This Platinum Crown

by Capn_Chryssalid

Chapter Forty Three: Twilight - Equestria's Strongest Couple (part 1)

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(43)

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“Uwaaah! That’s strong! What’s this stuff called again, sugarcube?”

“Vodka,” Antonovka told her, and Applejack slid the bottle across the fold-out metal desk that dominated the officer’s Spartan tent. Antonovka shook her head and returned the cap to the bottle. “I only drink forty milliliters a night. Never any more.”

“Apple flavored,” Applejack noted with a grin on her lips. “Reminds me a bit of the apple hooch Granny cooks up.”

“We make it from filtered cider, actually.”

“Ohh! ‘We?’”

“Not ‘we’ but rather certain ponies,” Antonovka corrected herself, spearing Applejack with a frown at the sight of her ever-widening grin. Shuffling a paper in front of her, she picked up a pen between her teeth and began to write, pointedly ignoring the other mare in her tent.

Applejack, meanwhile, yawned. That last experimental sip of foreign liquor hadn’t exactly done much to help her stay alert. Her green eyes lingered on Antonovka’s pallet. It was much nicer than a ‘pallet’ normally would be – just some linen over a bed of hay – the army General had a pillow and an additional quilted sheet over the hay and linen. It looked clean and particularly inviting after a night of trying to keep up with Pinkie Pie.

Not that Applejack had really even tried to keep up with Pinkie when it came to drinks. She liked living. But she had watched Pinkie’s endless cavalcade of drinking contests, and that was a kind of participation, right?

It wasn’t until the sound of stomping hooves woke her up that Applejack even realized she had fallen asleep. She rolled off the bed just in time to see a stern-faced blue Pegasus mare salute the seated General. “As you command it, Général de Brigade!”

Behind her slim, portable desk, Antonovka was once again putting her name to paper.

“What’s goin’ on?” Applejack managed to ask, looking between the two mares. “Did I miss anythin’?”

“Your friends have arrived,” Antonovka replied. The brigadier general finished signing some sort of order and then hoofed it over to her subordinate. “Excellent work, sous-lieutenant. You have your orders; you are dismissed.”

The Pegasus pony left without saying anything else, further leaving Applejack in the dark.

“What orders?” she asked and reached for a cup of tea Antonovka had on a stool nearby.

The army general merely snorted and sipped from a plain porcelain tea cup.

“What orders?” Applejack asked again.

- - -

“I got in one little party,
and Mommy Pie had a spill!
She said you’re moving in
with your Auntie and Uncle in Ponyville!”

“Hrm.”

Pinkie Pie crossed her forelegs in vexation, a sentiment rather undone by the fact that she was upside down and lying on a pile of empty cider steins with a rather prominent smile of cider foam on her cheeks. The first few rays of morning light were mute witness to her night-long drunken binge. How many pints of cider had she consumed? How many pretzels? How many vegetarian wings? Where had the pizza box come from? Had some poor pony delivered it all the way from Ponyville? Who knew?

“How little was this little party?” Her companion for the night was still seated, if not in the same spot, but close to where he had been before it all began. Lord Cruciger was not smiling – she had come to accept that he rarely did, even when he was mostly sort of happy – but he was what she assumed to be at ease. Only a slight droop to his eyes betrayed the fact that he had been up all night drinking, eating, and, for many hours, dancing. Yet he did not slump and his appetite seemed almost as bottomless as her own.

“Mostly little,” Pinkie told him, flailing her legs and making an angel in the empty mugs.

“And ‘mostly little’ is…?”

“Two hundred and sixteen. Two hundred and thirty including the police.”

“Ah.”

“I know!” Pinkie cried, rolling around in the cider mugs all around them like a happy canine in the grass. “Sure, the neighbors filed a few noise complaints, but they only live a mile away, so what was the big deal? It wasn’t like I didn’t invite them, either! They were just being big stinky, um, stinky, stinkers! Party poopers! That’s what!”

“Hrm.”

“Party poopers really grind my gears!” Pinkie informed the High Lord.

“…”

“They totally get under my skin, you know?”

“…”

“I was so~o~oo going to prank them, too, but as soon as the police ponies realized they didn’t have a jail for fillies and sent me home, Mommy Pie threw a bag at me and told me I had a new job away from the farm. I mean, I love Mister and Mrs Cake, but they’re not really my Auntie and Uncle! I think Mommy Pie just said it so it the sentence would rhyme or something. What’s up with that?”

“…”

“You know, Cruccie, you’re a great listener!”

“…”

“Bwaaah! Say something! You’re not dead are you? Oh my gosh!” With a yip, Pinkie jumped clear into the air and pronked over to the big bay stallion, violently shaking his shoulders. Or at least trying to. He budged about as much as a statue would. “Did you overdose on cider?” she cried, desperately. “Oh no! You did! You’re OD!”

He just stared back at her, slowing raising a single eyebrow.

“Okay! Okay! Don’t panic!” Pinkie told herself as she spun around wildly, in a total panic. “I need a huge syringe! Like in Pulp Friction! Quick! Somepony throw me a huge syringe!”

“Calm down.” A rather sizeable hoof pressed down on her head, forcing her into a seated position. “Hrm,” the stallion responsible grumbled, narrowing his eyes. “Come to think of it, since when did your mane turn all… puffy?”

“Oh oh!” Pinkie’s blue eyes rolled up as if to stare up through her skull at her own hair. Snapping out one hoof all the way over to a sleeping Rarity, she suddenly produced a needle, and, without pause, poked her own curly mane, deflating it like a balloon.

“Silly me!” she exclaimed, even as her hair settled around her shoulders with a wheeze. “Here’s a needle!”

“How…” Cruciger searched for a moment, trying to find the right word to describe the pony before him. “Odd.”

“Better odd than even!” Pinkie explained.

“Nonetheless, you have a remarkable constitution,” he said, lifting his hoof off her head like she was a filly half her actual size.

“You too!” Pinkie replied, bouncing a little in place. “Hey! Hey! How come you aren’t drunk, anyway? I mean, I’m me, so that explains that, but what about you?”

“Alcohol is a poison,” the great Duke explained, taking a moment to look out over the rest of the exhausted and sleeping guests at his table. “I cannot die, no matter how much of it I consume. Still, I do feel the effects. I feel them almost instantly any time I drink. The same would be true of any who activate Arsenic’s blood. This entire night, from the first drink to the last, I have been what most ponies would consider hung over.”

“Ooooooohhh!” Pinkie said, her mouth slowly going from an exaggerated ‘o’ to a big, giggly smile. “That’s why Monee gets drunk so~o~ooo easily!”

“She is less used to the sensation involved in being so intensely inebriated,” the rather lucid but supposedly drunk noblepony answered, snorting in displeasure.

“Oh! Oh! Next! Next can you explain how you made this?” Pinkie ducked her head into the sea of empty mugs around her hooves and retrieved the flattened pewter mug turned Frisbee. “I’ve been trying to do it, too, but it just hurts my hooves! Is it magic anypony can do, or do you need a unicorny-horn?”

“Ah. That.” Cruciger murmured, though it was a deep rumble of a sound. “Well--”

“My Lord!” a voice interrupted, heralding the appearance of a well-dressed and decidedly sober guard in Terre Rare crimson. He waded through the sleeping guests, overturned plates and empty steins.

“Speak,” Cruciger commanded, his attention quickly shifting from Pinkie to his guardpony.

“Intruders have approached the camp,” the guard reported with military efficiency. “They were captured before they could enter our airspace. Shall I present them to you or return them to their cells?”

The Duke of Germaney and Prance shifted some of his weight back to his haunches as he leaned back and considered the question. He pointedly ignored Pinkie bouncing in place on the periphery of his vision. He did notice, but put little stock in, when Pinkie Pie suddenly stopped bouncing and turned to stare at the guard. She went uncharacteristically silent.

“Who are these unexpected and uninvited guests?” another voice asked.

“Heya, Monee!” Pinkie spun again to face the new speaker, smiling widely. “Good morn~ing!” she sang.

“Good Morning, Pinkamena.”

“Pinkie! Pinkie! Not Pinkamena!”

“And I am Antimony, not Monee.” The youngest daughter of the Terre Rare family sat, rather deliberately, at her father’s right side with her usual grace. Her mane and coat were less than perfect, having only recently woken up and removed herself from where she had spent the night on the ground by the table, but she did not let it affect her air of superiority. “Now, guard, who are these intruders?”

The guard dipped his nose slightly in respect to the newly woken Lady.

“They are Lord Crescent Moon, the ‘Night Light’ of Canterlot, Lady Twilight Velvet, Archmage of the Third Circle, Lady Twilight Sparkle, Apprentice to Her Highness, the Princess, and Element of Harmony, and lastly, Lord Alpha Brass, Marquis of the Equestrian Reach.”

“My scheming son comes to me in the company of my rebellious cousins,” Cruciger mused aloud, his feelings toward them clear even without anypony seeing his deepening scowl. It was an expression of displeasure made even starker by the scars across the old stallion’s face. The silver and onyx that covered up his missing eye did not move, but the other eye contorted and crinkled.

