“Sorry we’re late,” apologized Soft Mane as she sat down at the patio table, Spike taking a seat next to her. “We surprised my mom with a trip to the Ponyville Day Spa, and had to talk her into accepting the super-deluxe mane blow-out and massage we got for her.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble at all,” replied Fluttershy, giving the pair a timid smile as she passed menus their way. “We were still trying to figure out what to have for breakfast.”
“And we’d have waited either way,” added Applejack. “Takin’ care of family’s important.”
“I still can’t believe one of Princess Luna’s own guards attacked you guys,” huffed Rainbow Dash. “Did it not occur to him that he could have just asked to use Twilight’s portal thingy?”
“He didn’t exactly seem like the asking type,” noted Spike wryly, scanning his menu.
“Well, I still think that Princess Luna should have warned us that somepony so dangerous was on the loose,” added Rarity, her voice thick with disapproval. “That newspony from the Canterlot Chronicle that we met at the assembly Princess Celestia conveved even mentioned that cad had assaulted Twilight’s brother before he went missing, so clearly he was someone we should have been watching out for.”
“Hmm, it is kind of hard to believe she forgot to mention that,” agreed Pinkie, looking up from where she’d been using crayons to draw a surprisingly-detailed picture of herself as the Pona Lisa (save for the wide grin on her face) on the children’s placemat she’d requested. “I mean, besides telling everyone there that she’d been cursed, dealing with Discord, me and Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon finally making back from Everglow, that giant monster attacking, all of us almost dying, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon getting lost on Everglow again, and then all of us being saved by an angel, you think that would have been what that big meeting was all about!”
Coming from anyone else, that remark would have been sarcastic in the extreme, but coming from Pinkie the statement was completely genuine, something which made Rarity flinch in embarrassment. “Yes, well…I suppose she may have had other things on her mind.”
“If she didn’t before, she certainly does now,” murmured Fluttershy sadly, looking back down at the newspaper in front of her, the front page of which showed Luna – wingless and with her mane hanging limp – stoically looking at the camera.
Her comment caused several sets of ears to fold back. Luna’s public announcement of what Lex Legis had done to her had made the local papers that morning, and while it was still early, it had already taken the town by storm. A glance back inside the restaurant whose veranda they were on showed that their water – rather than coming back to take their orders – was huddled in a corner with several other members of the staff, their eyes glued to a copy of the same newspaper.
But that wasn’t the reason Fluttershy’s observation had caused everyone to cringe.
“So…anypony know if Princess Luna’s plannin’ to try again with the Crystal Heart?” asked Applejack after a moment.
That earned her an incredulous look from Soft Mane. “After what Spike said she went through the first time?”
“I know, it’s just…” Taking a moment to order her thoughts, Applejack tried again. “I ain’t no wizard, but I’ve picked up a few things about magic since I started studyin’ it, and one of those things is that just because somethin’ doesn’t work the first time don’t mean it ain’t never gonna work. Which is kinda like a lot of things, really.”
“You mean like how, at that conference, Princess Cadance said she needed a few tries before she was able to remove the curses that Lex Legis put on those other two ponies, Produce Aisle and Comfy Cozy?” murmured Fluttershy nervously, as though merely talking about the villain who had spread so much misery was frightening her.
“Yeah, but don’t forget what Twilight said when she took the curse off my wing back in Vanhoover,” pointed out Rainbow Dash. “Lex is doing something new with his curses that makes them harder than normal to remove.”
“So it’s like how my Nana Pinkie’s special caramel taffy bubblegum is so sticky it can even stick to non-stick pans?” pondered Pinkie, casually taking out a piece of the caramel taffy bubblegum she’d made that morning and popping it in her mouth, the thick substance quickly leaving her fighting to part her lips. “‘cuth thath weawwy thihy!”
“Something like that,” murmured Spike, shuddering as he remembered how spectacularly the Crystal Heart had failed to remove Lex’s curse from Princess Luna.
It hadn’t been for lack of trying. The moment the artifact had unleashed the love it had gathered from the crystal ponies, the dark magic Lex had covered Luna in had manifested, appearing as an inky black material that covered her completely, just like what had happened with Rainbow Dash’s wing. The hope had been that, just like Twilight had done then, the Crystal Heart would be able to peel the filmy substance off of her, at which point it would lose cohesion and dissipate, leaving Luna restored.
For a split-second, that had been what happened, the murky stuff stretching as the Crystal Heart’s aura pulled it away from Luna, tears appearing in its viscid-looking mass that revealed the alicorn underneath. In that instant, he and everypony else on the balcony had been able to see the real Luna – her stature restored, her mane waving, and her wings spreading outward – struggling to get out. And as more of the opaque film enveloping her was torn open, it had seemed like she would.
That was when the curse had started fighting back.
Writhing under the onslaught of the Crystal Heart’s magic, the dark magic had lashed out with a viciousness wholly unlike the previous attempt to remove it. Rippling and thrashing as though an electrical current was coursing through it, the black substance had thrown itself back onto Luna in large splotches, hauling its amorphous mass around her in defiance of the power tearing it away. Even as one section had been peeled away under the relentless aura of the Crystal Heart, another would lunge forward, covering part of her that had been freed only seconds before. It had been like watching a tar pit come to life, fighting to engulf a victim that fallen into it.
At that point everyone had rushed forward to help her, but it had been futile. For all that the substance of Lex’s curse had looked like a viscous mass, it hadn’t had a physical substance for them to grab. Twilight had explained later that the ebony goop was just what the magic looked like when manifesting to the point of being visible with the naked eye, and wasn’t something that could actually be touched, but at the time all they’d known was that they couldn’t seem to grab hold of the stuff. Twilight and Cadance – who had flown back up to the balcony when she’d heard the commotion – had been the only ones to use their magic instead, the two of them casting their curse-removal spells in an effort to turn the tide.
