Human Shining Armor Gets Twilight Sparkle Pregnant

by D. G. D. Davidson

Quill Pen, unicorn and ace reporter for the Canterlot Times-Picayune, had made his reputation and his career by living an immaculate life. He dressed neatly, he kept a tight schedule, and he was the master of a poker face that had enabled him to interview the most reluctant ponies with an apparent sense of disinterest that put them off guard, often convincing them to say things they meant to keep hidden. Quill Pen had thereby gotten innumerable scoops, including the one that had earned him his Ponylitzer.

He faced a mirror in his tiny room in the Crystal Palace and adjusted his tie as he tilted his head back and forth to make sure none of the gelled hairs in his mane were out of place. He looked perfect as always, like a wax model rather than a real pony, but it didn’t hurt to double-check: it was not every day that even Quill Pen interviewed royalty, and he expected this interview, if all went well, to earn him yet another award.

When he left his room with a notebook and pencil floating in a levitation spell beside him, he met two crystal pony guards clad in solid diamond barding that sparkled in the light of the palace’s sunroofs. They gave him a slight nod and led him down the hall toward the salon.

He noted that the guards took him only so far as the door, but then bowed their heads and stepped back. When he walked into the salon, he found it, like most rooms in the palace, both lavish and uncomfortable: every piece of furniture and every spot on the walls glittered with diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and several gems he couldn’t identify, but nowhere could he see a single soft chair or cushion. Perhaps that was appropriate: although this was supposed to be an “intimate interview,” it certainly wouldn’t be a cozy one.

Princess Twilight Sparkle, her middle obviously heavy, sat on a chaise longue against one wall. Her back was stiff, her jaw set. Standing at her shoulder with a pained expression on her drawn face, as if she could detect an unpleasant smell, was her mother, Twilight Velvet, the famous astronomer. Sitting opposite on a portable throne carved from a single piece of quartz was Princess Cadance. Cadance wore her usual copper tiara, necklace, and bell boots, but Twilight Sparkle was unadorned.

Quill Pen could not help but notice that Shining Armor, Cadance’s prince consort and Twilight Sparkle’s brother, was absent. He was sure to jot that down in his notebook.

Maintaining his deadpan expression, Quill Pen sat on a chair facing the princesses. Nopony offered him any greeting or any refreshment. He let the room’s uncomfortable silence stretch out for half a minute before he said, “Princess Twilight Sparkle, tell me, if you would, about the time you spent in this other world.”

Twilight swallowed once and met his eyes, but then looked away. “I was changed,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. “I became one of them. They walk on two legs, they’re frail, and they have thin, hairless skin that they cover in extra clothing to simulate fur.”

Quill Pen pretended to write this down, but he knew it already. “And you say these creatures are oblivious to our existence, yet they closely resemble us? You met—”

“Humans.”

“—Humans, yes, who were alike in personality and even similar in appearance to the ponies you knew in Ponyville?”

“I did. Including my closest friends.”

Quill Pen almost allowed a smile to show. That sentence let him easily slide into the interview’s real purpose. “And including your brother, correct?”

Twilight squeezed her eyes shut and dipped her head. She whispered, “He wasn’t . . . really my brother—”

“But he was like him.”

“He wasn’t my brother.” Twilight’s voice grew more firm. She looked up.

“But you say you met humans like”—Quill Pen glanced down at his notes—“Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Applejack—”

“But that doesn’t—”

“They had the same names, the same personalities, even similar coloration? They were doppelgängers of your friends, other selves in a world paralleling our own, but where ponies walk on two legs—?”

“I don’t know what they were.”

“But one of them much resembled your brother.”

Twilight swallowed and cast her eyes down again. “Yes.”

“Tell me about him.”

“My brother?”

Quill Pen deliberately chuckled, but he stopped when he noticed Cadance stiffen; considering what he intended, it would not do to upset the crystal princess. “No, not your brother. The human who was like him.”

The melancholy didn’t leave her, but a smile nonetheless formed on Twilight’s lips. “He was kind. It was hard to adjust to their world, to their ways of doing things, and especially to the new body I had. He was the first pony—sorry, he was the first human—who was nice to me.”

