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// 7 The Possession 
// Story: Numbers Are Ponies Too 
// by Telofy 
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The rain splashed in her face and the mud spluttered up from the soaked ground wherever she stepped.
Seconds later she noticed the effect of the whistle. Half the borough must have heard the signal, and all the shop owner, bartenders, and their bouncers stepped before their doors. It was too late for Amber to switch to her lost filly act. Everypony’s eyes were on her. They knew her for the whistlee.
They were in no hurry. They blocked the street ahead of her and closed in behind her. The closest street corners were cut off behind walls of a dozen ponies in both directions.
To her left she saw a narrow gap between two houses. It was just wide enough for a pony to pass through but more likely intended to keep fires from spreading.
She jumped, spun ninety degrees in the air, braked hard with her hindhooves, and dove into the cleft before the owner of the house could close in on her.
She had to jump over the trash ponies had thrown into the dead interstice. Every jump had her scraping along one of the walls if she did not keep precisely in the center. The raw bricks and mortar ripped her cloak and grated her flanks.
No pony had thought to conveniently discard a carpet in the gap. Amber cursed herself for not having prepared her escape while she was in the shop. C’mon, think of something!
Then she reached the other side. A last jump and she was out in the open. In midair a muscular foreleg caught her around her neck, blocked her momentum like a tree trunk, and slammed her to the ground. A coal gray stallion of Big Mac’s proportion loomed over her. A dozen more joined him.
The crash to the ground had paralysed her and sent her vision spinning. The huge stallion was thorough though and also pinned her down with one hoof. She could hardly breathe.
“Caught it!” he shouted.
“Thank you, good sir,” came the voice of the merchant from far away.
Amber labored to turn her head in the mud. Vertigo and the rain falling in her eyes made it hard for her to see him.
“First I need to take something back that is mine,” the merchant added, much closer now, “then she’s yours.”
Amber was not eager to find out what that meant. She had never managed to teleport, and with the pain blurring her vision and derailing her thoughts she might not be able to sustain a simple levitation. If she attempted to use magic to fight back, half a dozen unicorns around her would block her attempts. She had only one option.
Would the amulet force her out of her body and take over the reins? Or would she be able to control it? Had Trixie just been easily corruptible? Would whatever happens happen instantaneously or gradually? Would she first have to learn to use the amulet before she could do anything with it? Amber decided it was time for certainty.
With one swift magical motion she levitated the amulet from her inner pocket, along under her cloak, and toward her neck. She almost missed for dizziness, but when it touched her neck it righted itself.
The healing spell worked instantaneously. Her pain was gone. Her vision was clear.
Still covered in mud, pinned under a mighty hoof, and half strangled in a ripped cloak, she enjoyed for a moment that these dozens of ponies thought themselves her captors when in reality they were all at her mercy now. She noticed without judgment that her eyes narrowed and that a mischievous smile reached her lips.
The merchant stood over her now. “Please remove her cloak,” he told the bulky stallion.
“Bored now,” Amber said instead. Slowly she let fire emanate from beneath her like a lake of burning lava that flowed outward frictionlessly. She observed with delight that she had tinted it in yellow and red hues, just like her coat.
The stallion jumped away and stomped his hooves to extinguish the flames around them. The merchant took a step back as well. The rain evaporated when it hit the ground, so Amber was soon shrouded in a thin cloud of vapor.
Applying magic recursively, she levitated herself, turned herself upright, and set her hooves down in the center of the flames. They lapped up to her knees but did not harm her. Her erstwhile pursuers retreated several more steps.
Amber observed that she did not have to learn to use the amulet. It just did exactly what she wanted it to, even before she knew that she wanted it.
From one second to the next, the sea of fire sent out filaments that split before and met behind all the ponies that ringed her. Then they widened and coalesced until each pony was standing on just a tiny islet in an expanding sea of flames. Amber had to giggle at the beautiful symmetry. First they had caught her; now she had caught them. Tit for tat!
Four pegasi leaped into the air at once, but not two beats of their wings later, they were slammed back to the ground by Amber’s magic. She was amazed at her own swiftness. Her magic was precise yet fast as a reflex, and it took no conscious thought.
A few unicorns tried their tricks on her, but she never even learned what they had in mind. The moment the faintest aura shone around their horns, she had already stifled it in her magic grasp. Again she only truly noticed what she was doing when her magic already engulfed their horns. It was automatic, just like the times when she galloped down some steep stony slope and her hooves seemed to find the stable stones and plain patches before she even saw them.
