Chapter 11 - The Rising
Twilight sat on a small stool in a brightly lit room in one of the lower levels of the castle, slowly rocking from side to side. The wooden seat quietly creaked as she shifted her weight around, passing time while waiting for Basenji to speak again.
The diamond dog in question was sitting on the floor in the center of the room with his drum in his lap. His brow was knitted in concentration as his ears twitched and swiveled atop his head. He was staring at her chakram, which sat on the floor a half-pace away from him, outlined with an impossibly thin layer of magic and spinning on its edge in slow rotations. It wasn’t a difficult exercise. Twilight often made the ring of steel spin like this when she was bored. Basenji had asked for a demonstration of her usage of the weapon, and it had been the first thing to pop into her mind.
That had been almost an hour ago.
She sat there on her stool, impatiently patient, waiting for her friend to glean some clue to the object’s nature that she hadn’t yet discovered. He lifted his paw and tapped gently at his drum – thrice, in a quick succession – and the suddenness of the sound made Twilight’s body tense with excitement.
After a moment, he hummed inquisitively, and the intensity of his brow-furrowing increased markedly.
Twilight suppressed a sigh and went back to rocking. Eager as she was to voice her impatience, she understood that she could best help Basenji by keeping quiet. Her eyes began to wander around the room. They were in the lower levels of the castle, but the stone walls were done up with wood paneling in an attempt mimic the appearance of an office. It was a rather poor attempt, but it was still cheerier than the usual dreary gray that all the rooms below the ground floor had – a design aesthetic that Cadance had once described as ‘Dungeon Chic’.
The Royal Guard had several rooms just like this one in the castle set aside for their own use. They were mostly used for orientating new or transferring guards, or used as debriefing-slash-interview rooms, as the situation dictated. For the most part, however, they sat unused, aside from the periodic card game – which was technically against regulations, but so long as things never got out of hoof, the C.O.s always looked the other way from a good card game.
Twilight’s rank allowed her to commandeer one of these rooms so long as it wasn’t in use, and the security spells inlaid behind the faux-wooden paneling were some of the strongest in the castle. It was as good a place as any to delve further into the mysteries of her weapon.
The door opened and Spitfire walked in, unannounced, loudly chewing bubblegum. Normally, nopony would be able to enter unless they knocked and got permission from the room’s occupants, but Twilight had already keyed Spitfire into the room’s security before they’d started.
Spitfire sauntered in and took a seat on the empty stool next to Twilight. She blew a bubble, and the loud popping sound it made caused Basenji’s ears to flick in their direction. Twilight rolled her eyes and put up a small silencing charm around herself and Spitfire.
“Thought you said you were going to get snacks,” Twilight said, frowning at the obvious lack of snacks.
“I did,” Spitfire said as she took a seat on the stool next to Twilight. “They were good.” She lifted her chin towards Basenji. “How’s our boy doing? He figure out your whatsit yet?”
“No, and I’m starting to get a little antsy just waiting,” Twilight said. “I’m trying not to break his concentration, but I’m dying to know how it’s going.”
Spitfire slowly inflated a bubble between her pursed lips, and the massive balloon of pink was nearly the size of her head before it popped. “I’m sure he’ll figure something out,” she said as she stuck out her tongue and licked away the sticky remnants of gum from her face. “That thing came out of diamond dog treasure trove, right? His people probably made it, so I’m sure a smart boy like Basenji can puzzle it out.”
“I hope so,” Twilight said with a sigh.
The silencing charm Twilight had put up around them was only meant to muffle the sound within, so when Basenji spoke, his voice came through clearly.
“Twilight Sparkle,” he said without looking up from the rotating chakram, “how much force are you applying to this enchantment?”
“Not—” Twilight paused as she realized her mistake, and quickly dispelled the silencing charm. “Not much. Hardly anything, really. Casting unicorn magic requires a certain amount of intent, and that intent naturally carries an almost infinitesimal amount of magic with it – just enough to establish an actual link between my mind and the object or exterior force that I am applying my will to. What I’m doing to the chakram right now is just…” Twilight pursed her lips thoughtfully. “...I’m only expressing the intent to cast a levitation spell, and the small amount of magic communicating the statement is enough to activate and power the spell. It’s immensely efficient. The effect seems to hold true for other spells that I cast on it, but levitation and locomotion spells seem to be the most effective.”
Basenji reached out a paw and held it steady, just out of reach of the slowly spinning ring. “May I?”
Twilight nodded. “Careful of the edge, though,” she said. “It looks dull, but it gets sharper when magic is running through it.”
Basenji lowered his paw and carefully grasped the flat of the ring, pinching it between two claws. Twilight maintained the spell, but the tiny amount of magic being fed into the spell wasn’t enough to keep it spinning with Basenji holding it like that. She could sense the spell struggling against Basenji’s hold, pushing and relaxing before pushing again – like a clockwork toy that had been jammed up and kept slipping gears.
“Fascinating…” Basenji muttered. He released the chakram, watched it for a few more revolutions, then held it still again. “You can increase the force, yes?”
“Yes...” Twilight said cautiously, “...but I won’t – not while you’re holding it like that.” Basenji looked at her, quirking his head curiously. “Like I said, it’s really efficient. Even a very small push would put enough force into it that you’d probably lose that paw.”
Basenji released his hold on her chakram like it had hissed at him. He cradled the paw to his chest, gently massaging the digits as though he were checking if any of them had come loose.
“Yes, well then,” he said, clearing his throat nervously. “Fascinating…”
“Just ‘fascinating’?” Spitfire asked, her voice lightly tinged with amusement. “We flew you a quarter of the way around the globe for ‘fascinating’?”
Basenji gave Spitfire the sort of lidded-glare that Twilight often caught herself giving Cadance. “It is fascinating,” he said insistently. “I still cannot ascertain the reason why Twilight Sparkle alone is able to wield this weapon, however, I have learned that the weapon is indeed connected in some fashion to the Ways. In what capacity, and how this is accomplished, I cannot tell, however.” He waved his paw back and forth above the chakram, as though he was feeling for strings. “There is a sort of… aura about it. It is as though it is somehow attuned to the Heart of the World.”
“What’s the Heart of the World?” Twilight asked.
“I have already explained this to friend Spitfire,” Basenji said with a nod in the mare’s direction. “Every living thing in this world possesses a heart which beats, and all beats come together to form a single rhythm, a massive heartbeat which all this world shares. This is the Heart of the World. Those powerful in the Ways can hear and manipulate this heartbeat to perform great feats.”
