//------------------------------// // Chapter Twelve // Story: The Dresden Fillies: Great Power // by psychicscubadiver //------------------------------// Edited by: SilentCarto Proofreader: Coandco Disclaimer: I don’t own The Dresden Files or My Little Pony, that is Jim Butcher and Hasbro respectively. This story takes place between books 8 and 9 in the Dresden Files and seasons 2-3 of My Little Pony. Against every one of my better senses Fluttershy had convinced me to let her talk with the Red Court Vampire we’d taken prisoner. Alone. For such a quiet little slip of a girl she could be surprisingly stubborn when she wanted to. Eventually I gave in, but not before I chained the bastard to the thickest beam I could find in the factory and threatened him with any number of horrendous deaths if he hurt her. The ghoul and the ant hill from last summer would be nothing compared to what I’d do to him if he so much as touched a hair on her precious little head. But after doing that, I let her enter the room and shut the door behind me, leaving them alone. Only to immediately put my ear to the door and begin to Listen to the conversation that followed. Hey, I’m a wizard. It would be unnatural not to cheat. The rest of the girls clustered around the door too, including Pinkie, who put her hands through a series of strange gestures before declaring her ‘jutsu’ complete. She then stretched her ear to something like five times its normal size and placed it against the door. The sight was so utterly bizarre that I lost the beginning of Fluttershy’s conversation before I refocused my senses.  “Then what are you doing here? You can’t make me talk.” I could practically see the sneer on his ugly face as the vampire talked down to her. “You’re right,” Fluttershy replied, with greater calmness and poise than I would’ve expected. Then a beat later she continued. “I can’t make you tell me anything, but I hope you will tell me because it’s the right thing to do.” He laughed at that and insulted her, which is about what I expected. From her unperturbed demeanor, it sounded like it was about what Fluttershy had expected too.   It went on that way for a bit and after just a few minutes I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Forget playing therapist, the pint-sized pony practically had the vampire eating out of her hoof. And not out of any deceitful or manipulative work on her part. She had listened to him and heard more than he was letting on, sensing and helping with the pain he still carried from back when he was a human. I’d heard rumors of the sort of horrible things the Red Court typically put their initiates through so this didn’t surprise me in the slightest, but nonetheless she was able to pull out his deeply-buried guilt and regret like it was nothing. My mind couldn’t help but flash back on the conversation we’d had last night and how she’d gotten me to open up in a manner that wasn’t really all that different. It made me start to wonder just what was required to pick up an Element of Harmony, or maybe what side benefits you got  if you qualified for one. It’s no accident that Twilight holds ‘Magic’ and devours magical theory and learning like it’s candy. Or how Pinkie - the bearer of Laughter - can pull comical stunts and props out of literal thin air. Applejack’s truth-telling ability also seemed more than a little suspect in that light so maybe it wasn’t really all that surprising that Kindness somehow gave its wielder the abilities of a super-therapist. Regardless, I was more than grateful for the results. There was a moment or two where things seemed touch-and-go, but Twilight put a hand on my shoulder each time I tensed up and wanted to intervene.  Eventually Fluttershy finished and the vampire gave her addresses for all three of the other bombs. She approached the door and all of the ponies-turned-human pretended they hadn’t been listening in, including Pinkie who had apparently stopped impersonating Dumbo when I wasn’t looking. As Fluttershy opened the door and stepped out, Rainbow stopped her conspicuous whistling and pacing. “How’d it go, Fluttershy?” I didn’t even try for a moment to fake it. “That was amazing. How the hell you did it, I’ll never understand. But you’re sure those addresses are legitimate?” She glanced at her friends who were pretending not to be guilty with varying degrees of success, then let out a small sigh, squared her shoulders and looked at me. “Yes, once you get to know him, Francisco is a real sweetheart.” I held my own opinions about that, but there was no sense in arguing with her. “What about the creature that attacked us at the Pier?” Fluttershy bit her lip. “Sorry, Mr. Dresden. I didn’t think to ask about that.” I grunted, and started towards the door. “No time like the present.” She put up a pair of hands that realistically couldn’t have stopped me on her best day. Only, they did. “Please,” she asked. “He’s in a delicate state right now and seeing you might make him difficult. Give me just a moment.” The heavy steel door shut in my face and after a moment to give a sigh of my own I put my ear against it again and waited while she asked him, but this time they kept their conversation a bit quieter. Almost like she knew some jerk of a wizard was trying to eavesdrop. A minute later she returned. “According to him, Mr. Ortega got word of a monster storming its way across the region and eating up c-cows from the dairy farms, because the Green Lady put a price on its head after it attacked her herd. So he tracked it down, showed up ahead of the Green Lady, and extorted it into working for him by threatening to reveal it to the Summer Court.” I frowned. That was weird. The Green Lady was a high sidhe, and not somebody that any creature with sense should have been looking to piss off. But older creatures supposedly had harder and harder times repressing their instincts, and it was clear even from my brief interaction with it that this thing was both ancient and inhuman. It might have lost its senses for a while and now was trying