//------------------------------//
// Chapter 2 - A Little Rain Must Fall 
// Story: Sundowner 
// by King of Beggars 
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The sun had already set by the time I pulled into the parking lot on the east side of Canterlot U’s campus. The parking lot was surprisingly empty for a school night, and around half of the security lights weren’t even on. It gave the place a sort of spooky vibe. Less like a major sub-Ivy League school, and more like the kind of place where bad guys in a movie might arrange a money drop for a kidnapping ransom.

I had my window rolled down, and the steady rumble of my car’s V8 growled its way through the deserted lot like a candy apple red panther in the darkness. It wasn’t exactly subtle, but subtlety had never really been my forte. And besides, the stylized phoenix on the bonnet of my little Firebird spoke to me on a very spiritual level.

I mean, come on, it’s a pony car. How could I not?

I’d sent Night Light ahead to wait for me at the school while I changed into something more comfortable and considerably warmer, and I found where he had parked easily enough. The lights closest to the buildings were all on, and his was the only other car in the lot. Even from a distance I could see him sitting in the car, windows rolled up and fogging as he nervously fiddled with the radio. He looked up at the sound of my car approaching and swiped his hand over the driver’s side window to squint into the shine of my headlights.

I pulled up next to him and got out of the car, grabbing my old black leather jacket from off the back of the passenger’s seat. The jacket was a souvenir from the motorcycle I used to ride around on in my younger, wilder days. It still had some scuff marks on it from the time I'd taken a tumble while trying to do a wheelie. It had saved me from a serious case of road rash and I’d worn it religiously since then, as a sort of good luck charm. Hopefully I wouldn’t need too much luck tonight, but it never hurt to be cautious.

Night Light got out of his car and gave me a look that was dimly disappointed. “That’s what you’re wearing?”

I blinked, momentarily stunned by the sudden question. “What?” I asked looking down at myself in confusion. I wasn’t wearing anything odd. Just a pair of jeans, some hiking boots, a concert t-shirt from the reunion tour of a band older than I was, and my jacket. I checked myself over, trying to find something wrong with the outfit – I even double checked the zipper on my jeans.

“You’re not going to wear… I don’t know.” Night Light gestured spastically. “A shrine maiden’s outfit, or like, a wizard robe or something? Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we're not going to stand out, but...”

I rolled my eyes. “The harem getup is something I wear for customers,” I explained as I bunched up my hair and tied it into a ponytail with a rubber band from off my wrist. I used to wear it short, but I’d let it grow down below my shoulders because it looked better with my fortune teller costume. “I’m off that clock. Believe it or not, sorcerers do buy off the rack, same as everyone else.”

“Oh,” he said, and his mouth held the little O-shape of his exclamation for a few more seconds as his gaze swept over my car. “Nice ride.”

I patted the trunk lovingly. “Thanks. Her name’s Philomena and she’s my spirit animal.” He gave the car a wary look that made me think he was expecting it to suddenly turn into a cat like some cartoon witch’s familiar. I rolled my eyes… again. “Not literally.”

“Right, right, how dumb of me,” he muttered, masking his sheepishness beneath a layer of snark. I could respect that. I respected snark. “Um, okay, so what are we doing here again?”

I motioned with my hand in a little underhanded ‘shoo-shoo’ wave. He caught the gist of the motion and started walking.

“You said that this was where you got attacked,” I reminded him. I lengthened my stride for a few paces until I fell in step beside him. “Makes this as good a place as any to start poking my nose around.”

“You think it might still be around here?” he asked, shrinking into his own shoulders like a turtle withdrawing into its shell as he swept the campus with his eyes.

I thrust my hands in my jacket pockets, scanning our surroundings myself, though markedly less fearfully than Night was. “Might be. Failing that, if this is a random wild monster, we might be able to find the crack it came through.”

“Crack?” he asked.

“Monsters don’t really exist natively in this world,” I said didactically. “They fall into this world from other planes of existence, through cracks between the worlds. There’s no way I can tell what’s got its eyes set on you from just what little info you’ve given me. Not without a massive amount of research, anyway. That might be someone’s idea of fun, but I’ve always preferred a more direct approach to these things.”

Of course, there was still the possibility that this wasn't a wild beast from another plane, but something set on Night Light by someone with juice, but I didn't want to scare the guy any worse than he already was. And besides, I like to live on hope – don't laugh, I do – and this whole thing would go down way more smoothly if there wasn't another human involved.

Night Light’s face was half-shadowed by the poor lighting in the parking lot, but I could tell that it was screwed up almost painfully. He was grimacing like he was trying to swallow down a kitchen knife. He’d already resigned himself that there was magic afoot, but it looked like the nitty-gritty of it was still difficult for him to come to grips with.

I could relate, somewhat. My human body had become pretty fond of human cuisine, and I’d once made the mistake of looking into what goes into a hot dog. I still like a good hot dog, but it had taken me a few months before I’d been able to put it out of mind.

Magic, it seemed, was Night Light’s hot dog.

“Okay,” he said after a few seconds of painful acceptance. “So we need to find this… portal, crack, thing… and then what?”

“Well, don’t put the cart ahead of the horse,” I said. “There might not even be a crack here, we’re just looking because it’d make things easier if there was. If I could pop my head in and see what’s on the other side, it’d give us a good idea of what we’re dealing with.”

“I guess that makes sense,” he said.

The campus proper was separated from the rest of the world by a lush, well-tended lawn. The long way around the lawn was lined with security lights, but we chose to take the shorter, unlit pathway. The paved shortcut cut through the grass, curving and meandering lazily, like a snake slithering its way across the field. The walkway curved sharply around a pond where ducks and geese floated lazily across the water, half-concealed by the reeds growing along the bank. A few of the male geese noticed us getting a little too close and hunkered down, ruffling their feathers and honking angrily at us from the darkness as we walked past.

“How does it work then?” Night Light asked. “Do we need a divining rod or something? Have you ever seen one of these cracks before?”

“One or two,” I said with nonchalance. “I’ll know it when I see it. A crack could be anything – a big glowing tear in space-time, a hole in the ground, a statue, an infinite void of darkness contained inside of a frog’s mouth.”

Night Light rubbed at his stomach like it was giving him trouble. He was probably suffering from the early stages of an ulcer, but he just nodded and dutifully followed my lead as I aimlessly wandered the campus.

According to Night Light, the campus was semi-closed for spring break, which explained the curious lack of other people. Most of the students had gone home, or headed off to sleazy vacation spots where all the drinks came with little paper umbrellas.

The campus wasn’t completely deserted, though. We did see a few lights on in the windows of dormitories we passed, belonging to students who lacked the time, money, or inclination to leave school for the break. The campus security drove by us twice in the span of a half hour in his little electric golf cart. I was a little older than the average student, but I was young enough to pass for grad student, so the guard didn’t pay me any more attention than a nod as he zipped by. Probably helped that I was walking around with someone from the faculty.

It was a nice school. Lots of big, fancy buildings with the names of important – or, more likely, rich – people on them. In my lifetime I’d had a lot of really great teachers, and my education hadn’t wanted for anything. I even had a GED, and a college degree that I’d earned through the mail. Sure, the degree was from an unaccredited South American school, but I was proud of my sheepskin from Universidad de Escuela.

But walking around the Canterlot U campus made me wonder if maybe I’d missed out on something afterall. It might have been nice to have gone back to school, even if I didn’t really need the degree. I love learning, and going to a regular human school might have even been… fun.

Within an hour and a half we’d covered the entirety of the campus, and twice looped around the perimeter. The search had turned up bupkis, which was frustrating, but at least Night Light had quit shaking in his booties at every rustling bush.

