Brad and Twilight Sparkle are madly in love, so madly in love that Brad agrees to follow Twilight through the mirror portal to Equestria, where the two of them plan to have a big pony wedding. But when Brad comes to Equestria, he isn't a pony.
Brad and Twilight Sparkle are madly in love, so madly in love that Brad agrees to follow Twilight through the mirror portal to Equestria, where the two of them plan to have a big pony wedding.
. . . Problem is, after Brad comes to Equestria, he doesn't turn into a pony.
With his mouth hanging open, Brad stood in the middle of Twilight Sparkle's backyard and swayed on his feet as he stared up at the glowing disc hovering in the air.
“Is it real?” he whispered, his voice hoarse. “This other world—?”
“Yes,” Twilight said, her eyes turned down to the crown in her hands. “It’s real.” The crown’s jewels glistened in the portal’s light.
He glanced at her and saw pleading in her eyes. He put his arms around her, and she tried to pull away, but he held her tight.
“Brad, please, don’t—!”
“If this is my last chance to hold you like this, I’m going to make the most of it.”
She stopped struggling, paused a moment, and then melted into his embrace. “You believe me, don’t you?” she whispered, laying her head against his chest. “About Equestria? About the ponies?”
“I love you.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question.”
“It should.” He placed two fingers under her chin, tilted her head up, and kissed her. The crown she’d been holding dropped to the grass. She slumped as her knees went weak, but his strong arms held her up. When he drew back, he found her eyes still closed, her lips still quivering, and her body still leaning against his, so he kissed her again, softly and briefly, before he said, “I’m going to come with you.”
“But—”
He kissed her one more time to stop her protest, but now she put her hands to his shoulders and pushed him away. “Brad, please, I do love you, but I’m really—”
“A talking magic horse with wings. I know. You told me already, and I told you I don’t care.”
She looked toward the hovering disc, put a hand to her mouth, and bit into a knuckle. “If you step through there, you’ll turn into a pony, too—”
“Perfect.” He tried to take her in his arms again, but she stepped back.
“Brad, please. I want you to think about this.”
“I’ve thought about it.”
“Think harder.” She shifted on her feet, and her eyes took on that pleading look again. Finally, with her face contorted in anguish, she said, “But I love you just the way you are, right now—”
“And I’ll love you no matter what you’re like. Do you believe me?”
Chewing her lip, she gazed into his face before she walked to him and swiftly gave him another kiss.
“That doesn’t answer my question,” he said.
“It should.”
“I can be back in an hour.” He glanced up at the disc. “How long will the portal stay open?”
“Until I pass through.”
He turned away from her, but she caught his hand and squeezed it, forcing him to linger.
“Take as much time as you need, Brad, but . . . hurry back.”
He pushed through the back door into the kitchen and called out, “Mom! Dad!” No sound answered except the steady dripping of the sink faucet. The house was dark, and the dim, ruddy light of the sunset angled through the Venetian blinds over the dingy kitchen windows.
Ewan, he knew, was at a friend’s house. Brad found, taped to the refrigerator, a note that said, “Red Cross meeting. Home late. Lasagna’s in the fridge. Love you. Mom.”
He didn’t even bother to heat the lasagna before he ate a piece. It was one of his favorite dishes, but he had little appetite due to the butterflies in his stomach.
After placing his plate in the sink, he walked, dazed, through the house. His hands found random objects and fondled them—a candlestick on the dining room table, a book on a bookshelf, one of Ewan’s action figures left in the middle of the living room carpet, the rough ring of missing veneer on the coffee table where someone had set down a glass without a coaster. It was the last time he would see this house, and now its most mundane components, its defects, the things he usually never thought about, were all precious to him.
He made his way back to the kitchen, pulled the lasagna from the fridge again, and ate another slice, this time more slowly. He realized it was the last time he’d eat meat.
After he ate, he walked up the stairs—noticing again how the third step from the top always groaned—and entered his room. He looked around at the posters of his favorite metal bands. A couple of model rockets dangled on wires from the ceiling; he touched them both and then stared at the dust coating his fingers. His guitar case stood propped in one corner. Crumpled on his bed was the dinosaur-print comforter he’d had since he was eight.
He took up his backpack and started throwing in things he thought he might want. He tossed in a few science fiction novels he wanted to read and some textbooks he knew Twilight would like. He considered taking some CDs, but then remembered Twilight telling him that the ponies didn’t have CD players. He thought about packing clothes, but figured none of them would fit anymore once he was a pony. Twilight said the ponies didn’t wear clothes much anyway.
Finally, from his desk, he picked up a photograph of his parents, himself, and his younger brother. All dressed in their Sunday best, the quintessence of a happy family, they smiled broadly for the camera. His father looked proud with his arm around his mother. His mother had a hand on little Ewan’s shoulder. Brad stood a little apart, and his smile was a little less enthusiastic. Even after his mother had tried hard to comb it down, his hair still stuck up.
For a moment, his conviction wavered. His hands shook, and he felt tears welling in his eyes, but at last he threw the photograph into his backpack. Slinging the pack over his shoulder, he took up the guitar case—Twilight had assured him it was possible to play the guitar with hooves, though he’d likely have to learn the instrument all over again—and then he left his room and shut the door. His hand lingered on the knob.
Back in the kitchen, he ripped the note from the fridge and turned it over on the kitchen table. He found a pen and wrote,
Dear Mom and Dad, and Ewan, too (hey, squirt),
I won’t be here when you get home. By the time you read this, I’ve already left. I’m okay. Please don’t try to find me. I’m safe and I’m happy. You might hear that Twilight Sparkle is missing from school. You remember you met her before I took her to the Fall Formal, right? You helped me pick out her corsage, Mom. I’m with her now. We’re both okay.
He frowned, and his knuckles turned white as he gripped the pen. He knew what he wanted to say, but the words wouldn’t come out right.
I want to explain, but I can’t. Twilight is from somewhere else, another place far away, and she has to go back home. She has stuff she’s got to do there, lots of responsibilities. I’d tell you about it, but it sounds crazy.
I’m going with her.
I love you. I love you a whole lot—
He stopped writing and clenched his teeth when he found tears forming in his eyes again. After a deep breath, he continued,
—but I love Twilight, too, and she can’t ever come back here again. I can’t lose her. I just can’t.
I’m sorry.
Love always,
Brad
After he finished the note, he put his head down on the table and wept.
It was dark when he returned to Twilight’s place. He found her sitting on the edge of the deck in the back with her legs dangling, feet idly kicking. Her dog Spike sat in her lap and panted softly. The portal hovered over the middle of the yard, seven feet in the air, and its wan, flickering light played across Twilight’s serene, uplifted face.
When Brad walked onto the deck, Spike stepped from Twilight’s lap and sat at his feet. He bent down and scratched the dog behind the ears.
“After we go through,” Twilight said, “he'll be a dragon again, able to walk on his hind legs and breathe fire.”
Brad laughed. When he looked up, he found Twilight leaning back against the railing and looking at him shyly through her lashes.
“What’s up?” he asked.
“I want you to kiss me one more time while we’re still human. I want to remember—”
With another laugh, he grabbed her roughly and pressed his lips firmly against hers, lingering for a long moment. When he released her, her violet cheeks were flushed crimson.
“I think I’ll remember that,” she whispered as she pressed her face to his neck.
“What do we do now?” he asked.
She stepped from him and took up the crown from the railing. After carefully placing it on her head, she picked up Spike and cradled him in one arm. He whimpered softly. Then Twilight tried to climb onto the railing, but, with a gasp, she slipped.
Brad caught her before she fell. “Help me up,” she said. “We have to jump together.”
He held her steady until she had a good footing. Then, pressing his guitar case on the railing and leaning on the case for balance, he lithely stepped up beside her and took her hand.
His heart pounded hard, his throat closed, and his stomach clenched up as he looked down into that flickering disc. It swirled like a whirlpool.
“On three,” Twilight said.
He nodded, searching for his voice.
“One,” she said.
“Two,” he croaked.
“Three!”
Together, still holding hands, they jumped, and the world became a spinning sphere of light. He floated in nothing, and then he dissolved into nothing. Twilight’s hand slipped away, and somewhere far away in the brightness, he could hear her screaming.
He tried to call her name, but he couldn’t feel his mouth. He no longer had a mouth. He no longer had a face. He no longer had a body.
How can I hear her if I don’t have ears? That thought was his last before all thoughts disappeared. The brightness faded swiftly and without fuss, like a desert sunset, into black. But no stars came out, and Twilight’s screaming continued undiminished.
When Brad awoke, he lay on what felt like a sheet of polished quartz, smooth and cold. He raised his head and saw a tall, round mirror such as topped ladies’ dressing tables. It was blackened and cracked as if it had been through a fire. A fragment fell from it and struck the floor with a high-pitched tinkle, like the sound of a glass bell.
His breathing was loud in his ears, as if he’d been running in winter, but his breath didn’t frost on the air. His head felt light, and his stomach growled. He turned slowly until his eyes fell upon Twilight.
His heart leapt into his throat. He thought he had prepared himself for this.
He hadn’t.
She was indeed a pony, just as she had said. Her clothes were gone, but bright purple fur now covered her body. She lay on her side with her eyes closed and her barrel quivering. An image of a star, much like the one that had adorned her skirt, had been meticulously dyed into the fur of her hip. Her hair looked as it had before, dark blue and streaked with pink, but now she had a long tail to match. Her four legs ended in delicately filed hooves painted the same color as her coat.
As far as he could see, all that set her apart from a regular pony, aside from her coloration, was her head. It was bulbous, giving evidence of a large brain, and her muzzle was short and blunt, more like a dog’s than a horse’s. From her forehead rose a stubby horn that looked like ivory or mother of pearl, but which was dyed purple like her fur.
Before her face, lying on his back and looking to be asleep, was Spike. He did indeed look like a dragon, though he was less impressive than Brad had imagined.
His heart leapt again and then started pounding hard when Twilight opened her eyes. Her eyes looked much the same as they always had, but were now bigger. She stared up at him with her equine mouth hanging open, and then, to his shock, she unfolded an enormous wing from her back and used it to cover her face.
“Don’t look at me!” she cried.
“It’s okay,” he said. He reached a hand toward her.
He paused. Cautiously, he flexed his fingers. He turned his hand over and stared at it. Then he looked down at himself.
His legs were splayed out on a glass floor. He still wore his jeans, T-shirt, and jacket, and he was unmistakably human.
“I’m . . . me,” he said.
Behind her wing, Twilight released a single, soft sob. Some of her delicate purple feathers rustled from her exhaled breath.
Brad heard the loud, echoing clop of hooves against a hard surface. He looked across the room to a high double door made of glass set in a frame of gold. The door opened, and Brad sucked in his breath and trembled from head to toe as he beheld a great white unicorn with a crown of gold on its head and a mane colored like a rainbow and waving as if floating in water. The mane stretched over half the unicorn’s face and reached almost to the floor.
It glanced at him with one eye, and he pitched forward onto his face.
“Twilight Sparkle,” he heard a stern, feminine voice say, “what have you done?”
Brad only dimly remembered what happened after the white unicorn walked into the room. He remembered that she glowed like the sun, and he remembered that, when he looked into her eye, he thought she was peering inside him and reading his soul like a book. He remembered how the strength left his body and he fell down flat.
He heard Twilight pleading with someone, someone he assumed was the white unicorn. He couldn’t remember what she was pleading for, but he remembered being afraid.
When he came back to himself, he was propped up on a red velvet pillow on a long, gilt chaise longue in a spacious chamber sparkling with jewels. A four-poster featherbed, a vanity, a coffee table, and an armoire, all coated in gold foil and encrusted with enormous rubies, sapphires, emeralds, and opals, stood in the room. It occurred to him that if he pried off just a few of those gems, he could be set for life: a blue diamond at least as big as the Hope jutted from the apex of the vanity mirror’s frame, and it was not even the largest stone in the room.