Or did the amulet take hold of her in exchange for the illusion of control? She could pose the question but it was hard to think about it. Then she saw the flames again. Light yellow and dark red, almost unnaturally dark. Those had been her favorite colors for as long as she could remember. This had to have been her choice.
They had been captured for about as long as she had been captured under the iron hoof. Her business here was done.

Teleportation was based on a pony’s ability to not only convey magical energies into the temporal world but also to convey elements of the temporal world, themselves, into the realm of pure magic. This eversion of the boundary between the worlds was what made teleportation fundamentally different from other sorts of magic and inaccessible to most unicorns.
It was also dangerous. If ponies did not protect themselves with sufficiently strong magical shields while immersed in the seas of energy, their hair would be singed and scorched upon ejection.
Amber paid no heed to the intricacies of the technique until after it was all over. With one poof of red, she stood in her hotel room. Then she gaped. Naturally, she had never experienced anything like it.
“Oh, there you are,” her mother greeted her. “When did you learn to teleport?”
“It comes with age,” she replied without hesitation.
“And what’s with the necklace?”
Amber materialized a scarf around it. “Just a trinket. Where is the rest of the family?”
“Your dad’s back in the hotel kitchen, and your brother is getting a blowtorch for him for a crème brûlée. He should be back any moment.”
Then it struck Amber. Her brother was the enemy. He, and only he, had the power to divest her of the amulet although he did not know it. He must never find her!
“Actually, I’m just on a quick sojourn here to pick up some of my cards.” Amber tried to quickly scan the notecards they had prepared for future events. “Or I’ll just take all of them.”
That moment the door opened. “I got the blowtorch, but do you know where I can get a gas tank?”
With one magical swipe, Amber snatched and bundled up all the cards even while she already jumped out of the window. Once in the air, she levitated herself, her aura glowing vivid red, and shot up far above the city almost the height of the mountain summit.
The nothingness beneath her hooves made her queasy, so she materialized a carpet for herself to sit down on. Then she went through the cards.
Eight million starving griffons. Eight million. She could not grasp that huge number but the numeral with its googly eyes looked kind of cute for a moment. She turned the card ninety degrees to see it better. Then she got bored and tossed it out into the wind.
Bat pony filly discriminated against during school baseball match. She wanted to kick some juror’s tail! But then a mental image of a bat pony stared her into her mind’s eye. Those narrow pupils! Just like Nightmare Moon’s! She tossed the card out in panic.
Dam failure. That one was similar to the one Mare Do Well repaired, but she had the advantage of foreknowledge and could prevent it before any water could break free. This one, however, was far away from Ponyville. She did not even know where that town was. The name sounded completely unfamiliar. She tossed the card away.
Ten minutes later she had reduced the stack to a few cards. “Perfect!” she exclaimed.
The famous River Eddy’s little dog would go missing during the Equestria Games in Manehattan only a few days from then. She remembered the adorable Yorkshire terrier from billboards and she had also seen a photo in the newspaper the day before. She even knew his name. New Amber could not believe that Old Amber had completely dismissed this card. Tsk-tsk, Old Amber.
Manehattan was a bit too far for teleportation but the flight was quick enough. A strong shield protected her from cold winds and low pressure as she overflew Foal Mountain. Hollow Shades and its northeastern peak lay to her left and she could already see the skyline of Manehattan dimly through the atmosphere. A few more minutes and the suburbs passed by underneath her. She could even see the great tanks of September’s mother’s company where the liquid soap was stored.
She would never be allowed to work there. Liquid soap production was a job almost completely reserved to earth ponies, bat ponies, and pegasi, because so close to such great amounts of liquid soap, even a small magical sparkling, be it only of a unicorn that sneezed a little clumsily, would be amplified by the liquid crystals and sent out like a beacon over half of Equestria. Dragons—as well as a certain Ponyville fashion designer—had a fine sense for the scent of gemstones in the magical field, and when they arrived to find only soap, they sometimes burned the factories to the ground in their wrath.
Once she arrived in the city center, she materialized a few bits and rented a hotel room. Her family would be worried and start a search for her. She felt guilty about that. But then she remembered the adorable critter and his owner all distraught. Priorities, Amber!

“Your Highness, the ponies you requested to see.”
“Thank you,” Celestia said, and when the guard was about to leave she added, “You may stay, Praetoria.” Wide eyes looked at her. Hehe, it always catches them off guard, as it were, when I know their names.
She looked at her guests. A pegasus with scarlet mane; a thin, slightly pinched-looking earth pony; a unicorn colt with the blackest coat she had ever seen but white, almost luminescent mane and tail; and another earth pony with pink coat and brown mane, who, she could tell from their faces, must be September, the colt who stayed with the Rose family. He seemed scared.
