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

Pinkie stood in the study, where sketches of Granny's creations lined the walls. Some were strictly anatomical. Others showed the creatures in their natural habitats. Her eyes wandered from one to the other to the next. There was a smile on her face.

Granny entered the room and closed the door behind her. She didn't so much as glance at her sketches. To her, they were a reminder of her failure as a sculptor to create true life. The best she'd ever managed were magical constructs―mockeries of life.

Pinkie said, in reference to one of the older sketches, "I always liked the spin you put on things. Why did you stop?"

Granny crossed the room and stood beside her. "I could never quite get the effect I wanted, so I thought I'd try my hoof at going the opposite direction. It hasn't worked out much better. Still feels like there's something I'm just not doing right."

In her defense, it wasn't her fault. She'd learned to use magic from a pony, and ponies had very particular ideas about how to use magic. It was fine for their purposes, but when it came to things like creating life, it was like trying to paint with a brush without bristles. At best, you'd get something like modern art. At worst, you'd get frustrated and poke a hole in the canvas. Her canvas was her pocket dimension. She'd painted over it many times, but she couldn't paint over the hole in the sky.

"It's funny," she began.

Pinkie smiled up at her. "What is?"

Granny wasn't smiling. "You've always been an inquisitive pony, even before you got your cutie mark. That's what brought you here, yet you never asked me any of the questions an inquisitive pony would ask. Isn't there enough about me to make you suspicious?"

Pinkie drifted into reminiscence. Her first party, the one where she'd gotten her cutie mark, had always held a special place in her heart. When she'd related the story to the Cutie Mark Crusaders, she'd left out the part about the after party, which had taken place beneath the rock farm, in Granny's cottage. She'd been there before, of course, but that was the most memorable occasion.

It was the most memorable for Granny too. It had been her first party, but it had also been the last time she'd had cause to celebrate.

Realizing she was expected to say something, Pinkie said, "Well, I could tell you didn't quite know whether to trust me, but I never thought you were dangerous. You've always been nice to me, even when you didn't have to be, like when I killed your plant. I figured you'd tell me your story in your own time, but I always knew you weren't my real grandmother. I mean, it's not possible, right? There was never a pegasus pony in our family."

"No," Granny conceded, "but there was a bat pony."

"When?"

"It's a long story. Forty years. Or a thousand, depending on your vantage point."

"Twilight once said that time was relative. At the time, I'd wondered, 'Whose relative?' I'd heard of Father Time, but in order to be a father, he had to have had a son or daughter. There was Starswirl the Bearded, but he was a unicorn pony, not an anthropomorphic―" Pinkie caught herself. "What do you think?"

"I always thought it was a fickle thing," Granny said. "Certainly not the sort of thing you'd want to base your life on."

She turned and gestured to the lounge and coffee table that still sat in the middle of the room from the last time she and Pinkie had gotten philosophical. The fact that Pinkie had been a filly at the time didn't escape her; she willed another lounge into existence with a puff of magic. Refreshments followed. "Shall we talk about it over tea and scones?"

Pinkie grinned. "With blueberries?"

"Of course."

Pinkie climbed onto the lounge opposite Granny and lay on her side, her torso propped up against the armrest. It had always struck her as a funny pose for a pony, but Granny swore by it. it was very historical. Certain frescoes recovered from Rompeii proved as much. Taking in the sight of the spread, she said, "Ooh, you brought out the china!"

She munched happily on a scone, and Granny told her about the cult that had formed in the aftermath of Luna's fall. The leader had been the former captain of Luna's Night Guard, Granite Slab. He'd had a son named Jasper. Jasper had had fangs.

Before Granny reached the end, Pinkie declared, "You're a draconequus, aren't you?"

Granny fell silent.

"Sorry. You were building up to that, weren't you? It's pretty obvious, though, isn't it? I always thought Discord was one of a kind, but that wouldn't make much sense. He had to come from somewhere."

