//------------------------------//
// Chapter 33: Heir to the Empire 
// Story: When the Everfree Burns 
// by SpiritDutch 
//------------------------------//

Velvet sat in a box seat above the stage, watching half-lidded as her creation Astral made indecipherable speechs to the empty opera house. Her mutilated ponies, zombielike lobotomites, has dispersed to all corners of the room, to stand, lie, and listen. Listen for what, Velvet could not guess.

She considered the consequences of destroying Astral. Though she had been borne out of pony flesh, Velvet knew there was a new purpose to the flesh of the alicorn. It was animated, more like the strange undulations of deep sea invertebrates than a pony. At times, Astral seemed to flow more than she did stride, her component tendrils seeping from one part of the body to another like the roiling of waves: It stayed in the same place, more or, less, but bobbed around in a way that moved the form of the whole.

Or maybe, Velvet thought to herself, she was writing poetry where there was none, and the unsightly think on stage was just as much an unsubtle monster as it appeared to be. Velvet imagined all the other forms the creation could have taken, if only she had tried harder or been in a different frame of mind while weaving the ritual. What confluence of thought and internal wretchedness had pulled this particular horrible thing from Velvet's head and made it real?
Alas, Velvet doubted there was any force on the planet short of the Stars that could kill her Astral Nacre, and the Stars were unlikely to talk to her after she spited Shale and tried to kill Phyte.



Lost in her day-dreaming, Velvet nearly missed a new behavior from the alicorn below.
Astral was alert like a perturbed hound. She was standing stock strait, her head angled up and to the side, her nub-like ears swiveled forward. She did not move not even her tendril-ly mane, usually so animated.

Velvet rose from her head and leaned over the side of the box. "Astral?" She said. "Astral! What is it?"

"Hush. There's a wingbeat coming this way." Astral's head twitched incrementally sideways, tracking something. "Twilight...  Twilight I hear a flier unlike you, unlike me." She began mumbling.

"Eh?" Velvet frowned. "What does that mean, Astral?"



Instead of answering, Astral began to move. She hoped off the stage and stalked up the aisles, pushing aside her zombies and bursting into the entry hall.

"Uh oh." Velvet's eyes widened. She galloped from the box to the stairwell, arriving at the entry hall herself in time to see Astral kicking Night Light into a wall and trotting up to the doors to the night outside.
"Astral Nacre! Explain yourself!" Velvet shouted.

Astral swiveled her head. "Materials, Twilight. The boy Sel accused your race of being imperfect material, impossible to use in acts of great creation. I agreed with him." She turned away, to track again the thing beyond Velvet's perception. "There's perfection out there. It flies this way, Twilight. I must meet it."

With that, she kicked open the door and launched into the sky.



"Hmm." Velvet looked over to Night Light, who was pulling himself to his hooves. "I don't know what this means but it is better than her just hanging around here forever."

"I was fine with her staying put." Night Light hacked. He took a few deep breaths and made sure his ribs were still in place. "But what you say, goes, Velvet."

Velvet arched her brow. "Does it? GO GET SEL AND BLUEBLOOD!" She suddenly erupted into shouting, pushing him towards the door. "She's heading towards the castle! Meet me there with enough ponies to capture whatever it is she's after!" Velvet frowned. "And keep Astral from eating it. This could be our chance to get out of this funk!"

"Yes dear, thank you." Night Light nodded, limping as fast as he could out the door.







Sel Lech sat back in the chair he'd pulled from one of the tables cafes, crossing his hind legs and resting his forehooves in his lap. The little plaza he was in, at the edge of the Old Town, was surrounded by restaurants, closed now in the night, with a fountain in the center. Blueblood and the militia ponies were sitting by the fountain chatting.

Sel really didn't know what anypony saw in Blueblood. He was at best a persuasive, arrogant huckster. He took every opportunity to show his cowardly side.  Seacrest Blackhorn was dead, and all of the Black Horn Council save Blueblood and Aurthora Airy had been hacked to pieces. Sel would never outright say he wished Blueblood had gotten the sword too, but he wouldn't have been against it, since his use as a race-baiter and provocateur had run its course.
Sel saw Blueblood and the militiaponies laughing about something. Perhaps Sel didn't give the common pony enough credit; They could be bigoted all on their own. It ran against conventional noble logic, but commoners had just as much right to arriving at prejudice as well born ponies. It was infantilizing to assume otherwise.

"Cutting down the nobles was supposed to clear the way." Sel glared into the ground. "This... This goes against the idea of ponykind's shared destiny. We didn't finish the job."
His eyes roamed back to Blueblood. A bigot of tribe and class. Why didn't the commoners reject him? They seemed to be invested into his awful worldview. Perhaps... (Sel shivered) Perhaps the ritual in the throne room produced the unfortunate form of Astral Nacre because there was still corruption among ponykind, which kept them from embracing Velvet's dream. Sel dwelled on that though, expression turning severe. "There are more ponies to kill. Then will it all get better? Just let this nightmare be over, with a little spilt blood."


"SEL! BLUEBLOOD!" Night Light burst onto the scene, emerging from a street with a contingent of militiaponies. "Astral is in motion! Rendezvous at Canterlot Castle!"


Blueblood jumped up like a cat. "What?"

"The Castle! Go!" Night Light waved him forward. "Sel? Sel, get up!" The older pony galloped over to Sel, still in his chair. "Something has Astral Nacre in a tizzy. Velvet wants us to intervene."

Sel rocked forward. "Lord Light, I've been thinking. We're not doing this right. I believe in Lady Velvet's vision, but what if she's not the best pony to implement our goals? There's vital changes we need to make."

Night Light was confused. "Sel, please clarify for me. Are you asking me to go against my wife?"

"Well no, just doing things stickily to her orders have led us here. Is this where we want to be?" Sel said. "You and I, Lord Light, could double check things, you know. Maybe even trim unnecessary officers."

Night Light, consternation marring his expression, sighed. He shifted his body and smacked Sel across the face violently, knocking him clear out of the seat.

Sel lay on the cold pavers, head throbbing and vision blurred. Tears welled in his eyes, but not from the pain.

"Sel..." Night Light crouched next to the prone colt. "So, the god we summoned isn't what you expected. You're conflicted. You're confused. I am too, Sel. But I won't five you if you give up hope or shirk your duties! If the sacrifices we've made mattered to you, follow orders. You earned that uniform." He grabbed said uniform, hauling Sel to his hooves, though he was determined to remain limp in his grasp. "Now you have to make it mean something. Go to the castle and keep the peace, like a guard captain is meant to."

Night Light shoved Sel forward. Sel stumbled forward a few steps but remained on his hooves. Sel lifted his head, his face burning from pain and embarrassment. Mercifully the militia ponies had gone with Blueblood, so they were not there so see his shame. He just had to face the judgement of his instructor. "Lord Light..." He gasped through his constricted throat. "Ponies...  we can't-"

"If you think Astral Nacre is a failure, then good. She's not all we hoped for. Does that mean we did something wrong? of Course not! Sometimes our greatest efforts still end in failure." Night Light said, part stern part sympathetic. "Twilight Velvet thinks our new god can be turned into something beautiful, and therefore so do I. It's not up to us to doubt. Worship her, Sel. I won't tolerate faithlessness."

"I..." Sel gulped.
If he was going to obey Night Light's orders, he needed to change the way he'd been rationalizing their work. If Astral Nacre wasn't worthy, then there could be no apotheosis of ponykind. But if Velvet could make Astral worthy, then that more than justified Velvet taking and holding on to power, even political power. Velvet was the shepherd to lead ponies and gods both. 
It was all so surreal. The work was supposed to be done after Astral was created. Now it was looking like they were in it for the long haul.

Sel knew thanking Night Light from the lesson would only earn more rebuke, so he wordlessly turned and galloped in the direction of Canterlot Castle.







With Astral Nacre's departure, Velvet was alone in the opera house- Or at least alone with Astral's mutilated and mindless victims. Trotting towards the stage, Velvet saw the zombies had become passive in the alicorn's absence, standing or laying here and there, motionless. Those still able to move did so poorly, tripping over seats and colliding with walls.
Moving closer to one of the unfortunate ponies, Velvet saw her earlier assumptions about them were wrong: Astral had not attacked them out of pure sadism, for it seemed that despite their deteriorated condition the morbid creations were in no pain. Nor was Astral so insane that the work she had done was shoddy. No, it seemed just the opposite, for despite being horribly rearranged, the ponies still functioned. Velvet looked over the pathetic creatures and saw signs of improvement here and there from pony to pony, cleaner grafts and better aligned reconstructed limbs, but still no improvement in sapience. Still, Velvet had to hand it to her: Astral Nacre matched body parts by color much better than Phyte had.

"Attempts to create pony perfection. The whole thing is dripping with irony." Velvet poked one of the zombies to test its flesh. Seemed healthy. "Ponies and alicorns kill and butcher one another, in idealistic attempts to 'perfect' the other, and therefore themselves. Pony can't mutilate pony, and alicorn can't mutilate alicorn. Only by changing the other can they seek after the beautiful."


