The Heart's Promise

by MyHobby

Tales of the Second Age

Whitetail Woods
Western Territory of Pre-Pony Equestria
The First Spring in the Reign of Her Majesty, River Cicada, Year 1000 BCE (Before Celestial Era)

Adagio Dazzle poked her head out of the cave and beheld a blue sky, the first in months. She sniffed the air and detected flowers instead of sulfur. A quietness fell over Whitetail Woods that was, at last, peaceful rather than ominous. The young earth pony mare took slight, hesitant steps out from the shadows and eased into the light.

The Unseelie Court had failed! River Cicada and her friends were triumphant!

Another step into the light, however, brought a new realization to her. The world felt… different. Strange. The sun had once felt like a warm blanket over the world. Now, it felt like she was standing too close to a campfire. The leaves which once shone with a vibrant, jewellike gleam had paled to something resembling paper. The wind that had once smelled of sweetness now tasted like dirt upon her tongue.

That was the price of survival, she supposed. A lessening. A diminishing.

Before she could voice her thoughts, a blur of brown fur and mismatched limbs bounded out of the cave above her. “They did it! I told you they could! Didn’t I tell you they could? Here you are moping around in the darkness, dreading your inevitable doom, and all you had to do was believe your dear friend when he said it was going to be all right.”

Adagio sat down hard as Discord perched atop her curly mane, resting lightly despite being five times her size. So it was with Creatures of Thought like the Draconequus; only as physically real as they wished to be. She crossed her eyes as she looked up at his smug face and gave him an equally smug smile. “I don’t usually trust what I can’t control, you know. And believe you me, things got wildly out of control.”

“Have you forgotten, Adagio?” He tapped her shoulder to get her to look left, then settled down on her right. “Control is an illusion, a silly name you mortals made up for when the winds of fate blow your way.”

“You’re really gonna sit there and pretend we had nothing to do with—?” She threw her forelegs out to gesture at their surroundings. When he continued to smile, she shook her head with a sigh. “Never mind. Of course you will.” She patted his side with a hoof and stared out into the woods. “Just know that I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“The winds of fate blow where they may,” he said with a chuckle.

She trotted to a nearby apple tree and took a blossom that had fallen from the branches. They had once smelled like the richest of candies. Now, it smelled… fresh? Clean? She nestled it in her mane as she returned to the cave to retrieve her bag. “You gonna stick around long enough to rebuild?”

He cracked his back in three different places, which broke open three walnuts. He tossed one to Adagio and chomped on the rest himself. “With Ba’al Shamayim and his goons shunted off to the Abyss, and River Cicada taking the reins of a new world… Honestly, I don’t know what to do with myself.” He glanced over his shoulder, his expression a rare example of unease in the Draconequus. “Rebuild the garden? I think it was destroyed for a reason. And I don’t think I’d be able to stay there without thinking of the others… How the Unseelie Court… killed the Draconequi.”

“The Court’s been banished, Discord,” Adagio said with a firm voice, one that she didn’t fully believe in. “And the Rainbow of Darkness went with them. I don’t think there’s any power, fairy or mortal, who can hope to harm you now.”

“It’s not about me.” He wiped the worry from his mug and grinned, displaying his snaggletooth as if it were a glamourous ivory horn. “It’s about letting bygones be gone by. It’s about moving forward, reaching for the future, kicking the dust from my proverbial sandals.”

Adagio plopped her bag beside him and opened it, revealing the three golden apples they’d secreted away from the Unseelie Court. Three apples that contained the elixir of life, the power to return youth to the old, to keep the young strong. Even just looking at them, Adagio was filled with vigor. A vim that left her unable to sit still. She looked up at him with a furrowed brow. “Maybe the Tree of Life was destroyed for a reason. But maybe that reason was that Ba’al Shamayim is an evil, sick dastard. Maybe it’s more important that we saved these fruits.”

Discord chuckled, rubbing her head with his talon. “Well, if that’s how you feel about it, I’m not going to try and stop you.”

“Besides…” She rubbed the skin of one of the apples until she could see her face staring back at her. “While I was with the Tree of Harmony, I got this… this feeling. Like this is what I was supposed to do with my life. Like it would be important some day. More than even I know.”

Discord snorted. “More important than what you did for River?”

“Maybe.” She shrugged. “Maybe taking care of both—Life and Harmony—is what I’m meant for.”

Discord tapped a paw against his chin. “You know, long ago, the Tree of Harmony had another name.”

Adagio’s eyes widened. “What was it?”

“It was once the Tree of Knowledge. Then, through perfect Knowledge, we achieved Harmony.” He picked up a golden apple and dangled it by its stem in front of her eyes. “Life and Knowledge. Dare I say, in order to fully comprehend the one, you must eat much of the other.”

She took the apple from him and placed it alongside its siblings. She sealed the bag and slung it over her back. “Then I shall travel to the Tree of Harmony to glean its knowledge. Shall you accompany me, Discord Draconequus?”

“I shall, until forces more powerful than I thrust us apart.” He tittered at his little comment, though Adagio noted a hint of wariness in his voice. “At least… at least until the new golden apple tree sprouts. I wasn’t kidding when I said the thought of it… haunts me.”

Adagio frowned, walking at a gentle pace through the forest. She spoke softly, her voice only just carrying to his ears. “Don’t think of it as all that remains of your people. Think of it as a final ‘rut you’ to Ba’al Shamayim. A final failure of his kingdom to endure. A symbol of everything he’s ever done being undone and becoming new again.”

Discord’s soft smile was a far cry from his usual belly-deep guffaw, but it seemed all the more real for it. “You sound like my uncle, Antipathy. The guy wouldn’t admit the sky was blue if he wasn’t the one who said it first. But you’d find no one you’d rather have on your side.”

“Sounds like a fun guy. Also like a guy whose lights I’d like to punch out.” Adagio Dazzle adjusted the young blossom in her mane to prevent it from blowing away in the bitter-smelling wind. “What’d he look like? Was he as crazy a jumble of limbs as you?”

“I hesitate to say he even resembled an animal at all.” Discord twirled his goatee with a bird-like talon. “Except for his head, which looked quite a bit like… like a… Hmm. That’s odd.”

“Draconequi often are.”

“No, it’s just—” Discord scratched the top of his head, peering into the middle-distance. “I… I had it just a moment ago, but… I swear, I can’t recall how he looked.”

Adagio pursed her lips. “You? Your brain isn’t even real—er—physical. Is it? How does a Creature of Thought forget something?”

“I mean—” Discord hunched his back, pacing back and forth while still keeping pace with Adagio. “I didn’t think it possible. But now that I think back… some of the Draconequi are fuzzy. Indistinct. I remember the day to day drudgery of caring for the Tree of Life. I remember meeting you. I remember—hmm—I remember finding everyone… dead.” He drooped in midair, no longer pantomiming a walk as he floated alongside her. “Is it because they were Creatures of Thought as well? Never truly existing physically in this world? Is that why they’ve faded from my memory? Because they weren’t real as you mortals understand reality?”

“If they weren’t real, how could they have cared for the Tree of Life?” Adagio got behind him and pushed him along. Gently, if firmly. “You are as real as anything else in my life, so I don’t think you have to worry about that.”

He sighed, more forcefully than before, and lowered an eyebrow. “Then what do I have to worry about, pray tell?”

Adagio gritted her teeth and spoke out of the side of her mouth. “You’re the one saying control is an illusion. Why worry about what you can’t change?”

He crossed his arms and became too heavy for Adagio to move. “Because you don’t believe a word of what you just said, Little Miss Songstress.”

“Yeah, well—” She stopped. Her head fell forward to lean against his back. “Yeah. You’re right. We’ll figure it out together. I promise.”

Discord decreased his mass and was practically launched forward by Adagio’s forehead. He waved as he sailed away on the wind. “I’ll hold you to that promise, my friend!”

“Get your Draconebutt back here, you dummy!” Adagio charged after her friend, feeling a little lighter on her feet at his improved mood. She clicked her tongue, clicked her heels, and galloped east, towards the cavern that held the Tree of Harmony.

All the while, Discord’s strange memory loss hung heavily on her mind.

---

Central City
Everfree Territory of The Changeling Empire
The Two-Hundred-Fifty-First Autumn in the Reign of Her Majesty, River Cicada, Year 749 BCE

Adagio Dazzle stared down at the corpse of the changeling she’d just killed. There were dozens like it littering the valley, alongside an equal number of pony corpses. This creature in particular looked young, perhaps just old enough to join the army.

Perhaps just old enough to fake being old enough.

The changeling city loomed in the distance. A massive multi-level ziggurat, beneath which ran the great halls and cavernous tunnels of the Changeling Empire’s Central City. Changelings swarmed around it like a black cloud, like a swarm of fruit flies over rotten apples. Unicorn magic clashed with changeling fire as the pony slaves revolted against their keepers. Pegasi launched flight after flight of arrows and spears. Earth ponies caused the earth to shake beneath their hooves as they stampeded through the changeling horde.

“Maiden Adagio!”

Adagio tore her eyes away from the battle and caught sight of a mud-covered earth pony running towards her. He was bleeding from several wounds, but she suspected his opponents had fared much worse. “What is it, Haberdasher?”

“It’s the strutters, Ma’am!” Haberdasher heaved in great gobs of air as he skidded to a stop in front of her. “Our troops are barely holding them inside the ziggurat! We are going to be overwhelmed within an hour.”

Adagio winced. Strutters; mechanical monsters designed by changeling scientists to be brutal, unstoppable war machines. They were powered by harvested pony hearts, guided by changeling soldiers. Killing one of them was as good as killing a fellow pony, and a thousand times more difficult. “Have the earth ponies collapse the entrances. Changeling stone crumbled the same as any other.”

“We tried,” Haberdasher said, still breathing heavily. His voice was growing more ragged by the second. “They dug themselves out. They clear the debris away as fast as we can create it. The front line is collapsing.”

Adagio closed her eyes. He needed to rest. They all needed to rest. They’d been at this fight, collapsing changeling camps and outposts one at a time, for nearly a year now. The ponies had finally risen up after decades of slavery… only to be faced with an overwhelming army. Now, rather than liberate the ponies, Adagio found herself leading them to their deaths.

“Have you heard anything from the Mother?” Adagio touched the red gemstone she wore around her neck and felt for its power humming within. When the stallion didn’t reply, she looked to him, only to see that he had collapsed in a lifeless heap, his strength spent forever. Adagio cursed and charged towards Central City, leaving his corpse among his fellow warriors.

As she approached the city, she heard a voice singing a song louder than the cacophony of battle. It could only be Partita, Mother of the Sirens. She quickened her pace. Perhaps she could add her song to Partita’s, giving their troops even greater strength and unbalancing their enemies. Her Siren’s Sigil glimmered from its place around her neck, drawing power from the violence, lending its strength to Adagio’s body. It could turn the hearts and direct the minds of any who heard it. The varied and interconnected pathways she had carved into the gemstone directed the magic in intricate, ingenious ways that no one before her—and no one after her—had ever devised. Some would call the Sirens’ Sigils her magnum opus.

