Rumors of the Apocalypse Are... Somewhat Exaggerated?

by SparklingTwilight

What Truly Happened

Starlight Glimmer wiped her mouth clean and, in a hoarse voice, began her tale: "Trixie and Maud threw a party for me. To celebrate my graduation as your student, and to cheer me up."

"Cheer you up? Why did you need another party? Pinkie Pie already threw you one!" Twilight interrupted.

"At Pinkie's party, there were so many ponies. I hid in the corner. ..." Starlight shuddered.

"No you didn't. You knocked down that piñata!"

Starlight's face turned weirdly sable and she glowed with a sudden rush of power. "You weren't beside me the entire time! I put on a happy face for as long as absolutely necessary; then, when I could get away, I hyper-ventilated and did my best to calm down!"

"Oh," Twilight backed up, blinking. "I didn't know."

Starlight huffed and puffed, but her face soon-enough reverted to its normal coloration. "It's okay. Okay. It's past."

"I'm really sorry," Twilight said.

"Don't think about it. I'm--I think I'm getting better. But if I'm not, then we may not have a lot of time," Starlight said. "Here's what happened. We had the party, a low-key affair:"

Maud brought the wine, seasoned with cooled stones of the "gneissest caliber". Trixie, showing off a newly-mastered spell, assumed responsibility for providing the wine glasses ... which turned out to be random items she proudly, in front of us, transformed into identical tiny porcelain teacups. And I brought some fish-shaped pastries I bought from the Cakes."

A tear came to Starlight's eye, then she blinked, took a deep breath and continued.

We sat and started talking about life, the universe: everything. We drank--a lot. I expounded a bit--well, maybe more than a bit on advanced transfiguration--Trixie was yawning near the end and she preemptively tried to turn a rock into a proper wine glass, but she was still conceptualizing teacups, so that didn't quite work.

Starlight sighed. "If it doesn't revert, that's why, Twilight, you now have a vase-like teacup; it has whale patterns--Maud had mentioned it looked like a whale. It's probably for the best that Trixie didn't come into her full power that early in the night. I'll get it fixed." Starlight continued:

Trixie and Maud played rock-paper-drink with Boulder--Maud's pet rock. And Maud was laughing a lot. Yes, really: Maud. She spiked her drink with perfectly round black rocks: organic sedimentaries, she called them and was rolling them around inside of her mouth and Trixie was casting sparkling spells on the rocks and then I joined in to, well, fix Trixie's spells after one almost burned a hole in Maud's mouth--by Celestia, Maud doesn't react much to pain but that looked horrifying. ..."

Starlight Glimmer shook her head. "It was supposed to be low key."

Then we played a game that Maud and her sisters sometimes play, Hitchhiker's Guide, where somepony blindfolds her eyes and gets guided around by anotherpony and has to guess correctly where she is and what she is holding onto and then she'll be turned around and around and around and will hitchhike again with one of her friends until she wins twice more--a silly fillies game, I know.

Starlight shook her head.

So Trixie cast a spell and apparently she located something "great and powerful" jammed behind a secret passage. She used that discovery as my book to guess--I'm going to make absolutely clear I didn't know it wasn't one of your display books until much later--and we wandered into the garden. If it hadn't been obvious from the grass I was stepping on, our location would have been clear by the bouncing sounds I heard. Trixie had installed a stunt trampoline for the party and Maud was putting it to good use. Anyway, Trixie laughed after I correctly guessed we were in the garden but I failed to guess the particulars of what I held. It was obviously a book--but she demanded a title.

"You're a verrrrrry powerful lizard, Starlight; you can do a lick or two better than just guess it's a booooook." Trixie had drunkenly laughed. Maud made chicken sounds, sounding soft when she vaulted into the sky and louder when she descended.

"Chicken sounds?" Twilight asked.

"I know... right?" Starlight said, then she continued.

"I can do even better!" I'd responded, after concentrating deeply. "This is a... Spellbook! I'll cast from it even though I'm blindfolded!"

"Ooh, we can use that bit in the show!" Trixie exclaimed. I sometimes assisted in her magic show.

"I know that," Twilight interrupted.