Velvet hopped up onto the stage. She wanted to see what Astral had been so protective of before she ran off. Velvet pulled back the stage curtain.
There were several bloodied hospital beds, likely stolen at the same time as the patients. Beside them were two stone slabs, covered in etched symbols and with blood that had long since dried. Velvet inspected the slabs but could decipher neither the symbols nor guess where it had come from. Very odd.

Astral Nacre had also made little gatherings of objects in piles across the stage. Broken glass, flakes of iron, golden rings, and crumpled pieces of paper all had their own sizable piles. The glass could have come from anywhere, but they still enticed Velvet with how they caught the candlelight. The iron flakes were probably from one of the artisan blacksmiths in the old town, a waste product from any number of reductive processes. The gold rings, which seemed to be wedding bands based on their etchings, had likely been pulled off the zombified ponies. A gutted dictionary leaning against a lectern told Velvet where the crumpled paper had come from.

And then there were the piles of organs: Things which Astral, in her infinite wisdom, had deemed unnecessary. Brain lobes of varying sizes, one or both kidneys still attached together, coils of arterial linings, a lung, a digestive tract, a heart or two, and many many sets of genitals. With a sickened glance at the zombies, Velvet confirmed their source. It seemed Astral Nacre wasn’t quite sure what she believed to be the perfect pony form, but it certainly didn’t include genitals.

“Interesting.” Velvet picked up on of the brain lobes. The pineal gland, she guessed. She tossed it back with the rest.



Backing away from the gore pile, Velvet almost fell into a hole in the stage floor. "Hmm?" The hole most certainly had not been there before, or productions of My Trottingham Cousin would end with most of the cast plummeting into it. She peered into the abyssal crack, some fives hooves diameter, and saw how it cut through the floor, then foundations, then the rock of the Canterlot Plateau, past where the light could illuminate. However Velvet thought she might have caught a fleeting indication of a moving light down in the dark, at least a hundreds of hooves deep, like a lantern or torch.

“Theres a pony down there.” Velvet said to herself. “Hello there! Can you hear me?" She yelled into the hole. Save for her echo, there was no response.

Pulling back from the hole, Velvet glanced around for anything that she might use to pull up what could have been a stranded pony. The stage’s pulley system, used for flying props across a scene, was sitting untouched off to the side. The corresponding harness, to attach the actors to the pulleys, was draped over a ponyquin in the corner. Thankfully none of the equipment had been damaged by Astral Nacre's madness.

"As much as I'd like to explore a mysterious, unknown hole, I think that's a job for somepony younger." Velvet rubbed her chin. "Not much else to do here then. I'd better catch up with Night Light."

She retreated from the chasm, cleared her mind, and teleported away in a column of green and purple fire.









High above Canterlot, on a cloud bank fracturing on the Mountain, Twilight Sparkle surveyed  the plateau below her. Something was wrong, even more than could be expected from the absence of the the empress. Something was seriously, seriously wrong in her hometown.

A strong east wind was beginning to clear away the cloud cover so Twilight was soon to lose her perch. She jumped from the cloud onto the rocky slope of the Mountain. The upper slopes were nearly vertical, but she found the alicorn body dexterous enough to maintain its footing. She dispelled the taxing cloud-walking spell.
Like a mountain goat, she began hopping her way down the mountain. Cover of darkness and camouflage among the dark rock keep her from being seen, not that it looked like any sentries were posted.


Desperately hoping nopony was watching in the city, Twilight risked the brief flash of light from her teleportation spell to make it onto the city wall. She reappeared where the wall merged into the slope of the mountain, and her fear that the guards were waiting to ambush her proved false. There was nopony to be seen or felt.
"Highly unusual." Twilight said to herself. Now that she was closer to the city she could see one or two patrols, clearly not the usually city guard, hanging around the public places. Like in Ponyville, all the civilians were holed up in their homes.


Twilight cautiously stalked along the city wall, making the great clockwise arc around the circumference of the city. Still there were no guards, not even in the watchtowers. Finally she reached the tower that connected the wall to Canterlot Castle. The castle was partially built into the wall, or rather the wall grew out of the castle, but a single arching bridge joined a tower with the central keep to better restrict access in.
Twilight paused on the bridge, the smaller towers and wings of the castle beneath her. The wind was really starting to pick up, and the tapestry tied around her neck began to flutter. The aura around the castle felt...  cold, unwelcoming. All the bustle and life that ponies gave the castle was absent. Even when the ponies of the imperial court had their disagreements, a wind of energy and eagerness pervaded the halls.
Death. Twilight detected the miasma of death. Pulling her cape close around her, she crossed the bridge and entered the keep.

The halls and annexes of Canterlot Castle could be dark even in the liveliest of times, as there was only so much candles and torches could do for the voluminous spaces and high ceilings. As Twilght walked the black rooms, lit only by moonlight through the windows, her fear grew. Something bad had happened. She could feel a few ponies milling near the bottom floors, but other than that the castle was completely abandoned. Fancy Pants, Prosser, Shining Armor, Cadence, all absent.

"Focus Twilight." Twilight rubbed her eyes. "You're just here to find a spell. Worrying about Canterlot can come after I go back and find Spike."

Gritting her teeth, Twilight trotted quickly through the keep to arrive at the library. Unexpectedly, it was as warm and well lit as ever. The crone librarian, an aura so faint Twilight hadn't noticed it, was haunched at the front desk reading over inventories by candlelight
Twilight thought she could sneak past the old mare, but as soon as she stepped out of the shadow a terse tutting met her ears.

“New visitors?” The librarian peered over her desk with broad spectacles. “You have to sign in, you know.”

Twilight shifted uneasily. The librarian seemed completely unconcerned that an enormous, haggard, black and purple alicorn was sneaking around Canterlot Castle; Perhaps her glasses prescription were not strong enough. "Um, yes. I know."

"Step forward please." As Twilight knew well from many discussions with the old crone, the cataloging and good treatment of books was likely the only thing keeping the frail librarian alive. Still, she had a wealth of knowledge about obscure parchment-making techniques that had captivated a filly Twilight on her trips to the library for new material.

“I’m not checking anything out.” Twilight was trying her hardest to keep her new and gravelly voice pleasant. “I’m looking for a spellbook.”

“That’s what that ruffian Foaly Flux said, and now half the forbidden magic collection is missing.” The librarian scowled. Twilight was tempted to plop her saddlebag full of said books on the desk while making a joke, but decided it could wait. There were more important things than timely book return. Or were there?

“Fine.” Twilight leaned the desk and levitated a pen to the list “It’s not like anypony reads over this thing anyway.”

“I read it!” The librarian bristled, looking at the newest signature on her logbook. Her eyes twinkled in surprise. “Twilight Sparkle? Oh! Lady Twilight I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you.”

“Must be my new manecut.” Twilight wondered if it would be better to come up with a pseudonym. Flicker, perhaps? Or Dusk Lantern? She'd workshop it. "As I said, I'm looking for a spellbook."

"Could you be more specific Lady Sparkle?" The librarian pushed her spectacles farther up her nose.

Twilight fidgeted with her cape, something fast becoming something of a nervous habit for her. “A tracking spell. One that specializes with dragons? I want to cheat at hide and seek with Spike.”

The librarian didn't care to notice the excuse, instead pulling out a resister and flipping through it. “Didn’t you some in here showing off a tracking spell just the other week? Why couldn’t you use that one?” She hummed.

“That was two years ago, and I need something specialized towards dragons because Spike would appear as ‘reptile’ with Jazmane the Hat’s tracking spell. That’s not very much use in the Everfree Forest.”

“Playing hide and seek in a place as unpleasant as the Everfree? I must say Lady Twilight, I’m surprised at this uncharacteristic adventurousness. However, something does come to mind.” The librarian paused above a particular entry in the register. “Able Airy had a set of cataloging spells, one for each phylum. Might that help?”

Twilight shrugged. “That would be a good place to start.”

“Aisle twelve.” The librarian stood up and pointed into the maze of bookshelves. Twilight gave a shallow curtsy and cantered up the rows to the twelfth.







The same cold wind that was coursing through Canterlot had been buffeting Cloudsdale for hours, whistling down from the slopes of the Unicorn Mountains and around the cloud homes. Airships at the skydock creaked and groaned, their taut mooring lines insufficient to keep them from rolling with the eddies in the breeze.
Spitfire and the Wonderbolts landed in the center of the Stratus District, in a plaza wedged between the looming white edifices. They quickly sheltered among the columns of one of the buildings, then ducked inside.

Although it claimed to be ‘royal’, the Cloudsdale Royal Hospital had never treated a princess. It was a relatively modern building, floating halfway up the Stratus District within a convenient range of the airship mooring base, and not too far from the Weather Factory, the two places injuries were most likely to be inflicted. Tempered by daily maiming, delimbings, electrocutions, rainbow deluges, and merciless beatings, the staff of the Cloudsdale Royal were prepared for every occasion.
Thus when Rain Gnash, screaming in pain and terror, appeared in the entrance a burst of magic, not a second was wasted on confusion or questions. 


