My Little Denarians

by Chengar Qordath


Harry Almost Dies ... Again.

After one or two quick stops to pick up a few last minute supplies ranging from a couple magical odds and ends to some trail mix, beef jerky, a bottle of chocolate syrup, and some bottled water, the three of us started our journey into the Outside. I would’ve preferred coke over the water, but Lash insisted we stick with stuff that actually had health value instead of letting me make all our choices based on minor, unimportant things like what tasted good.

Going through the Outside was, impossible as it seems, even more unpleasant the second time around. Well, I suppose it was actually the third time, but between Discord and Lasciel’s messing with my brain I didn’t remember my trip from Equestria back to Earth, so it was the second time for me. I guess Pinkie’s experience with dimensional travel counted for something; Lash knew all the theory of traveling the Outside, but she’d never actually done it before. Practical experience counts for a lot with this kind of thing.

Then again, last time we’d been traveling the Outside, I hadn’t been holding onto a tracking spell. That was probably making things a lot worse for me, especially since things like figuring out which way to go was very difficult in a place that doesn’t follow any of the rules of reality. The Outside is formless; there is no up or down. Or more like there was an up, but it was actually right, while right was inwards, and down was the smell of the color green.

Yet somehow, I could tell we were getting closer to our destination. Don’t ask me to explain how I knew that; I just did. Maybe all of Pinkie Pie’s random craziness was less to do with her naturally being lovably eccentric, and more a side effect of spending way too much time in the Outside. Running around in a place so utterly alien to any normal conception of reality can’t be very healthy for the brain.

If not for the reference points provided by the tracking spell, I would be hopelessly lost; no wonder Lash had been so dubious about our ability to retrace the route Pinkie Pie took us on to reach Equestria. As it was I was hopelessly lost, except for knowing where Earth and three other places were.

Actually following the tracking spell was a bit difficult, since on top of the fact that navigating the Outside was doing unpleasant things to my brain, the tracking spell pointed in three different directions. Lucky for me, each of the pulls felt a bit different. It was probably a safe bet that the weakest of the three pointed to Equestria, since only one of Rainbow’s friends was there. Out of the other two, one felt slightly stronger than the other, which I guess meant Rainbow had favorites among her friends. Or maybe it was something else entirely; the Outside isn’t exactly known for consistency and logic.

After what could have been anything from less than a minute or several years, we finally arrived at wherever the heck we were headed to. From the looks of things, we’d landed in the middle of a lightly wooded forest, and I could see a rather large mountain close by, with more off in the distance. There was a bit of a chill in the air, but after the last few months I’d spent in Arctis Tor, it wasn’t nearly enough to bother me.

The shock and disorientation of arrival was actually not quite as bad as it had been when we arrived at Equestria. A quick look down gave me a pretty good idea as to why that was; I’d gotten to keep my good old human body. That was a relief.

Don’t get me wrong, cartoon ponies were neat and all, but I liked them a lot better when I didn’t have to be one of them. Speaking of which, I took a quick look around until I located Rainbow Dash. Rainbow was still her old self too, which crossed one more issue off of the potential worry list. Since Equestria had a no humans rule, I’d been concerned that we might end up in a universe that had a no talking magical cartoon ponies rule. Shapeshifted ponies would’ve been a complication, and I never like it when things get complicated.

“Lash, Dash, you guys alright?” What can I say; I couldn’t resist the urge to wordplay.

“I appear to be essentially intact.” Lash answered.

“I feel like I just went to one of Pinkie’s mega-parties.” Rainbow groaned. “Except then I stuck around for the after-party, the after-after-party, and then the last-night’s-party-was-a-great-party party, and didn’t get any time to sleep in between them.”
I guess being best friends with a party pony has its downsides. Speaking of Pinkie Pie… “We’re not back in Equestria, and this place looks a bit too wild and natural to be sci-fi land, so I guess that means we followed Pinkie and Fluttershy.” I turned to the pegasus. “Rainbow, can you pop up and scout around for a bit? Try not to let anyone see you; I’d rather play it safe until we know what’s going on.”

Rainbow saluted with hoof to her forehead, and shot up into the air. Hopefully she would be able to dig up something to help narrow down where exactly we’d wound up. All we really knew at the moment was that Nicky was hunting something that would let him take on dragons. That wasn’t much to go off of, since at least 95% of medieval fantasy has dragons somewhere in the mix. When it came to tools for killing dragons in fictionland, Nicky had no shortage of options.

I’ve only ever had one encounter with a Dragon back in the real world, when I’d run into Ferrovax back at Bianca’s little shindig. If Ferro was anything the judge the rest of them by, the Dragons back in my neck of the woods were some of the heaviest hitters around. Ferrovax had just about reduced me to a quivering wreck by just saying part of my Name. Then again, Michael had managed to kill a Dragon once, back before half a dozen bullets forced him to retire from being a Knight of the Cross. Problem is, that wasn’t the best way to judge how strong Dragons could be. By everything I understood, the Knights didn’t really fit into any sort of normal power arithmetic. From what I’d seen of them in action, the Swords gave their wielders as much power as the big guy upstairs thought they needed.

Anyway, the bottom line is that in the real world, unless you happen to have an Excalibur-wielding holy warrior handy, Dragons are really bad news. They’re strong. Real strong. Squish wizards like they’re tiny little insects strong.

However, a group of plucky adventurers going up against a dragon and killing the heck out of it was one of the archetypal plots of any Medieval Fantasy work. Swords, spears, and spells of dragonslaying were a dime a dozen in fictionland, and if Nicky got his hands on one of them, and brought it into the real world, that could give him all kinds of leverage. If Nicky got his hands on say, a Vorpal Sword, he could just kill the Dragons off to mess with the status quo, or even worse, he could hit them with the classic ‘join us, I make with the snicker-snacking’ offer. The Denarians were bad enough on their own; if they somehow managed to blackmail, bribe, or bully Ferrovax and the other Dragons into throwing their lot in with them, I might as well just kiss my ass goodbye.