Granny made a mental note to ask about Discord. She'd heard about his past exploits from Jasper, but she imagined a lot could have changed in a thousand years. "Yes, you're correct. I was born a draconequus. Jasper used to tell me about a time before recorded history, when the draconequuses ruled Equestria―that was our idea of a bedtime story. The cult wanted to see that time come again."

Pinkie was quiet for awhile. Her way was to take in stride the bizarre happenings that made up her everyday life and process them later, when time permitted, but just then, there was no immediate danger, no need to think quickly and ask questions later. Most ponies would be alarmed by the revelation that they were sharing tea with the antithesis of their existence or that their earliest ancestors had sought to unmake the world. Most ponies were a bit prejudiced, she thought. It came with the herd mentality.

Granny sipped her tea and waited. She didn't lift the cup with her hooves; there wasn't much point anymore.

Pinkie came to a conclusion. "You don't look like a draconequus."

Granny laughed. "I can look like anything I want, dear."

"Show me what you really look like."

Granny set down her tea cup.

Pinkie took a sip from hers.

Granny's torso stretched out until it was long and serpentine―not unlike Discord's, but more noodle-y and made up of a different assortment of creatures. She had a salamander's arm and a dragonfly's wing, among other things, and no horns. Her mismatched feet touched the ground, but the rest of her considered gravity something that happened to other ponies. Her mane stayed white, but it was younger and healthier and fell in front of one eye. Her other eye was bright and alert. The wrinkles disappeared from her face. Her snout became slightly more canine than equine, but her fangs were only visible when she spoke, her voice playful and full of mischief, "You can call me Eris if you like."

Pinkie was grinning again. "I bet it feels good to be in your own skin."

"It does," Eris said, turning over her webbed hand.

Pinkie pressed on, "You're very pretty for a draconequus. You shouldn't feel like you have to hide. Skyline and I are going to Canterlot after we're done here. You should come too. I bet Princess Celestia and Princess Luna would like to meet you. If I tell them you're my friend, they'll have to hear you out. That'll be your chance to prove that you're not trying to be the next Discord. I bet they won't even remember that bit about our great grandparents setting their old castle on fire. Plus, I can't wait to see the look on their face when I tell them I'm technically part of a doomsday cult!"

Eris gave her a funny look and asked, "Just how much has Equestria changed while I've been cooped up here?"

Pinkie told her about how Discord had escaped, how she and her friends had returned him to his stone prison, and how he'd later been given another chance and agreed to become a contributing member of pony society, though what exactly Celestia had meant about having use for his magic wasn't clear. She went on to tell her about the other Element bearers and all the adventures they'd shared, including the numerous times the world had nearly met its end at the hooves or not-hooves of some supreme villain or other.

Eris listened to the words she'd waited two centuries to hear. If what Pinkie said was true, the world beyond the rock farm was finally ready for her return.

***

Inkie had decided to wait by the bedside, that she might be the first thing Skyline saw upon waking up. That had lasted about twenty minutes before she got bored and went off to find Blinkie, but during those twenty or so minutes, Granny's words had returned to her, "It's important to know why your loyalties lie where they do."

Her loyalty to her sisters was paramount, not because they were family but because they had earned it time and time again. Her loyalty to Father, such as it was, was nothing more than a vague sense of social obligation that deserved no further consideration. She thought of Mother a bit like a caged bird―she could do so much more if she had room to spread her wings―but she couldn't sympathize with anypony who let herself be made a prisoner. As far as she could tell, that was their relationship.

Of course, Granny had been talking about Skyline.

That night in the woods when Pinkie had left Inkie alone with Skyline, he had seen in her a kindred spirit. He'd asked why somepony with such fire in her heart would settle for a farmer's life, and she'd told him. He'd sworn to take her with him to Canterlot, whether she wanted to go or not, that she might find a life befitting a pony of her talents. She'd pointed out that her talents mostly pertained to rocks, and he'd told her about archeology.

She liked Skyline. She knew they could be friends, and if there was no other mare in his life, perhaps they could be lovers. She blushed, never having thought such thoughts about another pony. The images that shifted before her mind's eye became increasingly intimate until she had to put a stop to them.