“And you were attracted to him.” This time, Quill Pen noticed that both Cadance and Twilight Velvet stiffened.

“Yes,” Twilight Sparkle said. Now she looked up and met Quill Pen’s eyes. “Yes, I was.”

“Even though he was not a stallion, but a—”

“He was a man, and I was a woman. It was different. I was different. I had a different body, and it . . . wanted different things.” Her voice had risen and taken on a defiant edge, but, at the last phrase, it fell again into a whisper.

Quill Pen made sure to write that down word for word. It would make a juicy quote in his column if he framed it right. “You were attracted to him even though he reminded you of your brother?”

Twilight Velvet visibly shook. “Why did we agree to this interview?” she hissed.

“Because the ponies have a right to know a few things, at least,” Twilight Sparkle answered. Her voice rose with defiance again, and her back grew even straighter. “I was attracted to him because he reminded me of my brother, who is a good and noble stallion. But he wasn’t my brother. He was somepony else entirely, somepony from another world—”

“But his name was Shining Armor.”

Twilight deflated again. “Yes. It was.”

Quill Pen looked away and studied the gems on the wall. For the first time, he noticed tiny mirrors interspersed amongst the jewels, so his own emotionless face stared back at him as he examined the decorations. After the silence had again become oppressive, he said, “The foal you carry, is it human or—?”

“I changed when I went through the portal, and I changed again when I came back. I conceived her as a human, but she’s a pony now.”

“She?”

Twilight laid her front hooves over her barrel and smiled. “I used my magic to touch her mind. She’s a filly, and she’s an alicorn.”

Quill Pen felt his eyebrows lift. He had to struggle to maintain his characteristic deadpan, and in spite of his effort, his voice rose as he said, “You are telling me that you are carrying the first natural-born princess—?”

“Yes.”

“Celestia, Luna, Cadance, and you all achieved this pinnacle of ponydom when you learned your true destinies. Your daughter has it already even though her destiny is not yet known?”

“Her name is Skyla, and she will decide her own destiny. That is her special talent.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. I conceived her in a world where destinies are not fixed. Humans have no cutie marks: they choose their talents. They make them through their own tears, sweat, and”—she swallowed hard and her voice broke—“and blood.”

Hovering beside him, Quill Pen’s pencil scribbled madly. He leaned forward. “How do you feel, Your Highness, being the dam of the first pony to be born as an alicorn?”

“Proud.”

“And how do you feel, knowing you conceived her incestuously and out of wedlock—?”

“Enough,” said Cadance. She had been leaning her chin on one hoof and listening in silence, but now she brought her hoof down to the legrest of her throne with a resounding thump. “Enough. The interview is ended, Quill Pen.”

“Your Highness,” he said, turning his full attention to Cadance, “I have a request to make.”

“What is it?”

“I have here but one half of the story, if even that. There remains the matter of the father—”

Cadance shook her head. “The mirror portal will open for a pony only once. Princess Twilight can never pass through again.”

“But I can pass through.”

Again, for half a minute, the room was silent.

“The mirror is ancient and mysterious,” Cadance said. “I do not understand it. Even Celestia does not understand it. Legends say it originally belonged to the One Queen, that she used it to summon Magog the Warrior Judge, and that the crystal ponies carried it away as spoils when they were exiled from the Valley of Dreams. What would you want with it?”

“My use for this ancient and estimable artifact is humble: I wish merely to interview Prince Shining Armor’s human doppelgänger and then come right back again.” Quill Pen glanced at Twilight Sparkle. Staring at the floor, she looked as if she had a corncob stuck in her throat.

No,” said Twilight Velvet, her eyes pleading as she looked to Princess Cadance. “No.”

“I would bring you word from him, of course,” Quill Pen added, “of his current occupations, his health—”

“He’s trying to manipulate you, sweetheart,” Twilight Velvet said as she rubbed Twilight Sparkle’s withers. “Just tell him no.”