Spitfire was guided to the hospital's top floor, to a wing set aside for Cloudsdale's social elite. She alone went into the room she was pointed to, the rest of the Wonderbolts waiting in the hall. 
Spitfire had had a few hours of rest, and not even had the opportunity to bath since the flight from Canterlot. She was tired and she ached. When she saw Rain Gnash , those petty pains felt inconsequential.



“Capchain Spiffire. It’s pout chime you chode up.” Padding and gauze around what remained of Gnash’s muzzle stymied her enunciation. “Shadly mosh of me’sh shtill misshing.”
The majority of the admiral's body was covered in bandages, with her wings and torso enterally encased. The admiral’s enormous bed took half the space of the room, which dwarfed even her greater than average size. However the straps holding her remaining limbs in position kept her from enjoying it.

“Reporting as ordered, ma’am.” Spitfire whispered with quiet dismay.

“Thash goot.” Gnash said. “Don’ch waiss kime wiff me, capchain. Chalk oo Fweetfwuut.”

“Of course, Admiral.” Spitfire nodded sadly. “You, umm, don't need anything, do you?"

Rain Gnash rolled her eyes, the only part of her she was able to move freely. There was something strange about that, Spitfire thought. The eyes were an especially vunerable and vauable part of a warrior. Among the ancient pegasi, victims were often blinded as a symbolic display of power. Rain Gnash's eyes were intact; She was undefeated. "Wfen I need a nursh, I'll cawl for er, Spiffire." The admiral said.

"Yes ma'am. Those savages. We’ll make them pay for what they did.” Spitfire promised.

“No! NO!” Gnash rattled her trussing violently, trying to get closer to Spitfire. “Shtay away! Whashever you do, shtay away fwom Cancerlot!”

A nurse rushed in to try to calm Rain Gnash’s trashing. “You need to leave.” She said over her shoulder. “Any excitement and the scarring will reopen.”

Gnash’s frantic gaze following her, Spitfire ducked out of the room. 
"Geeze." She gingerly closed the door.

"That bad?" Soarin asked.

"She's going to live, but..." Spitfire sighed.

"But they tore her up." Fleetfoot nudged past the other wonderbolts. "You made it, captain."
The teal wonderbolt was, wrapped in a hospital gown. She had no outward injuries, but her eyes had trouble focussing on anypony. Despite the relative warmness of the hall, Fleetfoot could not stop shivering.


“Fleet! I'm glad to see you're alive." Spitfire said.

Fleetfoot smiled. "I'm fine. They made me wear the gown."

"I can’t believe they let you and the Admiral live.” Soarin tentatively pulled Fleetfoot into a small hug.

“It won’t be so good if she gets infected. You can't see it under the bandages but she's missing a lot of skin.” Fleetfoot said solemnly. “Admiral Gnash...  Well you saw what she looked like. I..." She shook her head. "I don't know where to start explaining. That monster tried to fix her. Didn't really work."

Spitfire assumed she meant Twilight Velvet. “It's okay Fleet. Can you tell us what happened? How did you get here before us?”

“Magic, to both answers.” Fleetfoot’s attention grew distant, her breathing quickening. “It's...  almost impossible to describe. Lady Velvet tore them apart with a...  a horrible spell. It wasn't a spell meant to be used by ponies."

"Tore them apart? Who?"

"Everpony. Twilight Velvet had already turned the Speakers of the Estates into so much chum. The throne room was filled to our ankles with blood." Fleet moaned. "Lady Velvet started explaining her motivation but I couldn't understand what she was talking about. Admiral Gnash did, and even accepted her logic! Gods, it was awful. They cast a spell..." She cleared her throat. "It took five ponies. Velvet herself, Seacrest Blackhorn, Lord Flux, Admiral Gnash, and that robed servant pony. The spell ate all of them except Velvet. At the end of it, the only thing left was... death and awe."

Spitfire and Soarin exchanged worried looks.

"The child of the spell was a creation out of Lady Velvet's dreams. Oh, but what pony has dreams so terrible! It wasn’t a pony, and, it wasn’t a god. It... It took the shape of an alicorn.” Her breath became ragged. “It didn’t even talk! It just thought words, and they appeared in our heads!”

“It wasn’t a god.” Spitfire repeated. Had making a god been Velvet's intention in the first place? “If it's not a god, then we can fight it. If we plan well we can go back and take Velvet down a peg.”

“NO!” Fleetfoot had the same crazed look that Gnash had. “Stay away from Astral Nacre. She's not a god, but something worse! Please captain, Canterlot isn’t worth it.”

“What about payback? What about retribution for all the ponies Velvet killed?” Spitfire shot back. She felt her cheeks burning at the idea she had run away from Canterlot for nothing. If she'd stayed and fought, clear of the fear that had gripped her, so much pain could have been averted. “We can’t let them get away with that!”


Fleetfoot shook her head fretfully. “Captain please listen to me. During that ritual Admiral Gnash got closer to that monstrosity than anypony should ever have too. She saw horrible horrible things, Spitfire. Depravity and madness like we couldn’t understand! It’ll take more than just ponies to stop the monster.”

“We could understand? Fleetfoot what are you talking about?” Spitfire was getting unnerved.  “How do you know all that?”

“We didn’t get away unscathed.” Fleetfoot said quietly. “That demon touched us, and she…”  Fleetfoot twitched, and her eyes snapped shut. "I tried to help and..."

Spitfire was definitely getting the impression something invisible to the eye was irking Fleetfoot. "What happened? Did they... Torture you?"

"No. No." Fleetfoot gulped. "It tried to heal Admiral Gnash. I offered my life in exchange for hers. I should have known better."  She reopened her eyes. A pale white light oozed from out of her pupils, and  the pegasus’s voice was no longer her own. "We both lost vital part of ourselves, taken by the monster. If I was to survive, certain things had to be shared. Including our souls.”

Spitfire ran a nervous tongue along her teeth, feeling the effect of frantic days without brushing. She stared into the white eyes, just like Phyte’s thrall under the Musician's Guild had possessed. The death of normalcy was spreading beyond Canterlot. She spat the stale saliva on the hospital floor.
"Fleet...  It doesn't control you, does it?"

"No. It's just Rain and Fleetfoot. Here. When we close our eyes, we see from the eyes of the other. A thought begins in one head and ends on the tongue of the other." Fleetfoot blinked and the light faded somewhat. "It's a wretched way to exist." She choked out. "We've lost our privacy. I'm a freak."

Spitfire found it hard to breath. "Fleet, listen to me. Staying behind like you did was a noble thing, but you were just one pony."

"Captain." Fleetfoot lurched forward, pressing her face into Spitfire's. "We order you to STAY AWAY from Canterlot. You're a real bastard but you don't deserve this fate. Promise me you won't lead the Wonderbolts back to Canterlot."


Spitfire, hair raised, backed into the wall. She felt a mix of sympathetic fear and anger for the insubordination Fleetfoot was showing her. Only... It was Gnash speaking through Fleet.
"Are afraid of what I'll do in Canterlot."

"Do? No. You'll die." Fleetfoot pronounced solemnly. "Or worse."


The dread she had experienced running from Canterlot washed back over Spitfire. Having cycled through three emotions in as many minutes, it was all she could do to open her mouth for a last "Buck all this.” She pushed past Fleetfoot and Soarin and made for the window at the end of the hall. "I'm going home." She slid the window open jumped and flew out into the windy night sky.



"Damn." Soarin rubbed his chin with the back of his hoof. "Fleet, the captain is tring to help you. She wants to fight for you."

"She should be thinking of yourselves now, not us." Fleetfoot said. "Go home. Wait out the night. Don't let yourselves be sucked back into the coming whirlwind."

Soarin stared at his comrade. Fleetfoot using Gnash's little mannerisms seriously unsettled him. The other Wonderbolts had retreated to a safe distance, regarding her with looks of fear or concern.
"Well Fleet...  Admiral...  Are you going to order like you did Captain Spitfire?"

Before Fleetfoot could speak, the door to Gnash's room opened and the nurse scurried out. "You ponies keep it down." She said before trotting up the hall.

Soarin peeked into the room. Rain Gnash was passed out, her ragged breathing u even.

"We're never going to dream again." Fleetfoor said, her voice becoming less her own. "It's what I get for wagering my l life on somepony else's mad ambition. I only regret that Fleetfoot has had to suffer as well. It will be... interesting to so what happens. I may still die. Who knows what will happen to her if I do. Will it be better or worse if I go on living?"

“Admiral, I-.”

“I’m not going to mince words. Look in the room again: I'm a bucking mess. I’ll never walk or fly again. If I’m lucky my father or the Admiralty will hire a pony to wheel me around.” Fleetfoot shook her head, her modulated voice wavering. “What will they say about me then? The number of ‘whale’ comments alone would put the Cloud Creche to shame for sheer immaturity. I will be known forever as the cripple admiral, whose looks were improved by the burns and scars. No, maybe it’s better if I die, to say nothing of the burden I'm placing on Fleetfoot.”