When she drew near the ziggurat, Partita’s voice boomed louder and louder. Adagio realized with a start that it was not merely from proximity. Partita was singing ever louder, reaching notes once thought impossible for a pony to sing. Her song had reached a pitch and speed that made it so that Adagio could no longer understand the words. Her hackles rose, sending a prickling sensation running up and down her entire body. This was wrong. A spell of this magnitude shouldn’t be attempted alone, not even by Crone Toccata. Adagio bowed her head forward and ran until her chest burned and her legs cramped. Then she ran faster. She ran past a pegasus who had fallen from the sky, clutching her ears and screaming like a madmare, though there was no way to hear her over the tremendous siren’s song.

Just before Adagio reached the ziggurat, just before she could get close enough to add her voice to the song, just before she had a hope of helping Partita, the Mother reached the Crescendo of the spell. The air pressure bodily picked her up and flung her backwards. If she had not been wearing her own Sigil, she would have gone deaf for hours, if not days. As it was, she still felt a pressure in her skull and a ringing in her ears. All the changelings dropped from their flight paths, collapsing on the walls of the pyramidal building, or dropping face-first into the mud of the battlefield. The ponies fared no better, though most of them lay some distance from the changeling city.

When the note ended, there was silence.

A resounding crack, like a hundred thunderbolts flashing at once, pulled Adagio’s eyes to the ziggurat. Cracks appeared on the surface of the stone walls. Tremors shook the very ground beneath her. She watched in awe as the building seemed to melt before her eyes, sinking in on itself as it fell down, down, down into the depths of the earth, becoming debris and dust long before it hit bedrock. The screams of pain as changelings were kneaded into the carnage were drowned out by the death rattle of Central City.

Adagio staggered to her feet. Where once stood Central City was only a pile of rubble atop a vast network of caved-in catacombs. Strutters and bodies alike lay entombed. She trotted towards the ruin, moving slowly; every step could lead to a newly created sinkhole. Her gemstone necklace glimmered weakly as she used its magic to seek out any sign of life in the debris.

It took hours of digging before she stumbled upon the shattered remains of Partita’s green gemstone. Beside it lay shattered remains that no longer resembled Adagio’s friend. Adagio stared in mind-numbed stupor. How was she supposed to react? The pony soldiers around her had begun to regain their hearing, and had thus realized the battle had ended in their favor. All around, she could hear weary cheers, some of victory, some of merely being alive. She had little sympathy for either.

A few hours later, night had fallen over the Everfree. The pony army had rounded up the changeling survivors and locked them away. Two hundred of the creatures remained at most. Two hundred out of an entire city-state. Adagio glanced at the tent that held the iron-barred pen. Huge guards, the only ponies holding non-makeshift weapons, stood guard at the tent flaps.

Adagio herself sat at a fire with a few other pony leaders who had survived the battle. Each one was tired, verging on death by exhaustion. None of them had said much since the city collapsed. Adagio didn’t intend to draw their thoughts out of them. Small camps formed all around, their fires dim in the oppressive, starless night. The army couldn’t celebrate their victory. They were too hungry. Too injured.

“Maiden Adagio!” A pony trotted up to her fire and threw her a salute. “The scouts report a squad of ponies is approaching our perimeter. It seems they’re from Crone Toccata’s army up north.”

“They might be bringing news,” Adagio said as she stood up. Her generals followed close behind while she made her way towards the approaching scouts. A small, spry yellow-coated fellow, his skin mottled with bruising and mistreated wounds, waited for her alongside a burly green brute and a lithe, blue-coated mare.

The yellow stallion saluted, but remained seated. “Maiden Adagio… the northern changeling city has fallen. Queen River Cicada’s body was found in the forest—she had cut out her own heart. The changelings either died in battle or scattered.”

Adagio sucked in a deep breath. “Then the war is over? We won?”

“They were…” The yellow pony glanced at his companions and found no comfort nor closure. “There’s a lot…”

The scouts were given a meal—bread and water—and a fire to warm themselves beside. The scout—Bumble was his name—spoke quietly with Adagio and her commanders. “When the battle ended, and the changeling army surrendered, Tungsten named himself king. His first act was to declare ‘Dark Magic’ outlawed.”

Adagio frowned. “Dark Magic?”

“Necromancy.” Bumble swallowed hard. “Spells which spread diseases. Communication with evil spirits.” He gave her a pointed look. “Mind-altering spells.”

Adagio touched a hoof to her necklace. “He can’t possibly be conflating the Sirens with necromancers!”

“Maiden of the Sirens, his first act was to burn Crone Toccata at the stake.” Bumble wiped dirt from his forehead; it only served to smear it deeper into his coat. “He lit the pyre himself.”

The green mountain of a pony passed Adagio a small sack. She opened it with trembling hooves and poured its contents on the ground. It was shards of a purple gemstone, one that she had carved for the grouchy old mare she had called her dear friend. “How… how could you leave me, too?”

The blue mare shook her head. “It was clear he’d been planning this for a long time. The moment the battle was over, he was giving a speech while his troops captured Crone Toccata. Nobody had time to react.”

One of Adagio’s advisors, an older pony who had been a slave his entire life, grasped her foreleg. “Adagio, we can fight back! Declare yourself queen and all these ponies will follow you to their death. They have no power like a Siren at their side; with you, we can outmatch their army and bring peace to the ponies at last!”

Adagio looked to each of her advisors in turn, then glanced over her shoulder at Bumble’s trio. A solid lump of lead formed in her stomach. Her ears drooped atop her curly mane. “But… They’re ponies.”

“They made the first move, My Lady,” a tough-as-nails mare said. “They’ll execute you unless we act fast.”

Adagio turned away from both groups and stared at the remains of Central City. The mound loomed like the corpse of a giant. “I need some time alone. To process this.”

She started walking before any could object. As she trotted, she could hear snippets of her advisor’s conversation drifting across the ratty mud field.

“We should gather the troops.”

“Are we sure they’ll be willing to fight a war again so soon?”

“If we emphasize King Tungsten’s betrayal, they’ll be willing to defend Maiden Adagio.”

“Drat, what about the prisoners? We can’t travel with them.”

“If we let them go, we risk them rising up like we ponies did. It’s best to end everything now. It’s mercy.”

She shut her eyes. Of course. Of course she knew this would happen. It happened with River. It was inevitable it would happen with Tungsten. And it would happen to whoever eventually overthrew the ponies as well. The corruption of power. The denial of equinity to other species. How had she been so naïve, so stupid?

She hummed a soft tune, not enough to rouse the camp, but just enough that the two guards at the changelings’ pen were unaware of her. They wouldn’t remember her visit. She ducked into the tent and instantly had an audience of two-hundred. They cowered away, all having seen her transform into a terrifying monster on the battlefield.

“They’re going to kill you in the morning,” Adagio said. When the changelings moaned in sheer hopelessness, she continued, “When I open this cage, run. Do not go near any pony towns. Do not approach any ponies at all. Keep running until you can’t run any more, then keep running. Get as far away as you possibly can. Remember, if you bring harm to anybody, I will know about it.”

One changeling, taller than the rest, pointed her horn threateningly at the Siren. “How do we know you won’t simply slay us with arrows the moment we leave this cage?”

“Can you take that chance?” Adagio gripped the iron lock on the bars of the pen and ripped it in half. The way lay open. She glared at them, her gemstone illuminating her face with a fierce, red light. “Get out.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the changelings filed out, swiftly and silently. They escaped into the darkness with nary a hint of movement. Adagio watched from the front of the tent, staring intently into the shadows until she no longer felt the presence of the runaways.

She broke into a gallop, running until she had left behind even the meager light of the campfires. She stumbled over something she didn’t want to see. She kept going, until she had reached not the changeling city, but the canyon beside it. It was a deadly drop, but she knew the path to take downward. Stones jutting out at just the right angle, vines with enough strength to support her, roots that couldn’t be moved even by an earthquake. She reached the bottom and scampered through the darkness with only her own Siren’s magic to guide her.

After a hike that would kill most ponies, she came to an unnatural cave carved into the canyon wall. Words were carved over the entrance, written in language ancient even to her: “Where the First Word was spoken.” She all but ignored the words as she hurried into the cavern, to a wide open room that glowed with a familiar light. She shut her eyes and moved by memory, coming to a stop only when she was nestled in the roots of a magical tree.

The Tree of Harmony warmed her with friendship’s light. The sweet smell of its fruit tickled her nose. She almost heard the laughter of friends long dead, a glimpse of warmth in her heart. The blue, crystalline bark tingled at the touch, bustling with magic that resonated with her heartbeat. The tears came at last. She took the shards of Partita and Toccata’s gemstones and laid them at the foot of the tree. She wept, the two mares’ beautiful singing voices echoing in her mind. The two ponies she had come to rely on. The two she had though she would never have to say goodbye to.

When she opened her eyes again, she saw the memento Discord had left with her: a broken branch and single leaf from the golden apple tree she’d grown. He, too, was gone. Never again to remember her. She’d tried to grow a new tree, but it had come to maturity too late. It hadn’t flowered until long after he had been taken by his own madness. Forgotten memories couldn’t return. A destroyed mind couldn’t be rebuilt.

Once again, she was alone.

“Now that is a truly pitiable sight.”

Adagio shrieked and jumped back from the tree. A creature lay in the branches, looking much like a pony with a clear sense of wrongness to it. His face was remarkably unremarkable, the type to slip right out of memory the instant you weren’t looking at it. His irises were gray as rocks; his eyes lacked life of their own, only reflecting the intelligence in hers. He wore long black robes over his gray body, to match his midnight-black mane. His limbs hung from the branches loosely, as though his tendons had no tension. His face contorted into the rough approximation of a smile. His skin seemed not to fit over his bones.

“Who are you?” Adagio snarled. “What are you doing in this sacred place?”

“Sacred?” The unpony tilted its head towards her, barely moving its lips as it spoke in a half-whisper. “Sacred, coming from you? Was Tungsten wrong to slay your sister? Your Siren magic steals the hearts and minds of creatures, robbing them of their free will. Removing their ability to love.”

An itch crawled its way along her skin, just beneath her orange coat. “What are you talking about?”

“Is he wrong?” The creature tilted his head to the side and turned his eyes to the ceiling. “Is he wrong to wish for freedom for his little ponies? They slaved for years beneath the scourge of the changelings. Now you would enslave them to a different master. You would enslave them to yourself.” He chuckled, a twittering little sound. “You didn’t trust them to follow you of their own free will.”

“The necklaces are about unity,” Adagio said, rubbing the irritation on her back. “We gathered an army in a matter of months. It was the only way to fight back against the changelings.”

“You didn’t trust them, and that lack of faith robbed them of the choice to trust you.” He lowered his face and glared at her from beneath his eyebrows. “You, yourself, robbed them of the chance to trust you. They would all die for you now, and they never had the chance to say otherwise. You are worse than the changelings, Adagio Gemcarver. Adagio Heartthief. Adagio Loverobber. Adagio Weaponmaker.”

“Enough!”

She had not noticed him climb out of the tree, but she backed away when she saw him stalking towards her. He hissed through clenched teeth. “You who had no faith in your followers denied their own faith. Do you not know that it is written that anything done without faith is sin?”

“Go away whatever you are!”

“Is not Tungsten,” he said with a smiling growl, “their hero? Adagio Lieschemer. Adagio Hatebringer. Adagio Mindrotter.”

She ran from the cave and into the pitch-black night. The shadows seemed to crawl around her like insects chittering against the itch in her skin. It was not a welcoming night, but it seemed preferable to spending more time with the pony who was not a pony. She knew what sort of being he was. He was a fairy. Of the Unseelie Court most likely. The ones thought defeated by Queen River Cicada.

