ON TO KEEP YOUR OWN HEAD ABOVE WATER?”

There was the sound of bone breaking, and Asta scowled down at the girl as she hit the grass hard. Even if she had been conscious to answer the question, it was doubtful that she would have been able to with the broken jaw. “That’s the problem with people like you,” Asta said as he panted for breath while Mariella lay unconscious at his feet.

With the fight over, Asta looked up to find his bigger sword so he could retrieve it. When he found the thing, the sight made him wince. It was sticking out of Sunset’s barrier. He saw the entire dome flicker for a few seconds before it was completely nullified by the anti-magic.





Sunset leaped aside to avoid the crystal barrage before focusing her personal mana to infuse her body and create a solid layer of defense. As she was moving, the diamond mage turned several pages on his grimoire to create a giant floating sword made of crystal that she had seen him using previously. “So, do I get to ask you questions now, or is this just a one way street kind of thing?”

Instead of replying with words, Mars brought the giant sword down towards the redhead. Despite the weapon being a good forty feet long and as wide as a room, it moved as if it only weighed a couple pounds, forcing Sunset to pivot and backstep to avoid being crushed by the giant blade that was much too large to cut anything less than ten feet across. Then, she clenched her fist and channeled her mana into it. “Fire Magic: Calidus Brachium!”

Although simple on the conceptual level, Sunset could appreciate the usefulness of the spell she had stolen from Mereoleona and the speed at which it could be deployed because of its simplicity. Rather than a basic enhancement of physical ability that any mage could do with their mana, the ‘Flaming Arm’ added a jolt of kinetic force to a concentrated burst of flame on top of the aforementioned increase of physical ability and focused it all onto a single point.

So, when Sunset actually struck her target, the hit was more like a bomb that only went off in one direction, without any rebounding of kinetic force back on the caster.

The attack shattered the sword at the point of impact, breaking it into two very large pieces of crystal, along with dozens of other little pieces that went flying into the air. For a second, at least. Then, they simply hung there for a second before expanding and flying back at the not-unicorn.

He can still control the pieces? Sunset thought to herself in surprise, freezing for a moment to do so.

A mistake she ended up paying for when several shards headed towards her much too quickly to do anything about other than raise her left arm in front of her face to protect her eyes. Several small crystal shards impact her arm, sinking in a few inches, her mana skin stopping them from completely blowing through the limb.

Sunset cried out as pain exploded in her arm. It refused to listen to any mental commands to keep standing up and fell limply to her side. The rest of her body had taken a few minor scratches, but her left arm was the only thing that had taken more than a few glancing blows.

Still, she stumbled and bit her lip to help her concentrate on something else as her mana skin worked to numb the pain to the point it was bearable. Holy crap! That...that’s what REAL PAIN feels like? Sunset asked herself. While she had suffered a stubbed toe and other damage to her human body before, nothing had even come close to what had just happened. And Asta makes getting smacked around all the time look easy. 

“Surrender and accept being bound by my magic,” Mars told her evenly. “Judging by where my crystals punctured your arm, blood loss will render you unconscious in moments.”

After taking a deep breath through her nose, and doing her best to ignore the darkness closing in around her from all sides, Sunset focused her mana on a spell that she really wished she had done some real practice on, rather than just a quick bit of study. “Flame Healing Magic: Phoenix Robe.”

The second Sunset activated her magic, fire enveloped her body and the lingering pain from the wound that had just been inflicted quickly disappeared, and she felt the crystals being forced out of her body as her bone. Both muscles and flesh quickly regenerated to their previous state. A few seconds later, her arm responded to commands for it to move as she took a second to flex both it and her fingers to check for any nerve damage.

“What?” Mars breathed in shock. “That’s Fana’s spell. WHY DO YOU HAVE FANA’S SPELL?”

After shouting his demand, the man let out a gasp and reached up to hold his head for a moment. Seeing the opening, Sunset leapt forward, closing the distance between them in an instant before bringing her fist in contact with the man’s chest. The controlled explosion of the fire spell that was still covering her fist sent the man flying through the air and into a tree hard enough to break the trunk.