“Not to worry,” Celestia said to the group. “I’ve asked you here because I need your help in finding your daughter and friend, Amber Rose.” She gestured for the ponies to sit. “A few hours ago, the Berry parents wanted to file a restraining order against your daughter.” She allowed some time for the parents to gasp. “They claimed that your daughter infected their daughter with a nasty flu. These are already unusual grounds for a restraining order, but moreover their daughter, Juniper Berry, was vehement that the illness she suffered was due to her own negligence. Further evidence in favor of her version is that Amber was—and continued to be—perfectly healthy when Juniper fell ill. Her parents’ version was only supported by their assertion that ‘Somepony had to be behind it.’
“Needless to say, the case was complicated enough that soon a small legion of my staff, including several guards, became involved as they deliberated the proper course of action. It was then, that some of them noticed that the family’s description of Amber Rose fit exactly that of a filly I’ve been observing on and off over the past few days.
“Only two days ago, for example, staff members alerted me to a strange sight, a pony who fit her description hovering over the city on a carpet, so high that only with a telescope I should see her clearly. Unfortunately she soon flew away.
“But I understand that that must’ve been around the time when you last saw her. You started the search a day later. According to the records, you saw her last when she leaped out of a second-floor window and then flew upward unaided. You also stated that she wore some sort of necklace. Do you remember what the necklace looked like?”
Three ponies looked at the son of the Rose family, Damask Rose. He shook his head. “She was wearing a scarf when I came in. When I saw her, she was already outside the window.”
“Did you see anything peculiar about the color of her magic? She must’ve had a magical aura around her when she levitated herself.”
“Allow me to go back for a minute,” he said. This confused the princess at first but then she saw that he drifted off into a state of reverie. First his unfocused eyes shone and a smile played around his lips. It was just of the sort of joyous expression she had often seen ponies wear who just obtained a working blowtorch at an economical price. A moment later she saw a colt’s recognition of his mother mirrored there, then an expression of confusion and concern. Damask returned. “Yes, her aura was vivid red, not auburn as it used to be.”
“Did any of you notice something strange about her eyes by any chance?”
It was the mother who answered. “Now that you mention it, yes. I thought it was just an optical illusion, but there was one moment when for a brief second her eyes seemed to shine reddish.”
“Then my suspicion was likely correct, namely that your daughter is under the influence of an old magical artifact that I believed destroyed, the Alicorn Amulet.” Then the one I destroyed must’ve been just another unicharm. I never can tell those things apart.
She counted only two gasps. “You are not surprised?” she asked Damask and September.
They hesitated. Finally September replied. “Well, we had been reading about the Alicorn Amulet and it was clear that earlier or later she would try to find it to destroy it or give it to you for safekeeping. She did not tell us about her concrete plans.”
“Good. I will have more questions about that later, but for now I would like you to travel to Manehattan to continue your search there. Praetoria will accompany you.” The ponies looked uncomprehending. “When the filly I now know to have been your daughter first hovered over the city and then took off, her direction was that of Manehattan. In between the only sites of importance are a mountain range and the Hollow Shades, so I think it is likely that she was headed for the city.
“The Berry family refused their assistance in the matter. The parents did, to be precise. They seemed relieved about Amber Rose’s disappearance and explicitly specified that they would not allow her daughter to be in contact with any of the Rose family.” She looked significantly at September. The colt seemed just confused.

The stadium was easy to find. From her hotel window, Amber could already see its lighting towers, and after a few minutes of walk, the oval of its membrane roof became visible over the roofs of the city.
A long double line of ponies wound around almost half the stadium when Amber arrived. She thought she should have come earlier, maybe even on the day before to sneak in and hide overnight, but she had not made any plans that she was aware of. She would have to improvise. It had been working out well for her over the past days.
Getting in line and waiting for half an hour or more only to be told that no tickets were left did not feel right at all. Amber just moseyed past all the sports enthusiasts hoping that some idea would occur to her. Many of them wore items of apparel that expressed their allegiance; others were more formally dressed but still wore a tie pin for the same purpose.
Soon she saw a black stretch carriage drawn by two steeds in black come to a hold on the stadium’s carriage parking lot. The two black-clad unicorns removed their harness and one of them opened a door. Amber hurried to get closer.
There she was! The famous River Eddy stepped out of the carriage, cradling her dog under one wing. She wore an extravagant dress that made her look like some sort of exotic plant.
