//------------------------------//
// Chapter 13 - Heart of Steel 
// Story: Twilight Sparkle of the Royal Guard: The Rising 
// by King of Beggars 
//------------------------------//

Shining Armor sat on the floor of the train car, in the space between two seats, his back pressed against the wall as he watched the skies grow cloudy and gray through the windows opposite him. The vibration of the train moving along, occasionally lurching as it hit another ice block, felt good against his back – like the massage spell he sometimes used when his back would ache from hunching over textbooks for several days straight.

“You okay, Shine-Shine?”

He looked up to see Pinkie Pie standing in front of him, her eyes soft with concern despite the disarmingly cheerful smile on her face. Behind her, the rest of his friends were looking in his direction from their seats – except for Spike, who was holding a book in his claws.

Shining nodded, a pang of guilt going through him over having worried his friends.

“I’m fine,” he said, chuckling to try and reassure them that he meant it. “Really. Just kind of nervous.”

“I should say so, darling,” Rarity said. “A test from Celestia? It must be quite the task.”

“Yeah,” he muttered sheepishly. “It’s weird. I mean, I’ve been Princess Celestia’s personal student since I was little, but I haven’t been a student-student for a long time. The appellation is sort of a formality at this point. I’ve got doctorates, for sun’s sake. I can’t remember the last time she personally gave me a test.”

“Five years, four months, thirteen days ago,” Spike said. He turned the page of his book with a casual flick of his claw. The statement was followed by a stunned moment of silence, causing Spike to look up from his reading. “Number one assistant, remember?”

There was a murmur of appreciation at the statement, and the girls all nodded knowingly. Shining Armor grinned bashfully. There was a joke amongst the group that Shining Armor would forget to brush his teeth if Spike didn’t remind him every day.

Which was a gross exaggeration, because Shining always made sure to brush… it was flossing that he sometimes forgot.

“What about when you had to go to Ponyville to work on the Summer Sun Celebration and ended up stopping Nightmare Moon?” Fluttershy asked.

“Or when she sent us to scare off that dragon?” Rainbow Dash added.

“Those weren’t tests,” Shining Armor said. “Those were missions – though, at the time, I thought going to Ponyville was just a favor. I used to do a lot of little things like that for the princess before I started dedicating my time towards friendship research.”

“So how’s this different?” Applejack asked.

“I dunno,” Shining Armor said. “That’s what’s got me nervous. If it’s a test, that means she’s looking for something specific, which means that even if everything turns out alright, I might end up failing to live up to whatever she’s testing for.”

“Celestia said that you have to go and find a way to help protect the Empire,” Spike said as he snapped his book shut. “Admittedly, the stated goal is a little vague, but at least it’s simple. You’re worrying too much, same as always. Besides, you’ve got all of us with you.”

Shining Armor smiled. His friends were all sitting there, nodding enthusiastically and grinning at him. Even when he was falling apart, his friends were there for him. It wasn’t all that long ago that all he had was Spike, and every day he appreciated the five girls sitting before him just a little more than he had the day before.

“Thanks, everyone,” he said in response to their reassuring smiles. “If it’s a test, it means it’s something I have to do on my own, but it helps a lot to know you’re all in my corner.”

“And let us not forget that Twilight will also be there,” Rarity said, a fiery determination burning in her eyes. “This is my big chance to impress her! She’ll be so impressed that she’ll just have to let me make her a wedding dress!”

Spike snickered in amusement. “Sorry, Rares, but I don’t think that’ll happen. Twilight’s pretty set on wearing her dress uniform, and of the three of us – her, me, and Shining – she’s probably the most obstinate.”

“No ‘maybes’ about it,” Shining Armor added.

“Pooh on both of you,” Rarity said with an annoyed huff. “Cadance and Miss Velvet have already had their tries at getting Twilight to wear a dress at the ceremony, and if I manage it then I will certainly gain considerable favor with both of them.”

“Can we all just take a minute to talk about what’s really important here?” Rainbow Dash said. “The princess said that Spitfire was there! Spitfire! I’m going to get a chance to go on a mission with the captain of the Wonderbolts!”

“I had no idea that Twilight knew Spitfire,” Rarity said. “I suppose it just never came up.”

"She was with Twilight when they rescued me and those other poor ponies on the night of the Gala," Fluttershy said. "She said they were friends."

The rest of the group shared a knowing look. Ever since the incident with foalnappings, Fluttershy had been very quiet about the details of that night. Knowing her as they did, all the rest of the gang could do was assure her they were there for her.

“I think I saw her at Twilight’s birthday party, come to think of it,” Applejack said, slipping a hoof under her hat to scratch at her head.

“Yup, she was there,” Pinkie Pie said. “Rainbow Dash almost pushed somepony down trying to get to her from across the ballroom!”

“N-no I didn’t!” Rainbow Dash said, her face flushing bright red. “That didn’t happen!”

Pinkie Pie pursed her lips, clucked her tongue, and wagged her hoof like a schoolteacher chastising an unruly student. “It certainly did happen. Trust me, I have a partygraphic memory.”

“W-whatever,” Rainbow Dash said with a snort, turning her head away as she crossed her arms churlishly. “Point is, I get a chance to impress Spitfire with my awesome moves. Once she checks out the new tricks I’ve been working on, she’ll have to let me into the Wonderbolts.”

“As happy as I am for you, Rainbow Dash,” Rarity said, “I’m not very much looking forward to Twilight’s other companion.”

Shining Armor frowned. When Princess Celestia had filled him in on the details of the Empire’s return, she’d mentioned that Twilight had brought along two of her friends who’d been staying in the castle. It was a little surprising that Spitfire had joined her, but what was really surprising was that Twilight had also brought along her friend from Zebrica.

A few months back, Rarity had run afoul of a group of diamond dogs on the outskirts of Ponyville. Everything had worked out in the end, but the experience had left something of a sour taste in Rarity’s mouth in regards to diamond dogs. When he’d later written to Twilight about it, Twilight had sent back a letter saying that she knew for a fact that not all diamond dogs were like that, and that she had a very good friend in Zebrica who was a diamond dog.

“I hope you’ll be fair to him,” Shining Armor said. He tried to be understanding, since it had been pretty frightening ordeal for her, but he also didn’t want her past experience to be held against one of his sister’s friends.

“Of course,” Rarity said, frowning. “I’m a lady, and a lady is nothing if not fair. He wasn’t one of those savages that tried to chain me to a minecart. And if Twilight vouches for him, I’m certain he must be a fellow of great character… all the same, diamond dogs…”

Everyone knew what she meant. Rarity would of course be polite, but it would take a little while before she felt comfortable around him.

Further conversation was stalled by the sound of the train’s whistle blowing thrice, and shortly thereafter the cabin door opened. Shining got up from his place on the floor and walked into the aisle to see who’d come in, while the rest of the gang stood on their seats, peeking over the backrests. The opening door had signaled the arrival of the engineer’s assistant. He was about Shining Armor’s age – just a few years older than the girls – but he had a very young-looking face that didn’t match his large stature. He was covered in soot and damp from sweat – both signs of how hard he worked to stoke the fires that kept the train running.

“Sorry if I’m interrupting,” he said as he shook off the layer of snow that had fallen on him as he’d walked between cars. “Just wanted to tell you that we’ll be at the end of the line in a couple of minutes.”

“That’s good,” Shining said with a nod. “Though, according to what we were told earlier, we should have been there an hour ago.”

The assistant chuckled sheepishly and adjusted his conductor’s hat. “Yeah, sorry about that. There was nothing we could do. The storm’s picked up a lot since yesterday, so we had to drop speed a bit ago. Safety precaution when the winds and snow gets too much, y’hear?”

“The train did seem to be hitting a lot of them there ice blocks,” Applejack said.

The assistant sighed. “Yeah, it’s the darndest thing. We don’t use this line often, but I been on the job for about five years, now, so I’ve been up this way more than a few times. I have never once seen the storms this bad, even in the winter. It’s weird.”

“Wild weather is pretty unpredictable,” Rainbow Dash said. She was captain of the weather patrol back in Ponyville, and if there was one thing she knew – aside from flying – it was weather. “Especially in places where there’s a lot of magic. This Crystal Empire place is supposed to be some kind of super-magical ancient city, right? The magic of the place might be having an effect on the wild magic controlling the weather around here.”

“I dunno about all that,” the assistant said, “I just know that this weather ain’t right.”

A horrible screech rent the air and the entire train car lurched. The sudden halt of momentum threw almost everyone in the car to the floor in a tangle. The girls all shrieked in surprise, but collected themselves quickly.

The assistant was the first back on his hooves. “The emergency brakes!” he shouted. His ears twitching spastically at the metallic shrieking still filling the air as the train’s wheels tried to find purchase on the icy tracks. He turned, lowering his body to the ground to sure up his balance, and reached for the door.

The train shook with an enormous, frightening thud, and the deafening sounds of metal being sheared and crushed. The force of the impact was like an enormous wave that washed over them. But as terrible as it was, they only had a fraction of a second to appreciate it before they were all thrown into the air as the train car began tumbling around them.

Shining Armor grit his teeth. The initial hit had hurt, making him feel like his bones were made of jelly and rattling his brain hard enough to make him feel dizzy, but he didn’t have the luxury of reflecting on it. The train had obviously come off the tracks, and if he didn’t do something, everyone in the car would be bashed against the inside of the car – or worse.

Luckily, his startle-response was closely tied to his magic, so the second he’d felt something was wrong, his body had begun gathering magic. He wrapped everyone in the car, including the assistant conductor, with his magic and pulled them close. His body hurt, he was dizzy, and he was having trouble concentrating, but he had one spell that he knew he could cast without fail, without even thinking about it.

All the magic he had went into a shield that sprung into life around the whole group. They all reached out, clinging to one another out of instinct and fear. Even as they twisted through the air, smashing against the seats and walls of the car, they held on tight. Some of the girls were shivering with fear.

By the time Shining Armor was able to think clearly, the car had already long-ago come to a rest. He looked down at the huddled mass he held in his arms. Some of the girls were looking around, their eyes glazed over, shock clear on their faces. Spike was on the other side of them, his arms also wrapped around the group. Maybe he’d managed the shock better than Shining had, or maybe Spike had the same reflexes he did, but he’d obviously also had the same instinct to try and protect them with his own body.

“Is everyone okay?” Shining Armor asked.

The girls all muttered shakily, confirming that they were fine. A knot in his chest that he didn’t know was there came undone when as heard their voices. Spike and the conductor’s assistant also grunted out replies.

“I’m going to let the shield down now,” Shining Armor said. He released them, and they all began to carefully extract themselves from one another.

The train car had come to rest on its side. The windows had broken out and they were standing on permafrost. There was glass and bent steel everywhere. A section at the back of the car was a mess of tangled wire and jagged metal. The car behind them had crunched against theirs – probably from the weight of the second engine at the rear pushing against it – fusing them together.

