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// Quis Custardiet Ipsos Custardes? 
// Story: Starlight Saves Equestria With Custard 
// by hawthornbunny 
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Clink, clink. The thick yellow dessert made the faintest ripple as Starlight's trembling hoof tapped the bowl. In the deathly silence of the Map Room, her nervous tapping sounded like the crash of a rock hammer.

Starlight sighed, closed her eyes, and took a long deep breath, trying to will the nerves out of her system. This is it, Starlight. No safety net. No do-overs. Nopony to pull you out if you mess this up.

She chuckled grimly. "I mean, I should have known, right? Of course this couldn't go any other way," she told the bowl of custard, which continued to sit silently on the Map table. "It always comes back to you in the end."

She felt her limbs begin to tremble again, and leapt off the throne, landing on four hooves, letting the shock steady her. Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about it. You can do this. You know you can.

"Well you know what? I don't need you!" Starlight yelled, gritting her teeth as she fixed the bowl with a glare. She stomped back to the table and slammed it with her hoof. Good. Anger's good for focus. "You think you're sooooo smart, don't you? Did you consider I might let Equestria fall just to spite you, huh? You think I wouldn't do it? Have you even met me? I wrote the book on destroying Equestria out of spite -" She winced and stopped herself. Don't think about it!

Starlight screwed her face up into an pained grimace, holding the flat of her hoof against her forehead. Then she started chuckling again. "I could just trot away," she continued. "Be done with you, finally. Be done with custard forever. You're all there is left."

She trotted over to the window and looked out over the sea of thatching that made up the eastern quarter of Ponyville. Rabbits fighting for dominion over the empty dirt roads. Unattended clouds drifting aimlessly into tall buildings. "Old Starlight would have done it without a second thought."

She turned back to the table and the custard bowl with a crazed glint in her eyes. "So just be grateful I'm not Old Starlight. Let's do this."

She lit up her horn and hooked her magic in to the invisible aura that surrounded the Map Table, control coming to her with ease. Motes of light blossomed out from the table center and projected upward, transforming into a representation of the entirety of Equestria.

For a moment, Starlight felt a pang of sorrow at seeing it, the Map only serving as a reminder of everypony they'd lost. But she forced the feeling away. There wasn't any time for that.

A shimmering six-pointed star blazed above the map, staining the entire Map Room in a distasteful magenta glow. A constellation of five smaller white stars hovered around it in attendance.

Starlight bit her lip, and activated the Map. The star erupted into a beautiful fractal, and then was gone.

There wasn't really any time left at all.





A ghostly green flash lit up the Map Room for a second, and when it was over, an alicorn stood on the other side of the table. Or at least, what used to be an alicorn - Starlight wasn't exactly sure if Nightmares still qualified, or if they were something else entirely.

The Nightmare's lips pursed into an eager leer, her flame-ringed eyes regarding Starlight with delight. "It was such a clever idea," said Nightmare Sparkle, smiling sympathetically at her former student. "Did you hope I'd forgotten about my connection to the Cutie Map?"

Starlight sighed sadly, gripping the cold arm of the Throne of Magic. "Well, you've had such a lot on, lately. I figured it might have slipped your mind."

Twilight laughed. "I admit, I wasn't expecting to feel that particular tingle again." She wiggled her hindquarters, her corvine wings rippling gently as she settled them. "For just a moment, I got that feeling - you know, the thrill of a call to adventure? It's been so long," she sighed wistfully. "Sadly, the connection only goes one way. The Map can reach me, but it won't get anything back. I severed that link."

"Of course you did," Starlight said dully. "How have you been?"

Twilight gazed up nostalgically at the array of crystal pennants decorating the airspace of the Map Room. "Busy, always busy," she replied. "I have all the pegasi now, I know that for sure. The hippogriffs gave me a lot of trouble - water makes everything more difficult - but I think they're all accounted for. The changelings, I struck a deal with."

Starlight blinked in surprise. "Thorax agreed to your terms?"

Twilight nodded. "The changelings are tired of hiding. Thorax knows I'll treat him and his people well."

"So you've got the entire Changeling Empire in your library now? How many shelves is that?"

"An entire wing," Twilight beamed, her eyes shining happily. "When it's complete they'll be the Mirage Wing, they liked that."

"Sure they did," Starlight grumped.

"I believe there are pockets of earth ponies still holding out in the badlands," Twilight said. "Terrain is difficult there. I'm still figuring out a plan for that." Her eyes drifted toward the bowl on the Map table. "Is that custard?"

"Yeah," Starlight said, feeling a shiver down her spine. "Thought I'd cheer myself up."

"I thought you hated custard," Twilight frowned.

"Well, you know, the end of the the world has a way of changing perspectives," Starlight said with a shrug. "Want some? It's still nice and warm. Cooked with nirik fire."

"Oh, there are still kirin free?" Twilight said, surprised. "Thank you for letting me know. I thought I'd got them all, but they're a surprisingly elusive species -"

"How's Spike?" Starlight asked.

Twilight froze, the faerie-fire around her eyes pausing for just a moment. "Spike is having a wonderful time," she said stiffly. "I put him in his favorite comic book."

"I'm sure he'll thank you some day," Starlight said stonily.

Twilight scowled. "You'll be pleased to know I have just one unicorn left to account for."

Starlight's heart began to hammer. "And when you say 'account for' you mean...?"