It hadn’t worked.
None of them had been able to do anything as Luna – screaming wildly as she fought with every fiber of her being to get away – had been pulled back into the lightless sludge, not just once but again and again and again, the Crystal Heart pushing it back enough to give her a glimpse of freedom but never enough for her to extricate herself completely. Even when she’d fallen to the ground, too exhausted to do anything but moan and shudder, the two magical forces had remained locked in stalemate, the substance of the curse being pulled apart only to reconstitute itself around her again seconds later.
That had been when Celestia had told Cadance to stop the Crystal Heart, the younger alicorn obeying immediately, recognizing that letting the struggle continue would only make things worse for Luna. Wordlessly, Cadance had flown down and removed the artifact from the center of the plaza, its aura dying away immediately. The instant it was gone, the black magic of the curse had overrun Luna again, the thickness of it surrounding her and hiding her from sight before it began to draw inward, sinking back into her until it was clinging to her like a second skin. When that had finally receded, Luna was once again her diminished self, being a unicorn to all appearances, surrounded by the shimmering and translucent forms of everyone else who had been touched by the Crystal Heart.
“…Spike?”
“Huh?” Shaking his head as he drawn away from the fearsome memory, Spike looked up. “Sorry Rarity, what did you say?”
“I said, do you think that Princess Celestia might try to negotiate with Lex Legis to remove her sister’s curse now that he’s a prince?” repeated Rarity.
But Spike didn’t have a chance to answer as Rainbow Dash jumped in. “Seriously? First Twilight, then Applejack, and now you’re talking about reasoning with him too? Rarity, I know all that highbrow royalty stuff is kind of your thing, but it doesn’t change the fact that Lex is a bad guy, and you don’t negotiate with bad guys, you kick their butts!”
An uncomfortable look crossed Rarity’s face at the rebuke, but it was there for only a moment before she gave her mane a toss, putting her nose in the air with an indignant huff. “As unpalatable as you might find the prospect, Rainbow Dash, I hardly think it would be beyond the pale for somepony to make compromises for the sake of someone they love.”
Pushing back the brim of her hat, Applejack nodded. “I know what you mean, Rarity.”
For some reason, that made the unicorn in question blink. “Y-you do?”
“Absolutely. Luna might be a princess and all, but to Princess Celestia she’s just her little sister, which means she wants to look out for her the way you do for Sweetie Belle and I do for Apple Bloom.”
“Oh yes, yes of course,” agreed Rarity quickly. “Watching out for one’s little sister is precisely what I meant.”
Peeking out from behind her mane, Fluttershy bit her lip. “You don’t think it would be different if the person you had to bargain with was the same person who hurt her in the first place, though?”
“Maybe it’ll be easier if Princess Celestia sends somepony to do it for her!” gushed Pinkie. “Like how I’ll sometimes ask Gummy to buy party supplies for me when I’m working on a big new surprise birthday bash for somepony and can’t get away! Even though he sometimes buys the wrong ones because he thinks polka dot balloons are the best even though solid colors are a party favorite for almost everypony in Ponyville and I have to make extra trips in order to return them and pick up the right ones, most of the time he’s really helpful!”
Soft Mane frowned, having met Pinkie’s pet alligator recently, but before she could ask about how such a sedentary creature could run errands, Rainbow Dash gave a snort. “Probably Twilight then. I guess if she can get Lex to agree to a duel, she might be able to get him to agree to change Luna back,” she groused. “I still think she should just lay the smackdown on him until he undoes her curse, though.”
Ignoring her girlfriend’s complaining, Applejack turned her attention to Spike. “Speakin’ of Twilight, any word from her, sugarcube?”
His features tightening with worry, Spike shook his head. “Not for a couple of days now. Last I heard, she’d made it to Viljatown, and was planning to use the magic map there to teleport to where Starlight said she was, but nothing since then.”
Fluttershy perked her ears up. “That place has a magic map? Like the one in Twilight’s castle that sent us to Vanhoover?”
Spike shook his head. “Not exactly. In the center of this hedge maze right by the castle in the middle of the city, there’s this big map of Everglow set in the ground. It’s called the Mythril Map, and it can teleport you to any place that it shows, even if you haven’t been there before. You have to pay a fee to use it, but I’m pretty sure it depicts the griffon kingdom too, so Twilight was planning on using that to get to Cuachan.”
“Aw, she’s going to Cuachan?” pouted Pinkie. “I wish I’d known! I’d have told her to pack warm clothes, bring extra toothpaste, and watch out for assassins!”
A heavy silence fell then, as a round of alarmed glances were exchanged. “Pinkie,” gulped Rarity at last, “what exactly do you mean, darling?”
“Well,” began Pinkie casually, “griffons use their beaks for eating, so they don’t really worry about brushing their teeth-”
“Not that part!” yelled Rainbow Dash, slamming her hooves on the table in agitation. “The part about the assassins!”
“Oh, that,” chuckled Pinkie. “Well, Cuachan is where I finally found Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon. They were getting ready to flee the city because they’d tried to break into the textile market in order to earn some money to try and get home, and some of the local griffons were so mad that they hired some assassins to deal with them. I heard they had some really close calls too!”
Heedless of the horrified looks being directed her way, Pinkie glanced back toward the restaurant. “Do you think anypony’s ever going to come take our orders? I’m really hungry!”