Amber teleported on the opposite side of the carriage. That allowed her to get close to them quickly without having to fall into a hurried, undignified gallop. She also appreciated that she had materialized a gown for herself in imitation of a silken dress with red seams that she had taken a liking to when she inspected the ponies in the line.
She walked around the carriage. “Oh! Can it be? River Eddy! It’s such an honor to be able to welcome you to our stadium today!” Our stadium? Amber was not sure where she was going with this, but it had felt right. Yet she felt a slight flinch within.
The ponies in black spun around. River Eddy turned more slowly. “Yes, it’s quite an honor for me as well. I’ll be holding a speech later.” She inspected Amber. “Do you work at the stadium or did you mean your city’s stadium?”
“My dad’s the catering manager.” Amber again felt that flinch she could not comprehend.
“Oh splendid! Every stadium I’ve been to either had a great chef or a great medic!”
Amber wanted to correct her that he was the catering manager not the chef, but since it was a lie to begin with, she let it slide. Then she noticed the joke.
They reached an inconspicuous door that was promptly opened for them from within by a pony in livery. “Ms. Eddy. An honor. Welcome to the Manehattan Stadium. I will escort you to your suite.” He hesitated for a moment. “According to my list, you wanted to come with two bodyguards, but the filly is not listed.”
“We just met. She’s the daughter of the catering manager,” River Eddy replied.
“I didn’t even know she had a daughter! Great to get to know you then. What’s your name?” the liveried pony asked. At the same moment, Amber noticed how Ms. Eddy’s bodyguards looked at their client who winked to them in reply.
“It’s Amber.” She felt that River Eddy’s gesture had been significant but she did not understand why.
On their way to River Eddy’s suite, they passed a number of different luxurious rooms, all high up and all with floor-to-ceiling windows out onto the field. Some of these rooms could easily accommodate several score ponies. Others would be crowded with even a mere dozen ponies in them, but to make up for their smaller size, they were decorated even more lavishly and equipped with large, cushy couches.
It was one of those latter rooms that they eventually entered. The corner to the right of the door was reserved for the catering. A number of fixtures for preparing fresh food were installed there, but more trays on heating elements as well as yet unused heating elements indicated that more food was brought to the room from some central kitchen.
Thanks to her father’s influence, Amber recognized and could have named most of the dishes. For just a short moment, she considered reinforcing her cover story by presenting them to River Eddy, but a feeling swept the thought away. The feeling told her that it was unnecessary. She let herself fall into one of the couches.
The opening ceremonies had hardly started when one of the coordinators came up the aisle to escort Ms. Eddy down to a podium they had erected at one side of the stadium. She set her dog on her couch, told him to stay put, and went down to the podium together with her bodyguards and the coordinator.
Amber noticed the waves of laughter going through the audience, but she did not pay attention to the speech for long because after a few minutes the dog hopped from the couch and followed some whiff that Amber could not smell out of the door to the hallway. She followed.
The dog paid little attention to Amber, so she followed closely. A minute later, they were in a large room that was furnished like a restaurant. At that moment, however, hardly anypony was interested in eating. Most of the ponies were gathered at the fieldward window front. Amber saw that another speaker had taken Ms. Eddy’s place on the podium. He was talking turns reciting a prepared speech together with a filly, probably his daughter.
Amber was about to follow Ms. Eddy’s dog out through an inconspicuous door when she saw his owner fly down to the podium and land with a loud thud. Her bodyguards were hurrying to keep up.
“I’m going to let you finish,” she said to the speaker, “but this is an emergency.” She turned the microphone toward herself. “Citizens of Manehattan, valued guests! It is with a heavy heart that I have to inform you of the tragedy that has befallen us on this day of celebration.” She paused dramatically. “My dog has vanished. If you see the little Yorkshire terrier desperately searching the confines of this stadium trying to find his way back to me, please lend him your guidance and bring him back to my lounge.” She indicated her suite. “I promise a thousand bits for whoever finds him and brings him back to me. He listens to the name …,” but Amber could not hear the rest of her sentence. At the mention of the thousand bits finder’s reward, the stadium erupted into chaos as thousands of ponies started to search all niches and crannies for the pet, and pagasi circled outside and even within the hallways.
For a moment longer, Amber watched the other speaker hopelessly trying to gain the audience’s attention back, then she turned to follow the diminutive dog through the door it had managed to press open.
She entered a part of the building where a laminate floor replaced the soft carpet she had grown accustomed to, and where the walls were of béton brut and no longer hung with series of framed photos. She caught up with him just as he entered the kitchen.
