***
Sunset woke up in more pain than she'd gone to sleep in, but she was pretty sure that was normal after the adrenaline of her escape, though in hindsight it had gone just about as well as it possibly could have. It made her wary of the Lovegoods, who also seemed too good to be true, which was saying a lot for somepony who had come from Equestria.
As much as she hated to admit it, though, Sunset needed help. She needed to learn about the magic of these human wizards and witches, even if just to defend herself against them, and since her very existence made her a target, she needed the Lovegoods for that.
Admittedly, the food and shelter helped, too, though if she was going to stay here, she was going to have an actual bed even if she had to make it herself. Throwing a bunch of blankets in a pile was something you did for a dog, not a person.
That could wait until she could get out of it, though.
Given how sore she was, Sunset estimated that she wouldn't want to be doing much for a few days at least, but that time came sooner than she thought.
"What is this?" Sunset said, holding the small bottle of liquid up to the light with her hoof.
"Fascinating!" Xenophilius said, as focused on examining Sunset's front leg as Sunset was on examining the bottle for some reason.
Sunset remained nonplussed. "What? You're the one who gave it to me."
"Hm?" Xenophilius said, turning to look at Sunset herself. "Oh, no, no. This is just a Wiggenweld Potion to help with the deeper bruising—but how are you holding onto it?"
"With my hoof?" Sunset said, thinking this was obvious, but apparently it wasn't. "Pony hooves are made of the same material as unicorn horns. They're not good enough to cast spells with, but they still channel natural magic."
"Wonderful!" Xenophilius beamed, pulling slightly on the bottle to test Sunset's grip, to which she played along while rolling her eyes. "You say you can cast spells with your horn, hmm? Yes, and the hair is keratin as well."
Sunset cocked her head to the side. "Pony hair has its own natural magics, yeah, but what's your point? I can't grab things with my tail, though I guess I've seen an earth pony do that."
Xenophilius nodded along and pulled out his wand. "Well, you see, the wands we use contain a core of a magical substance, and it just so happens that one of these substances is the mane or tail hair of a unicorn."
"Which I've been telling you I am," Sunset reminded him.
"You've also been referring to ponies," Xenophilius pointed out. "Does that make you a unicorn pony?"
"Yes?" Sunset answered, not sure where he was going with this.
"Well, there you go, then," Xenophilius said, leaning back and looking pleased. "The unicorns we're familiar with aren't ponies."
"What do you mean they're not ponies?" Sunset asked. "What else would they be?"
"Well, as far as we're concerned, ponies are a diminutive breed of horses and you are exceptionally diminutive as these things go—a typical horse is as tall as a man, and a unicorn isn't much smaller, just more slender and graceful."
Sunset looked up at the man, considering his height. "I guess you're as tall as some horses, yeah," she said. "I can't imagine a unicorn horse, though, and they really don't talk?"
"They're beasts rather than beings as far as the Ministry of Magic is concerned," Xenophilius informed her. "How intelligent they are, it's hard to say since they're very reclusive, but they definitely don't speak, no."
Sunset mulled that over for a moment. There was, of course, one pony with a horn that was nearly horse-sized that she knew of. "These unicorn horses... they don't have wings, do they?"
"Oh, no, not at all!" Xenophilius said cheerfully. "There are plenty of kinds of winged horses—the abraxans are quite incredible and capable of looking in a first floor window—but I can't say I've ever heard reports of winged unicorns; tell me more!"
Sunset was rather peeved at the man's pushiness, but she didn't see any harm in it, and if there were any similarities between the two worlds, she wanted to know, so she explained about the three main pony tribes—earth ponies, pegasus ponies and unicorn ponies—and how they all had their own unique magics, with Xenophilius commenting on feathers being keratin, too.
Sunset then went on to explain alicorns, who were originally ponies but went through an ascension of some sort and had the characteristics and magic of all three pony tribes.
Xenophilius, in turn, explained the various equine magical creatures that the wizards knew of, pulling out a copy if Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them for reference, though most of them were nothing special. Hearing about all the strange mystical qualities of the unicorn horses was bizarre to Sunset, who didn't think that cursed silver blood was a normal thing to have, nor did she think that it made any sense for the adults to universally dislike males.
Thestrals were another type of equine that Xenophilius mentioned, though Sunset's interest in them was purely practical, as being invisible to the majority of people seemed like a useful quality to have... though maybe not, as you'd never know if any given individual could see you or not. Maybe the thestrals could tell, though?
The subject of thestrals brought up stories of bat-winged pegasi from Equestria, and the conversation went on to cover the possibly extinct crystal ponies, seaponies and Kirin. Xenophilius in turn told Sunset of Kelpies, Nightmares, Heliopaths and other lesser-known creatures, some more verified than others. Sunset answered with stories of shadow ponies and windigos, briefly mentioning the story of Hearth's Warming Eve, after which she was all out of topics to cover.
By the end, Xenophilius had filled a scroll hanging down to his feet with all the information that Sunset had given him on the equines of Equestria, and he'd left Sunset with his copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.
All in all, it was maybe not as useful a conversation as Sunset would have liked it to be, but considering she was pretty much bedridden, it wasn't a bad way to spend a morning.
That was when Sunset remembered the potion she'd been handed and fished it out of her bedding. "You said this was a... Wiggenweld Potion? What is it? What does it do? I've only ever heard of zebras making potions; I've never taken one myself."
"Out of all the typical medical potions, the Wiggenweld Potion is the most general and helps with everything from fatigue to injuries and even counteracts sleeping draughts," Xenophilius explained. "It's not as good as a specialized spell or potion, but it's the best I could make that would help with the deeper bruising."
Sunset looked at the bottle curiously, then uncorked it, took a whiff and gagged. "This is foul! What's in it?" she asked, scrunching up her nose.
"Hmm? Oh, well, let's see..." Xenophilius said, thinking. "This version uses salamander blood, lionfish spines, flobberworm mucus, honeywater and boom berry juice... I think that's it. It's simpler to make it with wiggentree bark, but no less disgusting, I assure you."
Sunset looked down at the bottle, feeling a little queasy. If it would get her on her hooves, though, she'd just have to try to stomach it.
Xenophilius was right. It was disgusting.
It did work, though.
***
Sunset was immediately restless the moment she was no longer preoccupied by the pain of her injuries. Xenophilius had told her to rest and let the potion do its job, but it wasn't five minutes before she was itching to do something. She tried closing her eyes, but that just left the sensations coming from her horn to focus on.
At first, from the feel of it, Sunset expected that the Wiggenweld potion hadn't affected her horn at all; she still had that oversensitive sharpness to her magic sense that she'd been dealing with since she'd come to this world. Further exploration revealed that the chip that was missing nearer the base of her horn was still missing, but had been smoothed over, no longer at risk of catching on things or having the exposed nerves poked, and now that she was aware of it, the buzzing static she'd been feeling with her horn was also nearly gone.
The tip where Sunset's horn had been scraped to a point was similar—still ground to an off-center point, but protected by a thin layer of... not growth, exactly, since horns didn't normally grow or heal like that, but it was the best word she had for the smooth new keratin that the potion had produced.
It was rather miraculous, actually, and it left her wondering if the potions of Zebra shamans back in Equestria were this effective. It seemed unlikely. Celestia would know, wouldn't she? And if they were and Celestia knew about it, then she wouldn't let ponies with damaged horns stay crippled for their entire lives if she knew how they could be helped... right?