“Sometimes I hear drums,” Twilight said. “Like… like the drum that you play.”
“Yes, you mentioned as much in your letter,” Basenji said, frowning. “Hearts and drums are very similar. Such is why drumming is so effective in the practicing of the Ways.”
“So Twilight can hear the Heart of the World?” Spitfire asked. “Does that mean she’s like you?”
Basenji’s mouth opened, but he said nothing as his brows knitted together. He floundered wordlessly for a minute or so before replying. “If you are asking if Twilight Sparkle is a drummer, then no, I do not believe this is so,” Basenji said with a slow shake of his head. His voice was cautious, almost hesitant, as he spoke. “I believe she is only perceiving the Heart through her connection to the chakram. In the long history of my people, there have been no stories of drummers who were not dogs. As far as has been recorded, only diamond dogs are capable of hearing the Heart.”
“Your history also failed to cover a lot of stuff concerning the Necropolis,” Spitfire said pointedly.
Basenji sighed. “As you say… Regardless of that fact, I still do not believe my honored sister to be a drummer… Though, this does lead to another worrying topic. Twilight Sparkle, you mentioned in your letter concerns that the drums you have been hearing are having adverse effects upon your wellbeing.”
Twilight rubbed nervously at the back of her neck. This was one part of her experience in the mines that she’d never spoken about with anyone outside of the letter she’d sent to Basenji. She hadn’t even told Cadance about it yet. Every time she considered it, she just couldn’t think of a way of broaching the subject.
She summoned her chakram, and the disc immediately flew back to her. She held it between her hooves, staring down at the damnably indecipherable writing. “I’ve only heard the drums a few times,” Twilight said as she idly toyed with what was probably the most magically mysterious object in all of Equestria. “But this last time, when I was chasing Ammit… the drums were the strongest they’ve ever been. They filled me with…” She sighed, struggling to put the experience to words. “...with confidence and strength… with power.”
Basenji and Spitfire were quiet, and though she was focused on the ring between her hooves, Twilight could see her two friends sharing a worried glance at one another in the periphery of her vision.
“That sounds like a pretty good deal,” Spitfire said. “I’ve already gotten a taste of Basenji’s drum mojo, so I get what you’re saying. That drummer stuff kind of worms its way into you, makes you feel lighter than air.”
Twilight shook her head. “No, I’ve heard Basenji’s drumming, too, and this wasn’t the same,” Twilight said insistently. “It was loud – insistent. It made me impulsive. I chased after Ammit not even knowing what I was running after. I just had this vibe that it was bad, and instead of stopping and thinking about it, I just ran straight at it.”
Basenji made an inquisitive noise. “Were you not in control of your body?”
“Kind of,” Twilight explained, staring down at her hooves as she tried to relive the way she’d felt that night. Everything had happened so fast, all she had was intimations of how it had all went down. “My impulse control was really awful, but I can’t remember ever feeling sharper or more aware. My body was tired and hurting, but the adrenaline just kept pumping and pumping. At the end of the… I can’t really call it a fight, but at the end of our encounter, Ammit ran away. As soon as he was gone, the drums started fading and my body gave out on me. It took me a while before I was even able to stand up again.”
“Was it as bad as all that?” Spitfire asked. “I mean, even by your own admission you’re the kind of mare that goes with her gut.”
“Not the same thing.” Twilight rubbed her hooves together nervously. “There was no conscious decision on my part to go with a hunch. It was more primal than that – I saw something running, so I chased it.”
Spitfire turned to Basenji. “Is this something we should be worrying about?”
“I do not believe so,” Basenji said after a few moments of silent consideration. “There indeed exist songs which have these effects upon those who listen to them. The power of the Ways is not so direct, and so the Old Dogs created many songs which aid others who are more inclined towards… physicality. The after-effects of exposure to some of these songs can often put incredible stress on the body for those who are unaccustomed to them.”
“So it’s normal?” Twilight asked hopefully.
“Perhaps so,” Basenji said. He frowned, idly plucking at the strings holding the skin of his drum taut as he chewed on his words. “I hesitate to say anything definitively on the matter, however. If you are indeed hearing the Heart of the World, it begs the question of why you would have heard it beating a warrior’s rhythm – the Heart does not play to such a beat on its own.” He sighed. “As I thought… The chakram’s mysteries are deep and profound. There is little telling of what its capabilities are, or even how it operates at all.”
Twilight frowned. This wasn’t what she’d wanted to hear at all. She’d been pinning her hopes – however foalish they might have been – on Basenji strolling in and having all the answers, like a wise old sorcerer in a fairy tale. It hadn’t been realistic, but a part of her had hoped for it.
Basenji held out both paws, his palms up, as he nodded towards the chakram between Twilight’s hooves. She released it and levitated it over, setting it gently in his paws.
“I believe this writing is the key to understanding this phenomenon, sadly however, it is still a mystery that is beyond my understanding,” Basenji said as he eyed the ring. He brought the thing closer to his nose and sniffed at it, his face scrunching up in obvious dissatisfaction. “It had not occurred to me when first I laid paws upon it, but even the steel itself is confounding. The weapon seems to be quite old, but the quality of this blade is not something that should have been possible in ancient times. Dogs are renowned for their metalcraft, so I possess some knowledge in this regard. From scent alone I can tell that this steel was forged with surprisingly modern techniques.”
“So what’re you saying?” Spitfire asked. “That little whizzbee there is from the future?”
Basenji made a strangled sort of noise, like he was trying to hold in a laugh. “No, no I am not,” he said. “I am saying that the smithy who crafted this weapon possessed skills which were not seen again until very modern times.”
“So made by some kind of genius?” Spitfire asked.
“Such would be my guess.”
“To sum things up,” Twilight said as she plucked her weapon from Basenji’s grip and holstered it, “not only do we not have any answers about this thing, we also have new questions.” Twilight rubbed at her face tiredly, groaning into her hoof. She glanced up at the clock and noted the time. “It’s progress of a sort, I suppose. We can talk about it more later. I need to meet Cadance for dinner soon. You guys want to join us?”
“Thank you,” Basenji said with a polite dip of his head, “but I must decline. Friend Spitfire has promised to show me an establishment in town which caters to my particular dietary sensibilities.”
“Yeah, it’s a place a griffon friend of mine told me about,” Spitfire explained.