Antimony shifted slightly, uncomfortably, next to her father.

“Bring them all before me,” Cruciger finally gave the order.

“As my Lord commands!” the guard hastily bowed and excused himself.

Antimony coughed politely into her hoof. “We should clear out the guests before--”

Cruciger’s horn glowed, and a sympathetic energy quickly spread, radiating from the bodies of a hundred ponies, and untold numbers of plates and mugs and utensils. One and all, plates and tables and ponies all lifted clear into the air. Pinkie threw up her hooves and did a little spin in the air, caught in the effect the same as everypony else, but Antimony cringed and tucked in her legs.

With one great sweep, like a giant brush repainting the entire setting, all the debris and detritus and much of the formerly sleeping pony population, all tumbled away and off to the side. Only a few ponies were left largely unaffected, and these, Cruciger allowed to fall back to earth close to where they had been swept up. One, he lowered gently to the ground at his left.

“Mhhm. Matrix C-thirty-four. Two inverted starswirl arrays. Yes, yes. I’m paying attention, Princess. Just because I’m asleep doesn’t mean I’m not paying attention,” Twinkling Star Light grumbled, rolling around and licking her lips. “Mmrrh.” She stirred again, reaching up to sleepily rub her horn. “This magic? This magic is… one-fifty. Two. Two-ten. Is that you, honey bear?”

“Our son is here, my star,” he whispered, moving to lean down and speak into her ear. “He brought the Sparkle girl with him.”

“Brass!” Twinkling Star Light’s eyes shot open only to narrow a second later as another detail came to the fore in her mind. “And the Sparkle girl…?”

“Aye.”

- - -

Twilight looked well rested, Rarity thought.

Her being well rested was a large part of the plan they had agreed to beforehoof, so it wasn’t like it came as a surprise, but it was heartening to see her alert and ready to go. Pinkie Pie had done just what they had planned and hoped for her to do: from where they stood, side by side, both Cruciger and Twinkling Star Light looked visibly tired from the night’s intense partying.

Ideally, they would be too tired to answer Twilight’s challenge, especially Cruciger, who had been up the entire night drinking. No sane pony would fight a duel after a night of playing keep-up with Pinkie Pie. No sane pony would want to do anything but curl up in bed and sleep once Pinkie’s endless energy wore them out. On the other hoof, once confronted, Cruciger would also be loath to back down, and would have to appoint another to fight on his behalf, an honor Antimony would volunteer for. It was a bit of an underhoofed trick, but it was the best scenario they could cook up.

It was all in Twilight and Antimony’s hooves, now, to take advantage of her work and Pinkie Pie’s.

Rarity had not seen how the area where so many officers and guests had sat down to feast had been cleared so quickly, but it had been hastily prepared to receive new arrivals. Rarity and her friends were allowed to sit in, both as related parties and as representatives from Ponyville. Pinkie Pie sat to Rarity’s left, nursing a steaming hot cup of coffee. With Applejack still missing somewhere, Rainbow Dash had taken her spot to Rarity’s right. Rainbow was not a chipper morning-pony on the best of days, and this was not the best of days. It was clearly a struggle for the bleary-eyed pegasus to stay awake.

A select few army officers present put on a much better front, lined up in a neat row. Together, they all made a wall that stretched out from Cruciger’s left, with that big stallion, his wife, and his youngest daughter, all sitting at the head. Despite being bereft of any great hall or other overawing architecture, with the ponies organized as they were and the morning sky broken by horned Terre Rare standards, it was actually rather intimidating. Made abundantly clear was that the noble family were entirely in charge and not to be challenged on their own ground, surrounded by their legion of guards.

An unexpected arrival occurred when a trio of masked unicorn mage-guards took up a position to Antimony’s right, opposite the line of non-family ponies. This space had been left completely and rather blatantly vacant. The masked guards began to channel magic in a ritual Rarity recognized from her own duel. The central mage guard lowered his head as the magic swirled around him, coalescing into a black and white image that then expanded in size to almost two times normal pony size. What took form in the possession spell was the image of a refined mare in her late twenties with a long mane of braided, wavy hair. She was also rather clearly pregnant. At least nine months, if Rarity had to hazard a guess.

“Transmission complete,” the mare announced, covering her mouth to forestall a small yawn. “Hello, mother, father. Good morning.”

“Jewel,” Antimony coolly greeted her older sister.

“Antimony,” Polished Jewel’s tone was equally frosty. She rested one of her hooves on the bulge of her stomach.

“How is the foal?” Antimony asked, a sliver of genuine interest in her voice.

“Heavy,” Jewel replied, “I feel like a beached whale.” She snorted, dismissing the topic with a haughty wave of her hoof. “Now then, what is all this about…?”

She trailed off, turning her projected head away from her mother and father towards the other side of the camp. A pair of guards there escorted four unicorns. All four wore bonded horn restraints but were otherwise unencumbered, their legs and necks free. Twilight Sparkle was the first and most easily recognized of the bunch, at least to her friends, but Rarity knew the pair of older ponies had to be her parents. The last unicorn did not quite belong, a stallion with a golden coat and a short, flowing mane in a similar but darker color. A herald announced them in a more formal fashion, by order of precedence: Brass, as the Marquis, and thus second only to Equestria’s Dukes, then Crescent Moon, then Twilight Velvet, and lastly, Twilight Sparkle.

Applejack raced up from behind them, quick to find a seat close to Rarity, Pinkie, and Dash. Rarity shot a quick look her way, wanting to know where she had disappeared to and why she was arriving with Twilight’s group. The two of them – her group and Twilight’s – should not have mixed at all before the matter of succession was finalized and the Equestrian Girls had control of the Terre Rare. But there was no time to exchange whispers with the apple farmer.

It was starting, the confrontation they had all waited for… that so much hinged on.

“By my will, you may speak,” Cruciger commanded, after a suitably long silence. It was just long enough to ensure that everypony knew who was in charge – it was tradition, among nobility, that lesser only speak after their superiors. For the time being, that was a mandate enforced not just by Cruciger himself, but by the army he bore with him.

Next to Alpha Brass, who Rarity had almost expected to speak up, Twilight Sparkle sucked in a deep breath and stepped forward. The Marquis dipped his head slightly in deference, letting her take the lead. Rarity nodded. Good. That was good.

“Lord Cruciger,” Twilight began, holding her head high and stretching out her tail behind her in a show of strength and proper noble poise. “My family comes before you to offer one last chance to recognize my father, Crescent Moon, as the legitimate head of the Kamacite-descended Terre Rare. I respectfully ask that you reconsider this request!”

It was such a simple thing, or so Rarity thought.

It was such a little, simple thing these ponies were so willing to fight over. As everypony present held their breath, waiting for the rejection they all knew to be on Cruciger’s lips, Rarity slowly shook her head. It was honor. Honor. Honor. Honor. She understood that now. More than anything, it was a concept she had been forced to learn since her engagement with Blueblood – since the Gala, even before that. Cruciger would not change his mind, not after a public request like this. He would not lose face. He would die first. Why? Because of ‘honor.’

Honor, Rarity had learned, was nothing like she had imagined as a filly. It could be a wonderful thing, inspiring ponies to great deeds, or it could be a terrible force, driving ponies to cruelty and zealotry. It could preserve harmony or stand as an implacable wall against it. For all that the world needed it when it was good, it bled for it when it became bad, and the line between the two could be hard to see.

Honor.

Antimony had thought it honorable to impose herself on Blueblood and snuff out Rarity’s own courtly dreams. She could no more back down than she could cut off her own horn. She could no more forsake the path her family and her honor set her on than she could allow herself to cheat in their duel. What dark thoughts and intentions had festered in Antimony’s heart of hearts, all borne on the ill wind of honor – an honor, without which, she felt herself purposeless and her life meaningless?

Rarity thought of Yumi. The Neighponese mare had come to Canterlot to woo Blueblood, to be the first earth pony Duchess of Canterlot and to wear the Crown of Unicorns. For what? She had not met Blueblood before. He did not know her. Rarity knew that she and Yumi were alike in that respect. Before the Gala, she had never met Blueblood either, only pined for him from afar, but where she wanted love, Yumi felt the need to bring honor to the earth pony race and do what none had done before her. In her heart, she wanted to be recognized, not just in Neighpon, but in Equestria as a whole. Her honor and her drive had nearly killed her, and thanks to changeling interference, was on the verge of causing a war.

Rainbow Dash had talked much about Ritterkreuz, after the Art Festival, and why the marehunt for her should be called off. She had described the duels, the hiding, and Fluttershy had soon come forward to explain yet more. There was a twisted honor there, too. Blueblood had shared his past with the pegasus. She had come to Ponyville to fight, to see him in the care of a mare who would not harm him, and to die in a fitting way. As if there was a ‘fitting way’ to die that did not harm those who cared for you. And there assuredly had been ponies who cared for the madmare, despite it all.

And what of her own honor as Ponyville’s Baroness?