Good news was, this place didn’t look nearly trippy enough to be Wonderland, so that’s one possibility down. Several million left to go. “Right then,” I was half thinking out loud, and half tossing ideas Lash’s way. “You said our magic usually tries to follow the rules of whatever other universe we’re in, right? So, let’s do a bit of experimenting; that should help us narrow down where we are.”

Nicky was going to regret taking the fight into fictionland; he might be seriously bad news when in a straight-up fight, but when it came to knowledge of pop culture I could kick his ass with both of my metaphorical hands tied behind my metaphorical back.

First up, since I already had the tracking spell to find Rainbow’s friends up and running, I concentrated on it. Instead of its usual effect of tugging my pentacle in the direction I needed to go, a ghostly line of blue light sprang out of my left hand, pointing off into the distance.

Huh, that was different. A bit flashier than my usual, but I could work with it. It was still a “go this way to find what you’re looking for” spell, after all.

I took up my staff, and tried channeling a simple force spell through it. Nothing. It was as if my staff was an ordinary stick of wood instead of a carefully constructed magical focus. I tried my blasting rod next, and got the same result. Well crap, that was bad news.

My shield bracelet was next on the list of things to check. I was a bit surprised when the usual quarter-dome of protective light sprang into place around me. Looks like not all of my magical foci were useless. I had a working theory going now. Next up I tried triggering one of my kinetic force rings. It also worked just fine. Interesting.

“Arctis. Fuego. Forzare.” My combat evocations were working just fine, even without my staff or blasting rod to provide the extra level of control I usually needed. After tossing out the three spells I felt momentarily a bit drained, but a couple seconds later I was back to normal.

“Alright, here’s what I got so far Lash. General-purpose magical foci like a staff or blasting rod don’t work, but things with specific effects imbued in them like my shield bracelet or my rings do. That rules out a lot of places like Middle Earth where wizards use their staffs for all kinds of things. My other spells are working normally, and I don’t feel like I have some sort of hard limit on how many I can cast or need to study or prepare them before I toss them out. So, that means we’re not in one of Billy’s Arcanos campaigns or anything like that.”

Lash cast a few more spells herself, and then gave a slight nod. “After I cast several spells in succession, I feel slightly drained, but the sensation fades after a short time. There is also no indication that we are drawing power from any external source to create our magical effects.”

“Curiouser and curiouser.” I tried to come up with another experiment we could try to narrow down where exactly we’d wound up, when I realized there was something else I’d overlooked. “Nicky and his crew aren’t all that culture-savvy. If they’re raiding fictionland, they’d have to pick something they’re actually familiar with. That’d narrow it down to classic, well-known stuff.”

“Unless Nicodemus had his underlings do research before launching this particular venture.” Lash countered. She had a point; Nicky had a whole network of cultists and lackeys supporting him, and he’s not the sort of guy who goes into any situation without a plan. He’d probably had people spending months or even years looking through every bit of fiction they could get their hands on to find the best things for him to steal.

Fun thought; he’d probably also had a bunch of his goons researching and writing up reports on My Little Pony. I have to admit, I would have loved to see the looks on all his minions’ faces when Nicky first announced his plan to unleash death and terror upon the world with a little girl’s cartoon. His peers must have put poor demon-cultist Bob through all kinds of mockery when Bob had to watch the entire run of the cartoon multiple times to put together the psychological profile on Fluttershy that Nicky wanted.

Any further rumination on the fate of demon-cultist Bob came to an abrupt end when Rainbow Dash returned, diving almost straight down from the sky, until she dramatically flared her wings at the last second to kill her momentum and come to a smooth landing. I gave a polite little bit of applause, prompting the pegasus to hover off the ground a few feet and take a bow. “Yeah, I know, I’m awesome.”

“Her head is inflated enough without you encouraging her, Harry.” Lash grumbled.

“You’re just jealous that you’re not as super-cool, awesome and amazing as Rainbow Dash.”

“Don’t forget radical.” Dash added.

“Oh no, we can’t leave out Rainbow’s radicalness.”

“I gave up Lasciel’s mantle just to stand by your side.” Lash groaned. “I must have been suffering from a bout of temporary insanity when I did that.”

“You got taken in by my roguish good looks and lovable charm. Happens all the time.”

I was a bit tempted to keep pushing Lash’s buttons, but we did kind of need to move along with the whole saving the multiverse thing. “Find anything Rainbow?”

The pegasus pointed a hoof off in roughly the same direction my modified tracking spell pointed to. “There’s some kinda village over a couple miles that way. I didn’t get too close, but the people there look like they’re humans like you guys. I could also kinda see a city over on the other side of the mountain. Want me to go check it out? It looked like it was pretty far away, but I could get there and back in half an hour, tops.”

“Let’s not go exploring just yet.” I told the pegasus. “My tracking spell seems to be more-or-less pointing at the village, so I think we should check that out first. Besides, I don’t think it would be a very good idea to split up. We still don’t really know where we are or what we’re dealing with, and if you go too far away I won’t be able to keep the tracking spell up. It’s based on your magic-friendship bond, after all.”

“Yeah yeah, don’t split the group, I got it.” Rainbow waved a hoof dismissively. “But you guys are gonna want me to hide when you go into the human village, right?”

“Probably a good idea.” I admitted. “Lash and I could get in enough trouble on our own wandering into a village where we aren’t going to fit in. Leather dusters, jeans, t-shirts, and sneakers don’t exactly match the standard medieval peasant fashion trends.” That’s not to mention that if we were in medieval fantasyland there was a decent chance the village up ahead wasn’t a human settlement. Rainbow Dash said there were humans there, but even if she did get a close enough look to make out the little details, Rainbow didn’t have the background to know the difference between a human and your standard fantasy Elves and Dwarves; she’d just classify them as humans with weird pointy ears or short, bearded humans.