“Don’t you have any compassion?” asked Cadance, her eyes boring into Quill Pen’s. “A pony can only become an alicorn when she has performed deeds that win her the love of all ponykind. Are you so heartless—?”

“My admiration for Princess Twilight, and for you, knows no bounds,” Quill Pen said, “but neither does my dedication to the profession of journalism. I am being quite honest with you: I would interview the human Shining Armor and immediately return to report of him. I have everypony’s best interest at heart.”

“Everypony’s best interest or the possibility of another Ponylitzer?” Cadance asked.

Quill Pen didn’t reply.

Twilight Sparkle swallowed hard and whispered, “I would be okay with it.”

Again, the room was silent. Cadance, after having looked for a long time at Twilight, said, “I suppose, if the princess of friendship has no objection, then the princess of love can have none either. We will prepare the mirror chamber.”

Quill Pen had managed to tease out of Twilight a few comments about the humans’ culture and mannerisms so he wouldn’t make a complete fool of himself. He had packed extra notebooks and pencils in a saddlebag, given his tie another adjustment, and stepped unceremoniously through the mirror. Immediately after, he felt as if his body were being torn to shreds.

When the pain ebbed, he found himself on a hard surface where he lay flat on his back and stared up into a blindingly bright sky. He struggled for a few minutes to sit upright, only after several attempts convincing his abdominal muscles to heave his foreparts into the air. He fell over a few times, but in the end managed to balance on his buttocks.

Twilight had warned him that, after the transference was complete, he would spend several minutes examining his new limbs. Though he had vowed to himself to maintain his stoical composure, he soon proved her correct.

His hind legs were much longer than his forelegs, and his forelegs were weak, so it was apparent that quadrupedal locomotion was out of the question. His limbs were thin, his bones exceedingly frail, and his spine weirdly supple. He still had his tie, shirt, and jacket, though their cut had magically changed to adjust to his new figure. Matching the jacket was a pair of trousers belted just below the waist and encasing his hind legs. The trousers were enormously impractical, as they would require him to undress partially if he needed to relieve himself, but based on Twilight’s sparse comments about human culture, he knew better than to remove them.

Experimentally, he bent his hind legs and discovered that the joints he had initially supposed to be backwards-facing hocks were in fact stifles. Poking his hind legs with his forelimbs, he at last discovered a pair of shoes encasing his feet. When he yanked off his left shoe and pulled off the thin cloth garment under it, he discovered the most grotesque appendage he’d ever seen: his hock had deformed into part of his foot, and opposite it were five pink, soft, useless-looking digits, the tops of which were coated with thin, vestigial hooves. The reason for the shoe was clear: this foot was almost as soft underneath as it was on top. It was clearly not made for walking on rough surfaces.

Clumsily, he shoved his foot back into its cloth cover and shoe. It didn’t want to go back in the same way it had come out, so now the shoe pinched in several places.

This world into which he’d fallen seemed to have almost no smell to it, and that made him uneasy. To get a better sense of his surroundings, he tried to wrinkle his nose and pull his lips back from his teeth in a flehmen response, but the muscles of his face wouldn’t respond the way he wished. His lips felt oddly stiff, and his nose would hardly move at all. With a foreleg, he groped at his face. He found his lips, and they felt ridiculously thin and soft; he would no doubt shred them if he attempted to eat grass. He shoved a digit into his mouth to touch his teeth: they too were small and apparently useless. He felt his nose: it was a bulbous, slightly oily pear-shaped thing, entirely separate from his mouth. After some experimentation, he discovered that he could flare his nostrils and take a deep breath, but that did almost nothing to intensify scents, so he concluded that this human body had no vomeronasal organ. Then he realized that the world didn’t lack smells; rather, his olfactory sense had been muffled by an inferior nose.

For a moment, he paused to consider his other senses. Unidentifiable noises met his ears, but they were faint: either they came from a distance, or his hearing, like his olfactory sense, had been hobbled. His vision, however, appeared to have improved: colors were bright and details were sharp, so sharp that he had trouble making sense out of the lights and shapes he saw around him.