"Well, sorry for trying to cover everything comprehensively. This is all quite traumatizing--"

"Sorry."

Starlight continued.

Still blindfolded, I flipped to the random open page. The spell's name and its description, I later discovered, had been on a previous page, but the page I was on started with step one of the recipe. Much faster than one would assume would be necessary for such a devastating spell, I had properly cast the Apocalyptica. From the Apocalyptica. The book and the spell share a name.

"I've never heard of that ..." Twilight's interruption trailed off, as she was thinking deeply.

The spell was for summoning. I read the Old Ponish language and I called it down. Seriously, I am not sure why anypony would create a spell like this--but given that we were able to defeat these horrible creatures, it's plausible that the spell's creator was able to defeat them and then wrote the spell down for additional research. I'm sure you'll have fun researching it and/or dissecting me. Anyway: the next thing we knew, the sky's color shifted into weird purple and pink swirling chaos, and we heard hooves beating and pounding.

Trixie noted the magic and was rather excited since she thought it was a spell she could use in her act. She was running around triumphantly shouting: "Ventriloquism spell! Ventrilloquisssssm!" She'd mastered throwing her voice, but she hadn't managed to create a full aural-experience.

"No." Maud removed my blindfold and took the book away, considering the page with her ever-keen eyes. You know Twilight, I think she picks up on almost 'everything', you know. Uncanny. Anyway, meanwhile, she gave Trixie a rump tap and a warning: "Sober up, Trix."

Blinking from the sudden return of vision, I stared up at the strangely disconcerting colorful sky, which is where I saw them.

"Look! Big ponies!" I'd called, like a filly, not quite sober enough to realize what I had summoned. "Cool!"

"They're horses." Maud commented.

"What?"

"This says they're 'horses'." Maud shoved the open book in front of me. That word wasn't on the pages I had cast the spell from. She had flipped back to the real first page, which, in Old Ponish, explained the spell. "Horses of something."

"You can read Old Ponish?" I asked.

"My Rocktorate studies required knowledge of geological and archaeological scientific words to identify specimens. Many of those words are derived from Old Ponish."

"Okay," I said. "I don't know anything about this word you say means 'horse', but these last few mean 'of the Apocalypse', that is, of the end times, like when the windigos will destroy everything."

"Mmm-hmm," Maud nodded. "Horses are an extinct race, although their bones have been found. They predate ponies by tens of thousands of years."

"Wait--wait--you mean we are descended from ... those big things?"

"Yes, we evolved from them during a time of scarcity to become shorter, requiring less calories, becoming more compact, more magical."

"I'll be a bucking monkey's uncle before I believe horseapples about evil-lotion like that," Trixie laughed. "Next thing you'll tell me ish geologishts believe tha world's round and like four point five billionsh years old."

Maud met Trixie's accusations with a neutral stare. "We have a big problem." She gestured to the approaching thundering hooves above, mid-air. In the lead, far ahead of the others was a white 'horse'.

"Horseapples, Scarlight," Trixie exclaimed. "That'sh shome scary bit ..."

"--book must have summoned these creatures," I concluded.

"You mean you did." Maud had a penetrating stare.

"How can you blame me?" I boiled. "Why is it always Starlight's fault?" Then, overcome by anger, I blasted a wild lightning bolt into the sky. It curved back down. There was a distant explosion.

"Sorry. I hope that didn't blow up anything in Ponyville."

"The clock tower. ..." Twilight mused, but Starlight looked away and continued her report.

"No blame; just a statement." Maud often was very precise, sometimes infuriatingly so. "You spoke the spell-words; then they arrived."

"Trixie thrust the book in front of me. ... And you started the game!"

"True," Maud nodded.

Meanwhile, the lead skybound horse approached within hailing distance.

"They friendly?" Trixie squinted at the coming beast, which unfurled its wings.

"I, Pestilence, have come to herald the end of the world! THOU MUST PREPARE!" The white stallion declaimed, its voice shaking the castle grounds and causing the ground to shake.

"Pest lints; don' wanna buy that," Trixie slurred her words and stumbled, then fell flat on her back. But she bounced up, barely missing a beat in her patter--she had a lot of experience tumbling during her stage act. "We're havin' a party, so would ya kindly go back inta tha book tha' ya live in?"