to ride out the backlash. “Okay, but what is it?” She fidgeted for a second. “He doesn’t know.” The look on my face must have been something to see, because before I could even say something she already had her hands up in a placating gesture. “He really doesn’t! Mr. Ortega didn’t expect you to start looking into Sean’s disappearance, so once you did, he just brought the monster in as a way to keep you busy. Nobody really cared what it was so long as you were distracted.” I pinched the bridge of my nose and let out a long sigh. The worst thing is that I could easily see that happening. There are way too many would-be dark lords more than happy to gain power without ever looking at the source or cost. Right now I doubt anything mattered to Ortega Jr. other than his plot for revenge. “Fine. Let him know we’re going to leave him bound there for the next day to keep him under wraps until we’re done. In the meantime I’ve got some phone calls to make.” I stormed out of the machining room and up into the offices. The Red Court hadn’t exactly gotten this place up to code again, but the electricity was on and there were still ancient-looking phones on a few of the dusty desks that had probably belonged to floor managers and other staff once upon a time. I picked one up, started dialing, and put it to my ear. Only to realize that it didn’t have a dial tone. Of course not. Why expect the universe to ever make things easy for me? “Twilight, if you’ve got any binding spells now would be the time to set them on the vampire. Fluttershy, make sure he’s got some water because we won’t be back for a while.” Georgia and Will had scouted the place for any further ghouls while Fluttershy had her interview with a vampire, but they hadn’t found anything. Hopefully, any ghouls that had gotten away had packed it in and gone home. Given how the Red Court tended to treat messengers that brought bad news they’d have plenty of reason not to report in, but I couldn’t depend on that. We had an unknown time limit and three more bombs to disarm or else hundreds of thousands, possibly millions, were going to die. No pressure, right? Once everyone was back together we packed into the rented van and hauled ass. Pay phones weren’t common anywhere in Chicago these days thanks to cellphones, but the outdated nature of the industrial side of town worked in my favor and I found one only a few minutes outside the factory. I pulled up next to it, and wonder of wonders, the beat-up old thing actually had a dial tone. I gladly fed it quarters and dialed a number. It rang exactly five times, just long enough to tell me that the person on the other end wanted me to know that I awaited their pleasure, not the other way around, before it was picked up. A voice that could’ve sold ice cubes to eskimos purred into my ear, “How very prompt. And what did you find in that warehouse Mr. Dresden?” “Trouble, right here in river city.” I paused for a moment to let her be confused by the reference before I told her the real details. “If you tell me,” Lara Raith said in such a way that I could hear her arch an eyebrow, “that some unscrupulous sorts were shooting pool in that warehouse I am going to be very disappointed.” I was silent as I tried to process the fact that a century-old vampire was apparently a fan of The Music Man, but the seriousness of the situation reasserted itself and I found my voice. “I wish. Problem is the Red Court is back at it and they had enough nerve gas in that place to take out a fourth of the city.” She made an annoyed sound that was too refined to be called a grunt. “I had hoped that they would respect the terms set by your duel, but I can’t say I’m surprised.” “Yeah, well, the big movers may or may not actually know about it. Turns out Ortega’s kid Hector is pissed at me for what happened to dear old dad. It could be ‘plausible deniability’ for the Red King, but given how unsubtle most of their moves have been it feels like this might really just be a personal grudge.” “But you have dealt with it I trust.” “This bomb, sure. The problem is that according to the vampire I captured and questioned, there are three more gas bombs. Hector means to take out the whole city.” I gave her the addresses of the other three bombs. “Empty night,” she swore. “That’s insane. The industrial district and the mortal homes that surround it would have been one thing, but those other locations would threaten the holdings of several signatories. Not just mine, but Monoc Securities, the Svartalves, all of the Fae Courts, even minor ones like the Tylwyth Teg, have contingents here in Chicago. He’d be declaring war on every one of them.”   “That’s another reason I think he’s gone rogue rather than acting as a cat’s paw. I’ve got my team with me and we can hit another location, but I doubt we can get all three without somebody figuring us out and setting off the gas. Can you get a team together fast enough to hit one of them in the next hour?” “Harry,” Lara replied, sounding insulted. “Did you think I was going to just sit here and let you ‘take care’ of things? The moment you gave me those addresses, I signaled Justine to call out my team of troubleshooters.” I chuckled deeply. “That line’s the closest you’ve ever come to seducing me, Lara.” “Of course,” she said flatly, exasperated. “No amount of sensuous lingerie or sweet nothings gets you going. Only the promise of mayhem and violence.” I gave her an actual laugh at that. “Now you’ve got my number. You move in on bomb two. I’ll take number three and I’m pretty sure I can get another team on the first. I’ll call you back if negotiations fail on that front.” Then I hung up on her. Purely out of a need to move quickly and not as some petty power play, of course. Two quarters got me another call and this was picked up after three rings, indicating someone more interested in practicality than dominance games. “Marcone,” I said. “Ms. Gard, actually,” the voice on the other end told me. I shrugged. “If you’re answering the phone your boss can’t be that far off. Ask him if he’s interested in hitting the people who’ve been taking his turf.” I paused and let silence hang on the opposite end of the phone line. “Oh, and saving thousands of lives.” “Mr. Dresden.” It was Marcone with an edge in his voice that wasn’t usually present. “Didn’t we have a conversation about your activities and my interests?” “Yeah, but it’s a bit hard to keep my nose out when the Red Court is planning to nerve gas the whole city like they did that place in the Congo.” I filled him in on the details, giving him the same rundown I’d just shared with Lara.  “I can hit one of the remaining bombs and I gave Lara Raith the address for another. Do you think you could gather a posse fast enough to hit the third location before they can set the bomb off?” He paused. “You’re confident that your captive is telling the truth.” What he didn’t say was ‘how are you sure he isn’t duping you?’ but I took his meaning. “One of the girls you didn’t meet, well…” I affected a terrible German accent. “She has vays of making zem talk.” I dropped the accent. “But yeah, I’m confident. Now are you in or not? I can get SI to take the last bomb, but I’d rather not throw pure mortals into a ghoul nest. Or Lara can split her forces, even if that risks one of the bombs getting set off. Either way, this needs to get done now before they realize one of their locations is already down.” Marcone fell silent for a moment more, gears turning in his calculating mind. I glanced over at the van where everyone waited, tense and anxious to keep moving. I fought the urge to drum my fingers on the edge of the payphone as I waited for Marcone to decide. No sense taking the chance that I’d short out the damn thing. I didn’t want any strike team stretched too thin or for multiple groups to converge and clash - God knows what the situation would look like if SI and the White Court tried working together - but if Marcone wasn’t willing to play ball I needed to go to the bench and there weren’t a lot of people who would A) believe me, B) have the power to make a difference, and C) could be mobilized in time. “Fine. Give me the address and I’ll see to clearing out their stronghold. Do the bombers hold the gas on deadman switches or anything like that?” “Not at my location, but be quick and sneaky anyway. We took them by surprise and I have no idea how long it would take to detonate those things manually.” I told him the address. In his usual precise way he repeated it back to ensure he’d heard right. That done, I hung up and hauled ass to the van. “Floor it!” I told Will. He pulled off at a good pace, but stayed reasonably close to the speed limit. Which was probably for the best given that we’d have a hard time explaining the situation to any cop that tried to pull us over. The location we were going to hit was the closest to our current location, but Chicago is huge and traffic isn’t exactly what I would call ‘quick’. I had enough time for a quick mental rundown of my gear: two of my force rings were still charged up, but the other three didn’t have enough juice for anything more than a love tap. My blasting rod and staff were with me as always and my .44 had been reloaded and tucked into the holster on my waist. On the other side of my belt hung an Escape potion and a ‘Flight’ potion. Next to them was a ‘potion’ that was a bit of an experiment. But it should work out just fine, y’know, in theory. I hadn’t needed any of those in the factory, but if Miss Dense or a huge pack of ghouls showed up they could be worth their weight in gold. That done, I stared out the window as we sped out of the Industrial sector, tensely looking for any clue that the gas had been released. There weren't going to be any obvious signs like a huge green cloud, but I figured so long as there were birds in the air or sitting on telephone wires, it hadn’t detonated just yet. Twilight seemed just as bothered, and probably for the same reason. “I wish we had something to deal with this gas in case we don’t get there in time. There are spells designed to purify air for use in mines, but I’ve never studied those.” “Not to mention that the amount of air in a mine and an entire city differ by several magnitudes,” Rarity added, nervously fiddling with her compact. Rainbow Dash slammed her fist into her hand. “Hey! What if I got my wings back and made a tornado that blew it all out to sea? Er, out to lake?” Georgia shook her head. “I’m afraid all that would do is spread it around the city further unless we were right on top of the source. And if that’s the case I’d hope Harry or Twilight have spells that can deal with it.” She sighed. “Maybe it’s selfish to want gas masks, since there’s no way we could supply the whole city, but I still wish we had some.” “Would something like this work?” Something that looked suspiciously like a gas mask with an extended muzzle and two ear holes well above and behind the eye lenses dangled from Pinkie’s hand. Everyone took a moment to stare until Georgia reminded her husband to keep his eyes on the road. “Where the hell did you get that from? I thought you guys were supposed to be peaceful.” Will asked, clearly fighting the urge to look back at her. “I can’t rightly tell you where she got it from, but that’s a pest control pony’s mask. They gotta use all sorts’a sprays and gasses to control them critters. Why did ya bring one of them along, Pinkie?” Applejack asked. “One?” Pinkie scoffed, standing up and opening a trenchcoat that she hadn’t been wearing ten seconds ago. “Puh-lease, I’ve got plenty of these babies.” True to her word, the inside of the coat was lined with over a dozen similar masks. “So,” she asked in a strange sort of voice, “what’re you buying?” Everyone fell silent and stared. Spike slammed his fist on the arm rest and pulled a small gem out of his pocket with the other hand. “I’ll take your entire stock!” Everyone then took another moment to stare at Spike until Georgia reminded Will again that he needed to keep his eyes on the road. Pinkie chuckled sinisterly and quickly palmed the