The dog stopped close to the entrance, where at least a dozen trays of fried soy cutlets filled the air with spicy odors. They were too high up for him to reach them.
A waiter restocked a cart with a few of the trays and was already hurrying off again when she noticed Amber. “Dogs are not allowed in here.”
As if he had heard her, the terrier abandoned the trays on the table and followed the cart instead.
“Uhm, we’re about to leave, I guess,” Amber said, following the dog.
The waiter took a staff elevator one floor up. Locked in the small room, Amber had to tug the dog softly on the tail to keep it from pilfering the soy cutlets.
The waiter brought trays to a few of the luxury suites. Soon Amber recognized one of them. An exuberant pegasus flew toward her.
“Amber! You are an angel!” Ms. Eddy swept up her dog while landing in front of her. “Wherever did you find him?”
“Uhm, I kind of just, uh,” Amber explained.
“Come on down! We have to bring these glad tidings of joy to the world!”
River Eddy grabbed Amber in one foreleg, her dog in the other and flew all the way down to the podium again. The speaker with his daughter were still unable to continue their speech, but the stadium security had booted enough ponies from the premises to restore some first signs of order. Many of the rows were almost empty now.
“Ponies of Manehattan! Ponies of Equestria! Nonponies of the world! The state of emergency is hereby lifted: My dog has been restored to me!” Slowly, hundreds of disappointed ponies returned to their seats. “This filly, this fairy, this angel, has granted my dearest wish and has reunited me with him.” She held her dog up on one hoof and Amber on the other. Amber tried not to look as floppy up there as the dog did. “Amber! Please tell the world how you granted this dearest of wishes to me, my dear.” She held her toward the microphone.
“It’s just what I do,” Amber said. Her voice reverberated back to her from all sides. A stadium full of thousands of ponies had just heard her voice. It was intoxicating.
“Granting wishes is just what you do. A little fairy indeed!”
Amber yearned to say more to this stadium full of attentive ponies, but she could not think of anything. Then she noticed the other filly, the daughter of the other speaker, craning her neck toward the microphone.
“Amber?” she asked. “If you grant wishes, could you grant me one wish too?”
“Of course. Anything you’d like. What is it that you wish for?” Amber again enjoyed hearing her voice from all sides and seeing the thousands of spectators in rapt attention.
“I wish to see a real live dragon!”
“Of course. I will show you a real live dragon before these games draw to a close!” As much as she enjoyed herself, Amber was also shocked at her own promise. Where would she find a dragon? Those large, pleading eyes with three reflections—she could not possibly let that poor filly down.
“Thank you,” the filly said.
It was time to yield the stage to the legitimate orators. With a heavy heart, Amber followed Ms. Eddy up the stairs back to the suite. Climbing the stairs, she suddenly remembered the soap factory she had overflown. She knew how she would get that filly her dragon!
When she heeded her surroundings again, Ms. Eddy was climbing next to her. She folded one wing over Amber. “Who are you? I know you’re not the daughter of the catering manager.”
How did she know! “I’m just another filly.”
“C’mon.” A glottal fry accentuated her disbelieve.
Amber felt uncomfortable in the situation. Spontaneously she teleported away.
She found herself on the roof of the stadium again. The membrane was so taut that it hardly gave way under her hooves and the view of the city was glorious. Her position was tactically advantageous as well, because from this higher vantage point, she could make out the soap factory.
Even with her amulet-enhanced magic, it took her some concentration to shape a tornado, but when it hit the ground, she was satisfied with the result. Two of the tanks bust into shreds of metal and the liquid crystal was sucked up into the clouds. A minute of maneuvering later, the mass of soapy water reached the patch of sky above the stadium, held in place by a gigantic aura of red.
A third speaker, maybe some Manehattan politician Amber did not know, occupied the podium when the sun was blotted out by the vivid red cloud. A few ponies in the audience noticed the filly at the edge of the roof, her horn shining and sparkling in the same distinctive tone of red. Some may have even noticed the amulet glowing in the same color beneath Amber’s silken dress. The politician interrupted her speech and stared skyward.
Amber was sweating. The exercise was demanding even with amulet, and she was glad that she could now just release her hold. The red aura vanished, and the cloud shone in thousands of iridescent colors in the sky.
She had not expected that it would take so long for the soapy water to reach the ground. The scintillating play of the sun on the crystal structures captivated the audience for half a minute longer, then the politician could gain their attention back. A few paragraphs later, the stadium, the field, a third of the audience, and Amber herself were bathed in soapy rain. Everything shone in brilliant colors. It was beautiful.