She had to be honest with herself, and the honest truth was that she wasn't loyal to the pony so much as the idea he represented: freedom.

That was when she realized she wasn't the kind of pony who waited by another pony's bedside and left.

She found Blinkie walking down a long hallway with a window at the end. It overlooked the forest as if the cottage sat atop a great hill. There was a staircase on one side. On the other was a kitchen. The similarity to the Pie family farmhouse was so striking she couldn't help suspecting that it was deliberate.

Blinkie was looking at the pictures.

Inkie got the feeling that the pictures were looking back. One of them waved to her. Hesitantly, she waved back.

Blinkie didn't look to acknowledge Inkie's presence, but she said, "Our oldest ancestors are captured here. Not literally, mind you. I've never heard of interactive photography, but however it's done, that's all this is. Look at their faces, though."

Inkie looked. "They look happy."

Blinkie looked at her. She was smiling. "Now think back to the pictures we have hanging in the farmhouse. Their faces run the gamut from stern to constipated."

"The foals always just look uncomfortable," Inkie added.

"It's almost as if this is where they were meant to be and the world above was the fantasy. It's tragic that they forgot about this place."

"Huh?" Inkie asked. "How can you tell?"

Blinkie walked down the hall.

Inkie followed. The pictures became farther apart as they went, and there was a great expanse of unadorned wall before they came to the final picture. It showed Granny and Pinkie as her alter ego, Surprise. They were making faces at the camera.

She walked back to the other end, never taking her eyes off the animate pictures. She had noticed something else, a particular pony that appeared to be in every one of them from the first to the last. It was hard to tell, because that pony possessed a different body in each frame. She always had the same eyes, though. Scarlet eyes.

"You've noticed it too," Blinkie said. "Whatever Granny is, she's not a pony. Not by any definition with which we're familiar."

"She can do magic," Inkie said. "She healed Skyline like it was nothing."

Blinkie had managed to lose herself in her curiosity, but Inkie's words brought to mind the train of thought she'd been avoiding.

"I wouldn't be surprised if she'd created this whole world," she said without passion.

It wasn't often that Blinkie said things with passion, but Inkie could tell the difference, if only vaguely. She sought to change the subject, but nothing came to mind. On a whim, she walked up the stairs, turned left, and opened the door. A room not unlike hers greeted her. She leaped atop the bed and nestled into the blanket.

Blinkie appeared by the door.

Inkie called, "Well, come on!"

Blinkie climbed up beside her without energy.

Inkie frowned. She shifted closer to her and asked, "Hey, what's eating you?"

Blinkie gave her a sad little smile, the sort that would have made Pinkie throw her legs around her were she present. "I was hiding it pretty well until you mentioned Skyline's leg."

"It's the wolf, isn't it?"

Blinkie nodded.

That was something Inkie could understand. She hugged her. "Blinkie, you're not a murderer. I've known you since you were a filly who would tiptoe around the kitchen in order to avoid stepping on the ants."

"The rest of you didn't even see them until you asked me what I was doing."

Inkie grinned. "Mother threw an absolute fit, remember?"

"I do," Blinkie said and smiled. Then it faded.

Inkie released her. "Look, I nearly killed that wolf myself, and if I had, I wouldn't have felt a shred of remorse, much less doubt. It was self-defense. In your case, it was mercy. Those are exceptions. Anyway, you don't want to be a murderer, do you?"

"I don't."

"Then that's the end of it," Inkie said resolutely.

"I suppose that's the best way to look at it," Blinkie said. That her sister was making the effort to cheer her up was, in itself, enough to raise her spirits, but in truth, she couldn't drop the matter so easily. She knew it wasn't so simple. For the time being, though, she would put it out of her mind, for her sister's benefit.

Inkie sought to change the subject. In fact, there was something that had been eating her too. "What will you do when this adventure is over? We can't go home after this."

"Pinkie doesn't seem inclined to leave us behind."