Some of their number had returned?

A red glow appeared over the crest of the canyon wall. Adagio frowned at it; sunrise should not have come for quite some time yet. Had Tungsten grown impatient? Did he wish to flaunt his power before his new subjects? It seemed like a waste to exhaust so many unicorns in a showboating maneuver.

As she stared, the itch intensified and her eyes widened with understanding. “That’s not the sun.”

The unpony whispered into her ear. “Careful what fences you tear down, lest you unleash what they kept out.” She swung at his face, but he was no longer there. Still the voice trembled. “You’ve been gone a few hours, haven’t you?”

She climbed the canyon wall with her heartbeat heavy in her ears. Her hooves trembled. All she could hear was the crackle of flames. All she could see was smoke moving like a mountainous shadow in front of a bonfire. She had more than a few scrapes and bruises before she reached the top. But no pain could compare.

The camp was gone, consumed by fire. The bodies were well on their way to becoming ash. She could see Bumble lying alongside her advisors, could imagine their voices screaming for help, but no help had come.

A beast clawed its way through the smoke and flames. Its body was hewn from pure crystal. Its wings were veined with magic channels that spider-webbed across the webbed curves. Its short hind legs were of little use for running, but its lengthy forelegs ended in grasping claws sharp enough to tear into iron. A whiplike tail flicked a pony into its beaklike mouth, where it was devoured by razor-sharp teeth. Purple flames, the same color as its glowing chest, billowed from its gullet with a roar.

There were dozens of them.

Flying, crawling, scraping, burning, screeching. The monsters swarmed the fields of the Everfree, tearing up trees by the roots and incinerating the rest. Whatever forest animals hadn’t fled the battle between the changelings and the ponies were destroyed.

“It’s wonderful that you freed the prisoners,” the unpony whispered above the cacophony. “otherwise, they too would have been caught up in the slaughter.”

Adagio scooped up a rock and hurled it at the unpony’s face. He stepped deftly out of the way. He brushed dust from the front of his robes and eyed her with a questioning smile.

“You know,” he added, as if an afterthought, “my grotesques would never have been able to stand against the changeling strutters. Now, though, it shall be centuries before the Everfree Valley is inhabitable again.”

Adagio knelt in the soil and watched the grotesques rampage. Part of her wanted to charge in, to fight, to be killed alongside her fellow ponies. But the other part of her, the part that had carved the gemstone she wore around her neck, that kept her where she was. That kept her holding on to life. That kept her enduring the pain.

The unpony looked down at her and offered a limp hoof. “Adagio the Abandoned. Adagio the Abandoner. You can no longer name yourself among the mortal. You have ascended over the last two-hundred-fifty years. You have become part of this world, a part that shall never grow old nor fade. The Sirens could become queens. Overthrow King Tungsten and his newborn Crystal Empire, Adagio the Revenged. Claim your place as Adagio the Everlasting. Adagio the Exalted. Adagio the Beloved. What need have immortals for the petty dealings of mortal creatures? Stop pretending. Embrace what you have become.”

She touched her hoof to the warm, shining gem. She looked north, where Tungsten waited with his army of ponies, where the changeling capital lay in ruins, where he would slowly move further and further north to escape the grotesques. She looked east, towards the ocean and the griffon kingdom, which had already overthrown the third changeling city. Perhaps she might find sanctuary there among the gilded creatures. She would find none with Tungsten. She would find none to the west, where the garden of Elysium lay in ruins. She would find none here, where she was little more than food for the grotesque infestation.

Adagio turned south, to the unknown lands and the lifeless deserts.

The unpony watched her as she walked, step by step, into the shadows. “I doubt the changelings would accept you either, Adagio the Conqueror.”

She lay her ears against her head and kept moving.

The unpony smiled, a hideous, unnatural, bare-toothed expression. “One day, when your memory fades and your life grows wearisome, you will return to me. And you will bow before me. And it shall be… Most… Very… Amusing.” He pulled a black hat from Nowhere and placed it atop his head, balanced perfectly between his bent ears. “And you shall call me Princeling Jeuk, and you shall do my bidding, Adagio the Slave!”

It was some time before the laughter of Jeuk faded into the night. It was still longer before the violence of the grotesques dimmed in the distance.

It was decades before Adagio spoke to another pony again.

---

A Family Cave
North of the Cauldron, the Dragon Kingdom’s Capital
Early Spring, Year 500 BCE

Behemoth held her egg close to the warmth of her chest. The egg shown from within, the fire of her yet-to-be-born child fiercer than any forge formed by ponies or griffons. She breathed softly on the child to lend him her heat. As fierce as an egg’s heart was, they could not survive long without their parent’s magical flame.

Her green scales glittered in the light of the hearth of her cave, which far outshone the light of her modest collection of gems and baubles. Mere trinkets they were, compared with the joy of her child’s imminent hatchday. Just a few more months. She smiled as she thought of it, touching her clawtips to the rock-hard, smooth shell. The egg itself seemed almost gemlike, sparkling and polka-dotted with both her purple scales and her husband’s green.

“More precious than silver
More gilded than gold
A magical, mythical
Memory unfolds

“Hush now dear baby
The night’s not so dark
When I hear the whispering love
Of your heart”

Her frilled ears opened to catch the sound of a dragon clawing its way into the cave, unsteady on his legs. The familiar, bespectacled face of her husband appeared, carrying countless pounds of meat fresh from the hunt on his back. “If I am to feed three mouths I fear I shall never stop hunting.”

“Levi!” She greeted him with a kiss on his cheek and gently took the mound of meat from his back. “Perhaps not, but more gemstones would alleviate the need for protein.”

Levi sighed, scratching behind his webbed head frills. “Yes. That is… something we need to discuss.”

She carried the meat quickly to the pile of rock salt she kept in the kitchen. Though cooling the meat could keep it fresh, such was impossible in a dragon household. Instead, preservation was accomplished via salting or pickling the food. She set about salting as she spoke. “Levi… Hmm. The others talked about leaving the Cauldron again, didn’t they?”

“It is no longer talk, Beth.” Levi took his turn on the bed, surrounding the egg with his warm body, wrapping his wide, fluke-ended tail in a protective wall. “Dragonlord Thorntooth has decreed that we are to travel across the sea to a new land. It is the only way to escape the grotesques. They cannot travel over the ocean, as our fliers can.”

“The dragons always migrate north and south, never east or west,” Beth said, rubbing salt into the meat. She narrowed her eyes to study it; it appeared to be pork. Non-sapient meat was difficult to come by nowadays, and the dragons recognized inter-sapient cannibalism for the evil it was. Levi must have traveled far to find a herd of pigs. Dangerously far. “At least, so it was in the days before the grotesques came.”

“But the grotesques indeed came.” Levi idly blew superheated breath across the shell of the egg, tapping his claws in a rattle against the floor. “And we can no longer go north to the gem mines, so long as they rule the Everfree. The west no longer has good hunting grounds, none that diamond dog bandits haven’t pillaged. So we must go east. We must cross the sea.”

Behemoth hissed, her tongue slithering like a snake swallowing dirt. “Do you agree with that, or are you being forced to go along with popular opinion?”

“Agree or disagree,” Levi muttered, “one must obey an order from the Dragonlord.”

“No!” She abandoned her kitchen to look Levi in the eye. He stared back sorrowfully. “I’ve only just laid our egg! You can’t be called on an adventure when your duties draw you home. The child needs their parents both.”

“I know…” Levi’s frills lay flat against his neck. “But, fool that I am, I consumed too much knowledge. I am one of the few dragons who can speak griffish.” He shut his eyes with a gentle shake of his head. “In order to find safe land across the ocean, we will need to speak with our neighbors. Would you have Rockbiter or Hammerstone attempt to reason with the griffon king?”

“Thundercrust speaks zebra,” she said with a growl.

“We dragons could never live in the Lowlands.” He gestured to the pile of treasure she’d laid up. “We need caves. We need mines. We need gems.”

“We need you.” She turned with a huff and resumed her duty of preserving the saltpork. “Does Dragonlord Thorn-in-the-Rump intend to take your place on the hunting pack? Does he plan to give heat to our egg while I do the hunting?”

“You’ll be taken care of—”

“And you?” She slammed a hunk of rock salt against the top of the barrel she was filling. “When your baby hatches while you’re thousands of miles away?”

He wrapped his forelegs around her, careful to slide beneath her wings without bending them. He had the egg in his claws and held it against her warm chest. “This is so that our child can grow up free to play in the sunlight. Free to hunt and mine as he sees fit. Free of the constant threat of the grotesques.” A sizzling, steaming tear fell from his eye and ran down her back. “Another cave was attacked. Near the border. Nobody got out alive. The monsters are coming closer every day, Beth. We can’t just sit and wait for them to come for us.”

Beth ground her fangs together. “So you have rationalized Thorn’s commands.”

“Either I rationalize them or I chafe beneath them.” He rounded his long neck around hers to look her in the eye. “Which would you ask of me?”

“To chafe. At least then we would be of like mind.” She tossed a hunk of rock salt to herself like a ball. “Now get out of my kitchen before I add you to the meal.”

With a shut-eyed nod, Levi slipped from one cavernous room to the next, their egg tucked in the crook of his arm. He set about studying his own little treasure hoard; a series of books he was in the process of enlarging to dragon size. The original texts lay in a small huddle on a stone desk, beneath a massive (to pony standards) magnifying glass. He sat at the desk and gazed at one tome in particular, “The Tree of Harmony.” “I shan’t have time to work on these while we’re away.”

Beth glanced away from him when he turned to her. “I’ll keep your books safe, don’t worry. I might even dabble with a few of the shorter stories myself. I’d like our child to be able to read most languages.”

“I, as well.” He took the egg in both foreclaws and smiled at its incandescence. “Perhaps one day the stories will be about him.”

She laughed. “About him?”

“Why not?” Levi raised an eyebrow at his wife. “Have you known any dragons to have a boring life?”

Behemoth shook her head, putting the last of the saltpork into the barrel. “Not just yet.”

---

The cavern was dark. Behemoth huddled in the inky blackness, scared to breathe, lest the light of her fire give away her position. The egg sat silently against her chest, its light flickering like an ember in the early autumn chill.

It had been months since Thorntooth’s expedition left for the eastern continent. They had not returned. They might never return. All she had heard was rumors that the griffons and dragons had come to blows, in a war that had left both sides devastated. No word from Levi. No sign nor scale.

The grotesques’ boldness was understated, Beth had come to realize. They swarmed like flies, buzzing closer and closer to the Cauldron. The dragon soldiers, the few who had remained behind, had their numbers struck down in droves.

The monsters were vicious, tearing their prey apart, ripping into impenetrable dragon hide like it was cloth. The bodies had the appearance of gems but tasted like the worst sort of carrion. The fire that burned in their chests, visible for miles around, was a strange purple that burned things which should not be able to burn, and left unscathed only the grotesques themselves. Their teeth devoured dragon flesh until nothing but bones remained. Their cry was a shriek unlike anything Beth had ever heard before.

She heard it that very night.

They never slept, nor slowed, nor even rested. It was as if there was something of the undead about them. As if simple things like air, water, and food meant little to them in comparison with destruction.