Rarity wondered about that. It was a position given to her simply to legitimize her relationship with another pony. It was hard-won from her duel with Antimony and born of her spoken desire for it, but what had she done with her political power? She had borrowed and schemed, making promises and financing construction backed by bits that weren’t hers. For a mage tower. For a festival. For Ponyville’s weather. If she became Duchess, she expected to make good on her debts. If not, she expected it to crush her, financially, and possibly take the town down in the process. She had gone behind her friends’ backs. She had made secret deals to protect Sweet Apple Acres… deals she knew she only really risked making because Applejack was a close, personal friend of hers. Were she an ordinary citizen, reading this laundry list of her Baroness’s selfish deeds, what would she think?

For her honor, for the generosity and – yes – the pride that defined her, she had risked everything.

Just as, now, everypony knew what Cruciger’s response would be to Twilight Sparkle’s public plea. Everypony knew the response he was expected to make. Everypony knew what his honor would demand of him, whether he liked it or not.

“Nay.” The Black Duke did not thunder the word. He merely spoke it, dutifully and thanklessly hammering it in place like a nail in a coffin. “You will submit to me, Twilight Sparkle.” His good eye narrowed, drawing up his right lip into a sneer. “I am family head. I am Arsenic’s heir and Bismuth’s heir. I do not negotiate. I only need speak… and it is done.”

Twilight’s chest rose and fell as heard just what she expected to hear.

“Then words will not solve things,” Twilight said, announcing it to all present. She turned, holding out her hoof, and her mother came forward with a simple blue and black cloth between her teeth. None of them would be capable of magic with their horns suppressed. Twilight took the cloth and held it up for all to see. It bore the eight-pointed, asymmetrical star of her family.

Bringing the heraldic shield to her lips, she kissed it and threw it to the ground in front of Duke Cruciger.

“I am to marry your son and take your family,” she declared, tossing back her purple mane with a haughty disdain Rarity had never seen in her Canterlot-born and Canterlot-bred friend. “I will tear down your standards or adopt them for my own. Your armies will serve me, and I will appoint whomever I wish to head Kamacite’s line.”

The three most important ponies of the main branch listened from where they sat, side by side. Antimony, having expected to hear this, remained impassive and expressionless, save for her usual half-lidded stare. Duke Cruciger’s scowl was as deep as ever, the ugly scar on his face making for an even uglier glower. Twinkling Star Light… well, she was writing something down on a piece of paper and not really paying much attention.

“You consent to this, brother?” Antimony finally asked.

“I will preserve peace and promote strength,” Alpha Brass replied, neither smiling nor frowning. He appeared only alert and interested but not otherwise emotionally invested. “Is that not the Terre Rare way? Is that not what Arsenic, herself, would want?”

“Peace flows from strength,” Cruciger agreed with his son, at least in part. “Yes, this is the will of Our Great Mother. The Terre Rare are the strongest of all the world’s unicorns. Merit and Strength go hoof in hoof.” Cruciger’s neck tensed, and even from a distance, Rarity could see the muscle there. The old stallion was like chiseled rock. “You believe yourself stronger than me, Twilight Sparkle? More fit to rule?”

“I don’t know how fit I am to rule,” Twilight admitted, head still held high. “But I am the strongest unicorn here.”

Cruciger’s response was not in words.

His horn began to glow, and Rarity felt his magic – his suffocating ocean of magic – begin to spread across the cleared camp. She blinked and, for a moment, felt as if she were drowning in it. Her lungs seized up, and she nearly flailed her legs to try and swim up for air. Her entire body felt heavy, as if a great pressure was bearing down on it.

‘B-by the Princess… I can see it in the air!’ Rarity’s vision became like a hazy mirage. It was like being dunked underwater and trying to make out shapes in the gloom. ‘I can actually see it as if I was a fly on his horn. As we all in his star field? What kind of a monster is he?’

Then, a heartbeat later, it was gone. It left, in its wake, a dozen ponies struggling to catch their breath. Even Applejack and Rainbow Dash had clearly felt it. Dash’s wings were shivering involuntarily, and Applejack had one hoof on the top of her hat, her green eyes wide, their pupils dilated. Of the three ponies seated closest to the three heads of the Terre Rare hydra, one – a unicorn mare – had actually collapsed. The pony next to her was quick to prop his comrade up before she attracted the ire of their liege lord.

“Ohh! That’s how he did it!” Pinkie blurted out, and Rarity had to quickly hush her.

Twilight still stood, however, defiant and unbowed.

“Remove this restraint and answer the challenge,” she demanded, though her voice seemed a little strained.

When Cruciger replied, it sent a chill down Rarity’s spin, enough to make her tail stand on end.

“You will serve as an example to the other branches of the price of defiance.” He had yet to raise his voice, but still everypony heard him, his words cold and hard as iron, and tinged with malice. This was no threat. This was merely a warning and a statement of fact: unflinching and absolute. “Do not think yourself untouchable because of your association with the Princess. Do not think to make demands of me because you are an Element of Harmony. I can leave you with your life and your friendship and still show you suffering.”

“Father,” Antimony spoke up, as soon as he finished.

His one baleful eye turned her way.

“Allow me to answer this challenge,” the Baroness requested, turning her whole body slightly to allow her to politely and deferentially face her sire without craning or twisting her neck. “I am the family successor. Let me demonstrate that the future of the family, this generation or the next, is in the hooves of Bismuth’s heirs.”

Rarity felt herself lean forward, ears alert. Twilight pawed the ground beneath her convincingly, not betraying that this was just what she had expected to hear. Next to her father, Antimony lowered her head another inch or two, waiting for his response with baited breath.

Cruciger’s hoof lovingly touched her shoulder.

And, a moment later, Antimony was flat on the ground. She gasped, barely keeping her nose from digging into the dirt. Front legs straining, she struggled against some sort of invisible force. Cruciger’s hoof wasn’t even touching her anymore, yet still she struggled. Rarity knew Antimony’s physical strength first-hoof. She was no frail noblemare. What on Equestria was happening?

“You failed in Ponyville to defeat one Element of Harmony, yet you ask me to trust you to deal with the most powerful of them?” Cruciger snarled, and when he withdrew his hoof Antimony sprang back up, a wild look in her strange scarlet eyes.

“F-father!” she pleaded, but he was mute to her protestations.

The projected image of Polished Jewel snickered cruelly at her sister’s misfortune.

“Do you have thoughts, daughter?” Cruciger asked, and his eye turned on the mage guards and Jewel’s projection.

“N-not as such, father!” the pregnant mare, though hundreds of miles distant, answered hastily and a little frightfully… as if he could somehow reach across space and do the same to her on a whim, regardless of her delicate condition.

“O-only…” Polished Jewel dared to mutter, forcing herself to say just a little bit more. “At least… this challenge is brought by our brother’s intended… Brass, you two are…? You both mean to--”

“The arrangements have been made,” the Marquis replied, slowly trotting up to stand by Twilight Sparkle’s side. “The Dower and Dowery are set and the contracts signed. We are to wed. This mare is my bride, and I do believe her to be worthy of ruling the Terre Rare. Her strength is known, as is her connection to harmony. She sounds like the very ideal Lady Arsenic believed in.”

“Thank you,” Twilight replied, and in front of everypony, she stepped closer to him and looped a front leg around his, protectively, and most importantly, possessively. Rarity saw how the gesture immediately sent a ripple of interest through the assembled army officers.

A little mare in her head pumped a hoof in triumph. ‘Smart move, Twilight! You show them! Nopony can doubt the claim now!’

“I will--”

“W-wait,” Antimony protested, interrupting her father. “Please, let me…”

“Again, I have to discipline you,” Cruciger growled, and held out his hoof. For a second time, Antimony was pressed down into the ground. She fought it, gritting her teeth, even as a depression began to form in the earth around her, cracks spreading from beneath her hooves.

“Honey bear, stop crushing her already.”

The pressure instantly eased, and Cruciger turned on his wife. “Twinkie…”

“Twinkie,” Pinkie repeated the name with a stupidly broad grin.

“So much drama,” Twinkling Star Light said, raising her voice and looking up from her notes. “I can’t get any work done!” She winked her left eye and the papers and quills vanished without a trace. There wasn’t even any visible magic, the casting speed had been so fast. “Don’t you realize how annoying that is? Plus, you’re upsetting my little bear after he’s been up all night. And you, Antimony, you should know not to pester your father like that! What are you, twelve? Both of you need a little time out, I think!”

Twinkling Star Light sighed, and her horn finally glowed, for just a blink of an eye.

With four snaps, all four horn restraints fell from the foreheads of the Sparkle family and Alpha Brass. Rarity dug her hooves into the ground at the display. This wasn’t part of the plan. This wasn’t part of the plan at all! She noticed Twilight also glance her way, pretty clearly confused and looking for some sort of clue what to do or say next.

‘I don’t know!’ Rarity almost wanted to yell. But she couldn’t, so she tried to get the message across with just her eyes. ‘Improvise!’

“This isn’t good,” Alpha Brass said, breaking the silence that followed the four horn restraints hitting the ground. “Mother, don’t tell me you…”

Star Light faced her husband, the sitting Duke towering over his wife. “What do you say, honey bear?”

“As if any mare could match you,” he rumbled. “All right. Let it be done.”