“The castle’s chefs don’t mind making meat,” Twilight said. “They’re used to cooking for dignitaries from abroad. I think a couple of the chefs even kind of have a taste for rabbit stew, actually. Probably comes from years of tasting what they’re cooking.”
“Apologies, but I believe friend Spitfire has already made the reservations and ordered ahead,” Basenji said, once again lowering his head apologetically.
“Yeah, sorry, Twi,” Spitfire said. “I had to pull strings to get a reservation at this place, and it’s not a good idea go canceling on fancy places like that. Makes it harder to get a good seat the next time.”
“Nothing for it then,” Twilight said with a shrug.
Basenji stood and gathered up a few books and loose notes he’d spread out around himself. As he was packing his things away, Spitfire chuckled lightly from where she sat.
“Can I just add that I’m glad I’m not you guys? You magic-users gotta worry about all this arcane mystery crap.” She hopped off her stool and stood up on her hind legs, holding her forehooves up in a fighter’s stance. “All I need is Punchy,” she kissed her right hoof, “and Punchy Jr.,” she kissed her left. “They’re brothers and they fight crime.”
“Your hooves are brothers?” Basenji asked. His ears folded down flat against his skull. “But you are a mare. And why is it that one is named after the other, as a son would be?”
“Don’t question their methods, Basenji,” Spitfire said with a laugh, which only seemed to further confound Basenji.
Twilight watched as Spitfire and Basenji began discussing the ways in which Spitfire’s statement was completely inane. Their argument paused only long enough for them to say their goodbyes and give promises to see her later, and then they were out the door.
Twilight found herself standing in the briefing room, alone and frustrated. She tucked in one of her hind legs, tensing up to give the stool she’d been sitting on a good buck, but in the end she just lowered her leg with a long, tired sigh.
Basenji’s insights were helpful, and despite his unwillingness to commit to his suppositions, his explanation for her odd experience did give her some peace of mind. But then why had it only kicked in when Ammit had gotten near?
Was it a warning? If it was, did that mean this Heart of the World that Basenji was talking about wanted her to fight Ammit? Or was it just a magical reflex reacting to the presence of a supernatural threat?
As she stood there, going over the conversation again in her head, she frowned as she recalled the jab that Spitfire had made about not needing magic. Spitfire was an accomplished fighter, and a powerful flyer, but considering the foe they were up against, pure physicality wasn’t enough. What Spitfire needed was some sort of magic at her disposal – something to even the playing field against Ammit.
Spitfire had asked to be let in on the fight against Ammit, and, for better or worse, Twilight had agreed. That meant that she was responsible for making sure that Spitfire was properly equipped to handle whatever might get thrown at her.
Twilight hummed thoughtfully as she headed for the door, Her head was already buzzing with ideas. If nothing else, keeping her hooves busy would keep her mind from dwelling too much on questions that, so far, were only frustrating her.
* * *
A thousand years ago, Luna’s favorite place in all of Equestria had been the Royal Garden. Not the Royal Garden in Canterlot, of course, but the original one that had been destroyed in her foolish battle with Celestia all those years ago.
That she had destroyed the place that she had loved so much was just another item in a long list of regrets, but it wasn’t like the old garden had been completely demolished. The remnants of that place had grown wild, becoming the Everfree Forest and expanding until it had reclaimed even the ruined homes of the ponies that had lived in the shadow of their castle. It wasn’t the same, but it was still there, and on a clear day she could see what was left of it from her balcony.
Still, the new garden that Celestia had cultivated in her absence was nothing if not beautiful, and Luna made sure to avail herself of its quiet charms as often as possible.
Every night, Luna took a stroll through the grounds after they were closed to the public, unwinding after the day with a brisk constitutional. Being a princess meant having very little time for solitude, and the hour or so she took to walk about the garden had become a routine that she held as sacred as anything. It was a daily moment of self-reflection and meditation that allowed her to clear her mind and center herself for her duties as the Mistress of Dreams. Walking through the surreal, and often impossible, dreamscape was not for the faint of heart, even for one as practiced as she was.
As she was walking along, a cluster of fireflies flittered across her path, hopping from one garden pond to the next, no doubt. She smiled as the little flurry of blinking lights danced across the grounds, and she found herself following them as they cavorted off into the darkness. She didn’t have to travel far to find where they’d ended up.
The pond had been carefully arranged by their master groundskeepers to fit with the newest fashionable movement in lawncare, which prescribed meticulous and careful tending that resulted in something that looked like it hadn’t been tended to at all. Tall grass sprang up around the periphery, creating cover for the nocturnal insects to weave in and out of. The pond itself wasn’t very large, but the water was crystal clear and reflected her moon brightly. The image of that perfect sphere was distorted and rippling as insects landed in the water and quickly flitted away.
To her surprise, she wasn’t alone here. Another pony sat at the other end of the pond, beneath a peach tree, of all things. The pony in question sat in quiet contemplation of a peach she held in one upturned hoof, seemingly unaware that she was no longer alone.
“Sister,” Luna greeted as she walked along the edge of the pond. “You are out rather late.”
“Oh, hello, Luna,” Celestia said. She held out the peach, inclining her head towards the fruit. “Peach?”
“Just a half, I suppose,” Luna said as she joined her sister beneath the tree. A firefly landed on the tip of her nose and fluttered its wings. She shooed it away with a hoof as she cast a minor cantrip that would discourage the insects from bothering them. “Odd placement for a peach tree, this. Do they not require more aerated soil?”
“Yes, it’s much too close to the pond,” Celestia said as she used her magic to split the peach in half. “The soil is too damp here for the tree to grow very much. One of the gardeners must have taken that as a challenge.”
Luna eyed the two halves of peach and took the one without the pit, earning an amused grin from her sister. The fruit was plump and moist, and juice dribbled down her chin as she ate. It wasn’t very princess-like manners to eat so sloppily, but there was nopony around to impress.
“Hm, the tree seems to be doing well, despite the less-than-optimal conditions,” Luna commented with a mouth full of peach. “One can tell the health of a tree from the succulence of its fruit, and these peaches are wonderful.”
Celestia shrugged as she bit into her own share, eating it just as sloppily as her younger sister as she slurped and sucked the juice from the pulp. “Some things are just like that,” she said with the air of something philosophical, “they thrive even where they’re not supposed to.”
Luna made a polite hum of agreement and concentrated on her peach. After some time, Celestia had somehow managed to finish her half first and plucked another fruit from the heavily burdened branches above.