"THOU MUST GIRD THY SOUL," the stentorian voice commanded, and the horse's head peered around, at us, then back at Ponyville.

"Go away, snotty." Trixie had waved a hoof. "We're havin' a Trixie party. And a Trixie party don't stop for nothin'."

"PREPARE FOR THY END!" The horrible beast sneezed into a hoof, then reached out with a foreleg and scattered its phlegm and aural detritus to the wind, on Ponyville below. I sheltered all of us with a well-timed protective bubble.

"I jest told ya' we ain't endin' anythin', ya' party pooper."

"YOUR FLESH WILL BOIL, YOUR EYES WILL SHUT, YOUR BLOOD WILL TURN, YOUR BREATH WILL FAIL, YOUR END WILL COME."

"I hate party crashers," Trixie mumbled. Then, she brightened. "S-Starlight, why dontcha send him back intah tha book?"

I grabbed the text and started reading frantically. "It takes time to decipher Old Ponish," I warned Trixie.

Maud held the book steady for me. My hooves were flailing wildly as I paged through it, seeking key words on pages.

"Lorem Ipsum Sin Dolor..." I tried to pronounce the book's Old Ponish under my breath--not a great idea but, hey, I'd already summoned these horrific creatures so it's not like things could get much worse. And I was drunk, so give me some slack, Twilight. And then, recalling some very obscure literature about the stars that I'd read during my foalhood, I realized what had happened-- "These horses ... I think I know what everything means! They are the four horses of the apocalypse!"

"Apoco-what?" Trixie chewed the words.

"Apocalypse--the end times, Trixie."

"Whatever ya say."

"We already established that," Maud commented.

"We established they were four horses of the apocalypse, but those words have special meaning! There's a constellation and a legend." Distant memories returned. Then I flipped frantically through the book for information on how to stop the beasts. Meanwhile, the monstrous horse reached for Trixie.

But Trixie, though inebriated, wasn't helpless. She threw a smoke grenade to the ground and galloped away, evading the horse's grasping touch.

Then, Trixie rushed across the garden and jumped on her elastic trampoline, which sent her flying high, while she shouted: "The Great and Powerful Trixie has a greeting for you, Pest!"

Pestilence flew up to match Trixie's height, and she twisted and ignited her horn, shooting her unicorn magic at where she had concealed fireworks for my celebration--and off they went, screeching. A huge purple-and-white-striped rocket struck Pestilence with a thud, propelling that horse higher into the sky. The rest of the fireworks exploded, some more striking Pestilence but most hitting nothing, certainly not impeding the other three rapidly approaching flying horses.

But that first horse, Pestilence, screeched in horror. Windows shattered.

Then Trixie shuddered and the horse exploded and all of its magic--I think it went into Trixie.

Starlight gulped and pawed at the ground with a hoof. Then she shuddered and shuffled toward the toilet bowl, where she dry-retched. A little later, she returned to Twilight.

And her fireworks kept going off, multiplying across the sky, but that didn't stop the next horse to arrive--a red-coated beast wearing sparkling barbed armor--snarling and snorting.

"War has come for you, little ponies!" He had growled. "I come to level ponies rich and poor to be the same; I will grind their bones to dust and their monuments, their wonders, their buildings into petty, worthless stones!"

Maud, still supporting the book for me, tapped me on my shoulder. "Stone me."

"We don't have any of that to smoke--" I started.

"It's not a euphemism."

"See, she actually needed stones, Twilight, not to 'get stoned'. Maybe you don't know this--I didn't. I learned what that meant from some students at the School of Friendship, see, getting 'stoned' can mean ..."

Twilight glared at Starlight, who concluded her feverish non-sequitur thought: "nevermind."

So, I replied: "Why?"

War was approaching, inexorably, ever closer.

"Too much thinking, Starlight. Trixie defeated the first horse easily." Maud pointed out.

"Indeed Trixie did!" Trixie kept bouncing up and down. "Maud! Are you sinking whats I'm s-thinking?"