It hurt that Sunset no longer felt like she knew the answer to that. What had happened to the open and honest Princess Celestia who always wanted to talk things out?
Ugh. This was the problem with having to sit still with only herself for company; she made for lousy company and was a worse conversationalist. She didn't want to think about Princess Celestia; she'd done enough of that. That was in the past, now—and yet, every time she tried to focus on her horn and feel out the nearby area, she couldn't focus. Her mind just kept coming back to the reason she was here in the first place.
It was then that she remembered the copy of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them that Xenophilius had left her. She'd really already had her fill of that sort of thing already, but maybe it would get her mind off the mare who had once been her idol, mentor and at times, the closest thing she'd ever had to a mother.
It went about as well as you'd expect.
***
Sunset lasted less than an afternoon before the urge to do something got to her. That should be enough for the potion to run it's course, right? Honestly, she hadn't felt anything since the first thirty seconds anyway, so she was probably fine.
Leaving Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them down on the pile of blankets that she had in place of a proper bed, Sunset stood, straightened all her legs and stretched. There was an ache deep inside her everywhere but only the ache of sitting still too long.
Come to think of it, Sunset realized she hadn't actually been outside since coming to this world. Well, outside and aware, anyway. She had the vague impression from the brief moment before her carriage impact of a blue sky and yellow sun, but it was all a blur. Not wanting to think about the sun, Sunset instead focused on the desire to get an idea of the area she'd found herself in.
If something happened, she needed to know what her options were.
Being a single-dwelling tower, it wasn't hard for Sunset to find her way down and out of The Rookery. Xenophilius was at a writing desk on the ground floor and for once didn't comment on her passing, if he even noticed her. That was a relief, to be honest. Sunset may have liked attention, but not the kind of attention that demanded her attention.
In spite of Sunset's attempts to ignore the sun, the sun didn't get the message and insisted on blinding her the moment she opened the door. The scene was practically idyllic; it was mid afternoon with blue skies, scattered clouds and rolling green hills split by a river running into a small forest nearby. In the distance she thought she spotted a chimney or two peeking over a hill, but she wasn't certain.
Lightly populated with a selection of natural resources, it was pretty much exactly what she'd been aiming for when she'd been picking out a random place to floo to. In theory, she knew that most of Equestria wasn't much different from this, but she didn't really feel it; she'd spent most of her life living in Canterlot, high up on the side of a mountain, so all this greenery and these wide open spaces failed to inspire any feelings of home.
Admittedly, though, the tower did rather resemble a chess rook, so there was that.
Nearby, the child, Luna, was playing in the river and Sunset had a thought. Closing her eyes, she focused on feeling the magic out. She'd done this already while she was inside, but there she'd been surrounded by all the various magical knickknacks of the household.
Out here, it was a different experience; there really was almost nothing magical in the area outside of a few hotspots. There was the rookery, of course, and she didn't seem to have imagined those chimneys over the hills. There was also a diffused feeling that was probably some kind of ward, and the thing she was actually looking for: Luna, isolated enough to really get a good feel for her.
Humans were not ponies, that much was clear. It wasn't that Luna was weak, exactly—at least, not for a foal, anyway—but she didn't radiate magic like a pony did. Her magic was at once more chaotic and more contained than that of any Equestrian. In a way, it was like Luna had magic rather than being magic, but maybe that made sense for a kind of creature where the capability for magic might or might not breed true.
Interestingly, though, there was something radiating magic nearby that almost did feel like an equestrian... or a slice of Equestria, maybe. That got Sunset's full attention and she immediately began to search it out.
The source of the feeling was oddly difficult to triangulate, which just made it more interesting in Sunset's eyes, and before she knew it, she was erratically making her way into the brush of the forest. She'd walk a few steps, stop, cock her head one way, then the other, take a step to the side and go off in a different direction.
"What'cha doing?" asked a voice from right behind her.
Sunset jumped in startlement, whipping her head around to see that Luna had snuck up on her, the hem of her yellow dress still wet from the river.
Sunset opened her mouth to express her displeasure, but snapped it shut a moment later, remembering the previous night. Better to just ignore her.
"Do Crumple-Horned Snorkacks live in forests?" the girl asked, following Sunset as she went back to trying to find the Equestria-esque magic she'd felt. "Do they eat pine cones?"
"If you try to shove a pine cone in my mouth, I will return the favor," Sunset warned distractedly as she took two steps back, rotated on the spot three times and headed not quite back the way she came.
Knowing foals, it began to worry Sunset when she was able to spend the next two minutes tracking down the magic entirely uninterrupted. Sighing, she craned her neck over her shoulder to check and... yep. The girl was looking cross-eyed at a pine cone in her mouth. False alarm.
Finally, in a gap between the trees too small to call a clearing, Sunset found what she was looking for. It didn't look like much to the naked eye—actually, the naked eye seemed to quite disagree with it, wanting to be just about anywhere else—but there did seem to be a ring of mushrooms to mark it.
Magically, though, it was much more interesting. Another world touched this one here. It definitely wasn't Equestria—that much had been obvious from a distance—but it was closer to Equestria than it was to this world, and it absolutely reeked with magic. In fact, she thought it might actually be more magical than Equestria.
Suddenly, it was all clear to her. The mirror hadn't lied; it was just that this world of sad, barely magical humans was only the first step on her journey towards ascension.
"Thmm-thtt?" the girl asked through the pine cone in her mouth.
Sunset, of course, ignored her. In her head, she was already on the other side of the portal, free of this nightmare of a world, and she stepped into the ring of mushrooms to make it a reality.
"Mm! Thtp! Thmm-thtt, thtp!"
***
On the surface, almost nothing seemed to change. She was still in a lush, temperate forest standing inside a ring of mushrooms, and if pressed she might even say that the immediate area was identical, at least insofar as she had an eye for any specific shrub or tree.
Magically, though, things couldn't be any different. Things had inverted; she was not standing in a small island of mediocrity in the middle of a world that was absolutely rich with magic. Everything from the smallest leaf to the grass and dirt under her hooves was practically magic in physical form, and she actually winced at the sheer flood of it, suddenly wishing Xenophilius' Wiggenweld potion had brought back a little more of her horn's thickness so it wouldn't be quite so overwhelming.
Sunset shook her head, but that just made her magical sense swim, giving her a headache. She tried wrapping the crook of her hoof around her horn to dampen it a little, but that barely helped and she figured she'd be better off using her hooves to get out of the forest where she wouldn't be quite so crowded by life on all sides.
It took a little stumbling, but the edge of the forest was nearby and it did help, a little; enough that she could actually focus on actually taking in the world around her.
At first, glancing over to where The Rookery had been in the other world, Sunset thought she saw a tower in the shape of a bishop piece instead. On second glance, though, it was nothing of the sort; just a thatch-roofed cottage surrounded by neatly plowed fields full of ripe vegetables and a giggle from behind her.
Feeling a bit of déjà vu, Sunset turned her head, expecting to see that human girl had followed her, but there was nothing there.
Frowning, but shrugging the matter off, Sunset turned back to the small cottage, only it had two stories and a tile roof, now. There was another giggle—this one from Sunset's side—and she turned again, catching sight of several small, doll-sized humanoid figures with thin, iridescent wings before they disappeared into the overgrown grass and dandelions.
Sunset trotted over and kicked the grass to scare whatever they were out into the open, but she found nothing. Sighing, she turned back to the cottage and there was no cottage, nor were there any fields. The whole area looked completely untended; not just abandoned, but entirely wild.