“Umm,” Twilight interrupted, inquisitively raising her hoof. “What…? What’s…?”

“We’ll settle this with a dual-duel!” Twinkling Star Light announced, cheerfully throwing her hooves up into the air. “The strongest couple should rule the strongest family in the world. It has a nice, cosmic symmetry! Don’t you think?” She pumped a hoof in the direction of Twilight and her scheming son. “And then we can have breakfast!”

“Hmm!” Pinkie mused, a hoof kneading her chin. “That reminds me! I forgot to tell you, Rarity! Cruccie said he and Twinkie were the ‘Equestria’s Strongest Couple.’ What do you think that means?”

Rarity groaned and buried her face in her hooves.

Couldn’t anything ever just work out like it was supposed to?

- - -

“A dual-duel?” Rarity asked, once she finally had Twilight alone with her friends for a moment. “Have you even heard of such a thing before?”

Twilight Sparkle stretched out her legs, rolling her shoulders and twisting her torso. “I read about it once.”

“Sounds simple enough.” Applejack still appeared a little frazzled by Cruciger expanding his star field across half the army camp. Her mane was badly in need of a new brushing, too, though that may just have been due to wherever she had slept the night of the party. “Two versus two, right?”

“Make it a cage match!” Pinkie was, of course, her usual self. She bounced up and down in place, occasionally darting in to help Twilight stretch for her duel. “Oh! Oh! You could call it ‘Hell in a Cell’ and end it by jumping ALLLLL the way down on somepony!” She stomped her hooves onto the ground with a giggle.

“That. Sounds. Awesome.” Dash joined in with a squee. “Do it! Do it!”

Twilight stared at her two friends as if they’d grown a pair of extra, and frankly unfashionable, heads.

“No,” she answered, simply, and went back to working the kinks out of her neck.

“Awww!” “Awww!”

“Anyway, a dual-duel just means that of the two couples who enter, but only one has to come out for that team to win. Sort of like a magical duel, but with fewer rules,” Twilight explained and sighed. “A lot fewer rules, since we’re using a Brand-enburg style dueling. Even lethal attacks aren’t disallowed. The goal is simply to come up with a spell or series of spells that the other unicorn or unicorns can’t counter and make them submit.”

“And you’re going in with this Brass guy?” Dash asked and teasingly bopped Twilight on the flank. “And why is this the first we’re hearing about you and this stallion, huhhh?”

Pinkie nodded in agreement. “I always thought she’d bring a book to life and challenge Equestrian marriage laws regarding civil unions.”

“We’ve only been engaged for a few… a couple… weeks,” Twilight admitted, sitting down and twiddling her hooves anxiously. “I’m still sort of wrapping my head around it myself!” Her cheeks blushed beet-red and her tongue tied into a workable replica of a gordian knot. “I-I know I’ll want all you girls there with me, to be my bridesmaids, but… but it was just… just… hard to… and…”

“Woah, there, sugarcube. It ain’t like ya haven’t dropped hints.” Applejack said but kept to herself the fact that she did know about the engagement. She could see how there hadn’t been much opportunity to bring it up lately, besides which, it hadn’t really been one hundred percent finalized until today.

“Oh!” Pinkie gasped, clonking herself on the side of the head. “Was that what you were talking about back then?”

“You should’ve totally gone pegasus,” Dash remarked, spreading her wings and gesturing with her hooves. “What’s sexier than wings? Nothing. The answer is nothing. Wings are, like, pure sexiness!”

“I’d rather not have to preen myself or somepony else every week,” Twilight countered.

Dash’s wings slowly deflated. “W-w-well… you, uh… Whatever!”

“Horns are the best,” Twilight insisted, turning to Rarity for some support. “Isn’t that right, Rarity? What do you think?”

“I don’t think we should be…”

“You’re asking her?” Dash groaned. “Of course she’ll agree! She’s a unicorn with a unicorn coltfriend with a HUGE honking horn!”

“That has nothing to do with anything,” Rarity snapped, finally drawn into the conversation despite her attempts to the contrary. “If you must know… Wait! Why am I even…? Look! This isn’t about what tribe of ponies has the most attractive features!”

“Hooves.”

Every one of the mares present turned to stare at Applejack.

“Hooves,” she repeated, holding hers up for emphasis. “I like hooves. And earth ponies have the best hooves, so there.”

Pinkie just giggled, snorted, and fell bodily over onto her side.

“Hooves, really?” Rarity asked, intrigued only to vigorously shake her head a second later. “No! Now is not the time! Twilight, more important than this fine stallion’s looks, will he be a liability in this duel? Pinkie has told us that Lord Cruciger and Lady Star Light have been called ‘Equestria’s Strongest Couple.’ Both of them have not a single loss to their name. Our plan had been to avoid a fight if possible, and if not possible, only fight Lord Cruciger…”

“I know, Rarity.” Twilight took a deep breath and slowly looked around her circle of close marefriends. “But you don’t need to worry. Except for maybe my brother or father, Alpha Brass is the best stallion I can think of to fight alongside. I don’t… I don’t even know how to explain it, but…” She started to twiddle her hooves again, eyes falling to the floor. “When I’m around him, I feel like I can do anything. I… I even feel comfortable with him. We don’t even talk about being married. We’re… friends, I think. Different gendered friends.”

“Different gendered friends,” Dash repeated with a chuckle. “Oh, Twilight… only you.”

“And what does that mean?” said unicorn asked with a pout.

“Nothing!” Rainbow Dash assured her, waving her hooves in a conciliatory manner. “Nothing much. Except… this means that the only pony here without a coltfriend is…” She inclined her head towards a certain cowpony.

“You’ll have’ta forgive Fluttershy an’ me fer being so darn single,” Applejack replied, drolly. “Sugarcube,” she said to Twilight, ignoring Dash for the time being, “it sounds like ya got something special there. We’re all happy for ya. But Rarity’s right, Ah guess, and the important thing is that ya can fight alongside this fella. If ya say ya can, then that’s that, right? Yer really ready for this?”

Twilight Sparkle nodded, smiling warmly at all her friends. “I feel as ready as I could be, and best of all, I’ll have all of you out there, cheering me on.”

“Of course!” Rarity agreed.

“You betcha!” Applejack chimed in.

“You can do it, Twilight!” Dash cheered, pumping a hoof. “Use your killer bookworm powers!”

“I was gonna say that!” Pinkie cried. “I know you’ll do great, Twilight!”

“Thanks, everypony.” She took another deep breath and glanced back, past the ranks of guardponies, over to where a dueling ground was being prepared away from the camp and not far from the lakeside. “Any last bits of advice?” she asked, wiping a bit of sweat from beneath her horn.

“Look after yourself,” Rarity answered first. “I’m sure you can win in an endurance duel with most anypony, darling. I’ve never ceased to be amazed by your magic.”

“Hit him hard and fast!” Rainbow Dash advised, swinging her hooves like a prizefighter. “There’s no better advantage than speed! And don’t hesitate if you see an opening! Just go for it!”

“Ah don’t know how much good advice I have when it comes’ta fights,” Applejack admitted, rubbing behind her neck, the ponytail of her mane bouncing gently. “Ah guess I’d just say: try ta keep an eye open and not get overwhelmed. These ponies ain’t no joke. Ah don’t even know how that big fella is still standing after last night.”

“What about you, Pinkie Pie?” Twilight asked, facing the only one of her friends to remain silent.

“Hmmm!” Pinkie pondered, forelegs crossed and tail twitching back and forth behind her. “Beware falling objects.”

“Huh?”

“And if it gets hard to breathe, try being somepony else!”

“What does that mean?” Applejack asked, shaking her head.

“Don’t you mean ‘try being somewhere else?’” Dash corrected her friend. “Come on, Pinkie!”

Pinkie Pie lowered her legs to the floor, staring at Twilight directly. “You really will have to be careful, Twilight. Cruccie isn’t a nice pony. He’s nice to me, but I remind him of his wife, ‘cause I’m silly!” She boggled her eyes for emphasis. “But he won’t care if he hurts you,” she explained, instantly turning serious again, like an on/off switch. “Don’t hold anything back, or he’ll beat you.”

“Is that what your Pinkie sense tells you?” Dash asked, not making light of her friend’s analysis, but genuinely curious.

Pinkie Pie shook her head. “No. That’s what spending the night with him, drinking and listening to him, tells me. He’ll crush anypony and anything that challenges him.”

“Lady Sparkle?” a guard called to the group of mares. A pegasus stallion, dressed like a hussar. “It is time. Will you come with me, please?”

Twilight gulped, marshaled her courage, and turned to follow. There wasn’t even time to meet up with her parents again. They’d be at the battlefield, waiting. She was sure of it.

It was time.

- - -

Twinkling Star Light.

Duchess. Researcher. Mother.

One half of Equestria’s Strongest Couple.

Twilight tried to appraise her opponent… an opponent she had not planned for and whose capabilities were entirely unknown. Not only had Alpha Brass neglected to mention having to fight his mother, when she had done her earlier preliminary research into the main-line Bismuth descended branch of her family, there had been absolutely nothing about Duchess Twinkling Star Light’s dueling style. Except that, like Duke Cruciger, she was undefeated by any pony on public record. Given that there were only four official duels to her name, that particular fact wasn’t all that extraordinary, but now – on the field of battle itself – it began to seem rather ominous. Lady Star Light had won all her fights without killing, at least. Unlike her husband.