Night Light was pretty spry, but he was still an older guy, and an academic. He was more used to sitting in a comfy chair with a book in his lap than traipsing around in the darkness, so we made our way to the lounge near the cafeteria and had a break so he could catch his breath.

“You’re sure there was nothing in my office?” he asked. He was sitting at a cheap plastic picnic table, drinking contentedly from a cup of vending machine coffee.

“Positive,” I said as I frowned at the machine holding my own drink.

The machine in front of me had a picture that promised a steamy, frothy mug of hot cocoa, but the only thing the machine was dispensing was frustration. After a few cocoa-less minutes, I gave it a good whack on the side with an open hand, and the angry mechanical whirring stopped. A cup fell out of the dispenser and thick chocolate sludge poured into cup, followed by two puny marshmallows that mysteriously sank right to the bottom.

I sniffed at the cup, wondering if it was safe to drink. I took a sip and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was good, despite the weird consistency. Human cocoa couldn’t hold a candle to the stuff back in Equestria, but as far as Earth attempts at the drink, this was serviceable.

“I don’t think we’re going to find anything here,” I said as I drank my little cup of hot magic. “You’re sure you didn’t feel anything strange, either?”

Night Light shook his head. “No, nothing.” He sighed. “Maybe… maybe it’s gone? Or maybe you scared it off?”

“Not likely,” I admitted.

“So what do we do now, then?” he asked.

I chewed my lip in thought. There were a few ways to move forward, and I didn’t really like any of them. Finding the rupture, if there even was one, would have made this so much easier. I did have a few ideas of what I might be dealing with, and depending on how close I was I might have even been able to banish it without so much as laying eyes on it. Sadly, that wasn’t the case, which meant I was still flying blind. Knowledge was power, and I hated feeling powerless, so the only thing left to do was bite the bullet and try something else.

“I think maybe you should head home for now, go spend some time with your family,” I said with a shake of my head.

A look of panic filled his eyes. “You’re giving up?”

“No, but at this point I need a change of tactics,” I explained. I made for the door and started walking to the parking lot. The clip of the hard soles on Night Light’s shoes echoed across the deserted quad as he hurried to catch up with me.

“I’ll come with you,” he said.

“It’s better if you don’t. I might need to meet with someone shifty, and shifty people don’t like showing up to meetings to find unexpected strangers.”

“Is it someone dangerous?”

“He can be, yeah, but it’s not a concern,” I said. The cocoa goop had gotten extra syrupy halfway down the cup, and the mild sweetness had turned bitter, so I chucked the drink into a garbage can.

“Hey, Doctor Night Light!” a woman’s voice called out.

Doctor? Oh, right, literature professor.

We turned to find a fair-skinned girl running towards us. She was wearing a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt that read ‘Canterlot U Athletics’. The shirt bore the stylized logo of a fierce-looking stallion – the school’s mascot. She was wearing a backpack, and her long blue hair drifted behind her as she jogged towards us. She was ridiculously beautiful, and even sweats and a t-shirt somehow seemed as sultry as a neglige on her. Every step she took made her breasts jiggle with the sort of carefree perkiness that made women my age start feeling self-conscious.

I mean, I’m still really young, but I’m not perky young.

“Oh, hello, Luna,” Night Light said with a wave. “I thought you were leaving town for the break.”

The girl stopped in front of us, tugging at the hem of her shirt where it had bunched up under her backpack. “Yeah, we were going to Cancun, but the plan fell through,” she said with a sigh. Her voice had a husky quality that reminded me of silk sheets on a summer’s night. “What’re you up to? And who’s this?”

Night Light looked at me, a bit of panic creeping into his slightly-widening eyes. He apparently hadn’t thought of a cover story for why he was walking around campus with me, and he probably wanted to avoid introducing me as his ghostbuster. I probably should have been offended, but it was honestly pretty funny.

“Hi, my name’s Sunset Shimmer,” I said as I held out my hand. He might not have been very quick on his feet, but knowing how to sell a bum story was how I put bread on the table. “I’m an old family friend of Night Light’s. I was thinking about enrolling in Canterlot U and he was showing me around.”

“Oh, wow, really? What major are you thinking of?”

“I think maybe astronomy, but I’m not really sure,” I said, picking a random collegey-sounding subject out of the air. I’d always liked astronomy, and not just for the opportunities it provided to make jokes about staring at heavenly bodies.

The girl smiled at that. “Astronomy is really cool. I’ve loved stargazing since I was a little girl.” She brushed her hair behind her ear sheepishly. “I’m still kind of undecided myself. Astronomy is one of my picks, though. If you end up in the program, maybe we’ll see each other around.”

“Maybe,” I said, returning her smile with one of my own. “That’d be nice.”

“Are you guys going to the parking lot?” she asked. “I was going that way, too.”

We started our way across the campus again, chatting as we went. It was smalltalk, and boring smalltalk at that, but Luna was a nice enough girl and I didn’t mind her company. I earn my living talking to strangers, but outside of work I don’t socialize much. I don’t have very many associates from the old days, and of the ones that I kept in touch with, none of them were the chatty types.

Luna, though, seemed to love talking. She’d apparently been on campus tutoring a friend of hers that had nearly failed a statistics midterm. That niggling feeling of longing hit me again as I listened to her gush about her picayune problems with friends and scholasticism. It occurred to me that maybe I envied Luna more than a little bit. If I’d have gone to school, would I have been like that? Would I have made friends like this girl?

I chased those thoughts away. They were unproductive. Night Light had chosen to stay out of the conversation, instead just watching our discussion with a smile. I took a page out of his book and nodded along as Luna told me about her hobbies and her interest in astronomy.

We were already at the pond in the middle of the giant lawn, halfway to the parking lot, when all the little boxes in the danger checklist in my brain started ticking off. I have a pretty good eye for details, and there were little things here and there that were setting off alarms in my head, even if I didn’t know what they were right away. I pulled up short, squinting into the darkness and trying to figure out what was putting me on edge. Night Light and Luna stopped, watching me curiously as I narrowed my eyes at every shadow.

“Something wrong?” Luna asked.

I held up a hand and shushed her.

Night Light had mentioned feeling like he was being watched, and while that might not sound like a big deal, that sense of wrongness is a fairly important evolutionary thing – one that ponies and humans share. There’s something to be said about animal instincts, especially where the supernatural is concerned, and I was starting to get that feeling right now. That little itch at the back of my skull, like someone was boring a hole into it with their eyes.

Also, we were next to the pond, and it was quiet. I’d almost missed it, listening to Luna talk about her favorite constellations, but those geese from earlier had let us get awfully close without voicing their displeasure again.

I fixed my eyes on the pond, watching the water for any signs of movement. The waterfowl had all left, and the surface of the water was eerily still, even as the reeds swayed in the late-evening breeze.

Something broke through the surface of the pond, bursting out of the water without so much as a splash, without even so much as a ripple. It lunged at Night Light so fast that I would have missed it if I hadn’t been watching the water.

I didn’t have time to cast a real spell, so I gathered my magic into my palm and swatted at the thing like a horsefly. It wasn’t elegant, but it didn’t have to be. A wall of magic thick enough to bend what little ambient light there was slammed against our attacker with a slap. I heard the brittle snap of bones cracking as the four-legged thing was knocked down mid leap. It bounced against the ground hard enough to tear out the sod.

Night Light and Luna flinched at the sound and spun around, eyes wide in shock as they watched the creature’s body slide across the lawn.