"Starlight," Twilight said, dropping her voice to a gentle whisper. She trotted around the table to face her eye-to-eye. "Please don't fight me. I know, I know you want to, you want to cling onto that hope like it's the last drop of water in the desert - but as a friend, I'm imploring you. Come to me. Come back to your friends. They're all waiting for you."

She raised a hoof to pat Starlight fondly, but the unicorn crossly drew away from her. "I even have the perfect book for you," she added, her daggerlike horn glinting with light as it summoned a thick, ancient tome, the cover sporting embossed squiggles that Starlight recognized as Marecenaean glyphs. "I've barely scratched the surface of the spells in this one myself. It'll be like walking shoulder-to-shoulder with the greatest mystics who ever lived, you'll love it in there! I promise," Twilight gave a wide, encouraging smile, her fangs gleaming. "And this is just the first volume! Oh, and Sunburst is in Volume Two! When you're ready I'll even let you two share a book together, once I figure out how -"

Starlight glared at her. "You know, the last time we fought, I technically beat you. If I hadn't given up, you wouldn't be standing here now. And honestly, you're really making me regret that decision."

The Nightmare's lips tightened. "If there's nothing I can do to convince you, I won't waste any more time." She began gathering magic into her horn. "I'll try not to hurt you, but if you resist me, I can't guarantee -"

"NOW!" Starlight yelled, standing up on the throne.

Twilight's mane erupted with a phantom wind as she heard hooves skittering out from behind a pillar, her dark wings flaring in readiness. She turned to face the new threat, and her flames sputtered in horror as she saw the trap they'd laid for her.

A cream-colored kirin leapt forth, and above her head floated a scroll upon which was inscribed a square grid, nine columns by nine rows. A scattering of the grid cells were filled with digits, but otherwise it was empty.

"NO!" Nightmare Sparkle shrieked. "That isn't fair!" She lit her horn, and summoned a ravenfeather quill.

"Come on!" Starlight cried frantically, flinging the door open and sprinting out into the corridor. "That won't hold her for long!"

The kirin scrambled past the nightmare alicorn as she threw the scroll onto the Map table, and poised her quill over it, lips muttering as she began to compute the positions of the missing digits.

"You sure?" said Autumn Blaze. "That one's a Diabolical..."

"I'm sure! Come on!" Starlight said, yanking her out of the door. Hooves clattered and crashed as they made their escape through the curving crystal corridors.

"It has the diagonals too!" Twilight's voice wailed behind them. "You monsters!"





"When we get outside, head south," Starlight said, chest heaving. She envied Autumn's stamina - even though she was running for her life, the kirin was gaily skipping alongside her, and Starlight got the distinct impression that she herself was the one slowing them both down. "Go to the badlands. Twilight will go after me, which is fine, that's what we want."

"Starlight, I have magic," Autumn said, her earnest eyes filled with determination. "Together, maybe we can -"

"No," Starlight insisted. "We can't win this one. Please, Autumn, just -"

SHOOM!

Nightmare Sparkle appeared in front of the closed castle doors, her eyes aflame with fury. "That was extremely inconvenient," she hissed. "Good fun, though. I enjoyed it." She lit her horn, and a shimmering bubble of green energy began to form a perimeter around all three of them. Only when they were fully enclosed did she gently hover to the floor. "I won't tolerate any more dissent, do you understand? I wanted to be nice, I really did. But now I'm putting my hoof down." A pair of books materialized above her frazzled mane. "I will use any force necessary if you resist, so please don't."

Autumn's eyes blazed with defiant fury as her entire body blackened and erupted into incandescent flame. She stepped in front of Starlight, adopting a protective crouch. "Pretty sure fire beats paper," she roared.

Twilight gave an ugly grimace, a distant painful memory surfacing for just a moment. "You would be correct. Unfortunately for you, magic beats fire."

Twilight cast a spell of such potency that Starlight's horn itched in discomfort just from being near it. Tendrils of green light shot out from one of the books and struck Autumn square in the chest, ignoring the fire completely as they began to wrap around her body. Autumn suddenly yelped as she was pulled up off the ground, and gave a furious growl, her flames blasting higher and hotter as she tried to burn away at the magic.

Then, to Starlight's horror, the kirin's body began to change. Her fire started to shudder and freeze in place, the white-hot flames fading to merely white, the deadly lilac bleaching away into cross-hatched designs, her body losing definition and dimensionality as her black coat became the color of ink. She turned desperately to Starlight, who saw only an illustration of a terrified nirik's face before it was sucked into the pages of the book.

"I didn't have time to pick out something for her," Twilight said tetchily. "Hope she likes table etiquette. This is your last chance, Starlight."

Starlight reared her head back and blasted Twilight with a wide-angle beam powerful enough to atomize a building.

Twilight sighed sadly as her force-shield effortlessly absorbed the blast and nullified it. "Fine."

Starlight closed her eyes as Nightmare Sparkle's magic enveloped her, wincing as the phantasmal tendrils wound around her neck and slithered beneath her mane, her hooves being plucked off the ground as the spell began to suck away her color and solidity. Her skin crumpled like paper as she felt her biology being rewritten... erased, replaced instead by lines of ink. She was becoming something not a pony, not a being, but a representation. To be interpreted, to be only what the ink showed her to be. Tears rolled down her blanched cheeks and froze as inky streaks, which remained as all her color faded to white and black outlines, even her cutie mark now just a drawn-on design.

She felt a pull, and the world began to splinter away from her as she was tugged into the spellbook. She managed to catch a glimpse of Twilight's saddened eyes before everything went dark.