Momentarily overwhelmed by sensory overload from his eyes, he lowered his eyelids and considered internal matters. He found, to his simultaneous wonder and disgust, that his appetites had grown stronger and more insistent. Although ponies naturally craved the high-sugar foods they needed to feed their big bodies and big brains, this human body, though smaller, was nonetheless more demanding in its request for sustenance. He was surprised, too, to discover the presence of a sexual urge even though he could smell no in-season females in the vicinity—or smell much of anything else, for that matter.

His initial and unflattering conclusion, based solely on self-examination, was that humans were small, weak, ungainly, and violently appetitive. That would at least partly explain and perhaps even excuse Princess Twilight Sparkle’s strange behavior.

Wobbling, he managed to stand upright on his hind legs. As Twilight had said it would, his body—thank Celestia—came complete with a built-in procedural memory that allowed him to balance and walk, but that didn’t make balancing or walking comfortable or pleasant. He weighed almost two hundred pounds less than he had as a pony, yet he stood twice as tall, and on only two feet. Merely standing upright gave him a sensation like that of balancing on the top of a long, slender pole. For a moment after he arose, he swayed back and forth, overwhelmed by vertigo.

The queasiness passed, and he took his first steps. Walking was a strange affair: he had to hurl one foot forward, deliberately throw himself off balance, and then catch himself with the other foot, over and over again. It astounded him that humans didn’t regularly fall on their faces.

Thinking about walking instead of simply doing it, he realized, made him liable to trip. He stumbled and fell, and his forelimbs, of their own accord, threw themselves out in front of his face. He avoided mashing his nose against the strangely smooth stone walk, but he scraped his front fetlocks, or whatever those joints were called.

When he pulled himself upright again, he took a moment to look at his forelimbs, which he’d entirely forgotten while examining his body’s other wonders. He found he had five digits similar to a dragon or griffon’s claws, and their ends, like those of the digits on his feet, were backed with vestigial hooves. He flexed them a few times and tried gripping his upper arms and pinching his shirtfront. He was pleased to find that these digits, like his legs, came with a procedural memory that would allow him to manipulate objects with at least minimal competence.

He at last dared to look around at his surroundings. Now more oriented toward himself, he found that he could make sense of everything else. He stood on a hard walkway made up of perfectly square, gray stones. Before him was a long, low building set with many tinted, rectangular windows. The building’s front was made up of glass sheets cleverly cut and hinged in strategic spots to form doors. He guessed that this was the “high school” of which Twilight had spoken, and which she had for several months attended. He had assumed that the school, being high, would be in a tall building or perhaps on an acropolis. Maybe the name was ironical.

In any case, he was exactly where he wanted to be. He adjusted his tie, and then he smiled to himself, for he had performed the gesture without thinking about it and had automatically done it with his hands. This body was weak, ungainly, and probably unsightly, but at least he knew he could get used to it.

Unsure whether to use his hands or another part of his body, he pushed open the school’s glass door with his head. Once inside, he was awash in noise and movement. The noises were quieter and tinnier than he thought they ought to be, so he concluded that his human body did indeed have an inferior sense of hearing. He also discovered, to his surprise, that this body was less nervous. All around him, other human figures bustled, squabbled, talked, yelled, swung saddlebags, fired spitballs, and banged open curious tall metal doors from which they retrieved books. As a pony, if he had walked into such a strange environment full of such excited creatures, he would have needed to perform a profound act of will to resist the urge to turn around and run. Now, however, he felt only the faintest hint of trepidation, so he concluded that the human did not have the pony’s finely tuned flight response. He didn’t know whether to consider this a merit to the humans or not.

Holding his head as high as he could on his short and inflexible neck, he walked into the hallway. Several of the humans looked at him, and he found, to his surprise, that their facial expressions were easy to read. They glanced up and down his body, apparently examining his clothes, and laughed or rolled their eyes. His costume was presumably some sort of faux pas.

He decided to make the best of things anyway. He examined the humans’ modes of dress and, though he saw several variations, quickly distinguished two styles: some wore long trousers that entirely encased their hind legs, as his did. Others wore skirt-like garments that stopped above the stifles, and instead of small shoes like his, they wore long boots that entirely encased their lower legs.