"I'm not planning to take over the world," Maud deadpanned, "or to serve as a strongmare sideshow."

"But your strength--" Trixie started, then sighed. "Alas. But no, Trixie was suggesting you throw stones at the beast. Its verbose verbiage provided me that Interesting and Idyllic idea." She smiled, smug.

"Agreed. Our opinions are in sync," Maud nodded.

"On wha?" I had been absorbed in the book, puzzling out an overarching solution.

Maud's plan was simpler. "Summon me rocks. Move them from the rubble piles."

"What rubble?" I asked.

Maud provided a precise description.

"Oh yes," I nodded. "Why?"

Meanwhile, as reported by the bouncing Trixie from her higher vantage point, the red horse pursued an unfortunate gray-coated, blond-maned pegasus and whacked her aside the head with the butt of a sword. She tumbled to the ground. Then the horse bucked and smashed holes in several buildings. Sofas and quills spilled out of one in a gory massacre of feathers that had been stuffed within sofas and fastened to quill-stands.

"I will throw the rocks," Maud explained.

Maud's idea made sense, so I summoned her material. She went to work right away, grabbing and flinging. Her tossed rock barrage caught the horse's attention, and it rose to meet her challenge; but it was smashed straight out the air and crashed to the ground.

Moments later, Maud shuddered and a panoply of colors emanated from her, the chromatic array settling on a brilliant blood red for a moment. And her haunches and forelegs burgeoned with muscles, but then the glimmering and the colors subsided and Maud looked the same as she'd always been.

"Huh," she took a step, smashing a deep hole in the ground.

I peered over the edge, concerned for her sake.

---

The third horse snuck up on me while I was watching Maud. It was very thin and extremely fast. It had been far in the distance, but it must have teleported. It caught me from behind in a horrifying embrace with rotting hooves, then squeezed.

Trixie, still bouncing above, squealed and coughed. "Starlight! No!"

"Help--" I called, before the horse's shoulder muzzled my mouth. I couldn't even speak words to spells or make the motions. And I felt myself growing thin and weak.

I must have passed out, but the next time my eyes fluttered open, I was confronted by the sight of a tempest of teacups, foul-smelling and acrid in their splashes. The teacups assaulted the horse, and burned my coat, but importantly, the horse released its hold on my mouth and I could breathe and move and speak.

Trixie was ranting as teacups smashed into and shattered against the horse. "The Great and Powerrrful Trixie insists you unhoof that mare right now!"

The teacups probably would not have caused much damage under normal circumstances, but boils erupted where their acid splashed. The horse writhed and took to the sky. Before it could escape completely, I started casting a spell, vomited, but finished the spell. It was good enough. The horse spiraled out of control, smashing into the ground beyond the castle walls. I collapsed. And shuddered as I felt power wash over me. Trixie came to my side. And poked me with a stick. I didn't flinch. I was simultaneously too spent and too stiff with power to react--I didn't feel pain--my body didn't automatically react--I was overwhelmed.

Maud, a weird, disturbed look on her face, emerged from the chasm. On firm ground again, she took a light step. The ground failed to subside. She'd nodded; then a rare look of shock crossed her face.

"Maud!" Trixie raced over to the Earth pony and embraced her. "Starlight's ... dead."

Maud walked forward fast, effortlessly dragging the still-hugging Trixie beside her with her strong strides. At my side, Maud paused.

"Dead ponies don't breathe." Her look of shock subsided back into her neutral resting expression.

"Whaaaa?" Trixie's head tilted to a side.

"Starlight's breathing."

"But she's immovabile-immobile," Trixie insisted. Then she coughed.

"Ugh," I finally found my voice. Then I vomited.

"Starlight!" Trixie embraced my back-legs since my forelegs and face were covered with ... ichor."

Starlight shuddered at the memory.

Maud's ears perked up and she wandered away from me. She had heard the fourth horse.

Trixie's tears were falling on me. "Starlight. What would I ever do if I lost my Great and Powerful assistant!" She accompanied sweet words with raspy coughs and expectoration, all across my face. She hugged me close; I could feel bursting boils on her forelegs.

"I have to go," Maud turned to leave.

