//------------------------------//
// Chapter I 
// Story: Another Slice of Pie 
// by The Fool 
//------------------------------//

Granite Slab looked up at the full moon through the broken roof of the Castle of the Two Sisters, and the Nightmare's unseeing eye looked back. All ponykind had put its trust in the princesses, and the princesses had failed. Few saw it that way, of course, which is why all but a hoofful of his former followers had ran into the woods―presumably to be ripped apart by the manticores or shown by the cockatrices and basilisks one of the many fates that are worse than death―when his scout had returned with the grim news.

Celestia knew what he was trying to do. Her Royal Guards were coming. If they caught up with him, the price for his actions would almost certainly be death. Whether or not they knew who the real perpetrator was, they'd likely kill them all. No witnesses. The Royal Guard was like that in those days.

Granite spat on the cracked stone floor. He wasn't going to allow it. As far as he was concerned, the Night Guard died the day he stepped down, the day his proud bat ponies were assimilated into the ranks of the Day Guard and the amalgam dubbed the Royal Guard.

It wouldn't last.

The new captain, a pegasus pony named Valiant Stand, was a coward and a fool, all the more so for his stalwart loyalty to the false princess.

Granite had taken a measure of pleasure in leaving misleading clues for his inept counterpart, but the time for games had passed. With the help of an elderly zebra who had sought refuge in Equestria from the genocide in his homeland, found none, and taken up residence in the Everfree Forest, they had found all the information they needed.

Looters had been scouring the abandoned castle for months. It was only a matter of time before they found something they shouldn't.

Granite stepped back into the main chamber, where his fellow earth ponies accented the chalk hexagram that covered the floor with intricate glyphs drawn to the precise specifications of the unicorn spellcrafters he'd managed to sway to his cause. The unicorn ponies had impressed upon him that there was no margin for error in this kind of invocation, and though he believed them, the fact remained that they were running out of time. His sensitive bat pony ears had picked up on the hooffalls of a full battalion of troops―because Celestia's loyal soldiers certainly had nothing better to do―not long after his scout had returned. It was getting louder.

He stood, still as a statue, and watched for several minutes. With each second that ticked by in his mind's eye, each grain of sand that trickled irrevocably into the past, his muscles grew more tense.

Finally, the earth ponies vacated the outer rings, and the unicorns turned to him with what he assumed were expectant eyes―despite his excellent night vision, their dark robes did a commendable job of obscuring their faces.

His son, a bat pony by the name of Jasper, approached him and removed his hood to reveal a fanged grin.

His expression softening, if only slightly, Granite asked, "We are ready, aren't we?"

"Yes," was all the response he got.

Granite nodded and stepped forward, Jasper taking his place by his side. "Right," he began. "..." he continued. "I had a whole speech prepared, you know. Very eloquent. This is a momentous occasion, all right, definitely speech worthy. Trouble is, the Royal Guard, by my estimate―" He cocked his ear in the direction of the bridge connecting the castle's isle to the rest of the forest. "―is about twenty minutes away. We'll be lucky if if we finish the ritual before they're breathing down our necks. When we do, Jasper will take the child somewhere safe, somewhere she can grow into the savior ponykind needs her to be. As soon as he's out the door, I want this whole place consumed in spellfire. No evidence of what we did here today is to survive for those mange-ridden lapdogs to find.

"It is my personal intention to die here tonight, to go down with the ship, so to speak, lest Valiant should get it into his head to hold me for interrogation. I would ask that those of you with the wherewithal to do the same do so. If so much as one of you cracks―and I wouldn't blame you, because I've seen what they do―all our hard work could be undone before it's even had a chance to take effect. Now, that being said, your lives are your own; you can spend the rest of them running from the Royal Guard if you so choose, but for the good of Equestria, for the good of your fellow ponies, consider what I've said."

Seeing that that simply wouldn't do, he sighed, took a deep breath, and bellowed, "Tonight, my ponies, marks the twilight of the era of the princesses, of false order, and of having our fates decided for us! Tonight, we decide, and tomorrow morning... Tomorrow morning will mark the dawn of a new era, an era of freedom, where the only order to which we'll submit will be the natural order that's governed the whole of the universe since its conception! My only regret... is that I won't be there to see it."

He realized after the fact that his speech really didn't make any sense, that unlike his original, it touched only tangentially on the principles on which he'd founded the group, but that didn't seem to matter. From the way his followers cheered, including the bat ponies and pegasus ponies who were circling overhead and almost certainly couldn't hear him over the howling winds, they were listening more to the passion in his voice than his actual words. That was fine. It got the intended effect.

As soon as the twelve unicorn ponies finished stomping their hooves, they set about casting the spell. The six most accomplished in the field of Theoretical Thaumaturgy focused their attention on the glyphs while the other six cleared their minds and funneled their magic into the lines of the hexagram and the concentric circles surrounding it. This latter group had to take care not to expend all its magic, for it would be responsible for invoking the spellfire that would consume all trace of the deed.