He suspected that the clothing styles were divided by sex. When he walked, he could tell from certain uncomfortable sensations that he still possessed a male’s sexual organs, though they were apparently radically altered in structure, so he concluded that his human body, like his pony one, was male. He decided that the long trousers must be for males and the short skirts for females. He speculated that females preferred short garments that didn’t divide the legs so that they could more easily give birth or perhaps nurse their young without disrobing.

Uncertain about finer points of etiquette, he decided it would be best if he didn’t approach any females, so he walked toward the closest knot of trousered humans and tried to think of a polite way to break the ice.

Wearing his characteristic deadpan expression, he said, “Greetings, fellow humans.”

Halting in the midst of their conversation, they turned and looked at him, and their curiously thin lips curled up into sneers.

One of them wore a bright red jacket with a letter “E,” made of felt, sewn onto the right breast. Covering his face were tiny red sores that looked like the aftermath of some terrible wasting disease. He had a vacant, hungry look in his eyes of the sort Quill Pen had never before seen except in the eyes of feral animals.

Quill Pen glanced around and noticed that red sores covered the faces of many of the humans present. He felt sweat break out at the confluences of his torso and forelegs; apparently, he had walked into the human world during a plague.

“Hey,” the feral-looking human in the lettered jacket said, “who the fuck are you, fucker?”

Quill Pen considered how to answer. Two of the words the human had used were unknown to him; no doubt they were imbued with deep meaning. This was, perhaps, a ritual greeting.

He decided politeness was best. He tried to bow his head, but it wouldn’t dip very low on his short neck. “My name is Quill Pen. I am looking for the hu—uh, the man named Shining Armor. Do you know him? Erm . . . fucker.”

When he raised his head again, he found the human’s face was nearly touching his. The human pushed a finger against his chest hard enough to leave a bruise and, with spit flying from his mouth, said, “Hey, fuck you.” Then he stomped away, and the other humans followed.

Quill Pen stood stock still, blinked several times, and struggled to maintain his poker face.

Have arrived in this world in the midst of an upheaval, Quill Pen scribbled in his notebook as he walked down the hall. Have attempted conversation with several humans and have been verbally attacked in similar manner each time. A disfiguring disease has afflicted most of the population, creating horrific boils on the face. Disease may also be responsible for aggressive and antisocial behavior. Is it zoonotic? Am I carrying it myself? Do I risk bringing it to Equestria if I return?

He was frazzled. By listening to the humans speak to each other, or by listening to them speak to him, he came to the conclusion that the word fuck made up most of their vocabulary. He was still hazy as to that word’s exact meaning, but he had discerned that it was an obscenity. Ordinarily, he knew, obscenities were reserved for times of ribald humor or, more especially, for moments of hot anger, but the humans used this obscenity constantly. That made a certain sort of sense: judging by their rudeness, the humans were angry constantly.

Every time another human insulted him, Quill Pen found, to his horror, that he was sore tempted to respond to the human’s rage with rage of his own. Was this merely increased aggression resulting from his own humanity, or was it the first symptom of whatever disease this particular group of humans carried?

After being yelled at, shoved, and even spit upon several times, he walked wearily down the hall with his shirt halfway untucked from his trousers and his tie loose. Stolidly, he continued writing in his notebook. He looked up for a moment to see a tall human male standing at one of those thin metal doors. The fellow wore an easy smile markedly different from the ugly snarls on most of the humans’ faces. He also had fewer of the facial boils: in fact, he had just one sitting on his smooth cheek like a lonely hill standing in the midst of a wide plain. Perhaps he was newly infected, and perhaps the mood-altering effects of the disease had not yet taken hold. Quill Pen’s eyes fell on the human’s spiky mane, which was the same shade of blue as the mane of Prince Shining Armor of the Crystal Empire.

Quill Pen spat out his pencil. “Excuse me, sir, but are you Shining Armor?”

Instead of cursing, the human answered, “Sure am. And I gotta say, you’re only the second person I’ve ever seen write with his mouth.”