If the frown on her face was any indication, Rainbow wasn’t happy about being stuck on the sidelines, even if she understood the reasoning behind it. “Alright, but if you guys take too long, or it looks like you’re in trouble, I’m busting in to save your fla – asses.”

I got yet another dirty look from Lash. I was never going to live my little expansion of Rainbow’s vocabulary down. It didn’t help that, if her giggling was any indication, Rainbow found my predicament amusing. I have a bad feeling that, if anything, the fact that I get in trouble every time uses the one mildly naughty word she’d picked up from me would just encourage her to use it more.

The three of us made the journey to the village in relative silence. Rainbow Dash kept a loose sort of aerial patrol over us as we walked, while Lash and I mostly occupied ourselves with hammering out all the little details of how our magic worked in this particular little pocket of reality. Sure, we knew the basics of it all, but the devil’s in the details. It definitely would have been bad news if I didn’t find out until mid-battle that while most of my combat evocations were working fine, some of the spells like my gravity manipulation magic had come out a bit weird.

After about half an hour of walking, we started hitting the outskirts of the village and the next time I glanced up our pegasus companion had already made herself scarce. I didn’t plan on doing a whole lot of mingling with the locals; the longer we spent, the better the chances were that we’d give ourselves away as not really belonging here.

Plus, we were on a bit of a tight schedule. There wasn’t any sort of definite time frame, but our fight with Prziel-Dash had confirmed that Nicky and the rest of his crew had found out that I wasn’t playing on their team any more. Giving Nicky a lot of time to plan his counter-attack wasn’t a good idea. That’s not to mention what Discord might do when/if he found out I was running around breaking the ponies out of his mind control. If I were Discord, my first move in that situation would be to remove Twilight from the picture. You needed all six of the ponies to make the Elements of Harmony work. No Twilight means no Elements, and no Elements means Discord wins.

The village itself looked a lot like what I’d always imagined a medieval peasant village would look like. Not quite as much mud and manure as I’d been afraid I would have to deal with, but still more than enough to be noticeable. The village itself was a collection of half a dozen or so wood and stone buildings sitting right next to a river. The large mountain I’d noticed earlier loomed over the entire village. A quick consultation of my new tracking spell showed a ghostly blue line passing through the village and right up to the foot of the mountain.

Of course whatever artifact of doom our corrupted demon-ponies were after would be on the giant mountain. Putting it somewhere convenient and easily accessible would just be too much trouble for everyone. Then again, this is coming from a guy who stored Excalibur in his umbrella stand for a couple months, so maybe I can be a touch too cavalier when it comes to my methods of handling and storing objects of power.

I noticed some of the peasants working their crops shooting curious glances our way, but nobody actually approached us. It was a classic case of them not wanting to get involved. Lash and I definitely looked out of place by most local standards, and your average person, whether they’re a medieval peasant or a modern blue-collar factory worker, doesn’t like getting mixed up with anything that weird and out of place. As long as we didn’t bother them or interfere in their lives, the peasants didn’t care if there was a pair of oddly-dressed people walking down the road.

Not everyone in this little farming community was a peasant though. Judging by his sword, shield, armor, and face-concealing helmet, the man walking up the road towards us was some sort of town guard. I felt the eyes of all the nearby peasants suddenly focus on us. It was simple curiosity; they wanted to see what was going to happen between the weirdoes and the law.

The man (or at least I assumed it was a man from the shape of his armor) gave the two of us a critical once over and then announced, apropos of nothing. “You know, I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow to the knee.” The man had a vaguely Nordic accent, but I couldn’t quite place it.

For a moment, I was at a loss for words about that random bit of information. “Um, I’m sorry for your loss?” I offered hesitantly.

I got a very slight nod from the guard. At least his odd little announcement confirmed that we’d wound up in some sort of classic medieval realm chock-full of wandering adventurers. That would make it easier to get away with looking unconventional. I could just tell anyone that asked that my clothes were magically enchanted, and that’s why I wore such odd things. Heck, it would kind of be true; my new duster might be lacking in the sentimental value of the one that had been destroyed after my final battle with the Red Court, but it had all the protective enchantments I’d put on my old duster, and a few more besides. My old duster had managed to stand up to everything from raging vampires to a .50 caliber sniper rifle, so those defensive enchantments were nothing to sneeze at.

“If I might ask a question of you, sir,” Lash began, breaking out all her manners and diplomacy. Don’t ask me where she got them, it certainly wasn’t from me. “We’ve been travelling for some time, and we’re new to this area. Could you tell us where we are?”

“This is the village of Ivarstead.” The guard answered helpfully. Something on our faces must have given away that knowing the village’s name didn’t help us in the slightest, because he went on to add. “It’s part of the Rift.” Lash and I were still looking at him blank incomprehension. “The Imperial Province of Skyrim.” When it was still clear he wasn’t getting through to us, the man very uncertainly offered. “Tamriel? Nirn?”

“Thanks.” I admit, I was a little annoyed by this turn of events. I’d been pretty sure I could beat Nicky in any contest of pop culture knowledge, only to have him somehow manage to get his hands on fictional setting I’d never even heard of before. Guess I shouldn’t have been quite so shocked though; the whole techbane thing has left some gaps in my knowledge, and spending most of the last few months either dead or hanging out with the Faeries in Arctis Tor hadn’t helped when it came to keeping up with the Joneses.

I did a quick check of my tracking spell, and confirmed that it was still pointing right at the big mountain just a bit past the village, Ivarstead. “Hey, what can you tell us about the mountain over there?”

“That’s the Throat of the World, the tallest mountain in all of Tamriel.” The guard exposited helpfully.

I could see where this was going. “Let me guess, there’s some sort of legendary ancient artifact of incredible power at the top of the mountain, waiting to be claimed someone daring enough to reach the summit in the face of unspeakable peril?”

The guard gave me a rather odd look, and slowly replied. “No. The only thing at the top of the mountain is they Greybeards and their monastery.”