“I remember the first time we ate peaches,” Celestia said wistfully. The shimmer of her magic twirled the little peach in the air, cleaning it off with a simple sterilization spell. “You said that they looked like a pony’s rear and laughed for a quarter of an hour.”
Luna shoved the rest of her peach into her mouth. “That was long ago, Sister,” Luna said warningly, juice trailing from the corner of her mouth as she tried to talk and chew at the same time. “You would do well to not tempt my own recollection of when we first encountered bananas, and what portion of a pony’s anatomy you believed they resembled.”
Celestia tittered softly. “I still laugh about that, sometimes…”
Luna cast a sidelong glance at her sister. A thousand years apart had meant a bit of readjusting, as far as learning one another’s quirks again, but Celestia was still her sister and Luna could always tell when something was on her mind.
Luna swallowed the last of her snack and conjured a small kerchief to clean herself. “So are we to sit here all night discussing erotically-shaped fruits? While that certainly sounds like a marvelously puerile distraction, perhaps you might instead like to speak of what is troubling you.”
Celestia pawed at the ground, toying with the grass beneath her shoes with a sigh. “It’s just one of those nights, Luna,” Celestia said quietly. “This past year has been… a bit overwhelming, to be honest.”
Luna sighed. “It has been an oddly busy several months.”
“The busiest I’ve seen in a long, long time,” Celestia said. She unfurled a wing and wrapped it around Luna protectively, fluffing her feathers to help hold the heat, the way she had when they had been very young. It was an unnecessary gesture – neither of them was a filly, and neither was very susceptible to the cold – but it was familiar and almost reflexive even after all these years. “At least you’ve been here… that’s more than I ever could have hoped for.”
Luna could only nod in agreement. The fact that she was of the right mind to return to the throne was a miracle. The power of the Elements of Harmony worked best when they were divided amongst separate users. When Discord had ruled the land, she and Celestia had managed enough control over them as a pair to imprison him in stone.
That hadn’t been an option when Celestia had taken up arms against Nightmare Moon. Using the Elements alone, the best Celestia had managed was to seal her opponent away for a few centuries. And even that had only been made possible because of Luna’s deeply mystical connection to the moon.
But Shining Armor and his friends had managed to do something that neither of them had considered. He’d wielded the Elements with enough finesse to push the darkness away from Luna’s heart, and to return her to what she had once been. It was the gift of a second chance, and one that she had done her best not to squander.
“I am also glad to be home,” Luna said quietly.
“You came home, the Elements were revived, Discord was freed, changelings attempted to nest in the caverns beneath our city, and now there’s some sort of ancient demon running around Equestria and I have no idea where it is,” Celestia said. She held her face in her hooves and groaned. “More has happened in the last year than has happened in the last hundred combined.”
Luna plucked the still floating peach from Celestia’s magical grasp, pulling it into halves with her own magic. She plucked the pit out and tossed it into the pond. It landed with a splash, momentarily scattering the little insects buzzing atop the water’s surface, only for them to regroup on that spot seconds later to investigate the disturbance.
“This Ammit creature has been in my thoughts as well,” Luna said. “I have sometimes brushed against… the other side, though I mostly avoid such confrontation where unnecessary. Of what I have seen from dealing with the occasional interloper in the dreamscape… it will not be a pleasant foe to battle.”
“It’s running around in the corpse of a changeling queen,” Celestia said. She held the half of peach Luna had given her in her hooves and stared into it as though she expected it to talk to her. “That… I don’t want to say that it worries me, but it’s something like it… it weighs on me.”
“Why would that be?” Luna asked as she bit into her peach.
“I still hadn’t told you this, but a few hundred years ago I tried to broker something of a peace agreement with a changeling queen,” Celestia explained. “She was… nice. I thought we might be able to get along, that maybe we could be friends. We introduced a number of changelings to a small community, just to see how it worked, but things fell through. My ponies were nervous about having changelings around and their queen blamed me for the experiment’s eventual failure. We argued, and tempers soared so high that she swore she would come back one day to take Canterlot for herself.”
“You believe that this changeling that has been taken by Ammit is your erstwhile friend?”
Celestia nodded. “Her name was Chrysalis. We parted as enemies, but I also sort of hoped that maybe there might be a chance we could patch things up. Now that she’s gone, though, there’s no going back. The finality of death has ended that possibility.”
“It is sad, then, that she was taken before you were able to make amends,” Luna said, trying not to think of how easily her own story could have ended the same way. If things had gone just a bit differently, if a pony other than Shining Armor had taken control of the Elements, would she be sitting here? It was a sobering thought. “At the least, we can rest assured that Twilight is working to resolve the matter with the help of her friends.”
Luna pried a stone free from beneath a tree root. She flicked it into the pond, aiming for the spot where the peach pit had landed. She smiled as the insects regouped once more to investigate this second disturbance.
Luna plucked a few more small stones from the ground, tossing them into the pond, scattering the little things yet again. The insects seemed to have caught on to her game, and had begun clustering together, as if they were challenging her to hit them. Every time she threw a stone the little cloud of mayflies and lightning bugs would skedaddle away just before they were hit, only to immediately regroup somewhere else on the pond. Each round seemed to be adding to the little swarm as more and more playmates came out of the reeds to join in on the game.
“It’s good that somepony trustworthy is overseeing this matter, but the fact that it’s Twilight that’s handling the situation doesn’t exactly do anything for my nerves,” Celestia said. She frowned at her untouched peach half and set in the grass at the edge of pond. A few of the insects abandoned their game with Luna to swarm over the sweet, exposed flesh of the fruit. “Honestly, it only makes me more worried.”
“Worried for Twilight Sparkle?” Luna asked.
“Somewhat,” Celestia said with a heavy sigh. “Of course I’m concerned for Twilight, but it’s Cadance that I’m really worried about.”
Luna frowned at the admission. Luna was certain that she already knew what was troubling her sister’s heart – Celestia was always rather easy to read – but rather than question it, she decided to wait for her sister to explain herself further. For things like this, it was better to let Celestia unburden herself – “get it off her chest” as the colloquialism went.
“All of our ponies are like my children,” Celestia said, “but Cadance is… she’s different. Her parents died very soon after she came to live in the castle. I had the pleasure of raising her myself after that. It’s… selfish of me to say this, but I’m happy that I didn’t have to share her with anypony else…” She shot Luna a worried, pleading look. “Is that a completely terrible thing of me to say?”