gem. “Pleasure doing business wit ya.” She dropped all the gas masks to the floor and the trenchcoat disappeared as quickly as it appeared. She was once more the picture of innocence and picked up one of the masks to examine as if she’d never seen it before. I was doubtful, but tried on one myself. Whether it was due to the flexibility of the rubber or some inexplicable pony magic, it fit my head just fine. The extended muzzle gave my face extra room to breathe and the overlarge eye-lenses gave me a surprising amount of peripheral vision. The ear holes felt weird, but the straps pulled the mask tight enough to my face that it still felt like I had a good seal. Would this work against whatever nerve gas the Red Court were using if push came to shove? Probably not, if I was really being honest with myself. But seeing Pinkie’s earnest expression as I considered the mask still brightened my outlook. They were in over their heads, but every one of the girls were still doing the best they could. “Thanks, Pinkie,” I told her, and her smile blossomed in reply. The rest of the masks got passed out, except for Will and Georgia. The weird masks might have been flexible enough to fit both humans and ponies, but a wolf’s muzzle was a bit much. Not to mention how it would block off their sense of smell and ability to bite. We were all playing Russian Roulette to some extent but you have to give the werecouple some credit for being willing to dive in even without that small chance of protection. “We’re just two blocks away, guys!” Will called out just as everyone finished putting on their masks. The second location was an old slaughterhouse in one of the poorer sections of town. It hadn’t been used in decades, but the area wasn’t worth enough to develop so it hadn’t ever been demolished, just left to decay. Fortunately, unlike the old factory, there wasn’t any fence surrounding the building – just boarded up windows, chained up doors, and messy graffiti everywhere. I pulled the mask on and tightened it, holding the handle of the van’s sliding door in a death grip. Will pulled up next to the door nearest the street and as soon as the van had stopped, before the engine had even died, I opened the door and we all spilled out. “Applejack, break the chains!” Twilight called. “On it!” she called, easily dashing past me despite the fact I was the first out of the van. She took one look at the rusty - but huge - padlock securing the chain and gave it a yank and twist that ripped that section of chain clear off. The rest of the chain glowed purple and unspooled itself from the door in less than a second. I didn’t even have to break my stride as I charged forward. “Little vamp, little vamp, let me come in! Forzare!” I bellowed, slamming a blunt lance of force into the center of the door. With an agonizing screech of bending metal the door buckled and gave, collapsing inward as the hinges gave out. I was in first, but Rainbow followed closely on my heels and quickly dashed out ahead of me. We had broken into the killing floor and one or two rusty hooks swung softly from the impact I’d dealt to the building, but there was nobody to react to our sudden invasion. A pair of wolves streaked past me, then the rest of the girls funneled into the room and I was abruptly glad that the masks were probably cutting off their sense of smell. “Stay in teams, but sweep quickly! We need to find the bomb before they have a chance to react!” “Roger dodger!” Pinkie called out. “And no magic until we get rid of it!” I continued. Twilight’s and Rarity’s expressions couldn’t be read beneath their masks, but their eyes at least looked serious as they nodded in response. It’s probably stating the obvious, but slaughterhouses are creepy. Mammals, as a whole, are social animals whether they come in herds, packs, or pairs. And we’re intelligent enough to note that the presence of other dead mammals is usually a sign of danger. Even the best janitors in the world couldn’t have wiped the sense of death from that place, and to the lizard brain, ten thousand dead mammals are ten thousand dead mammals whether they’re cows or people. Add in the ominous machinery, half-functional lights, and oppressive silence, and it’s kind of surprising that more horror movies aren’t set in these kinds of places. It might not have been as bad if there had been a ghoul or two to fight once we had broken into the building, but there was nothing. We swept room after room, careful to move fast, but also stay together, but there was nothing. Well… nothing except some stains that looked suspiciously fresher than the rest of the building, but I tried not to think about those lest my lizard brain take full control and convince me to run. It was the northern end of the building where we finally got our first clue. Will and Georgia, still in wolf form, flinched in concert. Then Georgia let out a small whimper. That did not exactly build confidence, but when I looked at them they motioned towards the long hallway ahead and nodded. The hallway was actually the chute where cows came through before they met the business end of the slaughterhouse. It was dark, but I fought down the urge to light my staff or pentacle. If anything was close enough to fight, our wolves would’ve smelled or heard it and if something was far away, my light would make us an easy target in the chute’s narrow confines. That isn’t to say my lizard brain didn’t get an extra vote or two to swing towards the ‘run away’ camp as we entered the darkness. Especially not when I heard the faint sound of crunching. I couldn’t place exactly what was causing it, but somehow it didn’t sound like another piece of machinery. There was an unpleasant and somehow organic sound to the noise. I assume that was what caused the flinching between Will and Georgia, and while it was too dark to see the expressions on the faces of the girls their breathing was a little more labored than just the masks could explain. There was, thankfully, a light at the end of the tunnel after a small curve. Sure the