Sunset was starting to get a bit worried. Sunset had known that this was a magical world, but she'd never really thought about what that might mean. Were these illusions, cast by the little flying humans to mislead her?
Sunset looked left, right and then left again. On the whole, nothing jumped out to her as different, but actually paying attention, it was the complete opposite. From glance to glance, all the details were different. Over there, a rock—but if her attention wandered, just a bit, it was an entirely different rock.
Sunset made her way over to the rock and put her hoof on it, confirming: yep, it's a rock. Performing her test again, her hoof remained solidly on the rock, but it was once again a different rock in every respect except for the particular spot she was touching, which hadn't changed.
Sunset let out a slightly hysterical giggle, and something behind the rock giggled back. She did not look.
Suddenly, Sunset had a thought and remembered Princess Celestia's stories of Discord and the sorts of things he'd done, roaming the land living up to his name and title as a spirit of chaos. Streets turned to rivers, ponies and animals trading places—and of course his favorite trick of all, playing the sun and moon like billiards.
This... was much more subtle, but even more maddening for it, and she was beginning to doubt that the little tiny winged humans had anything to do with it. It was much too consistently inconsistent; much too encompassing and pervasive. It was the world itself; there was just so much magic here that there wasn't much room for any of the little things that worlds usually had, like strict laws of physics and causality.
The really worrying thing was how close to this that Equestria actually was. It was pretty much the first thing she'd thought, before she'd actually known what she was looking at—that one could be mistaken for the other.
Sunset blinked and everything/nothing changed. The grass was—if it was possible—even more vibrant than before, and that went for everything. Even the sky seemed just a bit bluer now; the wispy clouds looked a little more solid and the little winged humanoids that she could only spot in the corner of her eye or at a distance were now breezies. The tower was back, but in the horse-head shape of a knight piece. High up on the side of a needle-like mountain was a city of ivory towers—not quite Canterlot but they were cousins at most—and towering up over the now much more sinister-looking forest was its twin all in black and twice as menacing.
Sunset was torn. On the one hoof, nothing so far had indicated that she was in any way wrong that this was the sort of place she might find the answers she was looking for—but on the other hoof, she did have a sense of self preservation and her sense of self-preservation did not like this place. A lot more than Sunset's sense of self-preservation didn't like this place, actually. Sunset, as a whole, did not like this place.
That probably meant that it would be worth it, though.
Still, between the shining white city on the mountain and the sinister black castle in the spooky forest, Sunset knew which one she was going to pick.
***
Sunset didn't know what she had expected to find in I Can't Believe It's Not Canterlot, but colorful, iridescent bug-ponies wasn't it. The weird thing was, they didn't even resemble the breezies all that much. Sure, they both had members with diaphanous, insectile wings, but the breezies were otherwise nearly normal-looking ponies, with longer legs and antennae. Sunset would have expected the larger ones to be Flutterponies, in that case, which were essentially the same writ large, but without the antennae.
These creatures, on the other hoof, were ironically much more insect-like. Though their proportions were more that of a typical equine, they had hard carapaces in all sorts of different summer colors from blue to green to gold with the specific shades shifting along the gamut depending on the angle.
More interestingly, each and every one of them had a horn like a unicorn, though they were curved and many of them jagged along the inside curve. The scene was at once familiar and unfamiliar. The nobility back home would have celebrated the horns and bright colors and been confused by the lack of any actual white in the crowd.
Well, if they could get over the bug pony thing, which, admittedly, they wouldn't.
Also, none of this was real, probably—or didn't look like this, in any case, if it looked like anything, which was still up for debate if she had anypony to debate it with.
What confused Sunset was where the image for these not-ponies had actually come from. The breezies, certainly, she was familiar with and resembled the small winged humanoids she'd seen at first, but these? She'd never even heard of any such thing. Were they a real thing back in Equestria? How did that matter if Sunset had never heard of them? What in tartarus even was this place?
The insect ponies, for the most part, acted similar enough to the breezies, but without the actual hiding. Instead, they simply kept their distance, watched, gossiped and giggled. It would have been a little off-putting if Sunset had any intent to actually talk to them, but she knew where she was going.
The white palace was one of the more different things about the city. Like Celestia's palace, it was mostly white marble, but that was where the similarities ended. This place didn't have the gold and rounded corners, but was a lot more stark and austere, with tall arches and dagger-like towers stretching into the sky.
Sunset kind of liked it, actually.
When she got to the doors, the guards let her through, and the inside was similar—again resembling Celestia's palace, though the carpets were blue and green and the interiors much taller.
The throne room was a long hall lined with statues surrounding a fountain on each side. A blue and green rug ran down the center, stopping just before a series of steps that rose the throne up enough to make ponies look up.
On the throne sat the princess—or probably the queen—and Sunset wasn't sure if she should have expected it or not. Surrounded by servants and courtiers, the queen was, of course, of a height with Celestia, if not a little taller, and was just about everything that would be expected of combining the two ideas. What threw Sunset off, though, was the color: the queen's coloring was just as iridescent as her subjects, but it was more an opaline iridescence rather than insectile—mostly a milky white, with only a hint of the blues, greens and golds making themselves known when she moved.
It was very Princess Celestia, but a stark difference from those around her in a way that set her apart from them, and the smile she wore as Sunset approached couldn't have been less like Equestria's princess if she'd tried, and it wasn't because of the sharp teeth.
Well, it wasn't only because of the teeth, anyway.
Sunset came to a stop where the rug did, at the base of the stairs leading up to the throne, and the queen gestured to the servants at the side of the room. "Welcome, visitor," the queen said, smiling openly, but not precisely kindly. Two servants approached, supplicating themselves and presenting a variety of fruits and drinks. "Call me Titania, Seelie Queen of the Summer Court. Eat, drink," she prompted, an unreadable look in her eyes. "And give me your name."
"Sunset Shimmer," she absently answered, eyeing the food. Subtly, she lit her horn and cast an identification spell in the same motion as she took one of each with her levitation, as she'd been taught. To Queen Titania's credit, neither the food nor drink seemed to be poisoned, and she was suddenly very curious to know what food with so much magic would be like.
Besides, mangos had always been her favorite fruit, when she could get them. They hadn't exactly been common in Canterlot. With a flash of her magic, the skin peeled off and she took a bite.
Her eyes immediately went wide. Absently, she chewed and swallowed the bite, and while it was delicious and invigorating, that wasn't what shocked her. Staring at the mango, she took another bite, just to make sure, and confirmed it; there was no seed.
Seedless mangos. Brilliant.
Okay, maybe she was overreacting a bit, but it had come out of left field and she eagerly finished the mango off, savoring every bit of its excessively magical flesh.
No sooner had she done so, than there was a commotion back at the door. She casually turned to look behind her, sniffing the drink to see if it would surprise her just as much. Pear wine wasn't as shocking as the seedless mango, but it would definitely be to her taste.
What was slightly more shocking was the golden-haired child that came charging through the guards at the door and kicked the glass of pear wine away from her face just as she was about to take a sip.
Rude.
Also, wow. She had forgotten just how much bigger than ponies the humans were, and it was all the more jarring when surrounded by equines and architecture scaled to her own height.
Luna was bent over, hands on her knees, out of breath, and that was how she spotted the mango peel on the floor, her face draining of color. "No! You're not supposed to eat the food!" she shouted, overly distraught. "Now you can't come back!"