Everypony had a part to play.

The air swirled and crackled with magical energy, and the wild magic of the Everfree Forest responded in kind, battering the land-bound cultists with a torrential downpour and forcing the airborne ones out of the sky with hurricane-force winds. Flashes of lightning split the earth and stone, but there was no telling them apart from the streaks of raw magic that loosed themselves from the unicorns' control and connected with the crumbling walls in showers of dust and cobbles. Still the unicorns persisted.

It was like no spell they'd ever cast. It was almost as if the spell wanted to be cast.

Time was understandably dilated for the parties involved, but the whole invocation was over in less than a minute. When the magic dispersed―save what had condensed into the form of a patchwork abomination that vaguely resembled a filly but was otherwise unlike anything anypony present had ever seen―the storm subsided.

While the others, Granite included, looked on in dumbstruck silence, Jasper, knowing the filly-like thing was to be his responsibility, knelt and swept her up into his foreleg.

The creature―Eris, he had decided to call her―looked back at him with scarlet eyes that bore a level of comprehension wholly unfit for a newborn. She shivered and buried her rain-dampened head in his chest.

Holding her close with one enrobed foreleg, Jasper rose, exchanged a brief glance with Granite, and cantered out of the room without a word.

That was the last they saw of each other.

Upon crossing the wooden bridge and entering the forest proper, Jasper heard the metallic marching of the Royal Guard and made a dash for the underbrush. They'd see him for sure if he tried to make his escape then and there, so he waited, watching.

He saw the black smoke billowing into the night before he saw the fire, before he heard the screaming voices, many of which he recognized. Not one pony attempted to flee. They all stood beside Granite in his mad enterprise until the bitter end.

Eris reached toward the fire with her hoof which wasn't a hoof. She gave him a pleading look and saw the raging fire reflected in his eyes. She saw the tears that he himself refused to acknowledge, and though she snuggled against him, she remained silent. There would be time for tears later.

On top of the screams of the cultists were the shouts of the pegasus ponies among the Royal Guard, who tried to herd the defiant clouds into a rainstorm over the castle. They failed. Not even the princess could control the Everfree Forest. Not since the Nightmare.

Much closer, Jasper could hear the sounds of the forest's depraved denizens. They hungered, but for some reason, they gave him and his charge a wide berth.

Though the unicorns who cast it had long since been immolated, the spellfire continued to feed off their magical reserves until there was nothing left with which for it to sustain itself. At that point, a group of ponies broke off the main body of the Royal Guard, crossed the bridge in single file, and searched what remained of the ruins.

Valiant Stand wasn't among them.

Jasper could have escaped then, but he felt he had a duty to the deceased to see what, if anything, had survived for the Royal Guard to find. The keen eyes that ran in his interracial family aided in that endeavor.

When the ponies returned, all they carried between them was the charred leather binding of the book that had been so inspirational to the cultists' cause. Before the pages had been reduced to blackened stubs, they had detailed the origins and antics of the primal race of not-quite-equines that had ruled Equestria before ponies and harmony, the race that had all but disappeared―all, that is, except two, one who was immortalized in stone, and one who had just been conceived.

***

Inkie sat on her bed and gazed out the open window. The barren expanse of the rock farm stretched into the distance, where it dropped into the inky blackness of Galloping Gorge. She liked to think that there were monsters down there―basilisks as ancient as the stones, or perhaps a brood of flightless proto-dragons that had lost their sight through generations of inbreeding―and that a young mare with adventure in her heart might find her fortune among the treasures accumulated from those who'd come before. She might be turned to stone, but then, a stallion clad in armor polished to a mirror finish might come, and upon slaying the basilisk, catch a glimpse of the most beautiful mare he'd ever seen, lift his visor, and revive her with his kiss. It'd be awhile before the feeling returned to her legs, but he'd carry her out, leaving all the basilisk's earthly treasures behind.

She knew it was a silly thought, but when all you had were rocks, silly thoughts were a blessing. The image of a pink filly with a party hat sticking out of her impossibly tangled mane and a grin to light up the world stole across her mind's eye. She rested her chin on the windowsill and sighed. She wondered where Pinkie was now.

She'd spent enough hours watching the gray sky―Father didn't believe in weather control―to tell from its tone that the sun was in decline. There was still daylight left, not that it mattered. Father hadn't given her a lot of work for the day, and she'd finished early. She often finished early, but she'd usually try to abscond with Blinkie rather than let him pile on more menial tasks for the two of them. She had a feeling he wouldn't do that today, and it set her on edge. That he'd been kind to her lately hadn't escaped her.

It hadn't escaped Blinkie either. Nothing escaped Blinkie.