The thing didn’t stay down for very long. As soon as it came to rest it rose to its feet, bones popping and snapping back into place. The proportions of its body were all wrong, and for a moment, I thought I’d broken it worse than I had. It stood on all fours, but its mismatched limbs were different lengths and thicknesses, and its lumpy, half-formed body gave the impression that its bones and organs had just been thrown into its skin like a sack. Its was covered in patches of waterlogged fur, and as it shook itself, it threw up a spray of filthy pond water.

The thing glared at me with milky white eyes. The head was vaguely catlike – maybe a puma or a leopard – and the lower jaw thrust out past its face, like the jaw had been taken from a creature with a longer snout. It snapped its jaws mechanically at us, its teeth clicking as it opened and closed its mouth.

Night Light was shaking visibly, but he’d somehow found the courage to step in front of his thunderstruck student, shielding her with his body. The guy definitely had more guts than I’d given him credit for.

I stepped off the pathway and onto the grass. They must have recently had the sprinklers on, because the ground was soft under my feet. The smell of decay, wet fur, and old fish filled my nostrils as I neared the monster. More than the stink of death, I was picking up the stink of death magic.

In a vacuum, necromancy wasn’t a completely useless field of study, or even an inherently amoral one, despite the ickiness. The energy released during death was as natural as anything, and you could do some very interesting stuff with knowledge of it.

But that was only in theory. In actual practice, necromancy is just about the nastiest kind of magic mortal practitioners dabbled in. It was a field of the craft that seemed to attract the worst kind of people interested in magic. On the whole, necromancers were a bunch of weirdos diddling corpses and stitching them together into constructs, without regard for anything even resembling ethics, and I personally found it to be a distasteful use of magic.

At least I knew for certain now that this wasn’t just some weird random monster haunting a guy. A creature like this didn’t exist naturally in any plane I knew about. This thing had been put together by a necromancer for a specific purpose. What that purpose was would require some more digging, but for the moment the only thing that mattered was taking this other guy’s pawn off the board.

“Ugh, I don’t who made you, but you are the grossest thing I’ve seen in years,” I said. I held a hand over my nose and breathed deeply. They’d been in my pockets all night and smelled pleasantly of old leather. It did a serviceable job of masking the odor the monster was giving off. “Don’t suppose you can talk, can you?”

It wordlessly clicked its mouth full of mismatched teeth at me.

“Didn’t think so,” I muttered.

The thing surged forward, its paws clawing at the grass as I ran towards me. I must have made it mad, because it seemed to have forgotten Night Light’s presence. Which was fine by me.

Gathering magic means different things to different practitioners, depending on the way in which they came into their power. For people who bargained for their power, they have a tether of sorts to the being that they made their bargain with. For them, gathering power means drawing it from their source. This could be through a prayer, or a sacrifice, or some other kind of ritual.

For me, though, I didn’t need anyone else’s power. Magic was a part of who I was, it was a part of where I came from. Human or not, magic was suffused in every molecule in my body, and over the years, I’d learned how to draw it out without the use of a horn, or even a human focus item.

Using magic was as natural as breathing for me, and when this stupid monster decided to make a run at me, I was ready.

I held up my hand, drawing magic into it, and into my throat. “Lay down,” I said in a whisper. My throat burned like I’d just swallowed grain alcohol, and the magic behind my command shook the air.

The monster’s legs locked up in mid stride and it fell to the ground, laying completely still as its dead eyes locked on me. It just kept clicking its jaws at me, emotionlessly.

Commanding another being with willpower alone was a pretty standard trick. I wasn’t very good at it, but this thing was just a necromantic construct, a golem made of rotten flesh and broken bones. It had been made with simple commands, and only had enough intelligence to carry out its orders. Things like this were never given free will, so even my poor excuse for a command was enough to subdue it.

The construct started thrashing its head, still snapping away as it tried to wriggle its way the dozen or so feet it had to cross to reach me. It was almost cute, it was so pathetic.

The power I held in my outstretched hand was almost painful, like holding my hand against a stove. I clenched my hand into a fist, raised it, and then brought it down like a hammer. My magic condensed into a solid mass above the thing, striking the ground with a heavy thud and the sound of bones snapping like kindling. I raised my fist again, and the monster was freed of the magical pile-driver’s pressure. I could already see the bones twitching and slithering back into place.

I hit it again. Then again. I kept smashing it into the ground until the bones were dust, and the quivering ball of meat no longer had enough magic to fix what I had done to it. Constructs like this were made to repair themselves, and the best way to deal with them was to outright burn them to ash, but that would have attracted too much attention. Spring break or no, someone was bound to see the magical bonfire I would have had to conjure up to burn something like this, especially since the damn thing was absolutely soaking wet from being in the pond. No, the only way left to me was to hit it until the magic holding it together and giving it psuedo-life had run dry.

I unclenched my fist and stuffed it into my jacket pocket, gritting my teeth as I stroked the soft fleece lining. I held up my other hand and levitated the leftovers of my fight into the air, then dumped the gooey mess into the pond. It’d settle at the bottom and decay naturally now, or the school would find it and think a really big dog had drowned and decayed bad enough to be unrecognizable.

When I turned back to the sidewalk, Night Light and Luna were staring at me with a mix of fear and awe.

Magic can be an immensely beautiful thing – trust me on that, I’m from Equestria, so I know of what I speak.  It can also be incredibly ugly, and you can trust me on that, too. Just now, two total virgins to magic had seen me mash a monster into a fine paste with pure sorcerous muscle. As far as a first real introduction to magic went, it was a hell of a way to get your cherry popped.

I ignored the looks they were giving me as I brushed past them and continued on the path back to my car. It took maybe half a minute before I heard the sound of their hurried footsteps as they rushed to catch up to me, but this time they didn’t fall in step beside me. Night Light didn’t ask me if his family was going to be okay. Luna didn’t prattle on about midterms and missing out on overpriced daiquiris. They just followed me back to the parking lot, silent, a few steps behind me, the soft rhythm of their footfalls matching with my own as we walked.

When we got to the cars I didn’t even bother turning around. I fished my keys out of my pocket and opened my door more roughly than I would have normally.

“Go home to your family, Night Light,” I said. “You’re safe for now. We can talk more later.”

If he said anything in response I didn’t hear it over the sound of my door slamming. I put both hands on the wheel in a death grip to halt the trembling. This wasn’t my first time dealing with a monster – creatures like that had practically been teaching aids to Fiddler – but it had been a long time since I’d used that much magic. The physical strain that magic could put on the body was no joke.

In terms of magical stamina, I was a world-class athlete, but that had been about three-thousand hours of TV and cheese doodles ago. What I’d just done had been the equivalent of running a triathlon after quitting Olympic track to become a competitive eater. My magical muscles were all flabby, and the workout I’d just put myself through had seriously worn me out.

I buried my face into the steering wheel and hyperventilated myself until my heart rate had resumed something close to normalcy. My hands were all cold and clammy from the adrenaline, and they felt good against my sweaty forehead.

My heart rate spiked back up as I heard something knocking on the passenger side window. I looked up to find Luna staring in at me through the foggy glass. She waved at me sheepishly and gave a quick, “Sorry.”

I leaned across the seat and worked the crank to roll down the window. My car had a lot of balls, but it didn’t have power-windows, which I think is a fair trade.

“You need something?” I asked once the window was halfway down.

“I sorta don’t feel like waiting for a cab anymore,” she said. She was pulling on the straps of her backpack like a kid on her first day of kindergarten. Her cheeks were flushed pink against her pale skin. “Could you give me a ride home?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

I blinked. I’d been expecting a question about what had just happened. I’d been so damn sure of it that when she’d asked me for a ride I’d agreed without even thinking.

Before I could open my mouth and rescind the offer, she’d already snaked her her slender arm through the window and unlocked the door for herself. She got into my car and fumbled around trying to find the seatbelt.