With her opponent down, Sunset took a breath and-“Flame Healing Magic: Phoenix Robe.”-groaned as she watched a flaming aura that stretched out at a point beyond his shoulder like a wing  surrounding Mars. A moment later, the burns on his chest completely disappeared and he was back in fighting condition.

“Something tells me, this is going to get real redundant, real fast,” she said as the man called his grimoire back up in front of him.

Just to test things, Sunset punched forward in the air and sent a blast of fire with a great deal of kinetic force into it. The attack struck Mars and made him have to plant his feet to keep standing, but the actual damage that made it through was gone a few seconds later. Then, he created half a dozen smaller crystal swords that a normal person could have used as a dagger before sending them spinning at Sunset. Making sure to protect her vitals, the teenager shattered two of the swords that would have hit something important while the others just left light cuts on her arms and legs that were gone moments later.

“So this spell not only heals, it increases the caster’s resistance to fire-based attacks,” Sunset mumbled before she felt the spell around them begin to collapse. As the dome that was supposed to lock everyone into the combat area began to fall apart, Sunset decided to switch tactics. “Come and get me loser!”

And with that, Sunset turned to run away.

With mana skin increasing her durability and physical attributes, she skipped more than ran into the woods a few seconds before Mars created a crystal platform to stand on that also acted as a medium to fly with. What few attacks the man sent after her from bursts of raw mana turned into crystal were caught by the trunks of trees Sunset darted through, although the smoldering footprints she left on the ground thanks to the phoenix robe spell meant that losing her pursuer wasn’t an option.

As she ran, Sunset mentally went through her list of options on how to deal with the man chasing her.

Despite the circumstances, she didn’t want to lead Mars back to Yami, where he would most likely be killed by the captain. The idea of anyone dying still left a bad feeling in her stomach.

“TELL ME HOW YOU KNOW FANA’S HEALING MAGIC!” the man above her demanded before launching a series of crystal shards at Sunset.

The attack was easily avoided. “Who in the hell is Fana?” Sunset yelled back after ducking behind a tree that was skewered soon after she spoke.

Mars let out another cry of rage before sending a wave of crystal along the ground, which Sunset quickly turned and hit with her fist to destroy before it could catch up to her. “She’s the owner of that spell you stole!” he shouted.

I got that spell from your book idi-wait, Sunset suddenly realized as the connection formed in her mind. “You mean, she’s the one who owns the other half of your grimoire?” she said as they cleared the woods.

“TELL ME!” he demanded before his spell book flew up in front of him again and his mana flared. “Crystal Creation Magic: Laevateinn!”

As Mars recreated another one of his enormous swords, Sunset began to form a plan. Guessing that he wouldn’t attack her with lethal force if he wanted a trade, Sunset cut the power to her recovery magic and held up her hands. “Okay, how about we make a trade?” she asked. “I’ll answer your question after you answer mine.”

Mars stopped in mid-swing, considering the deal for a moment before his giant sword vanished. “Very well. What is it you want to know?” he replied before descending to ground level and getting off his crystal platform. However, his fiery healing spell with its protection properties remained in use.

Not that it would help him much.

“Why are you guys still after Fanzell Kruger?” Sunset asked. “I thought the thing he was involved in was finished without him. You can’t honestly tell me that you’re trying to get rid of him just because he got away.” The amount of resources dedicated to finding a man who just wanted to crawl into a hole and hide somewhere didn’t make sense. If he was a revolutionary, Sunset might have seen some logic in the Diamond Kingdom’s actions. But as things were, she couldn’t reason why they would keep chasing a man that wasn’t really a concern.

And then there was the fact that they hadn’t tried to just jump Sunset the moment she led them away from the base with sheer numbers like Fanzell said they would have. Instead, they called in a single mage. And he wanted to ask questions. She had thought that was just a euphemism for ‘beat the answers out of you’, but now…

Mars frowned. “This operation is under my personal direction. Master Fanzell was the man they wanted to complete my mental conditioning. Because he wasn’t around, my training was incomplete. I want him to return to the Diamond Kingdom and perfect my programming. In return, I am willing to offer him a full pardon.”