“Anyone see my hat?” Applejack asked slightly drunkenly. It was a laughably absurd question, considering what had just happened, but judging from her slurred words, she wasn’t back to a hundred percent yet.

“I have it, Applejack, dear,” Rarity said calmly, levitating out from under a pile of glass and snow with a hard shake to clear it off.

“Much obliged.”

The sound of metal being cut filled the car, and a section of the roof a little away from them was ripped away with a powerful tug of magic and an ear-piercing screech of tearing steel. Twilight stepped into the car, a look of panic on her face.

“Are you guys okay?” she asked hurriedly. She rushed over and immediately started looking them all over.

“We’re fine,” Shining Armor said quickly. “Watch your step, there’s glass everywhere.”

“What the hay happened?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“The train turned into a rollercoaster,” Pinkie Pie said poignantly. “Not a very fun one, either.”

Twilight groaned. “You all look fine enough to travel, so let’s get out of here. We need to get back to the city as fast as we can.”

With a flourish of magic, Twilight conjured a kerchief and passed it to Rainbow Dash. It took Shining a second to realize that the kerchief was to clean the blood off her face. At some point, before he’d managed to get his shield up, Rainbow Dash must have hit her face against something, or maybe she’d been kicked in the tumble. Either way, a trail of blood was slowly dripping from one of her nostrils.

“What’s the hurry?” Spike asked.

“It’s not safe out here in the open,” Twilight said. “I’ll explain more when you’re all safe. For now, just trust me.”

They all nodded and followed her towards the hole she’d cut.

When the conductor’s assistant had said it was cold, he hadn’t been kidding. The very small amount of chill that had made it through the walls and windows was nothing. This was the kind of chill that worked its way down into your soul and carved away at your willpower to do anything except lay in the snow and curl into a ball.

They walked a short distance away from the train before they heard a voice shouting at them.

“Twilight!” the voice shouted from the engine at the front of the train. “I need hoof in here!”

Twilight bounded through the snow and climbed back into the wreckage.

As Shining Armor stood there in the snow, his brother and his friends standing next to him, they stared in silence at what was left of the train. The bent, mangled mass of steel was a sobering sight. No one said a word, but he knew that they were all thinking the same thing – it was a miracle that they’d walked away. If he hadn’t gotten a shield up in time, who knows what might have happened?

A shiver that had nothing to do with the near-arctic winds went up his spine. The look on Twilight’s face when she’d stepped into the car was understandable now.

Spitfire crawled out of the engine car. Shining Armor had only met her briefly when Rainbow Dash had won that flying competition in Cloudsdale, but someone as famous as her was instantly recognizable. Twilight emerged from the engine car a moment later, and a third pony followed, suspended in a field of Twilight’s magic. It was the train conductor. He was covered in wounds – burns and cuts, and one leg that looked like it would have dangled loosely if it weren’t being supported by Twilight’s magic. The most noticeable injury, though, was the splash of crimson that showed through the pristine white bandages wrapped around his barrel.

“Steam Gauge!” the conductor’s assistant shouted.

“He’s okay, for now,” Twilight said, shouting to be heard over the violent winds. “There was a First Aid kit on the wall. I’ve been able to stop his bleeding, but he needs stitches. I can do that when we get back, so let’s move it.”

“Put him on my back,” Spike said. Shining and the assistant were just about the same size as he was, but with Spike being a dragon, the question of which of the three of them was strongest wasn’t even a contest.

“I think it’s probably better if I carry him,” Twilight said. “He has a broken leg and he might have a back injury.”

“Get a move on, then,” Spitfire said. She pulled out a flask that was strapped to her arm and poured something glowing onto her hooves, rubbing it in like lotion. “I’ll hold off Smokey.”

Spitfire wasn’t making much sense, but from the look in Twilight’s eye, she must have understood what Spitfire was saying. Shining Armor and the rest of the gang followed her line of sight.

In the far distance, dark stormclouds were gathering, rushing towards them at an unnatural pace – stormclouds with big, glowing green eyes that bled malevolent purple flames. The clouds gathered and formed a stallion’s head, and Shining Armor’s eyes went wide as he recognized the face. He’d seen it in the illusion that Princess Celestia had shown him during their meeting.

“Is that King Sombra!?” he shouted.

“Yeah, it is,” Twilight said. She nodded to Spitfire. “Good luck.”

Spitfire pulled a pair of reflective goggles down over her eyes, and suddenly she was on fire.

“You too,” she said.

Spitfire flew off into the sky, two flaming trails tracing her path behind her. The giddy, girlish squeal that Rainbow Dash let loose at the sight nearly deafened him.

“Stow the fangirling and run!” Twilight shouted.

Twilight started running, the glow of her horn and the field of magic surrounding the conductor floating behind her helped her stand out against the haze of falling snow as she led the way to safety. They followed behind, desperately trying to keep up with her on the unfamiliar terrain.

The disembodied king shouted in pain behind them, but Shining Armor didn’t look back to see how Spitfire was doing. He kept his eyes straight ahead, fixed on Twilight. As he galloped after her, he couldn’t help but marvel at how much his little sister had grown.


* * *


The train conductor had fared better than Twilight would have guessed. The engine compartment of a train wasn’t built for comfort or beauty. The engineer’s station had had dozens of gauges and levers, wiring and pipes – all manner of hard, sharp protrusions for a tumbling body to bash against.

But the stallion – Steam Gauge, according to his assistant – was a tough old guy. Aside from a broken leg, a nice big gash across his chest, and a few spots where he’d been burned from pressing up against the furnace, he’d come out relatively uninjured – relative to what he could have suffered from a literal trainwreck, that is. He hadn’t lost consciousness during the whole ordeal, but he definitely hadn’t been in any kind of shape for talking. Not that he didn’t try. The entire time Twilight had carried him back to the palace, and even while she was working to patch him up, he’d been mumbling about something.

Eventually he just passed out, most likely from the huge amount of painkillers she’d doped him up with. It wasn’t an elegant solution, but her skills with healing magic weren’t up to the task of easing his pain – luckily, her skills as a chemist were.

“He gonna be okay?”

Twilight spared the room’s other occupant a look out the corner of her eye. The engineer’s assistant was a few years older than her, and big, like you would expect from an earth pony who worked a hard job like shoveling coal into a furnace.

“He’ll be fine,” Twilight said as she finished packing up her medical supplies. “What’s your name?”

“Bituminous Shale,” he said. “Everypony calls me Shale.”

Twilight couldn’t hold back a tired giggle. “The name suits you.” Twilight levitated her medical supplies onto a table in the corner and nodded towards the bed that the conductor was laying on. The room they were in was a floor above the level with the throne room, and seemed to be private suites for guests, or high-ranking staffers. “Keep an eye on him. Do you remember what I said about the medicine?”

Shale nodded. “He can have more of that stuff in the blue bottle in two hours, if he’s up and wants it. Just two small sips every two hours, at most. If he’s really hurting, one sip from the green bottle instead of the blue.”

“Alright, then.” Twilight headed for the door. “Someone will be downstairs if there’s anything wrong. If I’m not around, look for Fluttershy, she’s the shy-looking pegasus with the pink mane.”

There was a pause that stretched on just long enough for Twilight to nearly make it to the door, and then Twilight stopped, halted by a sigh as deep and tired as any she’d ever let go. Something about that sigh resonated with her, and made her turn around.

Twilight looked back to find Shale watching her patient. The look in his eyes as he stared down at the broken body of his friend said a lot about their relationship. “You okay?” she asked. “Something hurting you?”

“Something, yeah,” he answered. He shook his head softly. “I just don’t like it, ma’am.”

Twilight sat on her haunches and waited patiently for him to continue. He clearly needed to get something off his chest, and though she was a little pressed for time, she had time enough to listen for a minute or two.

“He’s a good guy,” Shale muttered simply. “Been my partner for a few years now. He trained me up, showed me how to run the train. We been all over, ya know? He’s a good guy.”

“He’s going to be fine,” Twilight said.

“Yeah, thanks for that, ma’am,” he said, his voice going soft. “What do you think made our train flip like that? Was it that Somber thing that other guy was talking about?”

“Sombra,” Twilight said, correcting him, “and I don’t know… but maybe. I’m going to find out, though. Trust me.”

“Thanks for that.” He sniffed loudly as he struggled to hold in tears. Tough ponies like him didn’t like to let anyone see them cry – Twilight knew because she was the same way. “He doesn’t deserve to be all laid up like this. He’s a good guy.”

Twilight nodded respectfully and left the room.

She hated to see something like that – someone worrying over an injured friend. But for as sad as it was, there was something nice about the fact that it hurt him so much. Cadance would probably have something to say about it... or maybe Shining. Twilight knew a thing or two about comradery – it had been beaten into her at the academy as one of the cornerstones that held up every worthwhile soldier – but they were the experts on the subject.

It was sad to see people getting hurt over something that wasn’t any of their business. The conductor and his assistant weren’t part of this whole ‘save the empire’ mission. They were just a couple of guys who happened to be working the train that Twilight and Shining’s crews were riding to get where they needed to be. Bystanders that got caught up in someone else’s problems.

It was a part of fighting that instructors and other soldiers had been telling her about for years – sometimes people just wander into the crossfire between two cannoneers. Most of the time, when it went down like that, they were just good guys with bad luck.

Back downstairs, Twilight found her brothers and their friends in the throne room. They’d gathered around Cadance, who sat on her throne, looking like death twice warmed over. Cadance had been holding the city together with the power of her love alone, and the stress of it was wearing heavily on her. In the past twenty or so hours, Cadance had pumped out enough magic to lift Canterlot Mountain out of the ground by its roots.

It was the sort of magical stunt that only a crazy mare could have thought up, and only an alicorn would have dared to attempt – luckily for the Crystal Empire, Cadance was both.

Cadance looked up from the group assembled below her and smiled at Twilight as she entered. Her cheeks were usually full and flush, rosy with youthful beauty and vigor, but the stress of the burden she was shouldering had hollowed them out. Her eyes were still bright and smart and aware, but they were ringed by dark shadows and heavy bags. Her beautiful mane – that mane that she’d always taken such good care of – hung limp, somehow dry and greasy at the same time.

Basenji sat next to her throne on the dais, his drum in his lap as he played a song that he’d said would help with her fatigue. According to him, his song was attuned to Cadance, so she was experiencing the most benefit, but Twilight had to admit that just being in the same room with Basenji while he played was doing wonders for her own aches and pains. Pinkie Pie also seemed to really enjoy his performance. She was sitting next to him and swaying back and forth in time with his playing.

“Twilight, how’s the conductor doing?” Fluttershy asked as she hurried over. She’d been the first to notice when Twilight had come in, even before Cadance, so she’d already been walking towards the door before her friends had realized that someone had entered.

“He’s okay,” Twilight said. “Relatively speaking, anyway. Eventually he’s going to need real medical treatment, but for right now he’s not in any danger.”

Shining Armor rushed up to her, worry clear on his face. “Twilight, is that really King Sombra?”