Inkie would have liked to lie with her in the grass and the shade of the trees that dotted the outskirts and talk until the stars came out to greet them, as the two often did, but she hadn't seen her all day. She'd entertained the idea of going out to look for her in the forest, but the forest, she knew, was Blinkie's escape from the world. She'd always been curious what was out there, but she'd feel like she was intruding if she went without Blinkie's permission. She'd have to ask Blinkie to take her with her one day, before she left.

Since the night before, she'd been going over what she wanted to say. She hadn't told anyone yet. Not even Blinkie. Though she knew Blinkie probably knew, as it'd been on her mind for a long time, the unspoken words still left a sour taste in her mouth. That she'd barely had a drink of water since breakfast might have been another factor. On any other day, she'd have passed the hours of manual labor with thoughts of what the future might bring for her―and if she came with her, her sister―but not today. Today was too important.

Today was the day she broke the news to the one pony who might try to stop her.

It wasn't that Father was abusive; on the contrary, he'd never lain a hoof on her, her sister, or her mother. That might have been preferable. It would have shown that he cared.

When Inkie was young, before her sisters had been born, she'd worked hard to win his love, but as she got older, she came to realize that he didn't care about the work they did. They worked the fields because they needed to make a living, but there was no joy in it, not even for him. Not anymore.

Pinkie had promised to change that, but then she'd disappeared. There was no explanation. There wasn't even a goodbye.

That was when Inkie had started to wonder about life beyond the rock farm.

Years later, here she was, a grown mare, and she still only knew the rest of Equestria from the faded pictures in the atlas Mother had bought for her in Vanhoover. There was such a lot of world, and though much of it had already been settled, there were still frontiers out there. For her first year or two abroad, all Equestria would be her frontier. There was so much to which to look forward, but she still had to take the first step.

She didn't see the first drops of rain; she felt them. She shut the window, got up from her bed, extinguished the lamp, and let her hooves carry her out into the hallway and down the stairs. The words had deserted her. She'd figured they would, and maybe that was for the best. They were the wrong words. Brooding was her way, but experience had taught her that the right words would come when she needed them.

She opened the door to the living room.

Father was already there. He sat in his chair by the window, the curtains drawn back, and favored her with a smile. "Inkie! Come sit with me, won't you?"

That wasn't what Inkie was expecting. She sidled over to the chair across from him and sat down. She tried to remember how she'd planned to broach the subject.

Shifting uncomfortably, all his enthusiasm apparently exhausted, Father said, "Inkie, there's something I've been meaning to discuss with you."

What was the subject that needed broaching again? Ah, right... "Actually, Father, there's something I've been meaning to discuss with you too. It's about..." Here Inkie made a sweeping gesture to encompass the living room, the farmhouse, and presumably, all that lay beyond. "...this."

Father raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. When she didn't continue, he went on, "Well, as it so happens, 'this' is exactly what I wanted to discuss. May I continue?"

"Oh, good..."

"May I continue?"

"Please."

Father nodded and went on, "This feels like the time for a big important speech, but you know I'm no good with words."

Inkie nodded, caught herself, and shrunk.

A pained expression flashing over his face, Father started to say something, thought better of it, and shifted his gaze out the window. The rain was coming down in full force, and the ground that wasn't solid rock had turned to mud. "What I'm trying to say is that I'm getting old, Inkie. The rock farm demands a lot from ponies, even rock-hard earth ponies like us. I don't know how much more my body can take. I'll work until the day I collapse, but I don't know when that day might be. It may be tomorrow, or I may live to be twenty-seven. I don't know. My father was twenty-three when he gave me this speech, and not without messing himself up first. I don't want it to come to that."

Inkie had a good idea where this was going. Her heart sank like a boulder.

Father took off his hat, confirming her suspicion.

Inkie couldn't let him say what he was about to say. If he did, she wouldn't be able to deny him. She hated him with every fiber of her being, but he was still her father. She was loyal to the idea of family if not to him personally.

Father looked back at her and opened his mouth to speak.

Inkie cut him off, "No."

"You don't know what I was about to ask."

"Yes, I do, and I can't do it."

"Inkie," Father began.

"No!" Inkie shouted. Her body shaking, she got up from her chair and stalked toward the center of the room. "You can't make me, all right? I'll run away. Blinkie will come with me. You'll never see any of us ever again. That's what you want, isn't it?"

Father got up to follow her but stopped short. He craned his neck to catch her eyes, but she avoided his gaze. "Inkie, what are you saying?"

Inkie turned to face him, tears in her eyes and anger twisting her features. "I'm saying I don't want to spend the rest of my life on this Celestia-forsaken expanse of rock. Why do you think it is that nothing ever grows here?"

"There are plenty of places where plants don't grow," Father tried to respond. "More to the point, rocks grow here. There's no other place in Equestria where that happens."