All the other details and factors were unknown.

Which begged the question of how a pony engaged in four duels – much less won them – without anypony knowing anything about how she did it. There was always some sort of gossip that got recorded somewhere. Dwelling on it as she trotted up to her designated spot in the cleared dueling field, Twilight could only come to one conclusion: caution. By all accounts, Twinkling Star Light was not a unicorn duelist, but every inch of her radiated confidence and a sort of power that only came from experience fighting… somethings, if not someponies.

Lady Star Light, on a first superficial glance, reminded Twilight a little of her own mother, Twilight Velvet. She had the same sort of near-alabaster white coat, well groomed and cared for, and a mature but still beautiful face that belied her age. She was a bit taller than Twilight Velvet (or Twilight Sparkle for that matter) entirely due to slightly longer legs. Twilight paced anxiously, but her opponent merely stared at her with calm violet eyes.

Both mares tried to tune out the father and son confrontation beginning not far away, closer to the shore of the lake.

“I understand your magical abilities are praiseworthy,” Star Light said, breaking the silence between mares and stretching her legs out with a few experimental kicks and crouches.

“Your son holds you in the highest esteem,” Twilight returned the compliment, rolling her head on her shoulders with the occasional pop and crack.

The Duchess smiled, amiably, like a mother would at her son’s kind words. “He’s a good boy. Well,” she amended, with a tilt of her head. “I did teach him to be a good boy, so he at least knows what to say and do to play the part.”

Both mares experimentally cycled magic through the horns, light blue and soft magenta-red playing across and briefly highlighting their faces.

“Before we do this,” Twilight said, though it was clear the older mare had more to say about raising and training her only son. “I need to know something.” She gritted her teeth and took a bold step forward. “You let him marry Lady Olive Branch?”

Star Light didn’t see the question. “I did.”

“Did you know how much he suffered because of it?” Twilight asked, hotly. “Did you know what kind of pony she was? Did you even look into her beyond just her title?”

Lady Star Light blinked and tilted her head again, like a confused deer caught in a bright light. “By reputation, Lady Olive Branch had a strong predilection for much younger colts and for shameless libertine values. This worked out in our favor. Alpha Brass was chosen by her in part because of his age. She insisted on a young colt for her next husband. He agreed to the match as well, and, now, our family controls the entire Equestrian border and frontier. They never conceived, which is strange, but I don’t understand the problem.”

“Brass doesn’t either! He doesn’t blame you at all!” Twilight replied and set her hooves a good distance from the other mare. She calculated the distance in her mind: thirty paces. “Which is one of the things we disagree on! What kind of mother sends her son off, selling him to a stranger like a bag of apples?”

Twinkling Star Light still had her head tilted, and her only response was a shrug.

Which just further irritated the Element of Magic.

“I guess saying that makes me sort of a hypocrite,” Twilight went on to explain. “Since I’ve already agreed to marry one of my own foals off even before they’re born… but when I walk my son or daughter down the aisle, I’m going to be damn sure they aren’t making a mistake! I’ll be sure they’re marrying somepony who will treat them right! Somepony they can love and somepony who will love them back!”

Twinkling Star Light narrowed her eyes, betraying a hint of vexation.

“Nopony can be sure of things like that,” she replied, dismissively. “The best a mother can do is to prepare her children for the world. My son has thrived, despite whatever adversity he encountered in Olive Branch’s company. But I think we’ve chatted enough about that, Twilight Sparkle. If you have more to say, you can say it while showing me what a Princess’ apprentice can do these days.”

A ripple passed through her long, feminine horn.

“Instruction number one,” Star Light said, and her eyes flashed white. “Concord’s Commendable Celestial Canvas: Living Stars. And Spectral Summoning Supreme Secret: Horsehead Nebula.”

Twilight reared in surprise and shock as very world around her twisted and warped, exploding into stars and multicolored swirls. “D-double spellcasting?”

She all but vanished into the emerging clouds, summoned out of thin air, rising and thundering hundreds of hooves up into the air. Up close, it was like a wall of endlessly churning pink and red, glittering with a pale inner light. Visible in full from far away, even in Ponyville, the column of strange matter peaked, creating a gigantic pony’s head and a pair of legs that cupped together at the base.

‘Is this really… the Horsehead Nebula?’ Twilight instinctively covered her mouth and spun around, trying to get her orientation straight in the strange stellar mass. ‘That was a four alliteration spell, plus a subsidiary casting! And she did it twice!! Two four-alliteration spells at the same time?! How in Tartarus can she do that?!’

Twilight smacked herself in the forehead with a hoof.

This was Twinkling Star Light. Brass had said that his mother was a powerful unicorn and an arcanist without peer. Of course she would have some potent magical abilities! Twilight tried to think rationally. This also explained why nopony knew Twinkling Star Light’s capabilities. She literally blanketed the battlefield, and inside or out, it was nearly impossible to see anything. It stung just to keep her eyes open. She didn’t dare breathe in whatever otherworldly gasses made up the summoned nebula until she knew it was safe.

‘First, I need to be able to breathe and see!’ Twilight concentrated and felt a magical barrier form inside her mouth and then expand outward, carefully, pushing away the nebular glasses. It was important to only form the barrier from a point where she knew the air was uncontaminated. Just like with Yumi’s pollen storm.

The eyes were trickier. It was already in her eyes.

Ducking her head and quickly scooping two hoof-fulls of dirt right into her face, she patted it down and then cast another spell to transmogrify it. Then another transmogrification, immediately after, without dropping the initial star field. Two flashes of light later and she had a pair of fairly functional goggles over her eyes.

“If you want to be my daughter-in-law, much less lead our family,” Star Light’s voice seemed to echo throughout the nebula. “I’d suggest you start running.”

Twilight felt a fading pinprick on her neck and a sensation of brightness tickling the crown of her head, like somepony shining a bright lamp overhead. She glanced upward, and noticed one of the innumerable little stars scattered throughout the nebula. It was pulsing. Pulsing and growing.

That couldn’t be a good sign.

“Run?” Twilight yelled into the hazy stellar cloud around her. “That’s a problem! I’m not great at running.”

A pulse of reddish-purple light – her first offensive spell – tried to clear the nebula around her. She hadn’t really expected it to work, but it was worth a try. Her shield spells were far above average for a unicorn, but the strange haze of the nebula passed right through the otherwise impermeable barrier. The pulsing light, meanwhile, had grown into a flickering ball of magic and light the size of a carriage… even as it accelerated and fell, like a meteor.

Twilight’s horn erupted in magenta fire as she braced her hooves and telekinetically sunk her magic into the ground – deep – deeper – deeper! Like a giant ice-cream scooper, like a titan-sized shovel, she uprooted enough soil and rock and foundation to build a basement. The huge chunk of earth spun lazily as it tumbled in her magical grip, hurled up and into the falling ‘star.’ Twilight felt the object rip and burn through her star field and into the mass of dirt.

A blast of light and fire sputtered out from the back end.

‘It penetrated four pony-lengths of solid ground!’ She dodged to the side and away from the collapsing mount of charred earth. ‘What the heck was that?’

It was time to try something to keep the other mare off balance.

Berkelium's Blinding Beam.

Magenta energy coalesced at the tip of Twilight’s horn, even as her eyes searched for Star Light in the gaseous soup of her nebula cloud. Compartmentalizing one spell, she cast a second one. A basic ‘darkvision’ spell. It wasn’t very advanced, but it was exponentially harder to cast multiple spells at once than it was to cast single spells. Even the most advanced unicorns could rarely manage more than two or three simple parallel or compartmentalized spellcasts. Double-casting double alliteration spells wasn’t routine, but it was doable. Double-casting four alliteration spells… that shouldn’t have been possible.

Twilight’s eyes shifted to grayscale. Even her pupils themselves turned gray, reflecting the spell’s effects. The haze of red and pink and black became whites and grays of varying shades. Still, there was no sign of the other mare, or even of Cruciger and Alpha Brass. Not only did she have to identify her target, now, with the two stallions fairly close by, but she had to be sure it was who she wanted to hit. Darkvision wasn’t working. It just wasn’t enough.

A small, fast shape shot towards her from behind, forcing her to jump out of the way.

“You sensed that coming somehow,” Star Light mused, safe and out of sight. “I wonder how?”

‘Brass warned me she was smart,’ Twilight reminded herself and almost dropped the spell that had just saved her from being tagged. ‘She’ll figure it out sooner or later… but next, if I had to guess, she’ll drop another one of those stars on me, and then use the distraction to attack.’

Switching from Darkvision to a more advanced Cat’s Eye spell, Twilight still couldn’t discern the location of the other mare… or anypony else. Trotting quickly, she tried to cover more ground in her search. Overhead, another one of the twinkling stars abruptly swelled. Twilight watched it carefully this time, even as she picked up her pace, circling to what she had thought would be the edge of the cloud… except it wasn’t. Either the nebula was following her, wherever she went, or was much larger than she had thought.

