Witch fusses anxiously with the teacup before her, the jasmine and camomile aroma wafting up from the softly steaming brew, before glancing at the ticking clock over the counter.
“Two-hundred and twenty-eight minutes to go…” Monkey comments dryly, her own cup half-drained and half-forgotten at her elbow. Witch sighs, turning back to her friend and tapping a hoof in worried agitation. “And no, you can’t go back to the hospital and take over the operation from Doctor Red Cross…” the pegasus adds, making Witch grumble incoherently into her tea.
“You’re probably the only person that’s gotten her to stay put just by saying that…” laughs a charcoal gray unicorn mare with a wavy mane of dark purple and lilac.
“Mother!” Witch exclaims plaintively, her eyes reflecting feigned betrayal, causing both Monkey and Witch’s mother to chortle.
“Oh don’t ‘Mother’ me, Witchy… I know better than Miss Wrench here how you can be while waiting… The only thing that compares is when you’re preparing for some event…” Fine Brew replies, coming by and topping up Monkey’s tea with fresh. “Drink that, Miss Wrench… It’ll help keep your head clear, and trust me… You’ll need it to keep my daughter in line…” she adds, giving the pegasus a slight nudge as she heads further into the Tea Room to ensure that her customers, few though they were at this hour, are content for the time being.
“It’s almost as bad as having my own mother hanging over me…” Monkey states dryly as she picks up her teacup. Witch chuckles at Monkey’s obvious discomfort.
“How’re your parents doing anyways?” Witch asks before taking a sip of her tea and sighing contentedly. Her muscles relax against the railings of her mind, the taste of this particular tea blend triggering the ingrained response… And if she isn’t much mistaken, her mother had dosed her tea with one of her father’s sedative concoctions as well.
“Same old, same old…” Monkey replies with a shrug. “Mom’s cloud-architect firm keeps growing, Dad’s got Cloudsdale Air Guard… They asked if I was considering moving back, but I sent a reply explaining things with Tricks. I can only imagine how surprised they’ll be that I’m essentially a co-guardian at the tender age of 17…” She sighs. “And really, if I went back, what would I really do? It’s not like I want my old job back… And besides, I… Well… I’d miss everyone here… and you…”
Witch smiles at Monkey, levitating a cinnamon cookie over to her pegasus friend. “I’d miss you too, Monkey,” she replies as Monkey eagerly grabs the cookie and eats half of it in one bite.
Monkey opens her mouth, whether to speak or finish off the cookie would remain a mystery, when the front window shatters, two pegasi tumbling through at high speed and crashing through tables and chairs before hitting the counter. Witch gasps as she recognizes the pair brawling.
“Commander Soarin! Captain Spitfire!” she exclaims before turning her attention back to Monkey. “Help my mom! Get everyone through the kitchen and into the pub!” she shouts to be heard over the screams of the other patrons. Monkey immediately takes off, zooming towards the older unicorn and helping her marshal the other ponies through the double doors at the back of the tea room.
Even as she turned back to her superiors, Soarin goes flying through the glass door next to the broken window. “Captain Spitfire!” Witch shouts again, trying to figure out why she was fighting with her squadmate. She catches a brief flash of pink light emanating from Spitfire’s eyes, making Witch recoil from her, inexplicably terrified of that aura. Horrified, she watches the Wonderbolts’ Captain land heavy hits on Soarin.
Suddenly, after a wicked punch to his face, Soarin has Spitfire grappled, forcing her to the ground. Witch peers out from the doorway, cautiously stepping over the glass shards. The air is thick with the sounds of a fierce fight, and she could hear Soarin pleading with the captain, though not specifically what he’s saying. Pink magic flares around the plaza, and Witch cringes at the sight for some strange reason she can’t quite put her hoof on.
A fuchsia explosion from further down the plaza sends a rainbow-maned pegasus flipping head over hooves backwards towards the struggling elites. After steadying herself, she joins Soarin and Spitfire on the ground, forming what Witch could only describe as a pile of hugging pegasi. Anxious, Witch gingerly trots across the avenue, stepping lightly around the demolished cobblestones when the rainbow-maned mare left to help Commander Fleetfoot against their disgraced squadmate, Rapidfire.
Rose-colored energy crackles around the orange pegasus, making Witch’s insides quake, and the arrival of three more dark versions of the Wonderbolts certainly didn’t help matters. She could hear words being exchanged between these magic-using dark pegasi and the Wonderbolts, but she could feel the pain and mental anguish radiating off of Spitfire, even as Soarin keeps a hold of her, nearly overwhelming Witch.