“Seems like it is,” Twilight replied. She stepped around him and walked across the throne room to sit beside Cadance. She took Cadance’s hoof and patted it gently, earning a tired smile from her princess. It was heartbreaking to see her suffer like this, but all Twilight could do was stroke Cadance’s hoof and try to reassure her that she wasn’t alone. “Cadance filled you in, didn’t she?”

They all nodded.

“It’s like she says, then. We’ve been holding back Sombra since yesterday. Cadance has been supplying enough love to keep this city’s built-in defenses up, but that’s not a permanent solution.”

Cadance tried to pick up the explanation, but her voice was strained, so Twilight summoned a canteen from her bag of supplies and gave her a drink.

“Thanks, hon,” Cadance said as she lightly coughed. “The way I see it, our first priority is to see to the wellbeing of the crystal ponies. The fact that I’m able to substitute my magic for their love proves that the problem doesn’t lie with the city, but with them. Sombra’s curse is still upon them, suppressing their thoughts and hearts.”

“And that’s where we come in, right?” Spike asked.

“I’d like it to be,” Cadance said with a smirk that was so weak that it died almost immediately. “What we could really use, though, is more information about how the magic of this city works. As it stands, I really have only the barest inkling of how any of it works.”

“How are you maintaining the barrier, then?” Shining Armor asked. “I know a thing or two about barriers, and the one we walked through was top shelf.”

Cadance shifted uncomfortably on her throne, a flush of redness tinting her already pink cheeks. “It was actually kind of an accident,” she admitted, chagrined. “To be honest, the only thing I knew was that there was some kind of magic that protected this city, and that it ran on love. My plan didn’t go much further than brute-forcing my own love into the city and hoping that something good happened.”

Everyone in Shining’s group, aside from Shining himself, looked surprised at the confession, but Shining Armor just quirked an eyebrow in interest. “That was a little dangerous, considering you didn’t know what kind of magic you were dealing with.”

“That’s what I said,” Twilight grumbled.

“I had to do something,” Cadance said in her own defense. “I couldn’t just stand back and do nothing.”

Twilight frowned, but she knew there was no point in arguing about it. Reckless as it was, it had been the right decision, and Twilight would have made the same move if she’d been in Cadance’s position.

Cadance liked to say that they were attracted to one another because they were opposites – Twilight, the cool-headed tomcolt, and Cadance, the pretty pink princess wild-child – but when it came to the things that mattered, they were actually a lot alike.

“Worked out in the end, I guess,” Shining Armor said with a half-shrug. “You can’t just ask the crystal ponies for more information about the Empire’s magic?”

Cadance shook her head sadly. “When I said their thoughts and hearts were being suppressed, I meant it. They’re seriously not all there. You’ll see what I mean when you talk to them yourselves, but believe me, they’re not going to shine any light on this mystery.”

“There’s a library that you can go check out for clues,” Twilight said, trying, and failing, to keep the reluctance out of her voice. When Spitfire had said she’d found a library, Twilight had had to call up every ounce of discipline she had to not rush right over. A thousand-year-old library, perfectly preserved outside of time, and she was going to live practically next door? She’d entertained fleeting little fantasies about being the first modern Equestrian to set hoof in that library, but sadly, the mission took precedence. “I’ll take you there before I head back out into the snow.”

“Why would you need to go back out?” Fluttershy asked. “King Sombra can’t get in, can he?” Her voice was shaking as badly as her knees.

“Sombra can’t get in, but every time he shows up he starts beating his head against the shield, so I have to stand out there and keep running him off.” Twilight looked up at Cadance and tried to communicate how sorry she was that there wasn’t more she could do, and in return she got an understanding smile from her beloved. “It’s the best I can do to take some of the burden off of Cadance. She’s the one doing all the heavy lifting.”

From the dais, whoever was sitting on the throne had a view straight out the chamber doors and down the hall to the balcony. Twilight, from her place at Cadance’s side, saw Spitfire the second she returned. She didn’t look injured, which was good, though expected, but the scowl she wore as she glided down the hallway to the throne room said she was very displeased about something.

The rest of the group turned to see what she was looking at, but no one called out to greet the Wonderbolt upon seeing the look on her face. Even Rainbow Dash, a noted and enthusiastic fan, had curbed her excitement down to a grin.

“Spitfire, what’s up?” Twilight asked as she stepped down from the dais to meet her friend as she entered the throne room. “You’re kind of late. Did you have trouble or something?”

Spitfire sucked loudly on her teeth. “Nah, Sombra’s no big deal. He spooked fast.”

“What kept you then?”

“I went to take a look at the train some more,” Spitfire explained. “I wanted to find out what made it jump the rail like it did, so I followed the tracks. Didn’t have to go far, though. Just a bit away from where we dragged this lot out of the wreck, something tore up the tracks.”

Twilight frowned. “Tore up how?”

“Tore up like if a giant reached down and scooped out a chunk of the earth, and part of the track with it,” Spitfire said. “What’s left of the track’s been torn out and twisted all up, and there’s a big pit where it used to be, just filling up with snow.”

It took Twilight a second or two to process what she was being told. “A trap?” she asked, her eyes narrowing at the thought.

“Yeah, that’s what I’d guess,” Spitfire said grimly. “Which is weird, right?”

“Why weird?” Shining Armor asked.

“Because a thousand years of living as a disembodied spirit has driven King Sombra bonkers,” Twilight explained. “He doesn’t have the presence of mind to do something like that.”

“And we should have seen him doing it,” Spitfire added. “He’s not exactly subtle.”

“So what does that mean, then?” Spike asked. He was sitting next to Rarity, with one arm draped protectively over her back.

Twilight’s frown deepened. “I don’t know yet...”


* * *


Twilight sat alone in the middle of the main road leading out of the city. The flagstones beneath her rump were warm as they would be on a balmy summer’s day. It was a hard contrast against the frozen tundra just a few paces away from her.

The shield that Cadance had erected around the city had done more than just protect it from Sombra’s intrusion. The power of her love was suffusing every inch of the city that it touched, and the land itself seemed to be waking with renewed vigor. Only the barest hint of Celestia’s sun was making it through the blizzard raging around them, but everything within Cadance’s reach seemed to glow with warmth and light. The snow had all melted in the heat, and the damp earth was rich and already covered in lush wildgrass.

Even the crystal ponies were being affected by her magic. They still seemed… loopy, but the vast majority of them had come out of their homes to wander the streets – albeit in a daze. It was very odd, watching the befuddled ponies drift around the city. They seemed to be regaining their memories in small measures, and a few of them had even gone to stand behind the counters of empty stores, or to mindlessly sweep walkways that weren’t dirty. Little by little they were coming back to the waking world, and though it was a bit saddening to watch a mare tearing pieces off a sponge to feed a crystal statuary of a duck, it was progress.

Spitfire had been right when she said they were like phantoms.

Twilight sighed as she stared out over the unspoiled horizon of clouds and wind and whirling snow. The warm stones beneath her were pleasant enough that she had to fight off a yawn every few minutes. Even the howling winds passed through the shield and became a delightful breeze that billowed the tails of the scarf dangling around her neck.

All in all, putting aside the threat of the ghost of a thousand-year-old magical juggernaut, it was a nice day. It was enough to make her wish she’d gone to the library after all. After Spitfire’s report, though, she’d decided to go out and take a look at the scene herself. It had been exactly as Spitfire had described, and Twilight’s heart had skipped a beat or two at the sight of it. Steam Gauge, the train’s conductor, must have had eyes like a falcon. Hitting the brakes as quickly as he did had probably saved all of their lives.

This was supposed to be a diplomatic mission. Show up, win the hearts and minds of the locals, take the throne, start some victim relief programs – that sort of thing. Now the city that she and Cadance were supposed to govern was under assault from the throne’s previous occupant, the citizens were practically the walking dead, and her brothers and their friends were nearly killed.

She needed a drink. Badly.

Maybe some pancakes... No, definitely waffles. Cider and waffles.

She conjured a cereal bar from her cache of supplies back in the castle and unwrapped it. The little bar of carbs and calories was mostly tasteless, despite the liberal addition of substances claiming to be chocolate and marshmallow in the treat. It was gone in just a few bites all the same.

Spitfire, meanwhile, had gone with Shining’s group to check out the library. She was supposed to join Twilight once she was done, and just as Twilight was wondering what was keeping her, she heard the approaching sound of beating wings. A few moments later and Spitfire was sitting in the road next to her.

“Any sign?” Spitfire asked.

“Nothing yet.” A yawn finally slipped through Twilight’s defenses. “Just a matter of time, though. He always comes from this direction.”

“Think there’s something over there?”

Twilight shrugged. “Maybe. The guy is crazy, though. Who knows why he does anything?”

Spitfire sucked her teeth. “Seems to be a lot of that going around…”

“Eh?” Twilight turned to Spitfire, one eyebrow arched in question. Spitfire always did that teeth-thing when she was annoyed, and the tone in her voice was in line with that. “Something up?”

Spitfire didn’t speak up right away. She wore a look of hesitation, and for a second Twilight thought that Spitfire might try to wave off the comment.

“Your brother,” Spitfire finally said, “Shining Armor. He found a book in the library that said the ponies in the Empire used to put on some kind of annual fair that ‘renewed the spirit of their love’ or whatever. The Crystal Fair, they called it.”

Twilight felt a surge of relief at the news. That sounded like exactly what they needed. If they could rekindle the spirit of love within the crystal ponies, maybe they could shake free of Sombra’s control and provide power to the Empire’s defenses. Strangely, it seemed that Spitfire wasn’t as happy with the proposal as she was. “Let me guess. You think it’s a waste of time?”

“Not a waste of time,” Spitfire answered. “I think it’s a waste of resources.”

“How do you figure? It seems like a promising idea to me.”

“Take a look at what we’ve got here,” Spitfire said. “We’ve got you, me, a drummer, an alicorn, Celestia’s personal student, and a fire-breathing dragon. Plus, we’ve got the other Elements of Harmony. That’s a lot of muscle. You ask me? I say we consolidate all that into an offensive plan. With just the two of us we’re already fustigating Sombra. If we all gang up on him, I’m sure we could end this.”

“And then what?” Twilight asked. “We don’t know for sure if finishing off Sombra will break the curse on the crystal ponies, so we might end up putting on the fair anyway. Not to mention the fact that permanently removing Sombra isn’t a guarantee if we did decide to have a showdown. Something’s up with him, or did you forget? Maybe he’s starting to, I don’t know, wake up or something, but taking out the train tracks doesn’t gel with what we’ve seen so far. Seems to me he’s still got some tricks.” Twilight held out a hoof, gesturing towards the barrier of magic protecting the city. “Cadance is holding their entire Empire on her back, and if this Crystal Fair can lift that burden off her, I say it can’t come fast enough.”