Beth covered herself and her egg with her vast wings. She pressed her child against her chest scales. The egg needed its mother’s breath. It needed its father’s breath. It flickered faintly, begging for warmth and sustenance.

The dragons standing guard at the cavern entrance screeched as grotesques descended upon them.

“Creator, please protect my baby.” Her voice was hoarse with fear and cold. “Whatever happens to me, please protect my baby.”

The grotesques howled as the dragons fell silent. Clawing and scraping echoed in the cavern, and the purple light of their unnatural fire caught her eyes with its glow. In that moment, fear seized her as it had never before. They were coming for her baby. They were coming for her family.

The fire in her chest blazed until it could be seen through her scales. Her wings opened until they filled the whole of the cavern. Her tail thrashed as she bared her teeth. The first grotesque to appear in the room found itself grasped by the neck and dashed to pieced against the wall. The next two fell beneath a blaze of fire such that a volcano would fall woefully short. Claws flashed and green blood dripped from a hole in her side. She ignored it. Another wound appeared in her neck. She never noticed it.

Behemoth fell upon the invaders with a ferocity only a mother dragon could wreak. Her cedar-like limbs crushed the monsters even as they clawed through her wings. Her jaws carved through their numbers and pushed them out of the cavern and into the stormy night. Lightning flashed and thunder boomed, drowning out the carnage of the grotesques and their uncooperative quarry. She roared, but the cry of rage only attracted more of the monsters. As many that died, tens more descended. She threw them down the mountainside. Her tail whipped and buried many beneath an avalanche of rocks.

Another gemlike claw found its mark buried deep in her heart. Tears hissing with steam fell down her face. With one final roar of anguish, she struck the walls of her cavernous home and collapsed the entrance. The weight of the mountain pressed down, locking her home tight from the grasping claws of the beastly grotesques.

Within the lightless cavern, the glow of the egg dwindled, bit by bit, until it, too, became cold as stone.

---

Dragonbone Mountain
Southern Equestria
Midsummer, Year 60 BCE

The mountain loomed overhead like a tooth that had been sawed in half, jagged-edged and uninviting. Celestia took that as a challenge. She climbed up the boulders, only occasionally using her wings to balance. The sun glinted off her nearly-pure-white coat and warmed her, particularly the cutie mark that had come from her first time raising it. When she had used its power to save her sister and slay a bandit king.

She put such thoughts far from her mind, instead focusing on the climb. She had seen a cave on the side of the mountain when their procession was still a long ways off, and she wished to explore whatever might have been hidden there. Secret treasure? Lost civilizations? A hint as to the location of the Elements of Harmony? Unlikely, but her imagination ran wild regardless.

A small, serpentine creature rested against the nape of her neck, resting his hands behind his head. His limbs were mismatched, one reptilian, one avian, one feline, and one bovine. Two wings, one feathered and the other webbed, fluttered against her back as he stretched lazily. He grinned at her, his snaggletooth wiggling with soon-to-be-spoken sass. “Prithee, to what end doth thou weary thyself?

“I know it not.” She leapt from boulder top to boulder top, nearly stumbling on loose shale. “Though I appreciate the peace here among the rocks. The quiet.”

“You seek quietness and yet invite mine goodself along.” He curled himself up like a cat and rested in the middle of her wings as she flapped her way up a particularly-tall ledge. “Truth, my name doth be Discord, but thou art thyself the addle-brained fool.”

“Thou’rt a different sort of noise.” Celestia crested a final ledge and found the cave mouth yawning before her. “White noise, present but peaceful. Lacking pressure. Lacking anxiety.”

“Lacking sense, hopefully.”

“Aye.” Celestia smiled. “Lacking a great deal of sense. Thou wouldst never be mistaken for one of the wise.”

“I have made too many mistakes to be one of the wise. I have too many knowledge gaps. I’ll not accept the responsibility of wisdom.” Discord slithered from her back and grew several times over, until he was at more-or-less his usual height. He towered over Celestia, who was already tall for her age, though she was not quite as tall as the average stallion yet. He approached the cavern with hesitant footsteps, tasting the air with a forked tongue. “’Tis… ’tis not a pleasant place.”

“Verily?” she asked, lighting her horn and sensing through the magic in the air. “I sense some faint hint of love magic. Just a touch.”

“Love was here, aye, sure enough.” He licked his finger and stuck it in his ear. “But violence also. Death lies among these rocks, Princess.”

“Do not call me ‘Princess.’” She strutted past him into the cave mouth. “I am no princess, merely a warrior.”

“So thou sayest.” He ducked to enter, making a face as he did so. “Thy countenance resembles the prophecy more each day.”

Signs of a recent earthquake lay everywhere. Once-covered rocks lay exposed to the sunlight for the first time in centuries, or even millennia. Cracks allowed water and sunlight to trickle down into the depths of the hollow mountain. Moss grew on the walls, while the floor crawled with critters too pale to enjoy bare sunlight, but too lively to survive in the sunless depths. Celestia carefully picked her way through them, while Discord hovered overhead on his mismatched wings.

Not far into the cave, they came upon a massive skull that could have easily fit both her and Discord within it. The bones were cracked in places, worn smooth in others. The full skeleton lay beyond it, its ribs caved in and its legs splayed. It had been buried here for hundreds of years, the silent guardian of its demolished home.

“She’s female,” Celestia said, her voice echoing, “judging by her bone structure. A female dragon lying inside this collapsed cavern. Perhaps she lived here.”

“She was attacked,” Discord muttered. “Look at the claw marks on her vertebrae. It cannot be said whether she died during the assault or the avalanche.”

“They might have been one and the same.” Celestia crawled past the skull and through what remained of the ribs. The wing bones lay haphazardly around the empty torso, torn from their place. “Mayhap she fought to keep something safe.”

“Dragons do so love their hoarded gold.”

Celestia didn’t think that was it, but she kept it to herself. Discord’s voice was so flat she almost expected him to serve it with syrup and fruit. Instead of argue the point, she led the two of them deeper into the cavern, until she had to light the way with the shine of her horn. She found three rooms deep in the mountain. One seemed to be a sitting room, with a bookshelf holding larger-than-life tomes which would have fit perfectly in the female dragon’s claws. Some smaller volumes were so decayed only the covers remained, and the rest disintegrated at the touch. A humble kitchen drew her eye next, where no sign of food remained aside from a mound of rock salt in the corner. Time had conquered the rest.

The third room was the bedroom, with a round, blanketed bed built for two full-sized dragons. From the looks of it, they would sleep in a ring made up of their two bodies encircling each other, guarding something precious in the center. That precious thing tugged at her heart, calling out to her as though she could hear a voice from long ago, speaking love and protection with words she couldn’t understand. She ignored the small pile of gold in the back of the room and made for the exact center of the bed, which held a round, stonelike egg, about as big around as Captain Pansy’s head. It seemed to be coated with glitter over the smooth, gray surface.

“Ah.” Discord’s voice was low as he took in the scene. “I do believe I understand the whole of it, now. She died to protect her child. The child died without its mother.” He shrugged. “Life and death, love and loss, contained in a single mountain cave.”

Celestia lifted the egg in her telekinetic grip, weighing it with a heft. “Dost thou truly believe it dead? I feel something within the egg. Perhaps ’tis sleeping.”

“Thou feel only what thou wish to feel.” Discord shrunk to the size of a cat and perched on her back. “Dragons die without their inner fire, and the stone lies colder than ice.”

“Yet still…” She handed the egg to Discord, who bent beneath the weight for comedic effect. “Hold this. I wish to speak with Mage Clover.”

Before Discord could say anything, she galloped from the cave and into the sunlight. Hopping down the mountain would be quicker work than climbing it, and her wings would allow her to glide most of the way. About halfway down the mountain, she caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye and paused to look.

A wingblade flew through the air, nearly hitting her face. It bounced off of a boulder beside her. A lock of her mane fell to the ground, having been severed by the keen edge of the knife. Celestia let out a shriek and fell to her rump, dumping Discord from her back.

“Hell’s Teeth, what wert thou thinking!” A pegasus mare, tall and strong, with a wispy white mane and scars all over her blue coat, landed before Celestia and grabbed the alicorn’s ears. The mare shook Celestia’s head to punctuate every word. “Entering an area where I am training? Dost thou know what thou hast done? I might have killed thee!”

The nearness of the knife, the adrenaline from the climb, the loudness of the screams, the pain in her ears, all combined to force tears from Celestia’s eyes. “I’m sorry, Commander! I didst not know! I didst not know!”

Commander Hurricane stopped shaking Celestia’s head and let her ears go. The scar on the mare’s cheek, an old wound that would not heal, throbbed briefly before the older mare turned away, staring into the middle-distance. “Thou... Thou art… Thou speakest true. I hath not cordoned of my training area. I… Thou couldst not know.” Hurricane glanced back at her, moving her mouth as though she wished to say something more. She did not. She opened her wings and flew away, higher up the mountain.

Discord appeared from behind the rock he was hiding behind. “What an incalculably ill-tempered mare.” He strutted up to Celestia’s side, carrying the egg easily in one tiny hand. “Tred lightly around such, I suppose. Mayhap then I shall be among the wise.”

Celestia paid him no attention. She was too focused on stalling her tears. Stilling her trembling wings. Her ears throbbed, and she could barely hear the sweet sounds of nature that surrounded her. She felt embarrassment heat her cheeks, blubbering as she was in broad daylight.

Discord touched a soft paw to her side. He rubbed her shoulder gently. “Come. We do not have as much day as one might think. Thou hast spoken time and again on wasteful lazing.”

Celestia nodded, scooping Discord onto her back. She could feel the redness of her eyes keenly as she glided down the rest of the mountain. Yes, Discord was right. She just needed to focus. Keep her mind off the encounter. Keep her thoughts away from the vast task before her. Keep the pressure building up behind her eyes to a minimum.

At the base of the mountain lay a camp, hastily set up at the edge of Dragon Territory. Pony soldiers, lightly armored for the sake of the long march, trotted to and fro, going about their duties. One of them saluted to Celestia as she entered the campground, past the wooden spikes set up around the perimeter. Tents decorated with the symbol of Equestria—two alicorns encircling the sun and moon—stood in straight rows. A banner with the same image flew overhead, fastened near the largest tent in the company. This tent had only three walls, and was filled with tables and scrolls. Mages and wise ponies from the Crystal Empire mulled over the literature, drawing on maps and arguing amongst each themselves. It was to this tent Celestia walked.

Clover the Clever sat with Luna, teaching the younger alicorn a lesson on magic. Luna had been focused on learning magic for her entire life, and her thirst for knowledge had only grown more intense after Wulf the Diamond Dog’s attack. She didn’t even look up from her book when Celestia entered the tent, egg gripped with telekinesis.

The disinterest was a front, Celestia realized; Luna parted her cloak to allow the diminutive form of Discord to slip inside, hiding himself from Clover and the rest of the ponies who would ask too many questions about who and what he was. Celestia kept her eyes locked on Clover, suppressing a smile when he blew raspberries at the wizard unseen.

Clover covered her head with her hood and nodded when she saw that it was Celestia who had come up to her. Magic twinkled around her otherwise-blind eyes, causing her irises to glow. “Celestia. I had thought thou meant to climb—” She tilted her head and reached for Celestia’s ears. “Wert thou injured?”