Of course, an ancient order of dusty old men who were probably incapable of speaking in anything other than questions and cryptic open-ended statements, charged with watching over whatever it was Nicky had sent the ponies here to collect. I bet they were gonna have some really contrived puzzles for me to solve too. Or maybe it would be riddles. I like riddles.

“So,” I asked our handy little guard-turned exposition fairy. “If someone wanted to get up to the top of that mountain and have some words with the Greybeards, what would be the best to do that? Is there some sort of special path pilgrims are supposed to take, littered with thematically appropriate obstacles to test our virtues and abilities?”

“No…” Oh great, he was using that ‘I’m talking to a crazy person’ tone with me. I get that a lot. “Just walk across the bridge on the west side of the village, and you’ll see the start of the seven thousand steps. If you want to get up to Greybeards at High Hrothgar, that’s the best way. I doubt they’ll see you though; the only outsider they’ve ever allowed in is Dovakhiin, the Dragonborn, savior of Skyrim.”

Seven thousand steps? I think I preferred the esoteric tests of virtue. At least the offhand mention of someone called the Dragonborn confirmed that we were on the right track. Looks like there was nothing for it but to start climbing.


“Five thousand seven-hundred and thirty two. Five thousand seven hundred and thirty three. Five thousand seven-hundred and thirty four…” I’m pretty sure my count was nowhere close to accurate, but I had to do something to pass the time. It was count steps, or complain about how sore my legs were. I mean, I’m in pretty good shape, especially with the perks that come along with being the Winter Knight, but there were a lot of stairs. The fact that half the steps were slick with ice and we were on a snowy, windy mountain probably wasn’t helping.

Rainbow, slowly flapping along next to Lash and I as we climbed, let out a cry of pure frustration. “We’ve been climbing for hours! Why are you guys so slow? We’re never gonna catch up with Pinkie and Fluttershy at this rate!”

With a resigned sigh, I grabbed a handful of Rainbow’s tail just as she was about to dash off and leave the two of us behind. Rainbow Dash was tied to the Element of Loyalty, not the Element of Patience. “Do we really need to have the ‘why splitting the party is a bad idea’ conversation again Rainbow? Sorry we’re not as fast as you, but we’ve got to stick together. For all we know, they could be waiting up ahead to ambush us.”

“It’s Fluttershy and Pinkie. I can take ‘em.”

“No, it’s Fluttershy and Pinkie being mind-controlled by demons and hopped up on Hellfire. That makes a pretty big difference.”

Rainbow crossed her forelegs in a pout, and continued flapping along for a minute or so before she finally spoke up again. “Well, if we gotta stick together how about if I fly up to the top of the mountain and carry you guys with me?”

I looked at four foot tall pony, then down at my own six feet and change self. “Think I’m a bit big for you to lug around, especially if you’re trying to carry me and Lash at the same time.” If I’d had one of those weight-reducing potions I’ve used in the past Rainbow’s idea might have worked, but considering the dimension-hopping we were going to be up to, I hadn’t done any potion-brewing. With the way magic works differently every time I hopped to another dimension, there was no guarantee that a potion I brewed back on Earth would work properly. From what Twilight and Lash said any magic would try to adapt to the new universe’s rules, so there was a decent chance that my potions would still work right, but when it comes to magic that you plan on drinking, I’d rather play it safe than risk having a potion fail in the most spectacular way possible.

Rainbow didn’t seem happy at all about the fact that I had expressed doubt in her abilities. “Alright, yeah, you guys are kinda big, but I managed to carry four ponies at once last time I did a Sonic Rainboom. I could probably handle it. I mean, I am the best flier in Equestria.”

“No offense Dash, but I’d rather play it safe for now.” I really didn’t want to find out once we were a couple hundred feet up that Rainbow had overestimated her carrying capacity. Long falls and high-speed collisions aren’t exactly good for your health. Plus, most of the way up a tall, snowy, windy mountain really wasn’t the time to start experimenting with how far Rainbow could push her flying abilities.

“Six thousand.” I resumed my completely arbitrary and most likely inaccurate stair count. “Six thousand and one. Six thousand and…”

I’d gotten up to six thousand two-hundred and thirty four when I heard the explosion. Spending more than a decade as a freelance righter of wrongs had given me a distressing familiarity with the sound of things blowing up. That sound rarely heralded good things.

Rainbow was off before I could even think to try and restrain her, so Lash and I had no choice but to run as fast as we could to try and keep up with her. Needless to say, we’d lost sight of her in the space of a couple seconds, and it took us about five minutes running flat out to catch up with her.

When the two of us finally reached the top of the staircase, we found Rainbow Dash sitting on the ground, a slack-jawed look of shock on her face. My face rearranged itself into a similar expression a moment later. “Stars and stones, that’s one huge-ass party cannon!” At a guess, I could have climbed right into the barrel, and even standing on my toes and stretching my arms out over my head I wouldn’t be able to reach the other side of the cannon. Any gun that needs to have its caliber measured in meters is something I don’t want to mess with.

There wasn’t much left of the Greybeard’s monastery; just a giant pile of rubble covered in streamers, candy, and deflated balloons. Considering the mind-bogglingly impossible size of her party cannon, I was amazed that a huge chunk of the mountain hadn’t been wiped out along with the monastery.

I spotted the two colorful demon ponies in the ruins of the monastery; fortunately they weren’t looking in our direction. Amazingly, it looked like someone, presumably one of the famous Greybeards judging by his grey beard, had actually survived the blast from Pinkie’s insanely huge party cannon, albeit pinned down under a huge block of rubble. Fluttershy was staring the old man, her eyes glowing with a familiar unnatural light. “Looks like Fluttershy got Exael’s coin.” Freaky mind control eyes do kinda fit with her ability to stare down a dragon or a cockatrice, and being able to break into people’s heads was a handy trick when you wanted to steal their secrets. Certainly beats solving puzzles and riddles.