Spitfire sighed. “I still don’t like it, but you’re probably right.. And I really don’t mean to sound like I’m questioning the expertise or commitment of the Super Friends back there. They’re not soldiers, but they’ve fought for our country, same as you and I have, so all due respect for that…” She sighed again, shaking her head sadly. “I’m just uncomfortable because I don’t get it, this whole magical friendship and love deal. I think maybe I’d be more comfortable if it was some kind of Friendship Knife. Something I could hold in my hooves and use myself.”

“This is just how they fight,” Twilight said with a chuckle. She knew where Spitfire was coming from, somewhat. She understood the principles of magic better than most, and she knew personally just how powerful the magic of love could be – how could she not? But all the same, Spitfire’s position was understandable. “They’ve got good hearts. That’s what these crystal ponies need right now.”

“You need more than a good heart to protect a nation, Sparkle – you need steel.”

Twilight grinned. “That’s what you and I are here for, isn’t it?”

Spitfire laughed. “Guess so,” she quietly said.

They sat for a while longer, in the companionable silence of two sentries on watch duty. Eventually, a splotch of shadow appeared in the cloudy sky, spreading like spilled ink across the gray clouds. They stood without a word and readied themselves for another skirmish.


* * *


Cadance stood at the edge of the balcony, watching as Sombra rallied himself for another attempt at breaking the city’s barrier. She forced herself to look away from the sight, knowing that Twilight would take care of that particular problem, and instead chose to focus on the streets below.

From the huge platform, she could see as Shining Armor and his friends hurried to implement their plan to bring joy back to the hearts of the crystal ponies. Tents were already up, and the sound of the girls calling to curious onlookers from their stalls like hustling carnies occasionally reached her ears.

It was working, if only a little so far. She was connected to the Empire itself through her magic, and through it she could sense the hearts of the crystal ponies warming, shaking free of the freezing grip of Sombra’s curse. It was slow – painfully slow – but inside each of their hearts was a tiny flame, like a match, and slowly but surely those tiny flames were growing.

“It’s working, Basenji,” Cadance said. She turned to look at her friend, to find the dog still sitting in the same spot a few paces behind her. His eyes were closed in concentration as he beat at his drum. His tongue was hanging out of his open mouth, and the quiet breaths of his light pants were in time with the upbeat rhythm he was pounding out on his drum. He didn’t reply, but from the swivel of his ears, she knew that he’d heard her.

He looked at least as tired as she was, but he’d stayed at her side the whole time, working his magic, giving strength to her with the music of his people. She was hungry and tired, but she knew that she would have been much worse off were it not for Basenji’s support.

She turned back to watch the fair below. The commotion around the palace was slowly drawing ponies in from the outskirts of the city, and over the past hour the crowd had grown to an impressive size.

But happy as she was about the good cheer of the crystal ponies, she couldn’t help but feel uneasy. The ponies down below hadn’t yet noticed Sombra preparing for another assault in the distance. Twilight and Spitfire had skillfully turned him away several times, but that didn’t mean that Cadance could relax – not while her mare was out there in the cold, fighting to protect their ponies.

There was a sudden, jarring sense of quiet as Basenji’s drumming came to an abrupt end.

“Getting tired, huh?” Cadance said, laughing. She looked over her shoulder, expecting to find Basenji digging in his satchel for a drink, or stuffing his mouth with gems. Over the past day or two, Basenji had been at her side constantly. The sound of his drum had become as familiar as her own breathing, and the abrupt end of it had been enough to startle her momentarily.

Cadance’s heart stopped, and only shock prevented her from crying out the moment she’d laid eyes on her friend. Basenji was lying on the ground, frightfully still. His head had been dashed against the ground so hard that the crystalline floor had shattered into a webwork of cracks, and the blood slowly trickling from his head filled the fissures the way melted snow fed creeks at the foot of a mountain.

Standing next to him was a creature with a body of cracked obsidian, at once insectoid and equine. Its jaw dangled loosely, as if broken, swinging in the playful breeze. It had a single hoof raised, resting atop Basenji’s precious drum. In the blink of an eye the hoof pressed down, tearing the drumhead. A casual flick of the hoof turned the instrument on its side, and another careless stomp crushed the shell to splinters. The remains of Basenji’s drum were kicked away like trash.

“Don’t scream,” the thing commanded her. Its voice was harsh and ugly as sin, and issued forth from its throat without movement from its apparently useless jaw. “Don’t call for help. If you do, I will kill everyone.”

Cadance’s heart started again, beating ten times for every beat it had just missed. Her eyes went wide, and she began breathing heavily, panic gripping her like a vice. Her concentration waned, and the torrent of magic she was controlling flickered, threatening to snap.

A loud horn blew from somewhere on the street below. A graceless musical note played by an amateur musician. The poor attempt at music must have seemed funny to the crowd, and the sound of laughter – much of it childish, clearly issuing from foals – floated up to her.

Cadance marshalled herself and reasserted her control over the magic she was protecting the city with. Every fiber of her being was telling her to run, to run and call out for Twilight to help her, but she couldn’t – not while her ponies were in danger.

The thing in front of her looked like a mare, like the queen of the changelings as her aunt Celestia had described her, but it wasn’t a mare. This was merely the corpse of a mare, pulled over the formless, sexless, lifeless essence of a demon like a costume.

Cadance licked her lips uselessly. All the saliva in her mouth had spontaneously dried up. “You’re Ammit,” she said tremulously. It wasn’t a question, just a statement that she felt she had to make. She would have slapped herself, just to see if she was dreaming, but her most primal instincts made her think better than to make any sudden moves while in the sight of a predator. “What do you want?”

“For now, just to talk. You’re interesting.” Ammit shuffled closer to Basenji and lifted a hoof. He pressed his hoof down on the side of Basenji’s face, toying with his head like a child rolling a ball back and forth. Basenji was insensate, and only managed to groan weakly at the mistreatment he was suffering.

“L-leave him alone!” Cadance demanded.

Ammit froze, turning his head slowly, twisting it in the way an owl might peer curiously at a mouse. His eyes were cloudy and gray as the snowy skies. The hoof lifted from Basenji’s face and Ammit stepped away.

“You’re a curious thing,” Ammit mused airily. He walked to the edge of the platform and looked to the sky, where Sombra’s head darted about while doing battle with Twilight and Spitfire. As he moved, the cracks in the changeling queen’s ruined body became more apparent. Especially around the belly, where the shell had split open, revealing a jiggling mass of lumpy gray flesh – a gut full to bursting with meat. He was limping. One of his hind legs hung as broken and useless as his jaw, connected only by stringy, half-rotted flesh. “You worry for your children, but worry not. I’ve no interest in eating them. They are unseasoned, as the children beneath your mountain were. I have devoured beasts the likes of which you cannot comprehend. The children below have never known Hunger. Thus they are not hunters, thus they are not to my taste... Although, I may need a few for what’s to come, but for the moment, it is unnecessary.”

The bulge hanging from Ammit’s gut slipped a bit from the cavity of his thorax, and as it did it issued a sound that was not dissimilar from that of Basenji’s drum being torn. Meat and viscera spilled onto the floor beneath Ammit with a wet slap, and Cadance took an involuntary step back from the spreading pool of gristle.

Ammit seemed to sigh. “Ah, at last this vessel nears its end. This barrier of yours is impressive for a mortal working. This shell has fared well and devoured much, but even it could not penetrate your defense unharmed.”

“Excuse me if I’m not overjoyed with your praise,” Cadance said. Her mouth was running on its own now, and its default setting was always to snark.

Ammit made a loud, throaty huffing noise that sounded as much like laughing as the sound of dry kindling being snapped. Every convulsion squeezed a bit more juice out of the creature’s wound.

“Every word you speak makes the picture clearer.”

Cadance swallowed back her disgust. “What picture would that be?”

Ammit’s laughter stopped. His eyes were fixed at the spot in the distance where Twilight and Spitfire were battling Sombra. Their attacks painted the sky with streaks of fire like calligraphy – all swooping, graceful curves and beautiful spirals.

Ammit watched the scene in silence for a while, and Cadance didn’t dare to speak first. She kept her eyes open, focusing on the periphery of her vision for signs that Basenji might be stirring, but unwilling to look away from the monster in front of her. Considering how fast Twilight had said Ammit was, Cadance didn’t even want to blink.

“You’re all petty, insignificant things,” Ammit said. His words were harsh, but spoken with the polite, slightly-disinterested tone of someone commenting on the weather. “You’re in the land of the living, but you never live. You shuffle about, rattling your chains and begging for mercy from your keeper. Your kind especially, you ponies, wear your weakness on your bodies and call it pride… but she’s not like you. She wears no chains but the ones she dresses herself in. She has cast aside the Will which governs even gods in this realm.”

Ammit turned his head towards her, and those milky gray eyes flashed with a cruelly amused light, like filthy glass reflecting sunlight.

“I feel a kinship with the anomalous girl – the one whom Fate cannot see. She has become a stone in the river of time, and the changes she has made to its flow are deep and vast. It has taken time, but soon the ripples she has made will begin to reshape this world. She and I will have our fill in this new place – a world of endless hunt, where Hunger is the only law.”

“You’re nothing like Twilight,” Cadance said, spitting out the words in disgust. “She’s someone who will spill her own blood for the sake of others, and you’re a disgusting monster that eats hearts.” Cadance tossed aside her fear as the anger welled up in her. She scowled at Ammit, sneering in disdain at the evil thing. “Your very existence is offensive to me.”

Cadance blinked, and in the microsecond of time where her eyes were closed, Ammit had crossed the distance between them. They were close enough that Cadance could smell the stench of rotting meat, but she didn’t cower, she didn’t even so much as flinch.

“I wanted to meet you,” Ammit said in a voice so low it was almost a whisper, “to see if I could understand why she would stand at your side… I believe I understand a bit, but you must know she will never be entirely free so long as she wears the burden of you around her neck. Killing you would be a kindness to her.”

Cadance leaned in closer, almost close enough to touch their noses together, as she glared into Ammit’s dead, glassy eyes. “Then what’s fucking stopping you?”

Time stretched on, the seconds becoming long as they stared at one another. The shouts and laughter of the crystal ponies in the square below continued on, ignorant of the battle of wills taking place above their heads.

A realization struck Cadance like a bolt of lightning from the sky. She opened her mouth and let out a single bark of derisive laughter. “Hah! You won’t do it!” she crowed smugly. “You’re afraid of what Twilight will do to you if you hurt me!”

“Go to sleep,” Ammit said with a snarl, real anger entering his voice for the first time.

Cadance had just enough time to be confused. Her vision darkened as the ground rushed to meet her face. The last thing she could remember as her consciousness faded was the pain of her skull being cracked like a porcelain egg.


* * *


When the barrier around the city came down, Twilight, Spitfire, and even Sombra, froze in mid-fight. Ever since the barrier had first gone up, it had never faltered, not even once. Why had it gone down now?

Panic gripped Twilight’s heart at the thought that something might have happened to Cadance.

Of the three of them, Sombra came to his senses first. The roar of his laughter shook the air like thunder as he sped off. His smokey body glided towards the city, cackling the whole way, and in his wake, black crystals rose from the ground everywhere his shadow touched.