He quickly learned that he was a prisoner, albeit in a large and luxurious prison. The front door was locked, so he pounded on it until it fell open.
Brad gaped. In walked a pony with a body apparently made out of living blue crystal. The pony shimmered whenever he moved, and Brad could actually see right through him to the furniture in the hall outside. The pony wore boots, a helmet, and a breastplate that, from the way they fractured the light into rainbows, appeared to be diamond.
“May I help you?” the pony asked.
Brad shook his head to recover from the shock. “Yeah, you can let me out of here. Where’s Twilight?”
“The princess will see you soon. May I offer you some refreshment in the meantime? Food? A drink?”
“No, you can let me out.”
“That, I am afraid, I cannot do. Will that be all, sir?”
Brad scowled. “Are you a butler or a jailer?”
“For the moment, both. Good day to you, sir.” The pony backed out and closed the door.
Brad kicked the doorframe in frustration, prowled around for a few minutes, and then tried the two other doors in the room. As he had expected, one opened into a closet, and the other into a bath.
The floor and walls of the bath appeared to be inlaid with squares of quartz rather than ceramic. The sink was actually a fountain topped with what looked like a giant seahorse carved from topaz, spitting a stream of water from its mouth. The toilet was less impressive: it was merely a porcelain-lined hole in the floor. Brad saw no toilet paper, but a device beside the toilet appeared to be a bidet.
The tub was the size of a small pool and sunk into the floor. Deciding he didn’t smell too good after all he’d been through, he turned on the faucets and slid out of his clothes.
Beside the tub, he discovered an enormous rack of scented soaps, bath oils, and sprays. He read some of the labels and then, curious, poured a few vials into the bathwater—essence of lavender, juniper oil, almond milk, sassafras oil, and appleseed extract. He decided he’d overdone it, as the hot bath gave off a heavy, cloying, and decidedly unpleasant odor, but he climbed in anyway and soaked for several minutes. Leaning his head back, he stared up at the quartz tiles in the ceiling and let his mind wander.
While the fumes of the bath oils cleared his sinuses, he felt as if the rest of his head were clearing as well. The last few months had been crazy: Twilight Sparkle had appeared out of nowhere and literally crashed into him in the hall. Awkward, clumsy, and exceedingly weird, yet both incredibly smart and incredibly pretty, she had quickly carried his heart away.
When she had made her teary confession to him, telling him that she loved him more than she had ever loved anyone before, but that she couldn’t be with him because she was really a magic pony princess from another world, he had assumed that, as he had already halfway suspected, she was a nutjob. But he loved her, so he had chosen to believe her anyway.
Only after she had taken his hand, pulled him to her house, and opened the mirror portal had he finally lost all doubt. He had decided then and there that spending the rest of his life as a pony would be a better fate than losing Twilight.
Now he wasn’t so sure. He remembered that, when he had looked down at himself after passing through the mirror and had seen his human body intact, his first feeling had been one of profound relief.
He looked down at himself now. He was thin and bony, perhaps, but he was a man, and he liked being a man. Whenever he was around Twilight, he lost his head, but for the moment, his passions were cooled, and he knew one thing for certain: he did not want to be a pony. He very desperately did not want to be a pony.
With a long, low sigh, he reached for the rack again and rifled through its contents until he found the least girly-smelling soap, and then he scrubbed.
After his bath, he had no choice but to slip back into the same clothes he had taken off. Combing some “Goops for Stuff All-Natural Renewing Mane Gel” into his hair, he walked back into the bedroom. He gasped and dropped the comb when he saw a pink unicorn sitting on the chaise.
“I didn’t want to interrupt your bath,” she said. “Are you having a pleasant stay?”
He put a hand to his chest and struggled to even his breathing before he answered, “Sorry, but everything here is still catching me by surprise. Who are you?”
“Princess Cadance. Did Twilight mention me?”
“You’re her sister-in-law. Where is Twilight?”
“You’ll see her soon.”
“Why is the door locked?”
“As a precaution. Come sit down.”
He hesitated a moment, but finally walked over, sat in a chair, crossed his arms, and scowled at the unicorn.
He couldn’t hold the scowl long. Sitting near her, he felt his face flush, and his heart started pounding. Squirming in his seat, he put his hands to the chair’s armrests—hoofrests, maybe?—and gripped them hard.
Cadance raised one eyebrow, but appeared to be trying to ignore his reaction. Then she paused, frowned, and wrinkled her nose. “That’s an interesting scent you’re wearing—”
Brad felt sweat break out on his forehead. He tugged at the collar of his T-shirt as if it were tight. “Well, I found a bunch of stuff in the bathroom, and one of the bottles smelled like deodorant, so—”
“That’s actually a vaginal spray. A mare would wear it to mask her natural scent when she’s in season.”
“Oh.” Brad felt his face flush even harder.
Cadance, as if dealing with a mildly distasteful subject, looked down, took a deep, longsuffering breath, and said, “If I’m making you uncomfortable, why don’t you scoot your chair back a few feet?”
Feeling lightheaded, he nodded and said, “Thanks. I will.” Pushing with his feet, he shoved the chair backwards, and as the distance between himself and Cadance lengthened, he felt his face cool and his heart slow. He shook his head to clear it.
“You seem to be unusually sensitive to us,” Cadance said. “Interesting. Princess Celestia said your reaction to her was quite unexpected as well.”
Brad mopped at his forehead with the back of his hand. “I don’t understand. Sensitive to what?”
“Alicorn magic, I presume. Celestia has a certain aura of power around her, and anypony can sense it, but you’re the only one I’ve ever heard of actually fainting in front of her.”
“I didn’t faint. I just—okay, I sort of fainted.”
“And I’m the princess of love.” She lifted an eyebrow again. “I seem to cause you a pronounced physical—”
“No, no. Not at all.” His face heated again.
“Am I still too close? I can move to the other side of the room if you like.”
“You’re fine. It’s fine. Just don’t mind me. Tell me when I can see Twilight.”
“That matter is more complicated than you think. Do you know where you are?”
“Equestria, right?”
“Yes, and do you know what Equestria is?”
“The land of magic ponies?”
“More than that, it’s a kingdom. A pony cannot simply cross its borders whenever she pleases. You are here illegally.”
Brad dropped his hand to his lap, and his face fell. “Oh. She never mentioned—”
Cadance sighed. “I thought not. Listen, Brad, I’m going to get this sorted out for you—”
“Aren’t you a princess? Can’t you just wave your hoof over it and say, ‘Brad can be in Equestria’?”
She smiled. “It happens that you are in my domain, the Crystal Empire, but I am not the ultimate ruler here. I intend to make your stay as comfortable as I can, but your case will be decided in Canterlot. Princess Celestia has returned there to call the Cosmic Council, but it takes time to gather the members. In the meanwhile, ask me for anything within reason, and I will provide it.”
“How about a TV?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Okay, how about my backpack and my guitar?”
“I will send for them as soon as I leave.”
“Books?”
“I will select a shelf of my favorites, fiction and nonfiction, and have it brought here.”
Brad leaned forward and said very slowly, pronouncing each syllable individually, “And Twilight Sparkle.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible.”
“Why? Don’t tell me she doesn’t want to see me. I won’t believe you.”
A warm smile settled on Cadance’s face. “The situation is difficult. Surely you have an inkling of that.”
“I don’t care. I want to see her.”
Cadance’s smile grew wider and softer, and her eyes moistened. She looked like a girl watching a sappy rom-com, but after clearing her throat faintly, she changed the subject. “Let’s discuss your diet, shall we? I notice you have small teeth—”
“Screw my diet. Let’s talk about my girlfriend. Where is she?”
“I will explain everything as soon as I can, Brad, but I must meet with the other sovereigns first. The situation is unusual, and we are having trouble figuring out the right way to handle it.”
“Locking me in a room is not the right way. Why don’t you ask Twilight how to handle it? Why don’t you bring her here?”
Cadance closed her eyes and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly as she pushed one foreleg away from her breast, apparently in an effort to calm herself. “Brad, Twilight spent a lot of time as a human, but now she’s a pony again. She fell in love with you, very much in love. Believe me, I can sense it from her. Her heart is like a . . . a bonfire! But she’s confused right now, and she needs time alone to sort things out. I know, because you love her, that you want to be with her, but you can also respect her when she needs to be alone, can’t you?”
Brad looked down to the floor and nodded. He felt his eyes watering, and that irritated him.
Cadance stood and deliberately drew close to him until he felt his heart begin to pound again. “Brad, I have one more thing to say to you, and I want you to listen closely. Do you know my special talent?”
“Making people flush?” Annoyed, he got out of his chair and backed away from her.
“Close. My talent is helping ponies fall in love.”
For a brief moment, Brad wondered wildly if she were hitting on him. He grabbed the chair and shoved it in front of himself like a shield. “Can’t they do that on their own without your help?”
“Usually. Most ponies choose their own spouses, but among the nobility, marriages are often arranged. They call on me to make sure the arrangements go smoothly.”
“Where I come from, we don’t much like arranged marriages.”
“Maybe you should reconsider. Ours, at least, are usually happy.”
“What does this have to do with me?”
Cadance twisted her mouth as if considering her words. “I can also, sometimes, help a pony fall out of love. When a relationship just isn’t possible, it can be easier that way. Twilight told me that the two of you were planning to marry after you came here, but seeing as how things didn’t work out as you thought—”
Brad leaned over the back of the chair and said, “Go to hell.”
“I let ponies decide for themselves whether or not they want to come to me for my services. I am not advising you, Brad. I am not urging you. I’m only letting you know I am here if you want me.”
“I don’t want you. I want Twilight, and you can go to hell. In my world, love isn’t something you can turn on and off like a faucet.”
“I know. It must be a very difficult place to live.” Cadance turned and walked again to the door. As her hoof touched the knob, fear suddenly gripped Brad’s heart.
“Wait!” he called. “Wait! Twilight, she didn’t . . . I mean, she wouldn’t have . . . did she ask you to . . . ?”
Cadance looked over her shoulder at him for a long minute before she said, “If you need to ask that question, Brad, you should consider whether the love between the two of you is really as strong as you think it is.”
With that, she left, and she closed and locked the door behind her.
“He loves her deeply. I could taste it in his heart.”
In the high court of Canterlot, Princess Cadance sat on a portable throne carved from a single piece of quartz. Just to the left stood Princess Celestia’s throne of gold.
Celestia rested her chin on a hoof and brooded. Light from the chamber’s many stained-glass windows dappled her white coat with reds, blues, and pinks. “What was your impression of him?” she asked.
“He is a little rough-mannered, but not unkind,” Cadance said. “He is very loyal to Twilight, though I do not think he has yet fully grasped what’s happened. He is in denial.”
Celestia lowered her hoof and sighed. “The fault is ultimately mine. Perhaps Twilight was not ready—”
“You couldn’t control when she became an alicorn, Auntie. It was her destiny.”
“But I steered her toward it. I trained her for it. Lifting ponies to their full potential is part of my task, and sometimes I fail—”
Cadance waved a hoof through the air, letting the window’s light play across the gleaming copper of her bell boot. “You didn’t train me. I became an alicorn without your help.”
“That’s why I snatched you up and made you my adopted niece before you could do any damage, Cadance! I trained you after the fact, and I trained her before. Either way, you are both my trainees, and when you err, the fault is mine.”
Cadance, a mischievous smile on her face, stood from her own throne and climbed into Celestia’s, tucking herself up against Celestia’s side. “Auntie, are you really sure she’s erred? Their love is true.”