I sighed and lifted my butt off the seat to blindly grope around for my keys. I’d thrown them on the seat in my hurry to get into the car, and I’d been sitting on them the whole time. “Check the floor, it’s a lapbelt,” I said. She found the belt and clipped it into place while I started the car and rolled my own window back down. “Where am I taking you?”

Luna grabbed her bag off the floor and unzipped the front pocket to retrieve her cellphone. A couple of pencils fell out and she muttered a curse as she stuffed them back into her bag. She messed around with her phone a little and then spoke into the receiver. “Take me home.” The phone chirped and a second later it started giving me directions.

I did as the phone commanded me and pulled into the street. CU’s campus was far enough away from downtown to avoid most of the traffic, and we were in that odd golden-time of late-evening, early-night where it was still too early for the nightlife set to make the rounds, and too late for the nine-to-fivers to be out and about. The streets were empty enough that we drove for long stretches where the only sounds I heard were the directions from Luna’s phone, the dulcet purring of my engine, and the mellifluous crooning of Blue Oyster Cult through my speakers.

I knew it couldn’t last, though. Luna had to go and ruin the moment with that ultimate of disrespectful moves – shutting off the radio.

You don’t touch another woman’s radio, especially when the BOC is laying down the gospel. I’ve gotta have more cowbell.

She’d had a rough night, though, so I could forgive her… just once.

“You’re not really thinking about going to my school, are you?” she asked.

“No.” The phone told me to turn left at the next stop light so I put my blinker on.

“And you’re not an old friend of Professor Light’s.”

That one wasn’t a question, but I answered it like one. “No, I only met him today. I won’t go into details, they’re not mine to give out, but he needed help and he reached out to me.”

She grunted in what I took to be acceptance. There was a long pause, and for a second I thought the questions might be over already. “Is your name really Sunset Shimmer?”

“It is.”

Another pause, and then the inevitable. “Magic?”

“Yeah… yeah, magic.”

The rest of the drive was in silence. We hadn’t actually gone all that far, but neither of us had bothered to turn the radio back on, so the silence hung in the air between us like the dangling legs of a hanged man. I drove, and she sat in the passenger seat, holding her phone and clutching her bag tightly against her chest as she cast furtive little sidelong glances towards me.

We pulled up to her place, which turned out to be a fairly nice condo with a postage stamp sized lawn, lined up in perfect sequence with other equally nice townhouses with equally puny lawns. I’m a firm believer in lawns, and the sight of the tiny patch of grass made me frown.

“Oh, my sister is home,” Luna said, her voice singing with relief as she looked up at the light coming from one of the second floor windows. She looked at her feet, clutching her bag against her chest as she chewed her lip. “Do you… do you want to come in?”

“What, for like, coffee or something?”

Luna nodded, and her hair fell forward, covering her face.

“I shouldn’t,” I said, shaking my head. “I’ve still got some stuff to do tonight.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, a note of fear entering her voice as she looked up. “You could come in and meet my sister… or… or if you want, you could even come up and see my room.”

Her pale skin practically glowed with her blush as she loosened her grip on her bag, and pushed it down into the footwell. She thrust out her chest almost imperceptibly.

Ah. She was asking me up for sex.

“That’s… that’s probably a bad idea,” I said.

“Of course,” she said dryly. She looked away and crossed her arms over her breasts, physically withdrawing into herself even as she withdrew the offer of coitus. “You probably don’t even like girls…”

“No, I do, but I just—”

If I hadn’t been so off guard, I might have been able to stop Luna before she’d undone her belt and leaned across the car. Before I knew what was happening, she’d grabbed the front of my shirt to pull me towards her. Her lips were against mine, and her tongue had forced its way into my mouth.

It had been a long while since I’d been physical with anyone, and I’ll admit, the kiss felt good. Getting kissed almost always feels good, even when you’re too shocked to kiss back, and the person kissing you is less than skilled at it. It also helped that Luna was insanely hot.

For maybe half a second after the shock had worn off, I let myself enjoy to feeling of another person wanting me, but the moment of weakness was short lived. I pushed Luna away, and the sensation of her lips on mine lingered even after we’d separated.

She gave me the kind of doleful look that charities on TV used to guilt donations out of people, and doubled over, burying her face in her hands. “Oh god, I’m so sorry,” she said, mortified.

We sat in the car for a while, listening to the motor run. I got feeling that this broad wasn’t going to get out of my car so easily, so I killed the engine.

“You okay?” I asked.

“I’m not a slut,” she said defensively. She was shaking.

“I know you’re not,” I said.

“I mean it!”

I scratched nervously at the back of my neck. How the hell was this my life? All I had wanted to do tonight was watch Dancing With the Stars and prank phone call the asshole on the local radio station’s nightly Love Doctor show. And here I was, wrapped up in some bookworm’s magic problems, and I was talking a girl that was barely out of her teens off an emotional cliff. Talking her out of sex, no less.

“You just saw something spooky for the first time, and then you saw me beat it into jelly with something you probably thought only existed in movies about hobbits,” I said, summarizing the night she’d just had. “I think you’re freaked out, and you’re desperate to not be alone. I think you just walked away from danger, so maybe you’re a little horny from all the adrenaline in your bloodstream. I think that in the back of your mind you’re scared of the notion that there might be something under your bed, and that you don’t want the tough, scary bitch that kills monsters to leave without checking.”

She was watching me now, her eyes welling with unshed tears as I talked. I gave her a smile.

“I think all that stuff,” I said in conclusion, “but I don’t think you’re a slut.” I stuck out my chin, gesturing towards her front door. “Get inside, lock your door. Eat a whole bucket of ice cream and get some sleep. You’re going to be okay. Monsters aren’t as common as you think. I promise you’ll be fine to sleep alone.”

Luna swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and gave me the watery shadow of a smile. She grabbed her bag and got out of the car. She closed the door and leaned down to look in through the lowered window. “Am I going to see you again?”

I started up the car and put it in gear. “Maybe,” I said. “Goodbye, Luna.”

“Good night, Sunset Shimmer,” Luna said.

As I drove away I could see her in my rearview, watching until I had turned the corner at the end of the block.


* * *


There were some things about living in the human world that had taken a bit of getting used to. Cities, for example, sometimes had human world analogues to the places I knew from back home, only with silly nonsensical names, like Manhattan, or Philadelphia – madness, right?

I think that maybe that was why I always found myself coming back to Canterlot City. Over the years, I’d been lucky enough to see a lot of the human world, and I’d been to a lot of really great places. But Canterlot City was the only city I’d found with a nearly-Equestrian name, and it was where the portal back to Equestria was. Even though I’d long ago given up on returning home, this was where I felt most comfortable – where I felt the most connected to home.

Worse than the cities, though, were the living analogues I’d found here. Imagine my surprise the first time I’d come across one of these doppelgangers just walking down the street. I still remember the first one, in fact. It had been the human double of a colt I’d known from my years at Celestia’s school. The colt’s name was Rumblefish, and back in Equestria he was a unicorn a few grades higher than I had been. He was supposed to be some kind of engineering prodigy, but in the human world, Rumblefish was a pimply-faced teenager who worked in an autobody shop.

And it hadn’t ended there. Over the years, I’d come across a ton of human doubles for ponies I knew in Equestria. The damndest thing about it though? They weren’t always the exact same people they were back home. Maybe it was because their lives had been different, or because whatever weird connection the two worlds had wasn’t completely perfect, but sometimes I’d meet a double who had a completely different personality than their counterpart. Other times, the differences were more extreme, like meeting a woman who I’d known as a stallion in Equestria, or a child that I’d known as an old mare.