crunching was getting ever louder but it hadn’t done anything to us yet and at least we wouldn’t have to confront it in the dark. I put a hand on Rainbow’s shoulder so she’d stop and gave my troops one last hushed peptalk. “Okay, boys and girls. When I count to three, we’re rushing down this chute and dealing with whatever’s on the other end. Hopefully all the bad guys have gone to lunch and it’s just an automated nutcracker.” That got me one or two panic-stricken giggles. “But on the off chance there’s something horrible up ahead, be careful. No magic until we’re sure the bomb isn’t there.” In the darkness I couldn’t see them nod, but I heard the masks creak and flex as their heads moved up and down. “Then let’s go,” I whispered, and we went. The room beyond the chute was huge. Based on the train tracks that ran through the far end, this was where the cattle were initially off-loaded and held before being driven down the chute. The fact that there was room enough for a herd or two of cows between the opening of the chute and the train tracks was part of what made that assumption feel correct. It was mostly empty except for a couple of things that stood out immediately. On the left was Miss Dense, lounging on a bed of dirty straw while chewing on an… arm that probably used to belong to a ghoul. I didn’t just assume that because of the wiry hair and long knobby bones, but also because of the small pile of dead ghouls next to her. On the right was another nerve gas bomb and several massive wooden crates that its components probably came from. Miss Dense blinked lazily at our arrival and then the most unsettling smile crossed her face. “I was wondering just how to track you down,” she said, her voice reverberating with power in a way it definitely hadn’t back at Navy Pier. “And lo, Fate itself has delivered you unto me.” She rose, but not in the sense that she stood, or even kipped up in a sort of martial arts move. One second she was lounging around like Mister after a particularly satisfying belly rub and then she was fully vertical and ready to fight. There was no intervening moment between the two, or at least none that my eyes could catch. “Applejack! You’re on bomb squad with me! Everyone else, hold off Miss Dense. She hits like a freight train so don’t get in close no matter what you do!” I put paid to my word by dashing towards the bomb. It was hard to resist the fighting the god-awful monster, but not only could the bomb clear out a fourth of Chicago and kill everyone in the room, but it was also preventing us mages from using magic against Miss Dense lest we accidentally set it off. Give her credit for tactical thinking, because AJ came to the same conclusion and wasn’t more than a step behind me. Or she was just good at following orders, which was almost the same thing in this situation. The circle I drew wouldn’t have earned me a passing mark under any White Council mentor, but I was free-handing with chalk while an inhuman beast nearly backhanded one of my few friends into next Tuesday. Will escaped with his head intact while Miss Dense lost a sprinkle of blood from a shallow bite, but it was a near-miss thing and couldn’t help but distract me. Still, the circle was together and I was inside. “Aparturum!” I cried. A vertical line split the air even as Rainbow got thrown across the room out of the corner of my eye.  I didn’t even get a chance to yell ‘now’ before Applejack had sent the bomb soaring through the portal. If anything she was a bit too vigorous as I watched the bomb smash into a strange crystalline plant with thick, black fronds. There was the screech of twisting metal as the frame bent and crumpled around the otherworldly tree, quickly followed by the heart-stopping sound of hissing gas. “Instaurabos, instaurabos, instaurabos!” I chanted, feverishly attempting to shut the dimensional rift faster than I ever had before. The open way to the Nevernever snapped shut and either the gas hadn’t made its way back through the rift quickly enough to kill us or Pinkie’s ad-hoc masks were actually doing their jobs. I wasn’t sure which was true, but I wasn’t in any hurry to take off my mask and put the second possibility to the test. Will and Georgia still seemed fine, but they were across the room so it would be wise to keep an eye on them just in case. Our wolves were harrying Miss Dense from either side, careful to keep their distance and retreat at the first sign of her attention, but never straying too far from being a threat. Miss Dense evidently didn’t appreciate that as she feigned an opening that almost drew Georgia into a devastating counter-attack. But Pinkie parried her claws with a frying pan of all things, and four gouges got cut into cast iron instead of Georgia’s side. “The bomb’s gone and magic’s back on the table!” I bellowed to the group as Applejack charged past me. “Oh, and Forzare!” I concentrated my lance of force down into the smallest, most compact form I could and sent it roaring towards Miss Dense. This wasn’t a public show like back on Navy Pier and I was more than happy to show her what a wizard could really do. My spell caught her in the gut with the force of a car roaring down the highway, only it was compacted into the size of a man’s fist. I had tenth of a second to see her frenzied eyes, alight with fury and hunger before it bent her double and lifted her a couple inches off the ground. Which was the perfect position for Applejack to barrel into her with an open field tackle that would’ve earned her a yellow flag from any ref with a working pair of eyes. She used the momentum from my spell and slammed Miss Dense into the wall of the building, cracking some of the cinder blocks with the impact. Ribbons of purple light, thicker and less translucent than I remembered, flowed from Twilight’s hands and lashed Miss Dense to the damaged wall where she had just impacted. Rainbow wasted no time, following just behind the spell. A flurry of blows landed on Miss Dense, a straight to her nose, an uppercut to her chin, an elbow in her