Celestia nuzzled Cadance’s cheek, but then rapped her on the nose. “You care so much for love that you forget other things, Cadance. Apparently, in his own kingdom, Brad is a child: Twilight took him away from his home, and because the mirror has shattered, we cannot send him back. By the law of any civilized land, Twilight Sparkle has committed an act of abduction, coercion, and, I fear, even seduction—”
“She was, as I understand, thrust into the body of an adolescent. I think some brash action can be expected.”
“Perhaps, but within limits.”
“Let me tell you something,” Cadance said as she leaned her head on Celestia’s shoulder. “Soon after Twilight first became an alicorn, before she traveled to the human world, she came to me for advice on how to run a kingdom, and I reminded her of how I ascended to princesshood after defeating the witch Prismia. I described coming here shortly after to be tutored by you—”
“The time when you were also her foalsitter.”
“Yes, of course. I off-hoofedly mentioned that, while I was foalsitting her and learning under you, I had a terrible crush on her brother. When I said that, she said one word in reply that stuck in my mind, and I pondered it for many days after. I think it holds the key to understanding what has happened between her and Brad.”
Celestia lifted an eyebrow. “What was the word?”
“The word was, ‘Yuck.’”
Celestia blinked a few times, and then she laughed.
Cadance frowned and tapped Celestia’s neck with her horn. “Auntie, I think you do not understand the implications.”
“I think, dear Cadance, that you have a—what should I call it?—a love myopia. Not everypony need be thrilled by your picture-perfect romance with my former captain, without whom, by the way, the Royal Guard is becoming downright sloppy.”
Cadance pouted. “When I foalsat Twilight, I found her to be a delightful, well-behaved, charming little filly. But she had no friends. Her only delight in life was books, and I saw that continue and even worsen as she grew older. She is brilliant, Auntie. She has one of the best minds in Equestria, but in some ways she never really matured.”
“Because she never swooned over stallions? Really, Cadance? That, to your mind, is the mark of immaturity? I never swooned over them either: I chose not to, because I knew my task was too terrible to be laid as a burden on the back of a husband.”
“You never opposed my marriage.”
“You are your own princess, Cadance, and you must follow your own path. I believe you and Shining will have many joys—and many sorrows, as I warned you.” A mischievous grin appeared on her face. “Besides, I knew I couldn’t have stopped you. Your adoptive mother warned me that you’d been chasing colts since you were old enough to walk.”
“That’s not true!” Cadance’s face turned bright red.
Celestia laughed again, and her grin grew wider. “Ah, I made awful promises to your mother when I took you in, and I feared I would be unable to keep them! Seeing how you turned the head of every guardspony when you walked by—”
“Stop it!” Cadance turned up her muzzle. “I only had eyes for Shining Armor.”
“Perhaps, but plenty of other stallions had eyes for you, I assure you. A great many glasses of sarsaparilla have been drunk in your name in late-night taverns, and on your wedding night, half the stallions in Canterlot had their hearts broken.”
“Half the mares, too. Shining has turned his own fair share of heads. But you are distracting me, Auntie. Surely Twilight’s solitude was abnormal.”
Celestia turned serious. “It’s partly true, at least. I grew concerned over her lack of friends, and I at last felt the need to take drastic action, which seemed to have worked. But now I am not so sure.”
“By becoming human, she also became an adolescent again,” said Cadance. “We are seeing, I think, the result of growing pains: you might say she’s making up for what she missed the first time through.”
Celestia pressed her hooves together in front of her face, and her brow furrowed. “Not just a human, but an alicorn. You were a youth when you transformed, so it was easier for you. For an adult, however, it is not pleasant; the body begins growing again.” She stretched out one forelimb and turned it back and forth. “You grow these long, skinny legs.”
“And you fall madly in love?” Cadance asked.
Celestia glanced sidelong at her. “Young love is often short-lived.”
“It doesn’t have to be. I fell for Shining Armor when I was young. I have counseled—and married—a great many couples who’ve barely reached their majority.”
“And they are happy?”
Cadance beamed. “Every couple I match is happy, Auntie.”
“Nonetheless, even if Twilight’s action was the brash behavior of an adolescent girl, she still had the mind and the experience of an adult.” Celestia lowered her head and closed her eyes. “The law’s full weight must fall on her. I cannot shield her.”
Cadance gazed out into the wide, empty room. The fountain at the base of the thrones’ high dais babbled softly. “Their marriage—”
“Impossible.”
“Is it? Even if Brad has not reached the age of majority in his own land, he has reached it here. He has a full sixteen years, and that makes him not much younger than she.”
“As if that were the only barrier! You tell me: would they be happy?”
Cadance stared at the stained-glass windows for half a minute, moving her eyes between scenes of Celestia and Luna’s conquests. Her eyes fell at last on the image of Twilight and the other Element Bearers defeating Nightmare Moon. “No. No, they could not be happy. They could love each other dearly, of course. They could have many fond moments and many pleasing things. By their great love, they could cherish even their agonies and disappointments. But could they be happy? No. I do not think so.”
“And if that is your opinion, Cadance, then nopony would dare argue the point.”
“Twilight would argue. So would Brad.”
“Brad will of course be free. Since he is an abductee, I cannot convict him of trespass, and since we cannot send him home, he must be naturalized. Twilight, I fear, will go to a dungeon. It seems she has become a princess only to be made an example of: an alicorn may be sovereign within her appointed kingdom, but she is not above the law of all the land.”
Cadance threw her hind legs over one of the throne’s hoofrests, rolled onto her back, and gazed up at Celestia’s face, provoking Celestia to run her hooves through Cadance’s hair. “You cannot mean that.”
“It’s not that I want it, child. I dearly do not want it. But I don’t think I can prevent it.”
“Fluttershy took your pet phoenix, but you didn’t charge her with theft.”
“She robbed me personally. It was in my power to pardon.”
“It’s still in your power. You can pardon anypony.”
“There have to be limits, and this is behavior too reckless to go unpunished.”
“Auntie—”
Celestia shook her head. “My personal judgment is clouded. The Cosmic Council must decide this.”
“Twilight is on good terms with everypony on the Council, and she is famous throughout Equestria. Everypony’s judgment is clouded.”
“It’s the best I can do. No lower court can try her.”
“I will defend her, you know.”
“Please do. Since she acted out of love, everypony will expect you to make a defense. It pains me, but I must remain silent; otherwise, I shall have the Timekeepers, the Geldings, Cloudsdale, and possibly the noble families to contend with. And I couldn’t much blame them.”
Cadance snorted. “You know, in the Crystal Empire, we don’t have all these factions. The first queen declared that everypony would be equal.”
“And she enforced that equality quite brutally, from what I understand of the Empire’s early history. If Equestria hadn’t annexed the Empire, the queen there would have the power of a dictator.”
Cadance closed her eyes and rocked her head back and forth as Celestia stroked her mane. “I wouldn’t abuse such power.”
“The pony who came after you might, and the pony who came before you certainly did. We need our little factions and fights, even if they threaten harmony, lest anypony have too much control.”
“You’re changing the subject, Auntie. You’re worried sick about Twilight, I can tell. You want to pardon her, so why don’t you?”
“I have asked you, my niece, never to use your magic on me.”
“I don’t need magic to sense your feelings, only old-fashioned horse sense. There is a loophole in the law, you know, one that would keep Twilight out of the dungeon and allow you to continue grooming her for her future kingdom.”
“It would stain her honor,” said Celestia.
“Too late for that! And if you must have punishment, remember that neither of them will be pleased with the decision. Is there any point in chaining Twilight Sparkle to a dank wall beneath the castle? You know she doesn’t deserve it.”
“I know it very well.” Celestia looked away and continued stroking Cadance’s hair. “If you help me, I can manipulate the Council.”
“I will. Though it might not be the most pleasant, it could be the best solution.”
“Indeed. But since we are speaking of love and marriage and related things, tell me, while I have you pinned down”—Celestia placed a hoof against Cadance’s breast to prevent her from rising—“when are you finally going to bless me with the closest thing I will ever have to grandchildren?”
Cadance tipped her head back and giggled long and loud. “Believe me, Auntie, it’s not for lack of trying. Come here.” She grabbed Celestia’s head and pulled it down toward her belly. “Listen close and you might hear the heartbeat.”
“What! Child, do you mean—?”
“I do.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I just did.”
“Did you use magic to determine if it’s a filly or a colt, or are you going to wait?”
“I wish I’d waited, but I was so excited, I wanted to know. It’s a filly. Shining and I have talked baby names, but we want your advice. What do you think of Skyla?”
“Sounds pegasus—”
“I used to be a pegasus, you know.”
“But you were raised by earth ponies.”
“And I married a unicorn, and I rule the crystal ponies. Love and harmony between the tribes! Next, I shall make friends with sea ponies and mermares, and then I shall be complete.”
“An admirable goal.”
Celestia released Cadance, who, like a child playing, clambored over the hoofrests and back into her own throne. Then Cadance leaned over and swiftly rubbed Celestia’s nose with her own. “Now there is a new creature in our land, and I am going to see to it he feels welcome. Punishing the mare he loves is not the way to do it, I think.”
Celestia frowned and steepled her hooves before her face. “In a day or two, I’ll join you again in the Crystal Empire after I have arranged everything here. I wish you the best, Cadance. If anypony can move the Council toward mercy, it is you.”
Celestia turned her head away, but not before Cadance caught a glimpse of a tear in her eye.
Brad stood with Twilight on the stoop in front of his house. His thick, heavy hands held her tiny, slender ones.
“Are you nervous?” he asked.
She swiftly rubbed the tip of her nose against his. She was always doing strange things like that. “Not really. They’re your family, and meeting them is important to me.”
She stepped back and spun once to show off her dress. Her sequins and the glitter in her hair twinkled in the light of the porch lamp. “How do I look?”
“Beautiful. You’re really living up to your name.”
She laughed. Taking his hand again, she interlaced her fingers with his and sighed. “I’m going to miss these,” she said.
“Miss what?”
“Hands.” She leaned her head on his shoulder. “Yours, specifically.”
“Right. Let’s go in.” He pushed open the front door, but without taking his gaze from her bright eyes, her upturned nose, and her violet skin, which was smooth and pale like a freshly bloomed lilac. He was struck again with a sensation that unexpectedly came upon him from time to time—a sense of wonder and gratitude that she even existed at all. She was beautiful, smart, funny, and crazy. And Brad had decided he could live with the crazy part.
The evening before, after he’d taken her for ice cream, she had cried on his chest for an hour and told him she was really a pony with magic powers, that she had lost her magic and had to make friends to get it back, and that she had to win the Fall Formal princess crown and defeat Susan Shelby in combat or something so she could return to her own world and run a kingdom.
He had held her, of course, and wiped away her tears, because when a girl is crying on you, that’s the thing to do. And he had listened quietly and patiently to her confession because he had been too nonplussed to do anything else.
He had in the end decided that, if she wanted to believe she was a fairy princess from Fairyland, he had no right to say otherwise. And when he’d parted from her at her door, walked the dark streets alone, and taken in the evening breeze with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and the tingle of her kiss still stamped on his lips, he could believe it himself.
A soon as he pushed open the door, his mother pulled him from Twilight and hugged him. Then she took Twilight’s hands and the two of them giggled and jabbered and said things to each other that failed to fully register on Brad’s mind. For a brief moment, they shut him out. But that moment passed, and their sounds reassembled into recognizable words when his mother said, “You must be Twlight. Oh, Brad can’t stop talking about you. And—my!—aren’t you lovely? Come in, dear.”
Blushing, Twilight shot Brad a quick glance before following his mother further into the house.
Ewan ran up and threw his arms around Brad’s waist. “Is that your girlfriend?” Ewan demanded.
“Sure is, squirt. Now let go of me before I give you her cooties.”
“Yuck!” Ewan stomped off, but he didn’t leave. Brad’s mom seated Twilight on the couch before heading into the kitchen, and then Ewan tried to climb into Twilight’s lap.
“Don’t do that, Ewan,” Brad said. “You’ll wrinkle her dress.”