A few ponies realized what it was and ran toward the exits. Most were trying to contrive of actual or magical umbrellas to protect themselves from the sticky downpour. The politician ran for cover.
Soon Amber saw the first dragon on the southern horizon. She teleported to the podium. “Within a few minutes, a dragon will arrive at this stadium. Your …,” Amber looked around but could not find the filly who had wished for a dragon. “The filly’s wish has been granted.”
Amber noticed a commotion behind her and turned to see September come through a gate. Praetoria was talking to some of the security guards.
The dragon was faster than she had expected. While Amber’s back was turned on much of the stadium, he arrived and circled it twice. He noticed the ruse, and he did not enjoy being fooled.
His fiery breath set several sections of the roof membrane ablaze. The thin film of soapy water hardly slowed the fire down. “Bucking soap!” he roared.
Now thousands of ponies ran toward the exits and onto the field, countless pegasi took flight, often with loved ones in their grasp. A few dexterous unicorns merged their fields to shield the masses from the drops of molten roof membrane.
The little filly had wished to see a dragon. Amber had granted her wish. That was all that counted.
Another burst of fire melted some steel cables, and a lighting array came crashing down next to the stage just as September reached it. It missed him by inches.
“September! What are you doing here?” Even though she had her back turned to it, the microphone picked up her cries. Three more ponies emerged from the gate and ran toward her. “No! Damask! Don’t come closer!”
“Hei sisko?” he said tentatively.
Amber did not reflect on what she did next. She walked straight toward her brother and stopped inches from him looking him straight in the eyes, their noses almost touching.
With a quick motion of her right hoof she ripped the amulet off her neck. “There you go.”
He took it into his magic.
Not at once but within just a few seconds Amber’s world collapsed twice. First the posthypnotic suggestion collapsed. No! My amulet! Then the power of the amulet itself collapsed. No! What have I done!
Amber looked into the stunned faces of her parents, the security ponies, and some of the audience who heard the exchange over the din of the conflagration. She wanted to apologize, she wanted to flee to some part of Equestria where no pony knew her name, she wanted to escape into the past again and make it all undone.
She decided that it was not the right time for any of these plans. She shot lines of fire across the floor of the podium while she turned toward her young earth pony friend.
“September, rally up some pegasi and coordinate them to create a huge deluge over the stadium. Try to find something acidic to mix into the water. We need to extinguish the fire, and dissolve and dilute the soap.” She jumped over one of her fiery lines. “I’ll distract the dragon.”
The lengths of carpet had burned through along Amber’s lines of fire and she ripped a segment from the floor, pulled it taut, jumped onto it, and shot out over the field.
“Nothing but bucking soap!” the dragon shouted in a voice almost too deep for ponies to perceive, except by pallesthesia. He kicked a lighting tower. The half-molten trusses bent and snapped. The tower hit a burning section of the stadium roof. It caved in on itself and scattered debris across the field.
Amber dove down to the field, dodged a falling floodlight, flew so low that the carpet scooped up some of the puddles of soapy water, then gained altitude again and concentrated hard to recreate the complete shields that the amulet had allowed her to hold during flight. It was not a question of raw magical power, she found, but of technique, and she remembered some of the technique that she had used so effortlessly when she was under the curse.
A second, smaller dragon stopped with two powerful beats of his wide wings and regarded the stadium from aloft. “What is your substance, whereof are you made, that millions of strange shadows on you tend?” he rumbled.
“Just bucking soap!” the first dragon replied.
“I know. It felt too big anyway.”
The first dragon tackled the stadium and deformed the elliptical structure into an egg. The remaining sections of roof membrane snapped. “I hate soap!”
“Dude, chill. It’s not like they spilled all that soap on purpose.”
“Yes they did! They just love messing with us! Don’t believe their lies!”
The shield appeared around Amber. Now it was simple to shape it to resemble the sharp edges of a cut gemstone and opaque it from the outside in ruby colors.
The second dragon pointed. “Look! Where did that come from? Ruby, ruby, ruby, ruby!”
“Another ruse, I’m telling ya! Rubies don’t fly.” He stared at the gem. “It’s mine!”
“Whoever catches it first!” the second dragon countered.
Amber saw the two dragons dive at her from the front, slightly to port. They had come from a southeastern direction, so that’s where she had to lure them back to.
Upward acceleration hurt the most. Amber aimed just slightly above the outer edge of the stadium wall, right through the structure that had held the stadium roof only minutes before. The dragons changed their course to intercept their gem.