“The heart is a strange and jealous thing,” Luna said after a moment of thought, “I know this better than most. You’re not a terrible person for loving somepony. Love can be quite the paradox – at once infinitely giving and infinitely selfish. I am certain Niece Cadance would agree.”
Celestia nodded. The look in her face said that Luna’s words had helped ease the burden of her conscience, but a glimmer of worry still shone in her eyes.
“She grew up so very, very fast,” Celestia muttered sadly. “As I get older, the days seem to fly by faster and faster. It feels like it was only yesterday that I was talking to her about puberty, and now she’s getting married…” Celestia sighed, pulling her legs under herself to lie on her belly atop the grass. She crossed her forehooves, resting her chin on them like a pillow. “Over the last few years she grew away from me a little bit. Only just this last year have we really begun to reconnect. I don’t know if I’m ready to share her with somepony else yet… especially somepony who can make the sort of enemies that Twilight has. First Anubis, and now this Ammit – once is happenstance, twice is the beginning of a pattern.”
“You do not believe Twilight Sparkle capable of protecting Niece Cadance from any harm that might come her way?” Luna asked. “It was you, I shall remind, who first appointed her as our niece’s guard.”
“It’s not a matter of thinking she can’t protect Cadance,” Celestia replied. “It’s that I think Twilight is the kind of mare that trouble will gravitate towards. One way or another, that trouble might end up hurting Cadance.”
Luna contemplated that for a moment, and she had to admit that Celestia did have a point. But at the same time, one could also say the same thing about Celestia, and Shining Armor, and Cadance, and any number of other ponies throughout history who had strides that were larger than most.
“By that measure, I could say the same of you,” Luna said. “If you so greatly fear for her safety, then perhaps you should also distance yourself from her. Or perhaps she can be placed onto the top shelf of a very high cupboard.”
“Fine, fine,” Celestia said with a grumble, “point taken. There’s no need to be hyperbolic.”
Luna smirked as she laid herself out on the ground next to her sister. The small bit of fruit that Celestia had offered to the insects had gathered quite the crowd. The little fireflies had descended on it readily, and the peach shone in the darkness like a tiny sun.
“What do you think of Twilight?” Celestia asked. “I mean really think of her.”
“Twilight Sparkle is an exceptional mare,” Luna immediately replied. “She is powerful, intelligent, forthright, honorable, loyal… Truthfully, had Niece Cadance not laid claim to her, I should have liked to have taken her for myself…” Luna cleared her throat. “…for my Night Guard, of course.”
Celestia tittered lightly. “No need to clarify, I know well your proclivities, little sister.”
“Yes… well…” Luna reached up and brushed back a lock of hair that wasn’t actually there. She’d long ago fully claimed the power of her mantle as the Lady of the Moon, but she could never quite shake the old habit of toying with her mane, even though it was now little more than a magical field the color of a starry sky. “Twilight Sparkle has been a great friend to me, and will be a welcomed addition to our family. I have great faith in her abilities. I saw her yesterday, in fact. We spoke for several hours, and our discussion led to her proposing an idea for a most interesting alchemical experiment.”
“Is that why you asked me for some of Philomena’s feathers earlier?” Celestia asked.
Luna nodded. “They are the key reagent for the experiment. It shall be a few days more before we know if we have been successful, but we are very hopeful.”
Celestia arched an eyebrow in suspicion. “It’s not some kind of magical phoenix coffee, is it?” she asked.
Luna scoffed. “Pah, of course not! Phoenix feather potions are far too spicy for a proper coffee! Bitter is better! And I shall thank you not to attempt to lecture me, yet again, on the dangers of caffeine addiction. I am not addicted, I am an aficionado!”
Celestia rolled her eyes. “Of course you are.”
“Oh, very well, then,” Luna said, her voice dropping dangerously. “While we are on the topic, let us discuss your own overconsumption.” Luna sat up, scooting to the side far enough to jab a hoof at Celestia’s pliant flanks. “Your love of cake is going right to you buttocks. Have you looked in a mirror? You have mother’s hips, and you know it!”
Celestia sputtered indignantly. “Why, I never!”
“Nay, you do!” Luna replied. “And every day, at that, while the staff is out to their midday repast! Such is the problem!”
Luna bit the inside of her cheek, holding back the grin on her face by willpower alone as she watched Celestia’s face slowly change color in time with her rising blood pressure. Celestia rose to her hooves and stormed off into the night, stomping the grass as she walked – like a child throwing a tantrum on the way to her room.
With Celestia finally out of earshot, Luna let loose the torrent of giggles she’d been holding back. A particularly brave little firefly flew close, crossing the boundary of her rapidly weakening cantrip, presumably to investigate the strange sounds she was making. The spell was only meant for temporary relief from insect activity. She lifted her hoof and the little glowbug alighted onto the tip of her shoe, staring up at her with huge, unblinking eyes and fluttering its wings curiously.
“A pleasant night to you, little friend,” Luna said with a happy coo. “Please pass along Our sincerest apologies to your compatriots about the disturbance. Our dear Sister was being uncharacteristically brooding, and at such times a sisterly tiff is just what one needs.”
The bug buzzed its wings, as if to say, “Will do!” and hustled off to join the rest of the swarm. Luna smiled as she watched it go, and stretched out on her belly to bask in the quiet dignity of her night.
* * *
Twilight walked the hallways of Canterlot General Hospital, scanning every intersecting corridor and every open door as she passed. The clean white walls were indistinguishable from one another, save for the random posting about the importance of antibacterial gel and signs pointing to the nearest eye-wash station. Only the signs at every corner and new hallway told her that she was actually getting anywhere. She looked up at the sign that said she was just down the hall from the Phlebotomist’s office, and finally far away enough from Pediatrics that the signs no longer directed her towards it.
The wedding was only a few weeks away, so Cadance’s schedule had thinned out quite a bit. Which suited Twilight fine, since it freed her own schedule for training with Spitfire and research time with Basenji.
Still, there were some things that Cadance refused to set aside, and she had jumped at the opportunity when the hospital had asked if one of the princesses would visit the children’s wing to cheer up the patients.
Cadance had been a big hit with the foals. She’d played board games with them, put on a puppet show, read some stories, and even sang for them. One little filly in particular had taken a real shine to Cadance, even despite the teasing the princess had given the filly about having ‘the kissing disease’. The child was apparently something of a budding romantic herself, and she had pestered Cadance the entire afternoon with questions about what it was like to be the Princess of Love.