“Wait,” Sunset said, not believing what she was hearing. “You want him to come back and brainwash you? Why in the hell would you want something like that?”

After letting out a groan, Mars reached up and touched his head again. “Because I can’t stop thinking about-no! I answered your question. Now you answer mine!” he yelled. “How do you have a spell from Fana’s grimoire?”

Sunset sighed before throwing out both of her palms until they were just shy of the flames surrounding the diamond mage. “Yeah...I lied about that,” she said before releasing her mana, using a spell that Noelle had spent the better part of the week showing her. “Water Creation Magic: Sea Dragon’s Cradle!”

As surprise showed on Mar’s face while he was surrounded by a water barrier, Sunset stuck her hands into the swirling sphere. “Crystal Creation Magic-”

“None of that now,” Sunset told him before she released all the mana she dared as water, quickly filling the swirling prison and removing the man of his oxygen supply. Unable to breathe meant that the man was unable to cast, and with the pressure of the water crushing down on him, Mars let out a gasp, the oxygen in his lungs flowing out of him as he lost consciousness.





The room was dark and cold, the walls just basic stone and several feet thick. Mars, along with over thirty other candidates stood, looking up at the projection several feet above them as they all clutched their grimoires. 

“This will be the final test to see who is worthy of leaving this place as a mage of the Diamond Kingdom,” the man all the children were looking up at announced through the magical window that projected his image into the room. “You will fight to the death. Any who refuse will be killed.”

There were several gasps throughout the room and Mars looked back to the girl standing a bit behind him, to his left. She had short pink hair, but the front of it came down so much that it nearly covered her blue eyes. Despite the fact that Mars had more mana and could channel more magical power into his spells, Fana was the reason that he had managed to make it this far in the training without breaking down like so many others.

She helped keep him together when he wanted to do nothing more than break out and get away from this awful place. She told him they were born to protect their country and that when they got out, they would go and see the world together.

But...if they were supposed to kill each other and only one of them would be let out…

Mars didn’t have time to finish his thought, as a boy to his right charged at him, his hand glowing with magic. So, Mars raised his hand and released a surge of mana. The crystal that erupted from the ground impaled the child with a hole so big, his body fell in two a second later.

And like that, the massive free for all had begun.

Mars...wasn’t much aware of what happened next. Ten years of being drilled to use magic had his mind nearly blank out as he cut down one opponent after another. All around him, he was aware that other children were doing the same, but they were unimportant until he felt them turn their mana towards him.

Then, they died.

In only a few minutes, almost all of the other children were dead.

The room stank with the smell of blood and other things that were released from the human body upon death. Despite the fact that there was no sunlight, the room seemed hot to him.

Mars panted as he finished off the last boy who had come near him, ignoring the child’s begging that he not be killed as he turned to run away before Mars stabbed him in the back with a crystal spear.

Then, he felt another source of mana die off, and there was only two of them left in the room.

He turned to see who his last opponent was...and froze.

Fana dropped the boy whose face she had just finished burning off. There was blood on her clothes, but she didn’t seem to be damaged in any way as she walked towards him. “Mars...I’m sorry,” she told him before the flames on her hand reignited. “This is the only way...now die!”

She charged at him, throwing a bolt of fire as she did and Mars flinched when it scorched the side of his cheek, forcing him to cover himself with his hands as he threw up a burst of mana to defend himself to avoid another, more powerful attack.

Blood hit his cheek as the sound of a sick splashing filled his ears.

He looked back. Fana stood there, a jagged wall of crystal running through a good portion of her body. The second he realized what had happened, Mars removed the mound of crystal that Fana was hanging from and her body dropped to the ground for him to run over to. “Fana! Fana no! I’m sorry I-”

Despite the damage to her body, she reached up with a flaming hand to touch the side of his face. The burning sensation went away and it didn’t hurt to move his mouth as she finished with her healing spell. “Now go and see the world.”