“I…” Soarin was undercut by how resolute she sounded. "Ma'am, have you asked Fleet."

The light in Fleetfoot's eyes faded again, and in a clear voice she softly spoke. "I willingly chose this. You would too, Soarin. We both made oaths to Cloudsdale and our superiors."

"But-" Soarin's eyes were drawn to the open window Spitfire had gone out. "It's..." Despite the tense situation he laughed. "It's going to be a pain talking to you, when we can't tell which mare if listening.


Fleetfoot’s eyes lost their glow completely, and she staggered under the disorientation of her sudden return to lucidity.  “Uhh, Soarin. I need to rest." She slumped against the wall. She poked herself in the cheek weakly, as if testing the flesh. "Soarin... If we go mad..." She drifted into unconsciousness.


Soarin and the other Wonderbolts shared worried looks.

“Yeesh, the chain of command just got complicated.” Rapidfire remarked.

Soarin sighed. “Barracks gossip will never be the same.”








Sel Lech arrived at the plaza at the foot of Canterlot Castle right as Twilight Velvet appeared in a burst of magic. Blueblood, a dozen militia ponies, and Aurthora Airy were already on the scene.

"What's going on?" Blueblood demanded.

Velvet was distracted enough not to reprimand him. "Astral Nacre left the Opera House, heading in this direction, and has likely already entered the castle. She is after somepony, or something." She pointed to the great entryway to the castle, the gate slightly ajar. "If you encounter Astral, or her prey, stay at a safe distance."
Her eyes swiveled to Sel Lech. "Captain Sabonord, I need a word with you."

Blueblood and Aurthora led a column of militia ponies each into the castle, the former unenthused and the latter resolute. Sel nervously approached Velvet bowing his head.
"Lady Velvet, I'm sorry about my behavior in the Opera House. I have been troubled by confusion." He whispered. "I worry that I may lose sight of our goal. I've let personal animosity get in my way."

Velvet arched a brow. "You mean Blueblood? Is he being a jackass? If he's bothering you that badly just shoot him." She arched a brow. "Well?"

Sel licked his lips. "Um, no ma'am. I- I... I agree with your reasons for keeping him on. He was a valuable ally in misleading the estates."

"He was. It does prompt questions about his further usefulness."Velvet shrugged. "But on to what I need from you. Sel, you must check on something for me so as not to let the others know."

Sel blinked. "My lady?"

"You know the catacombs under the Musician's Guild? Surely you do, since you swept them with the city guard after the Wonderbolts did the dirty work of purging them." Velvet motioned to the ground, and the tunnels somewhere beneath their hooves. "That was only one, isolated section of a larger network of tunnels. If you remember your history, Canterlot began as a crystal mining outpost, and there are countless passages we don't know about." She gripped his shoulder. "And other, deeper, darker things are down there too. Go back to the Opera House, and make sure nopony comes out of the hole in the stage." She smiled devilishly. "And also keep anypony from going in. Understand, Sel?"

Sel almost asked for clarification, but bit back his curiosity. It was his duty to follow orders. If he did not understand her meaning from what she had said, it was his fault. "Yes, Lady Velvet." He said sternly. "They won't get past me."

"Good lad." Velvet smiled.

"But-" Sel looked past Velvet, to the castle. The homeless ponies he had directed to shelter there were now stuck between Astral and Blueblood, a worse predicament than where they'd begun. "I...  I won't hesitate when it comes time, my lady."

"I'm glad for you Sel. When it comes time, I hope you are work as hard for your desires as you've worked for mine." Velvet nodded. She shooed him back in the direction of the old town, while she herself turned to the castle. "Good luck captain."








“And someponies keep breaking the front door to the castle down, so with all the rain we’ve been having it’s been very humid in here. I can almost hear my books screaming, the poor dears.”

Twilight let the librarian talk as she read through the spellbooks she’d set aside. Able Airy, ancient ancestor to the Viscountess of Draftkel Castle, Aurthora Airy, had been a natural scientist and magical theorist of moderate fame from the early imperial era. Most of the spells Twilight found herself reading through were clever adaptations of the magic of other species for unicorn magicians, not unlike the cloudwalking spell she had found in the Ponyville library. Several were critiques on the amniomorphic spell by Starswirl, changing the spell so it slowed rather than hastened embryonic development in ungulates. Fascinating. Heterodoxical, but fascinating.

“Who keeps breaking the doors down?” Twilight asked, as she flipped through pages with practiced speed so as to reduce the amount of wasted time to a minimum.

“All those pretentious aristocrats and their thugs, no offence to your ladyship. After Fancy Pants died, Captain Hausseway was marching his guards through here every day like he owned the place.”


“Wait, wait, what?” Twilight skipped several beats, pausing from her reading. “Fancy Pants is dead?”

“Oh yes, I suppose you weren’t here for that whole debacle.” The librarian mused darkly. “Yes, some assassin mares did it, though the only name I heard in connection to it was Scratch.”

“Skratchy.” Twilight uttered.  The mare from the coffee shop the day she'd left for Ponyville: Twilight remember her well, with the blue mane and white coat. Twilight remembered joking with her about the coincidental similarity of her name to the infamous psycho murderer of a decade past, Vinyl Scratch. Coincidence not. "Debacle indeed. I'll have to catch up with the political news. When I have time, I mean." Though after reading a few more lines from the spellbook she looked up again. "I suppose Captain Hauseway is in charge now?"


The librarian looked sympathetically pitying. “The issue at hoof, Lady Twilight, is more important. Ask later, and of somepony closer to the center."


Twilight obliged, but the growing sense of dread was proving distracting. Had Fancy Pant's death led to the aweful aura that now pervaded the castle?

Several books and hundreds of spells later, Twilight what she was looking for.
“Ah ha! Able’s Spell for Reptilian Differentiation!” Twilight read through it several times. “That’s exactly what I’ll need to find Spike!” It was not complicated, so Twilight quickly committed it to memory. 

“Excellent, my lady. Why don’t you cast it a few times to test it before you leave?” The librarian proposed.

“Heh, I don’t think there are many reptiles in Canterlot Castle, despite what the conspiracy theorists may believe.” Twilight joked. “But there's another version for mammals. That should be a sufficient test.”


Twilight charged and released the spell. Blobs of color began to dance across her vision. With a range of several hundred hooflengths, she could see the outline of ponies even through walls and across floors. She could also see the many rats and mice living in the cracks in the stone, and the cats stalking them. Twilight glanced around, taking in the sight. The upper levels of the keep was as deserted as it had seemed. Besides the librarian and herself, there were only two ponies in the upper sections of the castle. There was quite a few ponies mingling in the lower levels by the enterance but Twilight ignored them.

Twilight let the spell dwindle. "Canterlot Castle is empty. “Where are all the councilors?”

The librarian wrinkled her nose. "Lady Twilight, there are better ponies to ask."

"Yes...  But I have to know before I go back to the Everfree. Why is the castle abandoned? Where are the ponies that are supposed to be running the empire?"


"Dead, mostly."

Twilight almost shouted an objection. "Dead? What? Was it a coup? A revolution?"

“It’s difficult to say.” The librarian struggled to keep her emotion in check. “More than anything it was a massacre. You wanted to know about Captain Hausseway? He’s under the royal gardens, along with hundreds of other ponies. The Speakers of the Estates have, one and all, been killed.”

Twilight's blood ran cold. She had expected a certain amount of chaos in Celestia's absence, but this was beyond the pale. It was beyond comprehension! Such a brutal political purge was literally unprecedented. "Who? Who did this?”



“I- I-” The librarian faltered, and erupted into silent tears. “It’s just so terrible. The provisional leadership is still investigating. All the castle staff were tossed out. Nopony knows where the next meal is coming from. I'm luck to havve the key to the castle larder or I'd hardly last the night.”

"This is so bucked." Twilight stood up. Out of curtesy she quickly reshelved the books. "Thank you mis. I'm sorry for what's happened."

"Good luck with hide and seek." The librarian said despondently. "Until next time, Lady Sparkle."


Twilight galloped out of the library, but paused in the dark hallway. An unfamiliar fright was creeping up her spine. It did not take a powerful force like Nightmare Moon or Forlorn Spark to kill a lot of normal ponies, but it did take an incalculably cruel one.
Twilight's instincts were screaming at her to run away, as if danger was pressing in on her. 


She cast Able’s tracking spell to check that her route out of the castle was clear of ponies, but she noticed a discrepancy between the last time she had looked. In the throne room was a very small outline labeled as a pony, a unicorn, earth pony, and pegasus simultaneously, that had not been there before. That impossibility exploited Twilight’s greatest weakness, curiosity.
With a precision gained from a decade living in those halls, Twilight teleported directly to the throne room.