"Why?" I asked.

"The fourth horse alighted. Then a life ended."

"Where?"

"I heard it."

"I didn't hear--" I started.

"I need to go." Maud blinked. "There was a struggle, a conflict. I sense a fight. I need to go." And she was gone.

---

When Maud came back, Trixie had gotten me standing and was supporting me. My cheeks were already sallow and my stomach had been emptied of more volume than I thought it had held. And I was avidly studying the book, although that thankfully remained vomit-less.

"It's managed," Maud said. Just above her jaw there appeared to be desiccation, rotting into her coat. But after I blinked, my clearer eyes were pretty sure it was just a bruise.

"I'm trying to note everything, Twilight, but I don't know if that will help," Starlight explained.

"It might explain something when all of this information is considered together," Twilight pondered.

"Anyway, the next thing that happened was:"

"No it's not!" Trixie, proud to express knowledge she had just learned from me, shouted. "Even if you defeated that horse; we've got to do it again."

Maud arched an eyebrow.

"It's all your f-f-fault, you know, Maud," Trixie added.

Maud cocked her head.

"You s-suggested the wine that we imbibed; that'sh the proximate cause for all of this." Trixie finished, with a grin. But, after an oh-so-brief pause, she demonstrated that she wasn't finished. "And T-trrrrrixie had to fix everything for you, defeating not one but three horsemares."

Maud took a deep breath.

"It'sh all right," Trixie coughed. "Trixie is Great and p-p-Powerful. You are not. Trixie s-serves the less-endowed!"

"You provided the spell to Starlight. From a strange book. And you had no idea what it might do."

"And yet! You-y-you did nothing to stop Trixie!" Triumphant Trixie grinned.

Maud took a deep breath, then closed her eyes.

"Too stunned to look on the face of one who has Brilliantly and Boldly defeated you with logic and facts?" Trixie laughed. "Haha!"

"It says here," I indicated the book, "that the four horses have to be defeated four times by four."

"But there's only three of us."

"The book may not be entirely correct," I added. "That may be how they were defeated last time, but there could be other ways."

Trixie nodded sagely. She always liked to be in the know.

"But it does say the horses grow more powerful each time they are defeated." I swallowed, then quickly spat it out--I couldn't even hold down liquids. "Physically--physical defeat is what was done last time. The ponies who wrote this spell didn't know about alternatives, probably."

"Alternatives?" Trixie asked.

"The ponies who wrote this," I explained. "Didn't know about the magic of friendship."

"Are you still drunk?" Trixie asked. "Trixie s-supposes all the vomiting might have helped sober you up, but what the buck does friendship have to do with the price of horseshoes in Saddle Arabia? Friendship is only important insofar and insomuch and infomercial as it has utility for each party. It's obvious," Trixie yawned. "It's not possible to just be friends. There's always a transaction!"

She noticed my glare. I had thought we resolved this distinction about friendship after Trixie and I performed the Moonshot Manticore Mouth Dive and Trixie asserted that our friendship wasn't just based on my utility to her in annoying my mentor, Twilight Sparkle.

"I mean," Trixie quickly added. "We are friends because Trixie enjoys the services you provide and that are part of your personality--nothing to do with Twilight's opinions. Meanwhile, you enjoy the Trixie Treats, including all of Trixie's myriad and multifarious splendid services: Trixie's cleverness; Trixie's gumption; Trixie's beauty; and of course, Trixie's tricks."

"Trixie," I warned.

"And Trixie understands it's difficult playing second fiddle to Trixie but one must get used to the inevitable dynamics of the situation--"

"Trixie," I increased my volume.

Trixie kept yammering, and I was getting really mad. I don't even remember what she said but it ended in me repressing my anger so much that, weakened by my encounter with the horse, I passed out.

Glaring at each other, Trixie and Maud managed to rustle me awake. I tried to forget about the quarrel and I focused on our problem. "Good." So frustrated was I that I barely noted their assistance. "I don't think we can defeat them with magic alone again--not even supplemented by whatever specialness we took from them or hoof-strong earth pony magic." I looked sadly at Maud who had done double-duty defeating a duo of villains. She shrugged.