“FANA!”

As always, Mars jerked awake, sitting up as he called out to his friend.

Confusion followed as he found himself sitting in the middle of a field. He tried to move his hands, but found a pair of iron manacles had bound both his wrists and feet. For some reason, his lungs also hurt. “What?” he choked out. “What happened?”

“You drowned,” a familiar and infuriating voice said from behind him, making Mars look back. The redhead girl was there, holding his grimoire in a spherical magical barrier of some kind as she stood up behind him. He reached out for it with his magic and got...nothing. “Yeah, I’m not letting something like that happen again.”

Mars let out a sigh as the memories from a few minutes ago came back to him. He had drowned...again.

And the redhead had saved him...again.

“Fana, that isn’t the first time you’ve said that name,” Sunset said. “Who is she?”

Not seeing the point in resisting, Mars let out a sigh. “She was my best friend, when we were children,” he told her. “We went through the program together until I...killed her. During our battle in the dungeon, I started to think about her again. That’s the reason I’m looking for Fanzell. I want him to condition my mind so that I don’t have to remember her anymore.” Not that it mattered. Now that he was captured by the Clover Kingdom, he would be killed, his body dissected to learn its secrets.

Sunset blinked. “And this Fana, she was the person who originally possessed the other half of your grimoire?”

“That’s right,” Mars told her. “After I killed her, they took her grimoire and combined it with mine.”

After a few seconds silence, Sunset pressed her lips together in thought. “Wow...you’re a complete and total idiot!” she said before kicking Mars in the back of his head, sending him rolling back onto the ground.

Laying on his chest, the man pushed himself up onto his hands and knees but was unable to rise further thanks to his shackles. “What?” he demanded.

Sunset sighed, then looked at him with a scowl. “Okay so...skipping over the obvious thing for a second, you actually feel bad about something, but instead of coming to terms with it, you want someone to scramble your brain to the point where you don’t feel anything about hurting that Fana girl of yours?” she asked. “Yeah, that’s called being cowardly and stupid. If you did a bad thing, then own up to it. And if you want to make it up to her somehow, do something that girl would have wanted you to do instead of what the guys who set things up for her to get killed tell you to do.”

The casual command had Mars growing at the girl. “What would you know about Fana?” His service to the Diamond Kingdom was how he was honoring her memory.

“Well for starters, I know she’s not dead,” Sunset pointed out. “At least...she didn’t die when you think you killed her.”

“What?” Mars replied in a disbelieving tone “Now I know you don’t know what you’re talking about-”

“What happens to a grimoire after its owner dies?” Sunset suddenly asked, cutting Mars off. Then, before he could answer, she kept talking. “It breaks apart because it’s linked to the life of its user. From what I understand, hers stuck around more than long enough for them to tear it apart and glue it on to yours somehow. Ergo, Fana didn’t die...or you didn’t kill her, at least.”

Mars stared up at the girl, unsure of how to respond to what she had just said. He wanted to deny it, tell Sunset she was wrong. Because...that was the world he had come to accept. Fana had died because he had killed her.

The fact haunted his dreams. Made it hard for him to sleep. Consumed his every waking moment.

If it wasn’t true then…

Well...what did it matter at this point?

He was a prisoner of the Clover Kingdom. Even if Fana hadn’t been killed by him, or even better, was alive, he would never see her again. As that crushing reality set in, there was a loud popping sound, and his restraints disappeared. “What?” he asked before standing up. “What’re you doing?”

Sunset let out a low moan. “Yeah...see...there are these weird set of rules I have to follow while I’m here, and I’m not sure...but I think getting a high-ranking official from another country killed would violate them,” she told the young man. “Which...I’m guessing you are since you’re bossing around a guy who is supposed to be the head assassin of a whole kingdom. Or was it just the kings I’m not allowed to kill? Ah well, either way, I don’t want any more deaths on my conscience. At least not when they’re just a brainless loser who can’t even think for themselves. I have trouble enough sleeping at night already.”

The situation taking him completely by surprise, Mars continued to stare at the girl. “What?”