Celestia jerked away from the hoof. “It’s nothing. I wanted to show you something I found.” She took special care to use the more formal “you” over the more familiar “thou.” Wizard Clover was the leader of the company, after all. She held the egg against the frog of Clover’s hoof. “I was wondering what you could tell me about this.”

“It appears to be a dragon’s egg.” Clover’s eyes widened as she took the hefty thing away from Celestia. She tilted it this way and that, performing countless spells in her examination. “At least four-hundred years old. Cold for nearly that long. Thou found this in the mountain?”

“Aye.”

“Alas, the stories that gave the mountain its name, Dragonbone, were sad tales with no joy in them. For the grotesques swarmed and cut down countless dragons in their lust for violence and death. With no one to care for it, this egg had little chance of survival.”

“Thank providence we killed the last grotesque, Clover,” a bouncy voice said from behind Celestia. She turned to see a smiling, lovely young earth pony mare, Smart Cookie, walk in with a tray full of lunch for her, Luna, and Clover. She gave Celestia a wink and passed her a bread roll. “’Tis how I met my husband, Gregor. The two of us had a rollicking adventure in the Everfree Forest escaping one of those foul beasts.”

“Hello, Smart Cookie.” Clover the Clever accepted the tray from Cookie and placed it beside the book she had been reading. “Indeed, the last of the grotesques was eliminated shortly before we discovered the two of thee, Celestia, Luna.” She spun the egg around, shining a light against its shell. Celestia could see a faint shadow within, but could not make it out. “Far too late to save this little one’s soul, alas. If thou wish, we might both learn a thing or two about dragons by dissecting this egg. Dragons are predominantly made of magic, in the scales and in the blood, so this egg will appear to be a geode if—”

“No!” Celestia blushed, ducking her head, but even so, she spoke again. “No, please, don’t hurt it. I’d… I’d like to keep it. As a memento.”

Clover leveled her gaze at Celestia, thinking for a moment. “Perhaps I was too eager to break something so rare. So pure. Take it if thou wish, though it might be a heavy burden on this long trip.”

Smart Cookie furrowed her brow and touched the egg gently. “Strange memento, to find a sad reminder of days gone by.”

Celestia hugged the egg close to her chest. She shrugged, unable to think of anything to say.

Clover nodded softly and picked up the book, her meal forgotten for the moment. “Still, thou shalt hide the egg away whilst we are in dragon territory. They have become reclusive and isolationist, true, but they are also fiercely protective of anything they regard as theirs. If they see thee with an egg, a dead egg no less, they shalt not look upon our cause with kindness.” She opened the book to a page near the middle, which she had scribed herself only a few weeks prior. “And it is of utmost importance that we succeed.”

Celestia craned her neck to see the page. It was one she’d read many times before, one detailing their only clue as to the location of the six Elements of Harmony.

Kindness was found among the ponies
Loyalty was forged among the dragons
Honesty was accepted among the flatlands
Generosity was gathered among the griffons
Laughter was rescued among the changelings
Magic was unleashed within the mountain

“What more can we do but go to each of these places and search until we find the gemstones?” Clover the Clever glanced at the egg and shut the book with a snap. “We cannot afford to be turned away. Not until we find Loyalty.” She tapped the book against Luna’s head. “We leave early in the morning, so no late-night study sessions, apprentice!”

“Yes, Lady Clover,” Luna muttered.

Smart Cookie clicked her tongue and bit into her food while it was still warm. “Would that we could find more clues about the Elements. Would that the others could be handed to us like Kindness was.”

“These are the only surviving words of River the Hero.” Clover the Clever slotted the book neatly into a small shelf of similar tomes. “Everything else was burned either by King Tungsten or the grotesques. We shall make due with what we have.” She nodded to the other three and picked her plate up in a spell. “I must do some reading before tomorrow. Good day.”

As she left for her tent, Smart Cookie frowned at her friend. She glanced at Luna and Celestia with narrow eyes. “Don’t worry overly much about Clover. She worries about Starswirl. I imagine it’s hard on both master and apprentice to be separated on different quests.”

Celestia was about to excuse herself to get lunch, when Smart Cookie grabbed her by the wings and set her down beside her. She examined the young alicorn, spending a long time tending to her ears. “Thou met Hurricane on the way down the mountain, didst thou not?”

“No, I—”

“Child, t’will do not thee nor I any good to keep it to thyself.” Cookie sighed and gave each of Celestia’s ears a kiss. “She is too hard on thee and thy sister. What didst thou do to raise her ire?” Celestia told her, in as few words as possible. Smart Cookie tried to hide her exasperation, to no avail. Even so, she rubbed Celestia’s head and spoke in a quiet voice, so that none could overhear. “Tred softly with Hurricane as well. Today is the anniversary of her husband’s death. Frozen by windigos, he was. Just before we crafted the Hearth’s Warming Spell, at that.”

Luna raised her head from her book. “What was his name?”

“Crosswind, or so Pansy told me.” Cookie patted Celestia’s side and allowed her to stand, but Celestia tarried a moment longer. “A noble and upright stallion, though I think a bit too serious to my liking.”

“He would have loved to have met thee,” Hurricane said.

Celestia shrunk back from the arrival of the commander. Hurricane’s eyes were a pale, cold gray, and they looked upon the three of them with an expression Celestia couldn’t quite figure out. Was it angry, or sad, or nothing at all?

“He would have loved to have met all of thee.” Hurricane continued to walk deeper into the tent, seemingly to study the maps of the surrounding area. All present gave her a wide berth.

Smart Cookie spoke in the faintest voice, which Celestia could barely make out. The words were clearly not for her to hear. “Oh my friend, if only I could do something for thee.”

Luna looked at Celestia until she made eye contact. She gestured with her horn towards the outside. Celestia nodded, then turned to Smart Cookie. “Lady Cookie, might I be excused?”

“For the moment.” Cookie tapped the alicorn’s nose. “I shall speak with Hurricane about what she did, and she shall not do it again. Keep not your worries bottled up inside, lest they burst forth.” She pointed at Luna with a firm frown. “And that goeth double for thee, Miss Luna.”

Luna ignored her, and the two sisters trotted to their shared tent, near the middle of the camp. Inside, Celestia stowed the egg away in her bed, while Luna put her study book on the small shelf she kept for herself. Discord appeared from beneath her cloak and reclined in midair.

“’Tis stuffy beneath that coat. Nearly as stuffy as the Ladies Clover and Hurricane.” Discord pulled a purloined bread roll from Nowhere and bit into it. “I don’t relish the thought of milling about on the edge of dragon territory for months on end.”

“’Tis of the utmost necessity, Discord.” Celestia rested on the edge of her bed, rubbing the shell of the egg gently. “How else will Equestria fight against Tirek the Demon King without the Elements of Harmony?”

“How indeed?” Luna tapped her spiral horn against Discord’s mismatched horns. “Mayhap thou might be able to cow him with thy vast power, or art thou talk alone?”

“Powerful I do be indeed,” Discord said. “Powerful in thought and deed, and more powerful than most. The power I have to raise sun and moon, to shape hide and hair, to cast mountains to the sky and bring down the clouds to be tasted by those who crawl in mud. Yet worse than worthless it would all be against the Demon King, for he carries with him the Rainbow of Darkness, and therein lies my great weakness. For magic of the mind, chaos magic, lasts only so long as the mind bends the magic. And I cannot fight Tirek without meeting face-to-face, which would only render me within the grasp of his fell Rainbow. He would devour my chaos, and in doing so, become the greatest power this world has ever known. Then would he devour thy magic, and become so great as to unmake the whole of the face of the earth.”

Celestia looked at Luna and received the same wide-eyed expression back. To think that even Discord, who made things appear out of thin air, to whom size and shape were mere matters of whimsy, could not stand against Tirek the Demon King. What luck had two young fillies, even if they had all the prophesies of fate at their backs?

“Then what hope,” Celestia said, “do we have even with the Elements of Harmony?”

“Ah, that’s the thing!” Discord descended, growing in size so that his head never moved until his legs touched ground. “My chaos magic is not of this world, but of the realm of thought. The Elements of Harmony are much greater in this level of reality. They are tied to the very world you stand upon, tethered by the Tree of Harmony, and derive power from truths set in place at its very founding. My magic is quite alright for matters of the imagination, but for matters of what is… What Always Is… That is what the Elements of Harmony are, and what they feed from, and what they suffuse into. For some things were but have passed, as did the ancient kingdoms. Some things are but will fade, as will anything created with Chaos. Some things will be but are not yet, such as the prophecies Starswirl and Clover spout ad nauseum. But the Elements derive their power from things that Always Were, Always Are, and Always Will Be. Though Tirek feasts, he will be overwhelmed, since their power is not their own. The Elements have no power but that which they pull from What Always Is.”

“A lot of good they did in the past,” Luna said with a sneer. “The kingdoms that once welded them crumbled, turned to dust in the wake of the grotesque attacks. How great a power can they derive from if they can be corrupted so easily? Destroyed so thoroughly?”

“All things become lesser if they are misused.” Discord brushed the air with his talon, as though he could bat away the very idea. “Wouldst thou use a book to plow a field? An arrow to scribe a letter? If the Elements are misused, they become something vile.”

Celestia’s ears lowered. “If I did not know better, I would say thou knowest the Elements even better than Clover the Clever.”

Discord nodded, his brow furrowing. He tapped a talon against his snaggletooth. “I remember much of the Elements of Harmony… though I do not remember why. I was friends with someone who worked with them, but I have forgotten that friend entirely. It was such a time ago I believe that they would be most assuredly dead, and dead for a thousand years at that. Softly. Softly there and Softly gone.”

Celestia paused with her hoof at the very top of the egg. She tilted her ears this way and that, chewing her lip in thought. “Couldst thou… Wouldst thou… Restore life to this egg?”

“Am I a god that I hold the power of life in my hand?” Discord spoke with a snappiness that vanished when he saw Celestia flinch back. He lowered his voice and his head, producing a flower from nowhere to give to each of the alicorn sisters. “Alas no. The child is gone home to Dreamland ahead of us. I can no more bring life to this egg than I can undo the suffering of all mortals everywhere. Thou seekest a miracle, and I am no miracle worker. Not truly. I am but a fanciful fancier of fantasy.”

Celestia bowed her head. She slid the flower stem behind her ear, displaying the colorful decoration in her mane. “Then I shall stop wishing for a miracle. I shall keep this egg as a reminder of the pain all people feel. A reminder to stop evil wherever it may lurk. Someday, perhaps I shall pass it on to others who would learn much from it, as Clover said. But not yet. Not for a long time.”

Luna bobbed her head, clutching the flower to her chest. “We do not live in a world of miracles, but of hard work and sacrifice. Though I begin to believe that the Elements of Harmony may be the closest thing we’ll ever get.”

“Now, now,” Discord said with a sigh, “I didst not say miracles never happen. But one can never demand them. Nor does it do any good to expect them. Not in this age…”

Celestia frowned at that. Some said the fact that two alicorns were born in accordance with the prophecies was a miracle in and of itself. Some said the Elements had been created by a miracle, and it was miraculous that River the Hero could find them. Something told her that if she held onto the egg, no matter how long it took, she just might see a miracle once again.