"Then what can we do? Although Trixie is Very Special, you two are not quite as sp-special, and of coarse-course we are not ha-harmonious--not elements of harmony!" Trixie insisted.

"I don't know!" I shouted, staring at the ground surrounding me, which had once held green grass, but now, all grass that I brushed up against was wilted--from the famine powers I had absorbed. "Is everything I touch going to wither and die of blight? Am I never going to be able to hold a pony, or a plant--is this my plight?" I stomped my hooves, indenting deep into the ground.

"Maybe," Maud suggested--heartlessly.

"I wanted a plant, Maud, a healthy green one. I'd name her Phyllis. ..."

"Real crazed drunk-talk from me." Starlight shook her head. "I was sobering up for a bit there, but--bam. Lose some weight and get freaked out and--" She started hyperventilating. Twilight reached out for her and she recoiled and waived her mentor off. Then, she took a deep sigh and continued.

"This is stupid." I sighed, pushing vast amounts of air through my nostrils. "I feel famished, so much." The bottom of my jaw hung open; some water drooled.

"Ew ..." Trixie held her nose. "Disgusting. Starlight, pull yourself together."

"You're so full of yourself!" I shouted.

"Stop!" Maud interjected, her voice calm, but raised.

I shoved her aside. "Not now!"

"Yes." She pushed back, her tone once-again even. "We cannot fight. Not now."

"This is a perfect time to fight!" I kicked at the dirt. "We're going to die if we can't get Twilight or Celestia, so we may as well have it out--you emotional rock!"

Maud blinked at me and cocked her head. She may not have realized the content was an insult, but she could read the agitation in my tone. Trixie laughed.

Up until that moment, I had thought we were going to need to track you down, Twilight. But then I saw the glow, and another solution arose. I spoke to Trixie. "Look at your flank."

Trixie's flank was glowing. More precisely, her cutie-mark was, but I assume her inebriated-influenced view of the world led her to perceive it as being on fire.

"Aaaahh!" She shrieked and jerked and bucked.

"The map of Harmony is calling you," Maud calmly noted. "And Starlight. And me." She gestured to her own pulsating cutie mark.

"So, if my theory is right, we'll have the tree's assistance in solving a friendship problem."

"What friendship problem?" Trixie asked, having realized there was no point to flailing around.

"That's ... a good question, " I noted.

"This is more of a threat-to-all-of-Equestria problem," Maud noted. "But maybe the map can call ponies together for that too?"

"We don't have time to track down ponies that might be having friendship issues!" Trixie adamantly beat her hooves against the ground.

"I don't know," I cogitated. "Perhaps the problem may be ... with us?"

We heard distant hooves, pounding across the sky, making hoof-falls even with lack of clouds or ground to against them pound.

"We could list some things that might be putting up barriers between us?" I suggested.

"Trixie's braggadocio can be annoying. Sometimes." Maud started, almost immediately.

"Trixie never suspected you could be so c-cruel!" Trixie puffed her cheeks.

"I second Maud's comment. I don't like when you demean me," I spoke up.

"What- wh- wha-" Trixie trembled.

Maud approached her and patted one of her shoulders. "It's fine. Criticize me."

"I-um-uh-I-" Trixie sputtered. "You're so Cool and Confident ... I'm jealous."

Maud pat Trixie on her shoulder. "It can be difficult to discern my emotions, but I feel scared too: sometimes."

"Really?" Trixie's eyes were filled with rheumy liquid.

"In the pit, with only Boulder by my side, I missed you two. Boulder's good. But he can't wrap appendages around me to give me encouragement."

Weeping loud, Trixie flung her forelegs around Maud. I joined in the embrace and whispered in Trixie's ear. "Sorry, but we have to be thorough about this; can you criticize me, now?"

The hug ended and Trixie backed off. She looked me in the eye. "I--feel inadequate to my assistant--Starlight. She's so powerful, great, and I don't want to drive her away and I need to be more thankful. I don't wanna hafta see her driven away; say so long to her. I should say thanks more often. Thanks for all the ... fish cookies you brought tonight." Trixie paused. "No, that's not enough," she realized without prompting. "I mean, thank you for all the m-m-magic," Trixie wept.