“So...you go find your friend or...whatever. Long as you leave the country and don’t come back,” Sunset told him. After hearing about what happened to the guy, she seriously doubted that he would be doing much good for the enemy country. “As for me...I think I’m going to go throw up and read a scroll of five-hundred year old lawyer-speak that I’ve been putting off getting all the way through.”

Still not sure what was going on, Mars could only stand there as the redhead disappeared in a flash of light. A second after he was gone, the spell binding Mars’s grimoire became undone and he called it back to his hands.

For several minutes, he simply looked down at the book in his hands. The snow white cover of his grimoire, with pieces of an orange red color that had belonged to Fana. Could she really be alive?





Noelle did her best not to grimace as she watched Sunset bend over to empty her stomach into a bucket that was usually reserved for Vanessa’s mornings while the Black Bulls sat around the common room. In the center of the room, the three prisoners that had been brought back with them were bound with both magic and physical restraints while Finral talked on the communication magic item about arranging a pickup for the prisoners. As a security policy, captured spatial mages were never transported by portal.

“So, you led the enemy commander away from the battle and then teleported back here, huh?” she asked after hearing Sunset’s dubious story.

The redhead finished gagging then turned back and gave the Silva a pair of big, innocent eyes as she clasped her hands together. “Oh yes! He was just so strong! I got so scared and just had to run away.”

Before she could even say a word, Noelle felt her hair friz up as Luck jumped next to her. “Then we should go find him!” the boy said while lightning crackled around his hands.

Vanessa let out a little laugh. “I think that you should keep an eye on the prisoners just in case they try to get away again.”

“We weren’t trying to get away!” Mariella shouted in a panic, her hair still standing on end as lightning burns covered a good deal of her body. “That psycho untied us and beat us up!”

Galleo just wined and slumped over a little.

From his place at the bar, Magna snorted. “Sounds like an attempted escape to me. Using your feminine wiles magic to hypnotize poor Luck.”

Asta put his foot on the back of the woman to force her into a bow. “You’re lucky we stopped him before he did anything else. After all the pain the two of you have caused, you deserve a lot worse.”

After letting out a frustrated cry, Mariella looked back at the boy with a frown. “I’m telling you, they forced me into working for them!”

“It must be so easy for you,” Noelle told the disgusting woman as she crossed her arms. “Only caring about yourself. As long as it benefits you, then you can justify anything. You could have had some decency and refused, ran away, or a number of other things. Instead, you decided to kill people to prolong your own life. Even the man who saved it at one time.”

The mention of Fanzell made Asta look over to the girl with the silver hair. “Hey, that reminds me. Did you and Finral find Domina?”

Noelle froze for a moment before a smile crept up on her face. “Um...yes,” she said nervously, remembering their loving reunion.

-1 Hour Ago-

After Finral’s portal dropped them on the edge of the castle town, Noelle led the party of three back to the black market that Vanessa had shown her the location of. Thankfully, Domina hadn’t moved on yet, and they found her stall easily enough, with all its assorted trinkets.

The look on Fanzell’s face slowly changed from cautious hope to absolute joy as he spotted the woman and ran towards her. “Domina, it’s you! It’s really you!” he cried out right as he reached the woman with the chestnut hair done up in a long ponytail.

“Fanzell?” she replied, with a disbelieving look.

“Oh! I’ve missed you so much! When you weren’t at the meeting place, I got so worried,” he told her.

The woman’s eye twitched. “WHAT THE HELL TOOK YOU SO LONG TO FIND ME!” she shouted before hitting the man in the jaw. Then, as Fanzell fell down onto the ground, Domina jumped over the little table holding all of their things to begin kicking him. “I’ve been here for months! MONTHS! Do you know what I had to do to earn yul? I had to sell illegal magic items! YOU TURNED ME INTO A CRIMINAL!”

-Present Time-

“It was very...emotional,” Noelle told him.

Although, they two of them did leave the capital together, so...she guessed it turned out okay. 