"I know, but we can't just stay with her at Sugarcube Corner. Even if Mr. and Mrs. Cake would let us. We have to live our own lives, wherever they take us."

Blinkie gazed out the window. "You're sure we can't go back? Not even to tell Mother and Father what we found?"

"Positive."

At length, Blinkie sighed. "I wish I'd taken my book with me."

Inkie tried to understand. She knew the book was important to her, but it was just a book. "You can get another. First book shop we come across, I'll get you another. It'll be a new one, with stories you've never read before."

Blinkie looked back at her and smiled. "I'd like that very much, but it's not the book. It's the memories. Pinkie and I used to stay up long after you and the others went to bed and read to each other. One time, we didn't go to bed until the break of dawn. Father was annoyed to find us still up, but we didn't care."

Inkie took her hoof in hers and said, "We can make new memories."

Blinkie had tears in her eyes. She hugged her.

***

Skyline awoke in a strange bed in a strange house. Out the window was a strange scene. Admittedly, it wasn't the first time it had happened, but he usually had some vague sense of where he'd been the night before, whether he'd been attempting a spell well beyond his abilities or merely out on the town with his colleagues. His memories would return in time, but at that moment, all he remembered was falling asleep with a rather pretty mare named Inkie curled up against his side after the two had spent the night talking about... something. No spirits had been involved, but the room seemed to think differently.

He tried to get out of bed, and he'd have dismissed it all as a fever dream had a sharp pain not shot up his hind leg. Then he remembered the wolf. He remembered looking back to see a bloodied lump of leg bone, his leg bone, stabbing through his rent flesh like a snapped twig. That was about when his vision had gone black. He still had no idea how long he'd been out, but the pain was nothing like it had been. The school of healing magic was in its infancy, and broken bones could take months to mend by themselves.

He wondered if he'd been in a coma. It certainly felt that way, what with the sedative spell Granny had cast on him still wearing off.

There was a fresh roll of gauze on the bedside table and a note. Somepony called Granny―his caretaker, presumably―had written it. His vision danced, but he managed to piece together the words, "Your leg is fine. Inkie thought you'd appreciate the gesture, though. Go find her when you come around."

He pulled himself back onto the bed, unwrapped his leg, and gawked at what he saw. He ran his foreleg through the fur. There wasn't even a scar.

A familiar voice in the next room drew his attention away.

He couldn't make out the words, but the irrepressibly bubbly tone was unmistakably Pinkie's. He got back up and swayed toward the door. Very carefully, he grasped the handle with his magic and twisted it. Across the hall was another door. He knocked. His voice raspy from disuse, he asked, "Is that you, Pinkie?"

Without waiting for an answer, he tried the handle. It was unlocked. He heard a muffled gasp, saw a flash from under the door, and felt a surge of magic that hit him like a wave. His vision returned, such as it was, and revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

Granny smiled at him with scarlet eyes. "Ah, you're awake. Come join us, won't you?"

Skyline entered the study, and Pinkie moved over to make room. He took note of the sketches and the shelves of ancient books that lined the walls, but he was more interested in the pegasus pony who sat across from him. Her eyes had sparked a memory he couldn't quite place, and her magical aura wasn't a pegasus pony's. It was like Pinkie's, or rather, the fraction of Pinkie's that wasn't an earth pony's. Something else had caught his eye too. He wasn't sure if it would be impolite to mention it, but he couldn't help himself. "Pardon me, madam, but has one of your wings always been that of a dragonfly?"

Pinkie looked mortified.

"I don't mean to be rude!" Skyline said. "I've never seen anything like it, is all."

Granny thought up an explanation based on how the intense, localized magical field could have unusual effects on ponies who spent enough time in it. It wouldn't have been a lie, exactly. It was why Pinkie could do things normally reserved for cartoon characters; it was why Jasper had had to leave; and it was why she could distinguish his descendents from ordinary ponies without prior knowledge of their identities.

Like Skyline, she could sense magical fields and auras. She could tell exactly where Inkie and Blinkie were, and she could tell that two more members of the Pie family were making their way through the forest as if being reeled toward her on an invisible thread.