I’d asked Fiddler about it once, and he said that it was best not to think too much on it. Interdimensional stuff was muggy, and generally a pain in the ass to deal with. He’d tried to convince me that it was easier just to accept that the universe was full of weird shit, which I’ve never agreed with, but I like to think I’m smart enough to know when I’m not smart enough to tackle a problem. Maybe one day, but not any time soon.

The first few years I’d been in the human world, I’d spent a lot of time looking around, trying to spot more doubles. It was kind of a hobby of mine, and I’d even kept journals full of my sightings. The shine had worn off that hobby after a few years, though. Now I hardly even think about it. Probably because, by this point, I’ve spent more time as a human than I ever had as a pony.

Sometimes I get a little sad about that, but that’s just the way life goes – if you’re me, anyway. It was pointless to compare humans I met to ponies I used to know as a filly, especially when I’d known their human selves far longer than I’d known them as ponies.

As I opened the door to the ICLOP, I was greeted with the friendly face of the woman who best exemplified that.

“Well, hello there, Sunset,” the woman said, flashing me a smile that I knew was a degree or two warmer than what other customers got.

“Hey, Cheese Cake,” I said, returning the smile with one of my own. “Working hard?”

“You know I am, child,” Cheese Cake said with a titter. “Table for one?”

“Two,” I said. “I’m meeting someone.”

She frowned. “It’s not who I think it is, is it?”

“Yeah, sorry,” I said, wringing my hands contritely. “Apologies in advance.”

“He just better watch his damned manners.” Cheese Cake crooked a finger and led me towards a booth in the back, away from the rest of the diners and next to a window. It was late enough that the dining room wasn’t very packed, but Cheese knew me well enough to know how much I liked my privacy.

The mare Cheese Cake had been in charge of the cafeteria at Celestia’s school, and I’d never paid her much mind. The human Cheese Cake, though, had been working at the pancake house for almost as long as I’d lived in the human world.

She was a cheery, older woman, who wore her years better than anyone I’d ever met aside from Princess Celestia. Considering Princess Celestia was ageless, that was really saying something. Cheese Cake was comfortably chubby, and vain enough to color her hair, but not enough to care if the silvery roots were showing through her bright orange dye-job. I followed her as she wound her way through the tables, swinging her shapely hips with a self-assured sensuality that had earned her more than a few tips over the years. It hurt my back just to imagine working on my feet all day while walking around like that.

She saw me to my seat and immediately went to put in my order, scribbling away on her ticket pad as she went. She didn’t have to ask me what I wanted, I always ordered the same thing every time I came in.

I found a blue crayon hidden amongst the tray of syrups and condiments, probably left behind by a child who’d been playing with the activity placemats. I had nothing else to do while I waited, so I pulled a napkin from the dispenser and used the crayon to sketch out the mark I’d seen on Night Light’s back.

After a while, I realized that I’d screwed up the proportions, so I tore up the napkin and tried again. I probably should have taken a picture of it with my phone, and I cursed my own stupidity as I worked my way through a few more failed attempts to recreate the sigil from memory. Little things like proportion were important in this kind of runecraft, so I was careful to try and get everything just right.

I was just finishing up my sixth try when I heard someone rapping their knuckles against the window. A boy was staring in at me, his face set in a neutral mask, and the look in his emerald-colored eyes was too sharp to belong to a normal child.

He lifted his chin in greeting and walked around to the front door. Cheese was standing near the kitchen, talking to the chef in the back. She looked up at the sound of the bell hanging off the door, and corner of her mouth twitched as her natural reflex to smile died at the sight of the boy. They exchanged frowns with one another, and Cheese Cake returned to her conversation as the boy walked past the cashier’s station and saw himself to my table.

He looked around fourteen years old, but tall for his age. His unblemished face still had a bit of prepubescent roundness, but was clearly in the midst of full-blown teendom. He was dressed plainly, just a pair of jeans with muddy cuffs and a flannel shirt, but he wore them with the confidence of a clothing catalog model. His onyx-black hair was tied into a braid that fell to the middle of his back, and his soft features had an almost feminine quality. He had the kind of teen heartthrob looks that could launch a thousand boybands, and he was decidedly not human.

Back in Equestria, there were creatures called changelings. They were shapeshifters, and more insect than pony. They had wings and horns, and fed on the love of others like emotional vampires. They were pests, but mostly harmless. They’d disguise themselves as some random pony, spend a few hours with their family, soaking up the psychic juice, and then slink back off into the shadows.

The human world variety of changelings had a more… checkered past. Human myth and storytelling was filled with legends of parents who’d had their children stolen, only for the child to be replaced with a changeling without their knowing – which is exactly what changelings used to do. They’d kidnap a child and take its place, feeding off the love of the parents that were raising it.

As for the child they’d taken? Some stories went that they were raised by other changelings, becoming fae-children. Other stories said that the children were killed, or even eaten. None of the changelings I’d met had ever given me a straight answer on it, which always led me to believe that the truth was one of the latter, bloodier theories.

They’d given up that racket long ago, though. Humans don’t like when monsters mess around with their children, and at some point in the past some changeling had brought a curse down on their heads by stealing the child of a powerful human practitioner. I don't know what the curse entailed, but I do know that a lot of changelings had died before they were able to shake it off. Ever since then, changelings in this world preferred to just imitate orphans and street kids – beggars. They stood on corners, looking doe-eyed and asking for alms, and every time someone opened their heart enough to toss them a coin or buy them a sandwich, they gave off enough love for the changeling to feed itself with sips and nibbles.

Canterlot City had a surprising amount of street kids, and a large number of them were changelings, but I hadn’t learned that until long after I’d gotten off the street myself. They were harmless now, and they had eyes all over the city, so the changelings were one of the few magical groups that I kept in touch with. If you wanted to find something in Canterlot City, the changelings probably already knew where it was.

And this guy, Clavus, was one of the biggest of the movers and shakers in their little underground community. I didn’t know the particulars of how he ended up in Canterlot City, but what I did know was that Clavus was old – like, really old – and that you would be hard pressed to find someone else with the sort of magical knowledge that he had.

He’d also been one of my teachers, albeit in an informal capacity, and he was one of the few beings in this world that knew that I wasn’t originally a human. Telling that to him had been the cost of earning his trust, and it had been a fair price to pay. He was a bitter, sharp-tongued old bastard who treated me like a child, but he was as good a friend as I’d ever had.

God, but that’s sad.

“Thanks for seeing me,” I said.

Clavus slid into the seat opposite me and nodded. “You smell, brat,” he said simply. His voice was adorably youthful and cracked on the last half of ‘smell’. He grabbed one of the two glasses of water that Cheese Cake had brought over earlier and took a long drink.

“It’s nothing,” I said, not taking offensive at the blunt statement. I knew that he wasn’t talking about my actual odor. “I got hit on by a girl who was looking to make a mistake.”

He arched an eyebrow curiously. “Was she pretty?”

“Extremely.”

“And what happened?” he asked.

“I didn’t like the idea of being someone else’s mistake,” I said, and left it at that.

“I see,” he muttered after a few moments of quietly frowning at me. “You’re a very boring woman.”

I sighed. “I wish I was more boring. I kind of got myself into a bit of a thing today.”

He looked down at the napkin under my hand, seemingly noticing it for the first time. He reached across the table and tugged the napkin free. “It have anything to do with this?” He turned it around, knitting his brows at the crude crayon drawing. “Awful. Did you draw this with your mouth?”

“I was hoping you could tell me what that symbol is,” I said, choosing to ignore the comment. “It’s got a Greek meander around it, You were around for the Greek stuff, yeah?”