Suddenly, Squad 3 flies in, followed quickly by Wave Chill of the second squad blasting in. He lands and skids to a stop beside Soarin, making Witch pause a few steps away from the two members of Squad 1. “Reporting sir!” Wave Chill says as he salutes Soarin. “Blaze and High Winds took over at the compound! They are going through the last inspections before the whole force is dispatched! Captain Silver Lining flew to the castle to warn the princesses! I estimate both the Wonderbolts and Royal Guard arriving full force in fifteen to twenty minutes!”
Witch exhales a breath she hadn’t realized she’d held, trotting up as Soarin made the Squad 2 Commander promise faithfully to protect Spitfire.
“Sir?” Witch says timidly as Soarin leaves to join the rainbow-haired mare that she still only vaguely recognized. Filing it away, she returns her attention to Wave Chill, “We can take shelter in the tea room. My mother’s the owner, and there’s a pub on the far side through the kitchen. Plenty of places to barricade…”
Wave Chill peers at her suspiciously. “You look familiar…” he says, still not moving.
Witch sighs. “I’m Witching Hour with the Unicorn Auxiliary, Trainer and Research…” she explains as she glances towards where the dark pegasi begin to fight with the Wonderbolts again with a worried expression. “Sir, with all due respect, we should take cover and get the captain away from the fighting. If you have another idea, I would recommend acting on it now…” Finally, Wave Chill nods, accepting her logic, carefully and gently pulling Spitfire to her hooves. Witch sends a quick sweeping charm to clear the shards and debris from their path, ushering them inside the battered tea room.
Wave Chill barely left Spitfire’s side, but chooses to stay as close to the plaza as the shop would allow, so Witch quickly pulls some overturned tables to make a temporary blockade of the door that the stallion could easily see over, but allows the two mares cover. Peering cautiously over the edge of the table, Witch spies the Streak twins watching an airborne fight that obviously includes Commander Soarin, since Fire Streak is getting his brother’s cooperation in aiding Soarin if it started to look bad for him.
Witch ducks back down, turning her attention to the distraught captain, curled up and shaking against Wave Chill, who has a foreleg loosely draped around her. “Are they all okay?” she suddenly asks. Witch doesn’t reply, looking up at Wave Chill for the answer.
“Uh… yes ma’am! The Wonderbolts are fighting well!” he responds, robotic in his militaristic answer. Witch edges closer to her, putting a foreleg around her as well.
“They’re gonna be fine, right?” she asks immediately, making Wave Chill blink in confusion. He looks at her with a long and appraising expression, obviously trying to figure out what had turned the usually stoic and serious captain into this shaking wreck that clings to any reassurance.
“They’ll be fine, ma’ - Spitfire.” Witch couldn’t help but be amused at the way Wave Chill haltingly dropped the formality. It’s obviously difficult for him to go against his strict code of conduct, but Witch can easily see that comfort and informal support is what the captain needs. “They’ll be fine,” he repeats, and Spitfire buries her face into his shoulder, shivering.
Witch shifts closer to Spitfire. “Ma’am? I never got to thank you and your friends for helping my friend last week…” she says softly, making Spitfire peek with one uncertain eye at Witch. “You helped her, and me by extension, a lot…” Witch pauses just a moment, hesitating before attempting to cleanse the mental wound the pegasus had suffered. “Captain, I know this doesn’t mean much from me, but don’t lose hope… If something is truly important to you, you will find the time to make it happen… But you’re not alone… No one ever truly is…”
Spitfire’s eye closes and she hides again in Wave Chill’s hug. Witch simply sits with her foreleg around her, a hoof running soothingly up and down her back. She tries to not think about the ground shaking and the shouts of fighting. She looks to the back of the café, spotting Monkey peeking through the swinging double-doors. Witch shakes her head and makes a small hoof gesture to send Monkey back to the other patrons and her mother. Focusing quickly, she casts a spell to freeze the door from opening on the tea room’s side and then a protective shield over it.
“Trainer Witching Hour?” Witch nearly jumps out of her skin when Wave Chill speaks.
“Yes, sir?” she responds, looking up at him from beside Spitfire.
“Third Captain Fire Streak and his brother have joined the fighting. Can you cast a shield over the door?”
Witch nods at his question, and her horn flares brighter as the multiple spells take effect. “It won’t be able to hold against much, and if they use that…” she hesitates briefly, unwilling to call the pink auras magic, since everything in her screams at its wrongness, “that stuff… I don’t know if it’ll react normally with natural magic…”
“You don’t think it’s natural magic?” the elite commander queries, meeting Witch’s eyes as his hold around Spitfire tightened slightly.