Quill Pen breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank Celestia. I thought, with the plague—”

Shining Armor frowned. “Plague? What plague?” He laughed. “Yeah, you’re as whack as her, all right.”

“By ‘her,’ do you mean Twilight Sparkle?”

Shining Armor’s easy smile fell. “Hey, how do you know her? Who—?”

“If there is a private place,” Quill Pen said, “I think you and I should talk.”

They found a bench in a nearby grassy park. It was a sunny day, birds chirped from the tops of what Quill Pen assumed to be telegraph poles, and the leaves of the park’s aspens rattled pleasantly in the breeze. A couple of humans dressed in tight shorts loped past with their arms pumping rhythmically. Quill Pen was not entirely sure whether they were male or female, but he guessed the latter, as he had noticed that the females generally had more willowy bodies. Shining Armor, he saw, followed the two running figures with his eyes, and for a moment his face took on that same feral look that Quill Pen had seen in the faces of so many humans that day. Perhaps the disease was beginning to take its effect. Trying not to be obvious about it, Quill Pen edged away.

The look of animality evaporated from Shining’s features as quickly as it had appeared, and his easy grin replaced it. “So, how is it you know Twilight Sparkle? You her brother?”

“No, though, if I may say so, I find the question ironical, coming from you.”

Shining cocked an eyebrow. “Eh? What are you? Her cousin?

“No.”

“Old boyfriend?”

“Certainly not. I have no relation to Her Highness, nor are we close in any way.”

Shining’s shoulders relaxed visibly, but his eyebrows scrunched together. “Did you just call her—?”

“A slip of the tongue, I assure you. I have some odd, ah, habits of speaking, that I ask you simply to ignore.”

“Huh. You talk kinda like she did . . . but you say you’re not her brother or boyfriend?”

“No, you are.”

“What?”

“Her brother and boyfriend.”

Shining, a look of confusion still lingering on his face, laughed. “Uh, yeah, well, she and I, you know, went out.”

“Could you tell me about that?” Quill Pen took his pencil in his teeth and started writing again.

Shining’s look became more cunning, his grin more lopsided. He leaned close and said, “You sure she’s not, you know, close to you?”

“I’m sure,” Quill Pen said around the pencil.

“Well then, just between you an’ me, I totally banged her.”

Quill Pen spat out the pencil. “I’m sorry, you did what?”

“I banged her, man. I shagged that nasty skank till she cried.” Now looking smug, he lounged against the bench’s armrest and threw an arm over the back.

Quill Pen felt something uncoiling in his stomach, and he had to struggle to keep his voice even and his face composed. “You must excuse me, but your terminology is unfamiliar. Are you trying to tell me that you covered the princess?”

“That I did what?”

The two looked at each other in confusion for almost a minute before Shining added, “Anyway, she was the new girl, a nerd, and she was awkward, I mean really awkward—tripping over everything and running into doors. I took one look at her and figured she’d go for my ‘chivalrous’ shtick. I acted all sweet and smooth, fended off the bullies, pretended to be interested in her nerd stuff, that kind o’ thing. When I could tell she was panting for it, I looked in her eyes and said, ‘Baby, I love you.’” He brought together two of the digits on one hand with a loud click. “Works every time.”

“I think I only understand about every fifth word of your speech, but if I get the gist of what you are saying, you are telling me you dissembled with Twilight Sparkle.”

“Hell no, man, I’m not into that. I just banged her.”

“What I mean is, you lied to her.” Quill Pen felt rage bubbling up. He swallowed, and his throat felt raw, as if acid were rising in it. The muscles in his jaw grew tight, and he knew his emotionless face was slipping.

“Well, sure, I lied. You know how girls are. You gotta say ‘I love you’ and stuff like that before they’ll put out.” He frowned, apparently discerning the anger in Quill Pen’s face. “What the hell is your problem? You a virgin or something?”

“Are you aware that she’s pregnant with your child?”

“No.” Shining Armor looked thoughtful for a moment, but then shrugged. “Oh well. I suppose she’ll, you know, take care of it.”