“Stop him!” Spitfire shouted as she gave chase.

Spitfire was fast – fast enough to catch up to Sombra almost immediately. She dove right through the smoke, burning it away with the pure magical flames around her hooves. She came around and pierced the mass of dark magic again, and the beautiful green grass withered and died wherever the ash of Sombra’s burnt magical form fell. Sombra paid the damage he was taking no heed. The holes that Spitfire had burned through him filled in seconds, and he just kept flying towards the center of the city, laughing like he was possessed.

Twilight called back her chakram and holstered it. Spitfire was zipping in and out at very shallow angles, keeping the pressure on Sombra. It was too dangerous to use her weapon, so all Twilight could do was sprint after them as fast as she could.

At the speed they were moving, Sombra would be at the center of the city in minutes. The way he was moving towards the palace so singlemindedly made Twilight think that he must have a plan. Crazy or not, this was the unicorn that had plumbed the deepest secrets of the Empire’s magic, and unraveled the mysteries of turning the beautiful magic of love into something callous and evil. Whatever he had in mind, she couldn’t allow it.

She was also worried about Cadance. She kept telling herself that it was probably exhaustion. Cadance hadn’t slept, and she had barely eaten over the last few days. Exhaustion was dangerous – Twilight knew that intimately – but a few weeks of bedrest could recover the damage… still, the possibility that something more serious had happened would not leave her.

Twilight grit her teeth. One thing at a time.

“Spitfire, back up!” Twilight shouted.

Spitfire pulled away without question, giving Twilight the opening she needed. Twilight teleported ahead of Sombra and channeled all her magic into an enormous, flat shield that she positioned in the air above her like a wall. As Sombra approached, she slammed the wall down, right into his face.

The disembodied head of Sombra let out a grunt of pain, but dematerialized back into smoke as Twilight’s shield smashed into him. He billowed out around the edges of her shield and reformed to continue on. Twilight drew her chakram and flung it at Sombra. Even without an immolation spell channeling through it, the cold steel of her weapon cut through Sombra’s body with a hiss. Her chakram had odd effects on magic, and magic was all that was left of Sombra when you got right down to it.

Sombra growled and twisted in the air. The enormous head in the midst of the cloud of evil magic turned for a moment and snarled at her. Spitfire dove back in, and Twilight continued to teleport ahead and take what shots she could.

It was pointless, though. Without a more drastic way to stop him, Sombra eventually made it to the palace.

The shrieks and panicked cries of the crystal ponies at the sight of their tormentor filled the air. They all fell to the ground, prostrating themselves before their tyrant, too fearful to even run as they shivered and muttered pleas for mercy. Sombra looked down at them with the glee that a troublesome colt might look down upon ants as he held a magnifying glass.

Sombra’s head was engulfed by the cloud, and a pillar of smoke rose up into the sky. Atop the pillar, a stallion emerged, riding the plume of dark magic like a wave. Spitfire dove at him, but the cloud of smoke expanded and engulfed her. She cried out, and the flames around her hooves lit up the cloud. The glow of Spitfire’s flames flickering within the smoke reminded Twilight of the time a firefly had gotten stuck behind a curtain in her dormitory.

A brilliant, blue light shone forth from the very peak of the Crystal Palace. The light spread across the sky, glowing atop the spire like a lighthouse on the shore of a gloomy coastline. It was a pure and beautiful thing, and the look of hunger in Sombra’s eyes as he rose up to meet that light was enough to send shivers down the spines of everyone watching.

“The Crystal Heart!”

“No, he’s going to take the Heart from us again!”

The crystal ponies began to cry out in fear. All around, ponies were reaching out for one another, clinging together as they wept.

Sombra paid no mind to them.

Something emerged from the castle. The object – Crystal Heart, the ponies had called it – was the source of the light. Even from a distance, Twilight could feel the unimaginable power contained in it. The light from it was warm as a lover’s embrace, and sweet as a mother’s song.

Sombra laughed. He laughed and cackled, and his body returned to smoke and poured into the light until he fully disappeared within it. The clouds parted to reveal a blood red sky. The light of the Crystal Heart was being consumed, twisted into something dark.

Sombra cried out in joy, and his voice rang out from within the Crystal Heart high above, bellowing out a proclamation. “At last! Again I will have a body, and all the lands of this world shall belong to Sombra!”

And then Twilight heard the thump of a mighty drum. Her own heart stopped. The drum sounded again, and then again, and then again. Slow, heavy thumps with the force of a giant pounding the earth. Every time the drum beat, so did her heart, in perfect synchronization.

She’d collapsed without even realizing it. Her legs had crumpled under the weight of the pounding drum. Something was coming.

She forced herself to ignore the beating of the drum and looked up. As Sombra was cackling, reveling in his victory, a streak of darkness leapt from balcony where she’d last seen Cadance and Basenji. The beating of the drum was already having an effect on her. Her every sense was at its peak, and time seemed to be nearly at a standstill. Yet even with her heightened senses, the streak was so fast that it was merely a blur of shadow. All she could make out was a pair of cold predatory eyes, and a huge gaping maw filled with sharp teeth.

“I believe we might meet again in the land of frozen hearts…”

Ammit’s parting words from their last meeting came to her, clear as a bell in her mind.

How could she have been so stupid? How could she have not seen this coming?

She didn’t have time to reflect on her failure. Ammit had leapt up in a single bound, and with a smooth motion, his jaws plucked the Crystal Heart from the sky.

The sound of a thousand hearts breaking at once. That was the sound that the Crystal Heart made as Ammit chewed.

All at once Twilight understood what had happened. This was what Ammit had been aiming for. Basenji had said that hearts were the seat of the soul, and in all of Equestria, where would you find a more powerful soul in a more powerful heart than you would find here, at this very moment?

The body of the changeling queen began to change. The flesh beneath the exoskeleton bulged, swelling so much that the chitin cracked and fell away like a crab discarding an old shell. The mass continued growing even as it plummeted to the ground.

The crystal ponies scurried away. They were confused, but they had wits enough to run away when something was falling on them. The amorphous blob hit the pavement with a sickening plop.

Everyone in the square watched as the bulbous pile of meat sat there, growing with every second until it rivaled the surrounding homes in size. A bright crimson light danced across the mound, and long fleshy tendrils slithered from the mass like serpents in search of mice.

Dozens of limbs snaked out, wrapping around the crystal ponies before they could even scream. The limbs retracted slowly, pulling the ponies along the ground, and only then did they realize what was happening. They pleaded and cried, pawing at the ground with their hooves in a vain attempt to escape. They begged for help, but the other crystal ponies could only watch in terror as their loved ones – husbands and wives and children – were dragged towards the disgusting thing.

The drums continued beating in Twilight’s head, in her chest, in her bones. She felt the beating of the drum – the words of the Heart of the World, Basenji had said – with her very soul. As the tendrils lashed out and grabbed ahold of the crystal ponies, Twilight felt anger, hatred like she’d never felt before.

Twilight drew her chakram. She gathered all the magic she could and poured it into the weapon. When she threw it, the air split with a deafening boom. In half a blink of an eye she’d cut through the tentacles.

The massive blob of Ammit’s shapeless body trembled with a deep guttural noise, like a crocodile roaring into the night. The stumps of its ruined appendages retreated into the main body, leaving trails of dark red blood as they slithered away.

The drums in Twilight’s head had picked up, filling her body with strength and vigor. She stomped her hoof hard enough to crack the crystal-paved street. “These are my ponies, Ammit!” she declared. “And I won’t let you have even one!”

More tendrils emerged and reached for the surrounding ponies, but Twilight again cut them off.

“Spitfire!” Twilight looked up to find Spitfire gaping at her. “Run interference!”

Spitfire nodded and the flames around her hooves flared brightly as she dove into the fray. She danced around Ammit, and the fleshy limbs reached for her seemingly out of reflex. Whenever one got too close to the crowd, she’d sweep in and stomp on it with her flaming hooves to pull its attention away.

With Ammit distracted, Twilight was free to do one of the things she did best: organizing.

She scanned the crowd and found her brothers. Once the trouble had started, the group of friends had all gathered together, which certainly made things easier for Twilight.

“Spike! Breathe some fire on it, but don’t let it touch you! Shining, I want shields, and I want them now! Pinkie Pie, put down that horn and go find Basenji! Fluttershy, go with her! The rest of you get all of these ponies back! Drag them away if you have to!”

They all scrambled to carry out her orders.

As half the girls began herding the civilians away, Shining and Spike stepped forward. Twilight felt a surge of pride as she watched them join the fight.

Spike got down on his belly and moved with the serpentine grace and speed of a cobra. Every time he opened his mouth, a gout of flame issued forth. The things were fast, and mostly he was only managing to singe the tendrils, but every clean hit he did manage to land burned its target away completely.

Shining Armor put up a shield around the ever-growing mass, but after several broken shields he gave up trying to contain it. Instead of a hard shield, he created a shimmering pink barrier around it. The fuzzy aura of his magic wasn’t meant to completely resist, but the speed of the tendrils was greatly reduced. One of Ammit’s tentacles lashed out and tried to strike him, but he just stared it down and cast a second shield around himself. He might not have been able to create a powerful enough shield to hold back something that was now bigger than a house, but at a smaller scale, nothing could get through one of his shields. She could see him grinning from inside his bubble of protection as he began gathering magic for yet another spell. The tendril attacking him was blasted apart by a bolt of lightning that descended from the sky.

Shining Armor might have given up his dream of entering the Guard, but he was still Celestia’s personal student. If there was anyone who knew more about combat magic than Twilight, it was her brother.

Shining’s friends were quickly moving ponies away. The fierceness of the battle had finally jarred the crystal ponies into action, but it was still an uphill battle against the stupor of Sombra’s curse. Twilight’s fear that the death of Sombra wouldn’t lift the curse seemed to be all too real.

She was also worried about Cadance, but Cadance would want her to stay and help fight. All Twilight could do was hope that her love was okay, and trust that Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy would look after her if she wasn’t.


* * *


The first thing Basenji was conscious of was the white-hot knife of pain stabbing directly into his brain. Every beat of his heart drove the knife in another inch.

He forced himself to open his eyes, and he gawked witlessly as he found himself looking up at a blood red sky. That hadn’t been there a second ago. Through the delirium and the swimming vision and the pain, he was dimly aware of the sound of violence taking place somewhere nearby. Blue streaks of lightning flashed in the sky with deafening cracks, and familiar voices were shouting wordless battlecries.

The last thing he remembered was sitting on the balcony while Cadance looked out over the city. He’d been playing for her, using an old song to ease her fatigue and bolster her vitality. The working required much concentration, so he was deeply immersed in the Ways and only aware of small bits of whatever Cadance was talking about. She had said something about the fair going well, and then he’d felt something pressing against the side of his head...

Something had attacked him.

“Ah, f-friend… friend Cadance…” Basenji muttered. He tried to stand, but the world began spinning around him and he was forced back to the ground. The whole side of his face hurt, and his jaw clicked painfully every time he opened his mouth.