Witch shrugs, helpless in her ignorance. “It just feels wrong…” she answers. “Everything in me screams to run away from it.” Wave Chill accepts this explanation with a slight nod, before lowering his head to rest against Spitfire’s for a long moment.
“If anything comes our way, and your shield can’t hold it off, you take Captain Spitfire and get back to the compound,” he states, all authority and command.
Witch simply nods, knowing an order when she hears one. “Yes, sir.” Sitting there, with nothing to do but maintain the spells protecting her superiors and her mother’s patrons behind the kitchen door, Witch feels time pass her slowly. Crashing noises last far longer than she thinks they should, and even the little vocalizations seem drawn out for too long.
She senses more than sees or hears the approaching guard, especially with the magical blast of amethyst light that sends one of the dark-pegasi tumbling from the air. Breathing for what felt like the first time in half an hour, Witch relaxes. “Luna’s here,” she sighs in obvious relief.
“Oh no you don’t!” Luna shouts, making Witch look over the barricade into the plaza beyond. Another burst of light, this time all shades of the rainbow, accompanied by the sonic boom of somepony breaking the sound barrier, follows Luna’s challenge before a crackling implosion of air rushing into a vacuum and another explosion of glass and broken bricks crashing to the ground.
Dropping the protective shields over both doorways, Witch leaps over the tables blocking the doors and dashes out into the plaza, not phased by Luna shouting obscenities and stomping the cobbled road hard enough to shatter the stones. Eyeing the Wonderbolts, none of the injuries look particularly threatening, though she could easily tell that Misty Fly isn’t handling something well.
She looks around, feeling something missing, when Captain Fire Streak looks around, his distress clear. “Wait, where are Commander Soarin and Miss Rainbow Dash?” he asks, shaking Fleetfoot’s hoof away from him.
Fleetfoot simply looks up, apparently knowing where the pair are. Witch blanches, suddenly recalling the rainbow-maned pegasus from the stained glass windows in the castle. An Element of Harmony is missing?! Witch feels the pit of her stomach give out under the weight of the horrible sinking feeling that thought produces. “Princess Luna! Where are they going?! Can you track them?!” she asks loudly as Luna joins the group of battered Wonderbolts. Witch cringes, already knowing the answer, and Luna shakes her head.
“The magic in their crystals is quiet and mysterious. We are afraid we cannot sense nor trace it.” A quiet murmur of disbelief passes through the gathered guard and Wonderbolts. “Witching Hour, stay here and help the Royal Guard in organizing transport of any injured ponies then meet us at the palace,” she adds, addressing her student specifically and drawing the gaze of others to her. Witch swallows nervously and nods to the princess.
Taking charge of the situation there is easy enough for Witch, dispatching guardponies into the buildings to find any ponies that were injured by blasts or debris, unquestioned because of the authority granted to her by Princess Luna.
As she heads back to The Fine Brew Tea Room, Witch stops in her tracks, an unpleasant jolt of energy spiking up her foreleg. Shifting to one side, she looks down and quickly quells the urge to scream and smash the pink jewel, glittering with feigned benevolence in a crack between cobblestones. Cautiously, she pulls a napkin from her mother’s café with her magic and wraps the crystal in it before heading inside.
Monkey stands near their abandoned table, eying the bundle in Witch’s arcane grip. “What’s that?” she asks, moving to pluck it from the air.
“NO!” Witch shouts, nearly knocking her friend over as she both magically moves the hidden gem out of reach and practically tackles Monkey away. Monkey gives Witch a confused look as she rights herself and Witch hastily steps back and puts the suspicious… thing… in her bag. “Sorry,” Witch says, coughing nervously. “It’s something those pegasi were using to attack the Wonderbolts and I don’t want it hurting you…” she explains, smiling apologetically at her pegasus companion.
“You have to go?” Monkey asks, well able to guess that, as Luna’s student, Witch would be needed at the palace.
“Yes… As soon as the Royal Guard have found all the injured and started transporting them to the hospital,” Witch confirms with a nod and resigned sigh. “Were there any hurt here from when Captain Spitfire and Commander Soarin crashed through the window?” she asks, casting a wary glance back towards the kitchen.
“Just a few scratches from flying glass. Holly Sweep’s fixing them up and Fine Brew got them all something to make them relax a bit,” Monkey replies.