"Didn't you once say to Starlight that you could both be great and powerful?" Maud noted.

"But she's great and powerful all the time."

"But your sacrifice was necessary in the Changeling hive." I pointed out Trixie's recent effort at heroism. "We couldn't have saved Equestria without it."

"But it wasn't magic. I--" Trixie sniffed, and she was coughing a lot. A cloud of miasma ballooned near her face.

"I find you amusing, interesting, and vibrant," I said.

"I concur," Maud nodded.

"Please, let's not try to one-up each other."

"Okay ..." Trixie sighed. "Trixie knows that Trixie was scared... and drunk." She turned to Maud. "But it was Trixie's choice to drink."

Maud inclined her head.

"You didn't critique me for this, Maud, but I sense it bothers you," I added. "I don't like to admit when I'm wrong."

Maud nodded.

"I'm just so afraid I could be as wrong as I was when I enslaved that town; but that's stupid. I need to stop doing wrong things before it gets that bad; I need feedback. I shouldn't have fought you when you were right. I am the pony who cast this spell."

"I also should apologize. I can hammer on things a bit too much," Maud admitted. "I forget to add kinder, tempering words. Not everycreature has the stolid soul of a rock."

I wept with joy, joining Trixie's sniffling.

We looked at each other: two of us crying and Maud with her eyes focused low toward the ground. Here we were, three more-or-less drunk mares--though I think Maud and I had mostly sobered up by then--talking about stupid stuff like we were chatting in a restaurant when here we were, confronting the maybe-end of Equestria, at the end of the universe, at the end of time.

And then we hugged. The light of our cutie marks grew brighter and brighter.

And the thundering horses drew nearer. I didn't see the horses that were pounding them; I just hugged tighter and tighter until I heard Trixie squeaking. Then I released my hold and looked up to see what the power of friendship, forthrightness, and forgiveness could accomplish.

The horses were enveloped by the glowing light from us (courtesy of the Tree of Harmony), which blasted them out of the sky. And all of us felt stronger, both in our friendship and certainly in our magical power.

"So that's what happened," Starlight Glimmer concluded. "I suspect we entirely subsumed the four horses' powers after they were defeated. I'm still working on mastering my portion of the magic." Twilight could see Starlight's bones through the wide folds of her coat.

"Um," Twilight started. "Thank you, Starlight."

"Could you walk me back to Trixie and Maud?" Starlight asked.

"Sure." Twilight lent her a shoulder and Starlight stumbled down the hospital hallway.

"I'm getting better," Starlight said.

"Really?"

"Yeah," Starlight elaborated. "You're not famished now, right?"

"What?"

"At first, whicheverpony I touched got thin and famished--"

"But Trixie and Maud aren't--"

"That's because they have their own special powers. Trixie's taken over pestilence, Maud has war and death," Starlight explained. "But I've got famine under control. You're still healthy!"

"...who did you touch?" Twilight asked, with a frown, either concerned for the touched person or at having been a test-case for Starlight.

"A doctor," Starlight sighed. "He'll be fine though. I followed up with a sustenance spell once I realized what was going on."

"Oh, Starlight," Twilight started to launch into a lecture.

"Here we are." Starlight cut her off by pointing at the restricted-marked room holding her friends within. "With luck, I'll be able to get and hold down some weak tea; maybe I'll work my way up to biscuits. We'll get through this Twilight." And she stumbled into the room.

Twilight looked down at her own barrel; she didn't look famished, or feel nauseous. Whatever horrible magical side-effects Starlight might have been emanating hadn't affected Twilight. But ... what about her friends? Maud and Trixie had touched them! What if they were fighting, sick, or dead. ...

Panicked, Twilight galloped to the office where she had left her apocalyptically-touched friends.

Author's Note:

Congratulations in advance to anyone who catches the hidden four Douglas Adams references. There are other references, too.

Comments

[SparklingTwilight]

10970748
Thank you!

[Bicyclette]

"At Pinkie's party, there were so many ponies. I hid in the corner. ..." Starlight shuddered.

aww! i like that Starlight has this in common with Maud! and this ties in nicely with her anxiety about being the positive center of attention on her first return to her village post-reformation just days before (though of course at that time there were other dynamics to make that uncomfortable as well!)