She exchanged glances with Pinkie and made her decision. Wordlessly, she shifted back into her true form.

Skyline had busied himself with a scone, not knowing what else to do to stem the awkwardness. He dropped it on the carpet.

Granny finished her transformation and gave him a look that was mischievous and vaguely predatory, like a cat with a full belly who'd happened across a mouse and wanted to see what it would do next.

Skyline said, "Oh."

Eris had pretty eyes, he had to admit. They looked out of place on a pony, but to another draconequus, they would probably be stunning. He said as much, and to his amazement, she blushed.

Pinkie giggled, relieved.

Eris knew Skyline was still a bit dazed, but she had to admire his audacity. It was a bold mouse that flirted with a cat. It was intriguing.

"You know," Skyline said, "I really should have seen this coming."

"Whatever do you mean?"

"I mean I'm surprised I didn't connect all the dots sooner. I've known your magic all my life, but it took me coming face to face with, well, you, for me to realize its source. In Vanhoover, my house was built with stones from the rock farm. It was an old house, built to withstand the ravages of the sea. The magic was weaker then, but when I closed my eyes to go to sleep, I saw the glowing green spiderwebs in the walls.

"We had all kinds in Vanhoover, even a family of bat ponies, but it was like no magic I'd encountered before. I encountered it again in the sample I used in my post-graduate studies in Canterlot, and again when I went to Ponyville to meet Pinkie, the only living pony to have left the rock farm. Inkie and Blinkie have it too, in a sort of diminished form. It's the same magic that follows Discord around like a fog, confusing the senses with glimpses into the infinite realm of what-ifs and could-have-beens.

"It's the same magic that composes the cottage and the forest and the sky. This entire world is just an elaborate construct of draconequus magic, a bubble of reality that's been bent in on itself and stretched thin like the skin of a balloon. That's where the veins are coming from, isn't it? There's so much magic here that it's crystallizing out."

Eris was grinning.

Skyline found the fangs a little unsettling, but Pinkie recognized the brightness in her expression that rendered it a harmless display of something approaching affection.

The scene changed, and they were in the living room. Inkie and Blinkie were there too. Disorientation turned to terror as their eyes fell on Eris.

"Please, don't be alarmed," Eris said. "Skyline, would you mind telling them what you just told me? I think they'll be more comfortable hearing it from you."

"You'd better sit down," Skyline said.

Inkie and Blinkie joined Pinkie on the couch. Skyline and Eris sat across from them, their backs to the door, with the coffee table between them.

In brief, Skyline told the story as best he understood it.

Eris didn't bother with refreshments; she doubted anypony was in the mood. When he finished, she expanded on his explanation with the things only she knew, the things Jasper had taught her. What Equestrians viewed as draconequus magic was nothing of the sort. It was merely magic in its natural form, the way it had been before the age of ponies. It was wild; it was alive; and while it wasn't sentient in any way they understood, it chafed at the way ponies wielded it like an extension of their will.

It had a will of its own, and it remembered a time when it was free. It had always taken the caster's intentions into consideration, but it tended to find a happy medium rather than acting exactly as intended. The draconequuses were one such happy medium. Because they understood magic and its desire to be free, they could use it to its full potential rather than the vastly diminished form that passed for unicorn magic. Ponies could learn to use magic the same way―many of their most innovative spellcrafters had done so―but not without it affecting their bodies and their minds.

Before the draconequuses became ponies, Equestria was a world of chaos. You could go to bed one night and wake up the next day not just in a different bed but in a different dimension. To them, it was paradise. History doesn't say why they changed, but it was their decision. It's possible that their unchecked magical manipulation threatened to make matter itself unstable, as all matter in their universe was composed of magic the same as all matter in ours is composed of energy. It's also possible that they just got bored.

Celestia and Luna were the figureheads of the movement toward a calmer, safer, more harmonious world at the price of magic, as they are to this day.