“Have you kissed my brother yet?” Ewan demanded.
“Your brother is a perfect gentlecolt,” Twilight answered, neither confirming nor denying the charge.
“He’s a what?”
“She means gentleman, squirt. She talks funny sometimes. Why don’t you, uh, run off or something—?”
“If you sit down right here, Ewan,” Twilight said, patting the seat beside her, “maybe I’ll tell you a story.”
“What kind of story?”
“Well, you’ll have to sit down to find out.”
He plopped onto the couch and kicked his little legs.
“Let’s see, this is a story about a girl who studied very hard every day because she wanted to learn everything she could. One day, a beautiful princess saw her and made her—”
“Boring,” Ewan said. He jumped up and ran into the kitchen.
Brad shook his head. “Never mind him, he’s—”
“He’s great,” Twilight said. “Back home, I foalsat my friends’ little sisters sometimes. Princess Celestia says foalsitting is good training for a princess because—”
“Twilight.” Brad sat down in the spot Ewan had just vacated and put his arm around her. “Maybe, while you’re here, you might wanna tone down the pony princess stuff. Just for my parents, I mean.”
She blinked. “But—”
“I don’t mind it, but they might think it’s weird.”
“Shouldn’t they know all about me? I mean, if we’re thinking about getting married?”
“Yeah, you might wanna tone down the marriage stuff, too.”
“But—”
Brad’s father walked in, and Brad and Twilight both jumped up from the couch.
Brad’s father put his arm around Brad and playfully punched him in the gut. “So this is the Twilight Sparkle I’ve heard all about.”
“Not all about,” Twilight mumbled, scowling and looking away.
Trying to come up with some words of consolation or apology, Brad reached toward her, but his father clapped him on the back and squeezed his hand tight. “I hope Brad here looked your old man right in the eye and gave him a firm handshake. You can tell a lot about a man by the feel of his hands. We used to have a woodstove in here before we put in the central heat, so Brad grew up chopping wood, and you can see it in his hands, feel it in his grip—”
“Actually, he hasn’t met my parents yet,” Twilight said.
Brad’s father frowned. “You two are doing things backwards.”
Brad’s mom sashayed back in with a plastic container holding a small, neatly arranged bouquet of aster and African lilies surrounding a single crocus. She popped open the container and held the flowers up. “Now, I want you to know Brad picked this out all by himself—”
“Let him put it on her,” Brad’s father said. “He’s a man.”
“Dad, please—”
“Oh, they look delicious,” said Twilight, taking the flowers in her hands.
Brad gently pulled the flowers away before she could eat them. Then, fumbling, and keenly aware of his parents watching him, he attached the flowers to her forearm by a bracelet.
She held up her arm and turned it back and forth, marveling. “I see! So it’s sort of like an all-day sucker—”
“It’s a wrist corsage, Twilight,” Brad muttered. “It’s just for looks. I hope you like it. I didn’t know if it was right, but I figured, hey, it’s purple—”
“It’s beautiful,” said Twilight. “I love it.”
“Oh, I need photos!” Brad’s mother cried. “You two stand right there, and I’ll go get the camera!”
By the end of his third day as a “guest” in the Crystal Palace, Brad was going stir-crazy. He spent most of his waking hours pacing the room, doing pushups or sit-ups, and playing his guitar.
He tried to read the books Cadance had sent him, but quickly gave up. The books she’d sent all turned out to be romances or marriage guides. He thumbed through the first few pages of novels with titles like Of Ponies and Prejudice, Jane Neigher, Withers Heights, and Horse Sense and Sensibility before he tossed them aside. He wasn’t interested in stories of leisure-class ponies trying to contract marriages.
He hesitated before picking up any of the nonfiction works, as he wasn’t quite sure he was ready to confront what they contained. But after a day, curiosity got the better of him, so he grabbed a few and thumbed through them.
To his surprise, they were all quite mild. He skimmed through Rearing Foals Right, Cooking for Your Family, The Mare: Head of the Household, and Treat Her like a Princess. The most salacious title in the collection was How to Nuzzle a Mare, which was about exactly that, and he couldn’t help but think Cadance had stuck such a book in there for a reason. In any case, the information it contained was irrelevant to him: his lips simply couldn’t move that way. On the plus side, however, it taught him a few interesting factoids about equine facial anatomy.
It also made him anxious; clearly, he couldn’t kiss like a stallion. He wasn’t sure if Cadance was trying to point that out to him or just trying to give him some advice.
After he gave up on reading, he tried to write a song about Twilight, but it wouldn’t come out as he wanted: he was a poor lyricist, and he couldn’t think of anything to rhyme with “Sparkle.”
Besides that, romantic songs weren’t his style. Brad loved Twilight madly, but his first love would always be metal—the heavier, the better. His favorite bands had names like Splattered Cross, Blistered Mister, Bob Crombie, Smooch, Steely Girlfriend, Kanabis Kanabal, Hellbound Hellhound, and Scimitary. However, Brad had never been able to convince Twilight to enjoy rock music even though she had hung out with Roxy Dodgers, the school’s tomboyish soccer star, who was also a metal fan. Brad and Roxy had often swapped CDs.
As it turned out, going three days without listening to head-splitting, nerve-jangling, pulse-pumping rock music was hard on a man. He wished he’d at least brought an MP3 player he could have used until the batteries went dead.
To Equestria, he had only brought his acoustic guitar, which wasn’t quite the same as the Fender Stratocaster he’d left behind, but he could still shred some hot licks. Imagining the thud of the drums, the hum of the bass, and the thrum of the rhythm guitar, he stood in the middle of the room and banged his head as he played the opening to Kanabis Kanabal's biggest hit, “Crack Pipe Organ.” Then he moved into an improvisation, after which he raged the face-melting guitar solo from the middle of Hellbound Hellhound's “Route Six Sixty-Six.”
After that, he knelt in front of the coffee table and again tried to work on a song for Twilight. Heavy metal just didn’t sound right on an acoustic.
As he scribbled, he brooded, wondering if he could somehow break out of this room. But the door was sturdy: he could do nothing but pound on it, and pounding always brought an impassive but deferential guard. The room had no windows, only a transparent, curving ceiling: he had thrown several things at the ceiling to see if he could crack it, but everything he’d thrown simply bounced off.
And he didn’t know what he’d do if he escaped, anyway. Perhaps he could find that magic mirror again, but he’d seen it shatter, so it probably no longer worked. Perhaps he could find Twilight, but what would he do with her? Run off someplace? Spend the rest of his life with her on the lam?
Besides that, he had no idea what these princesses could or would do to him if he escaped. For all he knew, he was facing a guillotine or torture rack if he stepped too far out of line.
A single tear fell on his sheet of paper. “Mom, Dad,” he whispered, “I think I’ve really screwed up this time.”
He slowly rose to his feet when he heard a commotion in the hall. The guards outside were shouting, and their voices, though muffled, carried through the door.
“Don’t come any nearer, Your Highness! We have orders!”
“Please, Princess, just turn around, and—”
“Out of my way! I’m warning you!”
Brad’s heart leapt into his throat. That last voice had been Twilight’s. He ran, dropped to his knees, and slid across the floor to the door. He pushed his ear up against it.
“Stand down!” a guard shouted.
“Move aside,” Twilight answered, “or I will not hold back!”
“Twilight!” Brad yelled. He beat a fist against the door. “Twilight, is that you?”
A piercing whine set Brad’s teeth on edge. Then came a confused din full of animalistic snorts and whinnies as well as human-sounding cries. Something slammed hard against the door, splintering the wood and rattling Brad’s skull, sending him toppling backwards. After that came silence.
Lifting himself up onto his elbows, Brad breathed hard as he stared at the door. He expected, any second, to see it blow off its hinges, after which Princess Twilight would step in through a cloud of dust and say something like, “Sorry I’m late.”
Instead, he heard a faint, timid knock followed by Twilight’s voice. “Brad?”
He slid to the door again and pawed at it. “Twilight! Twilight, is that you?”
“Yes, it’s me.”
“I’ve missed you so much!”
“I’ve . . . missed you, too.”
Silence followed.
Brad pounded the door again. “Twilight, what’s wrong? Open this.”
“I can’t.”
“You can’t? What, has it got some magic lock, or . . . ?”
“No, I can open a magic lock. It’s not that, Brad.”
“What? What is it?”
“Do you know why you’re in there?”
“Because I don’t have a visa? Because they think humans are scary freaks, maybe?”
He heard Twilight give a low, melancholy laugh. “No, Brad. You’re not being punished. They’ve locked you in there to protect you.”
“From what?”
“From me.”
Silence followed again.
“I would have come earlier,” she said, “but I didn’t know where you were. It took me time to find out, but I know a lot of the crystal pony guards, and one was willing to tell me. Cadance knew that, if I could find you, nothing could keep me away from you.”
Brad could hear his pulse thudding in his ears, and sweat broke out along his spine. He pulled back from the door and planted his feet on the ground as adrenaline coursed through his veins. “Twilight, what are you saying? If you’re dangerous, why didn’t they lock you up?”
“Because I can’t be locked up, at least not in the usual way. If they decide I have to be imprisoned, the prison will be something more extreme. Celestia and Luna don’t control the Elements of Harmony anymore, so they can’t lock me in ice or stone, but there are other ways.”
“What are you saying?”
“I messed up, Brad. The Cosmic Council will convene soon, and they are going to treat this as a case of foalnapping.”
“What?”
“In your own world, you’re considered a child, so when I brought you here, it’s sort of like I abducted you. Do you understand?”
Brad’s heart slowed and his shoulders slumped. “But you and I are the same age.”
Almost a minute passed before she answered, “No. We’re not.”
“What? Wait, do ponies age like humans do or not? Are you really, like, only five years old or something—?”
Twilight laughed again. “No, we mature the same way, more-or-less. But I turned into a human youth, though I’m not sure why. Here, I’m older.”
“How much older?”
A pause. “I’m twenty-three.”
Brad blinked. “Really?”
“Yes.”
“Holy crud, Twilight. Kinda robbin’ the cradle here, aren’t you?”
“What? No, it will probably be years before I take a protégé, even if I’m not imprisoned.”
“Huh?”
“Look, Brad, it’s for the best—”
He ran to the door again and punched it several times. “Hey, don’t give me that! You came all the way down here, and if I understood what was going on out there a minute ago, you just kicked major ass. Don’t tell me you’re going to turn around and leave!”
“Brad—”
“Twilight, I want to see you. You’re already here. Is it such a big deal to open the door?”
“Yes. I’m not the girl you thought I was—”
“Baloney.”
“Brad, I’m an alicorn, and you’re sensitive to magic! If I just walk in—”
“So what? So you’ll make me sweat or feel lightheaded. Well, you do that to me anyway! Do you understand? I love you.”
“But I’m a pony—”
“I know. I saw you. I wasn’t impressed. Open the door, dammit.”
“Calm down, Brad.”
“I can’t.” Leaning his face against the doorframe, he slumped to his knees. “When I’m not with you, I can’t be calm. It’s not just now, either. I’ve been that way since I met you.” He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists against his knees. “Twilight, I don’t have your way with words, and I don’t know how to say what I feel, but when you’re not with me, I feel like I’m cut in half, and the other half’s somewhere else. I feel like there’s this walking void following me around, and it’s shaped like you. Anything I do, anything I see, anything I think, I think about what you might think of it, and it reminds me that you’re not here. It’s like—”
“Brad.” A sob entered Twilight’s voice. She sounded closer, as if she were leaning her face against the door the same way he was. “Don’t make me do this, please. I’m afraid—”
“Of what?” Tears streamed down Brad’s face. “You think I won’t like you anymore?”
“Yes!”
“That’s not going to happen. It can’t happen.”