Twilight, for her part, had done her best to stay at the back, close enough to do her job, but far enough to discourage the children coming up to try and distract her. A few of the colts had tried to get her to talk to them about what it was like to be in the Guard, but Cadance had thankfully noticed her predicament and regained their attention by asking if any of the children wanted to try making paper crowns.
Things had been going well right up until an old stallion in a wheelchair had rolled himself out to see what all the commotion was. The old timer had turned out to be a retired sailor who’d been admitted for chest pains. The hospital had been busy the day he’d been admitted, and he’d been placed in the children’s ward since it had an available bed.
The old veteran had proven more difficult to lure away than the colts had been, and soon enough Twilight had found herself getting her ear talked off. It wasn’t an unpleasant situation – he had a few fairly amusing stories – but Cadance had given her the slip while she’d been distracted.
To make matters worse, none of the nurses had seen where Cadance had gone off to, and questioning the children hadn’t helped, either. Asking the children had led to six different foals pointing in seven different directions – the extra direction coming from one very wobbly-looking filly that seemed to have balance problems that were probably related to something in her inner-ear.
With only vague, unreliable clues to go on, Twilight had just picked a random direction and started walking. She stopped every pony she came across, asking if they’d seen a princess wandering the halls, but the doctors and nurses were so preoccupied with their duties that Celestia herself could have ridden an elephant through the hallways and nopony would have been the wiser.
Just as she was coming up to another intersecting hallway, a unicorn mare dressed in a nurse’s uniform crossed her path in a hurry. She had a clipboard floating in front of her and was mumbling to herself as she read, paying no attention to the fact that she’d almost run headlong into somepony else.
“Excuse you,” Twilight said tersely to the retreating mare’s back.
The nurse stopped just long enough to shoot a disinterested glance over her shoulder. Her eyes widened slightly as she realized that she’d almost run smack into a Royal Guard in full dress. “Sorry,” the nurse muttered, before hurriedly continuing on her way.
Twilight rolled her eyes at the rude display. Nurses had a difficult job, which she understood, but she’d learned a long time ago that it was important to keep one eye open when reading and walking at the same time. Hopefully the nurse would start being a little more careful on her way to wherever she was going. Not everypony she might bump into was wearing thick, magically enhanced plate armor.
Twilight turned her head as she heard somepony clear his throat. A big earth pony stallion was walking out of a nearby room. He was wearing a light blue shirt with badge emblems on the sleeves, and a big flashlight hung from a cord around his neck. His Cutie Mark was an opened box of donuts and a steaming cup of coffee. She smiled at him, happy to have finally stumbled across somepony whose job it was to be observant.
“You need any help, ma’am?” the security guard asked. “You look a little lost there, um…”
Twilight followed his line of sight and realized he was looking at her galea, probably in an attempt to figure out her rank. “Decurion,” she said by way of explanation. “And yes, I’m looking for somepony.”
“This somepony an alicorn?” the stallion asked. “About my height, pink, wearing a crown?”
“That’d be her,” Twilight said. “I take it you’ve seen her, then.”
The security guard jerked his head in the direction the nurse had come from. “I saw her heading for Obstetrics,” he said. “I asked if she needed an escort but she said her personal guard would be along shortly.”
Twilight could feel her composure crumbling as she felt the rising urge to sigh into her hoof. “Thank you,” she said, giving the guard a polite nod.
The stallion returned the gesture before heading off down the hall to make his rounds.
Twilight sighed and began walking in the direction the security guard had indicated. The walls of the Obstetrics wing were more heavily decorated than the rest of the halls had been – not counting the colorful walls of Pediatrics, of course. There were notices and instructional fliers every few paces, giving tips on techniques for changing diapers and warning about common infant maladies that new parents should be on the lookout for.
There were a lot of benches and chairs scattered around, and potted plants that seemed strategically placed to make the hallways seem more welcoming. As she passed the same notice about the appropriate sleeping posture for an infant for the fifth time, Twilight realized that the clutter on the walls was probably there to give nervous family members something to look at while they waited out deliveries.
She passed a group of mares and stallions standing in a circle, quietly laughing together and passing around oddly colored cigars. The unicorn mare in the center of the crowd noticed her walking by and broke away from the group to stop her.
“I’m gonna be an auntie,” the mare said in a thick Trottingham accent. She levitated one of the cigars from a saddlebag on her back and passed it to Twilight. “Go on, have a treat. Me bruv was a Guard back in Trottingham – retired. Reckon he might want you having one, and I bought a few too many as it is.”
“Oh, thank you,” Twilight said as she accepted the cigar. She wasn’t supposed to take gifts from the public while in uniform, but she decided to make an exception, given the reason for the offer.
The cigar turned out not to be a cigar at all, but a stick of pink bubblegum in a smokable shape. The little paper label wrapped around the end of it said ‘It’s A Girl!’ in glittery letters.
The mare went back to her group and Twilight tucked the stick of gum into a small pocket under her breastplate. The pocket was just big enough for a notepad and a pencil, but with a little wiggling she was able to slip the treat in next to the pencil.
A little down the hallway she found Cadance, sitting in a chair and looking through a large viewing window and into an observation room. She had her forehooves up on the sill and her nose pressed against the glass as she watched the nurses tend to the newborns.
Twilight wanted to chastise her fiancée for leaving without saying anything, but watching Cadance as she sat there, Twilight couldn’t find it in herself to be upset. There was another chair against the opposite wall, and Twilight moved it, setting it down right next to Cadance’s.
“You shouldn’t have left without telling me,” Twilight said as she sat down. “You know you’re not supposed to do that.”
“Sorry,” Cadance said, not actually sounding all that sorry, “I didn’t want to bother you, since you were talking with that nice old stallion. One of the colts was telling me that his mom was in the hospital, too, having a baby.” She laughed softly. “I shouldn’t laugh. He said he broke his leg falling out of a tree when he heard his mom shout that her water had broken. I just wanted to come by and see the babies. I was just going to be really quick – here and back before you noticed.”
“How’s that working out?” Twilight asked cheekily.
Cadance lowered one hoof from the window sill and took one of Twilight’s hooves in the crook of her fetlock. “It worked out fine.”