He heard the sound of hurried hoof-steps and then a mare spoke to him. “Easy, there, Mister Puppy-Pants. You’ve got a goose egg on your noggin big enough to cook a birthday cake.”

Basenji opened his eyes to find Pinkie Pie – the friendly mare who had sat next to him as he played earlier – rushing over to him.

Despite her cutesy words, the mare’s voice was clearly shaking with worry. She immediately reached out and gently touched a spot on his head that seemed to be the source of the majority of his pain.

“Ah, I’m sorry,” she said with a squeak as he flinched away. She tried again. Her hooves were shaking badly, but her touch was gentle. She began rambling, clearly on the verge of tears. “I got some bandages from the bags that Twilight had all her stuff in. I cleaned you up a little bit and bandaged it as best I could, but I haven’t done this in a while. I used to do it a lot, because I grew up on a rock farm and my sisters can sometimes play kind of rough and sometimes there’s accidents and sometimes we’d get hurt so dad said I had to know how to take care of cuts. But since I moved to Ponyville I don’t have to bandage many cuts, and usually Fluttershy or Shining or Spike takes care of that stuff when we do adventurey things…”

Basenji held out a paw and placed it on Pinkie’s shoulder. She was trembling.

“Is friend Cadance well?” he asked in a calm, even tone that he hoped would be reassuring.

“I don’t know.” She cast a nervous glance back towards the princess. “Fluttershy and I came up here and found you both passed out with bumps on your heads. We bandaged you up, and I helped Fluttershy carry Cadance inside.”

“She is alive, then… That is good enough for now. Thank you, Pinkie Pie.” Basenji sighed with relief. It was a struggle, but he managed to get off the ground with Pinkie’s help, and after a few moments the world had stilled enough that he could stand on his own. “What has happened?”

Pinkie Pie’s ears flattened against her head. When he’d met her earlier, her mane had been as full and bouncy as the cotton candy that he used to buy for his little cousin Djembe, but now it hung limply around her face. “I don’t know,” she muttered, hiding behind the curtain of her hair. “A lot of things happened… We were having a party, but then King Sombra got in. He pulled some kind of thingy from the top of the castle, and then he went into the thingy, and then something else came out and ate the thingy… Twilight started shouting orders, but she told me and Fluttershy to come find you…” She looked up, her eyes brimming with tears. “She called it Ammit, I think.”

Basenji’s eyes went wide. “What?”

He shuffled towards the end of the balcony, making sure to give wide berth to the still-drying pool of gristle and blood nearby. He was still a bit woozy, but he didn’t have time to be injured. He stood at the edge of the balcony and looked down at the fight taking place below.

Twilight and her friends were in a pitched battle against a mountain of flesh covered in writhing appendages. Basenji sniffed and the scent of putrid, rotting flesh filled his nostrils. The stink of death was thick in the air. He listened for the Heart of the World, and through it he could hear the pitiable wailing of the hearts of the crystal ponies he had come here to help. Amongst their voices, he could also hear the words of the Old Dogs, whispering songs to him.

“That is Ammit?” Basenji bared his teeth and a growl rose up in his throat. “Profane thing… you dare to show your face before a son of Anubis? I see what you are doing, and you shall not have a body. I will not allow it.”

He looked around for his drum, but all that remained were the red splinters of its shell and the tatters of the bassonova fruit rind that had been the drumhead. He carefully pulled the torn skin from the bindings, clutched it to his chest, and took a deep breath before stuffing it angrily into his satchel.

“Pinkie Pie,” he said as he turned back to the mare. “I require your assistance.”

“Anything you need,” she said with a nod.

“I will be requiring a drum,” Basenji explained. “Have you any idea where I might obtain one?”

A grin slowly spread across Pinkie’s face, and bit of bounce returned to her mane.

“Oh, I can get you a drum.”


* * *


Twilight grit her teeth as she gathered as much magic as she could. She felt a trickle of blood run down the end of her snout, but she ignored it, choosing instead to focus on the sound of the drums and the spellcraft she was working. Her chakram hovered in front of her, perfectly still as she used it as the focal point for her spell. The arcane characters etched into the surface of the blade glowed with pink light as she pumped her magic into it.

It seemed like for every tendril that they cut or burned, two more rose up in its place. Ammit’s fleshy body was covered in the things now. Dozens of them whipped around, trying to strike Twilight and her friends down. If it weren’t for the barrier Shining Armor had put up slowing the tendrils down, they would have lost the fight by now.

She was towards the back of the fight, standing next to Shining as he maintained his shields and dropped lightning on the beast. His attacks had slowed down as the fighting had become more frantic. There were more targets, but that meant that the movements of their upclose fighters were harder to predict. Rainbow Dash had also joined Spitfire in distracting the monster. She wasn’t wreathed in flames like Spitfire was, but she was just as fast, and every time she bucked one of Ammit’s limbs she slowed it down.

Twilight’s spell was nearing completion, and definitely didn’t want anyone on her side getting hit with what she was about to do. “Everyone fall back!”

Spitfire, Spike, and Rainbow Dash hurried away, and Twilight unleashed her spell the second they were clear. The spell released and the area around Ammit’s body was bathed in soft pink light as she created a localized gravity field that pinned Ammit’s tendril’s down with nearly twenty times their own weight.

“Nice spell, Twily!” Shining said in praise. He was laughing like a colt that had been shown a card trick. He dropped the shields he had up, including the barrier around Ammit, and lowered his horn. “My turn!”

Clouds gathered overhead, blocking out the blood red sky, and as Shining lifted his head, dozens of lightning bolts fell from above, striking the area around Ammit. Spike rushed to their side and joined in the assault. He stood on his hind legs, his chest expanding like a bullfrog’s throat as he sucked in air. He breathed out a pillar of flame the size of a building, and the entire mass of flesh was engulfed by his flames and the bright blue flashes of Shining’s lightning.

Twilight stood next to her brothers, panting along with them. The blackened, charred remains of Ammit’s body twitched and smoked in the aftermath of their combined attack.

“Did that… did that do it?” Spike asked between ragged breaths.

As if to answer, Ammit let out another of those guttural roars. The mass of flesh quivered and began growing again. Still more tendrils emerged from the body and furiously swept the air, blindly reaching for anything stupid enough to get close.

“Okay, looks like a no,” Spike commented breathlessly.

“How are we supposed to beat this thing?” Shining asked through grinding teeth.

Twilight shook her head. This was getting out of control. Ammit was building a new body, and at this rate he’d be done before they figured out a way to stop it. The drumming in her head was insistent, telling her that the answer was in the Ways – but she couldn’t do anything with that knowledge. What she needed was someone who understood the Heart of the World. Someone who could decipher the little whispers and clues it was giving.

What she needed was a drummer.

“Play me a beat, dog-buddy!”

The loud thump of a drum rolled over Twilight, and she realized with a start that, for once, the drum hadn’t been in her head.

Every pair of eyes in the area turned towards the direction the sound had come from. Some of the crystal ponies had been herded into nearby buildings, and many of them were leaning out of windows to get a better look.

Basenji stood in the archway leading to the courtyard beneath the palace. Next to him was the biggest drum Twilight had ever seen. It was nearly twice as tall as Basenji, and considering it looked like the shell was made of emerald, it was probably ridiculously heavy. The drum was so big that it couldn’t be placed upright, so it was on its side and held in place by chocks so it wouldn’t roll away.

Pinkie Pie was standing atop the drum, on her hind legs, her arms cross over her chest. The look of glee on her face was almost manic.

“Hear me, old monster!” Basenji shouted. He lifted a paw and pointed a single claw at Ammit. “You do not belong in this world, and this son of Anubis shall return you to your master’s side!”

Basenji opened his paw and slapped it against the massive drum with all his might. The sound rolled through the city like a wave. He struck it again, then again.

Every beat of the drum made the fleshy blob of Ammit’s half-formed body convulse and spasm.

Basenji increased the tempo. His paws were a blur, slapping against the drum with big, sweeping motions. Ammit’s body began to grow pale. It shriveled up into cold white ashes, and every wave of sound carried some of it away like a hard wind blowing sand across the desert. Little by little the massive blob dried up and blew away, the ashes disintegrating into thin air.

A claw emerged from the cocoon of ash, tipped with razors that gleamed with a horrible light that seemed to promise grisly death with every movement, and another quickly followed. Ammit’s claws tore at the ground as he slowly pulled himself up. The dust fell away, revealing the long, flat head of a crocodile, large enough to swallow a stallion whole and filled with wicked teeth that jutted up past the lips of its closed mouth. A full mane of hair clung wetly to his neck and down his impossibly massive shoulders. His hind legs were long and thick – the legs of a creature that was made for running, for closing in on prey in a single pounce. The ground cracked as his tail – thick as a dragon’s neck and covered in scales – slammed into the ground hard enough to rattle the windows of nearby homes. He stood there, as terrible and dark as death, and roared at Basenji.

Before anyone could say a word, Spitfire had already made her move. She dove at him with all her speed, her hooves ablaze with the phoenix fire.

Ammit’s tail lashed out and knocked her aside without so much as a glance. Spitfire was propelled through the air like a cannon shot and slammed against the slanted roof of a home. She hit the building with a scream of pain and the sharp sound of snapping bones. Her body bounced limply off the roof and continued on.

“Spitfire!” Twilight shouted. Several other voices shouted as well, and a rainbow-colored streak flew into the sky to catch Spitfire as she tumbled through the air.

Basenji had been one of the ones that had shouted, and he abandoned his drum to run after her, heedless of the fact that Ammit was glaring at him.

Basenji’s drum might have stopped, but the drums in Twilight’s head had not. Her blood was pumping, and the surge of adrenaline had her feeling almost lightheaded. She could see every twitch of muscle beneath Ammit’s thick hide as he tensed to pounce at Basenji. Twilight gathered her magic and in a flash of light and a bang of displaced air, she was standing between Ammit and her friend.

The demon was leaping towards her, his claws – each one was curved like a scimitar and as long as a mare’s leg – outstretched and ready to strike Basenji down. Twilight’s chakram flew out of its holster at her command and floated before her, interposed between them like a shield. Twilight focused her will into it, and the weapon began to hum with her power as a barrier surrounded her.

Ammit’s claws made contact with the barrier with a flash of blinding white light. Sparks flew, as if steel had met steel, and two of Ammit’s claws shattered with the force of the impact. Ammit’s slitted, reptilian eyes narrowed. He leapt away and lowered himself to the ground, ready to pounce, and glared at her with cold malevolence.

Twilight was distantly aware of Basenji gasping behind her. The exchange between her and Ammit had happened in the span of a second or two at most.

Twilight lowered her eyes and returned Ammit’s glare with one of her own. “He’s not a pony,” she calmly explained, “but he’s mine, too.”

Ammit’s throat bulged, and he growled with that horrible guttural noise yet again. “Why, girl?” Ammit asked. “Why are you protecting them? You’re free of your chains. You can be anything you want, and yet here you are – a wolf laying with sheep. Why are you pretending? They’re just meat.”