“Hello, dispatch, this is Finral with the Back Bulls, we caught three indavuals performing reconnaissance around our headquarters. They’re from the Diamond Kingdom and were claiming that they were after some guy in red hair, but a through search of the area found no evidence of a fourth person,” the spatial magic user said. “One of them uses spatial magic, so we need a guarded transport.”

Once the message was completed, Sunset turned to Yami. “Uh, won’t they figure out that there was more going on when these people are questioned?” she asked. “I’m pretty sure I remember the Wizard King saying his assistant has some kind of mind reading magic.”

Yami looked down at the girl. “You mean about that guy you fought? Eh, probably. But he got away, and I didn’t know about Zell until after he was gone, so it’s no skin off my back. Or yours...maybe. Besides, Marx spends all his time trying to make sure Julius is doing his job, so by the time he gets around to interrogating these two, it’s all going to be old news.”

“What’s going to happen to them?” Asta asked.

After taking a drag on his cigarette, Yami looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Well, Julius is a big softie, so…” he muttered before looking down at the kid. “We’ll probably stick them in a hole somewhere for a few years, until they’re so out of their minds from boredom that they’ll be willing to do community service until they die just for something to keep them from going nuts.”

Asta stood there for a few minutes, obviously thinking about the matter. “That’s uh...that’s good,” he said before looking around. “I uh...I think I’m gonna go for a swim.”

Getting a good look at his face, Noelle could see that something was bothering the boy. With Sunset still looking rather woozy, Noelle sucked it up and followed him. “Think I’ll join you,” she said before following the shorter magic knight out of the room and towards the back exit of the hideout.

When they got outside, Asta walked up to the edge of their new pool that Sunset had added a cleared circle of stone to walk around and simply stood there looking down at the water. “Uh...I forgot my swimsuit.”

“Let’s be honest, Asta...you didn’t come here for a swim,” Noelle told him frankly as she slipped off her boots before tossing them to the side to sit down and put her feet in the water. The last thing she wanted the idiot doing was commenting on how they smelled or something.

Asta sat down too, taking his shoes off before following suit. “Yeah,” he told her.

Starting to become annoyed at his lack of talking after she had the heart to come out here on her own and announce her intentions to everyone, Noelle looked over to Asta. The depressed look on his face killed her enthusiasm. “So...um...what’s on your mind?”

“Do you know who those guys were?” Asta asked in a hollow voice.

“Basically,” Noelle told him carefully. “I mean, you told Yami they were two of the people responsible for your adoptive family dying, right?”

He sighed and hung his head. “Yeah. The girl Mariella, she pointed them at my hometown, and Zell said that Galleo was the guy in charge of the whole operation. I didn’t even know he was involved until after I saw his red portals. But because of them...everyone I knew and cared about before I became a magic knight is dead, except for Yuno...and Sunset.”

Noelle nodded. “So…” she studied the boy for a moment. “You’re...confused as to why you’re not happy something bad happened to them, or are you mad they’re not going to be punished even more?”

“I don’t feel anything,” Asta told her quietly as he pulled his feet out of the water and pulled his knees up on himself to put his arms on as he rested his forehead on them. “When the guy who killed Sister Lilly...my…” he let out a very long sigh. “My mom, I watched him die and I felt glad that he was dead, that he got what he deserved. And when that woman talks about how she had to do things to help these guys, I get so angry at her, but now that it’s over...I’m just...it’s like there’s this hole inside of me that used to be filled because this one guy died. But then, I find out about how those other two were involved and it’s like the thing was opened up again. And when we catch them it’s...still there. And I don’t know why.”

Unsure of what to do, Noelle sat there next to the boy as he just looked down at the stone beneath them. “I don’t...know what to do,” Asta said after a moment. “Do I want them to die? Will that let me...stop thinking about it again? But then, if that’s how I am, I’m not any better than that Mariella girl, am I?”