She blinked, looking up at the girl. "Okay?" she said, not sure how that worked but also not seeing the problem. "I wasn't planning on going back anyway; this world is a hundred times more magical. I'm more likely to figure out how to become an alicorn and how to get home from here—I'd bet it's even dimensionally closer to Equestria, too."
Luna puffed up her cheeks in a pout and put her hands on her hips. "It doesn't work like that!" she shouted, sounding like this was the end of the world to her.
Internally, she scoffed. Kids.
"You ate the food!" Luna reiterated. "You can't—"
Queen Titania politely cleared her throat, and though that was all it was, the entire throne room fell silent—even Luna.
Naturally, she turned to look up at Queen Titania, noticing the glass that was laying on its side just at the top of the stairs leading up to the throne, empty. The seelie queen's sheer silk dress was wet, plastered to the front of her carapace. She frowned. Was the seelie queen wearing a dress before?
Well, she was wearing a dress now, and it was ruined.
For some reason, though, Queen Titania didn't seem angry, she seemed amused. "An alicorn, is it?" she asked, leaning back in the throne and placing one hoof under her chin. After a moment of consideration, she made a wave of her hoof and a tiny pinprick of light came into being in front of her. "Something like this, then? But what will you give me?"
Her eyes widened, and she stepped forward involuntarily. She was about to agree, but then caught sight of another smaller light that was lying on the throne's armrest next to her. "What's that?" she asked.
Queen Titania looks at the speck of light as if she'd just noticed it. Casually, she reached down and picked it up in her hoof. "This? You really don't know? You haven't even noticed?"
Sunset honestly had no idea what the seelie queen was even implying. Something she should have noticed? She looked up at Luna to see if she knew what the seelie queen was talking about, but the girl was just gaping up at the second light in growing despair. Soon, though, the turned to look down at Sunset in horror.
"That's your name—" it seemed like she was trying to say a word, but it wasn't coming out. "You gave them your name, you dummy!"
"What." Sunset had no idea what that was supposed to even mean.
Luna stomped her feet in frustration, unable to believe this was even happening and that she had to explain it. "They asked for your name and you gave it to them!"
"Yes," Sunset confirmed, thinking that sounded reasonable.
"So now it's over there and you don't have it any more!" Luna shouted.
Sunset rolled her eyes and said, "Don't be ridiculous; that's not a thing that can happen," she insisted. "My name is..." her voice trailed off as the particular words failed to come to mind. "Something about the appearance of light from the sky? Starlight Sparkle? Twilight Glimmer?"
"See?" Luna said, pleading for Sunset to get the idea. "It's gone! Even if you guess it, you won't recognize it!"
"No," Sunset denied, going back over all the times that Princess Celestia had said her name, be it with fondness or frustration, but the specifics eluded her. "No, you just—you put me on the spot," she insisted, slightly hysterical. "I'll have it in a second..."
"You know, this is so sad, it almost isn't even fun," Queen Titania said, bringing the attention back onto herself. "But only almost," she said, breaking into her wickedly-fanged grin. "So, tell me little pony." She motioned at the light of magic that she had conjured, which would allow Sunset to become an alicorn. "What will you give me?"
Sunset wasn't just speechless; her entire mind had just stopped, refusing to believe that something like this was even possible. Names were like cutie marks; they were an inviolable part of a pony. You couldn't just... give one away with a technical verbal agreement that didn't even have the intent.
It just wasn't how things worked... except apparently it was. It was how they worked here, and that was why she'd come here; because the magic ran deeper here than it did in Equestria—because things were possible here that she was denied in Equestria.
Sunset stared up at the pinprick of light that she was being offered, and she thought she could see herself as an alicorn in it, the same as the mirror that Princess Celestia had shown her. It was right there, but she wasn't stupid enough to just accept it. Recent events begged to differ, but that had been different. She hadn't the slightest idea that such a thing was even possible... but how much of a defense was that when a ten-year-old child knew better? A ten-year-old child that had been only too happy to tell Sunset anything she asked.
That... wasn't important right now. What was important was the opportunity in front of her and not falling into another trap. "...We can talk about price in a moment, but can you also get me home?"
Queen Titania seemed briefly surprised. She then threw her head back and began cackling in laughter. Sunset backed up, confused as to what had set that off and flattening her ears at the noise. Quickly, all the servants and courtiers in the room had joined in, none of them kindly.
By the time the laughing had died down, Queen Titania was looking at Sunset with something between pity and astonishment. "Oh—you're serious!" she announced. "Little pony, weren't you listening when the girl-child said it? You ate our food—you're of the Faerie Lands now, and there's no leaving—this is your home."
Sunset felt dread pool in her stomach. There was no denial, partly because she'd already been through it, but also because she could actually understand how that might work. She looked down at herself, as if she could see the difference, but she didn't have the time to properly examine herself with magic to see what the food might have done to her.
"You—you..." Sunset didn't have the words, but unlike the situation with her name, she had no difficulty contextualizing this situation in the least. Quickly, all of the greed, uncertainty and fear that were tugging her in different ways were redirected into one all-encompassing feeling of indignant fury and she didn't hesitate to express that fury in the most immediate way possible—with a beam of pure fire from her horn.
Queen Titania seemed unbothered, having bent just to the side while Sunset's spell toppled the top of the too-tall throne. "Now now, Sunset," the seelie queen said, and when she spoke Sunset's name, it seemed to skip past everyone's ears and strike down into the deepest part of her. "That's enough," the seelie queen said, and, just like that, without thought or consideration, Sunset agreed. There was no struggling or fighting against it; it was just as if the seelie queen had pointed out something obvious. Sunset had expressed her displeasure and the matter was over. Anything more would be like a child throwing a tantrum.
The actual child in the room, on the other hoof, expressed her displeasure in a different way. No one had been paying attention to her at all until, moments after Queen Titania's command, as she was looming forward, a thin chain and two weights wrapped around her like a bolas.
The metal sizzled against the seelie queen's carapace and she began to scream. She threw herself back against the throne, and then down on the ground rolling over, but the chain—which on second look seemed to be fashioned from paperclips and two halves of a locket—seemed to behave to her as if it was made of the thickest steel.
Luna didn't waste any time. Before the seelie queen hit the ground, she was running up the steps to the throne and grabbing the mote of light that represented Sunset's name. Several heartbeats later, she was coming back down the steps and dragging Sunset along.
That is, until Sunset shook her off, still staring up at the seelie queen—not for any lingering command from her name, but for something else. She was hardly thinking, but she knew that there was no situation that would make her leave this room without that second mote of light.
The one that would make her an alicorn.
Sunset thought she was decisive and quick. Just a little trip up the stairs and back and she would be right behind Luna. It was child's play in the most literal way; she'd just watched a child do it, and in that, at least, she succeeded. She snatched up the light off the ground next to the screaming seelie queen and was on her way back down the stairs when she saw it.
The girl—Luna—lying face down between the door guards, blood on the ground beneath her.
"No!" Sunset yelled, and though her immediate thought was that she needed Luna in order to make sense of this world, she did feel guilty about it. Briefly. As she ran back down the hall, Sunset blasted the seelie guards standing over Luna, who weathered the assault much less well than their queen.
When Sunset finally reached Luna, it became clear that she was alive and conscious, but curled up on the ground, crying, with her hand pressed over her eye because... because that's where the blood was coming from.