Fluttershy’s eyes stopped glowing, and a second later the pony spoke. “Thank you so very much, you’ve been so very helpful. You look tired now though; I think you should take a nice long nap, and you’ll feel all better.” Fluttershy put a hoof to the man’s head, and I hastily covered Rainbow’s eyes and closed my own. I couldn’t avoid hearing the sickening crunch of breaking bone though.

I’d known on an intellectual level that the mind-warped and demon-controlled ponies were probably every bit as nasty as the other Denarians, and I knew Rainbow had probably picked up a body count during her weather rampage through the Chicago suburbs, but actually seeing Fluttershy kill someone was just a dozen different kinds of wrong.

Nicodemus and Discord were going to pay for this.

I felt a shudder pass through Rainbow Dash, and felt compelled to speak up. “Remember, they’re not themselves. We need to break them out of Discord’s spell, and then they’ll be back to normal.”

After a couple seconds, Rainbow gave a single sharp nod. “Right. You need some of their hair, right? I’ll get it for you. They’re my friends, so I should be the one who beats them up.” A moment later, the pegasus gave a nervous chuckle and added. “Alright, that came out sounding a little weird. But – well – y’know what I mean, right?”

“Yeah, I do.” Rainbow wanted, and probably even needed, to play an important part is saving her friends. I was pretty sure she could handle herself already, and I wasn’t going to deny her the chance to act. “Just be careful, and stick to the plan. Get the hairs, bring them back to Lash, and them we keep them busy until Lash can lock them down. We go to plan C if things go pear-shaped.”

Rainbow let out a confident chuckle, already back to her old self. “Don’t worry, I’ll get those hairs for ya in less than ten seconds.” The pegasus shot towards her two friends. “Hey assholes! Gimme back my friends, or you’re gonna get it!”

“Rainbow Dash.” Pinkie’s voice was flat and emotionless; compared to her normal upbeat chirp, it just sounded wrong. She should be happy the pony she called her bestest friend, not cold. Pinkie’s slightly darker coat and completely straight hair were bad signs too, though at least those didn’t come as quite as much of a surprise. “I see Dresden and the Nephilim are here as well.” The not-so-party pony turned to Fluttershy. “Hold them off while I reload the super-duper-mega-ultra party cannon.”

Fluttershy nodded and deliberately placed herself between Rainbow and Pinkie. For a moment it looked like the two of them were about to get into a staring match, which would be a terrible idea considering the Hellfire boost Fluttershy’s Stare had gotten, but then Rainbow let out a battlecry and just charged right in.

Fluttershy did the worst thing she could have possibly done to Rainbow. She flinched back, and let out a frightened squeak, before covering her head with her forelegs looking at her fellow pegasus pleadingly. “I’m sorry! Please don’t hurt me Rainbow Dash! I’m sorry!”

Rainbow froze in mid-air, hesitating and unable to bring herself to raise a hoof against her friend.

As soon as she spotted Rainbow’s hesitation, Fluttershy’s mask of terror faded, and the demonic pony smirked at her friend. The yellow pegasus took a deep breath, and then let out a shout. Not a quiet little Fluttershy yell, the real thing. “Iiz Slen Nus!”

A blast of artic cold shot out of Fluttershy’s mouth, and a moment later Rainbow Dash fell to the ground, imprisoned in a thick coating of ice that only left her face uncovered.

So, Fluttershy breathes ice now. That’s new. The words she’d shouted were probably the source of that new trick. While it doesn’t work that way in real magic, there were plenty of fictional magic systems where speaking some sort of ancient language of power was part of the process. At least now I knew what the Nickleheads had come here for; with Exael’s mind-reading tricks, it would be easy to steal a practitioner’s knowledge and understanding of a language of power, and transferring that knowledge to other, willing recipients would probably be pretty simple. If Fluttershy got away, her demonic co-pilot could teach every other Nicklehead some nasty tricks.

Regardless of what new tricks she picked up, I needed to wrap any fight with Demonshy up pretty quickly; I really didn’t want to be on the receiving end of a blast from Pinkie’s ludicrously huge party cannon. “Forzare!”

An instant after I cast my spell, Fluttershy shouted again. “Fus Ro Dah!”

The result when the two spells met in mid-air was impressively destructive. Next thing I knew, it felt like I’d been bitchslapped by a huge troll, and I was flying. It took me several seconds of spinning through the air disoriented to figure out just what had happened. The first thing I figured out was that the fact that I was still in the air after several seconds was a bad sign.

Sure enough, the blast had thrown me clear of the mountain. What is it with demonically possessed pegasi and making me fall from incredibly unhealthy heights? The blast from our spells colliding had knocked Fluttershy clear of the mountain too, but being knocked out into the open air is much less of an issue when you have wings.

Applejack was right; pegasi and all the tricks they can do with their wings are just not fair.

I desperately tried to pull off the shield-layering trick I’d used to survive when Rainbow tried to drop me, sure, I had a lot more distance to fall this time, but it was better than just waiting to die when I hit the ground. However, this time it wasn’t working for me. For some reason, I couldn’t create a layered shield. Must be another one of those fun little differences between how magic works on Earth and how it works in … whatever this place is. That guard called it Nirn, right?

The worst part was, since I was stuck in another plane of existence, I couldn’t even toss out a death curse at Nicodemus and Discord. For that matter there might not even be death curses here; it’s not like that was the kind of thing I could really test out beforehand. Maybe I could try to use my death curse to free one of the ponies? I’d never heard of doing something like that, but it was definitely worth a shot.

The ground was starting to get uncomfortably close, and I was just about to start forming my unconventional death curse, when I felt a pair of hooves grab me by the armpits. “I gotcha!” I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to hear Rainbow Dash’s scratchy tomboy voice in my life. I could feel her pulling, and the speed of my descent started slowing down. ”You – are – heavy!” The chromatic pegasus grunted as she strained to arrest my fall.