Discord was the one who fought them every step of the way. He had warned them that to give up magic was to subject themselves to mortality, but they hadn't appreciated their immortality the way he had. Indeed, many draconequuses found death of natural causes appealing. The only reason Celestia and Luna had retained their immortality after the change was to ensure that he couldn't just turn the world back after they passed away.

There was a time after the transition and Discord's imprisonment when Celestia and Luna were absent from pony society for reasons unknown. Ponies were divided among five distinct races to force them to work together, but two of them still broke away from the whole. The bat ponies felt a certain kinship with Luna and came back when she did, but the sea ponies faded into obscurity. New alicorns started cropping up after Luna's disappearance, and Celestia had been very interested in finding out why.

Information about the state of the world before ponies, which had been forgotten by the time of Luna's fall, came to light when Celestia fled to the mountains in her grief and looters happened across the princesses' private library. From that information, a cult had formed with the intention of bringing about a new age of chaos.

The cult had a leader, but it needed a real one, a born draconequus who could wield magic without the fetters imposed on ponies. Since the only known draconequus was in Celestia's back yard and presumed dead, they found a way to make their own in what would come to be known as the Everfree Forest. Ponies had given it a wide berth since the confrontation, and the magic had gone feral.

When Pinkie pointed out that the rock farm had only existed for two centuries, Eris explained that she and Jasper had spent the intermittent eight in the asylum she had created for them. Due to the way time dilated in the presence of intense magical fields, it had felt closer to thirty. During that time, Jasper hadn't aged; he had absorbed enough of her magic that he would have been immortal had he stayed, but to do so would have necessitated his turning into a full draconequus.

Jasper had lived well beyond the age of a normal pony, and like most normal ponies, he hadn't found it to his liking. He didn't want what his father wanted; he wanted nothing more than to settle down somewhere, marry an earth pony, and watch his foals grow. The magic in his bloodline was still strong in those days, and his foals also turned out to be much longer lived than normal earth ponies. It was one of the things, along with their command of strange magics, that had contributed to their tendency not to stray far from the rock farm.

In closing, Eris gave her assurance that unlike Discord, she had no intention of changing the world against its inhabitants' will. From what Pinkie had told her, the world had changed a lot in the past two hundred years. Luna had made a full recovery, and Celestia no longer ruled alone with an ironshod hoof.

If Celestia and Luna saw fit to allow it, she would teach magic, real magic, to those who wished to learn. That would be the extent of her meddling.

Pinkie, Inkie, and Blinkie were stunned into silence, but none of them regarded her with fear. It would take the latter two awhile to come to grips with the fact that she was family, but given time, they would accept her as such.

Meanwhile, Skyline had rallied enough to make a proposal to Eris not unlike the one he had made to Mother and Father.

Before Eris could answer, there was a knock on the door. Getting up to answer it, she said, "It seems the last guests have arrived."

She opened the door.

Mother and Father stood on the step.

Beyond them, the sun was turning into the moon, and countless sets of yellow eyes glowed amid the trees. They had eluded Mother and Father, but Eris saw them. She knew they had trailed them all the way there, and she knew why.

Father cursed.

Mother looked up into Eris's eyes. A pony could get lost in those eyes and never find her way back to reality, but she saw things most ponies didn't. In those eyes, she saw madness. Her consciousness backpedaled into her skull.

Father caught her.

Eris tilted her head. "That's an interesting way to make a first impression."

Father found his voice, but he wasn't sure what to do with it. He decided the polite thing to do would be to introduce himself. "My name is Igneous Rock. I'm the patriarch of the Pie family and father to Pinkie, Blinkie, and Inkie. This mare is my wife, Cloudy Quartz. I believe we have some things to discuss."

Eris regarded him curiously. Pinkie had told her what had happened. She twisted her neck around, an unpleasant, snake-like motion, and looked to her for approval.

Pinkie nodded.

Eris looked back and said, "Yes, we do, but first, I believe you have something to say to your daughter."

She stepped aside to reveal Pinkie looking very uncomfortable despite having her sisters on either side of her for support.

Father said, "Yes, I do."