“I saw a pony with eyes of lightning. Her heart was hard and strong with a yearning for justice. She carried the sun on her right wing, and the moon on her left. Fire rained from heaven and consumed her enemies, and all trembled at the sight of her.

“I saw a second pony with eyes of shadow. Her heart was merry, though encased in a prison of stone. She carried the moon on her right wing, and the sun on her left. Darkness was her enemy and constant companion, but she would not surrender.

“Two ponies united in word and deed. Two born to squalor, and to squalor one returned. To the heavens both went, and from the heavens one returned. Two thrones, then one, then many, then none.”

---

Inasmuch
Northeastern Equestrian Shoreline
Spring, Year 58 BCE

Adagio Dazzle, Mother of the Sirens, reclined beneath the shade of a large fan, dressed in a white silk robe only held to her body with a golden clasp. She hummed a few scintillating notes, and the absolute beefcake of a stallion standing beside her dropped a grape in her mouth. She smiled and chuckled to herself, signaling the other stallion beside her to switch from shading her to fanning her. “So, either of you fellas doing anything later?”

Inasmuch was a small, poor fishing village to the east of Griffonstone, and did most of their trade with the griffon colony. The air itself tasted of salt, and the houses seemed perennially soaked with rank fish smell. Still, they tended to make do financially, enough to keep themselves fed, enough for the town to exist. It was also difficult to reach if one could not fly, being on the rockiest part of the coast, amid mountainous canyons. Even the nautical approach seemed designed to ward off visitors, with vicious coral reefs lying just beneath the surface, dangerous even at high tide.

But any distance Adagio could put between herself and Equestria was good distance. And hey, a handsome stallion was handsome no matter how much seaweed got stuck in his mane. Or how much he smelled like last week’s mackerel. Or how indecipherable his grammar was.

The stallions didn’t respond to her question. They continued their tasks in their brainless way, their eyes glazed with Siren magic. Adagio Dazzle pawed absently at her Siren’s Sigil, the very same that she had carved years before to fight the Changeling Empire. How times changed, especially times a few hundred years removed. Once, she couldn’t imagine using the power so casually. Now, she was fairly sure there was no other use for it.

The sound of a gallop on wood planks drew her eyes to the pier, where a purple-coated earth pony mare had just finished speaking with a grizzled, one-eyed sailor. The mare thundered her way to Adagio, her sour expression contrasting completely with Adagio’s more relaxed expression. “Adagio! Hay, Adagio!”

“Well, well, if it isn’t the Crone come to visit.” Adagio smirked and allowed one of her servants to drop another grape into her mouth. “What news from the outside—slightly-less-fishy—world?”

Crone Aria Blaze of the Sirens skidded to a halt, nearly bowling the fan-bearer over. She sneered at Adagio. “How can you relax at a time like this?”

“Easy.” Rather than elaborate, Adagio gestured impatiently at the younger, crosser mare.

Aria rolled her eyes. “It’s certain this time. The Archmage is on our tail. Even now, he is making his way through the treacherous footpaths of the Griffonstone Heights. I wager he’ll be here within a day.”

Adagio’s mouth became a thin line, even as her brow became a network of hills and valleys. “For this you interrupt my snack?”

“This is serious, Adagio.” Aria had never called her by her title, much to Adagio’s chagrin. She seemed to find the whole thing silly, unnecessary. And maybe it was. “Wizards can counter mind-controlling magic, and he is the wizard. It may take the power of all three of us, at full strength, to defeat Starswirl.”

“Star-swill the Stingy can eat a toad.” Adagio climbed to her hooves, leaving the couch and her servants where they stood. “There are three of us Sirens, Aria. Even if ten Starswirls came for us, what can they do to us at the height of our power? Have you forgotten how to transform? Have you forgotten how to stop his heart with a single held note, or smash his brains out with a shout? If so, then simply bite his neck and throw him into the sea, or break his back with a flick of your fluke!”

“Oh I remember!” Aria moved her face closer to Adagio’s, until their snouts were almost touching. “I remember the power you promised us! The awe that our captive audiences would have for us. And yet, I’ve been hiding away in this dung heap, eating chum, for five months!”

“Ladies, ladies, please.” Sonata Dusk, Maiden of the Sirens, stepped out from behind a nearby house, where she had been eavesdropping. She waved a hoof in a peace-seeking gesture, even if her smiling face held nothing but barely-concealed malice and derision. “Are we gonna do Starswirl’s work for him? Isn’t this an opportunity to finally cut off everybody chasing after us?”

Aria sneered. “You know better, Sonata. Adagio the Lazy is just going to order the townspeople to dogpile him until we have time to swim away. Just like in Manehattan.”

Sonata sniggered. “Is that how it is, Adagio? Will we be cowards once again?”

“Is it cowardice to survive another day?” Adagio snapped. “I would not lightly face both Starswirl and his apprentice together… But separately, on the other hoof…”

Sonata’s eyebrows shot up. “Did the old codger say the wizard was alone?”

Aria’s scowl deepened, but she nodded. “He only saw Starswirl, lugging only enough equipment for himself.” She narrowed her fierce purple-hued gaze at Adagio. “Sonata’s right. This is our opportunity. But only if we take it seriously. Only if we commit to it.”

Adagio pressed her lips together. “When have I ever done anything halfway?”

---

They met the wizard on the last leg of his journey into town. It was a narrow, natural stone bridge, spanning a perilous drop to the crashing waves below, rowed with dozens of spikes gnawing the air as assuredly as they would gnaw any hapless victim to pieces. The three Sirens stood at one side, blocking the way, while Starswirl stepped up to the far end.

Starswirl the Bearded rubbed his gray beard; the bells on his hat jingled with the movement. “Well, I cannot say I expected to be greeted on my way. Perhaps the Sirens do have knowledge of basic etiquette.”

Adagio’s voice was a snarl as she called across the span. “Are you sure this is how you want to die, Starswirl? Alone and helpless against three of the most powerful mares in the world? You could be back in the Crystal Empire, helping heal the king of his illnesses. You could be in Equestria, assisting your precious apprentice with seeking out the Elements of Harmony. Yet you throw all of that away, for the sake of three mares who you just… can’t… give… up.”

“They have their tasks, and I have mine.” Starswirl removed the pack on his back and set it down in front of himself. He scrounged around within and pulled forth a mirror, polished smoothly enough that it seemed to be a doorway into another world. Not silver, then, but glass? “I cannot sit by and ignore the villages you have terrorized, the lives you have stolen, the thoughts you have replaced with your own. These are people you are hurting, Adagio the Mother. They have the right to live their lives as they would wish, seeking happiness and contentment. Your brand of tyranny stands against everything I live to uphold.”

Adagio snorted, ending in a guffaw. She tilted her nose up to look down on the stallion, who looked so small across the bridge, bowing his head as he was. “Really, Starswirl, haven’t you grown up by now? After all these years chasing me. Chasing dreams of justice and virtue. You should know by now that you should never stand for anything. Because nothing will ever stand beside you.”

“It would seem so, as alone as I am.” Starswirl glanced to either side, at both Sonata and Aria. He set the mirror gently on the ground, face up, so that it reflected the sky. It was a full-length mirror, with an intricately-carved frame with gemstones embedded in it. Perhaps it was some sort of magic weapon, Adagio thought. “You two young ones. You have no need to be part and parcel with this witch. Leave now, cast away the Siren’s Sigils, and you shall go free.”

Aria said nothing, and did not meet his eye. Sonata growled with the ferocity of a lion pouncing on a wounded antelope. “And give up this? All this power?”

With a roar, the blue-coated earth pony ignited the red gemstone hanging from her neck. She was concealed within an unbelievably bright burst of magic, which soon faded to reveal a giant, scaled monster, gnashing its teeth. Adagio fumed, her big moment having been taken by her underling. Even so, she joined in the transformation, and Aria followed close behind. The three of them towered over Starswirl, who took a step back with eyes wide.

Adagio smiled as she saw fear writ large on his face, gleaming in his eyes. The old fool would die shaking in his horseshoes. She opened her mouth wide and sang a song of destruction, devastation, unmaking. The bridge crumbled beneath her, leaving her and her sisters hovering in midair. The ground beneath Starswirl remained, but that was all, as everything else fell into the frothing morass below, leaving him standing on a pillar of stone dozens of meters in the air. His horn shone with magic, covering him and his small patch of solid ground in a shimmering shield.

Adagio roared and dove for the shield, sinking her teeth into his magic. She was repelled, but only just so. She joined her sisters in a three-part harmony, sending ripples through Starswirl’s spell. They rammed with their shoulders, struck with their fluked tails, and thrummed with their two hooves, until the old wizard was bleeding from his nose. Her song became laughter, and she almost pitied the elderly stallion who had come so far, only to die a worthless death in the most foul-smelling village this side of the ocean. He sank to his knees, heaving. The three Sirens drew close around him, each hovering around his zigzagging pillar.

Starswirl coughed into his hoof. “May the Creator forgive me.”

“Forgive you?” Adagio barked laughter in his face until his ears lay flat against his head. “Forgiveness is a sham! Justice is a lie! You can’t find the Elements of Harmony because they no longer exist! Go off to Dreamland with the rest of your hope, your laws, and your piety!”

Starswirl removed his hat and let it thump flat to the ground. He looked Adagio in the eye, his face set like stone, and his eyes sharp as a wingblade. “Adagio, I banish you and your fellow Sirens from this world.”

“Come again?” Aria Blaze asked.

“I banish you from this realm.” His horn glowed, and the mirror beside him matched him for radiance. Rainbows shimmered within its frame, revealing it to be just as Adagio mused: A doorway. “I banish you to a world without magic, where if the Creator wills, you shall never harm another living being ever again!”

Chains crafted from polished crystal, pure solidified magic, appeared around her fetlocks and her neck. Any attempt to sing was cut off by his spell as it wove its way around her sisters’ bodies as well. She tried to pull away, but was held fast. The chain did not end until it traveled far, far into the swirling portal of the mirror.

Sonata thrashed and bit at the chains, then her legs as she attempted to chew them off. Anything to get free. Anything. She failed on both accounts and was dragged screaming into the mirror. She didn’t seem to change size, the portal merely was the correct size to engulf her all along. Aria fell next, shifting herself back into a pony to try and slip her smaller limbs through the chains, only to find that the chains now grasped all four hooves. She stared up at Adagio with wide, wild eyes until she vanished from sight.

Adagio snarled at Starswirl, any words cut off by his binding spell. He narrowed his eyes at her, never flinching. “You might have been the best of us, Adagio Dazzle. Brilliant of mind and beautiful of heart. I’m sorry it must end this way.”

With a heave of her jaws, the chain came loose enough for her to scream in his face. “I’ll see you dead, you cocky little freak! You and the Hellscape you call Equestria will burn!” Her pupils shrank in the throws of her enraged frenzy. “Even if your little alicorns do find the Elements, they’ll just corrupt them like every other wretch who calls himself hero!”

“Perhaps,” he said quietly as she was pulled neck-first into the mirror, “you are right.”

She fell for what felt like hours, her skin crawling with strange magic. She felt her bones shift, not painfully, but oddly, as though her body were elastic snapping back into its natural shape. Her breath caught in her throat as her necklace fell away and vanished into the light. She felt cold, and warm, and could not tell which way was up. She was swimming through air, then twisting out-of-control through water. She reached a hoof out and saw that it was not a hoof, but a hand. Five fingers wriggled in front of her face. She screamed, and her lungs nearly filled with liquid. Another hand grasped her and pulled her in a direction that might have been up or it might have been down. She broke from the surface of the water with a splash. Her mane matted itself against her face and clung to her back. She couldn’t feel her tail anymore.