Wanting Asta to shut up, Noelle reached out and grabbed the idiot before pulling him close. His face pressed in against her breasts, but she didn’t care. “You’re a hundred times better than that woman, you idiot!” she told the moron she said after wrapping her arms around his head and resting her own cheek against it. “I get it. You’re really hurting, even now. And idiots do really stupid things to the people who hurt them, but that doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. It just means you're hurting right now. And the fact that you didn’t kill them when I’m pretty sure Yami would have let you do it back before you brought them in means you’re a good person! So...just shut up and mourn your family now that you’ve got a bit more closure to the whole thing! Because I’m not letting you go until you do. And if you don’t, I’m going to drown you for putting your face in my breasts!”

“B-But you’re the one who put it here!” Asta’s muffled voice cried out from Noelle’s chest.





Cadance made her way through the system of tunnels, still impressed about the fact that something like this even existed so close to Canterlot without anypony knowing about it. From the looks of things, they were part of a large mine that ran throughout the mountain that Canterlot was attached to. Although the old entrances had long been sealed off, Sunset’s instructions had her enter the place from over a mile away from the Canterhorn, where an old drainage tunnel had been used to let water and other waste remained open and forgotten.

Had Sunset found out about the tunnels and hidden in them all this time, or were they a recent discovery that she was just using them to meet with Cadance? The pink princess didn’t know the answer, but she added it to the very long list of questions her big sister was going to answer once they found each other.

A green light up ahead, just around the next turn caught the Princess’s attention, and she galloped towards it. “Sunset?” Cadance called out. “Are you there?”

“Did you come alone?” a voice asked.

Cadance almost recognized it. It had been years since she had last heard the amber unicorn speak, so she supposed that her memory might have faded in that time. So, she put the oddity out of her mind. “Yes,” the pink princess promised her. “I left through my window so that the guards Celestia has watching my house didn’t see.”

A few seconds later, Sunset stepped out from the corner, the green light of her horn illuminating the darkness, and a saddlebag covering her cutie mark.

Was her magic always that color? Cadance asked herself. For some reason, the princess remembered it being a light blue.

But, such things were quickly forgotten. Sunset looked just like Cadance remembered. Albeit a little smaller, but then...that was what happened when one pony was a unicorn and the other was an alicorn that outgrew the normal height of their race without any help from cosmetic potions some ponies used to make themselves look more like Celestia.

Cadance galloped towards the shorter mare. “Oh Sunset, it is you!” she said before rearing up to wrap her forelegs around the unicorn and hug her as tightly as she could. “I thought...I never dreamed...I…” Unable to form a complete thought, Cadance just hugged her big sister as tightly as she could.

“Oh my! You really do love me, don’t you?” Sunset asked in the voice that still sounded slightly off.

The admission got a small giggle from Cadance before she felt her legs tremble. Vision blurred and the feeling of lightheadedness quickly followed as the world started to spin. “W-What? Of course I love you, silly,” she said before taking a step back and blinked at what she was seeing.

A pink mass of mana was flowing off Cadance’s body and into Sunset’s mouth as the unicorn’s horn lit up even brighter. “Sunset?” Cadance asked as it became harder to think. “What’s...going...on?”

Her legs gave out, and Cadance looked up to the unicorn as something became far too clear to her. “You...you’re not...Sunset,” she struggled to say.

The feeling of being drained ended, and the fake unicorn took a step back. “No,” she said. “But if I had known you have this much love for Celestia’s little trained killer, I would have taken her form much sooner.”

Cadance tried to for herself back up onto her hooves, but her muscles gave out and she hit the ground after only a few seconds. “Taken...her form?” she asked in confusion while looking up at the not-Sunset.

The unicorn in front of her was consumed in a swath of green fire to be replaced by something that just looked plain wrong. It had four legs, like a pony, but there were holes in them and a complete lack of hair aside from its sickly green mane and tail. The creature’s horn was jagged and twisted, while the wings it possessed looked more like they belonged on an insect than a pony, and were attached to a green carapace on the monster’s back.

“What...are you?” Cadance asked with some difficulty.

After giving her a considering look, the creature rolled its eyes. “You know, I really do wonder how you creatures can run your country when half of you know nothing about its history,” the monster replied with a voice that sounded even less natural than before as it lifted one of its evil hooves to place it on her chest. “I am Chrysalis, Queen of the Changelings.”