“Brad.” A wet chuckle appeared behind the sound of Twilight’s crying. “I don’t know how to describe how I feel right now. Can I tell you something?”
“Of course.”
“When I was human, I felt very weird without clothes. I was embarrassed in the locker room, and even a little bit when alone in the bath. It was almost like I was ashamed of my body. As a pony, I’m usually unclothed, but as a human I felt naked, as if I’d never realized before what that word really meant. I thought maybe it was because I was new to being human, because I wasn’t used to it. But is that . . . is that normal?”
“Yes, Twilight. That’s normal.”
“That’s awful,” said Twilight.
“I know. What are you trying to say?”
“What I’m trying to say is, I feel a little like that now.”
“Don’t. Twilight, I fell in love with you. With you. And if what you are is a pony, then, well, I’m in love with a pony, and nothing’s going to change that. You don’t ever have to feel ashamed with me.”
A long time passed before Twilight said anything, and Brad wondered if she had left, but then her voice came again:
“Go to the other side of the room, Brad. I’m coming in.”
Obediently, he stood and walked behind the bed. His heart began pounding again. He clenched the bedclothes until his knuckles turned white.
A high-pitched whistle hit his ears and made him wince. The door creaked, and its hinges gave off the melancholy whine of straining metal. Then all at once, with a crack like that of a falling tree, the door burst, sending shards of wood, fragments of metal, and dislodged gems flying around the room. Brad ducked and turned away.
When he dared to look again, he saw a great cloud of dust billowing into the room, and in the midst of the cloud he beheld a dark shape. That shape, with the steady sound of hooves on hard stone, walked forward as the dust parted.
Encircled by a shimmering glow, Twilight Sparkle stood with wings spread wide and feathers fluttering in a faint breeze sweeping in from the hall. The horn on her forehead shone with otherworldly light, and her eyes were balls of white flame. Slowly, with his mouth hanging open, Brad fell to his knees and lowered his chin to the bedspread.
The glow faded. Twilight’s violet eyes reappeared, and Brad could see that they were rimmed with red. Like rivulets in a dry valley, tearstains crossed the fur of her cheeks. Her eyes welled afresh, and new streaks of tears appeared as she gave Brad a weak but happy smile.
Brad could hear his heart thumping in his ears as he walked around the bed. When he approached, Twilight shied away.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said.
“You won’t. Cadance and Celestia made me feel weird, but they didn’t hurt me.” He glanced toward the shattered door. “What did you do to the guards?”
Twilight sighed and lowered her head. “I got a little carried away. They’re not hurt or anything—it’s hard to hurt a crystal pony—but I threw them around a bit and put them in a sleep field. They’ll be out for a few hours.” She looked over her shoulder. “With as much noise as I made, though, we probably only have a few minutes.”
“Okay, then. Let’s go.” Brad grabbed his backpack and began stuffing it.
Twilight frowned and wrinkled her brow. “Go? Go where?”
“You tell me. But wherever we go, it sounds like we better go quick.”
“Brad, we can’t run away—”
“Why not? You said they’re gonna throw you in some awful prison, right?”
“Well, they might—”
“So let’s get out of here.”
Twilight shook her head. “Brad, there’s nowhere to go. Equestria’s bound by ice on the north, oceans on the east and west, and a desert on the south. If you cross the desert, you’ll hit Camelu, which is an Equestrian protectorate. If you go further south than that, you’ll hit Saddle Arabia, which is an Equestrian ally, and then Zebrabwe, which is another ally. Cross the ocean to the east and you’ll hit Antilopia, which is an ally, and then Capristan, where they kill ponies on sight, and then Griffonia, which is another protectorate.”
“What’s to the west?”
“That’s the Sparkling Sea, which is an Equestrian territory. If you take a sailing ship, the sea ponies will find you. You could take an airship, but they patrol the skies with flying fish.”
“What’s beyond that?”
“Nopony’s traveled beyond that, but if we were running away, we wouldn’t make it far over the Sparkling Sea anyway.”
Brad paused in his haphazard packing. “It sounds like Equestria is a pretty big deal on this world.”
“We’re the . . . what’s the word you use? The superpower.”
“Back home, that means you have nukes.”
“Here, it means Princess Celestia could halt the sun over a kingdom and burn it off the map if she had to.”
“I guess that’s the same thing.” With a grunt, Brad tossed his backpack across the room. “So we’re hosed.”
“The only places we could possibly go are the Everfree Forest or maybe the Forest of Leota—”
“What are those?”
“They don’t respond normally to pony magic, and they’re full of monsters.”
“Hm.” Brad cracked his knuckles and started to pace. “Look, Twilight, I don’t know much about this place, but aren’t princesses supposed to, I dunno, have more power than this?”
“I don’t have a kingdom yet, Brad. I’ve made some new laws in Ponyville—as experiments, you could say—but only because the mayor lets me. Even if I did have a kingdom of my own, I would still answer to Celestia and Luna, like Cadance does.”
“Because this ‘Crystal Empire’—”
“Is an Equestrian territory. It’s not really an empire, and I know that’s confusing, but the name’s traditional.”
“This kingdom you’re supposed to rule, where will it be if all the lands everywhere are already taken?”
Twilight smiled and shrugged. “When Cadance was ready to rule, the Crystal Empire reappeared after it had been gone for a thousand years. Whenever I’m ready, my kingdom will be ready, too. The settler ponies in the San Palomino Desert have several new towns and might need a princess. The Mustangs of Mustangia might be ready to settle down. Or maybe my kingdom will be somewhere else entirely. Who knows?”
Brad stopped pacing, looked at her for a while, and stepped toward her. She stepped back.
“Somewhere else entirely?” he asked. “Like where?”
“Never mind that for now. How do you feel?”
“Fine. Stand right there.”
Slowly, keeping his eyes on her, he walked in a circle around her. With pink forming in her cheeks, she ducked her head, shuffled, and lifted her hooves, one after the other, as if trying to hide herself from his gaze.
“Am I making you uncomfortable?” he asked.
“Am I making you uncomfortable, is the question.”
“Not yet.” He drew a little closer and walked around her again.
“I sort of wish I’d put on a dress to come see you.”
“Much as I always liked seeing you in a dress, I thought you didn’t usually wear clothes here.”
“I don’t, but I always wore them with you.”
“I told you not to be embarrassed.”
“I am anyway.”
“You have fur, so you’re dressed.” He tightened his circle again and kept walking. “Twilight, have I ruined your chance to have a kingdom?”
Twilight shook her head. “You didn’t do anything, Brad. It was me. But it’s not over yet: Princess Cadance and Princess Celestia are going to do what they can to make sure this turns out okay.”
“Really? I got the impression Cadance didn’t like me much.”
“You got the wrong impression. She likes you a lot. I’m not sure if Cadance can dislike. She even says nice things about Chrysalis, who trapped her in a cave and tried to steal my brother from her.”
“Guess I won’t let her high opinion of me go to my head, then. Sounds like this place is dangerous—”
“Maybe it is, but so is your world. Nopony here ever gets shot with a gun or blown up with a bomb. We haven’t had a real war for about three millennia. Magistrates deal with thefts or brawls from time to time, and there are a lot of land disputes, but there hasn’t been a murder in Equestria for twelve years. I’d never even heard the word rape until I went to the human world, and I can’t tell you how much it scared me when I found out what it meant! We do have monster attacks, but there are other problems we don’t have.”
“If things are that good here, kidnapping must seem pretty bad, huh?”
“Yes, it’s pretty bad. About the worst, really.”
Brad drew closer again and made another lap. He felt a twinge in his heart, but he couldn’t quite identify it. “And you’re sure that running away—”
“We’ve got Celestia and Luna on our side, and they’re the highest princesses in the land. Princess Cadance is going to be pulling for us, and I’m on very good terms with King Leo of Aquastria. That’s the four most important members of the Council.”
He tightened his circle again as he continued his walk. The twinge grew to a stab, and warmth flooded his limbs. “So who’s against us?”
“Well . . . it’s hard to say. I’m not sure about the noble families. I don’t know what the Weather Board of Cloudsdale will do. The Sacred Order of Timekeepers will fight Cadance—”
“Who are they?”
“They keep track of time in Equestria and make sure all the days are the right length, but they don’t like alicorns very much.”
“Hm.” He took a deep breath and clutched his chest, trying to loosen a tight knot that had formed there. He stumbled, but kept walking.
“The Timekeepers don’t like anypony much,” Twilight said. “It’s complicated.”
“I see. Who else?”
“Well, there are also the Geldings. Usually, the Geldings disagree with the Timekeepers on everything, but they might agree with them this time.”
“Geldings? Does that word mean what I think it means?”
“Geldings believe the ponies have only one true Queen. She’s supposed to come back someday, so, in honor of her, they try to be more, um, feminine, and they cut off their . . . well, you know—”
“This place is weird, Twilight.”
“You’ll get used to it. Anyway, the Geldings consider the alicorns usurpers, kind of, so they might not be very sympathetic.”
“What kind of influence do they have?”
“They’re Princess Celestia’s personal staff.”
“But she’s one of these alicorns, right?”
“Yes.”
“But the Geldings don’t like alicorns.”
“Like I said, it’s complicated.”
The knot in his chest eased and became a strong but not entirely unpleasant ache. The warmth intensified, but didn’t become painful, and the tense muscles in his shoulders relaxed. He swayed as he walked, and his words slurred. “What is an alicorn, anyway?”
Twilight followed him with her eyes. “Maybe you shouldn’t come so close—”
“I think I should. I feel . . . good.”
As they had talked, he had been gradually spiraling inward toward her. Now, at last, only a foot away, he slid to his knees, looked in her eyes, and smiled. “Hi, honey. You look different today. Did you change your hair?”
She laughed, but blushed again. “Be honest with me, Brad. How do you feel? You have me worried, you know. I’ve barely slept the last few days.”
He shrugged. “Right now, I feel better than I have for a while.”
“But I must do something to you if Cadance and Celestia did.”
He shook his head and felt a broad grin spread on his face. “I’m honestly not sure. I feel calm. I feel peaceful. I feel warm and happy. I don’t know if that’s some magical aura thingamajig, or just you finally being here with me.”
She raised one eyebrow and shrank back. “You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Pretty sure.”
She rubbed her chin. “It might actually make sense . . . Celestia moves the sun and rules all of Equestria, and she made you fall on your face. Cadance is the princess of love, and she says she makes you all sweaty—”
“I wouldn't go that far. So what are you princess of?”
“Friendship. Do you feel friendly right now?”
He tipped his head back and laughed. “Yes, that’s it. You make me feel friendly.”
“Would you Pinkie promise that you aren’t in pain or anything?”
“Pinkie promise? Is that the thing Paulina used to do?”
“It’s a little different—”
He made an “X” across his chest. “Cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye. You are not making me feel bad.”
“Well, I suppose that’s close enough,” Twilight said.
Then she jumped him.
With the wind knocked from his lungs, Brad fell backwards and cracked his head on the hard floor as Twilight forcefully shoved her muzzle against his neck. It felt as if he were being nuzzled by an especially large and affectionate dog. When she had been human, whenever he had held her, he had marveled at how small and frail she had felt in his arms, and he had always found himself consumed by an overwhelming desire to protect her. That had certainly changed: as a pony, she was much larger and obviously much stronger than he was.
“I’ve missed you so much!” Twilight cried. She fell back onto her haunches, wrapped her fetlocks around his shoulders, and pulled him up, crushing him against her breast and pressing his face into her fur. “You have no idea how wonderful it is to be back in this body. When I was human, it was like half the world had been cut off! I can finally smell you.” She pressed her muzzle against his neck again, and he could feel her hot, moist breath.
She paused and pulled her head back. “Are you wearing rear end spray? You know that stuff is for mares, right?”