“All I’ve ever wanted was to help people,” Twilight said. Behind Ammit, in the far distance, she could see the crystal ponies, her brothers, their friends. They were all watching her, and even from here she could see the worry in their faces. They wanted to be saved, and she wouldn’t let them down. Not a one. She raised her voice so those distant onlookers could hear her words, and loudly declared, “If I can be anything I want, then I choose to be this nation’s steel!”

Ammit’s jaws opened wide and let loose a roar that made the earth tremble.

Twilight stomped her hoof defiantly and roared back.


* * *


The Wonderbolts were Equestria’s premier flying group. They were soldiers, athletes, entertainers, and role models, all wrapped up in blue and gold spandex. It took years of hard training and unshaking dedication to reach that pinnacle of flying excellence. And, of course, spending that much time in the air practicing trick flying meant that the Bolts had some of the thickest medical folders in Equestria. Everyone falls out of the sky at least a few times, and the Wonderbolts were no different. Getting back into the air after a bad crash was a sign of pride for a flyer, and Spitfire had felt that pride as often as anyone.

But she’d never been hurt like this.

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!”

Spitfire bit down on the inside of her mouth to hold back the screams as Rainbow Dash lowered her onto the dewy grass of someone’s lawn. The coppery tang of blood was filling her mouth as her teeth sunk into her cheek. She didn’t cry out, but a nasally whimper managed to slip loose as the weight of her own body settled onto her broken bones.

It didn’t help that Rainbow Dash wouldn’t shut up.

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh,” she muttered, her voice tight with confusion and worry. “What do I do? Your… Spitfire, your wings, and your back, you’re… oh my gosh.”

“Stop talking,” Spitfire said hoarsely. “Don’t tell me how bad it is.”

She already had an idea of how bad off she was. When Ammit’s tail had smacked her down, it had felt like getting hit by a train, and she knew that at least half her ribs were broken – every breath she took confirmed that much. Then she’d hit something hard, probably a house, and she’d entered a new dimension of pain. What worried her most, though, was that she should have been in more pain. Pain she could handle, but the cold numbness she felt in her lower half was absolutely terrifying.

“If I can be anything I want, then I choose to be this nation’s steel!”

Twilight’s voice reached her through the fog of her pain, and when that ridiculous unicorn returned the monster’s roar with one of her own, Spitfire almost laughed at the absurdity. “Hot damn… I guess we both threw in with a real crazy-mare, huh, dad?” she quietly muttered.

“Spitfire, what do I do?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“There’s nothing to be done,” Spitfire said grimly. Her goggles must have fallen off in her tumble through the air, because she opened her eyes to the untinted sight of Rainbow Dash’s tear-streaked face. Spitfire had always thought that Rainbow Dash was a good filly, and not just because she was such a big fan. She hated to see the girl crying like that. “Hey, don’t cry, you’ve already helped plenty. That was a good catch, thanks for that.”

Spitfire’s attempt to make Rainbow Dash feel better only seemed to drive the girl further into tears. She sighed and pressed her cheek against the damp grass.

This was pathetic. For all her bluster and boasting, her vendetta against the thing that had killed her dad hadn’t gone nearly as well as she’d hoped. Now here she was, on some random pony’s lawn, crippled, and all she could do was listen to the faraway sounds of Twilight’s battle.

Spitfire began grinding her teeth in frustration.

No. No, she wouldn’t let it end like this. Not before she’d stripped her pound of flesh from Ammit’s leathery hide. That monster might have taken her dad, but she’d be damned if she let it take the sky from her, too – not without a fight.

Her wings were useless, so she forced herself to lift her head. She tugged at the flask tied to her arm, and cursed as it slipped from between her teeth and fell to the grass.

“What are you doing?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Spitfire had always had a bit of a gambler’s streak in her. It was never the sort of thing that had gotten her in trouble – not like her love of drinks or her temper – but when the chips were down, she’d always choose to shoot for the moon and leave it up to fate. Right now, the chips had never been more down, and all she could do was desperately grab at something Twilight had said to her about the phoenix oil stuff.

“Don’t worry, phoenix magic has some immensely powerful healing properties. I’m sure that any burns you sustain will heal up pretty quickly.”

Healing magic derived from one of the most magically powerful creatures in Equestria – that’s what she needed. Twilight had said that ingesting this stuff would have unpredictable – likely deadly – effects… but if there was even a one-in-a-million shot that this wouldn’t kill her, she’d take it.

If she couldn’t fly, her life was as good as over anyway, so why not? What was it going to do, make her more crippled?

“I’m about to do something that a really, really smart unicorn told me was really, really stupid,” Spitfire explained. She managed to undo the cap on the flask with her teeth and drew in her breath to steel herself. “Might want to stand back, Dash.”

Rainbow Dash had a frightened, uncertain look in her eyes, and for a second Spitfire was afraid that she might take the flask away. Weak as Spitfire was was, there wouldn’t be anything she could do to stop her. In the end, Rainbow nodded and took a few steps back.

“Thanks,” Spitfire said. She laughed dryly. “And hey, that was some great hustle you showed out there... You’re going to make an amazing Wonderbolt some day.”

Before Rainbow could change her mind and move to stop her, Spitfire gripped the flask with her teeth and lifted her head to pour the oil down her throat.

It was spicy, and it tasted like cinnamon.


* * *


Nothing the size of Ammit should be as fast as he was.

He was huge, big as an elephant and strong enough to knock over a building in a single swipe. Every time he moved, chunks of crystal were thrown into the air from the force of his immense weight shifting around at incredible speed. Every lash of Ammit’s tail and every swipe of his claws had enough behind it to end Twilight’s life in an instant.

But this was what she’d been training for. This was why she’d practiced teleportation until she collapsed. Ammit’s speed meant nothing if she could instantly be anywhere she wanted.

She hadn’t stopped teleporting since the fight had begun. Every casting of the spell filled the air with a hard crack of displaced air, like the sound of dozens of cannons firing in quick succession. 

Twilight was covered in shallow wounds – superficial cuts where Ammit’s sword-like claws had come within a hair’s breadth of slicing her open. The fetid stink of his breath clung to her body from the dozens of failed attempts to capture her in his jaws.

She had never felt more alive. The drums beating in her head and in her chest were at a fever pitch, holding her up with the power of the rhythm. Her teeth were bared in anger, or maybe it was a smile, it was hard to tell.  She was scared and ecstatic all at once. Fear and excitement whirled around in her heart, and more than anything, she wanted to keep fighting.

And she was giving as good as she got. Her chakram flashed across the battlefield, a white glint that traced its way across Ammit’s thick hide, leaving behind thin lines of crimson. Every injury he sustained sizzled and bubbled like he’d been burned. Twilight hadn’t even bothered adding another spell to her chakram, the thing itself seemed to be anathema to whatever dark magic had formed Ammit’s body.

But she couldn’t keep this up forever. Ammit was a big target, but she still hadn’t scored a good hit on him. He was just too fast. Even with the drums urging her forward, drawing strength out of her she didn’t know she had, eventually the well would run dry. All the battles against Sombra had already began to wear on her, and now her body was being taxed to the very limits of her physiology. Something was going to give, sooner or later.

She needed help, but there was no one else around that could cover her back. The first thing Ammit had done was destroy that big drum of Basenji’s, so her diamond dog ace-in-the-hole had been forced to retreat to the sidelines. There was also her brothers and their friends, but though they were impressive, they wouldn’t be much help against something this vicious.

A ball of flame suddenly descended from the sky like a meteor and struck against Ammit’s side hard enough to send his massive body tumbling. Twilight squinted through the flames and could only just barely make out the outline of a pony wreathed in living fire.

It was Spitfire.

Her eyes were glowing like two angry suns as she watched Ammit roll back onto his feet. “Getting sucker-punched sucks, doesn’t it?” She lowered her head and pawed at the ground like a bull getting ready to charge. “Why don’t we have another dance?”

Twilight blinked. There was only one explanation for Spitfire’s appearance – she must have ingested the phoenix oil. It was a monumentally stupid move, but Twilight would have to save the lecture for later.

Twilight went back on the attack, and as Ammit sped out of the way of her chakram, Spitfire leapt into the air and pounded her hooves against the side of his face. A few of his teeth broke free and tumbled to the ground. He opened his maw to try and bite at her, but she was already in the sky. The phoenix magic surging through her body was making her faster and stronger than Twilight had ever seen her.

Spitfire hovered in the air, just out of reach of Ammit’s tail. Every beat of her wings blew searing flames in Ammit’s face. Normal flames would have meant nothing to a creature like Ammit, but the flames of the phoenix were magic of the purest quality. When she got the chance, she would dart in and slam her body against him before darting away. 

Spitfire in the sky, and Twilight on the ground directing her chakram. To outside observers it must have looked like a dangerous tactic to employ, but Spitfire and Twilight had honed their skills as a team over the last few days. Their training and their tag-team skirmishes against Sombra had tempered them, and they knew one another’s moves as well as they knew their own.

Ammit became frantic, thrashing about at them both, not knowing who to focus on. According to Basenji, in the land of the dead, Ammit had been at the top of the food chain, and only Anubis had been his match. But here, in the mortal world, in a new body, he was being fought to a standstill.

Suddenly, he broke away from the fight. He turned and tried to run, but under the influence of the drums, Twilight had noticed the subtle change in his posture and saw that he was going to try and escape. Spitfire must have seen it too, because she dropped from the sky and landed with all four hooves on his back.

Spitfire’s attack staggered him just enough for Twilight’s chakram to score deep cuts across Ammit’s hind legs. He stumbled, and Twilight did the same to his arms. Magical demon body or not, basic physiology was basic physiology. She’d been studying the way he moved, and she had a pretty good idea of where to cut to take the legs out from under him.

Ammit howled in anger, and maybe in pain. The wounds on his body smoked and sizzled, and Spitfire’s hooves were digging into the flesh of his back. Cinders were falling from her body as she turned up the heat. Ammit struggled to get off the ground in an attempt to run, but Spitfire reared up and stomped him back down.

“Twilight, weigh me down!” Spitfire shouted.

Twilight immediately caught the gist of what she meant and cast her gravity spell. Considering the magically-enhanced capabilities that Spitfire had demonstrated, Twilight didn’t feel the need to be gentle. Spitfire grunted at the sudden increase in her weight. Her legs nearly buckled, but with the strength of the phoenix magic in her body she managed to stay on her hooves.

Twilight teleported in front of Ammit and stared him down. He stared back, and a pair of translucent secondary eyelids blinked at her. His eyes were the cloudy yellow of fresh pus, and his pupils were thin vertical stripes of black that opened and closed like the shutter of a camera as he focused on her.

The ground rumbled as Ammit laughed. It was a sound like an old, poorly tuned airship engine, and came from deep inside his body. “You’re a Hungry one, aren’t you? I could smell it on you the moment we met.”