Aria’s violet eyes were the first thing that came into focus, but the mare’s angry words were drowned out by the painful rumble of water in her ears. Adagio rested on her hands and retched. Aria scrambled back, her face the very image of disgust. After a moment, Adagio was able to gulp great mouthfuls of air into lungs that tickled until she coughed again. She felt dirt cake itself beneath her fingernails as she clenched her hands. Her forelegs weakened and sent her toppling to the side to cover her in mud.

A strange creature, hairless except for her head, leaned out from behind a tree. She had Sonata’s face and voice, but there was little else familiar about her. “What the hell was that? What happened to us? Where’s my beautiful blue coat?”

Adagio turned to Aria and saw the same phenomenon repeated with her as well. A hand to her stomach told Adagio that they were three of a piece, hairless and uncovered except for the head. Like a Yahoo or Morlock with an overzealous barber. She scrambled on all fours to the waterside and tried to see her reflection on the rippling surface.

“Didn’t you hear Starswirl?” Aria spoke with a low voice. She brought her hind legs to her chest and hugged her knees tight. “He sent us to a world without magic. We’re as good as dead.”

Adagio stared at her new face with her mouth agape. Her shoulders shook and she nearly fell face-first into the river. Her snout was gone, replaced with a tiny nose and a flat mouth. Her ears couldn’t move anymore, fixed as they were to the sides of her head. She could already feel her skin breaking out in goosepimples, cold as she was without a coat. Looking down at her body caused her mind to do summersaults just to reconcile reality.

“There’s gotta be a way back!” Sonata fell onto her belly and squirmed towards the river, grasping at the mud. “There’s gotta! I can’t stay here!”

“There’s no way back,” Adagio said, her expression reflecting glumly back at her. “Starswirl will have destroyed that mirror. We’re on our own.”

As Sonata yowled in despair, and Aria curled further in on herself, Adagio caught a glimmer of light behind her reflection. She refused to hope, even as she dipped her hand into the river and clawed the muddy bottom. She felt something in the palm of her hand; something that tingled with power. She pulled it to her chest and rubbed the grime from its polished surface.

Her Siren’s Sigil glimmered with magic power. She could feel it reach out to her, filling her body with life, drawing her to use it. It drew her to find the nearest people, to sing for them, to encourage them to help her. She climbed to her hind legs. It seemed a more natural stance for this body than crawling on all fours. She looped the chain around her neck and allowed her gemstone to hang in its rightful place. “He sent us to a world without magic…”

Aria lifted her eyes to her. There was a tremor in her voice. “What did you say?”

“Don’t you see?” Adagio’s mouth quirked to one side. “He sent us to a world with no magic… besides our magic. In saving his precious kingdom, he’s just doomed the next hapless saps to whatever we want. And no one… no one will be able to stop us.” She thrust a hand towards the river. “You two get looking for your Sigils! As soon as you’re reunited, we travel for the nearest town!”

As Sonata passed her, she jabbed her forefinger into the small of Adagio’s back. “Just so you know, I haven’t forgiven you.” Before Adagio could protest, she slipped into the river and began scouring the bottom for any sign of her Sigil.

Adagio crossed her forelegs—arms, she supposed—and pouted after the retreating Maiden. The Crone Aria slowly rose to her feet and staggered her way towards the water.

Aria gave Adagio a growling side-eye. “Just so you know, whatever happens to us is your responsibility… Mother Adagio.”

Adagio winced at the title. It seemed not to be a gesture of respect but an accusation of guilt, one that stung even more than Sonata’s finger. “Just keep close. We have to rely on each other now.”

“Of course,” Aria said. “What could ever pull us apart?”

---

Whitetail Woods
West of Ft. Everfree, Equestrian Capital
Autumn, Year 56 BCE

Celestia took a step back as the border crept closer and closer. From a distance, one could mistake it as a bubble gradually expanding, but up close, it was really just a distinguishable line that separated reality from some new state of existence. On this side of the line—the border—the sun shone overhead, the wind blew with a gentle breeze, grass grew and trees produced fruit. On that side…

The world had gone wrong.

Gravity swung this way and that with no warning. Soil was replaced by every sort of sweet food imaginable. Plants walked like creatures, while forest animals lay embedded in the rock as though they were living cave paintings. A river flowed in midair where there should have been wind. Ponies rolled around blowing raspberries, their eyes void of thought, their senses completely lost to them. One of them laughed, then cried, then barked like a dog, while his wife flopped like a fish on dry land. Cold and hot intermingled until tornados appeared more frequently than birds, while the birds themselves swam through the ground, scooping the dirt with their wings.

Luna grimaced at the sight, testing the border with a spell from her horn. It did nothing to slow the growth of the affected area. “I would laugh if I weren’t so horrified.”

Queen Platinum sucked on her lower lip as she stared towards where Fort Everfree lay. “Have you seen any sign of Clover? Or Hurricane?”

“Not hide nor hair,” Commander Pansy replied, easing his spear back and forth. His helmet glinted in the light of the sun, blinding to the eye. “Smart Cookie and Gregor disappeared near the start of the calamity, as well. The whole of the capital resides in that misshapen… kingdom.”

Chancellor Puddinghead stomped a hoof, then winced and shook it. He looked up to Celestia, who stood a good two heads taller than him. “Young Miss, we-we-we must have hope. Do-do you—do you believe the Elements will help here as they d-did with Tirek?”

Celestia furrowed her brow as she watched the kingdom be torn apart by the absolute carnage before her. “The battle with Tirek ended almost before it began. He could do nothing but scream as his stolen magic was torn from him, returned to the poor souls he victimized. Those who had survived, at any rate. This… this is an entirely different beast. He’s shifting the world around him, rewriting the laws of physics. I’m not sure…”

Luna scoffed, firing a useless bolt of magic across the border. Within its confines, it shifted to a butterfly, then a pat of butter, then a butter stick with dove wings. “Nothing we can do will produce any results. It must be the Elements of Harmony. Even Clover the Clever lost herself within minutes. If Starswirl were here, I suspect we’d see the same from him.”

Pansy shook his head, a grim smile on his face. “If Starswirl were here, the Crystal Empire would have fallen victim to a horde of vampiric rabbits by now. He has his mission, and we have this.”

Luna waved a hoof dismissively. “Even so… Celestia, didn’t he once say his magic pales in comparison with the Elements? That his chaos magic, his Magic of Thought, only persists so long as he thinks it to be so? We must simply still Discord, and the world shall return to as it was.”

Celestia shut her eyes at the mention of her friend’s name. It had started with little things. A forgotten birthday here, a misplaced bauble there. But over the last four years, those problems kept multiplying, and increasing in multiplication, to an exponential degree. Discord had grown more erratic, at times violent, at times unresponsive. He had become impossible to hide from the Founders of Equestria. They had accepted him as a friend to the alicorn sisters at first…

Now, his malady was impossible to ignore.

The border crackled with chaos magic, tugging Celestia’s mane, pulling her in, promising her things she couldn’t understand in words no one could utter naturally. “It’s true. He himself said that the Elements were more firmly tied to this world, pulling power from things established at the very dawn of creation. Things that even the draconequi recognized as ancient and irrevocable. Even Discord.”

Luna nodded. “Then it is settled. Bring us the Elements of Harmony, and we shall deal with this threat.”

“The Elements are held within the castle itself.” Pansy gestured his second-in-command over to them. The pegasus soldier saluted. “Flash Magnus, with our speed, you and I have the best chance of reaching Fort Everfree’s treasure room before the chaos rewrites our brains.” He pointed a hoof at Celestia. “If Luna shields your minds, you shall remain aware even longer. If you distract Discord, Flash and I can retrieve the Elements without him knowing.”

“Th-that—that puts you at great risk! All of you!” Chancellor Puddinghead removed his pointed hat to rub sweat from his balding head. His worry lines deepened to worry canyons. “If you fall today, there shall be no Equestria tomorrow. Just… just that!” He pointed to the ever-approaching border, the ever-changing no-pony’s-land that remained of Ft. Everfree. “We should retreat, think of a new strategy, come at this from a different angle.”

“What more can deliberation do, my dear Puddinghead?” Though Platinum nearly matched Puddinghead for years, she had a youthful exuberance that mares half her age envied. She bounded up to the very edge of Discord’s Sphere of Influence and placed a hoof to her heart. “I challenge thee, let us all march together. This may be our last best shot, and we shall meet it with heads held high and banners aloft!” She smiled warmly at the earth pony stallion. “Think of thy grandchildren. As I think of my newborn Periwinkle. Either we fight today for their world, or they have no world to inherit.”

Celestia pressed her wings tight against her sides. Nothing in her nineteen years had prepared her for this. Not training with Hurricane. Not study with Clover. Not traversing the whole of the world. Not facing the Demon King. She didn’t want to take another step. She didn’t even want to look at the chaos. She turned away and put several steps between her and the border.

When she opened her eyes, she saw the few ponies who had managed to flee Ft. Everfree. Families from the outskirts, farmers mostly, and the ferrypony. They huddled together with their own, tears streaking their faces, wide eyes watching the approaching chaos closely, terrified that what was happening within would soon happen to them.

“You two should stay behind,” Pansy said to Platinum and Puddinghead. “If we do fail, then you must survive to lead the people. Find Starswirl. Together, you shall think of something.”

Celestia sighed. She looked at Luna, who raised an eyebrow her way. “It never mattered, did it? It never mattered what we were willing to do. It never mattered what we were prepared to do. The only thing that will ever matter is what we must do.”

Luna turned her eyes to her hooves. “Yes. Yes, more and more, I see this to be true.”

“We know what we must do.” Celestia turned towards the chaos and spread her wings. “Let us do it.”

They dove in together. Celestia did not remember much of what happened next, and what she did remember made little sense. She flew at the head of a v-shaped flock of turtles. She ran across a flat plane, each step meeting one of Luna’s, balancing atop each other as they ran, Celestia above the plane and Luna reflected below. Hurricane boxed her ears until a childlike Smart Cookie hopped on her back and rode her, tugging her this way and that with reins made of taffy. Wulf rose from the grave to swing his jagged sword, only to be eaten from below by a shark-headed giraffe. The Crystal Empire melted like ice cream, while a desert erupted from the center of the fertile Everfree Forest.

Celestia flopped to her stomach, her legs and her wings aching from the strain. She had traveled less than a mile, but felt as though she had run a hundred. She hoisted herself upright, only to be pushed back down by an enormous lion’s paw. The paw’s shoulder was attached to a giraffe’s neck, which held a goat’s head, which wiggled its snaggletooth at her. “Well, well, well, what have we here? A horn and wings? You just aren’t playing fair.”

“Discord!” Celestia pushed her hooves against the ground, but they sank into the hard stone with little resistance. “Please, you have to wake up.”

“Who’s dreaming?” Discord shattered into a thousand-thousand pieces, each remaking themselves into a tiny Discord. They marched around Celestia in rings, each layer alternating direction. “I’m awake, I’m aware, I’m having the time of my life! Why don’t you join me? You seem stressed… whoever you are.”