In the moment that Sunset let herself feel just a tiny bit bad about that, seelie guards from outside the throne room had blocked off their escape, and those from beside the throne had stopped trying to help their queen and decided to surround Sunset and Luna from the other side, but this was not the first time she had been in such a situation.
What did it say about her that this would be the third such place she would have to escape in as many days on as many worlds?
Fortunately for Sunset, subtlety had gone out the window and Sunset was very good at not being subtle. The first thing she did was snap up a flaming shield around herself and Luna to ward off the seelie guards, then, she did what she could to get Luna on her feet, which she struggled to do. Sunset only came up to the child's waist, so carrying her on her back wasn't going to work.
"Get ready," she said and began to charge up her horn for as strong a teleport as the could manage. She wished she could also blast the throne room as they left, but it was much more important to get as far away as possible. Several moments later, she finally reached her peak and the two of them disappeared in a blinding flash, the flaming shield guttering out the moment they were gone.
Sunset would like to say that the two of them hit the ground running when they appeared in the middle of not-Canterlot, but it took a few moments and some cajoling to get her bearings and get Luna moving. What Luna lacked in focus, though, she made up with in the length of her legs, and Sunset had to run flat out to keep up with her.
On spotting two outsiders fleeing the city, the city guards gave chase and Sunset soon gave them a reason to do so as she warded them off with blasts of fire. They clearly didn't yet know what had gone down in the throne room, or they likely would have been a little more determined. Sunset didn't know why exactly paperclips seemed to burn the seelie queen, but it had been a nasty thing to do.
Justified, yes, but far more than Sunset had expected from the young girl.
Whatever the cause for it, it didn't seem to matter now as Luna didn't seem to have any more paperclip chains or similar to fend off the Seelie, which, well, considering the bloody hand she still had over her eye, was fair.
That little worm of guilt squirmed to life inside of her once more, but she did what she could to not let it distract her.
As the two of them neared the edge of the city, the tall gates towered over them, very clearly closed. Sunset paid them no mind and charged up her horn once more, flashing the two of them out of the city with another blinding teleport, taking them into the countryside.
Finally, they were free.
***
As it turned out, they were not, in fact, free. Sunset and Luna only had a moment's reprieve to rest and catch their breath when squads of bug-ponies began to fly out of the city. It hadn't been obvious on the ground, but apparently every single one of them had the diaphanous wings that she'd noted before in addition to their horns.
That just wasn't fair. It was like a combination of what had happened with Cadance suddenly showing up as an alicorn, and also when a cockroach you're about to smash suddenly takes off and flies straight at you.
Sunset and Luna did what they could to evade the search parties who, by their behavior, almost certainly knew what had been done to their queen, and though she could throw them off for a time with her teleports, gaining a few moments rest, nothing she could do seemed to shake them off completely.
Sunset wasn't sure how long it took, but the running and the teleporting and the occasional blasting of any of the bugs that got close eventually started to take a toll on her, and even some of the injuries that she'd thought the Wiggenweld potion had cured were making themselves known again.
Who knew that doctors actually knew what they were talking about when they prescribed bed rest?
At some point, Sunset and Luna had gone from being chased through lush green mountains to lush green hills. Sunset was pretty sure that was impossible no matter how long they'd been running, but then, come to think of it, she also didn't quite remember spending very long going up the mountain either.
The sight of the black castle towering up out of the dark forest gave Sunset an idea, though. "What... do you think... the chances are... that these bugs... don't... get along with... whatever's... in... the forest?" she asked Luna during one of their brief moments of respite.
Luna had run out of tears and the blood and... other fluids from her eye had run dry, but she was still hunched over, one hand on her face and the other holding it there across her chest. She didn't give a verbal answer, but nodded, and the two of them took off again, heading into the dark forest.
***
In hindsight, it probably should have been obvious that there would be more to the forest with the evil castle in it than a population of ideologically contrary residents, but those residents were rather eye-catching all on their own, so Sunset and Luna could be forgiven for overlooking the more subtle dangers.
The plan did work, though. Almost as soon as they had entered the forest, the number of close encounters with the shiny bug-ponies dropped significantly. Unfortunately, it did so in inverse proportion to encounters with the forest's inhabitants, who—surprise surprise—were more bug-ponies, only with an evil makeover and then some and had the manners to match their appearance.
Now, Sunset may have been on the outs with Princess Celestia, but that didn't mean that she'd forgotten all of her lessons. Sunset wasn't one to call people 'evil' lightly. Just look at the humans; their entire government, with the floo surveillance, memory removal and salaried executioner really gave off that 'evil tyrant' vibe, but it didn't reflect on the species as a whole; just look at the Lovegoods. These creatures, though... well, evil makeover just about summed it up.
Like the seelie, these—let's call them, 'unseelie,' since they weren't kind enough to introduce themselves—these unseelie were also bug-ponies of the same general build, but instead of colorful, iridescent carapaces, they were all a uniform, smoky gray so dark it was nearly black, and what bits of color they had in their wings and eyes were a sickly greenish-yellow. Sickly was really the word for it, too. Sunset wasn't sure the first time, but after several close calls with the unseelie that let her get a better look at them, it was clear that as a whole, they weren't all there.
No, literally. They had holes in them. They weren't injuries—at least, she didn't think so—they just had holes in them; straight through, mostly in the legs like they were rotting or rusting, but some of them had them elsewhere.
Sunset supposed that the holes could be the scars of grievous wounds healed over with magic like her horn, which they superficially resembled, but she wasn't sure if she liked that comparison—especially since the connection might be more literal than she was comfortable with.
It was easy to forget that what she was seeing wasn't the immutable truth, and metaphor might be an actual tripping hazard if she wasn't careful.
Suffice it to say, that she had a lot on her mind, and getting split up from Luna wasn't something she'd been expecting to have to worry about.
It was an easy enough mistake to make; it wasn't as if the two of them were joined at the hip. Sunset had done what she could to support Luna, but their heights and gaits didn't match up enough to make that easy. Luna was a blonde biped twice as tall as Sunset, so naturally they'd taken slightly different routes up out of a ravine. Luna had gone to one side of a cluster of trees and Sunset had gone to the other.
She'd been about to suggest that they make their way back to the ring of mushrooms that had brought them to this world and see what they could work out, but when she'd looked up, Luna was gone.
At first, she had expected that the girl had finally collapsed. They hadn't been in the forest long, but they were both dead on their feet and Luna wasn't a magical pony; she was just a child. Sunset had gone looking for her, then, but the obvious trail out of the ravine just... stopped. Sunset was not a woodspony of any sort, but Luna was wounded, exhausted and dragging her feet.
She'd been taken.
That was... well... uhh... The Unseelie didn't have the same grudge against them as the Seelie, but they'd attacked the two at every opportunity anyway. Luna was probably dead, and there was no actual chance that Sunset could save her all alone.
Sunset felt kind of bad for being a shitty person, but—no, wait. If she went back, she could tell Xenophilius. Xenophilius would actually know what to do, and if the Unseelie were weak to paperclips or thumbtacks or whatever, he would know what type of office supplies would burn them on contact.
Yeah. Yeah, that was the sensible thing to do.
It didn't work, of course.
Sunset hadn't quite forgotten that she'd been told that she couldn't leave the Faerie Lands as Seelie Queen had called them, but she'd definitely sort of pushed it to the back of her mind and pretended everything was fine.
Everything was not fine.