“Shut your trap!” Spitfire bellowed. The flames around her body flared, rising high into the sky. The skin on Ammit’s back began to blacken and peel away under the intense flames.

The phoenix flames also licked at Twilight, but without the intent to burn her, it felt like a warm summer’s breeze against her coat.

Ammit ignored Spitfire’s words and the flames eating away at his back. “You should let me go,” he said. “There is no sport in killing me now. My body is incomplete. Why not allow me to leave in peace, so that I may complete my birth? Let us have a real challenge.”

Something inside Twilight perked its ears at the offer. The savage little part of her that had enjoyed the fight wagged its tail like a dog, and Twilight felt sick at the thought that she was even a little bit tempted by the offer.

“I don’t think so,” Twilight said.

“That’s a mistake,” Ammit said ominously. “You cannot be seen, but the ripples you make can. The events you’ve set into motion will become a great wave that will wash away this world. Soon there will be more meat than even you can swallow. When that time arrives, you’ll wish that I’d have been here to take my share.”

“I don’t work with monsters.”

“Then what is this thing standing on my back?”

Twilight narrowed her eyes. “She’s my friend.”

A push of her will and a bit of her magic, and Ammit’s head was removed from his body.

Twilight released the gravity spell and Spitfire leapt off the corpse to stand at her side. They watched as Ammit’s body began to be consumed by Spitfire’s flames. The evil magic animating the flesh had left it, departed to the land of the dead along with Ammit’s spirit.

In a matter of seconds, the flesh had all been burned away. Soon all that was left were bones, and even the bones began to splinter and crack. In under a minute, the phoenix flames had consumed it all, until all that was left was a pile of white ash.

As the flames died away, so too had the distant drums in Twilight’s head. She’d pushed her body to the very limits, and without the power of the drums bolstering her, it took all of her willpower to stay on her hooves. All she wanted to do was curl into a ball and fall asleep right here in the street, but she held fast. She wouldn’t let anything ruin the quiet dignity of this moment.

Spitfire gathered phlegm in her throat with a loud, rude noise, and – true to her name – spat fire on the ashes.

“That’s for my dad.” She spat again. “And that one was because I didn’t like your ugly face.”


* * *


“Be careful, one step at a time,” Fluttershy said, her voice laced with worry. “Oh dear, you shouldn’t be out of bed.”

Cadance hobbled down the stairs as quickly as she could. She was feeling dizzy, probably from a concussion, but there was no way she was staying in bed. As soon as she’d awakened, she’d had Fluttershy help her back down to the balcony where she could see what was happening. She’d caught some of the fight, and the sight of Twilight battling that monster had shaved at least ten years off her life. More than anything she had wanted to be down there at Twilight’s side, but she knew she would just get in the way.

Frightened as she was for the safety of her love, she knew that Twilight would win. The connection she shared with Twilight was strong, and through it she could feel the strength of Twilight’s convictions, and how powerfully her heart was beating. Twilight would win because she was the kind of mare that would not accept losing if it meant someone else might be hurt. Her heart was the most beautiful contradiction Cadance had ever seen – sharp as a blade, but gentle and loving enough to care for an entire nation.

She’d stayed away only as long as it had taken Twilight to separate Ammit’s head from his shoulders.

Cadance stepped out of the stairwell and into the courtyard. From above, it was easy to see that only a portion of the city had been directly affected by the battle against Ammit. The area surrounding the western face of the square was only a portion of the Crystal Empire’s capital, and the rest had been untouched.

But on the ground, that hardly seemed the case. From here all she could see was the shattered ruins of one of the most beautiful places she’d ever been. What had once been smooth crystal was now cracked, and broken into shards and chunks. The ground was smeared with blood from the fight, and much of it had pooled or become grisly runoff that muddied the surrounding lawns.

And worst of all… it was getting colder.

She saw Twilight in the distance, standing next to Spitfire and Basenji. They were speaking softly to one another as they watched the cooling embers of Ammit’s improvised funeral pyre. A crowd had gathered in the street, but no one other than Basenji had dared to approach – not even Twilight’s brothers.

Cadance’s heart twisted up in her chest at the sight of her love, bleeding and bruised, but alive. She rushed forward, not caring around the pounding in her head or the sense of vertigo she was feeling.

In her haste, she nearly slipped on a loose piece of pavement. She felt Fluttershy’s arms circle her, and with a grunt the small, shy girl was able to keep Cadance on her hooves.

“Let me help,” Fluttershy said.

Cadance nodded and let Fluttershy bear a little of her weight as she quickened her steps.

She called out. “Twilight.” Her voice cracked, and her mare’s name came out as a croak. She shouted again. “Twilight!”

Twilight spun around. “Cadance?” she asked, as though she couldn’t believe it. The look of relief that came over Twilight’s face twisted Cadance’s heart again, threatening to tear it out of her chest. “Cadance!”

Twilight hobbled towards her. She was smiling, but the corners of her eyes creased with every step she took. Spitfire and Basenji stood at either side of her, offering their support, and together they closed the distance between them.

What a sight they must have been –  two lovers, drunkenly shuffling towards one another with tears in their eyes, barely able to move under their own power. Their escorts released them at the last second, and Cadance lurched forward to fall against Twilight just as Twilight lurched forward to fall against her.

Cadance wrapped her arms around Twilight and sobbed into her mane. “We failed, Twilight,” she whispered. She felt Twilight’s body tense up. “It’s all gone wrong.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I was attacked by Ammit, he knocked me out so I would let the barrier down,” Cadance said. “Fluttershy told me about what happened while I was out. She said that Ammit ate something called the Crystal Heart.”

“So?” Twilight asked. She pulled from the hug and cocked her head in confusion. “Cadance, I don’t understand. Sombra took the Crystal Heart, and Ammit ate him, then Spitfire and I killed Ammit. I admit it’s bad that we lost such a magical treasure, but—”

“Twilight,” Cadance said, a note of desperation in her voice. “That Crystal Heart, whatever it was, it was tied to the magic of the Empire. Now that it’s gone… I can’t feel the Empire’s magic anymore.”

Twilight reeled. “But the magic is in the land, right?”

“The Heart must have been what connected the land to the ponies here,” Cadance said. “I’ve tried to power up the city with my own love again, but there’s no reaction. I can’t reach out to the Empire’s magic… Twilight… haven’t you noticed how cold it’s getting?”

Twilight looked around as though she was seeing the city for the first time. Her eyes were wide as she scanned the area.

It wasn’t just the weather or the damage from battle that seemed wrong. When they’d first arrived, the crystal that the city was made of had had the pristine luster of high-quality glass, but was now clouded and dull.

“It’s going to get colder, Twilight,” Cadance said. She could feel herself trembling, and the tears in her eyes blinded her no matter how hard or how much she blinked them away. “Pretty soon, nothing will be able to live here, and these ponies will lose their home… we’ve lost, Twilight.”

Twilight reached up with bloody hooves and carefully pulled Cadance’s head down. Cadance closed her eyes and felt Twilight’s lips on them as she kissed away her tears.

“We won, Cadance,” Twilight said with completely and utter certainty in her voice. “Everyone is alive. If they’re all alive, then they still have hope.”

Cadance shook her head. “No, no it’s… it’s going to get colder,” she insisted. “How are we going to get them out of here? The blizzard is still going, and the train tracks are all messed up.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Twilight said. “You and I, and all our friends, and these ponies of ours.”

Twilight kissed her, and that was all it took to calm Cadance’s heart. The air was already chilly, but Cadance didn’t even feel a bit of it as warmth seemed to pour into her body from Twilight’s lips. The shame and despair she felt were gone, replaced with the assurance of someone who loved her unconditionally and without restraint.

Her body felt lighter than air, and the pain in her head had dulled to a mild throb, and then disappeared completely. Twilight pulled away from her, releasing her from their embrace. Twilight had stepped away, but Cadance could still feel the warmth of her body as though they were snuggled up together beneath their thick winter quilts.

She opened her eyes to find a single point of light hovering before her face. It was brighter than the sun, and she could feel within it the love she held for Twilight, and the love Twilight held for her. Everything that their love was had compressed into that light.

The light slowly grew, and hers and Twilight’s love was joined by that of others. Their friends, the citizens of the Empire, the citizens of Equestria and beyond. All that love, all the goodness of kind hearts that numbered in the hundreds, thousands, millions. It all came together, layer by layer, with heat and pressure, until it had become a huge diamond – no, not a diamond, a crystal.

A heart of crystal.

Cadance recognized it. How could she not? She had the exact same gem emblazoned on each of her hips – placed there by destiny, as if to say that this was the moment she had been born for.

She looked down and realized that she was hovering in the air, and not in the way that pegasi normally did. Her wings were opened wide at her sides, but perfectly still.

The newly formed Crystal Heart zipped away to float in the center of the courtyard under the palace. A pedestal rose out of the ground, and the Crystal Heart alighted upon it. The love gathered within the heart spread throughout the city as a flash of light, touching everything and everyone.

The coats of the crystal ponies were no longer dull, but now sparkled and shone with a beautiful light beneath the bright, clear blue sky. The damaged city began reforming itself, the crystal growing like a scab covering a wound, until the city was back to its original, pristine condition. The blood that had been spilled during the fight had seemed to dry up and break away in flakes to be carried off on the breeze.

Even their friends were now crystalline. The strange magic of this land had suffused them with the same properties as the ponies who lived here. Even Spike and Basenji, who weren’t ponies, were shining like precious jewels.

Slowly she descended. She touched back to the ground and landed gracelessly on her rump, letting out a petite little “Ooof,” as she fell.

Twilight was gawking at her, eyes wide and mouth even wider. “Cadance… you’re… you’re… an alicorn…”

Cadance sniggered. “Uh, yeah, dumdum,” she replied. “We’ve been sleeping in the same bed for a year now and you only just noticed?”

Cadance’s heart felt light, and the impact of what had just happened was only slowly dawning on her. She opened her mouth to continue teasing her love, but something felt wrong.

Her scalp was itchy – tingly even. Like it was covered in medicated dandruff shampoo. But it also felt… slimy? Like pudding.

“Twilight…” she asked cautiously. “Why does my head feel like it’s covered in anti-dandruff pudding?”

She reached up and tried to touch her mane, but she didn’t feel anything. Her eyes went wide at that.

Her head snapped up in a frantic attempt to see the top of her own head. She shot to her hooves, still looking up, and spinning in circles like a dog chasing its tail. “Twilight?” she asked, panic creeping into her voice. “Twilight? Twilight! Where’s my hair, Twilight!?”

Something hovered at the edge of her vision and Cadance looked over her shoulder.

Her tail floated behind her, an ethereal and formless mass of pink and gold and violet, dotted with glittering motes of light and chubby little hearts that swam around like fish in an aquarium. It was the same type of hair that her aunts had – a sign that an alicorn had fully matured and become one with a fundamental aspect of the natural, magical world. It meant that she’d fully donned her mantle of power.

“Oh, honey-baked buttermilk piss! I’m an alicorn!”


* * *