‘She isn’t anywhere near the star when it swells,’ Twilight realized, analyzing the magic before her. ‘She’s triggering the effect remotely, somehow.’

One eye on the new threat, she tensed and jumped as another, smaller, one blasted through the air, almost hitting her on the flank. She threw herself bodily to the side, narrowly avoiding the small projectile. It looked almost like a… needle? Twilight stumbled on her front hooves, and finally had to teleport to avoid a second projectile that very nearly tagged her on the nose. She reappeared almost exactly where she had been.

Cursing inwardly, she sent out another pulse to blast away the nebula.

The descending star loomed above her, and left with little other choice, Twilight set her hooves, took aim, and unleashed the Blinding Beam she had kept on her horn-tip. A twisting, uncoiling lance of solid amaranthine magic erupted from her horn with the fury of a volcano, the recoil from it violently kicking up dirt beneath her hooves. It hit the falling star off-center, just like she’d planned for it to. Her earlier experiment had determined that the ‘star’ possessed mass. Which meant it could be deflected if it wasn’t destroyed outright.

Trotting quickly, Twilight felt another pair of small projectiles rip through her nearly transparent barrier. Needles! It was just like she thought. But deflecting the star was a lot easier than stopping it and it meant she still had the time and opportunity to avoid the inevitable opportunity attacks. The star burned hot and bright – almost blinding itself – as it fell a half dozen hooves away, ripping into the ground and splashing like water an instant before transitioning into burning gas.

It was all Twilight needed to see. She teleported.

And teleported.

And pulsed, and teleported, and pulsed, and teleported and pulsed.

“That’s quite clever,” Star Light said, and Twilight landed within sight of the older mare. She was happily but demurely stamping her hooves in applause and approval. “I had just figured it out, too! Which implies that you doing this meant you figured out that I had just figured it out!”

Twinkling Star Light nodded. “Using a combined barrier and transparency spell, first to hide that barrier, then to use it as another set of eyes? Very clever! You felt it every time I attacked you. But how did you know that I knew? Was it before or after you used it a second time?”

“You forced me to teleport and reapply the barrier,” Twilight explained, feeling little need not to reply. Besides, it was sort of exciting to face somepony this smart. It just felt right to talk about it, now that the cat was out of the bag. She grinned and chuckled, a little like a student arguing with a professor. “I was really hoping to find you without it! But I couldn’t! This cloud is really strange! What is it, really?”

She didn’t need to explain how, once she was sure the secret of her invisible sensory-shield had been figured out, she threw all caution to the wind. Teleporting randomly, she had pulsed her shield spell, over and over, hoping to get lucky. After a couple jumps, she had found a hit.

“The Horsehead Nebula is the highest-form of intermediate celestial summoning,” Twinkling explained, returning the dueling gesture that was the mid-fight verbal spar. “You can’t expect it to behave like a normal cloud, or like anything found naturally on Equestria.”

“I have a hypothesis about those falling stars, too!” Twilight said, “Do – do you mind if…?”

“Go ahead,” the Duchess insisted, bowing gracefully.

“Thanks!” Twilight all but cheered. This was fun! Well, it was also deciding the fate of her entire family… but it was sort of fun, too! “You’re remotely activating those stars, but I couldn’t detect any of your ambient or projected star field around them using Ingenuous Inference. So what causes the stars to swell in size like that? And where is the magic coming from?”

Star Light listened intently.

“I bet,” Twilight finished with an excited stomp of her hoof. “I bet the stars themselves are discrete magical constructs. You populated the nebula with them when you summoned it – though I’d really love to see you do it again, to be sure – and, once in place, all you need to do is unshackle them. So basically, I can’t detect a surge in your star field, because you’re using tiny amounts of it to hold the stars back, not to trigger them. When you do unshackle one of the stars, it absorbs the magical gasses of the nebula, increasing in mass and intensity!”

Twinkling Star Light’s smile grew at the explanation. She pointed at the younger mare.

“An excellent analysis!” she declared. “You are almost entirely correct!”

“Almost?” Twilight asked, ears folding back and dejected.

“Your only mistake was in your classification of the stars around us as magical constructs, but the comparison was almost spot-on.” Star Light shook a hoof in the air, as if to wave off and excuse the small error. “Really, you’re assuming this is something I use in duels, but it isn’t. I usually only summon this place to do research. Even the ‘stars’ are mostly for experiments. Using all this in a fight is completely secondary… but you were able to figure all this out while in a fight. That’s very impressive! I’m happy my son allied himself with a smart filly like yourself.”

Twilight felt a blush color her cheeks at the praise. “Oh, it’s nothing! Just keeping my eyes open!” she insisted with a laugh. “I never expected anypony to have magic like this!”

“And I never expected anypony to find out so much about my magic in so short a time!” Twinkling and Twilight laughed together. “I think I would approve of you as a daughter in law,” the older mare decided, but her brow drew down into a scowl. “That does not mean I will give you the family reins, however. Why don’t you give up, and we can go have some tea with Lady Velvet?”

“I can’t do that,” Twilight replied with a frown of her own.

“I’m sure I can talk my husband into guaranteeing you control over the Canterlot branch of the family.” Star Light sighed, softly. “All you have to do is remain true to the Bismuth line, as all branch family members must be.”

“Or you and your husband could bow out and peacefully hand over the reins to Alpha Brass and myself,” Twilight suggested, sensing the other mare really didn’t want to fight any more than she herself did.

“How silly,” Twinkling interrupted before Twilight could say more. “A moon orbits a planet, not the other way around. Branch families should know their place. And I’ve warned my son repeatedly about poking his adorable little nose into the family succession.”

“Is that so wrong?” Twilight asked. “So what if we…? What’s so wrong with letting us lead the family? Brass said you would support him!”

“He did, did he? Well! That is that, and this is this, and that isn’t necessarily this, or maybe it is,” Star Light replied, shrugging absently at would-be’s and could-have-been’s. “Too bad for you, you’ve caught me at a bad time. I’d have tested you anyway, but right now, I’m in a mood, and I won’t let anything or anyone upset my husband… and it is my husband’s desire that the succession be given, not taken. If you need a reason ‘why,’ I’ll remind you that the Bismuth line has held power since Arsenic’s exile. If the precedent is set, here, that the succession can be successfully challenged…”

She pointed at the younger mare claiming to be the one to succeed her.

“Your foals will be challenged by upstart rivals and jealous siblings just as mine are. An orderly succession will give way to chaos.” Despite her words, Duchess Star Light smiled again in a friendly manner. “But we are not entirely inflexible. ‘Sufficient strength overcomes all opposition.’ Show me you have sufficient strength, and I will bow my head, Twilight Sparkle.”

The stars overhead began to unshackle, a dozen at a time.

“I will tell you this,” Twinkling Star Light warned. “The longer this fight goes on, the more your chance of winning… approaches zero.”

- - -

Within the otherworldly cloud, flashes of light blossomed, visible to the eye but without sound.

“Shoot! What the hay is goin’ on in there?” Applejack held a pair of binoculars over her eyes, borrowed from a certain pouting pink pony persistently pestering her to return them.

“I wanna look! I wanna look!”

“Hold yer horses, sugarcube! I think Ah saw a flash of purple there.”

“They’re my binoculars! I wanna see~ee~!”

Rarity tried not to be distracted by her two earth pony friends. She had her own binoculars or, rather, a pair of opera glasses in fine silver with a lovely gold-trim necklace. Twin bands of blue, the same color of her mane, bordered the rear optics. They were quite the timely gift from Fleur and Fancypants, and Rarity held them up to eye level with her magic. Not that she could really see anything in the dense cloud concealing Twilight’s duel.

“What on Equestria is going on in there?” she asked with an unhappy moue.

“They may not be ‘on Equestria.’”

“Hmm?” Rarity turned her head to give Antimony a questioning look. “What did you mean by that?”

Lady Antimony, like a great many officers and other important ponies, had gathered to watch the dual-duel. From a safe distance, of course! Rarity had not quite seen the reason for putting so much distance between them and the battlefield, but when Twinkling Star Light had opened the battle by creating that massive cloud, well! It made sense. Whatever it was, the strange cloud in the shape of a pony’s upper body towered up into the sky, displacing pegasi and clouds alike as it formed. The base was wide enough to swallow two town blocks, at least.

“The Spectral Summoning Supreme Secret: Horsehead Nebula,” Antimony said, giving name to the spell. “Are you familiar with summoning spells, Lady Rarity?”

“Only the basic sort,” Rarity replied and noticed Applejack and Pinkie plopping down to either side of her to listen in. She kept hold of her opera glasses but concentrated her magic on another point. There was a snap in the air and a small mouse-on-a-string appeared – a simple cat’s chew toy.

“Sometimes Opalescence gets it in her head to bother me at just the worst times, so I like to have something around to distract her,” Rarity explained, tossing the chew toy over to Pinkie, where the party pony caught it in her mouth with a ‘squeak!’ “A summon spell marks an item with your magic, allowing you to recall it towards you at high speed. Hence the name: Summoning: Recall and Summoning: Revert.”