Maud brought the wine, seasoned with cooled stones of the "gneissest caliber". Trixie, showing off a newly-mastered spell, assumed responsibility for providing the wine glasses ... which turned out to be random items she proudly, in front of us, transformed into identical tiny porcelain teacups. And I brought some fish-shaped pastries I bought from the Cakes."

perfection!

We sat and started talking about life, the universe; everything.

Douglas Adams or the GameFAQs subforum?

Then we played a game that Maud and her sisters sometimes play, Hitchhiker's Guide,

ah, Douglas Adams

"Mmm-hmm," Maud nodded. "Horses are an extinct race, although their bones have been found. They predate ponies by tens of thousands of years."

"Wait--wait--you mean we are descended from ... those big things?"

"Yes, we evolved from them during a time of scarcity to become shorter, requiring less calories, becoming more compact, more magical."

"I'll be a bucking monkey's uncle before I believe horseapples about evil-lotion like that," Trixie laughed. "Next thing you'll tell me ish geologishts believe tha world's round and like four point five billionsh years old."

Maud met Trixie's accusations with a neutral stare.

and yes, loved this worldbuilding about the relationship between horses and ponies in this world! i headcanoned the word "horse" as having the same cultural space as the word "giant" does in the human world, which would include cultural myths that they were real creatures related to humans. it is neat to have them actually exist in the ponies' evolutionary line here, and how that legacy affects how ponies see themselves and their history

"You mean you did." Maud had a penetrating stare.

"How can you blame me?" I boiled. "Why is it always Starlight's fault?" Then, overcome by anger, I blasted a wild lightning bolt into the sky. It curved back down. There was a distant explosion.

this is very Starlight, and #relatable

"Lorem Ipsum Sin Dolor..."

nice reference! tho from canon readings Old Ponish is clearly Germanic and thus the analogue of Old English, while this should properly be the canonical Pony Latin, and furthermore;

Then Trixie shuddered and the horse exploded and all of its magic--I think it went into Trixie.

always great to see action Trixie! the first step in doing something ridiculous is to refuse to have a reason to believe that you cannot

"See, she actually needed stones, Twilight, not to get 'stoned'. Maybe you don't know this--I didn't. I learned what that meant from some students at the School of Friendship, see, getting 'stoned' can mean ..."

hehe

Meanwhile, as reported by the bouncing Trixie from her higher vantage point, the red horse pursued an unfortunate gray-coated, blond-maned pegasus and whacked her aside the head with the butt of a sword.

noooooo Derpyyyyyy

"Huh," she took a step, smashing a deep hole in the ground. I peered over the edge, concerned for her sake.

perfection

Trixie's tears were falling on me. "Starlight. What would I ever do if I lost my Great and Powerful assistant!" She accompanied sweet words with raspy coughs and expectoration, all across my face. She hugged me close; I could feel bursting boils on her forelegs.

a fantastic mental image, and a great Trixie moment

"I mean," Trixie quickly added. "We are friends because Trixie enjoys the services you provide and that are part of your personality--nothing to do with Twilight's opinions. Meanwhile, you enjoy the Trixie Treats, including all of Trixie's myriad and multifarious splendid services: Trixie's cleverness; Trixie's gumption; Trixie's beauty; and of course, Trixie's tricks."

of course your Trixie was fantastic throughout all of this, but this especially! ugh i love her so much

"I wanted a plant, Maud, a healthy green one. I'd name her Phyllis. ..."

and yes, the best plant character in the show!

Maud blinked at me and cocked her head. She may not have realized the content was an insult, but she could read the agitation in my tone. Trixie laughed.

and aww, poor Maud! she would indeed not take that as an insult normally

And then we hugged. The light of our cutie marks grew brighter and brighter.

aww! the magic of friendship! it was very nice to bring it around to that in the end

Congratulations in advance to anyone who catches the hidden four Douglas Adams references. There are other references, too.

i'm guessing the fish cookies are the third, but the fourth escapes me