Amber was pressed into the slightly slanted carpet with two times her weight. She could no longer stand, yet it seemed to her that the first dragon would intercept her anyway. She slightly corrected her course, then bit her teeth together and cranked the acceleration up by another notch.
“The gem’s escaping!”
“No!”
Her ribs compressed her lung painfully. The carpet, although magically tautened, bent under her multiplied weight. She shot through the bare roof structure.
One outstretched claw grasped for her. The longest talon scraped along the shield. Suddenly she was high above the city.
Amber continued accelerating but reduced the force enough so she could scramble to her hooves. The dragons lost time changing their course, but a few flaps of their muscular wings later they were in pursuit again.
Shortly later Amber dared to look back again. Manehattan lay far behind. Thick dark clouds were building up above the city. Good job, September.
But the dragons were also farther away than she had expected. They were already flying as fast as they could. She had to make sure they did not give up on the chase.
She braked the carpet and turned to the bow again.
A third dragon was dead in front of her, on collision course, her mouth wide open. Amber shot upward at almost forty-five degrees, having her body squeezed against the carpet again. The remaining soapy water was pressed off to the sides.
“Just soap again in Manehattan,” one of the pursuers warned the newcomer.
“But this one looks yummy! Why does it fly?” she asked.
“It’s mine!” the largest dragon shouted at her.
The new dragon reacted immediately and climbed at an even steeper angle while she spiraled around her own axis.
Amber whizzed past above her, but as she passed, the dragon turned again and engulfed the flying ruby in her fiery breath.
The carpet and Amber’s dress steamed in the heat and caused her eyes to tear up. She blinked it away. “Shields holding,” she reassured herself.
Beneath her was only the wide ocean now. If the shield collapsed, the airstream would knock her off the carpet at once. To the right, almost behind her, she could see the skyline of Fillydelphia. Baltimare was already visible as well.
All three dragons were behind her now, the female one much closer than the males.
A second burst of fire hit her from behind.
The aft shields failed at once and the carpet, Amber’s tail, and her formally elegant gown were set ablaze. She ripped off the clothes and waved her tail to extinguish the fire, but the carpet was almost dry again and the burning material filled the remaining shields with noxious smoke that burned in her eyes and lung.
“It’s just another one of those ponies!” The first dragon joined into the fire-spitting.
Amber stood at the bow of the almost consumed carpet when she saw the third wave of fire roll toward her.
She felt her consciousness on the verge of slipping away as she gasped for air, still she managed to jerk the remaining carpet up behind her as a flimsy substitute for the shield. The airflow hit it much harder than it hit her, and she was catapulted out into the air.
The third wave of fire burned the carpet away within the second but it shielded the heat enough for Amber to get away with some more singed hair. Now she had fresh air as well, too much of it, in all directions.
The first dragon drew breath again, but the others stopped him.
“She’s not gonna survive this anyway,” Amber heard one of them say. Then she had fallen too far to hear them.
She tried frantically to levitate herself like she had with the amulet. The gasses still burned in her lungs, her eyes burned worse, her head hurt. She tried to find something out on the open sea that she could levitate up to her as a carpet substitute. She could see nothing and even if she did, it would have been out of her reach until it was much too late.
Still dazed by the gasses, she appreciated the foreboding ambiguity in the term terminal velocity. She shook her head. No, don’t give up!
She tried to create a shield below herself to use the air resistance to slow down her fall. If it had any effect, she did not notice it. The waves, their surface surely hard as stone at her speed, became visible. Mere seconds away.
One slip in her concentration and the shield lost its precarious balance against the airflow and spun about setting Amber spinning as well. Up and down changed too quickly, she could not recreate it.
Sky flashed past, then the water, sky again, water. The surface raced toward her. Amber held her breath just on the off-chance that she might survive the plunge.
Something touched her softly from below and stopped her spinning. Then less softly. A second more and it was hard as a brick wall.
Her vision was reeling, she could not see where she was, but it was not water, she could breath. Then the force of the brick wall increased further and she could not breath anymore.
Then it was all over. The brick wall was soft again, and she hung limply from its edge. She puked into the water below. It was so close, she could almost touch the wave crests with her hooves.
A different hoof touched her shoulder.
“Amber, you look awful.” It was Juniper who greeted her so politely.
At once the two hugged.
“How do you do that, saving my life all the time?”
“September said they would go looking for you in Manehattan, he and your family that is. I was feeling better and wanted to come along, but my parents wouldn’t allow it.” Juniper made a spiraly gesture toward her head. “I snuck out on the hotel mattress as you can see. Good thing too, so I could catch you much more softly.”