Inkie was barely listening at that point, much less paying attention to her surroundings. Had she been, she still wouldn't have noticed Blinkie slipping into the room, just like she hadn't noticed Blinkie watching from the kitchen entryway for the past few minutes. "I wouldn't know that, though, would I? You've never let me see the outside world, but you know what? We're grown mares now. We can make our own decisions, and we've decided to leave and never come back, just like Pinkie did."

Father hadn't anticipated that, and he didn't know how to respond. Mother was the one who knew how to console distraught ponies. He thought about giving Inkie a hug, but at that moment, Blinkie caught his eye and shook her head. She was an enigma even to him, but he knew she and Inkie were the only two ponies who really understood each other. He stood awkwardly in the middle of the floor and waited.

"Well, don't you have anything to say?" Inkie asked incredulously.

"Inkie," Blinkie said softly and walked toward her.

Looking bewildered, Inkie turned to face her. She knew Blinkie had a habit of coming and going without anypony noticing, but she also knew Blinkie avoided conflict like the plague. Seeing her here was like seeing a shell-shocked pegasus pony wandering unarmed and unarmored through a war zone.

Blinkie stopped before her and looked into her eyes. Mortars exploded all around.

Inkie tried to hold her gaze, tried not to let go of the anger that had been bubbling up inside her ever since Pinkie's disappearance, but it was for naught. She fell back on her haunches and sobbed into her hooves.

Blinkie wrapped one foreleg around Inkie's shoulders and cradled Inkie's head against her chest with the other.

Inkie was the older sister. She was supposed to be the strong one, but she wasn't. She could have beaten her father in a fight even in his prime, but her heart was as fragile as an egg―an egg that had already been broken once.

Father returned to his chair and stared out the window. The rain had lightened up a bit, but twilight was settling over the sky. There was no making out anything more than a hundred feet away, and the light from the oil lamp stopped much shorter than that. It cast strange shadows over his features. Contrary to her belief, he understood. He'd had the same reaction when his father had asked him to take up the mantle, or as it was, the hat. That rebellious spirit was the true mark of a member of the Pie family. They all exemplified it in their own way, even the ones who were born under different roofs.

Blinkie whispered something to Inkie, and Inkie's sobbing subsided.

Father tried to ignore them, but he could feel Blinkie's eyes on the back of his head. He turned, and the lamps scattered around the rest of the room chased the shadows from his face. He asked, "What?"

"You were about to say something," Blinkie stated.

Father had been about to say something, in fact, but he'd been angry. It wasn't the sort of thing you said when you weren't angry, even if it was true, even if it was something you should have said a long time ago. There was a tradition among the Pie family of keeping secrets from one another; it came with the territory. The territory was two hundred years old, though, and in retrospect, he realized how much simpler things would have been had he just told his family the whole story.

He hadn't even told Pinkie. If anypony had a right to know, it was her, but the truth was that he didn't know the whole story―it had gotten lost in translation from generation to generation. But he had to try. He decided to start with the part he knew best. "Pinkie didn't leave of her own free will."

"What?" Inkie asked, looking up. "What do you mean?" All the anger was gone from her face. The fur on her cheeks was still wet, but her eyes weren't.

Father admitted, "I sent her away."

"What?" Inkie asked, her voice raised.

Blinkie touched Inkie's shoulder.

"Father, why?" Inkie asked in her normal voice. "Why would you do that to her, to us... to yourself?"

Father continued with a faraway look in his eye, "She didn't want to go―I didn't want her to go―but she couldn't stay here. I tried to explain it to her. I don't think she ever really understood."

"Why couldn't she stay here?" Blinkie asked.

"Because―"

A rapping on the old wooden door cut him off and brought him back to reality.

Everypony fell silent and looked to the door, unsure if the noise had been real. The Pie family didn't get callers. The nearest settlement was Vanhoover, and everypony there, especially the pegasus ponies, knew to steer clear of the rock farm. If somepony was at the door, he or she must have come a very long way.

After a minute, the rapping came again. There was no question this time. Donning his hat, Father got up and said, "You'd better go clean yourself up."

Inkie knew he was talking to her, and she didn't protest. She hated crying in front of other ponies, even if it was just Blinkie, and the evidence was still all over her face. She followed him into the hallway and turned toward the bathroom beneath the stairs.

Father waited to hear the running water before opening the front door.

A unicorn stallion whose sky-blue fur was matted against his lean body stood in the entryway with his foreleg raised. He lowered it, offered a winning smile, and said, "Ah, you must be Igneous Rock. My name is Skyline, and I was wondering if you might―"

"No."

"Sorry?" Skyline asked, his smile faltering.

"We don't want any," Father said, by way of explanation, and shut the door in his face. He walked back to the living room, where Mother and Blinkie were sitting by the coffee table. Why they had a coffee table when none of them drank coffee was anyone's guess.