Cadance struggled to breathe in some air as she looked up at the monster. “The...what?”

“...you haven’t heard of us, seriously?” she asked before blinking. “I mean, I can forgive you for not recognizing me on sight, I suppose. But, you’ve never heard of Equestria’s greatest enemy? The hidden threat that is constantly on the verge of draining every last ounce of love from Equestria and destroying you all? Aren’t you supposed to be one of the ponies in charge of this stupid country?”

The question made Cadance groan. “Have you met Celestia? Nopony else is allowed to make a single decision with her around. Even after she came back, Luna is still treated little better than an ignorant savage that doesn’t have a bit of real authority.”

Chrysalis tapped her chin with a hoof. “True, she is a rather obsessive micro-manager.”

“Now,” Cadance said as she finally made it back onto her hooves with a great deal of effort. Her legs were shaking, but she managed to stand up. “Tell me where Sunset is, or you’ll regret it!”

Despite the threat, Chrysalis looked more confused than anything else. “Huh? Didn’t you hear? She fled Canterlot through a magical mirror that is supposed to lead to another world,” she told the Princess. “If not for that, I would have replaced her a long time ago and stabbed Celestia in the back once she let me get close. But, she never really loved her trained killer so...it wasn’t really an option.”

Cadance fought to keep on her hooves at the news. “Celestia may have a hard time expressing her emotions, but I know she feels for that pony.”

“Not according to her last entry,” Chrysalis said before the green glow of her horn opened her saddlebags and levitated a book out of them.

The sight of the cover made Cadance nearly collapse again. “That...that’s Celestia’s journal! It’s been missing for years,” she said before needing to fight for breath as something became clear. Celestia was quite vehement in the claim that the book was lost, but... “You...you stole it!”

“Well duh,” Chrysalis said before opening the book to a place that was somewhere three-quarters of the way through the book before clearing her throat. “Ahem! Dear Princess Celestia, bla bla bla...ah, here is it! I met some creatures that treated me like actual family. Which, I now see you aren’t and never were. I guess that was my bad, the stupid delusions of a filly who never got to know what a family was before I met you. So, I guess I can let you off the hook for never really loving me too.” Then the bug-horse shut the book and turned it so that Celestia’s cutie mark was showing. “So, like I said, waste of time to impersonate Sunset, because Celestia didn’t love her.”

Cadance stood mute for several seconds.

After Sunset had disappeared, Cadance had gotten the big pony to let her see the book once she had left her third and final message to the mare. Although it was quite rude, Cadance had spent a good deal of time reading the previous passages, hoping they would make her a little closer to her big sister. While she hadn’t memorized everything Sunset had written, the pink princess was very certain that passage was nowhere in the journal.

So, the changeling was either lying, or…

“Let me see that book,” Cadance demanded.

Chrysalis floated the journal over to her. “You mean...this book?”

“Yes!” the pink princess said through gritted teeth.

“...no,” Chrysalis replied before the book suddenly burst into green colored flames.

Cadance screamed and leapt at her to try and grab the thing, but her legs were far too weak and even with a flap from her wings, she was far too slow to do anything before Chrysalis hit her with a magic blast in the chest that forced the breath from her lungs. The air knocked out of her, she couldn’t do anything as Chrysalis dragged the mare with her green magic deeper into the mine to throw her down another shaft.

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go enslave your husband, soak up all the love the party goers send your way at the ceremony, then conquer Canterlot,” she told the mare that couldn’t even move. “I’d finish you off, but...seeing as how having that much love being drained will keep your magic from working for a few days, starvation will do that for me.”

As Chrysalis left the tunnel that Cadance had been thrown down, she turned around a second later and blasted the entrance, collapsing it and leaving the pink princess trapped.

“This day is going to be perfect,” the voice of the bug-queen echoed through the rock from all around as Cadance tried to light up her horn, only for it to fizzle out, leaving her trapped in darkness.