solar plexus, a jab to her throat, a clap to both ears, a hook to each kidney. She struggled and fought, but Twilight’s bonds made her into little more than a sandbag for the moment and it was more than a little frightening to see how quickly Rainbow had learned the weak points of the human body after only two days of sparring with Murphy. But Rainbow was as human… er, as mortal as anyone, and eventually the barrage of blows stopped. Miss Dense hung limply in the bonds of Twilight’s spell and for a very stupid moment I thought we’d done it. Then came a strange sound. One I couldn’t readily identify until I realized it was Miss Dense taking a deep breath in through her nose. Her head snapped upright without a bruise to show from all the abuse she’d been taking. “So it was you,” she said with a grin. She reached out to touch Rainbow before her arm was stopped short by Twilight’s spell. A look of annoyance crossed her face like someone who gets their clothes caught on something. “Enough of this farce,” she muttered, and everything went to hell. Within a second she went from a rail-thin woman with stringy red hair to a sixty-foot serpent as thick around as my waist with dingy red scales and three sets of eyes. On the plus side, there were six eyes rather than four and they all matched, which meant she wasn’t a Denarian. On the minus side, the stubby legs and massive bat-like wings meant that she wasn’t just a huge evil snake. She was probably a Dragon, with a capital ‘D’. I only knew one man who’d slain a Dragon before and he had required literal Divine assistance, so all of a sudden our chances didn’t look that hot. At least this explained all the mass she was packing into her tiny human frame. Give Rainbow credit, her first reaction was fight over flight. By the time I had realized what we were facing, she’d already landed another dozen blows on Miss Dense. Unfortunately, to borrow a term from our weekly Arcanos games, not one of them seemed to have got past Miss Dense’s Damage Reduction. The Dragon stretched forward and Twilight’s bonds held for a moment, but then the cinder blocks that anchored them tore out of the wall, letting the ribbons of purple light to flop uselessly to the floor. “No fair! I smell some major bullhonky!” Pinkie yelled. “You summoned Slifer without a duel disk or even a deck!” The Dragon ignored her as a claw big enough to palm Rainbow’s head like a baseball swiped through the space where said head had just been half-a-second ago. “Cease this resistance and I might just let you and your friends live,” growled the same ancient, chain-smoking voice Miss Dense had used previously. It suited her current form a lot better than her previous one. She took a few more swipes and then tried to catch Rainbow in her coils, but our girl managed to stay one skip and a jump ahead of her. A ray of blinding purple light struck Miss Dense straight in all six of her eyes, but she shook her head and soldiered on, giving Twilight’s spell little more notice than an irritating spray of water. My go-to offensive spells tend to be Wind, Fire, and Force. Wind wasn’t going to be picking up something as heavy as Miss Dense and using fire against a Dragon sounded like blasting a lake with a fire hose, so that just left force. “Forzare!” I bellowed, slamming a wide plane of force into her midsection just where it rose off the floor. The spell bled around her, doing less than it should have but still rattling her cage for a moment. Unless I missed my guess, she was resistant to magic. Not immune, or she’d have ignored our spells entirely, but it still wasn’t a situation you wanted to be in as a wizard. Supposedly the upper echelons of Dragons are powerful enough that reality itself sorta warps around their real forms like the gods of ancient pantheons. Miss Dense seemed a little too worn and decrepit to do that, but if the change from yesterday’s fight to today was any indication then she was recovering those powers quickly. Applejack barreled forward, moving only slightly slower than our spells. This time instead of a tackle she went all out with a wild haymaker of a punch. It was big and predictable, easy to dodge even at the speed she was moving, if not for the way Miss Dense seemed entirely focused on catching Rainbow. Her fist slammed into the Dragon’s scales and there was a distinct ‘crack’ that echoed throughout the building. That got Miss Dense’s attention as part of her lower coils went skidding across the room with the shattered remains of a scale littering the floor. All six of her eyes narrowed and I got the terrible impression she hadn’t been taking us seriously until just then. The coils Applejack had knocked away circled back, swiftly surrounding her. She got a couple more good punches, but no more broken scales, before they tightened. Soon it was all she could do to hold her arms akimbo and prevent Miss Dense from crushing her to death. Georgia and Will were attempting to bite through her scales and the only thing they accomplished was to dull their teeth until she swept them aside with an errant slap of her tail. Rainbow landed light blows whenever she had the opportunity but they didn’t seem to faze Miss Dense at all. Pinkie had somehow clambered on top of the Dragon’s head, but it wasn’t clear just what she was trying to do. Any effort to pull Miss Dense’s head one way or the other failed and when she started to stamp her foot in rage Miss Dense easily shook her off, sending Pinkie flying across the room. Fluttershy managed to catch her, but the two of them went down in a heap. Twilight vanished in a flash of light to reappear next to AJ and flash both of them out, letting the Dragon’s coils close on empty air. They reappeared on the far side of the room and stood stiltedly in place as Twilight charged up another blast of magic. Miss Dense didn’t let the opportunity go by and spat out a sphere of fire bigger than a beach ball. They tried to dodge, but it moved too fast and exploded into a red-gold blaze that left nothing but scorched concrete behind. Which