It was like something taken from a horrendous nightmare. Although the corpses had been moved, the marble floor was heavily stained with dried pools of blood. The walls, windows, and even parts of the ceiling was similarly painted. In the fleeting light of Twilight’s horn the entire scene resembled the insides of some great animal. At the head of the throne room the normally golden throne was charred black by some horrible magic.

Twilight willed herself not to collapse under the sheer horror of the grotesque exhibition. She was beginning to understand the librarian’s panic. "Goodness gracious." She muttered, trotting towards the throne.
The aura of death was strong, making Twilight's horn tingle unpleasantly. The murders that had taken place here were not senseless, but rather in the service of a spell. Twilight had a creeping suspicion she knew what spell it was.

She stopped at the foot of the stairs up to the throne dais. The tracking spell was telling her the strange pony reading was by the throne, but there was nothing there. Twilight nudged the throne with her magic, and part of the back dissolved into ash. Twilight was aghast. Celestia’s imperial cathedra, charred and cracked from the profane magic, was beginning to resemble the ruined throne of Everfree Castle. Would the rest of the castle inevitably become a ruin too, lost to history.

As Twilight was considering this, she noticed that just to the right of the throne was a pile of folded clothing.
It was armor, not clothing, as Twilight discovered when she picked up the black lacquered breastplate. It was emblazoned with a simple triangle inset within a circle, a stylized mountain or unicorn horn Twilight speculated. Laying by the armor was a large sword with a black hilt with the same emblem. It unsettled Twilight for reasons she could not explain; It didn’t seem that outwardly special to Twilight, although it was of an exotic material and design.
"This thing was used in the ritual. As a focus point perhaps?" She rotated it again. "No, it was being worn. Worn by..."

The erroneous pony signature coming from within the armor. For whatever reason the aura of the armor had the indicators of a pegasus, earth pony, and unicorn.

"Could it be... That's how an alicorn registers with this spell?" Turning it over, Twilight found bits of dry flesh and blue fur stuck to the inside. “Eech!” Disgusted, Twilight dropped the breastplate. The armor and the associated sword were interesting curios, but with further study Twilight would uncover more about why it registered as it did: If she was correct, and the ritual had been used here, it could reveal something about the nature of alicorns.  Not that Twilight needed more armor, as she already had a set of nightmare armor permanently burned onto her flesh.
"I'll take these with me just in case then." Adjusting the knot on her cape, Twilight prepared to teleport out of the city.



A bright flash illuminated the wall: Something was directly behind her. Wheeling around, Twilight scanned the throne room’s entrance for anything amiss. Another flash of light, once again directly behind her. Twilight spun and saw a pony swathed in a black cloak by the throne, grabbing the living armor set.

“Hey!” She yelled, charged her horn. “Put that down!”

The pony looked at Twilight for a moment, the tip of her yellow nose and the ends of her wavy red hair visible from under the shadow of the cloak.
“Heya Princess.” It was a youngish mare’s voice, bitingly sarcastic. “You're here early. Celestia sure didn't present much issue, huh.”

Twilight froze. She recognized that voice. It had been years, more than ten years in fact. "Wha...  Lady Shimmer?"

"Peace out." In a flash of orange magic, the yellow mare disappeared with the armor.


Twilight was stunned. No. No it couldn't have been. It was completely impossible in a literal sense.
Fumbling forward, Twilight tried to detect where the mare's teleportation spell had taken her. Alas, it was disrupted by something.

"I..." Twilight gulped. She had hesitated and the mare had disappeared with most of the armor. She kicked in frustration, striking the throne and reducing more of it to dust. "Shit! Damn! Why are there so many distractions!" She'd just come to learn the detection spell (mission accomplished), and the city kept throwing things her way.



"hhhhhh" From the very depths of the castle, or perhaps Twilight's fitful imagination, an indescribable whisper came.

Twilight yipped. Another?! Fate and fortune were just messing with her now!

"hhhHHhhHHhhh" The whisper said again, clearer and stronger.  That voice, and the feeling that came with hearing it, struck her with its alienness.


"Who's there!" She shouted across the throne room. She could feel a presence looming, as powerful as Forlorn Spark with none of the recognizable qualities. It was outside Twilight's frame of reference. Very soon, Twilight would have her answer about the result of the ritual preformed at the throne.
She knew she could, and probably should, run. She had the tracking spell. She didn't need to stay and see the thing coming for her, or chase after the cloaked yellow mare. Canterlot's problems could remain its own. She had enough to deal with.

Gripped by fear, Twilight grabbed the black-hilted long sword from by the crumbled throne. She held it in front of her defensively.


"hhHHhhhhhi'm coming to get you." An enormous shadow darkened the threshold. "have a look at you. Wow." It wheezed, yes the voice was not audible, but mental. It spilled forward into the throne room. "Do you want to see me? I want you to see me. Describe me to the keepers of heaven when you arrive there."

"Who am I to deny you." Twilight said at a choked whisper. "Gods show themselves as they please."






"Ah Geez." Blueblood prodded the lump flesh stuck to the walls of the ground floor halls. He brought his lantern closer. "it's like she chewed them and spit them out."

Aurthora Airy pinched her nose. "Terrible. Who were these ponies? I though we had cleared everypony out already?" She cast an eye over the makeshift encampment the late ponies had made in the passageways. "These ponies were...  camping out?"



One of the militiaponies approached them. "Sir, Lady Velvet wants you."

Bluebblood's feeling of smug victory evaporated. "I see. Lady Aurthora, hold down things here."

He followed the militiapony to another corridor. In one of the small naves attached to a larger meeting hall was a private chapel. There were small statues, stylized depictions of Celestia and the sun, now splattered with blood. Twilight Velvet was observing the display by candlelight.

"My Lady." Blueblood was never at ease around Velvet, but something felt particularly off now.

"The organs, Blueblood. I can't seem to find them." Velvet said at a whisper, her eyes roaming the gruesome display. "Look around. Maybe they rolled under that chair over there."

Blueblood wrinkled his nose, but bent down to peer under the mentioned chair. It was dark. The dark was then all-consuming as Velvet kicked Blueblood in the rump. Blueblood squealed, his head jammed in between the legs.

"Prince...  What a word, prince." He felt Velvet kneel beside him. "The princess is dead. One thinks a prince would step into the spotlight. Oh, but Canterlot tried for a brief, spectacular moment, to celebrate a singular prince. A Blackhorn prince. Poor Seacrest, embodiment of all the pompous, patronizing presumptiveness of Canterlot nobility. What happened to him? My Canterlot killed his Canterlot."

Blueblood opened his mouth to offer the first excuse that came to mind. "L- Lady Velvet, let me up I beg you. You know I'm been on your side!"

"Blueblood, what do you know about my Canterlot? Yes, you have been working with us to make it a reality, but how much do you understand it meaning, truly?" She whispered. "What Canterlot do you belong to? The one that is dying or the one that is killing?"

Blueblood whined in displeasure. "My lady I don't understand the choices I have."
He felt a telekinetic field close around his hoof and dragged him into the center of the room. His relief was short lived as Velvet lifted then dropped the chair onto his head.
"Ow! Shit! you broke my nose!" Blueblood held his hoof up to defend against further attack. "W- Why did you do that?"

Velvet laughed. "You pathetic dip. When are you going to fight back? From the first second I showed up at the Black Horn Council, you showed your neck. Why do you go around calling yourself prince when you don't fight? Princes are defenders of their followers." Her lips pulled up in a sneer. "You helped me kill your followers, your Canterlot."

Bluelood closed his eyes and waited for it to pass.

"Nearly a hundred nobles died. That can mean many things, Blueblood. If I tell the city they died by commoner hooves, over a thousand years of tradition and institution will be instantly demystified. That will be it for the old Canterlot of princess and nobles. Then, it will be up to the ponies with a voice to tell ponykind what kind of Canterlot will take its place, yet reconcile the way that the old was brought down." She grabbed one of the statues and levitated it closer, bearing it like a bat. "That will be hard work, Blueblood. Since your usefulness as pied-piper for the imbecilic Speakers is over, you are going to have to find new work for yourself, and a new moniker that won't paint a target on yourself in the new Canterlot."

"M- My Lady, I- I'll do anything You ask! I'm a willing servant and will be to the end!" Blueblood stuttered. "Please, does it matter what I act like and why?" He rolled onto his stomach and pressed his head into the floor. "I- If you order me to, I will give it all up in a second! I swear, I follow every word, every letter."

Velvet's expression sunk into one of contempt. "Blueblood, shut up. I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about the ponykind and the future. See this is the problem with you. You're blind to the meaning behind it all. However, that may be your greatest strength too. You see ponies doing things, and want your hoof in their buisness, but don't understand the reasons they do what they do."
She used the statue to nudge his head up to look at the bloody statuary and iconography.
"Why do you think Astral did that?"

"I..." Blueblood croaked. "I don't know. T- To disrespect Celestia? Spreading some peasant blood on her altar would be what I would do if I wanted to spite the princess."

