//------------------------------//
// Day 43, fragment four: For cogs to shatter 
// Story: A mare and her dog 
// by cammera 
//------------------------------//

Twilight walked out of the room, nodding at Spike.

"She'll be waking up in a few minutes," she was going to add something, but noticed the guest and froze for a moment. They measured each other for a moment.

"Sparkle" Nanda broke the silence.

"Devi," she scoured her memory frantically, then commuted one of the spells embedded into her body to Nanda's mother tongue "Still believing Radagast's babbling?"

"Still worshipping Clover the Clod?"

A moment of silence passed. Spike's tired glance passed from one to another.

"I see you've grown taller. Liking absolute power over others' lives much?"

"And you older. Getting a taste for bureaucracy?"

"Ser-?" started Spike.

Before he had finished, Twilight threw herself and hugged Nanda by surprise.

"You idiot you, I had hopped that AJ found you" she let Nanda free "But why are you here? And what happened in Prasante? Half the unicorns in the city got a headache, I hear"

"Me? Why are you here? And short story is that rocs ate all the moles and the forest took the chance"

"Oh" Twilight took the information in and shelved it in its appropriate mental cluster, then gestured at Nanda to follow her and entered Applejack's room. Once the three were inside and all doors and windows were closed, she sprayed the walls with a personally developed cocktail of spells.

"The walls have ears here," she explained "And I received information-"

"From a certain network I am sure you have?"

"-of the sleeper's condition some time ago, and Queen Ridda shortly after that... actually the day after I had sent one to Applejack" she added, mostly to herself.

"It knocked her out for five hours" said Nanda nonchalantly.

"The earth's gravity, I already do all I can about it. Ridda and I met a few years back and... I'll tell you an Applejack when she wakes up, its a bit of a long story" her headache wor

etty invader, trying to usurp

sened for a moment, but she fought it off "Can you feel it too? its been getting worse since I came here"

"I wish I didn't have to" Nanda rubbed her head "But I though this was just the sleeper having some nightmare, I didn't expect him to target her" she gestured at Applejack, who was moving in her sleep.

"He didn't. It affected me, so it affected her" she winced at another surge of pain "I am connected with my friends in many ways. Too many, sometimes"

"You still have to let me analyze alicorn magic"

"Yeah, no. I am not giving away our secrets" it was an old dance that had happened many times before and one that, it seemed, Nanda wasn't willing to take on.

"Twilight, what is happening here? Why is the old guy attacking anyone with psionic capacity? Because he is. I've noticed the faces of random people in the streets, and seen their minds whirring like broken toys"

"Its complicated-"

"Its making half of Surane go mad! and I saw it at the very borders, people closer to the center must be getting hospitalized!"

"They are. Me and the queen are doing all we can to keep the place from blowing up, even with the kin-" Applejack grumbled in her sleep "Oh, I think she's..."