“Twilight,” he gasped, “you’re squishing me—”
“Oh!” She dropped him, and he fell hard on his rump. “I’m sorry, Brad! I’m still getting used to having my old body back.” She tilted her head to one side. “Wow, you really seemed so much . . . bigger to me when I was human. I hadn’t realized it when you were walking around, because you looked so tall—”
She leaned toward him and placed a hoof to his cheek. It felt hard and rough, but some sort of supple surface in its center undulated against his cheekbone. “Are you eating enough?” she asked. “You always had trouble keeping your weight up—”
Feeling lightheaded, he nodded and gently pushed her hoof away. “They’re feeding me regular meals, but I guess there aren’t a lot of calories in ’em.”
Offering her a strained smile, he sat up and gingerly reached out to touch the pink stripe in her forelock. Her hair, at least, still looked and felt the same, though her severely straight bangs now parted in the middle to make room for her horn.
Brad stared in fascination at Twilight’s ears, which he had watched throughout their conversation. Whenever she spoke, her ears, independent of each other, swiveled back and forth, perhaps searching for the sound of anyone approaching from the hall. But when he spoke, both ears snapped toward him. On impulse, he slid his fingers back to her left ear and stroked it.
Twilight’s left eye twitched. She pushed her head against his hand, and her lips went slack. “Um . . . you can keep doing that if you want . . .”
Feeling his face heat up, Brad pulled his hand away and scooted back a few feet. He wrapped his arms around his knees, intertwined his fingers, and stared at the floor in silence. When he glanced at Twilight, he saw tears forming in her eyes, though she appeared to be trying to hold them back.
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?” she said.
He looked away. “Of course not.”
“Brad, be honest. We were both human up until a few days ago, and we’ve hardly seen each other since then, and you’re in a new world where you’ve been locked in a room, and I’m going on trial in a few days—”
“Okay, you’re right.” He flopped onto his back. “I’m not just bothered, Twilight. I’m burnt out.”
She ran a hoof along his shoulder. It didn’t feel pleasant, and, without thinking, he pushed it away again before he realized that might hurt her feelings.
She turned and rose to her feet. “Maybe it’s better if I just go—”
“No, Twilight, wait!” He shot up onto his knees, slid across the floor to her, and wrapped his arms around her neck. He couldn’t help but think that this felt more like petting an animal than like holding his girl, but he shoved that thought aside. “Look, I’m confused as heck and don’t know what to think of any of this, but I at least know I want you around.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t make you uncomfortable?”
“You have always made me uncomfortable. That’s why I want you around.”
She lifted a foreleg, somehow turned her knee backwards, and cupped a hoof over his left hand. That pliable substance on her hoof’s inside somehow ballooned around his fingers and hardened, so his hand was locked in place. “We’ll figure this out, Brad. I don’t know the spell for it right now, but, somehow, there has to be a way to turn you into a pony.”
His heart stopped a moment, and a thick lump formed in his throat. “Twilight.” His voice sounded strangely tinny in his ears. “I don’t think I—”
Her face lined with worry, she turned her head to look at him, and her muzzle brushed against his nose.
“—I don’t think I can wait,” he said, forcing a laugh and rubbing the back of his neck.
She smiled. “I will figure it out. I am one of the most magical uni—well, no, I’m an alicorn now, with even more magic. Yes. I’ll definitely figure it out.”
Brad pulled back from her and extracted his hand from her hoof’s curious grip. He found himself looking at her hair again: it did indeed look much as it had when she was human, except it was shorter: her human hair had stretched all the way to her lower back, but her pony mane, though it ran the whole length of her crest, hung no lower than her shoulder.
He got an idea. Blushing a little and rubbing his neck again, he said, “Um, Twilight, would you mind if . . . ?”
“If what?”
“If I brushed your hair?”
A smile spread slowly over her face. “Why do you want to brush my hair?”
“Because.”
“Because why?”
He shrank back and peeked at her through one half-opened eyelid, as if afraid she’d hit him. “Because you’re a pony?”
She laughed. “Okay, sure. Why not?”
“All right! Just a second.” He jumped up, ran to the bathroom, and ransacked the rack of supplies. He walked back out with his arms full. “Okay, I admit I don’t know what most of these are—”
“Bring them here,” Twilight said. She went and sat on the floor in front of the chaise longue. Brad walked over and dropped several brushes, bottles, and unidentified objects onto the floor beside her.
As if behind a sheet of water, Twilight’s horn shimmered. It gave off a bright purple light, and one of the bottles levitated. A harsh whine filled the air, and Brad clapped his hands to his ears.
Twilight swiftly stopped the spell, and the bottle hit the floor with a dull clink. “I’m sorry! It’s habit! I forgot your magic thingy!”
“No, it’s okay,” he said, rubbing a knuckle against one ear. “I guess, sooner or later, I gotta get used to it—”
“I’ll just learn to use my hooves more.” With one hoof, Twilight scooped up the bottle and read the label. “‘Goops for Stuff Apple-Carrot Deep Mane Conditioner.’ Well, they’re giving you top-of-the-line products, I see. Goops for Stuff is very expensive.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yes. My friend Rarity helped them develop their production line.”
At random, Brad picked up one of the brushes he’d dropped. “So, do I use this?”
“Brad, that’s a body brush.”
“Right. I knew that.” He searched around his small pile and came up with a brush with thick, plastic nubs.
“And that’s a curry brush. I think you want this one.” She took a pink hairbrush in her hoof and passed it to him.
“Of course I do. I was testing you.” He sat down on the chaise longue behind her. She settled her back against his shins, and he began to comb.
She tipped her head back, and he could feel tension drop from her neck. “That really does feel nice.”
“Does it?”
“Mm hm. I’ve been really stressed out lately. I’m afraid I might have had a fight with Princess Celestia. I’ll tell you about it later.”
He continued to brush her in silence. Her hair was thick, but fine, and it combed easily. As he combed, Twilight, always incapable of tolerating chaos, organized the bottles and other items into rows.
“Brad,” she said, “if they’re giving you all these products, why exactly are you wearing a spray for mares?”
“The stuff is supposed to be an odor mask, right—?”
“Right.”
“So how in the world can it work if you instantly recognize it?”
Twilight laughed.
“Look, it’s the closest thing to Old Spice I could find in there, so unless you want to figure out how to open a portal back to my world and get me a proper deodorant stick, you’re stuck with it.”
“You might want to reconsider. Ponies’ noses are much more sensitive than humans’. What you smell like sends a message the same way your clothes or hair or posture do.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
He leaned his face down against the top of her head and inhaled deeply.
“Hey!” she cried.
“I don’t think I’m getting the message.”
“That’s because you don’t have the nose for it. What do you smell?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“Horse.”
“What else?”
“Um . . . some kind of flower, and maybe pine?”
“It’s acacia, periwinkle, and arborvitae. That’s my perfume. But if another pony took a whiff like that, she could not only identify my perfume, but could also tell what mood I was in and what I had for lunch.”
“Wow.”
“And the perfume is important, too.” She put a hoof to her breast. “You met Cadance, right? Her special talent is love, so she wears rose, honeysuckle, and chrysanthemum. Do you know what the scents I’m wearing represent?”
He shook his head and continued brushing. “Not a clue.”
“Friendship. It’s my identifier, I guess you could say. My signature. If I’m acting in my role as princess, my perfume is as important as my tiara or bell boots. Ponies change their perfumes to communicate with each other. It might be a good idea to learn some floral scents so you can get a basic idea of how it works.”
“Okay, so what does the smell I’m wearing say?”
“It says you’re in heat and want to cover it up. It’s very confusing.”
Brad chuckled. “I still don’t get it. If you know exactly what the stuff is and what it’s supposed to hide, why would a mare bother wearing it?”
“Well, it wouldn’t smell quite so strong if you used it right, but you’re missing the point.”
“What is the point?”
Her cheeks turned red, and Brad suddenly found himself wondering how it was he could see her blush through her fur. “It’s to keep stallions from getting the wrong idea, all right?”
“It says, ‘I’m not available.’”
“Basically.”
“I’ll just keep wearing it, then, so all the ponies know I’m with you.”
“You are so frustrating sometimes, Brad.”
With a laugh, he cupped his fingers around one of her ears and fondled it.
She sighed. “And . . . I lost my train of thought. Wow, I really am going to miss your hands when you become a pony. Oh, I remember what I was going to say—if you want to send the message that you’re with me, you should blend my perfume with a hint of musk and wear that. That would tell everypony that you’re my very special somepony. I could have that mixed up for you if you want.”
“Well, I’m not big on smelling like flowers, but it sounds like that might be a better idea than what I’m doing now.”
Twilight turned sideways and laid her head against his knees. He set down the brush, leaned forward, and wrapped his arms around her neck.
“I’m exhausted,” she whispered. “And I’m scared.”
“Me too.”
He held her for a moment in silence, but then she started chuckling.
“What?” he asked. “What is it?”
She jumped up beside him on the chaise and reached for a small book on the coffee table. “Is this what I think it is?” Fumbling with her hooves, she flipped the book open. “How to Nuzzle a Mare? You’re reading this?”
His face grew hot. “It’s not mine. Somebody must’ve left it there.”
Twilight laughed again and peered down the spine as if sighting along a gun barrel. “I think this is the same copy! Cadance caught me with this when I was little.”
“Really? It doesn’t seem like your type of book.”
“You know I like all kinds of books.”
“That one still doesn’t seem like your type.”
“Why not? It has lots of interesting factoids about facial anatomy.”
“Ah, I stand corrected.”
She flipped through the pages, snorted at some of the illustrations, and said, “I got the biggest lecture for this. Cadance insisted the whole book was junk. She said its only valuable advice was the part about using breath mints.”
“She’s the love princess, right? I guess she oughta know.”
“She didn’t let my brother kiss her until after they were married, but even long before that, she still claimed this book was all wrong.”
“So she didn’t really know what she was talking about—”
“Actually, I think she got it right. She said the problem wasn’t any particular thing in the book. She said the problem was the whole idea of writing an instruction manual on kissing in the first place.” Twilight laid a foreleg across Brad’s shoulders. “Do you remember our Shakespeare class?”
“I remember you went crazy with Shakespeare. I also remember thinking it was really weird that you’d never heard of him before.”
“Anyway,” said Twilight, “when we studied Romeo and Juliet, I kept thinking of this. There’s that line in there, ‘You kiss by the book’—”
“Ah, right,” said Brad. “I had no idea what that meant. Of course, I had no idea what any of it meant, and that’s why I got a ‘C’ in that class—”
“Before Romeo was in love with Juliet, he was in love with the idea of love, so he did everything based on the romances and poems he knew. But falling in love with Juliet changed all that, and things couldn’t go as he planned them. Real life is messy. In real life, you can’t kiss by the book—”
Twilight’s voice faded, and her hot breath tickled Brad’s neck. He turned his head to look at her and found her eyes closed and her muzzle very close to his face. He stared at her decidedly equine lips and nose and swallowed hard.
With a faint gasp, she leaned toward him. He tried to scramble away, and she fell on top of him.
“Agh! Twilight, you’re too heavy—!”
“Oh, I’m sorry! Are you okay?” She quickly put down her front hooves and lifted most of her weight off of him.
He sucked in a deep breath and tried to rub the pain out of his ribs. “Oh, wow, what do you weigh—? No, wait, sorry, I know you never ask a girl that—”
Brad was interrupted when a new voice thundered, “Twilight Sparkle!”
Like naughty children caught playing doctor behind the garage, Twilight and Brad looked up toward the room’s shattered doorway. There stood Princess Celestia and Princess Cadance, both with scowls on their faces.
With a loud crash, Twilight tumbled to the floor and then quickly jumped to her hooves. Brad sat up and tried to straighten his clothes. At the sight of Celestia, his pulse began pounding and his head felt light again.
“Your Majesty,” Twilight blurted, “I’m so, I mean, how surprising, I mean, you’re here—”
“And why are you here?” Celestia snapped.