Finding the mushroom circle again had been surprisingly easy. Where, from the other side, feeling it out with magic had been like trying to chase down a mirage, here, it was the opposite, and before she knew it, she was there.
Actually returning to Luna's world, though, was a problem. The portal, if you could call it that, was there; she could feel the other world on the other side, but trying to push through burned, like it was rejecting her.
She tried—she really did—but she couldn't do it, and once she calmed down, sat and concentrated on her magic, she could see why. She was still different from the rest of the creatures of the Faerie Lands, but not as different as she should have been.
To put a finer point on it, though she was mostly guessing, she was still physical in a way that things here weren't entirely, but magically, she had acclimated to the environment of the Fairy lands, proof of which was the headache she no longer had, even stretching her magical sense as much as she could push it.
Ironically, this actually gave her hope. It meant that she wasn't tied to the Faerie Lands as a concept, but an environment, and, well, it was called the Magical Land of Equestria for a reason.
She might get to go home an alicorn just yet.
Sunset blinked, then panicked. She remembered taking the mote of light that was supposed to be her ascension in the throne room—it was how Luna had gotten hurt, after all—but then they'd been running and she wasn't sure what she'd done with it. One moment she'd been holding it in her hoof and—
Sunset blinked again, looking down at her hoof, which was holding the mote of light. It wasn't like it had gotten stuck in the frog of her hoof or anything. She hadn't had it just a moment ago—or, she guesses she did, but not physically.
Sunset really, really hated this place.
But now she had her ascension sitting in her hoof, and nothing else mattered. Maybe it would have been better to have used it while they were on the run, if she'd thought of it, but maybe it would have incapacitated her long enough for her to be captured. It didn't matter. It was here, now.
Sunset swallowed to wet her suddenly dry throat. She made one cursory look around to make sure she wasn't being snuck up upon, then steeled herself. No questions, no delaying, no navel gazing. She picked it up from her hoof with her magic, held it in front of herself and then...
How exactly does one use a concept distilled into a magical pinprick of light?
Apparently exactly like that.
***
After an indeterminable amount of time not existing, Sunset burst back into being in a ball of flame, took a deep breath and opened her eyes.
That was...
That was...
She didn't know what that was.
Was that what ascension was supposed to be like? In hindsight, it had maybe been a bit foolish to assume that she could just be given—that she could just steal—an ascension and assume it was the real thing, and yet... and yet... it had felt real enough.
Sunset stood, stretched and checked her flank like a tweenaged foal looking for a cutie mark. Sure enough, a little more forward on what was actually her flank, was a wing.
Huh. That was a thing, and yet... that was kind of it. She had wings, but otherwise just kind of felt normal. A check of her memory confirmed she was still missing her name, and a check of her magic revealed... actually, it was slightly different in some indiscernible way.
She might have been a tiny bit taller, but was this really it? Was she really an alicorn now, or was this just some mad queen's impression? Part of her wished she knew more about how this world worked, but the rest of her wasn't sure that she wanted to be able to understand the underlying logic, if there even was any.
Realizing that she was getting into the weeds of frustration with the Faerie Lands again with nothing to actually go on, Sunset went back to taking stock of her physical differences again. She would be glad to have a whole and undamaged horn again.
Her horn was undamaged, certainly, but as she ran her hoof up it she did not encounter the smooth, fluted cone she expected. There was a gap and a too-sharp point, as there had been since her impact with the mechanized carriage... only not exactly. The bit-sized chip had been out of the side of her horn, but now it was at the rear, smooth, round, uniform and symmetrical, like it had been put there intentionally.
As if it was supposed to be like that.
Sunset took a deep breath, trying to control the voice inside her head that was screaming that this was wrong—wrong—wrong. She did not have time for a breakdown right now. This was... this was what she deserved, wasn't it? She would never be able to look at herself and not think of the unseelie, with holes scattered through their extremities.
Like they were rotting.
Was she rotten?
She remembered turning around and seeing a little girl lying on the ground, bleeding from her eye.
She might be.
***
With her newfound ascension—however valid—Sunset took another crack at the mushroom circle leading back to the other world, but still couldn't do it. The burning was actually a bit more bearable, but that wasn't saying much. Clearly, merely being an alicorn or the approximation of one wasn't the solution, but at least it hadn't set her any further back, either.
That there was a solution, Sunset would continue to believe, but she was getting nowhere with this. Maybe... maybe if she tracked down Luna, she would have some idea... and the little worm of guilt nagging her about the girl would go away.
Sunset's ascension to alicornhood turned out not to be terribly useful in tracking down Luna deeper in the forest, which was kind of an issue, given she'd decided not to do it in the first place on account of all the danger. She already had the personal hatred of one city of bug-creatures; she didn't want to make it two for two by making herself too obvious, even if she actually knew how to fly.
Mind, the evil ones had attacked on sight anyway, but they hadn't signaled an alarm or organized search parties, and she was pretty sure there was nowhere she could go if both sides were actively hunting for her head.
Especially if she actually was stuck here.
But no. She wouldn't believe that, and really, they'd already set themselves against her by (probably) taking Luna, so there wasn't any getting out of it.
She'd just have to be very, very careful. And quiet.
If Sunset was still alive at the end of the day, she was going to have to work out some actually subtle ways to use her magic. Sighing, she kept an eye out for a nice heavy stick on her way to the evil-looking castle at the center of the forest.
***
The strangest thing happened as Sunset got closer to the castle: things slowly became different. Now, admittedly, that was the general rule for the Faerie Lands as she'd discovered immediately upon her arrival here, but there was a difference in that kind of different and this kind of different. Normally, in Sunset's experience so far, the fine or even the not-so-fine details would change from moment to moment and glance to glance, but the overall impression would stay the same.
The shift that Sunset saw in the scenery as she neared the castle was almost like stepping into a story of a different genre or a painting by a different artist: the trees went from lush and temperate, bordering on swampy, to pines and firs with almost nothing in the way of foliage at ground level. So, too, did the environment itself change; the air acquired a chill, night fell and even the shadows seemed sharper.
What was even stranger was the creatures. The small winged humanoids that Sunset had seen in the first few minutes after arriving in the Faerie Lands, had become breezies, and their evil counterparts in the forest had been some kind of adorable, round, fuzzy things—but now, in this part of the forest, the tiny winged humans were back and what she'd expected to be an unseelie patrol had turned out to be something new entirely.
Okay, well, they were larger versions of the insect-winged humanoids, admittedly, but they differed from their smaller kin in having pale skin, pointed ears and intricate black armor or clothing.
This, she supposed, must be how the Faerie Lands arranged themselves around Luna, which was good, since it meant that Luna was nearby, and interesting because it meant that there was only a single way things could be at any one time, and the two of them weren't seeing different things.
Ironically, Luna's version was a boon in other ways, too. Luna's unseelie were all human-scale, and maybe on the taller scale even then. Sunset's coloring still stood out like a flame in the night, but being at a smaller scale than the people and architecture still made sneaking around significantly easier.
Of course, that didn't make it easy. The castle had a moat, for one, and while the chill of the area would be enough to dissuade her from swimming it, the fact that it was black as tar and hiding who-knows-what was a better reason not to risk it, and neither did she want to try flying for the first time in such a situation, even for such a short distance.
Fortunately, Sunset's color and magic actually worked out in her favor, for once. High up on the castle walls, each topping a tower, were several great, giant watch fires. Normally, Sunset's teleportation was like a flaming beacon that no one could miss, but teleporting next to an even greater source of fire, she was essentially invisible.