Mother, who must have slipped in through the back door, looked up expectantly and asked, "Who was at the door?"

"Some unicorn pony," Father said without interest and sat down across from them.

Mother got up and answered the door herself.

Skyline was still there. "Good evening, Ma'am. Cloudy Quartz, is it?"

"Yes. You're Skyline, are you?"

"I am!" Skyline said, his smile returning. "I apologize if your husband got the wrong impression. I'm not here to sell you anything."

"Why are you here, then?"

"Can we talk inside? It is pouring, you know."

Mother acquiesced and returned to the living room. Over her shoulder, she said, "Be sure to get all the mud off your hooves."

A moment later, Skyline followed. Mother gestured to the chair adjacent to Father's, and he accepted graciously.

Father studied him as a cat would study a mouse that had casually brushed past it on its way to steal a piece of cheese. A cat whose stomach was growling.

Blinkie studied him with a purer sort of curiosity. Sunflower-colored eyes, she noted, and a chalk-white mane that's probably wavy and disheveled when it's not plastered to his neck. Cutie mark of a lopsided, encircled hexagram, like amateur invokers use to channel magic beyond their capabilities, but without the six runes that indicate its purpose. Definitely a scholar. Probably not the most accomplished in his field, but unafraid of getting his hooves dirty, literally or figuratively. Father won't like him, she concluded, but Inkie might.

Skyline barely registered Blinkie's presence. Instead, he turned to address Father, "Since you don't strike me as somepony who likes to waste time―"

"Are you calling me impatient?"

Skyline grinned. "When you put it that way, it sounds like a bad thing."

Father was unimpressed.

"Right," Skyline said. "I'll just jump right in, then. I work in the Department of Theoretical Thaumaturgy at Canterlot Academy. I teach, mostly, but there is some time for research. I recently came across a sample of slate with a vein-like inclusion that glowed in the presence of strong magical fields such as those a unicorn pony can channel. The inclusion was otherwise completely indistinguishable from the surrounding rock. It had even adopted the same molecular structure! Until I isolated it, that is. I tried a magic-based extraction and recrystallization, but it soaked up everything I threw at it. In the end, I had to resort to conventional means, but the end result was unprecedented.

"In the days before the unification under Celestia and Luna, when in-fighting among ponies was rampant, traitorous unicorn ponies found a way to distill the ambient magical field into crystals of pure magic that could be inscribed with runes with purposes ranging from giving earth ponies skin as tough as quartz to turning pegasus ponies into invisible assassins. There were even rumors of an enchantment that let ponies breathe underwater and the discovery of a race of sea ponies that had long since adapted to life on the ocean floor. That latter rumor has since been debunked.

"This amazing technology was lost when Discord was banished from the world, but the crystal I isolated in my laboratory had the exact same properties, the difference being that it arose naturally. The slate in question came from your rock farm. Something about this place, probably something deep underground, is so potently magical that it's literally crystallizing out of the earth! If you'll step outside with me, I'll show you. It permeates the ground and even the foundation of your farmhouse like a giant mycelium!"

Father had heard enough. "That won't be necessary."

"You'll help me, then?" Skyline asked. "What you've got here could revolutionize the field of enchantment magic, and in lending me your assistance, you could be part of that revolution! Your family name, an earth pony name, could be known across Equestria and immortalized in the pages of magic history!"

"Skyline, I'd like you to leave," Father said, visibly shaken. He got up to lead him to the door. "We're honest earth ponies, and whatever it is you think you've found, I can tell you it's nothing more than good old earth pony magic."

Though Skyline got up to follow him, he protested, "Igneous, listen to me. We both know that's not true. I know earth pony magic. I've seen it, but this is something different. Earth pony magic coaxes life forth from the soil, yes, but it can't create life where there isn't any. Do you not see it? The stones themselves are alive!"

"You're hiding something, aren't you, Father?" Inkie asked. She was leaning against the wall adjacent to the living room, and judging from the lack of steam wafting out from the bathroom, she'd been there awhile. Her mane was still damp, but her pale eyes burned. They were the color of potassium salt on a gas flame. She shifted her gaze to Skyline, and her expression changed. Remembering a scene in a Fetlock Holmes story that went something like this, she smiled and slipped into character. "Skyline, is it?"

"Who are you?" Skyline asked.

"He was just leaving," Father said and shut the door. He mightn't be opposed to a stallion looking at his daughter―if she found a husband without having to leave the rock farm, she might find that she didn't need the outside world―but Skyline would definitely be too much trouble. Even if he told him all he knew, he knew Skyline wouldn't be satisfied. He'd want to see it with his own eyes, and then he'd want to share it with his peers in Canterlot, right under Celestia's nose. He didn't know what he was hiding, but he knew that some things were better left buried. That's what he'd always told himself, anyway.