“There are many variations on this, but that is the basic application,” Antimony agreed. “What are the smallest and largest items you can summon?”

Rarity thought for a moment, her hoof to her lower lip. “I suppose… the largest would be my fainting couch. The smallest would be my favorite brush… for mane emergencies, you know?”

“I usually hide my emergency brushes in my tail!” Pinkie helpfully explained, chew toy still in her mouth. She spat it out and spun around to rummage through her tail, hooves buried deep in the cotton candy hair. “Let’s see… where is it? Brushie. Brushie. Brushie. No, that’s my toothbrush… that’s a pick for afro-emergencies… that’s a brillo pad…”

“I’m not exactly sure how she does that,” Antimony went on, catching an afro pick that Pinkie tossed behind her as she searched through her tail for a brush, displacing an ever growing number of items that really had no business being in there.

“None of us do,” Rainbow Dash commented from atop her personal cloud. All that was really visible of her was her rainbow tail hanging off the edge. “That’s why I just ignore it and pretend there’s nothing reality-shattering going on.”

“What the heck is this?” Pinkie held up a device looking more like a billhook than a comb.

“I do believe that is a dragon-comb,” Rarity told her. “Spike has one.”

“Ohh~hhh!” Pinkie tossed it aside and returned to her search. “There sure are a lot of hammers in here.”

“Regardless,” Antimony continued, also trying to ignore the strange pink mare. “What you describe is a basic single-alliteration, two-step spell. The ‘summon’ and either the ‘recall’ or ‘revert’ element… this combination works for most unicorns, but it is also severely limited in what items can be ‘marked’ or tagged for summoning. You cannot summon your cat, for example.”

“Summoning Opalescence?” Rarity wondered, and, for a moment, she allowed herself to imagine throwing her irate pet cat at the next insufferable noblemare who challenged her to a duel. Oh yes. That could work.

“Unicorns can’t summon animals,” Applejack chimed in. “Everypony knows that.”

“Incorrect.” Antimony shook her head, her eyes still half-lidded but her mouth curving in a slight smile. “The larger the animal, the more difficult it is, but a skilled unicorn capable of two or three-alliteration spellcasts is quite able to summon creatures to her aid. Small ones, like parasprites, up to large ones, even dragons. Though for sentient creatures a binding magical contract is usually required, changing the spell from a two-step spell to a different three-step one.”

“Can you summon anything like that, Monee?” Pinkie asked and triumphantly held out a bright pink brush. “Found it! It was pink. No wonder it was so hard to find in there!”

“Can you summon living creatures?” Rarity also wanted to know.

“No,” Antimony answered, holding up a hoof to impress on the other mares to let her finish. “I know I’ve explained before that I specialize in enchantment and illusions. This is because I do not have the large reservoir of magic that my sisters possess… or the bottomless well Twilight Sparkle is blessed with. I know how to summon animals, but to do so would be foolish. It would leave me exhausted.”

“So what IS that big cloud thing?” Dash asked, rolled over on her stomach now so she could peek over the edge of her cloud. She pointed off to the side at the huge Horsehead Nebula. “‘Cause it sure isn’t a normal cloud! I’ve never seen anything like it in the sky before!”

“The Horsehead Nebula summoning is different,” Antimony explained, briefly looking up at the pegasus mare. “You would not have seen it in the sky before because it is not a cloud from our sky. It comes from The Aether… from ‘outer space,’ in other words.”

“From space?” Applejack blurted out, waving her hooves towards the otherworldly cloud in the shape of a pony. “Just how the heck can somepony conjure up somethin’ from outer space?”

“It is my mother’s specialty,” the Terre Rare noblemare replied, though it hardly explained much.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific, darling,” Rarity spoke up for her friends as much as herself. She had been a bit lost there with the jump from marking and summoning animals to sentient creatures to objects from the Aether of all things!

“My mother is an astromancer and arcanist without peer,” Antimony tried to explain, pursing her lips as she thought to find a way to clarify the subject. “Her special talent is in the magical manipulation of space. She is rather like Twilight, in that she has a general affinity for magic. By comparison, her knowledge of spells far outstrips my own in any field outside illusions and enchantment.”

To illustrate her point, Antimony conjured up the illusion of a pyramid-like scale. At the base, it displayed a large number of mundane objects: brushes, toys, a couch, and many besides. Above that, but in a slightly narrower section of the pyramid, there were numerous animals: from rabbits and spiders to wolves and a lion. Above that were more objects, either very small, like needles, or very large, like boulders.

“In difficulty,” Antimony told them, “when it comes to summoning, you have: objects, animals, greater objects – meaning very small or very large – greater beings, otherworldly objects, and, finally, otherworldly beings.”

The pyramid filled out as Antimony spoke. Above the greater objects, the illustration showed dragons and manticores and other fierce monsters. On the tier above that, there were glittering stars. On the tier above even that, at the pinnacle and eye of the pyramid, there was a single glowing sphere, radiating light. Disturbingly, Rarity could just barely make out an eye within that glowing sphere.

“The Horsehead Nebula is a four-alliteration ‘otherworldly object’ summoning spell. I am no expert, but I would guess that it doesn’t just transport the celestial cloud down to earth…”

Antimony used one more burst of magic to produce an illusion of two ponies, with a third pony farther away, looking on. One glowed, and the outline of a cloud enveloped the pair close together. An arrow from the third pony’s eyes stopped at the outline of the cloud, indicating that her vision was blocked. Inside the cloud, meanwhile, the second pony tried to run to get to the edge, but the ground beneath her constantly shifted, making it impossible to actually escape. She was trapped inside the cloud-outline.

“I believe the nebula is also a self-contained system, like a barrier,” Antimony hypothesized. “Even attempts to teleport out would only be redirected. Thus what happens inside the cloud is independent of what happens outside it. This is why we cannot see or hear or even feel much of anything going on inside.”

“What terrifying magic,” Rarity mused, glaring at the now rather frightful-looking cloud and easily imagining herself trapped inside, during a duel.

“That’s kinda spooky,” Dash muttered, her forelegs dangling off the edge of her perch to play with a few tufts of white cloud. “Some sorta space-cloud, huh?”

“Ah don’t know how you unicorns deal with all this magical mumbo-jumbo.” Applejack crossed her forelegs with a huff.

“Yeah!” Pinkie also put on the air of being upset, crossing her forelegs angrily. “Unicorns are overpowered! If it were up to me, I’d hit them all with my nerf bat!”

“It isn’t as if this level of spellcraft is very common,” Antimony argued, also turning her attention back to the cloud and the unseen fight within it. All that could really be discerned among the swirling pools of color were flashes of explosive light. Something was happening. The lights within the nebula were dimming.

“This sort of power… the type of unicorn who can harness it is, maybe…”

- - -

“…one in one hundred thousand?” Twinkling Star Light emerged from a plume of fire and smoke, her horn shimmering with radiant heat from repeated spellcasts. “Or, is that too conservative? That implies there are at least eighty unicorns in the world who could do what you’ve done. Which I doubt.”

Twilight Sparkle wiped the sweat from her brow.

“You didn’t think… I’d just let you keep blasting me with those stars, did you?” the Element of Magic asked, stumbling a bit on her hooves but grinning triumphantly. “Call it Concord’s Commendable Celestial Canvas: Brown Dwarf.”

“Brown Dwarf,” Twinkling Star Light repeated, taking a second to glance back over her shoulder. One of her glowing stars hovered in the air, but instead of glowing brilliant white, it was an anemic reddish-brown.

“You managed to identify the magical trigger I use, and then you corrupted it, simultaneously deflating every single star at the same time, all while dodging or countering my starfalls,” Star Light observed. “That isn’t something one in a hundred thousand unicorns could do. More like one in a million, and that is being generous towards the unicorn population as a whole. Very impressive. Why all at once, though?”

“As if you need to ask,” Twilight replied, taking a second to catch her breath. To her annoyance, Star Light hardly seemed fatigued at all. “If I did it one star at a time, you’d have devised a counter to my counter. I bet you already have one thought up, you just didn’t have the time to use it.”

“That’s true,” Star Light admitted.

“I’ve never met a pony who can cast magic so fast,” Twilight admitted, parting the mane away from her horn. It was already sticky with a sheen of sweat. “Or a pony who can double-cast at four-alliterations. After this is over, I’d really like to pick your brain for some answers!”

Twinkling Star Light stalked around the younger mare. “Two-ten, twenty, one-thirty-five.”

Twilight furrowed her brow. “What?”

“If you can figure out what those numbers mean about me, then you’ll have your answers. In fact, if you don’t figure it out, you’ll definitely lose this duel.” The Prench Duchess lifted a hoof up to her horn, and then past that, into the air. “You pass the first test, though. You have a quick mind and a lot of raw skill. Next, I want to see what sort of experience you have in the Five Arts.”

“The Five Arts?” Twilight recalled the archaic term. “You mean the Five Magics?”

“I’ll be fair and warn you about the first one!” A burst of light escaped Star Light’s horn, and as she spun her raised hoof in a wide circle, a ripple passed through the nebula around them. “Your strongest form of magic! Sorcery! Red!”

