//------------------------------//
// She's a Lecturer 
// Story: The Fire is so Delightful 
// by hawthornbunny 
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It's difficult to describe the Realm of Skyros to a mortal, but imagine a thousand alicorns all trying to build the same city at the same time, all with wildly different construction philosophies, and every time two structures overlap, one of them just turns off into a new spatial dimension. Yes, it gets confusing. Luckily there's an Alicorn of Cartography, so we do actually have fairly readable street maps.

My own portion of the city is a modest abode - a little mini-lair for me to plot in comfort while I figure out how to take the real prize, Equestria. Well, my native Equestria, I mean. There are other Equestrias. It's a multiverse thing. I told you it gets confusing. While it had plenty of homely comforts, I couldn't resist giving it my flair: archways with just the right overlighting to make dramatic entrances, acoustics balanced perfectly for two ponies to have extended exchanges with each other, and of course plenty of dark fire to be silhouetted in front of.

Not that I actually had many visitors to appreciate it. The only pony who regularly saw it was the Alicorn of Marshmallows from next door, who kept running out of sugar for some reason. You'd think he of all ponies would make sure to keep a ready supply. Heurgh. I should roast him.

I was in my study, refining my latest plan. After much retrospection, I'd realized that my Crystal Heart plan had a fatal flaw in it from the beginning - the Heart was a single point of failure. Such a rookie villain mistake, and I should have been aware of it. No, I needed something much more intricate and convoluted. Layers upon layers of schemes, backup schemes, contingencies, all supporting and feeding into each other in a labyrinthine network with me at the center of it all.

And I had figured out a brilliant new way to take down that pesky princess once and for all. It was so simple even a child could have thought of it. And one already had.

Ah, Cozy Glow, the Demon Child. I couldn't help but admire her. Such unbridled ambition at such a young age. She'd seen what nopony else could - that if you can't overcome your opponent's magic, just take away the magic. And she'd nearly done it, too! She might even have bested me, if I hadn't been in Skyros at the time. That's how brilliant she was. I made a note to go and smash her statue later, just in case she escaped her imprisonment. Can't have somepony like that running around.

Of course, there had been a few flaws in Cozy's plan, although none that she really had the ability to account for. As a pegasus, she'd had no way to actually wield the magic she stole from Equestria, and had settled for dumping it in a nearby dimension. Effective, but wasteful. Also, she'd had to create a magic siphon using only the few artifacts she could get her hooves on, so it had been terribly inefficient. I'm amazed she got it to work at all.

But those problems were both trifles to an alicorn of my wisdom. I absolutely could wield that power. And I knew more about artificing than any unicorn alive today. I could create a siphon more effective, more unstoppable, than anything this world had ever seen, and ensure that 100% of that magic went to me. The plan spread across the wall before me was perfect. Twilight Sparkle would have no chance of stopping it.

At the ring of my door chime, I sighed wistfully, and trotted back through to the lobby of my lair. I could almost taste the victory. The image of Twilight Sparkle's face as I broke all of her dreams, and then broke her. It was going to take a lot of work, but that was what kept me going.

I pulled open my arched front door to reveal the tall, twinkling form of Princess Twilight. "Hi," she barked.

I slammed the door in her stupid face, took a second to compose myself, then blasted the door through its frame with a rocketing swell of magic. Chunks of my front wall splintered outward as the door sailed unhindered through the artificial Skyrosian night, and I watched it land on the cobblestone street with an underwhelming thud, a dozen feet away.

"Opaline," said a soft, dumb voice from behind me.

Teleport interdiction. Why in the Six Circles of Tartarus did I not set up teleport interdiction? It would have been so easy. One simple enchantment, and the princess's head would have arrived at the destination without her body. I'd have loved to see the look on her face then.

Two incandescent lines of magic converged at the tip of my horn to give it a magical knife edge, and with a single balletic flick of my forehoof, I spun around and beheaded a lampstand.

"Opaline, please," said the unworthy monarch, who had leaned slightly to the side to avoid her decapitation. "Calm down. I only want to -"

"I'll interdict your head off!" I shrieked at her.

Sadly, although I am the Alicorn of Fire, I am not the Alicorn of Sick Burns. She lives a couple streets over. Ooooh, a couple of words from Profania can cut deeper than any hornblade, let me tell you. Point is, this was not me at my best. I'd been caught off-guard, and my mouth wasn't able to catch up with the overflowing eloquence of my remarkable mind.