Inkie shifted her weight back onto her four hooves and braced herself for the shouting match, but there wasn't one.

Father pushed past her and shut himself in his and Mother's bedroom.

Inkie called after him, "You can't just walk away from this, you know!"

Mother slipped past her, gave her a look, and followed Father. She locked the door behind her, and after a moment, muffled voices reverberated through the silvering wood. It didn't sound like an argument. Somehow, that was worse.

"Come on, let's go to bed," Blinkie said, and Inkie followed her up the stairs.

***

Blinkie gazed up through the open window at the moonlit clouds that passed overhead. She was watching for the Two Sisters and the Sea Pony, two obscure constellations that wouldn't be visible just a few miles west amid the light pollution over Vanhoover. She could only catch bits and pieces at a time, so she reconstructed them in her head. The draft blew her ash-gray mane back over her grayish-purple neck.

Inkie lay at the opposite end of the bed, her pillow propped against the headboard. She was telling a story, but she wasn't paying attention to what she was saying. She was noticing how the moonlight complemented her younger sister's natural beauty. Blinkie had assured her that she was attractive in a different way―"athletic" was the word she'd used―but she had a hard time believing it. She could believe that her strong back and powerful hind legs would be attractive to another earth pony, but she wasn't attracted to earth ponies. They were too rough, too forward, too... grounded.

Blinkie had the slender build of a pegasus pony, and her eyes... Bronze was a rare eye color among ponies, and like the lines in the obelisk that made up her cutie mark, they seemed to glow with an inner light. When they looked intently into yours, you got the impression that the deepest truths of your soul were laid bare before them. They never looked unkind. At worst, they looked disappointed. At that moment, those curious, soul-piercing eyes were turned on Inkie. "Then what happened?"

Realizing she'd lapsed into silence, Inkie shook her head and resumed her story without missing another beat. "He was about to tell me he wanted me to be his heir!"

"You are his heir, Inkie. We both are." It wasn't the first time Blinkie had caught her looking at her. Inkie was, in fact, the only pony who noticed when Blinkie entered a room. It was comforting. She was the kind of pony who wouldn't be sure of her own existence if there was nopony to remind her. Inkie kept her grounded like that.

Inkie rolled her eyes. "You know what I meant."

Blinkie nodded and returned to gazing out the window, but this time, she was looking at the ground. "That was when I slipped in, when you started raising your voice."

"Sorry," Inkie said, cringing and shifting on the bed.

Blinkie shook her head. "Don't apologize. You... Your heart was in the right place. Anyway, that's not what concerns me. What concerns me is what he didn't tell us."

"About Pinkie?" Inkie asked. "Yeah, that's been bothering me too."

Blinkie gave her a look.

Inkie rolled her eyes again. "Yeah, I know you can tell. You don't need to remind me how much cleverer you are than me."

"Hey," Blinkie said, sounding hurt, "it's not my fault you're so easy to read."

Inkie grinned and kicked Blinkie's flank with her hind leg.

Blinkie smiled a little, but the expression soon faded. Her eyes became distant, as they often did when she was remembering something―or as Inkie liked to think of it, gazing into another plane of existence. She was still looking out the window, though, so she could very well have been looking at something.

Inkie took the opportunity to nestle into the top blanket and lose herself in her thoughts. Happy thoughts. Thoughts of a certain stallion, the first she'd met who wasn't her father. Though they'd met only briefly, Skyline had definitely made an impression. He was smart and handsome, a bit scrawny, but most of all, ambitious―rebellious, even. He was nothing like her father. He was like her. Had he approached her with his proposal instead, she'd have lent him whatever help she could, not least because she was curious herself.

She imagined Blinkie was doubly so. Ever since Pinkie had got her that anthology of Fetlock Holmes stories, Blinkie had been unable to resist a good mystery.

Skyline might have even taken them back to Canterlot with him to present their findings to his superiors at the academy. Oh well.

As if reading her mind―though not quite, because she wouldn't have had to ask―Blinkie asked, "What did you think of Skyline?"

Inkie told her what she'd just been thinking.

"Why don't you go ask him? He's still poking around out there."

"What?" Inkie asked, rolling onto her stomach and shuffling toward the window.

Blinkie moved over to make room for her and pointed her hoof toward the shadow of a craggy formation, one of several that had reared up from the surrounding earth over the course of the past few weeks. There hadn't been time to knock them all down.

"I can't see anything," Inkie said.

"He's there," Blinkie assured her.

Inkie knew Blinkie's ability to see in the dark was uncanny, owing to the bat pony ancestry Father insisted they didn't have. She left her place at Blinkie's side and headed toward the door. When she looked back to see that Blinkie hadn't moved, she asked, "Hey, aren't you coming?"

"I'll be along," Blinkie said, her eyes never leaving the window.