It was a good thing she knew how to make herself fireproof, though.
From her vantage point on one of the castle's watchtowers, Sunset learned two things; one, that the dark and evil castle was, against expectations, just as populated as its twin, and two, that it didn't matter, because Luna was being kept all alone in a crystal cage in the tallest tower.
To Sunset, who was from Equestria, this seemed like a perfectly normal thing to do and it was literally the first place she looked.
The place where Luna was being kept wasn't so much a room as much as a bell tower, open on three sides, with Luna's cage as the bell, and when Sunset teleported in, she was hunched over, hugging her legs to herself. At the flash and brief warmth of Sunset's teleport, though, she looked up, and their eyes met.
At first, Sunset was relieved because it looked like Luna's injury wasn't as bad as it had looked, but then, she realized that the eyes she was looking at were different colors. One, on the left, was her natural pale silver; the other—the eye that she had lost—was a faintly glowing teal.
A very familiar teal.
This might have been slightly more alarming if Sunset wasn't very certain that she was still in possession of both of her eyes, so clearly, the color was a coincidence.
Oddly, though, Luna didn't seem surprised or excited to see her, though there was a faint bit of hope.
"Stand back," Sunset said, then realized that Luna was already at the far end of the cage. "Or, well, close your eyes or something," she added.
Luna remained looking at Sunset for a moment, then silently did as she was told, tucking her head behind her knees.
Sunset tried subtlety at first, insofar as a flame like a welding torch is subtle, but the crystal seemed to just suck in the heat, and when she took a break to check her progress, it wasn't even warm to the touch. Sunset harrumphed, and decided to try something else, looking for the stick she'd brought.
...
She had brought the stick, right?
Actually, she had—sort of. Like with her ascension, the world just seemed to have forgotten about it until she remembered it. Sunset lifted the club-like stick in her magic and... reconsidered. "Uhh..."
Luna looked up in question.
"This isn't going to, you know, ring your cage like a bell or something, is it?" she asked. "Since this place is like a bell tower?"
Luna's gaze shifted to the stick and said, "Maybe," shortly followed by, "Don't bother. Only cold iron will work."
Sunset cocked her head in confusion, then just flashed inside the cage with a teleport—only it didn't work. She flashed, then felt like she hit something and was knocked back with enough force to send her sliding nearly to the open edge of the tower.
"Ow," she remarked, slowly getting back on her hooves, then pretended that hadn't happened. "What the heck does 'cold' iron even mean?"
Luna blinked. "Well, horseshoes are traditional," she said, looking down at Sunset's hooves, which were unshod since she wasn't a labor-pony. "But the paperclips worked. Daddy said that it's about 'representing the dominion of man over nature'... but I'm a girl and it still worked for me, so I don't think that's it. Another time he also said something about the fae being mean to the spirit of iron, so iron is mean back to the fae? Fae hold grudges too, so I guess that's fair, but they shouldn't."
"...So, anything that isn't cast?" Sunset surmised, taking note that the creatures here were apparently 'fae.' "Not that it matters since I don't see any iron—which I guess you wouldn't, if it burned you..."
An awkward silence passed as Sunset tried to think of some way to get Luna free.
At length, Luna sniffled, and whispered. "I want my daddy."
Sunset winced. "I... I tried to go get him," she said, weakly defending herself.
"I know," Luna said, sounding hopeless.
Sunset blinked. "Wait, what?"
Luna raised her head and met Sunset's eyes again. She pointed at her teal eye, and said, "Did you forget? I have your name."
Sunset opened her mouth, paused, and said, trying to yell and whisper at the same time, "How does that even work?!"
Luna sighed and took a deep breath. Then, she took another deep breath. And another. When she finally spoke, she seemed calmer, more serious and simultaneously not all there. "Fae aren't physical; they're half a dozen concepts in a trench coat if concepts could have memories, personalities, hold grudges, take everything literally and take everything, literally. If they ask for your name, or your attention, or your patience, and you allow them, they can take those concepts from you—but that also means that concepts are more real to them than anything else; they can't lie or break their word."
"...Well, that's useful information that I wish I had," Sunset politely admitted, "But what I wanted to know is how is my name your eye?!"
"Oh." Luna looked at Sunset, looked down at herself, then back at Sunset. "I don't know. I was missing an eye and I had your name?"
Just when Sunset thought she had gotten a hold on things... this. Not only this, but it made her feel shitty just asking, "...Can I have it back?"
Luna cocked her head, thinking. "I don't know, can you?"
Sunset was about to yell and demand that Luna give her name back, but what was she going to do, tear out her eye?
Before she could figure out what she was going to say, Luna continued uninterrupted. "Your name is Sunset Shimmer."
"Yes?" Sunset said, slightly annoyed at the obvious statement when she realized that it wasn't obvious at all. "Wait, that actually worked?" she said, then belatedly looked at Luna's eye with some guilt. The eye was still there.
"No, I don't think it did," Luna said, lost in thought. "I still have your name."
"But my name is Sunset Shimmer, right?" she said, confused and feeling a little paranoid. "I—I mean... my name is actually Sunset Shimmer, isn't it? You didn't just make me think my name is Sunset Shimmer?"
"It is, but I think I've just given you permission to use it," Luna said, biting her thumb.
"Okay I guess that's apparently a thing you can do," Sunset said, still not quite over her momentary panic. "What... else can you do. To me. And come to think of it, how does having my name for an eye mean you knew I tried to go—I mean, get your dad?"
"Well, I can see through it, obviously," Luna said plainly.
"It wouldn't be much of an eye if you couldn't," Sunset sarcastically reasoned.
Luna nodded. "So I saw when you got lost and went to the faerie ring."
"Okay, first—you got lost and foalnapped, not me," Sunset insisted. "And what do you mean you saw? You weren't there!"
Luna just stared blankly at Sunset. "We just went over this. I can see through it."
Sunset was half expecting this to be another nonsensical thing out of nowhere when the obvious finally clicked for her. "You mean you can see what I see?"
"Yes," she confirmed, paused, then unclarified, "And no."
"Yes and no?" Sunset asked, running out of the will to even ask.
"Yes," she repeated, pointing at her teal eye. "And no," she said, pointing at her silver eye.
"Obviously," Sunset dryly responded, then sighed and prepared herself for what was coming next. "What else?"
"Hmm." Luna placed her finger on her cheek in thought. "A faerie having your name gives them power over you, but I'm not a faerie," she reasoned. "I think I could fake it, though."
"Great," Sunset groused, her mood dipping. "I'm maybe an alicorn, but I'm trapped here and I have to do everything you say."
"Yes, maybe, and no, only if I use your name like that," Luna summarized.
"How would you know if I'm really an alicorn or an approximation—and how am I maybe not trapped here?" Sunset asked, pacing back and forth in agitation.
Luna shook her head. "It's conceptual, and... it's conceptual. That was the concept of 'alicorn' that you stole, so it can't be an approximation—and I have conceptual power over you, so maybe I can make you able to go through the faerie ring. What's an alicorn?"
"An alicorn is the immortal combination of earth pony, pegasus pony and unicorn pony," Sunset explained, gesturing at her hooves, wings and horn, trying not to think of the latter's... deformity. "It's an ascension that only a few ponies have ever managed, and Princess Celestia—my mentor—my ex-mentor—was one of them.