“Okay… Good… I’ll let the guards know, and you let Mom know that if anypony needs further care to go to the hospital. I’ll meet you there after I get done at the palace. Hopefully, I’ll be done there before Tricks is out of surgery…” Witch responds, her eyes constantly shifting and taking in everything and nothing at once; a sure sign of her anxiety eking its way back to the surface, compounded now with the emergency situation. Monkey nods and puts a hoof gently on Witch’s shoulder.
“Go get to work, Twitchy Witchy… It’ll keep your mind off things.” Witch smiles ruefully at Monkey’s well-placed encouragement.
“You know me too well,” Witch says, grabbing her bag with her magic and trotting back outside.
Witch forces herself to stare at the pink gem, thinking about it a merciful distraction from all the waiting. The occasional raised voices make Witch wish she were in the throne room with the group instead of this side room, but Luna had left instruction with the guards at the palace to have Witch wait there until after the Wonderbolts left.
With a heavy and frustrated sigh, Witch refocuses her gaze on the crystal, trying to puzzle out why it makes her want to destroy it without actually doing so. Those urges to smash it into dust had gotten so bad that she’d called in one of the unicorn guards after not even two minutes to cast a protective shield over it…
Every exploratory scanning spell she could think of, and still the pink gem remains an anomaly to Witch. She can’t even discern why only she is so affected by it.
At her wits’ end, she screams unintelligibly and swings her hoof down towards the crystal. The brown unicorn guard flinches when her hoof collides with his shield. Witch shrinks in on herself sheepishly, an apologetic half smile over her shoulder at the poor stallion.
“Eleven…” the guard comments dryly with one eye winced shut, still keeping count of the number of times she’d lost whatever composure she’d managed to gather and attempted to destroy the crystal.
“Sorry… Again…” she says softly before the sound of the door opening makes her whip around to see Luna entering, one eye still twitching.
“We hate him…” the princess mutters in irritation before blinking in confusion. “What art thou -” she cuts herself off, sighing and shaking her head, obviously forcing herself to exchange her regal formality for the normal informal speech Witch is accustomed to. “What are you doing, Witching Hour? And why is Sir Golden Compass cringing while maintaining a shield dome around a pink crystal?”
Witch sighs, rubbing her face with a hoof. “I’m trying to figure out two things: one, how this damnable thing allows pegasi to use magic…” she starts, looking up at her mentor. “And two, why it makes me want to smash it to smithereens!” she adds, before she makes another frustrated noise and takes yet another swing at the crystal, her hoof colliding with the gold aura of the shield.
“Twelve…” Golden Compass groans, his eyes closed tightly in a grimace.
“Sorry!” Witch quickly apologizes, cringing at her own loss of control. “Again…” she adds, her shoulders hunched up as she tries to hide her face in her mane.
Luna raises a brow at Witch’s uncharacteristic outburst, one ear twitching between up and down. Witch could certainly get flustered or anxious, but the anger just shown is decidedly not the norm. On top of her aberrant behavior, Luna’s eyes catch on the cuff bracelets, the blue jewels glittering with light not entirely from the lamps.
Approaching and circling her student, Luna takes a long hard look at the bracelets. The silver cuffs themselves, with their scalloped lower edge, now seem to be one piece with no means of removing them, and the silver surrounding the blue gems has old writing that even the princess had difficulty deciphering, though the characters are clear enough in a shimmering blue light that matches Witch’s own magic.
“Where there is Compassion, there is Love. Where there is Love, there is Strength. Where there is Strength, there is Life. Where there is Life, there is Hope,” she murmurs in the old tongue before her eyes stop on text that she’d initially mistaken as a simple reflection, but is actually more text made to look like a reflection. “From Envy, Hate. From Hate, Fear. From Fear, Death. From Death. Pain,” she whispers fearfully, unable to keep herself from reading the old text aloud. Luna looks up sharply at Witch, who peers at her mentor with a worried and confused expression on her face.
“Oh-ho-ho! Just when I thought things were going to get dull here for a moment, you go and prove me wrong, Lulu! I think you like having me around,” laughs a smooth male voice that echoes around the chamber. “But you do realize I have other places to be, don’t you?”
Witch finds herself wrapped up in the coils of the draconequus, staring into its red eyes with yellow sclerae. The gryphon-clawed arm holds one of her legs out to allow it to examine the glittering bracelets. “Oh my, Luna, where did you dig these up?” it asks, vanishing and letting Witch drop to the floor with a surprised squeak of protest. It reappears beside Luna, holding its paw and talons to form a rectangle that it stares through at Witch, as though sizing her up.
“Though, I suppose she does fit the bill…” it adds right before Luna finally gathers herself from her surprise.