Once Rainbow finally had the two of us stable, and actually started gaining height, I could finally stop worrying about my impending death and focus on what to do next. At a guess, I’d fallen more than halfway down the mountain, and been knocked a fair distance away from it as well in the bargain. I hadn’t been real eager to take the Rainbow Express earlier, but we couldn’t afford the hours it would take me to climb back up the mountain the normal way. I didn’t know what had happened to Lash, but since she hadn’t been blasted off of the mountain like me odds were that she was still up on that mountain with Demon Pie and Flutterfiend. Leaving her to face them two-on-one wasn’t an option. “Rainbow, can you get me back to where we were?”

“Yeah, no problem.” The strain in Rainbow’s voice said otherwise; carrying a full-grown human in her hooves was obviously taking a lot of effort, and she wasn’t flying nearly as fast or nimbly as she could normally manage. Still, we were making good enough time to be back at the battlefield before too long.

Then a yellow and pink pegasus flew right into our path. “Aw crap.”

“Oh hello Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy’s normally soft and sweet voice had a nasty mocking tone to it. “It looks like you’re having a hard time flying with that big heavy human hanging onto you. Let me take him off your hooves.” Fluttershy took a deep breath, and Rainbow dived just in time to avoid the blast of fire that came out of her mouth when Fluttershy shouted. “Yol Toor Shul!”

We’d avoided getting flash-fried, but the dive had cost Rainbow in height. I’m no expert when it comes to mid-air combat tactics, but one thing I remembered hearing a lot was that height was important. As long as Fluttershy held the high ground – air – whatever, she had an advantage over us, especially since Rainbow was also loaded down with my dead weight. At least we had one thing going for us; from what Lash told me, Exael’s demon form was some sort of giant toad that wasn’t all that good in a physical fight, so we didn’t have to worry about Demonshy transforming on us. I guess when it comes to the demon-power lottery, Exael spent all its points on the glowy mind-screw eyes.

“Next time she tries to do her shouting thing at us, let me block it.” I told my ride. If Rainbow had to dive every time Fluttershy attacked, we’d never stand a chance. A few seconds later Fluttershy was back, taking advantage of her height and the fact that she could maneuver a lot more easily than her weighed down friend. I quickly channeled power into my shield bracelet, and blocked another force shout like the one that had gotten us into this mess in the first place. It wasn’t the biggest hit I’ve ever had to block with a shield, but it was definitely in the top ten.

On a whim, I tried to respond in kind at Fluttershy’s retreating form, but nothing happened when I said, “Fus Ro Dah.” Guess there’s more to using her shouting tricks than just knowing the words.

I’d blocked her attack, but this really wasn’t going to work in the long term. You can’t win a fight just by not getting killed; you have to take the fight to the other guy. Problem was, just like with Rainbow Dash, having an opponent in mid-air that I was trying to capture alive really restricted my options. Any sort of knockout punch or binding spell would send Fluttershy falling to her death, and Rainbow might not be able to catch her in time while she was loaded down with me. I needed to get her to the ground, and I also needed to find some way to neutralize her shouting tricks. “Rainbow! We need to get Fluttershy on the ground!”

“Leave it to me!”

Unfortunately for the two of us, I wasn’t the only one looking for a way to turn the tide. Fluttershy’s next attack pass started off normally enough, and when she took a deep breath I brought up my shield to block whatever attack she was planning to hit us with.

“Wuld Nah Kest!” Instead of the usual blast of fire, ice, or raw kinetic force, this time Fluttershy suddenly shot forward at a speed that looked just shy of Sonic Rainboom territory. She went right around my shield, and a moment later was hovering right next to Rainbow Dash. The yellow pegasus executed a quick turn and then bucked Rainbow Dash full strength right in the ribs. I’m pretty sure I heard something snap when Fluttershy connected.

Rainbow let out a grunt of pain staggered to the side, I felt a moment of acrophobic terror when one of her hooves slipped out from under my armpit. She managed to keep her grip on me, but she was rapidly spiraling down towards the ground, and heavily favoring the side Fluttershy bucked her in. She did at least seem to have enough control over what direction she was falling in to aim herself at a relatively open snowy field, instead of hitting the side of the mountain or smashing us into a tree.

Rainbow dropped me while I was still a couple feet off the ground. I tried raising the simple magic shield that was all I could pull off here, but it didn’t really do much to soften the impact. I hit the ground in a roll that spread the damaged evenly along my entire body. Sure, I might have bruises all over, but I could still function with those. Having the rest of my body unharmed wouldn’t do me much good if my legs were broken. At least Rainbow had found a nice patch of relatively soft snow to drop me into.

The pegasus herself hit the ground about a dozen feet away from me, letting out a pained yelp when she rolled over onto her injured side. She didn’t get up very quickly; in fact, she seemed to be standing on all four of her hooves through sheer willpower alone. That wasn’t good; with Lash an entire mountain away and with Fluttershy right on top of us, I couldn’t make with the thaumaturgy. Keeping Fluttershy pinned down with evocation while simultaneously taking care of Discord’s mind-whammy and removing the coin was a bit more than I could manage at once. It sure would’ve been handy if Rainbow were in good enough condition to hold Fluttershy down.

I spotted the demon-pegasus coming in for a strafing run, and now that we were grounded I felt a bit more comfortable throwing a real spell her way. “Arctis.”

“Yol Toor Shul!” Fluttershy countered my ice with her fire breath trick. Stalemate. I needed to hit her with something she couldn’t counter, and preferably stop her from shouting altogether. My gravity spell might be able to bring her down, but hitting a target flying around at full speed in the open air wasn’t going to be easy; there’s a reason I hadn’t tried that trick until I’d forced Rainbow into a confined space. Plus, that didn’t do anything about her shouting.

An interesting idea hit me, but I’d need a bit of time to figure out how exactly to do it. In theory, it was simple enough, but new spells are always tricky, especially when I’m in a place that doesn’t follow all the normal rules. Good thing I know how to stall for time. “Hey Fluttershy, you up for negotiating? Rainbow’s hurt real bad, and I’m not doing so great myself.” With any luck, I could get her to stop flying around so much too; trying out a new spell at long range against a moving target would make things harder than I’d like.