"She was grooming me for the ascension, then just... stopped answering my questions—and—and then this 'Cadance' shows up a brand new alicorn from some podunk town on the coast and I guess... I guess all the time I spent learning from her meant nothing because she cast me out rather than answer one simple question: why?!" Sunset emphasized the last word with a stomp of her forehooves on the black stone floor, then made an effort to calm herself. "But I'm over that now, being an alicorn and all, even if I had to steal it."
"Oh," Luna said, visibly processing that. "Stealing it was the right answer, actually."
"Princess Celestia would—will—disagree," Sunset grumbled, insisting on pretending that she would get back to Equestria some day. "Especially if she knew that fae—faeries?—whatever you called them—honor agreements and can't even lie."
Luna blinked. "Oh, you misunderstood me," she said, suddenly realizing it. "No; they can't lie, but that doesn't mean you can trust them." The paused, thinking back. "Did you think that she was offering you what she wanted?"
"Yes?" Sunset asked, dubious. "She asked me what I would give her for it, after all."
"No," Luna corrected. "Twice, she asked you what you would give her, and that is it. The ascension was never on the table—not without you asking for it—and why would she? She already had your name. Don't even take a gift from a faerie, or say 'sorry' or 'thank you,' because it presumes a debt that they will make you fulfill."
Sunset stared, sat, and screamed. "I hate this place!"
Luna sniffled. "Yes," she agreed quietly. Tucking her head between her knees again, she whispered, "It's how we lost my mom."
Oh, well... if that didn't just make Sunset feel grand.
Sunset waited a while then carefully prompted the caged girl. "Do you really think you can get me through the faerie ring?" she asked.
At first, Luna didn't answer, and Sunset wasn't sure if she was ignoring her or thinking. "What does it feel like, when you try to go through?" she asked at length.
So Sunset explained the burning, and her assumption about having acclimated to the higher level of magic in the Faerie Lands.
Luna sat and thought, and Sunset realized she was relying on a child who hadn't even been to magic school to figure out how to get her out of this insanity.
"What's the difference between you and a real Fae?" Luna asked. "Because Fae can cross over."
That... Sunset hadn't known. She frowned. "Well, I'm still physical," she reasoned, and realized that it did make sense. Pure magic... or concepts or whatever the fae were, wouldn't have a physical biology to be out of balance with.
Luna stood, shaking, and looking absolutely pitiful. Her once-yellow dress was tattered and torn, stained with grass, dirt and blood, and there were scratches along both her arms and legs. It looked like she'd been dragged kicking and screaming through the forest, and she probably had been.
"Then..." she said, approaching the edge of the cage. "Can I have your physicality?"
Sunset grit her teeth at giving up a part of herself, but this whole thing was maybe... sort of... slightly her fault... and if it would allow her to get out of here, she would deal with the rest later.
"You can borrow it."
***
Luna closed her silver eye and watched through Sunset Shimmer's as she made her way out out of the Palace of the Winter Court, waiting until she was clear and into the forest before she stumbled forward and caught herself on the bars of her cage, collapsed under the additional weight of another piece of Sunset Shimmer's being—her 'physicality' as she'd called it. It was like suddenly becoming more real. Everything was just more. She could feel her metaphysical weight warp the Faerie Lands around her.
She was barely used to the sensation when she realized that Sunset was already to the faerie ring. Tentatively, the crumple-horned snorkack approached the way home and tested for the pain she had felt. There was some delay, some uncertainty, but soon enough she stepped through, much to Luna's relief.
Sunset would find daddy, daddy would come and everything would be okay.
The first sign that something had gone wrong was when the view out of Sunset's eye just... stayed there. It was a scene out of the forest near her house, but she seemed to be just... standing there. Why?
The answer came to her when she saw a bird, startled by Sunset's arrival, still standing on the ground.
Time... Time was always weird when it came to the Faerie Lands. There were stories of people taking a nap and returning home decades later, but also vice versa. She should know; she'd read everything she could on it after her mother had disappeared, hoping beyond hope that it would be the former and her mother would return to her one day, not realizing anything had happened.
Luna was not so lucky, and in the pit of her stomach, she could guess why. She'd barely even recovered from her first taste of it, after all—that heavy weight of influence that was radiating out from her.
Her heart nearly caught in her throat when the bird suddenly sped up and made half a wingbeat before slowing back down to even slower than before.
"Or, it could just be random," she said to no one with a huff.
It took over two hours for Sunset to blink, and when the last light of the outside world died away, she curled up and began to cry.
***
Luna wasn't just left alone in her cage high up in the tower. Eventually, she was dressed up and taken to meet Mab, Queen of the Winter Court, and managed to leave with her name intact, which she counted as a success. In a stroke of irony, she was celebrated, in a way, for doing what she did to the Queen of the Summer Court and getting away with it—not as an equal, mind, but as kind of a pet who'd peed on the lawn of a neighbor that no one liked. It didn't get her any real care and she refused everything she could, but she was brought out and shown off for events.
She ate the food, of course. The passing of time in the real world drifted up and down but mostly remained at the nearly literal snail's pace that it had been to start with, and it would do her no good to starve. If Sunset's 'physicality' was to blame for this torturously slow passing of time, then it was also Luna's only hope of being able to leave when it was over, since that 'physicality' was already adapted to the Faerie Lands.
Sometimes, in the dark of Sunset's blinks, Luna wondered if maybe she could find a way to split the difference, so Sunset wouldn't have to stay in the Faerie Lands.
The warmth she felt from seeing her father for the first time in months warmed her heart until the next blink, and to her delight, it was a short one, too, swallowed up by one of those vanishingly rare moments when she could almost see things move. She still held onto a faint hope that one day, any second now, the time difference would balance out, or even swing a little the other way, but she held it close to her chest and didn't feed it, lest it get too large.
She nearly had a heart attack when five entire seconds passed while her father was grabbing his adventuring pack from near the door, and she was absolutely crushed when it slowed down again afterwards. She thought she'd been out of tears.
Help was coming. She knew help was coming, but as it got closer, Luna wondered if it would be in time. The only thing she had to hold onto was the vision from Sunset's left eye, but the more she focused on it, the more often she seemed to have blind spots in her right. She knew she wasn't going blind, though, because shadows don't disappear just because something is in a blind spot.
No—the more she paid attention to the real world, the less her grip on the Faerie Lands seemed to slip, and she was starting to see past the surface, and... she... probably didn't want that?
They were so close now, though. They were in the forest, with Sunset pointing out the Faerie Ring... but she was also standing in a ballroom wearing a milky-white gown that she was borrowing—always borrowing—and there was a Faerie in front of her. She looked familiar when Luna could focus on her—when she existed—but Luna was looking right through her and... why was Queen Titania in the Winter Court?
Oh, they'd probably gotten tired of her. She couldn't blame them, she supposed. This was the first time they'd brought her out in a month, she thinks, though time was a bit funny for her. Time to pass her on while she still had some value.
Funny; now that she was giving all of her attention to her right eye, she seemed to be seeing even less and less of it while understanding more and more of what wasn't there.
One moment, a fair-skinned woman with a golden crown was dragging her out of the ballroom—then it was a opaline changeling—then it was just a writhing nimbus of power-strength-terror-glee—then, suddenly, everything snapped back together into a slightly different arrangement that she'd never seen before.
The sheer, tumultuous speed out of her left eye wreaked havoc on her balance, and she fell to her knees, forcing the Summer Queen to stop or drag her, but it didn't matter because Sunset and her father were there, in the Faery Lands, now.
It was over.