“DISCORD!!!” Luna shouts, her voice rattling everything in the room. “WE HAVE HAD ENOUGH OF THEE AND THINE TRICKS! BE HELPFUL OR BE GONE!” she declares, with a stomp of her hoof that cracks the tiles of the floor.
“Oh, Luna… Do relax,” Discord says, pulling a zipper-tag along her mouth, leaving Luna’s mouth stuck closed. “You can’t expect me to just leave when you’ve gone and spoken Old Equusese… Ooo! And a prophecy no less, involving your dear hopeful student, Witching Hour!” he continues, practically giggling and tapping the digits of his gryphon claw and lion’s paw against each other.
Witch feels the color drain out of her at the word ‘prophecy’, swaying dangerously on her hooves as the world seems to tilt and spin too quickly. ‘No,’ she thinks to herself desperately, ‘I’m no special pony…’
“Easy there, Miss Witchy…” Discord coaxes, and Witch blinks as she realizes that the embodiment of chaos is supporting her with his detached wings fluttering on their own. “You need to relax more than Moon-butt over there does…” he continues, a giant red arrow suddenly pointing at Luna who is desperately trying to find the tag to unzip her mouth. “And I would beg to differ, little Witch Doctor… Being the student of a goddess is enough to make any pony special.”
He, and his wings, vanish again, and a whole, if miniaturized Discord appears on the table, opening a door in Golden Compass’ shield like it was there the whole time and taking a long look at the pink crystal. Witch staggers somewhat when the support suddenly disappears, and Luna lets out a frustrated roar as her mouth is released.
Surprised by Discord’s antics, Luna’s rage, or all or none of the above, Golden Compass’ magic flickers and the shield drops, and the guard pony collapses as well, hooves over his head and groaning. Witch’s bracelets flare with dazzling blue light, and the crystal glows bright pink in response. Moving without thinking, Witch makes a sound of primal fury as she leaps at the table, her eyes aglow with the same light as her bracelets.
The miniature Discord looks panicked only for a split second before he, and the crystal, disappear with a faint pop. Witch crashes into the table, breaking it and leaving her groaning in the wreckage. When he reappears, he’s back to his normal size, and the crystal is suspended in a small transparent box.
“There you go, curious little pony. Now you can study it without giving some poor unicorn a splitting headache, if you like…” He trails off, one ear suddenly turning into a bowl-like shape with a rod sticking out of the middle that swivels around 360* before he shrugs. “Gotta run! Been a treat as always, Lulu!” he calls as he pops away.
Luna gives vent to her frustration by stomping repeatedly, practically pounding a section of the tiled floor into dust. As her anger fades, the sound of muffled sobbing penetrates over the sound of her racing, irritated, heartbeat and she turns towards it. Her fury deserts her instantly and she rushes to Witch’s side, ignoring the table-debris that made sitting next to her student less than comfortable. When Luna extends her wing to cover Witch, the unicorn turns towards her and hangs onto her desperately as she cries, clinging as though the princess is the only thing capable of steadying her. “Witching Hour,” she queries softly, lowering her head to lightly graze her nose against Witch’s mane and ear.
Witch shudders again, obviously trying to regain control of herself. “I don’t know why I want to destroy that crystal… I couldn’t stop myself… Those dark pegasi were using it like magic… I don’t understand any of this…” Her voice breaks and she shivers against her mentor, her mane falling across her face.
“Neither do I,” Luna admits, and Witch looks up at her with a stricken expression. “But we need to find out,” she adds. “I knew you needed those bracelets, though not why or what for. They are now bound to you and your magic… and somehow, they are opposing forces.” Luna sighs heavily, resting her head lightly against Witch’s. “I would take this burden from you if I could, but -”
“I know…” Witch interrupts, sniffling. “I know you can’t…”
“I need you to keep studying this,” Luna states firmly, making Witch jerk sharply. Luna tightens her wing around Witch, keeping the unicorn against her side. “We need to understand these crystals… and we need to understand how it connects to your bracelets, and the writing on them…”
“Where there is life, there is hope,” Witch says, her voice sounding distant and far away. Luna cringes, mentally cursing Powers greater than she that Witch had understood the words spoken.
“I’ll send you some books that might point you in the right direction, but you cannot tell the Wonderbolts about the crystal…” Witch looks up at Luna with hazy blue eyes that steadily focus on Luna’s face. The princess shakes her head, answering the unspoken question. “Not even your friends in the support corps,” she adds, then explains further, “There are many ways they could react to it, and none of them show any promise towards understanding the way these crystals work, and how they relate to the augury.”
Almost numb from shock and now this burden, Witch nods her acceptance.