Fluttershy came to halt a couple hundred feet away from us, still hovering in the air. “If you give Rainbow back her coin, I’m sure the Fallen in it would be more than willing to help heal her. Consider it a gesture of good will, to prove you’re really willing to negotiate in good faith.”

From the look on the pony’s face, she was obviously expecting me to refuse her ridiculous demand and keep fighting. As a general rule, I never like doing what the bad guys expect me to do. I reached into one of my duster’s pockets and pulled out a single coin, then walked over and placed on Rainbow’s hoof. The wounded pegasus looked down at the coin, then back up at me, confused, but a moment later she put it all together, and winked at me.

Demonshy, clearly taken off balance by my submission to her demands, dropped down to the ground and began trotting over towards us. Rainbow Dash let out a chuckle, and suddenly sounding not nearly so weak as she seemed, whispered. “Told ya I’d get on the ground.”

So Rainbow’d played up her injury to get to the ground and draw in Fluttershy? Looks like I’m not the only one who can be sneaky. The possum play was one of the oldest tricks in the book, but the main reason most of those tricks have been around for so long is that they work.

We had the possessed pony on the ground, and I had a window of opportunity to hit her before she got close enough to figure out that the coin I’d given Rainbow Dash was just an ordinary quarter I’d taken a black marker to. I’m surprised it took me so long to think of having a fake Denarius or two on hand when I had to deal with the Nickleheads. It wouldn’t fool anyone for very long, but sometimes faking someone out for a couple seconds is all you need. I started bringing my new spell together.

Fluttershy was about twenty feet away when she stopped in mid step, and stared intently at the coin in Rainbow’s hoof. Looks like the game was up. The pegasus got three flaps of her wings in before I tossed the spell at her. “Vacuus!”

What’s one thing flying and shouting have in common? They both need to have air in order to work. I’d messed around with wind and air magic plenty in the past, this was just a new variation on the theme. Instead of moving air around, I was taking it away. Suddenly there was nothing for Fluttershy’s wings to beat against, or to carry her words of power.

The pegasus dropped right back down to the ground, gasping for breath that wouldn’t come. I nodded to Rainbow, and the battered pegasus picked herself up off the ground and rushed in to pin her friend down. Demonic co-pilot or not, Fluttershy was still Fluttershy, and she just didn’t have the muscle mass to fight off Rainbow, especially not when she could barely even breath. Flutterfiend did manage to land a few hits on Rainbow before she went down, including a nasty clubbing blow into the pegasus’ wounded side, but Rainbow just grunted and took the blows.

As soon as Fluttershy was pinned, I made with the magic to free her from Discord’s mind whammy and get rid of the coin. My new vacuum spell wasn’t the easiest spell to maintain, plus if I held it too long I might end up hurting Fluttershy. Ponies do kind of need to breathe.

Less than a minute later, I had another blackened Denarius safely stored in the opposite pocket from where I kept my fake coin (mixing those two up would be a really bad idea), and Fluttershy was slowly coming back to her normal self. “Oh Rainbow Dash!” Fluttershy softly exclaimed in her old sweet, innocent voice. “I just had the most horrible nightmare!”

Rainbow pulled her friend into a hug. “It’s over now, Fluttershy.” Rainbow’s voice came out more than a little rough, and I noticed some moisture in her eyes.

In a decent world, I would’ve been able to give the ponies a few moments. Instead, I had to worry about the distant explosions I could hear coming from the mountain we’d left Pinkie and Lash on. Groups hugs and recovering from psychological trauma would have to wait until after we’d dealt with Discord and Nicky. “Sorry to be a moment killer girls, but we still need to free Pinkie and your other friends from Discord’s spell.”

Rainbow pulled out of the hug and hastily swiped a hoof across her eyes. Fluttershy, on the other hand, lived up to her name by shying away from me, instinctively moving a bit behind her friend. “Aw relax, Fluttershy.” Rainbow assured her friend. “That’s just what Harry looks like when he isn’t a pony.” After a moment’s consideration, the meek pegasus stopped hiding behind her friend. “Alright, you get his right side.” Rainbow ordered her fellow flier. “I’ll get the left, and we can carry him back up the mountain to where Pinkie is.”

Fluttershy was about to follow Rainbow’s orders when she stopped dead in her tracks, staring at her friend. “Rainbow Dash! You’re hurt!”

“Huh?” Rainbow Dash looked down at her thoroughly bruised and battered body. It’s no wonder she’d been able to sucker Demonshy with her possum play; between the buck that I’m pretty sure had broken some ribs, the rough landing, and the hits she’d taken pinning Fluttershy down while I undid Discord’s spell, Rainbow had taken a thorough beating. “Oh yeah, I had a bit of a rough landing a while ago.” The pegasus lied smoothly. “It’s not a big deal.”

If we’d any time to spare for being sentimental I’d have taken a moment to appreciate the fact that Rainbow was trying to cover up the fact that it had been Fluttershy who’d inflicted most of those injuries. Out of all the ponies, Fluttershy would probably be the one to take it hardest if she ever found out about some of the things she had done while under the control of Discord and the Denarians. The wielder of the Element of Kindness really didn’t need to know that she’d been turned into a vicious, remorseless, and just plain evil creature.

With two pegasi to carry me, we managed to make good time back up the mountain. It took us less than five minutes to cover a distance that we’d needed hours to manage on foot. Honestly, I know that back on earth flying spells are horrendously impractical and dangerous, but if I end up ever having to climb another mountain I might just decide to take a chance on it and roll the dice anyway. Only being able to work in two dimensions was really inconvenient sometimes.