Inkie shrugged and left the room. Looking down the flight of generations-old wooden stairs that lay before her, though, she faltered. The noise had never bothered her before, but then, she'd never had reason to sneak out in the middle of the night before. If she did find Skyline out there in the dark, circumstances would demand that she confront him, but part of her still wanted to help him. She'd known he wouldn't be deterred so easily; she just didn't think he'd resort to trespassing. If he presented a good enough case, she told herself, she'd agree not to tell her father, provided he agreed to take her with him.

With the utmost care, wishing all the while that she had Blinkie's feline grace, she crept down the stairs. She let out a sigh upon reaching the bottom.

A mumbling, grumbling noise came from her parents' bedroom.

Inkie froze, her breath catching in her throat. When nothing happened after several seconds, she hurried toward the front door and let herself out.

Now that she was in the clear, her thoughts returned to Skyline. She stood on the doorstep and perked up her ears. There were no crickets. The wind whistled past her ears and blew strands of her slate-gray mane into her eyes.

For awhile, that was the only sound, but then a nearly imperceptible noise like a pebble being kicked across the ground came from the southern field. Her heart leaped. Forcing the grin from her face in favor of a determined scowl, she set off in that direction. She paid no mind to the squelching her hooves made when she lifted them from the muddy ground; now that she was out of her parents' earshot, she wanted to be heard.

Feeling a drop of rain on her back, she raised her head to the sky and saw that more dense clouds had rolled in from the west.

Another drop fell in her eye, making her stop and shake her head. When she opened her eyes, she saw Skyline backing out of the shadow of a monolith. She might have taken the opportunity to get a better look at him, but the encroaching darkness reminded her of her mission. She took a second to get back into character and yelled, "Hey!"

Skyline looked around wildly in the direction of the voice before taking off in the opposite direction. He clearly hadn't spotted her.

Inkie took off after him.

Skyline was athletic for a unicorn pony, but he never stood a chance. Seeing her running beside him, about to say something, he tried to break off to the right.

Inkie lunged at him, and they tumbled to the muddy ground. She recovered first, pinned him on his back, and snarled, "Start talking. Now."

"What are you―"

"Group hug!" a familiar, feminine voice squealed seconds before a blur of pink fur bowled Inkie and Skyline over. When they came to a stop a few paces away, they found themselves locked in a three-way embrace with another earth pony, a young mare. Her magenta mane was caked with mud, but she didn't seem to care. From the moment her brilliant cerulean eyes met Inkie's, there could be no doubt as to her identity.

Inkie would know those eyes anywhere. Even in the pitch darkness, they held a sparkle that was midway between the pinnacle of genius and the abyssal depths of madness, yet her mind refused to believe what her eyes could clearly see. She asked, "Pinkie?"

Pinkie cocked her head and grinned. "Of course, silly filly. Who'd you think I was?"

Inkie couldn't think. It wasn't that her mind had gone blank, as it often did. Rather, it was that so many thoughts were rushing through her head that she couldn't latch onto any. Her mouth worked of its own accord, "Pinkie, what―"

Skyline cleared his throat.

"Oh, right," Pinkie said. She released her grip on her captives.

Skyline recovered first. He drew himself up to his full height and ignited his horn with a crackling chartreuse corona. The magic he drew from the ambient field burned like a flare and veiled his eyes in shadows. "Now," he said, his voice low. "You're going to tell me how you knew to find me here."

Her unexpected reunion with her sister momentarily forgotten, Inkie cautiously rose to her hooves, never taking her eyes off him. All her muscles tensed, ready to lunge at him the second he tried to direct all the magic he was accumulating.

A moment later, Pinkie rolled onto her hooves and pulled them under herself. She shook herself off like a dog, starting with her head and making her way back to her hind quarters, blinked, and looked from Inkie to Skyline. Whereas a moment ago, they were staring each other down, testing each other to see who would break first, both were now looking at her incredulously. She said, "What?"

They didn't respond.

Peering closer, she saw the droplets of mud all over their faces. Realization dawned on her―at least, she thought it did. Without a second thought, she walked over to Skyline, rummaged through his saddlebag for a clean, dry cloth, and wiped the mud off. "There," she said, looking satisfied. "The rain will wash away the rest."

Inkie and Skyline looked back at each other, but the tension was gone―Pinkie had thoroughly short-circuited it.

Skyline let the light fade from his horn, and the moonlight returned to his eyes.

Inkie let a small smirk creep across her lips.

Skyline giggled.

The sound was so ridiculously out of place that Inkie couldn't help breaking out into boisterous laughter, and he soon followed her example.

Pinkie, meanwhile, looked from one mad pony to the other and back again, hopelessly puzzled. "What? What's so funny?"

Inkie gave Pinkie a hug, but she only laughed harder. She laughed so hard she cried. Then she wasn't laughing anymore. She sobbed and clung to Pinkie like a life preserver among the ocean of her tears.