Twilight paused, but then hung her head. “I . . . just wanted to see Brad—”
“And you decided breaking and entering was the best way to do it?”
“I . . . no. I mean, maybe—”
Celestia walked into the room. Brad, tugging his collar, jumped from the chaise and stumbled away from her.
“Twilight,” Celestia said, “you are a princess of Equestria. It would do a great deal for my peace of mind, and would also do a great deal for your case before the Council, if you could act like a princess instead of like a schoolfilly in her first heat.”
Twilight dropped her head all the way to the floor and closed her eyes. She whispered, “Yes, Princess.”
Celestia glanced at Brad. Again, he could feel her eye digging deep into his heart. He staggered, but he didn’t faint, and he kept his feet.
“You are both called to Canterlot,” Celestia said. “The Cosmic Council will soon be in session. Brad, pack your things. Twilight, come with me.”
Princess Cadance and her entourage traveled in a private train car. The copper roof shone like a forest fire in the noonday sun, and the walls were made of intertwining strands of particolored, translucent crystal. The inside of the car dazzled Brad’s eyes like a kaleidoscope pointed at a spotlight. It was also stiflingly hot.
At one end of the car, surrounded by guards and attendants, Cadance sat on a throne that had been carved from a block of rose quartz and engraved with an intricate pattern of intertwining vines and hearts, which were inlaid with beaten copper. She leaned her cheek on one hoof as three crystal ponies, their bodies glistening like the car’s walls, wove jewels into her mane. She had earlier kicked off her bell boots, and they now stood in a little pile near her hind hooves and clinked in time with the clacking of the train’s wheels.
Brad sat on a velvet cushion at the car’s opposite end. Two guards, solid and still as statues, flanked him. He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees, rested his chin on his hands, and stared at Cadance.
“You might as well make yourself comfortable, Brad,” Cadance said. “It’s a long ride to Canterlot. Ask for anything you please, and the crystal ponies will provide it.”
“Where’s Twilight?” he said.
“Traveling with her family.”
“Aren’t you her family?”
“With her immediate family—her mother, father, and brother. You’ll meet them soon, I’m sure. Shining Armor, at least, must accompany me to the Council. It’s expected.”
“Because he’s the prince, I assume.”
“Yes. ‘Prince consort’ is his full title, but we don’t use it much. Personally, I think it sounds degrading. That’s the same title you’re fishing for, by the way, in case you didn’t know.”
Brad leaned back, crossed his arms, and stared at one of the walls. The landscape outside was dark, hazy, and ghostly through the crystal.
“Why didn’t you build some windows into this thing?”
Cadance laughed and flicked a hoof toward the wall. The strands of crystal, slithering like snakes, spread outward from the spot to which she’d pointed and formed a porthole about a foot in diameter. The sound of the train’s clattering wheels grew louder, and a breeze blew in, tousling Brad’s hair and refreshing the suffocating atmosphere.
“The crystal ponies do not build as others do,” Cadance said. “Their tools, their buildings, and even this train car, are grown. Like their bodies, the crystals of their structures are alive.”
Brad flicked his hand toward the wall in imitation of Cadance’s gesture, but the wall didn’t respond.
“Twilight wanted you to have something,” Cadance said. “I hesitated to have it prepared, but in the end she convinced me.” She pointed to one of the guards, who produced a wrapped box and, holding it gently in his teeth, lowered it to Brad’s lap. Brad ripped off the wrapping and opened the box to find, nestled in a bed of tissue paper, a bulbous blue glass vial topped with an old-fashioned atomizer.
“It’s perfume,” said Cadance. “Acacia, periwinkle, and arborvitae blended with musk.”
“I’d rather you called it cologne. Sounds more manly.”
“As you wish. Do you know what it signifies?”
“Yes.”
“Wear it to the Council. It may help our case.” Cadance tipped her head back and closed her eyes as one of her groomers threaded plaits of her hair through a string of diamonds. “The language of scent is complex, and Twilight tells me you might not have a nose adequate to master it. I understand you have no vomeronasal organ?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“A pity that so much of the world is closed to you. The symbols of scents, unlike the symbols of words, are non-arbitrary. Words are meaningless until we learn them: the elegant language of High Ponese is mere babble to a barbarian, and her rough tongue is likewise babble to a pony. But odors are inherently evocative; they carry meanings we can grasp regardless of whether we have studied them, and they can bring to our minds memories unbidden. Even the plants and animals without speech can speak by means of scent: flowers and pheromones, Brad, communicate with a language anypony can understand.”
Brad set the box down, snorted as loud and long as he could, and then leaned forward on his knees again. “To me, Princess Cadance, you just smell like a horse.”
“Not just any horse, Brad, but the princess of love. In fact, there’s a company that distills my pheromones out of my urine and sells them as perfume. They do a brisk business.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“As you wish. If we’re really being so candid with each other, you might like to know that your own odor is not terribly pleasant.”
“I know. That’s why I try to cover it up.”
“Curious, is it not, to mask your natural smell?”
“You do it too, apparently.”
“I certainly don’t. Some mares do, but only because their odor is sometimes inconvenient, not because it is repellent. But seasonal odor masks are an exception: the true purpose of a pony’s perfume is to augment her scent, not hide it.” She pointed to the box at his feet. “I assume Twilight told you her emblem is friendship?”
“I think she mentioned it.”
“But there is more than that bound up in the three parts of her signature. Arborvitae is often planted as a hedge, and it can live for many years. It evokes protectiveness and strength, just as the pegasus ponies, by their strength, have often served as Equestria’s protectors. The periwinkle represents memory, eternity, and life; it is reminiscent of the magical power of the unicorns and suggests that Twilight wishes to remember what she was before she ascended. Acacia stands for purity of heart and length of life—and a pure, strong heart is the gift of the earth ponies. All three represent friendship, and together they tell the story of how Twilight came through friendship to combine all three types of pony into her one body.”
“And that’s what you call an alicorn, right? Three in one?”
“That’s right.”
“So if you take these three flowers or whatever, and you add musk in, what exactly does that say?”
Cadance gave Brad a warm smile. “Musk is a masculine scent. By wearing Twilight’s signature with musk, you claim to be her counterpart. If you wear it to the Council, it will send the message that she did not coerce you, but you followed her to Equestria of your own free will.”
Brad bent down, took the bottle out of the box, pointed it at himself, closed his eyes, and squeezed the atomizer’s bulb several times. A heady, complex fragrance settled around him.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Cadance and the crystal ponies wrinkle their noses and pull their lips back from their teeth. Cadance lifted her muzzle with an expression of concentration and pleasure—a look Brad had once before seen on the face of a connoisseur sampling wines—and after a moment she gave a curt nod of approval.
“An excellent mixture,” she said. “I was afraid the aromatic acacia would not blend well with the equally aromatic musk, and that the result would be too heavy. But the Crystal Empire’s perfumers are the best in Equestria, and they have proven it again today. So, Brad, what do you think of this, your new signature, the scent by which everypony who meets you will remember you?”
Brad squirted a little more of the perfume into his palm, slapped it onto his cheeks, and said, “Might make a good aftershave.” Then he leaned back in his chair, closed his eyes, let the breeze caress his face, listened to the steady beat of the train’s wheels against the track, and pretended to sleep.
Twilight Sparkle was human again, and Brad was happier than he had been in a week. He sat across from her at an outdoor table in front of the little café they considered their personal spot. She had a big book in her hands as she usually did, and he had an issue of a music magazine in his, though he wasn’t reading. Spike lay at Twilight’s feet and occasionally wagged his tail.
It was at this very table that Brad had first realized he was truly in love with Twilight, for he had discovered that he could be content simply sitting in her presence. It wasn’t necessary for either of them to speak.
He reached out, took her soft hand, and marveled at it. She looked up from her book and smiled.
“Brad?” she said.
“Yes, Twilight?”
“It’s time to wake up.”
Brad opened his eyes. Through a mental fog of clinging sleep, he peered blearily into the eyes of a thick-jawed white unicorn clad in a reddish brass champron.
Brad gasped, rocketed away from the unicorn, and fell out of bed, taking most of the bedclothes with him to the cold marble floor.
“Wakey wakey, rise and shine,” the unicorn said in a gruff voice tinged with amusement. “It’s time to be bright-eyed and hairy-tailed. And by the way, my name’s Stainless Steel, not Twilight.”
Brad sat up and rubbed sleep from his eyes. “Where am I? And what time is it?”
“You are in Canterlot, in your private quarters at the castle—”
“If they’re private, what are you doing here?”
Stainless Steel laughed. “Waking you, obviously. Princess Cadance wants an audience, so I suggest you do whatever it is folk of your type do to make yourselves presentable to royalty.”
“We don’t have royalty.” Brad began extracting himself from the sheets and blankets, but stopped when he remembered that, having only one set of increasingly crusty and foul-smelling clothes and no pajamas, he was sleeping in the buff.
Stainless didn’t appear to notice or care. “No royalty? You must be a right savage lot, then. Well, what are you waitin’ for, boy? Get up and get ready. The princess of love don’t appreciate bein’ stood up.”
“Would you mind giving me some privacy?”
“Eh?”
“It’s a human thing.”
“Ah.” The unicorn nodded. “Like a mare who don’t wanna be seen gettin’ dressed, lest you learn all her beautifyin’ tricks and ruin the effect, eh? I get you. They’d told me you were a bit on the dandyish side. I’ll just step out, then, but don’t be long: I’m sure Cadance would rather see you soon than see you prettied up.”
Whistling to himself, the guard walked out through a high door. Brad threw the sheets and covers back onto the bed and searched the floor until he found his discarded clothes. After donning them, he went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth with Goops for Stuff All-Natural Minty Fresh Tooth Powder Free of Evil Fluoride, and then he combed into his spiky hair about half a jar of Goops for Stuff Invigorating All-Natural Carrot and Pomegranate Ultra-Hold Mane-Fixing Pomade. When he knocked on the front door, Stainless Steel promptly walked back in with Cadance in tow.
“Cripes, boy,” Stainless said, “you insisted on gettin’ gat up, but you couldn’t even make the bed?”
“Cadance,” said Brad, backing to the other side of the room to escape her aura, “to what do I owe this displeasure?”
Cadance replied with a strained smile. “Your attitude was amusing at first, Brad, but it’s wearing thin. If you’d like to help Twilight, I strongly suggest you feign courtesy. We have only a short time before the Coucil convenes, and we need to make you presentable, so I’ve brought somepony for the task.”
Cadance tipped her head toward the door, and into the room cantered a white unicorn mare who made Brad’s jaw drop.
She fluttered her eyelashes, revealing eyelids carefully painted with blue shadow, and offered him a beaming smile. “Brad,” she said in a sultry voice, “how wonderful to finally meet you. For the Cosmic Council, I’m told, you are to be the personal guest of Princess Celestia, which is a great honor, and custom dictates that you simply must have formal day wear. I almost wish you were the guest of Princess Luna, as hers wear evening wear, which is so much more elegant, but still—”
Brad found his voice. “Rowellina? What in the world are you doing here, and how did you become a pony?”
The unicorn blinked a few times. “I . . . beg your pardon, darling? I don’t believe we’ve met. My name is Rarity—”
Brad glanced back and forth between Stainless Steel and Princess Cadance, and then gave “Rarity” a brief nod. “Riiight,” he said, doing his best to play along. “My bad. You just kind of remind me of someone, that’s all.”