Velvet tisked. "A perfectly...  obvious response. See, that's not peasant blood anymore. It's blood touched by her. Its semi-divine now, like those ponies in the opera house. Perhaps not literally, but in her imagination. She has painted over Celestia with her color. I don't myself know what that symbolizes."

Blueblood sighed plaintively. "Replacing her?"

"Perhaps. ut isn't that strange for an alicorn that is more obsessed with her own proclivities than being the leader I need her to be?" Velvet posed. "But I digress. Blueblood, you need to be thinking about replacement. How do we replace the mysticism that kept the old regime in power, with a syystem that keeps us in power? Astral has not given us immediate answers. Blueblood, I want you to fight back against your imminent obsolescence."

She licked her lips, weighed the weight of the statue in her hooves, and brought it down full force on Blueblood's hindleg. She stuffed her hoof in his mouth to stifle his scream.

"Astral is upstairs, closing in on whatever has caught her attention. Go upstairs and find Her." She ordered him. "Get her to fix that broken nose and  fractured leg." She chuckled. "And then you can be semi-divine too, hmm?

"Lady Velvet please!" Blueblood blubbered. "W- What have I done to deserve this?"

Velvet shrugged. "Quit your naval-gazing Blueblood and find a reason to call yourself prince." She wiped her hoof through the blood on the wall. "Ponykind need our answers. Not these ones of course, since you let them die." Her gaze sharpened. "Have I made myself clear?"

"Not really." Blueblood dragged himself out of the room, back into the dark hallway. "S- Somepony help me up please! We need to start searching the upper levels!"


Velvet turned back to the nave. "Time..." She licked her lips. "Time is not on our side. Sooner or later, heaven's avengers will come and punish us for what we've done, and pain these same walls with my blood." She licked the blood off her hoof. "What the hell am I doing."

She sighed. With a spark off her horn, the silk hangings were set alight. The fire quickly spread to the wooden paneling and canvas paintings that decorated the walls.
Velvet took a step back from the nave. Unsatisfied, she launched another spell into the small space. The whole floor rocked at the spell detonated in a blast of fire and smoke. Granite splinters showered into the hallway.

"What the hell am I doing." Velvet grit her teeth, as she stalked her way towards the nearest staircase.







Sel stared for many long minutes down the inexplicable chasm that had opened in the stage of the opera house. He'd sworn he'd seen a light at the bottom, a sign of a pony or some other entity that had gone down before he'd arrived.

Sel was conflicted. Lady Velvet had ordered him to keep anypony from passing. If somepony was already down there however, they could disrupt Velvet's plans. 

"Have I already failed?" He asked himself.
He looked around, noticing the same harness and pulley system that Velvet had.
"Rats." He nibbled his lip, resigning himself to his decision.



After a few abortive starts, Sel finally got the stage pulleys into the optimal settings to lower him down the foreboding hole. He put himself into the harness and tested how it slowly spooled out. It would slowly lower him to the bottom of the chasm, where he would search the immediate surroundings and find the pony he had seen.

After taking a deep breath, Sel leaned over the hole and let the harness take his weight. As expected, the pulley system slowly fed out rope and let him drop. He felt a surge of anxiety as he fell past the lip of the hole. The light of the opera house quickly became distant as he descended into the chasm. All around him was smooth rock, like a lava tube.

The pulley ran out of line ten hooves from the bottom.

“I’m already beginning to regret this.” Sel squirmed against the harness. “Ah, shoot, I regretted this from the beginning.”

Being almost a complete novice in telekinesis, it took him several minutes of unproductive flailing to release the harness straps, dropping him the remaining distance to the ground. He landed with an *uff*.

The space was indeed reminding Sel of the catacombs under the Musician's Guild. It was certainly every bit as dark and claustrophobic.
There was only one passage, which dwindled into a black infinity deeper into the Mountain. Craning his head upwards, Sel saw the pinprick of light from the candles at the top of the hole.

“I hope Lady Velvet sends a pony after me eventually.” Sel checked over his firefly lantern for any cracks. “Otherwise I may be down here a while.”


He set off down the lightless tunnel, in search of the pony that may or may not have been a figment of his imagination. Not unlike the eternal night up on the surface, time and its passage became difficult to track in the darkness.

“This would be a pretty bad time for an earthquake. Tra la, la la la.” Sel whistled. The same tune as in the garden, burying all the ponies. Sel was having vivid flashes of being buried himself.



Without warning, the tunnel opened up to a cavernous space far larger than should have been possible to exist under Canterlot’s plateau. Sel guessed he was now deep within the Mountain, for he could see neither the roof or the far wall of the voluminous cavity.
"Wow. This is really something." Sel gulped. The vast space felt impossible, and he kept expecting to see stars when he looked upward. He felt very small.

He took a few steps forward. The light of his lantern climbed up the legs of monolithic statues that loomed large between him and further into the cavern. They were huge, like no style Sel had ever seen before, but essentially ponylike in shape. They guarded against any further progression into the black, a forest of stone among a world of rock.

The bizarreness of the situation was already beginning to wear on Sel. He retreated back to the wall of the cavern, letting the huge statues go unseen in the dark.


"I- I should go back." He gulped. "It's going to be impossible to find somepony in this place. For all he knew, the cavern could be the width of the Mountain itself, miles and miles.

Yet there was another light in the seemingly infinite dark, a few hundred hooves to his right. There was a torch sconce attached to the cavern wall, casting some light on a cluster of objects.
Trotting over to the setup, Sel took note that the torch had been lit very recently. The objects surrounding it appeared to be set up like a laboratory or operating room.

"Hmm." Sel trotted through the 'lab'. He recognized many of the objects. He picked up a rusting circular birdcage from beside a desk. "Phyte."

Most of the equipment looked like it hadn’t been touched in some time, whereas others had been recently moved. The chemistry apparatuses and aged reference books were covered in a thin layer of dust and cobwebs. A row of stone slabs holding desiccated bodies was pushed against the cavern wall, though imprints in the dust betrayed the absence of several more.
Sel moved closer to the slabs. They had the same carved markings as the slabs Astral had inexplicably moved into the opera house. Sel suspected that this is where they had come from. How had Astral know the way into the forgotten gloom, Sel did not know. There was more going on with the alicorn than anypony understood. Unless Astral hadn’t been the one to open up the chasm...


“Lady Velvet would be quite interested to see what all this stuff is.” Sel picked up and inspected a beaker. "Maybe we can learn more about Astral and-

A flurry of movement darted at the edge of the light. Started, Sel dropped the beaker and it shattered against the cavern floor.

“Who’s there!” Sel advanced against the darkness with the lantern. He reached for his sword but discovered to his horror it had come out of the scabbard when he'd fallen from the harness. He grabbed a shard of the beaker and held it menacingly. “Show yourself!”

The clip of hooves on the stone echoed from Sel’s right, in the opposite direction of the tunnel back to the opera house. It seemed Sel's vision had not lied, and somepony had made it down into the tunnels.
Taking a deep breath, Sel gave chase, hoping his quarry didn’t have anything more dangerous than a fragment of glass.







It was several heads taller than Nightmare Moon, but rail thin at every point along it’s body. It’s twig-like limbs were entirely composed of undulating muscle and sinew, save for the horn and the bones protruding at its hooves and wings. It’s face was long and sharp, lacking in features except for beady eyes and the small slits of it’s nose. The white robes it had been wearing were shredded by what had been a very hasty gallop.

It looked like an unearthed corpse. Twilight's imagined she was seeing how Celestia would look after not too long.


“We will want to get to know each other. I know it.” Twilight was used to voices in her head, but the entity before her was an unpleasantness on a level she’d never before experienced. “You're more than the others. I can see it. I can smell it. You're something above them." The thing undulated violently, its head bobbing back and forth as it assessed Twilight. "I think you're going to be perfect. PERFECT. PERFECT."



“What in the hell are you?” Twilight backed away, holding the sword out in front of her..

“A life-maker.” The abomination cooed. Tendrils of flesh began to unwind from its hooves and race along the ground like creeper vines, following the grooves in the floor towards Twilight. All the blood caking the floor and walls began to moisten and bubble.

"Y- You don't belong in this world." Twilight uttered. "You shouldn't exist. Natural law should let you exist."

"I can make amazing things out of you. You are..." The entity paused, stopping its strange bobbing. "Beautiful. Let me turn you into a god. Let me take you apart and transform your perfect materials into a perfect craft."



Before Twilight could react, she was under attack.
At first it was purely mental in nature: Like an insane scream, a psychic wail battered against the inside of Twilight's skull. She fought back disorientation long enough to cast a counter-pattern, but that was when the magical attacks came.  The entity, rolling like a snake, sent a wave of green magic through the air. Twilight was almost sliced in half by the magical wave before she thought to drop to the ground. She heard the crackle of the energy against the floor and columns. She jumped up and back just in time to avoid another such attack that sliced into the floor. Then another psychic attack, sending Twilight reeling as she clutched her head. 