Pinkie returned the embrace and eased them to the ground. She cooed, "Hey, hey, it's all right. Come on, don't cry. You're gonna make me cry."

She offered Skyline a smile and said, "Maybe you should give us a moment."

Skyline, who had stopped laughing, acquiesced.

Pinkie held her sister, never once thinking of letting go. Thunder rumbled in the distance, but she paid it no mind. "I missed you, Inkie."

Inkie slackened her grip such that she could meet Pinkie's eyes. Though her sobs had subsided, her eyes were still misty, and she wanted―needed―to see. When she'd managed to wipe the tears away, she finally got a good look at the pony sitting across from her.

Pinkie had changed in the years since Inkie had last seen her. She had been a filly then, but now her body had filled out, in terms of both her general proportions and those particular curves that made stallions' hearts beat faster; she'd let her mane and tail grow long and embraced their tendency toward impossible curliness; and though her eyes showed that she had seen things more beautiful and terrible than most ponies ever did, they still bore the filly-like wonder Inkie had first seen in them the last time they'd seen each other: at the party where Pinkie had gotten her cutie mark.

"I thought I'd never see you again." Inkie said.

Pinkie nuzzled Inkie's nose, a small smile gracing her lips, and said, "I know, but I'm here now. That's what matters."

Inkie mustered a smile and hugged her again. She had so many questions, but she wasn't about to ask any of them. Pinkie had come back, and at that moment, in the shadow of the rock farm, the rain, and each other's embrace, that was all that mattered.

When the moment passed, Pinkie asked, "Where's Blinkie, anyway?"

Inkie pulled away to look back up at her bedroom window, but it was shut and the lamp had been snuffed out. "I don't know. She said she'd be along."

"Hi, Pinkie," Blinkie said, barely audible over the persistent patter of the rain.

"Blinkie!" Pinkie cried, turning toward the voice. She saw Blinkie standing a respectful distance behind them and rushed over to meet her.

Blinkie tensed.

Pinkie hugged her instinctively but quickly let go, looking abashed. "Sorry," she said. "It's been awhile. I forgot."

"No, it's all right," Blinkie said, and after a moment, she gave her a brief hug. She didn't look uncomfortable with her sister's affection, just embarrassed, as if someone had just told a rather personal story about her at some kind of get-together. Smiling softly, she added, "Just this once, I'll let you get away with it."

"We'd better catch up with Skyline," Pinkie said. "I told him I'd be his guide, and what kind of guide would I be if I let him get lost?"

Blinkie waited for Inkie to join her, and together, they followed Pinkie into the darkness. They lagged a short distance behind, perhaps intending to talk among themselves, but neither seemed inclined to speak.

Inkie was accustomed to the periods of silence that punctuated her interactions with Blinkie, but this silence was different. She said, "You're not telling me how well I handled the situation with Skyline back there. You were watching, weren't you?"

"I was," Blinkie confirmed. She didn't look at her. "Perhaps I will, later, but perhaps now isn't the best time."

Inkie couldn't argue with that.

"I don't think he'll hold it against you, though. Pinkie must have warned him what would happen if Father caught him trespassing. He was lucky it was just us."

Inkie relaxed. For all that Blinkie made her feel like an open book, she appreciated not having to ask the questions that were really on her mind. They walked the rest of the way in silence, but the silence didn't feel quite so awkward.

The fact remained that the hour was approaching midnight and they were following Pinkie, their long-lost sister with whom they'd just reunited after having been separated for the whole of their adult lives, down the narrow path into the depths of Galloping Gorge. It felt surreal, but Inkie was too exhausted, physically and emotionally, to appreciate it. Her hooves carried her on as if in a dream, but she knew everything around her was real.

The wet stone should have posed a problem, but it didn't. The fading moonlight, on the other hoof, did. By the time they got to the bottom, they were surrounded by such pitch blackness that even Blinkie had trouble seeing. Were it not for the ground beneath their hooves, the sensation of being suspended in a void would be complete.

Far overhead, so far that Inkie had to crane her neck to see it, the sky looked like a tear in the fabric of reality, viewed from the outside, where there was no reality.

"Come on, he's this way!" Pinkie called from somewhere up ahead.

Inkie followed her voice. She had lost track of Blinkie, but she knew she didn't have to worry about her. Turning a corner she hadn't realized was there, she saw the others.

Skyline sat on his haunches and studied the cliff face.

Illuminated by the light of his horn, Pinkie and Blinkie stood beside him.

Inkie joined them, but they paid her no mind―they were captivated by the chartreuse glow of the veins that snaked up the cliff face and along the ground from the point where the two met like the rays of a stylized, alien sun. All the while, raindrops splashed against the ancient rocks, to whom time was measured in terms of their erosion. Not so long ago, there had been a time when they hadn't measured it at all.