Distracting her with a thrown table, I darted into one of my hyperspatial corridors to retrieve something I'd been working on as a side project, the Orb of Destruction. A ball of pure infernal energy that would render the unworthy to a steaming puddle of ash. I snatched it off its pedestal, returned to the lobby, and flung it in the princess's stupid face. Her expression of surprise was the last thing visible as the miniature star erupted into a blaze so bright that the air itself was destroyed, torn to atoms. My ears blistered with the crackle of ionic energy as the radiation consumed everything. Even the fireproofing of my interiors couldn't hold, and furniture and picture frames rapidly crackled, blackened, and melted as the ball of plasma flayed the princess alive with weaponized light.

"Opaline, please stop attacking me," said Princess Twilight, sealing the Orb in a magenta bubble until it fizzled out. "I'm not here to fight. I came here to talk to you."

"You'll never succeed," I hissed, as smoking black sludge puddled off my walls. "My plans are encrypted by a secret decoder ring that only I can access. You think I wasn't prepared for you, princess? Oh, ho ho, you're all the same. You think everypony is as brainless as you are. Well -"

"Opaline!" yelled the princess, in a powerful, sonorous tone I'd only ever heard from Celestia. "I don't care about your plans! I came here to talk to you." With a gentle thrum of her horn, she extinguished the many small fires, banished the smoke, and levitated the pieces of my front wall back into a semi-organized state.

"What do you want?" I seethed at her over the hiss of my sizzling walls.

"Firstly. Happy Hearth's Warming."

"It's not Hearth's Warming."

"Ah, so that explains why you weren't expecting me. I told you, in my last letter to you, that I would be arriving on Hearth's Warming Eve. You did receive it, I trust?"

I frowned. I had indeed received a letter from Princess Twilight a few weeks ago telling me that she would be visiting on Hearth's Warming, but that didn't explain why she was here now. I'm sure it was still summer.

Twilight continued. "Look, it's fine. I know what it's like. Celestia always used to lose track of the decades too."

"But not you," I said with a glare.

"Of course not," Twilight affirmed with an infuriating smile. "I'm organized. Admittedly, I probably should have foreseen this. May we sit down?"

I still wasn't sure what her angle was, but decided to humor her for now. I declined to offer her a chair, largely because all my furniture had just been reduced to atoms, but she conjured up a couple of comfortable dining chairs and a table, offering me a seat. I sat opposite her, glaring as she magicked up a teapot and poured me a cup.

"You look just like her," I observed.

Twilight gave me a confused stare for a moment, but quickly figured it out. "Celestia? Yes, a lot of ponies have said the same," she said with a warm smirk, as she poured herself some tea. "I have tried to distinguish myself from her, but Celestia's shadow is a very difficult one to escape."

"Probably because of all the cake," I ventured. Princess Twilight choked on her tea.

"Indeed," she said, wiping her cheek with a napkin. "I loved Celestia, and she inspired me greatly, but she wasn't perfect. She never truly recovered from losing Luna to the darkness, even after getting her back."

"Because she was weak."

Twilight smiled sadly. "You could call it a weakness. Even so, she always played to her strengths. Celestia was very much aware of her limitations, you know. She always knew she couldn't keep Equestria safe forever. Her strategy was to trade progress for safety. She kept Equestria safe and secure for a thousand years. Not prospering, not progressing - just safe and secure. She felt stagnation was worth the price of security."

"And this is the pony you admire, is it?" I snorted.

"I do. Power is... it's a difficult thing, Opaline. Not just anypony can wield it. I know you agree with me about that."

I glared at her attempt to ensnare me into a concession. "Yes, of course I do." Power belongs to the one most worthy of wielding it. I didn't ask for that pony to be me.

"We have to do what's best for our subjects, not what's best for us," Twilight continued to drone. "We have to be ready to give everything, absolutely everything, for them. What happens to me, or you, that's for fate to decide."

Out of polite habit, I sipped some of the conjured tea, but immediately regretted it. I'd forgotten how awful this stuff was. Bitter, tasteless, masochistic plant ticklings. Give me malt any day of the century.

"Nihilistic nonsense," I sniffed. "Only foals believe in fairytale ideas like fate and destiny. I design my own fate, princess, I do not wait for the universe to deliver me rainbows."

"And you can!" she quickly backtracked. "I'm just trying to impress on you the responsibility that you have, Opaline. You've never shown me that you're ready to take it on."