Twilight couldn't felt her body go limp. Head head was a mess of color and pain from the brutal psychic assault the entity had subjected her to. It could project thoughts through its aura for devastating effect, implying a totally different kind of brain organization. Twilight had no opportunity to marvel at this as her agony continued.

Suddenly though, the attack stopped.
Twilight pulled herself off the ground and retreated behind a column. The entity had stopped moving completely, besides the seemingly reflective writing of its component tendrils.


“Hold on! We don’t have to fight!” Twilight yelled, breathing. “We can talk this through.”

“Can we? I doubt we would both be satisfied.” The abomination said. "I want to have your flesh and blood. Others do not givve me theirs willingly."


“And neither will I, but we can discuss alternatives.” Twilight said. She held the sword close. If she rushed the creature, she might be able to get a few swipes in before the mental attack resumed. Only she didn't know how tough its sinew was.  "Why do you want me?"

"Because you are an alicorn." The thing said. "Your body is beautiful."
Twilight felt the agonizing mental static returning. She could not pin down why, but she suspected the entity was not doing it fully on purpose.



"Back away, to the doors." Twilight demanded. "I have a sword!"

"Yes I saw." The entity said. For some reason it obeyed Twilight's order, retreating to the entrance. Its tendrils began to thrash more wildly. "Ponies have been haranguing me with comparisons with the alicorn Celestia. She was very white I am told, but you are very dark. I never heard of there being another alicorn."

"They didn't know about me." Twilight said.

"Would you like for them to before I disassemble you?"

The clinical, almost naively hopeful of the entity's words and intentions was terrifying in its own way. Twilight doubted the entity really understood the ponies it had killed. "Do they know about you?" Twilight swallowed her fear. She had to be in the advantageous position if she was going to be able to negotiate with the thing. That meant, unfortunately, violence. "Will they help me?


"Help you?"

Twilight charged her horn and dove into the middle of the room. She sent a purple lance of magic in the entity's general direction as she charged forward, sword primed to strike. Her magic caught the abomination in the leg, sending the limb flying away in a spray of silvery ichor. The suddenly off-balance entity fell forward but caught itself with its prehensile wing.
Twilight, galloping forward with all her speed, collided with the monster, driving the sword through its head and sending them both tumbling into the hallway. Twilight was dazed for several second, then lit her horn to see in the darkened corridor. The entity was pinned to the floor like a butterfly display by the sword through its head. It's beady black eye twitched.

"Like like you. I really like you." It said. It's severed limb completely unraveled and snaked along the ground back into its body. Its stump pushed new flesh to regenerate the leg.

"Oh.. Oh no." Twilight crawled to a safe distance from the thing. She hadn't meant to hurt it so badly, though that didn't seem to matter. "You're...  impossible." She cast a probing arc of magic at the thing. The flesh only grew back again. "How could the ritual create something like you? What are you?


“I am Astral Nacre.” It said simply. Astral saw the look of shock pass over Twilight’s face. “You’ve heard of me? You must be quite the exceptional mare, then. I can make you more exceptional.”


"More exceptional..." Twilight heard the nightmare mantra, endlessly, repeated, play in her mind again. Twilight and more. Become more. More than you were.  "No. I can't let you exist."

The thing name Astral Nacre lurched upright.


“NO!” Twilight preempted Astral with a flurry of powerful kinetic spells. “NO!” The unprepared abomination caught them on her exposed body, and great chunks were torn from her neck and chest. Astral was thrown against the wall, and she came to rest in a jumbled heap.

Twilight looked at the gore splattered scene she’d just created, utterly horrified. She had lost control, just like with Chrysalis. "I... Oh my god." She dry heaved, retreating to the wall.
Control, she pleaded with herself, exercise restraint and control. "... sorry ..."


“Beautiful and powerful. I didn't land a hit on you before, and now you have taken me to task.” Astral staggered to her hooves. She grasped the splattered flesh from the wall behind her and shoved in the holes where they belonged. “Who are you?"

"I have been practicing recently.” Twilight whispered.

"I should like to hear more some time." Astral's body shivered as it fully reformed into its normal shape. "I see I can not convince you of my view of things, nor overpower you. I'm disappointed." 


“Did you kill castle staff?” Twilight charged her horn again, but held back. “Did you kill the speakers?”

Astral seemed almost flustered. “I haven’t killed anypony! I make life, not death. Twilight, tell her!”


Twilight was beyond confused that the abomination knew and used her name, or that she would be telling herself something. "What?"

"Tell Twilight. Tell Twilight it is bad to kill ponies." Astral repeated. "Tell Twilight. Tell Twilight."

Twilight Sparkle felt her eyes go unfocussed. 'tell Twilight'  It echoed through her head.
"Twilight...  Twilight Velvet?" She looked over her shoulder to the blood-strewn throne room. "Ask...  Twilight...  Velvet?" 
The color in the room seemed to fade. Twilight couldn't hear anything over her own heartbeat.



"H- Hey!" A new voice called from the other side of the hallway. "Astral Nacre! Help me please!"

The two alicorns, turned to look. Blueblood, helped along by ponies with guns, hobbled towards them.

"..." Twilight followed the stallion with his eyes. "Blueblood."

The militiaponies, seeing one more alicorn than they were prepared for, hesitated. They shared looks, raised, and pointed their arquebuses directionally at Twilight.
Blueblood was unfazed. He limped between Astral and Twilight, glancing between them. Blood was coagulated on his nose and chin. "Uh, Astral...  And you... My leg is broken."

Twilight could do nothing but stare. It felt so surreal. She wondered when she had fallen asleep because she had to be in a dream. When had things become too ridiculous to believe? Had it come when Celestia died or earlier. Thinking back, there was so much about the last months that seemed impossible. Perhaps everything since the first time she woke up in the Everfree Castle throne room was part of an unending dream.

Blueblood shied away from the dark alicorn's intense stare. He slid towards Astral. "Um, can you fix my leg without, you know, eating me?"

"I'll do it." Twilight whispered. Se dipped her head, the militiaponies' gun's following her, to tap her long horn on Blueblood nose.  His nose sparkled briefly with purple magic, as did his leg. He yelped in pain as the bones came back together.

Astral watched Twilight work her magic, vibrating with interest.



Twilight stood up strait. "You." She addressed Blueblood. "Who desecrated the throne room? Who created this monster?"

"HEY! Lower those guns!" An order echoed down the hallway.
The militiaponies immediately obeyed, yielding to the new interlooper.
Twilight Velvet trotted up to the dark alicorn. She patted Blueblood on the shoulder, then pushed him out of the way. Grinning she assessed the unfamiliar alicorn.

Twilight Sparkle said nothing. Astral Nacre looked between the two Twilights expectantly.

"An alicorn. Look at those wings... wow. Look at that horn! You look like you've just stepped out of a painting." Twilight Velvet laughed. "Or just stepped off the moon. Amazing...  A Celestiaan."

Twilight took a shallow breath. "Are you responsible for this?"

The older Twilight smiled. "Twilight Velvet at your service. Welcome back to Canterlot, princess."








Sel trotted through the dark of the impossible cavern. It was impossible for the pony he was chasing not to have seen him, with the lantern on his waist being a sole light source in a world of darkness. He didn't know how the pony was navigating, or if they were just running aimlessly deeper into the black.
He heard the sound of hoofsteps he was fallowing sharply fall off. Moving more cautiously, he encountered the wall of the cavern again. There was a small tunnel, smaller than the one that led back to the opera house. The pony had gone in.

"It this back in the direction of Canterlot? I can't tell." Sel mumbled. "Shoot. I'm never going to find my way back. I'm going to die in this place." 

He ducked into the tunnel. It was much shorter than the one to the opera house, and it wasn’t very long before it reached its terminus. It opened up into another cavern, this one about the size size and shape as Phyte’s lair under the Musician’s Guild, illuminated by dim lanterns. Instead of birdcages and scrolls, this space resembled a printing house. Strange machines, odd assemblies of metal and gears, were lined up around the edge of the space.  The machines were completely foreign to Sel, and he could not even begin to guess what their glass and copper composition could do.

Sel stayed hidden behind the threshold, wary of potential trouble. The pony he was chasing could only have ended up there.



A flash of yellow light erupted from between the machines, and for a brief moment Sel could see the outline of the pony he’d been chasing. She was a slightly shorter than average with straight, shoulder length hair. Nothing could be discerned beyond that. When the light faded there was a second pony beside her, a taller mare wearing a cloak and carrying a bulky saddlebag.

“You’re here. Good timing.” The taller mare had a voice Sel almost recognized. “I was afraid you would wander off. I don’t know what I’d do if you got lost or kidnapped.”

The other mare’s response was rushed and urgent. “Somepony is in the Arcanum! I think they saw me!"

"What?! You saw another pony in here?" The first mare said.

"I was following up on Phyte's disappearance. I was trying to find out how much the ponies on the surface had taken, but one of them might have seen me, and I think they followed me back here!”