“The ‘Greek stuff’ was the foundation of this world's western culture, brat,” he said with a huff that blew out his adorable little cheeks. “But your horse-brained ignorance aside, I can’t help you much with this. This isn’t Greek, it looks Central American. I haven’t spent much time there – certainly not enough to tell you who any of their players are.”

I slumped into the booth with a groan. “Fantastic,” I muttered.

“However,” he said impatiently, “I do know an old changeling who used to haunt that part of the world. I’ll send him a letter, see if he knows anything about it.”

“You can’t call him? It’s kind of important.”

He shook his head and carefully folded the napkin. “No, he doesn’t trust phones,” Clavus said as he stuffed the picture into his shirt pocket. “He’s always been very strange, and age hasn’t been kind to him in that regard. I’ve no idea how he even feeds himself, but he’s wily enough to handle it, I suppose.”

“Thanks,” I said, sighing in relief.

Cheese sashayed over to our table carrying a big serving tray with our food on it. “Here you go, hon,” she said with a smile as she put my plate on the table. She set down a second plate in front of Clavus, letting it drop the last inch or two so it clattered loudly on the table. “And here’s yours.”

“Thank you, fat woman,” Clavus said as he examined his plate of pancakes. Cheese Cake had used the bacon and eggs to make a crude frowny face atop the stack of pancakes.

“Enjoy it, you little shit,” Cheese Cake muttered. She refilled our water glasses and left.

“I wish you two would stop being so antagonistic to one another,” I commented as I cut into my burger with a knife and fork. The ICLOP was the only place in Canterlot City that would make me a burger with syrupy waffles instead of bread, and I loved the place for it.

“It’s her fault for making a poor first impression,” Clavus said with a shrug.

“She knocked over your water and you cursed her out.”

Clavus snorted disdainfully. “A thousand years ago she would have been stoned in the street for such clumsiness.”

“That’s not even remotely true,” I said through a mouthful of fries.

“Just eat your disgusting hamburger and tell me what it is you’re involving me in,” Clavus said insistently.

I laid it all out for him. The whole story, starting with Night Light coming to my place with the mark on him. He sat quietly listening, nodding his head and periodically asking for clarification on details as I talked. I even included the embarrassing little scene with Luna in my car, partly because I knew he’d be interested, but mostly because a condition of asking Clavus for help was laying all my cards on the table. He prized honesty and openness above all when it came to dealing with people he was willing to call friends, and as long as I never lied or kept secrets from him, he’d count me among that group.

His food went untouched as he waited for the story finish, and by the time I was done going over the whole night’s events, I was sopping up the last of the maple syrup on my plate with my fries.

“Alright, then,” he said once the tale was finished. He folded his hands on the table and leaned forward. “I have a question.”

I wiped my mouth with a napkin and pushed the plate aside to mirror his posture. “Shoot.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Don’t be dim, brat,” he said. “Why are you involved in this? You’ve made it clear that you suspected from the outset that another sorcerer was involved, that this wasn’t just some random rift-jumping monster.” He reached into his breast pocket and held up the folded napkin with my sketch on it, waving the thing in my face. “The fact that you came here and asked me to look into the matter means you’ve already resigned yourself to butting heads with another mage. This is hardly the action of the Sunset Shimmer I know, so I ask again: why? Why involve yourself?”

It was a fair question, but it wasn’t an easy one. Clavus rarely asked easy questions.

He just stared at me with those sharp eyes, studying my face as I contemplated my answer. I hated that look, that expectant gleam in his eye that said he knew exactly what you were thinking even before you did. I could tell that he already had an idea of why I’d agreed to help Night Light, and he’d only asked the question because he wanted to know why I thought I was helping Night.

Like I’d said, Clavus had sort of been one of my teachers, and he’d always been more of a gadfly than a professor.

“He… he begged me to help his family,” I said, turning away so I wouldn’t have to meet Clavus’ gaze anymore. “He’s a good guy, who just wants to protect his family.”

“He could have been playing you,” Clavus pointed out. “I’ve seen men tell convincing lies while bartering for their lives. One man is seldom different from another, if you cut them deep enough.”

“He wasn’t lying,” I said with certainty. Admittedly, at the time, the same thought had briefly crossed my mind. Maybe it said something for how effective Clavus was as a teacher that his line of thinking wasn't far off from my own had been. I drained what was left in my water glass in one big gulp. “You didn’t see his eyes. He's just a guy that loves his children, and he needed my help.”

“And you think that helping this man protect his family will be worth the trouble you’re bringing down on your own head?”

I laughed humorlessly. “I don’t know yet. Probably not, but we'll see.”

Clavus nodded slowly in appreciation. “Very close,” he muttered as he finally reached for his utensils and tucked into his plate of pancakes. “It’s a good enough answer for now.”

“What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should distance yourself from this conflict,” Clavus commented dryly.

“Aside from that,” I said, holding back the snark in my voice. I knew he was only acting shitty because he was worried, not that he’d ever admit it.

“Aside from that,” he parroted back to me, “you should ask yourself another question. What does some random, magic-less, literature professor have to do to catch a necromancer's eye?”

“Yeah, I have been wondering that,” I explained, sighing as I rolled the crayon I’d been drawing with between my fingers. “I'd already asked him some questions about what he’s been working on in his day job. I wanted to make sure he hadn't just Nutty Professor'd his way into something dangerous, but everything checked out. He’s not into anything even remotely magical. No magic texts, no ancient untranslated manuscripts, no nothing. The guy doesn’t even do coin tricks. I’ve seen birthday clowns with more connections to the occult. I haven't got clue-one about how he got on a corpse-diddler’s radar.”

“It’s probably a good question to keep asking, then. As long as you’re careful, at any rate.”

I snapped the crayon in half and dropped the broken pieces onto my plate. “I’m not too worried. It’s just some third-rate necromancer. I got a little winded bashing up his construct, but that's only because I'm out of shape. It was actually pretty weak as far as flesh golems go.”

“Stupid horse, you still need to exercise caution,” he grumbled peevishly. “Sorcerers who underestimate other sorcerers rarely live to regret it. What have I always told you?”

“Vigilance and caution,” I said repeating the words he’d spoken to me many times before. “Any other advice? What do you think my next move should be?”

He pondered the question for a few moments. “Do you have his address?” he asked. “You might consider going by and setting up some sort of warding around his home.”

That was actually a good idea. Flesh golems aside, there were all kinds of long-distance shenanigans a skilled enough necromancer could do if he really wanted to hurt Night Light or his family. I could lay some minor wards tonight with just stuff I had in my trunk, and set up something better after I had a talk with Night Light.

“I can do that. Thanks for the advice and the help. I’ll be in touch.”

I stood to leave, thoughts about what sort of defensive wards I could manage already going through my head. I stopped as I heard Clavus loudly clear his throat.

“My emolument?” he asked. He favored me with a smile for the first time all night. “The pancakes are good, but you need to fill the other belly.”

He was right, of course. He was a changeling, and changelings needed love. The older a changeling got, the stronger they became, and the harder it was to “fill the other belly.” Changelings, especially old ones like Clavus, had to take love wherever they could get it.

I closed my eyes and sifted through my memories for every happy thought I could dredge up. The first time I’d ever ridden a motorcycle, the day I’d bought my house, the first crush I’d ever had. I leaned forward, brushed the bangs away from Clavus’ handsomely boyish face, and kissed him on the forehead.

When I opened my eyes Clavus was frowning at me.

“It’s never worth it,” he said with a sigh as he turned back to his pancakes. “You need to get a boyfriend, or girlfriend, or a dog at the very least.”

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Best I can do. If you want to eat anything else, just tell Cheese Cake to put it on my tab.”

He looked up from his plate, his eyebrows raised in mild surprise. “She lets you do that?”