Once we finally got high enough to get a good view of the destroyed monastery, I let out a shocked cry of. “Hell’s bells!” Eldritch Pie had been busy while we were gone; the landscape was dotted with dozens of party cannons that, while smaller than her super-duper-mega-ultra party cannon, were still more than large enough to ruin somebody’s day. All we could see of Pinkie was a fast-moving pink blur zooming around amongst the party cannons, which were maintaining an almost continuous stream of fire towards a rocky outcropping that I assumed Lash must be hiding behind, though all the confetti and streamers saturating the area made it hard to tell.

The pink blur stopped, and we saw Pinkie staring at us with unnerving intensity. “You got Fluttershy!” Demon Pie shrieked. “That does it! Time to break out the partillery!” Pinkie reached her hooves behind her back, and started pulling our party flak cannons and party missile launchers.

“Aw crap.” I opined.

“Eep.” Fluttershy agreed.

“Oh horesapples.” Rainbow thirded the motion.

The skies around us filled with confetti as Pinkie’s party flak-cannons opened up on us, while the pony herself raised a giant bazooka onto her back, pointed it at us, and fired. The two pegasi managed to dodge out of the missile’s path, but as soon as the weapon passed up by it started turning around to come at us again. Of course Pinkie Pie would have a party heat-seeking-missile.

I briefly considered trying to hex the missile and her guns, but considering the fact that her party weapons coexisted just fine with magic in her universe, hexing probably wouldn’t work. Back on Earth scientific technology and magic didn’t get along, but in Equestria it seemed like the two went hand-in-hand. Heck, her party guns might well be magical weapons.

So, I had to go for a more direct approach. “Fuego!” The party missile detonated in an explosion of flaming celebratory death. The two pegasi carrying me wasted no time in getting us out of Pinkie’s line of fire and into cover. Moments after we landed Pinkie’s party arsenal began blasting away around our position, effectively pinning us down. “Anyone got any suggestions?” I asked my two pony companions.”

“Um, panic?” Fluttershy suggested timidly.

“Already doing that.” I answered succinctly.

Eldritch Pie was seriously bad news. Pinkie had a casual disregard for the laws of physics and sanity on regular basis, but after her jump to the Dark Side she seemed to have figured out how to weaponize it. The demonically possessed pony was currently firing, reloading, and operating enough heavy weaponry to make to make a third-world military dictatorship green with envy, and wasn’t showing any signs of slowing down. Heck, for all I know, if she didn’t manage to take us down with her conventional weapons she could start whipping out Party Nerve Gas or Party Nukes.

That kind of made the brute force straightforward approach a non-option. I’ve dealt with plenty of things that had a huge edge over me when it comes to raw power, but Pinkie was different. Everything back on Earth has to follow rules, and usually the stronger something was, the more rules it had to work within. When I wasn’t winning through sheer dumb luck or being way too stubborn to know when to quit, it was usually because I’d figured out some way to turn all those rules to my advantage.

Pinkie, on the other hand, didn’t have any laws. Well, maybe she did have rules she had to follow and I just didn’t know what they were, but rules that I didn’t know or understand wouldn’t do me any good. There were no tricks I could pull, no Achilles Heel to target, no loophole I could gleefully abuse. I was just plain outmatched and out of conventional options.

Normally when you’re up against something you just can’t beat, the smart thing to do is to make a tactical withdrawal (also known as running like hell). Our only real hope of beating the reality-warping demon pony was to get out of here, then loop around and catch her when guard was down.

I suggested as much, but Rainbow Dash quickly shot the idea down. “No matter how fast I fly, I can never get away from Pinkie when she’s chasing me.” The pegasus confessed. “If Fluttershy and I are carrying you we’re not gonna be as fast as I am on my own, so...”

I was tempted to suggest splitting up to get away, but knowing Pinkie she would just do something crazy like split into multiple copies to chase us all down at once. The same was true of just about any other plan I could come up with; it’s hard to beat someone who’s power is really only limited by their imagination.

That’s when Rainbow piped in again. “We gotta use Plan C.” Rainbow would know, sometimes when you can’t win a fair fight, the solution is to start cheating.

“You sure about that?” I asked the pegasus. “If it goes wrong, it could be really bad for you.”

“Yeah, ‘cause getting blown to bits by Pinkie’s partillery is so much better.” Rainbow shot back. “Let’s just do it, and get it over with.”

“Sorry, but – what’s Plan C?” Fluttershy asked.

“This.” I pulled the thankfully intact bottle of chocolate syrup out from my duster, and upended it over Rainbow Dash. Desperate times call for desperate measures. “The C stands for chocolate.” I sagely informed the yellow pegasus.

Once I had thoroughly drenched Rainbow Dash in chocolate, the pegasus shot out into the open. “Hey Pinkie Pie! It’s me! Rainbow Dash, your bestest friend! And I’m covered in chocolate!”

I poked my head out from out cover, and saw Pinkie staring at her friend intently. The party pony’s entire face twitched into a manic grin for a moment, and her hair sprang up into a mass of poofy curls. “Dashie?”

Just as suddenly, Pinkie’s face returned to its angry scowl and her hair dropped completely flat again. “No! Kill! Maim! Burn!”

Pinkie twitched again, and went back to happy-mode. “Chocolate-covered Dashie?”

Demon Pie returned to the fore. “Kill them! Kill them all!”

Pinkie’s record skipped a couple more times between good and evil, and before long Pinkie’s entire body was violently vibrating, with her hair poofing up and deflating a couple times a second. After a couple dozen swaps, Pinkie suddenly leapt into the air, inflated like a huge blimp, then dropped down to the ground and bounced a couple more times before finally returned to her normal size, once more in her usual bright and happy state. A tiny metallic object shot out of the pony and embedded itself into the rock uncomfortably close to my head. I didn’t need to look to know it was the Denarius Pinkie’d been given.

“Dashie! Dashie and chocolate! Yay!” Pinkie leapt onto her friend, and began enthusiastically devouring every bit of chocolate she could reach. A quick check with my Sight confirmed that she was back normal. Well, normal for her at least.

Fallen Angels and evil gods of chaos and disharmony are no match for the power of friendship. And chocolate. But mostly friendship.