“Don’t panic, just tell me what it looked like. Was it an alicorn?” The taller mare quickly began unpacking her bags, though Sel couldn’t see it’s contents.

“I don't know. I don't know what most alicorns look like. It wasn't like Agana.”

“Most aren't like Agana, no, but how big was it compared to a pony?”

“I- I-  I don’t know, you all look the same to me!” The smaller mare was on the edge of hysteria. “Oh goodness, what if they find us? I’m scared, Sunset!”

Sel’s eye widened. Sunset. The name and voice connected in is mind. He dared to lean out further to try to see a face. Lady Sunset, another scion of Canterlot petty nobility...  Sel had memories of frolicking with the daughters of house Sunfall in their modest garden, and the little yellow filly he was sweet on before she went away to Celestia’s unicorn school. Sunset...  The Traitor. Welcome back to Canterlot, he thought to himself.

“Twilight, you’re panicking! Just calm-   Twilight, just calm-   Urg, okay, okay!” Sunset groaned. “We’ll pull back and wait until this dies down."

"Okay..."

"Worried? How about we, um, use code names. How does that strike you?" Sunset posed. "Look here. I have the Blackhorn armor, so we are ahead of schedule. We pull back, and finish tuning the projector in one cycle.”

"...  Alright Sunset."

"Good. Hold on."


Another flash of light illuminated the room and both the mares disappeared. 
Sel waited a minute before he risked uncovering his lantern. He strolled around the small room, but besides the massive metal machines, there were two new objects.
The Blackhorn armor, folded neatly and placed on the ground, and an oversized golden horseshoe, probably Celestia’s, wedged into one of the apertures of the machine.

"Sunset Shimmer, what are you up to." Sel whispered. It had been a long time, but saying her name made his heart tremor a bit. "Do I have to kill you to serve Lady Velvet?"

Sel reached out to pick up the oversized horseshoe, then after a moment’s hesitation, drew his hoof back. His thoughts were a storm of confusion and indecision, but after several minutes he resolved to head back to the surface.

"Buck." He swore to himself. "I... I should have spoken up. Maybe if Lady Velvet and Sunset talk, they can talk out problems before there's an escelation to violence." But as he said this he didn't really believe it was possible. Two headstrong mares, especially ones like Velvet and Sunset, could only lead to a clash.

Then there was one the baffling detail that made Sel doubt his own ears: Sunset addressing the other pony as Twilight. What did that mean? Was Twilight Sparkle back in Canterlot, helping the Traitor?
After a minute of teeth-grinding, Sel decided Twilight Velvet, and certainly Astral Nacre, didn’t need to know about Sunset. At least, not until it became pertinent. 








“Yes, some of us know about you. I learned about your kind from one of her late highness's councilors, Prosser. To others, inheritors of the old traditions such as my family, you come down through the ages as legends and racial memories." Twilight Velvet said gravely. "I imagined us meeting many times. It has turned out somewhat, well, awkward."

Twilight Sparkle just continue to stare.

"You look different than I imagined. Then again, I have had only decayed books and convoluted dreams to go off of." Velvet ran her hoof through the dark alicorn's mane, then traced the seam between the skin of her breast and the fused-on cuirass.  "Fascinating.

“Twilight Velvet...  Mother...” Twilight whispered. She looked into her mother’s eyes, and saw a perverted glee that frightened her.


Velvet didn’t hear her. “There is so much to say. I hope you forgive me if I jumble my words a bit. I'm almost overwhelmed."

Twilight didn't believe a word of that, and that was almost the most upsetting thing of all. Her mother seemed to be taking alicorns, murder, and violence in stride.
She looked to Blueblood. "You broke his leg."

"He's been a naughty boy that hasn't accepted that he needs to adapt to survive. That, and he needed reminding that even though the nobles and rank and file call him prince, they call me master." Velvet said. "Anything to add, Blueblood."

Blueblood cleared his throat and tried to speak up despite an obvious reluctance. "I am sorry for failing you, my lady. I, um, let this black alicorn heal me instead of seeking it from Astral Nacre as you ordered."


Twilight was shocked to see a pony with a reputation for arrogance like Blueblood totally subservient to Velvet. "You set him up..." She blinked, looking between Velvet and Blueblood. "You're showing off how much control you have over your subordinates."

"Wow, calling me out." Velvet laughed. "I can tell I'm going to like you. I hope you stay. Please forgive my Astral’s hostility. She doesn’t quite understand her place in the world yet.”

Astral Nacre was stunned to be spoken of in that way. “My dear Twilight that’s not a very nice-”

“SILENCE!” Velvet interrupted with magic enhanced volume, shaking the throne room and the rest of the castle. “You and I will be having a very long talk about etiquette and propriety after this! Lesson one, YOU WILL LISTEN TO ME, WITHOUT QUESTION!”

Astral's beady eyes quivered. "Listen to you?"

"Do you think I can't punish you if you don't listen to me?" Velvet said icily. "Act better, or I will have to treat you like another uppity officer who needs to be brought in line, talented, yet insubordinate."

"I- Insubordinate?! I am- I..." Astral went silent. Her whole body roiled with agitation.  She looked at Twilight Sparkle. "Brought... Brought in line..."


Despite herself Twilight felt a spark of satisfaction to see the monstrous entity humiliated. It was a huge risk, yet Velvet seemed to have cowed Astral. Astral and Velvet both understood some unspoken fact that Twilight did not see yet.

Velvet held her hoof out to the black alicorn. "Now who is calling out who? Do you think I set that up?" She chuckled. "Just as I did not quite expect you, you did not expect me. You're trying to hide your surprise."

"I am faced with many mysteries." Twilight said.

"Do you want answers? Stick around. See what we have here before you decide to challenge us or leave us." Velvet nodded to her outstretched hoof. "Canterlot hospitality is famous across Equestria."



Twilight had the feeling she was going to be in a very bad way, no matter if her mother’s civility was genuine or a trap. The level of disconnect she was feeling, casting suspicion on her own mother, was starting to give her a headache.

Twilight had to decide now what kind of character she was going to play. Her instinct to be vague about her identity was looking like the correct one, for the truth about herself, while just another impossibility among many in Canterlot, would only cause more trouble: The relationship between Velvet and Astral Nacre had to be balanced. If Twilight got too close to Velvet she had the feeling she would really set Astral off. Once the indefatigable monster stopped playing around, all Canterlot was at risk.

So if Twilight could not be honest, who could she be? What was the right character to mitigate the violence and horror hanging over the city?
Twilight bit back a rush of feelings. She was moving the body of Nightmare Moon. Was that who she needed to be?  No. No. Twilight could not bring herself to claim that identity. She did not deserve to have her actions attached to Nightmare Moon's name. 

"Please let me disabuse you of certain delusions you may be operating under." She purred. "I'm not the pony you think I am."

“You are not Nightmare Moon?” Velvet didn’t seem sure if she should be pleased or not over that news.

“I-” The crisis brewing in Twilight’s mind was coming to the fore. Her conversation with Applejack mouldered unpleasantly: Who did the idea of Twilight Sparkle belong to. Did it belong to the pony talking through Nightmare Moon's body, or the pony asleep in Everfree Castle. Both? Neither?
It felt painful to admit, but Twilight felt it almost dishonest to continue to be Twilight Sparkle. Like Forlorn Spark, she was what Twilight had been, but something more. Not the twisted and corrupting Spark, but more mature; Older, different. She was the idea that had grown out of Twilight Sparkle, but she was not Twilight. Perhaps, if she returned to being like she had been before, she could be Twilight Sparkle again.

What was in a name? Twilight had always acknowledged that there was something intrinsically powerful about a name, and she’d always loved the sound and symmetry of her own. Thinking of her own name over and over tickled her: It was just a collection of sounds, but it was the idea behind the name that made it important.

"The Nightmare of the Moon that came before died. I have replaced her."


"Interesting." Velvet said, eyes narrowing. "Where did you come from?"

"Her thoughts." That was not untrue. The nightmare curse that had turned Twilight into what she was now had come from Nightmare Moon. "I was a different consciousness, just as the Nightmare of the Moon was once different, then become Nightmare. We shared our curse, and our ambitions. When she died against Celestia, her body became mine."

"Ah...  I hoped for a moment you would say you began life as a pony." Velvet said, her scrutinous gaze going over every detail again, trying to pick out anything amiss. "And what, pray tell, is your name?"



Twilight swallowed the enormous apprehension she felt. What was in a name?

Who was she? A life, a former dreamer. But this lived within something else. They were the twin parts of her. Twin twilights.
Nay, twin darknesses. The mind within, the body without... They were both in shadow. Her soul was dark in the shadow of the past, the future, and what was yet to come. Her body was a lie, a sin, a blasphemy, and the visage of a nightmare. It was just pretentious to make her want to vomit.

She pulled her lips back in a slim smile. She felt morbidly clever, for though she'd born a name, the old felt like it was dying a little.
"Call me Anceps-nox. Ancepanox."