Twilight hunched down, bracing herself and providing a smaller target as the nebula continued to rapidly swirl around her. The multicolored clouds separated, reshuffling and vacillating at high speed. Twilight’s vision took on a reddish-sepia tone as the world came back into focus. Turning, trotting in a tight circle, Twilight tried to get her bearings in the new red-tinted nebula.

“Look down,” her own voice told her.

“Huh? GAH!” Twilight gasped as she followed her own advice, coming face to face with a shadowy Twilight Sparkle lying flat on the floor. The Twilight Shadow laughed as she extended a pair of coiling forelegs to wrap around her real self’s throat. Though only shadow, the shadow pony’s grip was vicelike, and Twilight cried out as the shadow constricted, cutting off her air and painfully squeezing her slender neck.

‘Is this real or…? No!’

Twilight’s eyes glowed with the power of a quick three-alliteration Truesight.

“Look… dowww…nnn…”

The shadow-Twilight faded as quickly as she appeared, appearing insubstantial against the actual shadow on the ground. Twilight frowned at the illusion, looking up just in time to see the detailed outline of a swooping dragon as it flew by, jaws wide and low, intending to scoop her up and swallow her whole. Instead, she passed right through the illusion, easily able to separate real from imaginary.

Looking around, Twilight sent a spell conceptualization command to her horn to teleport--

Only for the spell to fizzle, even before it initiated.

“Teleportation isn’t sorcery, it's wizardry,” she realized, which meant that the ‘red cloud’ she was in actually blocked any non-sympathetic magic. Twinkling Star Light could actually lock a pony out of every school of spellcraft except one. If it scaled up, that meant she could hypothetically stop even a Princess from using her preferred form of magic when within the Horsehead Nebula.

“But, conversely,” Twilight speculated, spinning around and unleashing an intense beam of magenta. The spell had flowed freely and easily, not hindered by the cloud, but enhanced by it. She couldn’t use any other magic here, but her sorcery had actually been enhanced!

A reciprocal beam of light blue whipped down from above, like a billowing, glowing wave, gouging out a long spool of earth where it struck. Following it to source, she could just make out the silhouette of Star Light, her horn already shifting to cast another spell. No: not one spell. She was double casting again!

Illusionary energy beams mixed with real ones, saturating the air as Twilight ran, jumped, and prepared her counterattack. Erecting a barrier first to protect herself, then to brace and cushion herself from behind, Twilight Sparkle brought to bear the most powerful magical beam she had ever risked casting. A thin line of dark red unraveled from around her horn, fattening until snake-sized and snake-shaped.

Berkelium's Blinding Bouncing Beam.

The energy snake hissed and grew ten times in size as it left her horn, ripping through the air in search of a target. When it dove, face first, at Duchess Star Light, it also tore apart and vaporized a town-block-sized strip of earth, the tail of the magenta serpent slamming down amid the explosion and sending a plume of debris so high Twilight lost sight of it entirely.

For just a second, she even entertained the thought that she had won.

Then two long spokes of light emerged from within the tumult. They looked like beams, but then they began to fall, and the contrail of light they left behind didn’t diminish. They weren’t just beams. Twinkling Star Light was double-casting again. Beams and Barriers!

The planes of light hit the ground with a thunderclap, and immediately they began to angle themselves and move. The first circuit passed slowly, but then it accelerated, going faster and faster. Twilight felt a suction across her entire body. Her eyes darted down to her hooves, and then to the bits of debris around her. They were being sucked into the vortex of barriers and beams and, not encouragingly, shredded on contact.

‘And I can’t teleport away?’ Twilight realized. ‘Okay then! I’ll just blast it all away!’

Her horn glowed hot, and she conjured up another quad-verbum level Blinding Beam. The energy snake uncoiled from her horn, expanded, and surged forward into the dynamo. The ground shook, and she had to cover her eyes to protect them from the flash. The scarred landscape buckled, cracks spreading from the impact point, but ultimately revealing Star Light’s barrier storm to be undamaged.

Twilight felt her hooves leave the ground.

‘S-shoot!!’ In no way intending on getting sucked in, Twilight rapidly cast two more Blinding Beams. The first she directed to remain ‘bouncing’ or solid. Still in snake-form, it wrapped around her midsection and then plunged both head and tail deep into the ground, anchoring the unicorn Element of Magic firmly in place.

The second, Twilight held onto.

Extending her right front hoof, she willed the magical construct to expand and extend. It needed a part of her body to coil to while it did so, so she gave it her leg. The magenta serpent slithered past her shoulder and all the way down to her hoof, the tip of its tail still resting at the tip of her horn from which it had emerged. The entire thing hummed and burned with raw magic, straining to be unleashed. For the first time in the entire duel, Twilight truly felt the strain in her horn from the sheer level of magic she had to use.

‘This is… probably as much as I can do… with this! Any more and I’ll lose control and the spell will explode!’ Her eyes narrowed as she cast one more spell enhancing her already Truesight enhanced eyes. ‘There! THERE!’

The Blinding Bouncing Beam uncoiled like lightning from around her leg and horn, shooting up into the air in a wide arc and then abruptly changing course in midair. Twilight was tempted to try and send it down and into the center of the spinning barrier, but if she knew Twinkling Star Light, that was also where the barriers would be strongest. No: she needed to hit the construct at the weakest point and counter to the existing rotational velocity.

For a moment, her magic vanished in the spinning turbine.

Then there was a flash of blue and red and purple and one of the rotating barriers tore apart. The sparkling, failing magical debris promptly shredded the entire construct, sending huge barrier-panels flying through the air at speeds that would shock even a certain cyan pegasus. Blisteringly hot fragments of magic rained down, forcing Twilight to erect a spherical barrier around herself.

Hooves hitting the dirt, she began to run towards the fading conflagration, one last Bouncing Beam taking form and coiling around her horn. She came up short when her opponent finally revealed herself.

“There you are!” Twilight yelled, unleashing her magical attack.

“Hardly,” Star Light’s image replied, taking a step back and holding up a hoof as a shimmering panel appeared in midair. “If you’re using a four alliteration beam--”

Twilight’s attack passed into the shimmering mirror.

“--I simply need to use a four alliteration barrier,” the Duchess lectured with a confident grin. “This one is Ribald’s Radiant Reflective Rampart.”

And Twilight’s own serpentine beam re-emerged from the shimmering space, back the way it came, promising the same destruction as before, but this time directed at its creator. Twilight faced the oncoming energy beam, complete with glowing pits for eyes and a snake-like mouth, distended jaws opened wide.

“As if I don’t know that!” she cried, magic spinning around her horn like a whirlpool. The magenta quickly took on the form of a catcher’s mitt, and, as the Blinding Beam plowed into it, it became rendered down into a huge ball in the palm of the glove.

Twilight’s hooves ripped through the dirt and tortured grass as she struggled to stay upright.

Finally, the last of the four-alliteration level beam vanished into the palm of her magical catcher’s mitt. Without delay, she closed her eyes, concentrated, and the glove closed tight around its catch. Twilight opened her eyes again, confident she had the magic under control, and smirked at the older unicorn mare.

“I was so impressed by you mixing beams and barriers… I just had to do the same!” Twilight yelled, whipping her neck to the side and hurling the barrier-enclosed energy bomb back at Star Light. “Catch!!”

“Ahhhh. How dangerous.” Twinkling Star Light’s face contorted as she concentrated, gritting her teeth and standing on her rear legs alone. Holding out both her hooves, her horn audibly whined as it unleashed a rapid-fire burst of spells, like a machine gun.

Projecting out from in front of her, one light-blue hexagonal panel after another took form, each one so close in front of the one before they may have been dominoes. Twilight’s magic bomb plowed into the first one even before it was fully upright, shattering it into glass-like magical shards with an ear-splitting crash. The second barrier didn’t fare any better. Or the third. Or the tenth.

Or the twentieth.

But each one it passed through and shattered left it weaker, and by the time it had gotten through them all--

Twinkling Star Light caught the magical bomb between her hooves, snuffing it out between them with a snort. She fell forward and back onto four legs, her red and pink two-toned mane hanging raggedly around her shoulders. She still wasn’t breathing hard, but at least and at last she finally looked like she’d been exerting an effort.

“Energy dampening barriers?” Twilight guessed, catching her breath. “How many…?”

“Twenty-one,” Star Light replied, staring down the other mare. The cutie mark on her flank, of the constellation Libra, the celestial scales, all but glowed in gold against her plain white coat.

“Twenty-one,” Twilight repeated, her smile actually growing at the news. “That spell was… Ribald’s Radiant Reductive Rampart? Right? Not the Repeating Rampart?”

The Duchess nodded agreeably. “Correct.”

“That means twenty spells in a little more than a second.” Twilight did the math. “That means you have a potential cast speed of fifty to sixty milliseconds. That’s ten times faster than a normal unicorn. Five times faster than a pegasus can flap her wings.”

“It is also six times faster than a pony can blink,” Star Light added. “Let’s continue. I want to see more.”

“You know?” Twilight’s horn flashed in time with Star Light’s own. “I do too!”