I’m sure made Applejack’s next punch a real surprise to Miss Dense. Twilight had actually teleported them to the opposite side, but Rarity’s illusions were pretty convincing, especially at a distance. Miss Dense growled in annoyance and Twilight had to blink herself and Applejack away again as a jaw that could - and did - tear through concrete excavated the section of floor where they’d both been standing. And me? Well, resistant to magic doesn’t mean resistant to things moved by magic. Earth is not one of my stronger elements and in most circumstances a spell that required two minutes to complete was not viable for combat. But when you’ve got plenty of friends to distract the big bad? The strain of the spell was immense as I drew more and more of the Earth’s power into myself. I just barely managed to hold the titanic exchange of energies the spell required until it was finally ready. “Get clear everyone! Gravitus, gravitus, maximus gravitus!” I intoned. If my calculations were correct, gravity disappeared from roughly the entire city block for three seconds. And for those seconds, all of it was concentrated on an area about the size of your average living room, the space that contained Miss Dense’s head and most of her upper body. A hundred times the normal amount of gravity slammed the Dragon to the ground, even as her resistance made silver streaks of light play across her as she began to fight my spell. But then she wasn’t the only one affected. The ceiling was old and rusted in places, but it was still solid metal construction. But as strong as they were, those I-beams had never been intended to stand up to Jupiter’s gravity. A full ton of Chicago steel slammed down on her head and buried her beneath the rubble as I wheezed and struggled to stay upright. “Is it over?” Fluttershy asked from behind me. She had dragged Pinkie into the shelter of the crates and Spike was helping her apply a bandage to the comically large bump on her friend’s head. Twilight and Applejack flashed into existence at my side as Rainbow began to poke at the motionless debris and I drew in a ragged breath to tell them of course it wasn’t ov- “Looks that way to me, sugarcube.” A dull red arm shot out of the rubble and grabbed Rainbow around her torso, slamming her to the floor as Miss Dense exploded out of the rubble. She reared her head back and hellish light began to build in the back of her throat. I could see the wheels spin in Twilight’s head as she considered teleporting me and AJ out, before realizing that would leave Pinkie, Fluttershy and Spike in the line of fire. And instead she began another spell. I swallowed my weariness and followed suit. Applejack fell back, trying to move the other three, but I knew she wouldn’t have enough time. “Twilight, change me back!” Spike yelled, charging towards us. I was a little more distracted by the gigantic Dragon charging up its flame, but Twilight’s eyes darted to him and with a quick yank of her right hand, not even interrupting the working she was still building with her left, the magic fueling Spike’s human guise suddenly disappeared. Within an eyeblink he was running on his own stubby little legs, clothing falling off him. That’s when Miss Dense finally aimed her head at us and the attack she’d been brewing was unleashed. Several things happened at once. “Ventas Tornados!” I bellowed, gale-like winds whipping around us, blowing fiercely upwards. It was almost enough to lift a person from their feet and my duster billowed impressively out behind me. Milliseconds behind me, Twilight’s working completed and a triple-layer dome barrier made of purple light appeared between us and Miss Dense, narrowly enclosing us two and Spike. Third, Miss Dense let loose her attack. And holy shit, it was by far the most significant of the many actions occurring all at once. Instead of the fireball from earlier, she had focused all that and more into a narrow beam as thin as a pencil. It was so hot that the beam was pure brilliant white with no other color to mar the perfection of its incandescence. My winds blew away the thermal bloom of superheated air that accompanied it, but they couldn’t hope to counter the concentrated fire that made up the core of her attack. It drilled through the first layer of Twilight’s defense without pause, then shattered the second layer just as easily. The third layer held out for less than a second, falling too swiftly for Twilight or I to have any time to respond. But it was long enough to let Spike jump in front of us. The little dude had to have jumped at least his own height, arms crossed in front of himself in a defensive posture. The beam of dragonfire slammed home, but rather than cut through him, it drove him into Twilight and she in turn was driven into me. The three-body pile-up was sent tumbling back into the people behind us and then into the crates behind them. In an action flick it would’ve been empty cardboard boxes. I’ve seen more than enough B-movies to know that factories are supposedly full of’em. Unfortunately reality was somewhat less than accommodating. These things - even when empty - had to weigh twenty or thirty pounds. One of them came down on my head and while I wouldn’t have any permanent brain damage (I hope) it was enough to ring my bells and make everything that happened in the next few moments swim in-and-out of my struggling consciousness. I felt people moving around me also buried in the pile of crates, and there was something incredibly hot among them. My view started to clear as crates got tossed this way and that by a blonde girl whose name was just on the tip of my tongue. Rarity and a pair of wolves appeared out of thin air on the other side of the room. I staggered to my feet and had to throw up as my stomach lurched with nausea. Everyone was shouting but it was just random noise to me as I struggled to get my head together. It felt like forever, but it was only a few seconds later than my mind started to clear. “What happened?” I asked drunkenly. “The dragon left,” Rarity said, her