My eyes flared an angry purple. "I've never shown you - are you judging me, princess? Is that why you invited yourself to my home? Do you really think I'm interested in what you think about me?"

Twilight sighed. "I'm sorry. Bad choice of words. Let me cut to the chase, then: I'm worried about Equestria, and about you. I know your ambitions, Opaline, and that you're planning to move against me. You wouldn't be the first."

No, but I'll certainly be the last. "Really," I said nonchalantly. "If you're so sure, why don't you do something about it? I'm right here. You're the one with the power, princess, you could end me right now."

"That's not how I operate. You know that," Twilight said solemnly. "There was a time when I might have blasted you with a rainbow laser and picked up the pieces afterward. But I'm not young any more, and things aren't that simple any more. I'd much rather try to help you. I've seen a lot of ponies follow your path, Opaline. Far too many. And take it from me, the longer they stayed on it, the worse it was for them at the end."

"Heurgh. Is that the best you have, princess? Idle scaremongering? If you have some concrete advice, I will take it. Otherwise, I'm not interested in spooky premonitions."

"I like to think my wisdom counts for something," Twilight replied calmly. "I'm not the Alicorn of Friendship for no reason, Opaline. I've helped many ponies off the dark path. I want to help you too."

Was that fear in her voice? It was very well-hidden - a skill she'd learned from her mentor, of course - but I was sure I could detect an undercurrent of trepidation there.

"And what do you propose?" I asked.

"Join me for Hearth's Warming celebrations at Canterlot Palace," she offered. "That's it. I place no expectations upon you, other than basic civility. You don't have to participate in anything, you don't even have to enjoy it. I just don't want you to spend Hearth's Warming by yourself."

Honestly, I think I'd rather be hit with the rainbow laser. "A party, really? Aren't we both a little old for such things?"

Twilight smiled. "I've known four Bearers of Laughter in my lifetime, and they would all be scandalized to hear you say that. There's nothing wrong with a little festivity, no matter how old you are."

I rolled my eyes. "I can think of a hundred more productive things to do with my time. Thank you, but no thank you. I'm very busy."

"Take some time to think about it," Twilight suggested. "My door will always remain open to you. Please consider my offer."

Finishing up her tea, she stood and took in the blackened remains of my lobby. "I'm sorry about the mess. Can I help you to clean up?"

"No, that won't be necessary. I like the dark look," I told her, escorting her to what remained of my front door. "Bye now. Merry Hearth's Warming."

"Opaline," Twilight said, daring to lay a tentative hoof on my shoulder. "If you do nothing else, please grant me this one thing: let's not fight. Our ponies don't deserve that. And I know that in your own, strange way, you do care for them. Happy Hearth's Warming."





Well, Twilight hadn't been wrong about one thing - it was Hearth's Warming in Equestria. The Canterlot weather had been made appropriately festive, with a picturesque layer of snow that steamed around my hooves as I trudged through the mountaintop city.

I hadn't bothered with any disguise, this time - it was well past the time that everypony was in bed, and if Twilight Sparkle really was as accommodating as she claimed then I presumed the few guards on Hearth's Warming duty wouldn't be bothering me. But there was one creature I knew I could still find up and about at this time.

Well, maybe "about" is the wrong word to use.

I approached the statue in the middle of Canterlot Plaza, finding the three figures there wearing festive decorations: Cozy Glow ironically sporting a bright glowing halo, Tirek with a silly Hearth's Warming hat, and of course my dearest Chryssi, doing her best to snarl through the indignity of the many lights and baubles strung on her.

I trotted up to her and gave her stony face a gentle tap. To be honest, I didn't know if she could hear me or not. If she was still aware of what was going around her, it must have been a lonely couple of centuries. But nonetheless, I'd felt compelled to pay her a visit. Chryssi was, after all, the embodiment of the dark path, was she not? She'd never stopped until she'd been stopped. Even in her last moments, even when she must have known she was done for, she remained defiant to the end. I didn't see defeat when I looked at her, but someone with the strength and conviction to see things through to the end. Someone like me.

"She's a coward," I told the static changeling. "All that power and she doesn't have the will to face me. It's insulting. Well, I do have the will, and I'm unlike her, I'm not afraid of the consequences!"

I patted Chryssi's mane and stepped up onto the plinth, leveling myself with the face of Cozy Glow, eternally captured in a moment of unresolved shock. I guess that's what happens when you waste your second chance. "And as for you, child," I said, narrowing my eyes as I looked directly into hers. "I'm feeling festive. You get to live this year."