“Well, yeah,” I said. “She likes me.”

Clavus’ face went all sour and he let out an adorable snort, like an offended chihuahua. “That fat woman never lets me pay on credit,” he grumbled as he angrily bit a sausage in half.


* * *


Night Light’s family lived clear on the other side of Canterlot from me, in one of the swankier upper-upper-middle class suburbs. The houses here were mostly mcmansions built on lots that could barely contain their girth, so the contractors had been forced to build upwards. The houses all had impressively trimmed lawns that were decorated with ugly plastic lawn ornamentation, and ceramic toads being ridden by gnomes with eerily lifeless grins. It was the kind of neighborhood they set scandalous sitcoms about cheating housewives in.

Professing couldn’t possibly be paying this well, so I could only imagine that Night Light, or his wife, had come from money. I filed that thought away for later. I was doing this out of the goodness of my heart... kind of, I guess… but he had said he would pay me for my time, and I was definitely going to charge him the Black-Platinum Package rate.

Right as soon as I figured out what that rate was.

I stifled a yawn as I slowly made my way through the darkened streets. The sky had opened up without warning not long after I’d left the pancake lodge, and the sudden deluge had already filled the gutters and pooled in every uneven dip in the road.

“Where is this stupid place?” I muttered to myself as I grabbed my phone off the passenger seat and double-checked the address I’d gotten from Night Light. The directions app had already chirped that I’d arrived at my destination in that obnoxiously happy voice, but I still couldn’t find the address.

Maybe the rain was screwing with the satellite or something? Human technology was pretty cool, but sometimes it was damned infuriating. I probably should have just asked Night for a lock of his hair, or something else I could track him with magically.

I briefly considered calling him, but wrote that idea off almost immediately. I could only imagine what his wife would say to Night Light getting a phone call at 2AM from a younger woman. I was already stepping on the toes of some necromancer, I didn’t need to add a jealous wife to my list of immediate threats.

Besides, there was no reason to bother him with this. I could set up the temporary wards in ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and be gone before anyone was the wiser. I was tired from the fight earlier, and I had a gut full of grease and sugar weighing me down. All I wanted to do was take care of this and then get some sleep.

I turned off the radio and turned up the speed on my windshield wipers as I squinted through the rain, trying to make out the house numbers. Damn rain was really coming down, I was even starting to hear thunder.

I finally found Night Light’s house on my third trip down the street. The house number was part of a ironwork fence that surrounded the house, and I hadn’t noticed it in the dark as I’d driven by. I’d have missed it again if lightning hadn’t flashed as I was driving by.

I pulled into the driveway and got out of my car, zipping up my jacket as I did. Almost immediately I got the sense that something was amiss. It wasn’t the same as the feeling I’d gotten back at the school, though. There weren’t any little clues or an odd silence to tip me off. The air just felt… wrong. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but there was something in the air that was telling me to be cautious.

The things I needed to set up the wards were in my trunk – chalk, salt, ashes, strips of silk cloth, vials of blood – but I ignored them for the moment as I made my way towards the front door. I peeked in one of the windows as I passed by, cupping my hands over my eyes and peering into the darkness. I was looking into was probably the living room, and the place looked like it had been tossed. Bookshelves had been knocked over, tables overturned, the couch cushions had been shredded, leaving their cottony-white guts strewn about the room.

I hurried up to the door to find that the jamb was broken, and the door had a dent in it about waist-high where someone had kicked it in. I started gathering up my magic and pushed my way inside.

The rest of the house hadn’t fared much better than the living room. It was dark inside, but I caught little bits of how bad the damage was in flashes of lightning from outside. The rain had gone full thunderstorm in the blink of an eye.

I reached for the light switch, but the electricity was out. Maybe the storm had knocked it out, or maybe someone had shut it off intentionally – it was bad news either way.

Lightning flashed again, and I could see the streaks of mud in the colorful faux-persian rug patterns. Something big, and wet, and covered in mud had walked through here. Something with four differently sized paws.

I broke into a run, heading for the staircase and bounding up the steps two at a time. I could already smell the stink of death magic in the air, mixed with the unmistakable coppery scent of blood.

“Night Light!” I shouted as I got onto the second level. “Night, are you okay!? It’s Sunset Shimmer!”

There was a clamor from one of the rooms at the end of the hall, and a construct – similar to the one from the university, but definitely not the same one – leapt out of the room so fast that it clipped its wide body against the doorframe and fell into a tumble. The brittle half-decayed bones snapped and immediately reformed as it scrabbled to its feet, malformed jaws snapping angrily. It was the size of a Great Dane, and wide enough that it took up almost the whole hallway.

“Down!” I commanded it, my voice booming with the force of the magic I was pouring into the order.

The construct flinched, its legs tangling as it fell to the ground again, but this monster was apparently stronger than the other one, because it managed to shake off my command almost as soon as it hit the ground. I didn’t give it the chance to try to come at me again. I wrapped it in a field of magic, lifted it up, and bashed it against the floor. I pulled it out of the hallway and over the banister, dangling it helplessly above the foyer. I threw it as hard as I could against the outer wall, and it fell to the ground floor with a wet splat and the sound of splintering wood.

I went lightheaded from the amount of magic I’d just suddenly thrown out, and the world started spinning around me. I still hadn’t fully recovered from the earlier fight.

I grit my teeth and ignored the urge to vomit as I held on to the banister and hobbled my way drunkenly towards the room I’d seen the construct come out of. I knew it wasn’t down for the count, but I didn’t care. The only thing on my mind was finding out if Night Light and his family were okay.

I found Night Light in his bedroom. He was laying in bed next to what I assumed had been his wife. They were almost laughably far beyond any help I could provide.

I quickly sobered up and ran down the hall, checking the other rooms as I went. I found the room that must have belonged to their son. There were posters of women in bikinis draped over expensive sports cars, and trophies of little golden men holding footballs in mid throw. There was no blood, though, no remains, so I went to the next room. This one had another broken door.

This room was done up in shades of purple, with glow-in-the-dark stars all over the ceiling. An expensive looking telescope was lying on the floor next to the window. There were certificates and ribbons covering all the walls – what little of the walls I could see past all the bookshelves. I found their son here, sitting on the floor, his insides on the outside, soaking into the shag carpeting. He was leaning against the closet door, and a dented aluminum baseball bat was held in a literal death grip at his side. His handsome, tear-streaked face was screwed up in an angry scowl. He was the very picture of someone who had gone down swinging.

Sometimes I worry that I’m not… a person anymore. That the parts inside me that make me a person are broken, and that I can’t feel things the way other people can. But looking at that boy, I knew those parts – the same in humans as they are in ponies – were still there.

I walked out of that bedroom to find the necromantic construct was bounding up the stairs. I held out my hand and squeezed. My magic wrapped around the creature’s body again, pressing down on it, crushing it like it was being held by an invisible grasping hand.

I suddenly realized that I was crying, but that didn’t matter. I just wiped the tears away with my free hand and pushed more magic into the field I was crushing the horrible thing with. It burst into flames, steam rising from its body as the water soaked into its fur instantly transitioned to vapor. I smashed its body against the wall, and the floor, the ceiling, beating it back to full death even as the flames ate away at its body, destroying it faster than the magic animating it could repair it.

The flames spread to the house, and soon the entire building would be an enormous funeral pyre. That was fine. I couldn’t help Night Light, but I could make sure that no one saw what had become of him. I could let him keep that much of his dignity.

By the time I was done venting my frustration, I really did throw up. I wiped what was left of my burger from my chin and bumbled my way back into the room where Night Light’s son had died. His eyes were open, and I couldn’t have that.