One of the babies started crying, and Twilight followed the sound of the wailing – muted by the thick glass – to where a nurse was lifting a baby out of one of the cribs. The child seemed greatly displeased to be handled in this manner, and the bundle of wooly blankets writhed as the child thrashed feebly against its swaddling. The nurse carefully passed the precious bundle to a pegasus mare who was seated in a wheelchair and wearing a hospital gown. There was another pegasus behind her, dressed in the same sterilized scrubs as the nurse, and from the way he was hovering – figuratively – he was probably the father.
The infant’s cries died quickly as its mother pressed it against her teats, coaxing it to feed.
Twilight felt a little added pressure around the hoof that Cadance was holding, and she gave a little squeeze back in kind.
They were in public, and she was in uniform, but Twilight didn’t care. Up until this point, no matter what they did or where they went, they’d always had an understanding that Twilight always had to maintain at least the pretense of professional distance. They might have snuck a hurried kiss or a few flirtatious words whenever everypony’s backs were turned, but they always kept it brief. At the moment, though, sitting where they were, Twilight decided that this wasn’t the time for distance. She levitated her galea off her head and stowed it beneath her chair.
Another baby started crying, and the attending nurse’s aide quickly shuffled over to see to its needs.
“It needs to be changed,” Cadance explained. “Babies are so very easy to read that I don’t even need magic. They’re scared, and cold, and hungry – and they’re so full of love…”
“Why are we here, Cadance?” Twilight asked, despite already being fairly sure of the answer.
Cadance didn’t answer right away, and from the look on her face she was searching for the right words to say what she wanted. Twilight didn’t pressure her. They sat and watched as the nurse diagnosed the source of the crying infant’s distress and set about correcting it. As she watched the earth pony nurse deftly removed the soiled linens with her teeth and replace them with a clean diaper, Twilight was again reminded of how glad she was that she’d been born a unicorn.
Cadance let go of Twilight’s hoof as she withdrew from the window to lean against the backrest of her chair. She fluffed her wings nervously.
“Do you still want foals some day?” Cadance asked.
Twilight had been expecting that, but the question still hit her like a brick to the face. She leaned back in her own seat, letting herself steep in the question like a teabag in hot water.
This wasn’t the first time the topic of children had come up for them, but the few times it had been brought up had been before they’d gotten engaged. It was something they’d discussed in passing, and they’d both agreed that children was something they were interested in, but the discussion hadn’t gone much further than that.
Now, it looked like it was finally time to discuss the matter a bit more seriously. That was a scary thought, even to Twilight – the idea that this was something they were going to have a real, serious, adult discussion about. They’d reached a point where they were certain they wanted to be together for a lifetime, and that commitment gave everything they discussed regarding their future a weight that it hadn’t had when they’d just been dating and fooling around.
And this one was a biggie.
Twilight looked inward, poking at her heart and trying to tease the answer out of herself. “Yeah, I do,” she answered with more ease than she would have expected.
Tension left Cadance’s shoulders, and she let out a soft, whispered sigh of relief. “That’s good,” she said, “because I do, too… I really, really want one.”
“I know you do,” Twilight said, feeling a knot in her chest at the sound of longing in Cadance’s voice.
“Can we talk about it for a while?” Cadance asked.
“Of course.”
Twilight looked up and down the hall, checking to see who might be eavesdropping. Aside from the ponies inside the nursery, they were as alone as they could possibly be while sitting in the hallway of a public building.
“We’re both females,” Cadance said simply, “so babies aren’t something we can just… you know, hope it happens. Don’t get me wrong here. I’m unbelievably happy with our sex life, but as far as babies go, we can’t just climb into bed and roll the dice when neither of us has dice to roll… in this analogy the dice are testicles.”
An adult discussion, Twilight reminded herself.
“We’ve got a lot of options, at least,” Twilight said. “Adoption, surrogates, artificial insemination… we can even try that thing with the, uh… transfiguration spell. The failure rate on that is really high, but it’s an option.”
“Bu-wha?” Cadance said, blinking as she shook her head in apparent surprise. “How do you know about that? I mean, I know about it, because that stuff is kind of in my wheelhouse as Princess of Love, but why do you know?”
“I did some research about it the first time this topic came up,” Twilight said with a grin. “It was, ah, kind of a scary idea to me, and when I get scared I do research. Things like that are less scary when you understand them better.”
Cadance chuckled quietly, grinning ear-to-ear. “Twilight, I am just so super proud of you right now,” she said.
Twilight rubbed sheepishly at the back of her neck. Even after almost a year together, a few words from Cadance could still make her stomach do flips that even Spitfire would find impressive. “Thanks. I’m still a little weirded out about this. Talking about transfiguration magic and artificial insemination just lacks… that element of romance.”
Cadance cocked her head, her grin taking on a wry, almost sultry, quality. “If it helps, we could always ask the doctors if you can mount me while they’re squirting science into me.”
Twilight groaned into her hooves. “Ugh, please don’t say ‘squirt’. All those romance books we read together have that word every third paragraph. The ick-factor is out of control with that word.”
Cadance made a thoughtful little hum. “Hm, I’ll agree with that, actually. That and ‘moist’.”
“All I’m saying,” Twilight said, hoping to push through the awkwardness with sheer force, “is that while a lot of our options involve magic, they lack your kind of magic.”
Twilight’s ears twitched and swiveled as she picked up the sound of somepony singing. She turned back to the nursery to find the pegasus holding her baby to her chest, rocking it gently from side to side as she sang. Her voice was soft, but powerfully emotional, and even through the glass, Twilight could feel the hope and love the young mother was pouring into her lullaby. The sound of her voice seemed to have an effect on the other children as much as her own, and all at once, even the fussiest of the newborns relaxed into the embrace of their swaddling clothes and fell fast asleep.
Twilight felt Cadance’s hoof take her own once again.
“It doesn’t matter how the baby came into their lives,” Cadance whispered, “this is where the real magic is.”
Twilight could only nod.
The mare’s song had slowly wound down, devolving into a simple, hummed melody, but her spell over the children had already been cast. The infant’s father leaned in and nuzzled the mother lovingly.
“When we decide that we’re ready,” Cadance said, “can I carry it?”
“If you want to,” Twilight replied.
“That easy? You don’t want to fight me for it?”
Twilight shrugged. “I’m interested in what it would be like to incubate a life inside me, sure,” she said, “but only from an academic standpoint…”
“You’re worried about your warrior’s figure, aren’t you?” Cadance asked teasingly.
Twilight cleared her throat, feeling a little rush of heat in her cheeks. “Maybe…”
“It’s fine,” Cadance said. “I’ll be fat for the both of us.”