“I’m your friend, Discord.” Celestia thumped her hooves against her chest, trying and failing to get any of the tiny replicas to pay her attention. “It’s me, Celestia! We’ve known each other for years! We searched for the Elements of Harmony together!”

“Harmony?” With a violent snap of his talons, the Discords coalesced into a single, rage-blighted monstrosity, all limbs and vicious eyes. “You dare use the ‘H’ word in my abode?” He popped himself back into his usual mish-mashed shape and removed a top hat with a flourish. “I am Discord, Antithesis of Harmony, Confidant of Chaos. At my own service.” He took a gigantic bite of the hat and munched noisily. “Celestia, was it? Are you here to rain on my parade? To poop my party? You should know what happened to the last group who acted… persnickety.”

He pulled aside a curtain that Celestia could have sworn was not there before, revealing three ponies and a griffon. Smart Cookie was being kneaded into a pastry by living gingerbread ponies. Hurricane was spinning endlessly in a tornado made from pollen, sneezing all the while. Clover the Clever was drawing with crayons on the cloak she used to allow herself to see, drool dribbling down her chin. Gregor the Griffon now had the back half of an eagle and the front half of a lion, and seemed to have lost any sense of self, growling at his wife as she was harried by the gingerbread ponies.

Celestia’s chest ached as she watched Discord chuckle. She shook her head to hide the tears welling up in her eyes. “I suppose it’s for the best you don’t remember anything, Discord. I might never have forgiven you if you had done all this in your right mind.”

“Right mind, left mind—” Discord did a twirl, swirling the curtain around himself like a flowing, red cape. “—I don’t really give a care, pa-pa-pa, who let the losers in? Left mind, right mind, give it up you stupid square, pa-pa-pa, you can’t win!”

“He’s gone, sister!” Luna pulled herself out of the mouth of an oversized frog. She kicked the amphibian aside and shook herself free of mucus. She came to stand beside Celestia, looking over the scene of Discord and the Founders with a frown as deep and dark as the night sky. “There’s only one thing we can do for him now.”

“@%$#&,” Discord said. “Por favor, kudasai, s'il vous plait.”

Celestia’s head snapped around to focus on the draconequus. He sat in a throne, the back of which resembled a deer’s skull, antlers spread wide. He looked at them from under a heavy brow, no longer playful, but deathly serious. He scowled at them, and for the first time in her life, the goofy, strange magical being seemed truly dangerous. He clutched a goblet in his talon, which bubbled with some unknowable liquid. When a bubble floated out of the cup, it popped with a sound like a scream.

“Perhaps we should cut to the chase.” Discord waved his free paw and Celestia was swept off her feet. She hung upside down before him, her legs and wings bound with liquorice. “You came into my kingdom, to disrupt my rule, for what? To save a few people from—” He cracked a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “—becoming far more entertaining than they have any right to be?”

Gregor’s lion-esque face tweeted like a songbird.

“You reek of seriousness. Of purpose.” Discord tickled the top of Celestia’s nose with a sharp talon. A wet trickle of blood dripped from where he’d touched. “You seem so convinced that what you’re doing has meaning, when it is quite the opposite. Who shall remember this day a thousand years hence? Two-thousand? Who shall care who triumphed, Discord or ponies, when the heat-death of the universe consumes all? Chaos is the natural state of things, princess, despite how fervently you deem it otherwise. Everything falls apart. Even me, especially you.”

Luna’s horn glowed, and the liquorice crumbled, freeing Celestia. “The world may be a dark, terrible place to be sure. But to become the dark and terrible thing yourself, that is no better than the tantrum of a child.”

“Being dark and terrible gives me POWER.” His voice became a shout as he clenched his fists. For a moment, Celestia’s entire body became white liquid, melting away and turning to a puddle of living matter. She returned to her solid form a moment later, and was not sure if it was the work of Luna’s shielding, or if Discord had simply decided not to kill her just yet. “You cannot turn the whole world to sunshine and rainbows, no matter how you work at it. Yet all I must do to cast my shadow is to EXIST, to bend the world to my will. The ‘right’ will fail, the ‘wrong’ prevail, because the ‘wrong’ is natural and therefore correct and THEREFORE RIGHT.”

Celestia growled, spitting to the side. Blood now matted the coat of her muzzle, dried to a stinging crust. “You seek power to exercise your will, but is that not just another form of order, thou so-called Spirit of Chaos?”

“Paradoxes come standard-issue with every helping of chaos magic.” He waved a paw as he gazed away, disinterested. “Now be gone or I shall show you how very natural it is for you to become charred craters pockmarking my beautiful creation.”

“You know better than we,” Luna said, “that this is no creation, merely a corruption. We shall not leave. We shall stand and fight, and you will see that your ways are not—they are not—the natural order of things.”

Discord scoffed. “How do you intend to fight me? With those trinkets your little friends are smuggling out of the castle?” He snapped his talons and ripped open the sky. Two pegasi appeared, Commander Pansy and Flash Magnus, the first tied up with octopus arms, the other tangled by a spider’s web. Discord threw six gemstones from his lion’s paw, which scattered across the ground before his throne.

The glimmering pink of Kindness. The blazing red of Loyalty. The noble purple of Generosity. The steadfast orange of Honesty. The passionate blue of Laughter. The vibrant shine of the sixth and most fragile among them.

“If the Elements be so powerful,” Discord said with a growl, “then by all means, smite me. Destroy me utterly. You can’t. You won’t. If by some miracle you seal me away, know that I shall return, even if not as myself, because eventually all things creep towards the end of all things. You try to stall chaos, and in doing so, you wear yourself to the bone.” He smiled, then chuckled, kicking Loyalty with his cloven hoof. “We’ll see how well you handle power of your own, Princesses. We’ll see what sort of dark paths you take, once you realize I was right all along.”

Celestia reached out to touch Magic, afraid that it was a trick, afraid that it would crumble to dust or vanish before her eyes. Power flowed through it; power as ancient as the world, and as strong as the day it was forged. She glanced at Discord, but he was no longer watching. His head was thrown back with laughter, his talon clutching at his heart while his lion’s paw waved in the air.

“I know this is not you, Discord.”

She picked up the Elements of Harmony with a gleam of her horn. She felt the same touch from Luna’s magic. Each of them held the Six, and each of them poured their will into the Six. The Elements glowed to match, then quickly overpowered the alicorn magic as they weaved their own purpose.

Luna’s spell-powered whisper slid right into Celestia’s ear, even from several meters away. “We can not merely steal his magic from him. Unlike Tirek, the chaos magic would have nowhere to go, and would cause even more damage that this.” She narrowed her eyes at the laughing draconequus. “If we can seal the magic away, reality shall reassert itself. Perhaps petrification?”

Celestia shut her eyes so that she couldn’t see her one-time friend gone mad. She listened to the way the Elements twisted and tumbled, their spell becoming more clear to her as the seconds passed. “If I am not mistaken, the Elements are already prepared for just such a spell. Your doing?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps I got the idea from them.” Luna shut her eyes as well, biting the inside of her cheek. “We must do it now.”

“Yes.” The intensity of Celestia’s horn hit a piercing bright white. “Now.”

The Rainbow of Light struck forth with a power that seemed capable of remaking the world. It flowed through Celestia, as though using her as a conduit. She guided the magic, and it guided her, in a symbiotic spell casting where neither could be as powerful alone as they were together. For a moment, it seemed as if there was but one Element, or that all six Elements were the same, and then the magic faded.

The throne was gone. They were surrounded by a softly-curving field, with low hills and plentiful grass. Birds sang in distant trees as the Everfree Forest hissed softly in the cool wind. Celestia almost collapsed in the tall grass there and then, every fiber of her being crying out in exhaustion and sorrow. Above the hills, above the beetles floating lazily along their paths and the bees collecting nectar, was a tall stone statue. It had the form of a draconequus, laughing uproariously, frozen stiff in an act of defiance.

Commander Pansy trotted across the field, pausing only to make sure Smart Cookie was unharmed before he beelined it to the statue. “Someone bring me a hammer! Now!”

Celestia stared at him, not comprehending what he said for a solid minute. Her eyes widened and she charged towards Pansy, her mouth moving faster even than her hooves. “No, please, we can’t! Not now!”

“If we destroy the statue, we can kill him!” Pansy spread his wings, indicating the whole of the field with them. “Then this never happens again! Then he never threatens us again! Did you see what he did to us? To Cookie? To Hurricane? Clover wasn’t even herself!”

Smart Cookie was leaning against her husband Gregor. He hadn’t said anything since he was freed from Discord’s grasp. It didn’t look like he could speak just yet. He shivered, staring at nothing, until Cookie put a blanket around his shoulders.

“P-Pansy is right, girls.” Smart Cookie took a shuddering breath. She looked nearly ready to vomit. “He’s too dangerous. Even Tirek didn’t… couldn’t…”

“Tirek was a monster and we keep him alive, chained as he is!” Celestia threw herself between Pansy and the statue. “Discord is a friend!”

“A friend with the power to twist the universe into a mockery of life!” Pansy raised his head imperiously, his eyes flashing on the cusp of anger at her. “Move aside, Celestia!”

“Hold a moment, Pansy.” Commander Hurricane rested a hoof on his shoulder. Her cold, gray eyes stared up at Celestia’s weeping face for a long, painful moment. Celestia couldn’t meet her gaze. Hurricane’s scarred cheek throbbed, causing the commander to wince. She sighed and walked around Celestia to look up at Discord. “He is a friend, of Celestia and Luna, and also to Equestria. Without him, we would never have found all six Elements of Harmony. Without him, Tirek would have devoured us all.”

Celestia’s mouth dried out as she watched the commander circle the statue. Hurricane’s expression was as unreadable as ever. She turned back to Pansy and lowered her head.

“Life is full of both good and evil, and all people produce both.” Hurricane rested a hoof on the statue’s leg. “None of us are different from the other. This is why we must stick together and help one another. That is what Hearth’s Warming taught me. That is what I’ve learned, time and time again, on this journey with all of thee.” She extended a wing to Celestia, until she touched her shoulder. “Celestia should keep Discord close, under watch, ready to act should he ever break free. A memento, kept in secret, until a miracle decides to show itself once again.”

Celestia looked down at the gemstones she had used to imprison her friend. “I do not think I believe in miracles.”

“Then thou shall miss them when they do occur.” Hurricane hopped into the air, shielding her eyes from the bright sunlight. “Those able-bodied among us should gather the people. We all need some time to recover.”

Pansy gave Discord one last glance before nodding in agreement. “Flash, are you able to stand?”

Flash Magnus saluted, and the two of them flew with Hurricane. Luna was by Clover’s side, helping her put on her enchanted cloak. Both Smart Cookie and Gregor needed a good meal, for starters, and a warm bed soon after.

Celestia gathered up the Elements of Harmony and placed them within a sack, which she hung from her side. She stared up at Discord with a deepening frown. “Perhaps the garden. Thou always loved the garden.”

Luna called her name, waving her towards Ft. Everfree. Celestia set out at a fast walk, working out in her mind what she would say, and to whom, when they asked where the statue came from. As she grew closer to the city, she could hear cheers, shouts of acclamation, the beginnings of a celebration brewing. She heard her name, shouted again and again, calling her home. Calling her prophesied.

In time, they would demand that she take the throne and rule as High Princess.

In time, she would accept.