“Why weren’t you with my family at the stadium then?” Amber asked.
“They had a few hours head start. When I got there, Damask told me that the three dots on the horizon were you with two dragons in pursuit, so I figured you might need help. When I saw you fall from the sky, I went so fast my shield started to glow. So cool!” She beamed at the scorched and dizzy Amber. “Oh, keep an eye out for your mom on the way back. She couldn’t keep up.”

“Your Highness, you wanted to see me?”
“Amber Rose, yes.” Princess Celestia motioned for her guard to close the door through which she had escorted Amber. “I want to thank you for finding the amulet for me. In the wrong hooves, it could’ve caused great harm.”
The princess set down a plate of cloud cake and gulped down her last bite. She indicated a zafu next to the one she was sitting on. Amber sat down.
“It has caused great harm in my hooves,” Amber said. “Did anypony get hurt?” Of course they did. Her mother had treated Amber’s shallow burns on their train ride back to Canterlot because the hospitals in Manehattan were all over capacity.
“Many burns and bruises but nothing serious. The evacuation went very smoothly.” The princess looked out of the window at her beautiful sunset. “However, rebuilding the stadium will take a few years, and the Equestria Games will have to move to a different city this time if they can even still take place.” She turned back to Amber. “You better stay away from Manehattan for a few years.”
“Then I’m not going to prison?” Amber felt constricted as if she were pressed into a carpet during a strong acceleration. What will be my punishment?
“Punishment has no place in restorative justice. The taking of a pony’s freedom is an extreme measure that is reserved as a very last resort when there is no hope that the criminal will amend their ways and they pose a threat to society. There have been very few cases throughout the centuries that required such extraordinary means.” She gulped, then her aspect lightened up. “And I don’t think you would do all that nonsense again.”
But Amber was only partially relieved. “It must seem as if the amulet had controlled me, but throughout I always felt that I was controlling it, not vice versa.” Now Amber gulped too and continued in a sotto voce she had rarely heard herself use. “Some things I did even now seem natural to me though of course I would never actually do them.”
To her surprise Celestia just nodded. “Yes. I think I’ve gained some insight into the way the amulet works. Central to its ability to channel such tremendous magical energies through common unicorns appears to be that it forces extreme spontaneity by suppressing some conscious functions—and thereby also the conscious parts of what in the past has been termed the superego, the ethical component of your personality.
“But no one component of your personality makes you. It takes all of them to form the Amber that stands in front of me, and that Amber I trust to make decisions that are loving and rational.
“Just as I trust that without the amulet, Trixie will stop short of enslaving a whole town, ignoring the fact that she won’t be able to anyway.”
“You know about that?” Amber was not actually surprised this time.
“Your brother briefed me on your plans, which is the main reason I wanted you to visit me here. We should put your endeavors on a little more, dare I say it, professional basis.
“I have established two teams, one to investigate the unusual mode of time travel that you have experienced and one to do what you did, to try to avert any catastrophes that can be reconstructed from the material that traveled with you. To redeem yourself, you will be required to advise both teams in any way you can.
“I also restored your graduation from school. If your advisory functions should bore you, you will be required to pick up your studies again, so you can continue to redeem yourself past the eight years in which your memories will be of value.”
Amber was an itsy bit overwhelmed. “Thank you. I will assist in any way I can. Has my brother also briefed you on the problems that will befall the Griffon Kingdom in about five years? You should be in a position to warn them.”
“Good to know the amulet has left no permanent damage,” Celestia said. “Yes, he has and I will, as soon as I have evaluated the evidence. Your brother is already with the second of the teams recreating your notecards from memory. You should join them. My guard will show you the way.”
“Yes, I’ll double-check them. Sometimes his memory plays tricks on him, though he doesn’t like to admit it.”
A few valedictions later, Amber was on the way to pick up where she had left off a few days earlier. Eight years seemed like a very long time to her, but what did Celestia expect her to do once she could no longer predict any disasters? Or would she have to watch the decades of her life dwindle away all in the knowledge that the only eight years of her life that had held any purpose were gone? Life like that seemed utterly pointless.
They passed the guarded door to Luna’s bedchamber just when the night shift took over. The guard who escorted Amber greeted all of them, then she guided Amber down a staircase and they were out of sight again.
No, there were a million ways for her to leave a positive impact in the world even without her foreknowledge. She could support campaigns for bat pony rights, organize marches against cutie mark readings, expose companies that cut corners in dam safety, and further the research into earth pony magic. Amber had her work cut out for her, finally.