“I’m sorry, kid,” I said, my voice cracking as I spoke. I reached out with a trembling hand and held it over his face. “This is fucking terrible. I wish I could have helped you, but I just...”

I laughed. Celestia help me, I actually laughed.

Then I heard something that cleared away the fog in my mind – a low, high-pitched keening sound, and girlish sobbing.

The girl.

In my anger, I had forgotten about the other kid. Night Light had two. This… this was the girl’s room. That was why the boy was in front of the closet. He was protecting his sister.

I got to my feet and heaved the body out of the way. It’s not easy moving dead weight, but a fresh flood of adrenaline was in me, and he felt as light as a feather. I threw open the door and found the girl, curled up in a ball in the corner of the closet, half hidden beneath a bunch of blankets and stuffed animals. She must have thought she could hide herself behind them.

I reached out and yanked away her camouflage, and she started screaming and fighting, thrashing around and beating against me with her little fists.

“Kid, calm down!” I shouted. “I’m a friend of your dad’s! I know Night Light! I’m here to help you!”

She froze at the sound of her father’s name and looked up at me, her lower lip trembling and her eyes flooding with tears. The corners of her mouth pulled down, and she wailed without restraint as she threw herself against me. She didn’t know me, she didn’t know what was going on, but I’d said I’d known her daddy, and that had been enough for a little girl who’d just had her world fall to bloody bits.

“We gotta get out of here, kid,” I somehow managed to say. My voice was painfully thick as the words caught in my throat. I picked her up and she buried her face into my shoulder, still trembling, still weeping. “Don’t open your eyes. We’re leaving, now. Keep your eyes closed.”

I ran out of the room, and every step I took made a loud, wet squelch as I trod over her heroic brother’s viscera. She flinched with every step, but she didn’t look up.

The hallway was full of flames now, but that meant very little to a pyromancer of my caliber. The flames parted as I ran by, closing rank behind me and continuing to eat away at the house, destroying all evidence of what had happened.

As I was about to leave I saw a picture on the floor that caught my eye. It was of Night Light’s family, alive and happy, standing on a boardwalk with a setting sun behind them. The girl in the snapshot looked about the same age as the one in my arms – even her hair was about the same length – so it was probably a recent picture. I summoned the photo, frame and all, into my hand as I ran.

I didn’t even bother with the keys as I got to my car. I opened the doors with a tweak of my magic and set the kid down in the passenger seat. Once she was strapped in nice and safe, I got into the driver’s seat and got us the hell out of Dodge.

Nobody had come out of their home to see what the ruckus was. Maybe this wasn’t that kind of neighborhood, the kind where people checked on neighbors, or maybe the sound of thunder had drowned out the sound of my fight. Whatever the case was, me and the kid were long gone by the time anyone noticed that Night Light’s house was burning down.


* * *


My house is pretty big. Not as big as the mcmansion that Night Light had lived in, but it was a good size, with more bedrooms than I’d ever needed before. I’m not the type that has company over. I just don’t have those kinds of relationships. As a result, only two of the three bedrooms in my house were furnished – the master bedroom where I slept, and one guest bedroom that had already had a queen-sized mattress in it that I’d been too lazy to remove when I'd bought the house.

I’d stuck the kid in the extra bed, and covered her up with some blankets from my own closet. She’d fallen asleep during the car ride, exhaustion overriding the human instinct to mourn. It was good that she was getting some sleep. She had a lifetime to spend shedding tears over the loss of her family. There was no hurry to get to it.

Boy, do I get maudlin when I watch nearly an entire family get murdered in their own home, or what?

I sat in the living room, on my dirty old couch that smelled like cigarette smoke and felt like it was stuffed with clouds. The remote for the TV was in its little green candy dish, and I reached for it to turn on some noise, so I wouldn’t be left with just my thoughts and the distant sound of thunder outside.

It was the middle of the night, and that meant classic TV reruns. That show about the goofy guy with the even goofier foreign cousin was on, and they were in the midst of buying a racehorse. I hated this episode, but I wasn’t watching it anyway.

I stared up at the ceiling, listening to the white noise around me and wondering how the hell everything had gone so bad. I should have thought of warding his house sooner. I should have gone home with him. Hell, I should’ve told him to bring his family to my place. They would have been safe here.

But no. I’d gotten cocky. I’d beat up one monster and thought there was no way some two-bit necromancer with a hard-on for a college professor would be able to field another one so quickly.

I’d underestimated this guy, whoever he was, and it had cost Night Light his life, and the lives of two of his family. It had orphaned his daughter.

An orphan.

The kid sleeping up in my guest room, she was an orphan now... and it was my fault for half-assing things.

I leaned back on my couch, not moving, and staring up at the ceiling long enough that my neck started hurting. Another episode of the show came on. I didn’t know which one, and it didn’t matter.

I walked to the entryway where I’d left the photo I’d stolen as I was fleeing Night Light’s house. The family in the photo looked so happy just to be together. I’d heard that family photos rarely reflect the reality of a family’s dynamic, but from what little I knew of Night Light, I got the feeling that this was real, that the happiness in the photo was something they had every day, not just when someone was pointing a camera at them.

I don’t know why I’d grabbed this picture. Maybe I wanted it for the kid. Maybe I wanted it for myself. Maybe I just didn’t want to see it burn. Whatever the case, I had it now, and I was glad I’d gotten it. Unless the kid had relatives that had pictures like this laying around, this was the only memory she’d have of her family being whole. It was more than I’d ever had.

I frowned as I realized that the glass was cracked. I couldn’t give it to the kid like this. I looked up at the few pictures I had hanging up on my wall. The pictures in the frames weren’t anything personal, just some landscapes and artsy shots of teddy bears in sepia, and they were only there to color up the walls so the house would look like someone lived in it.

I found a frame that would fit the picture and pulled the placeholder out of it. The landscape wasn’t even a real photo, it was just printed out on cheap computer printer paper.

I took the back off the frame with Night Light’s picture and blinked at the words written on the back. It was a description of the scene, written in blue ink, with looping, feminine letters with little hearts dotting the I’s. It had the date, the location of the beach, and the names and ages of the family members pictured.

Night Light, Twilight Velvet, Shining Armor, and Twilight Sparkle.

The frame slipped out of my hands as I read the last name. I knew that name, despite having only ever heard it once. I’d never forget it, because that was the name that had changed my life.

It had been years since I’d thought about it, but the memory came back to me in a flash, and I could practically hear Princess Celestia’s beautiful voice as she happily told me she was taking a second apprentice.

“I have the most wonderful news, Sunset Shimmer!” she had said, her voice bursting at the seams with self-satisfaction. “You’re going to have the chance to help mentor another bright young mind, just like yours. It’s a fantastic learning opportunity for you. She’s a little young, but I just know that you and Twilight Sparkle will be the best of friends before you know it.”

I remember that, at the time, I’d been angry. Angry because I felt like I was being replaced, and was being asked to train my replacement. I’d been impatient, I’d wanted power and respect long before I deserved either, or even knew what those words meant. I think I might have even demanded to be made a princess, like her niece, Cadance.

All because of Twilight Sparkle.

My legs gave out, and I slammed against the wall, sliding to the floor as I stared in disbelief at the writing on the photo. Twilight Sparkle, the girl who had ruined my life, was in my house...

...because I’d ruined hers.

“Come on, coo-sin!” shouted the idiot cousin on the TV in the other room. “Now we dance the dance of joy!”

I cried.

I kept crying until the sun came up, and at some point fatigue caught up to me and I fell asleep right there on the floor. When I woke up, Twilight Sparkle – the human one – was on the floor next to me, leaning against my side and clutching my arm to her chest as she slept.


* * *