“I’m sure she will. She loves the baby very much.”

An expression of incredulity passed briefly across Shining Armor’s features.

Struggling to control himself, Quill Pen said, “Let me ask you some questions. They are absurd questions, but I would much appreciate it if you pretended they were serious.”

“Okay—”

“First, what would you say if you knew Twilight Sparkle was from another world very different from this one, and that, in this other world, she was not a human at all, but a pony?”

The same look of incredulity appeared on Shining’s face again, but this time it stayed. “Pony? You mean like a horse?”

“Somewhat like, yes.”

Shining chuckled. “Well, I’d say I’ve knocked up plenty of bitches, but this is the first time I’ve knocked up a mare.”

Quill Pen shook his head in confusion, but decided not to pursue the question further. He was beginning to find the interview suffocating, and he wanted to end it as soon as possible. In a haze, he said, “And one final question. What would you say if you knew that, in this other world, Twilight Sparkle has the love of all ponykind, that she has great and powerful magic, and that she is, in fact, a princess?”

“You mean a real princess, right? Not just like the Fall Formal princess?”

“A real princess, yes.”

Shining shrugged again. “I guess it wouldn’t make a difference to me.”

Quill Pen rose slowly from his seat.

“I mean, why should it?” Shining asked. “I got what I wanted out of her, didn’t I?”

Quill Pen shook with an anger unlike any he had ever felt before. “Are you telling me that, as far as you are concerned, the princess of friendship, an alicorn of Equestria, the mare who loves you and carries your foal, is nothing to you but a . . . a dalliance? A cheap entertainment? Somepony you can use and then throw away like a bit of trash?”

“Dude, what is wrong with you? Calm down.”

“You . . . you . . . fucker!” Quill Pen struck Shining Armor across the face.

Looking stunned, Shining hit the ground. Quill Pen stared down at his hands to find that his digits had curled in on themselves. He immediately perceived the logic of it: by balling the digits up tight, he could turn the joints into striking surfaces. Not as tough as hooves, perhaps, but tough enough.

Shining jumped to his feet, feinted with one forelimb, and then struck out with another, catching Quill Pen in the jaw. Had Quill Pen been a pony, such a blow would have glanced off his heavy mandible, but his human teeth rattled and, for a moment, his vision darkened.

He could taste blood in his mouth. Ordinarily, sensing blood and facing violence would have driven him to flight. Now they only enraged him further. He swung wildly and rapidly with his forelimbs, striking Shining repeatedly about the chest and neck. One of his blows caught Shining in the throat and sent him reeling backwards.

It was then that Quill Pen realized that the body he had thought was so weak was, by human standards, quite strong. He would never have dared to fight the pony Shining Armor, who was not only a prince, but big-boned, deep-chested, muscular, and trained by the Guard. But the human version was thin and unremarkable, whereas Quill Pen, perhaps, retained some small bit of his former equine strength.

He dove in and struck out again. Remembering how his brain had rattled when his jaw was hit, he aimed his blows at Shining’s head. At last, after many random strikes, his fist connected with Shining’s nose, and he both felt and heard a pop. Shining's nose turned sideways and gushed blood.

Shining Armor fell to the grass again and lifted one forelimb to beg for a stay.

Panting heavily, fists still clenched, Quill Pen stared down at him. His rage was partially sated, but part of him wanted to keep going, to pound Shining Armor’s face into the ground and beat him until all his bones had shattered.

But he didn’t do that. Instead, he turned, walked away, and marveled at the blood drying on his knuckles. His own blood pounded in his head. His heart thrummed until his whole torso shook with it.

Euphoria rose up and overtook him like a strong drink of sarsaparilla. He left the park and wandered the streets aimlessly. Humans stared at him, but he ignored them. All at once, everything came together: this was what it was to be a man. He had found, when he first arrived in this world, that his appetites were strong and unruly, and that had both repulsed and irritated him. But now he knew the delight of letting appetite reign. He wanted to drink until he was drunk. He wanted to fight with other men. And then he wanted to grab a woman and shag that nasty skank until she cried.