Cadance sniffled loudly, and there was a soft pop as she conjured something up. Twilight looked over and found Cadance holding a kerchief with her free hoof, dabbing at the streaks in the fur of her cheeks that her falling tears had traced.
“Cadance, what’s wrong?” Twilight asked as she turned and took her mare’s hoof with both of her own.
“I’m being silly,” Cadance said with a watery little laugh. “I shouldn’t be getting upset. We’re finally getting this baby talk out in the open, and all I can think about is the fact that we can’t have one right now.”
“Oh,” Twilight said.
Cadance was right. Even if they were both on the same page as far as this baby thing was concerned, the timing just wasn’t right yet. They were about to get married, but that marriage meant that Twilight would be taking on an entirely new position – one that she was only barely scratching the surface of being prepared for. And if the prospect of suddenly becoming royalty wasn’t daunting enough, there was the fact that she had a demonic arch-rival waiting in the wings to do… something demonic, whatever it may be.
“I’m sorry, Cadance,” Twilight whispered, her voice reduced to a shameful murmur. “It’s my fault that you have to wait…”
“It’s nopony’s fault,” Cadance said with a sigh. “Either we both are ready or neither of us is. You’re going to be my wife. We’re a team in everything that life throws our way. Every trip, every triumph, they’re ours, together.”
“Okay…” Twilight said. She still wasn’t convinced, but there wasn’t any point in arguing the matter. “Okay… what do you want to do now, then?”
Cadance sniffled, dabbed at her nose with the kerchief, and sent it away with a quick flare of magic. “I think I just want to watch the babies for a little while longer,” she said.
“Okay.” Twilight leaned back into her chair, still holding Cadance’s hoof, and watched as the pegasus couple was ushered out of the room and another couple was given their turn in the nursery.
Twilight suddenly remembered the candy cigar she’d been given on her way over. She plucked it from her hidden pocket and removed the cellophane wrapper. She snapped it in half to offer some of the treat to Cadance.
Cadance took the bit of gum and looked down at it curiously.
“It’s a girl, huh?” she said, reading the little paper label aloud.
“Somepony is an aunt, apparently,” Twilight said as she chewed. The gum was kind of hard, but a little work softened it up.
“Neat.”
* * *
In the far northern reaches of Equestria, near the border where pony lands meet with the mountains where yaks make their homes, lies a land of snow and ice. In this desolate place, snow hares make their homes. They forage for tundra grass by day and huddle together in their burrows for warmth at night.
Sometimes the little hares would find themselves faced with yetis or wolves that had come down from the mountains in search of a meal, but they were clever, and knew when to hide. Today, though, something strange happened.
The winds suddenly began howling, and snow and ice began falling in thick sheets. The ground trembled with a terrible sound. Over the mountains in the distance, something let loose a soul-wrenching scream.
The little hares had been driven back into their warrens by the horrible sound and the tremendous shaking of the earth. Slowly the sound died away and the ground went still. Some of the hares, braver than the others, poked their heads curiously out of the ground.
Something new had appeared, seemingly from thin air. Something tall, bright, and gleaming in the last vestiges of daylight.
* * *
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How did you know I was terribly board today Author? Were you...
spying on me!? Where are the cameras!? *looks around frantically* 
WHERE ARE THEY!? Do I need to get BatHorse in here?
(yes, BatHorse is real)
community.wbgames.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/6174i7893C2CBA62243AC?v=mpbl-1
Hmmm. The Heart of the World wouldn't make a Warrior's Rhythm... But all hearts basically make it. Hmmm. Maybe the Changelings that Ammit ate still had some minor connection left even after Ammit ate their hearts that when whatever connection the Chakram gives Twilight to the Heart caused them to see it as a chance for vengeance and caused it to happen, empowering Twilight to hopefully kill the one that killed them.
4 chapters and over 34k words update. See this, Authors?! This is how you should update your stories every week! Only without the Complete Tag until the end. But 34k words of epic reading! Awesome.
just another item in a long list of regrets
unwinding after the day with a brisk constitution.
If all else fails in the kid department and Twi and Cady still want it to have Twilight's bloodline all they need to do is talk Shiny into donating sperm for them. Then they still get a colt or filly that's related to both. Yaaaaaaay!!!
That is the beauty of creative writing. You're allowed to do so if you need, or even simply wish to. Heck, casting Twilight in the canon role of Her brother could be considered taking license.
What is important is that when it is done, it is done well, so that it works. In this, you score an A+.
Also... does Spits have eyes for a certain Diamond Dog?
If only there was some way to see into similar worlds, Luna wouldn't have much to worry about in a couple cases.
6825007 'constitutional' is probably the right word. It means 'a walk for your health'.
I wasn't able to read this update until today, even though I was online when it came out, but JOY I GET TO READ IT!
I love this fic.
[youtube=O10IjF2Ahs4]
“Your hooves are brothers?” Basenji asked. His ears folded down flat against his skull. “But you are a mare. And why is it that one is named after the other, as a son would be?”
Lol
So that's why Crysalis attacked... guess Changelings take lover-spats very seriously...
You know, they could use Shining Armor as the donor.
You could of use shme or shmer..
(I think thats how its spelt)
Darn, that Changeling Queen was Chrysalis. And you had to give her enough tragic backstory to make it sad she's gone.
Is this a metaphor for Shining and Twilight in this fic?
This fic should really be called the adventures of punchy, and punchy jr. Tee hee.
6854765 and it really be about Spitfire and Basenji getting into trouble
Okay given the air date of The Crystalling, that's just scary.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXDPaois4Nk
I want to buy this. Where can I buy this? I WILL PAY ALL OF THE MONIES!!!
6831493
How would you feel about asking your sibling to be a doner?
I'm happy that Celestia wanted to be friends with chrysalis despite their falling out and I really wish I could have seen what would happen if they try it again with all the current cast. Though I'm also deeply saddened that Celestial won't get a chance to find out.
I'm surprised the Crystal Empire is making its appearance now when before it wasn't until after Cadence and shining armor got married. But then again this is an alternate universe.
As for Ammit, the whole her being a she and what not, that can be argued by the fact that a soul doesn't have a gender and sense he use she is using a body as a host it can be debated anyway. Besides I like the way your portraying Ammit as is. Keep up the great work.
Im all in for the transfiguration soell, I like flurry heart but would love Twilight having a baby and seeing how it differs in future.