voice tight and drawn as if she was trying not to cry. “It left and it took Dash with it.” ……… It was a beautiful sunny day in Equestria and Celestia was enjoying the calm afternoon. The Morning Court had gone well and now she had nothing more than a bit of paperwork that needed her attention. Despite the pleasant day, there was a bittersweet tinge to her enjoyment of it. The afternoon was calm, but it was the calm that came before the storm. She had felt the pulses of magic in the North growing greater and greater; soon the demesne that sealed the Crystal Empire away would fall and Sombra, although mortally wounded, had no doubt survived in one form or another giving his necromantic experiments. The Changelings likewise had been driven off, but not decisively beaten and Chrysalis still plotted in the Badlands stronghold for another chance to strike. Celestia’s spies had also informed her that Dragon Lord Torch was rumored to be stepping down and a new despot called the Storm Tyrant was building his strength in the Southern countries. She had some hopes that Twilight had the potential to ascend, becoming an alicorn, and that Discord might be made into an ally rather than a foe. But neither was a sure thing, and what worried her most of all was that soon her ponies would have to face these threats without either sister to guide them. The Outsiders knew they lived in this world now and would seek to worm their way in all the more fervently because of it. Celestia and Luna needed to leave before Equestria became another battlefield in the war between Reality and the Outside. The sound of distant running, flying, and shouting distracted her from her morose thoughts. Something was happening in the hall outside and whatever-it-was was drawing ever closer. “Grab him! Do you have a horn or not?” “He’s too slippery! I can’t get a grip!” “He’s headed for the Princess’s study!” And beneath was an intense frenzied muttering. “Why now? Why now? Why now? Why now when it’s almost too late?!” With a gold glow she opened the door, telekinetic field and multiple spells at the ready. Even if she hadn’t been able to beat Chrysalis in a contest of power without exhausting herself further, Celestia was confident that she could handle whoever her guards were chasing. An elderly pegasus flew into view, taking the corner at full speed in the same moment the door opened, as if he had already known her decision. His unkempt coat was the faded red of old bricks and he appeared a bit short and scrawny for a stallion, without any sign of armor or weapon upon him. Despite his harmless appearance, Celestia took no chance and fired a spell of paralysis at him. He moved to dodge even as the stunning bolt of magic left her horn, twisting out of the way just in time. But no amount of twisting would let him escape the netlike barrier that appeared between them and caught him, neatly as plump fish. He hung in the air, still babbling. “The infinite serpent, the oldest Dragon! It will come for us! Devour the world! Too late, too late, too late, my nightmares have finally been given shape and form too late!” Her guards, a trio made up of pony from each race, rounded the corner only a moment afterwards. “Your Highness!” cried the pegasus colt. “Are you safe?” Celestia fought the urge to snicker. They had every reason to be worried after the last few tumultuous years, but she was hardly delicate as spun sugar. “Calm yourself, Private Ice Mane. I’ve caught the miscreant, but he seems to be little more than a poor madpony.” “Begging your pardon, Princess,” replied the unicorn as he glared crossly at the muttering stallion in Celestia’s net. “But I can’t imagine that to be the case. He flew right in through a blind spot in the guard’s patrols as if he already knew their routes and made a beeline for your office. Where he clearly knew you would be.” Private Sun Down had a point, especially considering the way the old pegasus had dodged her opening shot with almost unnatural timing. “Very well then, take him to the interrogation chamber and sweep him for harmful magics. And follow the new Changeling protocols.” “Ma’am, yes, ma’am,” barked Sgt. Wild Goose, his mustache quivering with anger as he eyed their prisoner. He nodded to Sun Down who took the glowing strands of Celestia’s trap in his aura and they began to haul him away. “Princess,” the old stallion said, his voice shockingly calm and stable after his earlier rambling. Celestia glanced at him and belatedly realized that the eyes fixed on her were false ones made of glass. But the stallion followed her movements as if they weren’t. “Where is your student, Princess? Where is Twilight?” “Silence, criminal! You have no right to address her Highness!” Sgt. Goose shouted. The old pegasus paid him no attention and continued to stare at Celestia silently until they carried him off and closed the door behind them. That had been a… bizarre little episode. Especially his question at the end. Of course, she knew where Twilight was. She was off on vacation with her friends in… Celestia realized she couldn’t recall the city Spike had said they would be visiting. Worry began to gnaw at her, a faint reflection of the madpony’s own, but she brushed it away. No sense fretting, she was certain they were fine, but just in case it wouldn’t take more than a second to dash off a quick letter and discreetly ask Spike to refresh her memory. A few moments later, she blotted the page and then rolled the scroll, feeling silly that she was letting this get to her, but it would do no harm and so she cast the familiar spell and waited for the scroll to burn away. But after a flash of green fire the scroll reappeared and fell to the floor. Which meant that the spell had failed. Celestia tried again, focusing her full attention on Spike and her spell of simulated dragonfire. And again the scroll reappeared, the spell still failing. Which could only mean one of two things: either Spike was somehow blocked from her magic, or… He wasn’t in Equestria. “Where is your student, Princess?”