Breathing heavily, eyes rolling, he fell against a building and thought of Princess Twilight. She had conceived her foal Skyla in this world, and therefore Skyla had no special talent and would never have a cutie mark. If it were true that humans had no fixed destiny, then there could be no goal, no good, toward which they could work. Humans were beyond good and evil, and without good to practice or evil to avoid, what could they do except follow their appetites? That was why they raged, and that was why they used each other like playthings. Human existence was about nothing but slaking desires and accumulating the power over others necessary to slake them.

This repulsed Quill Pen no longer. Now it exhilarated him. If Princess Skyla were truly a mare of the human world rather than of the pony, then what kind of princess would she be? She could not work for the good of the ponies of her kingdom; all that would matter to her would be personal power. She would be a princess truly worthy of the name, and Quill Pen would be her chief servant. There, on the street, sweating profusely and leaning against an anonymous hovel, he pledged allegiance to the future kingdom of Princess Skyla: he would use his column to spread the ideas she would no doubt one day espouse when she took her throne, and she would recognize how he had paved the way for her rule. Then she would reward him, and, by means of her rewards, he would be free to feed his desires.

By the time he passed again through the mirror and took up his old equine form, Quill Pen’s ardor had cooled, but his will remained firm. Now calm, he vowed in his heart never again to swear by a princess unless it was Princess Skyla.

Adapting to his pony body was much easier than adapting to his new human body had been. Becoming a pony was like slipping into an old, familiar garment. After the transference, he rose from the floor, adjusted his tie with a levitation spell, and turned toward the portal mirror to check his mane.

He wore the same composed, deadpan expression as always. Only his eyes were different; they had taken on a new wildness, a ferocity of the sort he had only seen before in the faces of feral animals—and of human beings.

He turned back to the room and was surprised to find it empty except for a single crystal guard.

“Where are the princesses?” Quill Pen demanded.

“They told me to escort you out when you returned,” the guard replied.

With an impatient snort, Quill Pen shoved past the guard and, ignoring the guard's surprised shout, galloped for the door.

Keeping ahead of the clatter of the guard’s diamond bell boots, Quill Pen ran for the palace’s winding central staircase and bounded up several flights until he found the salon where he had met the princesses earlier. He shoved open the door and froze.

Inside, Twilight Sparkle sat on the floor and bawled loudly with her head lying against the breast of Twilight Velvet, who rocked her as if she were a foal. A white-clad doctor with a stethoscope around his neck stood at Twilight Sparkle’s shoulder and gazed down at her with a mixture of sympathy and embarrassment on his face. To the side stood Princess Cadance and Prince Shining Armor. Cadance watched the scene gravely. Shining Armor had bags under his eyes, and the ribs showing through his coat suggested he’d not been eating well, but his expression held a hint of relief, as if some trying chapter of his life had just come to a close.

Quill Pen looked on numbly. Twilight Sparkle’s racking sobs and pouring tears were entirely unrestrained; she was not merely crying, but wailing, giving full vent to the sort of grief that most ponies knew only a few times in their lives. As if she realized the door had opened, she pulled up one of her wings and hid her face. It reminded Quill Pen of the times when, as a small foal, he had felt some deep sorrow and hidden himself under blankets or cushions where he could give it expression without being seen.

Cadance walked to the door. Her face stern, she said to Quill Pen, “Well, what did you learn? What manner of stallion is the double of my husband?”

Quill Pen paused and looked down at his notes, but then he closed his notebook and tucked it away. Clearing his throat faintly, he said, “The human Shining Armor is a complete gentlecolt, well-mannered and utterly charming. He says he loves Princess Twilight dearly, though he regrets his momentary indiscretion with her, and wishes very much that he could be here to help her rear their foal.”

Cadance’s expression softened. “I will tell her that, Quill Pen, when the time is right. Thank you.”

Quill Pen’s eyes strayed over Cadance’s shoulder to where Twilight’s sobs continued undiminished. “What—?”

Cadance looked into his eyes for a long minute before she said, “It was a miscarriage.” Then, without ceremony, she closed the door in his face.