“Oh? How nice. Well, darling, I’m told I shouldn’t use levitation spells around you, which will make this more difficult, but if you’ll just step over here, please, I’ll take your measurements. I’ve designed many ensembles for satyrs and centaurs, which have builds somewhat like yours, so I’m sure with a few adjustments—”
Rarity continued prattling as she wrapped a tape measure around her front pasterns and stretched it across Brad’s body in various ways, pausing from time to time to take a pencil in her teeth and jot down notes on a piece of paper. She then asked him to move his arms and legs in several directions so she could get an idea of his joints, and she jotted still more notes. All the while, Brad watched her carefully: voice, diction, mannerisms, and even her interest in clothing all matched the Rowellina he’d known back in Canterlot High. Clearly, this was the same girl, and she’d clearly found some way to travel to Equestria and turn herself into a pony, though she apparently felt it best to disguise her identity.
A cold sweat broke out on his neck. If she could do it, then it couldn’t be long before Twilight would figure out how to do it, and that meant Twilight would be asking him to transform soon.
After she finished measuring, she danced about on her hooves for a moment and cried, “Oh, this will be marvelous!” Without ado, she trotted back out. A small smile formed on Cadance’s mouth as she nodded to Brad and took her leave as well, shutting the door behind her.
With arms crossed and a foot tapping on the floor, Brad stared at the closed door for a minute before turning to Stainless Steel and saying, “Why are you still here?”
Stainless laughed. “Why, didn’t nopony tell you? I’m your personal guard, boy, assigned to you by Princess Twilight, my mistress and yours—though I’m usin’ the word mistress two different ways here, if’n you catch my drift.”
“I’ll pretend I don’t. And she’s actually just my girlfriend.”
“Suit yourself. I’m sure the princess’d slap me silly if she heard me talk that way anyhow.”
“Which princess?”
“Any of ’em. They’re all uptight—well, ’cept Cadance, mebbe cuz she’s got a stallion in the paddock, if’n you catch my second drift o’ the mornin’.”
“So Twilight has her own guards?”
Stainless tapped his champron with a hoof. “Couldn’t you tell by the armor? Gold for Celestia, silver for Luna, copper for Cadance, brass for Twilight. Well, ’cept Cadance’s guards usually wear that crystally nonsense, but that’s another matter. There’s just three of us sundown guards at the moment—the pegasi who drag Princess Twilight around in that chariot, and me, though I do believe she’s hankerin’ to get that young Flash in ’er little collection, too, if you catch yet my third drift.”
“Wait, who?”
“Oh, nopony in particular. If’n that’d be all, milord, I’ll be takin’ my leave. You ring if you be needin’ somethin’, you hear?” Stainless bowed deeply and backed toward the door.
“Wait. Wait just a minute. Who is Flash?”
Without an answer, Stainless Steel slipped out and closed the door. Brad heard the click of a key turning in a lock, and he fumed.
The very next morning, Brad fell out of bed yet again when Stainless Steel burst through the door with a loud clamor, shoving before himself a wheeled rack from which hung several garments.
“Wake good, wake good, eggs and baked goods!” he called. “Are you plannin’ to sleep the whole day through? Princess High an’ Mighty is raisin’ the sun, and when she’s done with that, she and the other sovereigns’ll sit down to a lavish but no doubt tense and unpleasant breakfast, and then they’ll call the Council. They sent me along to clothe you, feed you, wet-nurse you if need be, and otherwise make you presentable.”
Brad sat up and rubbed his face. “I’ll clothe myself, thanks.”
“Fine by me. Miss Rarity sent over your new dress-up duds.”
“She works fast.”
“Aye, she’s one o’ the best, I’m told, and she’s a personal friend o’ your mistress an’ mine, if you again catch my—”
“I catch it, so stop throwing it. Why don’t you get out so I can play dress-up?”
“If I did that, boy, I’d eat all your fine breakfast for you, and you’d get nary a crumb.” After giving the rack of clothes a hard shove that sent it further into the room, Stainless retreated out the door again and promptly returned with a wheeled table loaded with dishes piled high with fried eggs and steaming muffins.
“That’s great,” said Brad, “but I need to get dressed—”
“Posh, boy. You plannin’ to spill egg all over your new suit? Dress after you eat, like a civilized pony.”
Brad sighed. “At least shut the door.”
Stainless obliged. Brad threw off the sheets, stood, and stretched. Stainless gave his pale, bony body a quick appraisal, but no more, and then sat on the floor near the table and dug into the eggs.
“Hey!” said Brad.
“Get it while the gettin’ is good,” Stainless said around a mouthful. “They don’t feed us like this in the barracks, that’s for sure.”
Brad crouched at the table opposite the pony and, two-fisted, grabbed a pair of muffins. The boy and the unicorn grew grimly silent as they set about the task of devouring the food, each one apparently bent on consuming more than the other.
By the time he’d eaten six eggs and four muffins, washed down with three cups of coffee, Brad felt halfway sick. He staggered up from the table and made his way toward the bathroom while, behind him, he heard Stainless Steel offer a long, slow, ruminative belch.
Brad bathed and brushed his teeth quickly, but, since this room held a rack of powders and potions every bit as enormous and varied as the one he’d enjoyed in the Crystal Empire, he couldn’t resist a few experiments. He was getting the impression that ponies were very particular about their hygiene products. He combed the other half of the jar of pomade into his hair, tried a couple of sprays after making sure they weren’t seasonal odor masks, and then, with a towel around his waist and a cloud of steam issuing after him, stepped out and headed for the clothing rack. Stainless, leaning back on his haunches and patting his full belly, watched impassively, but flared his nostrils briefly as Brad passed.
“You smell like a mare,” Stainless said.
“I get that a lot. Sooner or later, I will at last discover what you consider to be the manly combination of oils, gels, and sprays. Oh, that reminds me.” He went to his backpack and dug through it until he found the package Cadance had given him. He pulled out the bottle of perfume and squeezed the bulb vigorously, dousing himself with the contents.
Coughing, Stainless rose to his hooves and planted a forefoot over his nose. “I think one pump would be enough.”
“I want my message to be loud and clear,” Brad answered.
“It will be. I think everypony in the chamber will be able to smell that.”
“Good.”
“Gah! My nostrils are burning!” Stainless cautiously uncovered his nose, took another brief sniff, and shrugged. “But at least you don’t smell like a filly no more.”
Brad set about donning the clothes, which turned out to be more complicated than he’d expected. There was a silk undershirt and a pair of silk underwear that enclosed his legs snuggly and cinched at the waist with a drawstring. Over that went a long, ruffled white dress shirt, also of silk, with a wingtip collar, French sleeves, and black studs in place of buttons. The trousers and jacket were both of cashmere colored a faint purple, almost gray. Up the front of the trousers was an array of thirteen buttons, like those on a sailor’s dress blues. The jacket had a thin lapel and curved back sharply at the waist, indicating that it was not meant to be buttoned. Under the jacket went a cummerbund of bright lavender. For Brad’s neck, Rarity had left a bowtie of purple and pink stripes; fortunately, he knew how to tie one of these, as he’d looked it up once in order to don a costume for a theater class. For the final touches, Rarity had prepared a high felt top hat of the same faded purple as the suit and a polished black cane topped with what appeared to be a real diamond almost as big as Brad’s fist.
Unfortunately, Rarity had not provided new shoes, but she had sent a pair of spats that hid Brad’s worn sneakers somewhat.
Brad examined himself in the full-length mirror at the end of the bed. By the standards back in his world, the clothes were both anachronistic and garish, but he had to admit they looked sharp, and Rarity had cut them precisely to his measurements. He was reasonably certain that these clothes, like the perfume Cadance had given him, were supposed to send a message: the colors were muted, but Brad had little doubt that the choice of purple and pink was deliberate. Together, the outfit and the perfume unambiguously sent the message that Brad considered himself to be Twilight Sparkle’s. With a satisfied nod, he gave the cane a twirl and cocked the top hat at what he assumed was a jaunty angle.
Leaning his face on one hoof, Stainless gave a half-hearted and sarcastic wolf whistle. “You don’t strike me as the real cultured type, so jest let me advise you that, around here, inferiors show respect to their betters, so be sure you tip that lid to any mares you meet, and be sure you doff it in front of the princesses.”
“Thanks. I will. But I’m honestly not sure I can tell who’s a mare and who’s a stallion.”
Stainless snorted. “Can’t you smell the difference?”
“No.”
“Well, then, the mares are the ones without the danglies, if you yet again catch my—”
“My eyes are up here,” Brad said, leveling a hand with his face, “and I’m not going to bend down for a peek every time I meet a new pony.”
Stainless shrugged. “Ah, you’ll figure it out in time, I’m sure. We stallions are bigger, usually, an’ the mares have pretty, petite little muzzles—’cept the stallionish ones.”
“What about Cadance? Surely she’s not stallionish.”
“Alicorns don’t count. They’re all big like that.”
“Twilight isn’t.”
“Give ’er time, laddie. She just needs to grow a mite. Someday, the rest of ’er will fit those gigantic, ungainly wings, just as Cadance eventually grew into that enormous horn she’s got.”
Brad turned again to the mirror. “This outfit is nearly perfect, but it needs dress shoes.” He held up the cane and thrust it a few times as if it were a rapier. “And if I’m really going to walk around in this, I should carry a sword cane—both to truly complete the look and to defend myself from anyone who wants to kick my candy ass for dressing this way in the first place.”
Stainless snorted again. “You ain’t no guardspony nor a noble, boy. You ain’t got no right to carry a sword. Now, if you be done prancin’ in front of the mirror like a filly on Nightmare Night, it’s high time we got you situated in the chamber.”
Perhaps because he was nervous, or perhaps because the coffee had been strong, or perhaps because he’d never before seen himself looking so foppish, Brad felt oddly buoyant and jovial, as if he were half drunk. He giggled and spun around on his heels.
“I’m dressed in silks,” he cried, “and I’m perfumed. At this rate, you ponies will turn me into a first-class dandy. I require not only dress shoes, but a scented kerchief or a nosegay, and I demand that my next suit be of this same cut but in crushed velvet. Now take me to your leaders.”
Stainless Steel, with an eyebrow cocked and a hint of sarcasm in his voice, threw open the door, bowed deeply, and said, “Right this way, milady.”
As Brad and Stainless Steel walked through one of the high, arched hallways of Canterlot Castle, Brad several times dropped his cane with a loud clatter while trying to twirl it.
After the sixth time, he picked it up and peered at the stone on its top.
“I don’t know much about you two-legged types,” Stainless said with a grunt, “but I think you’re supposed to lean on a cane, not spin it like a chorus filly with a baton.”
“Not even chipped,” said Brad. “Now I’m convinced it’s real diamond. Good grief, what’s a stone like this worth?”
Stainless snorted. “It’s nice, to be sure, but it’s not worth more than fifty bits at the most.”
“What’s that in dollars?”
“What the hay is a dollar?”
“Never mind. Fifty doesn’t sound like a lot, though.”
“It’ll buy you about a week’s worth of meals.”
“That’s it? On my world, this would set you for life. People would kill for a diamond like this.”
Stainless shook his head and continued down the hallway. “Boy, there are very few things in the world worth killin’ for, an’ rocks ain’t one of ’em.”
Brad put the cane’s tip on the ground and walked with it properly as he sped up to keep pace. “So what is worth killing for?”
“Your mare, your foals, your friends, your kingdom, your princess . . . and that’s about it. And only if you have to, you understand?”
“You’re a soldier, right? You ever kill anybody?”
“What do you think I am? Of course I’ve never killed my buddies.”
“I mean any, uh, anypony.”
“No.”
“Never?”
“Never been to war, boy.”
“I was under the impression that Equestria got attacked by monsters on a regular basis.”
Stainless laughed. “Oh, that. That ain’t war. Lessee, there was them changelings, but Princess Cadance and her princy-poo knocked ’em for a loop. Then there was the giant flyin’ cockatrices, an’ that was certainly hairy for a while—”
“You didn’t kill any cockatrices?”
“They’s just animals, boy. They hardly know what they’re doin’. Princess Celestia rounded ’em up good an’ proper and kicked ’em back to the Everfree.”
Brad’s cane made rhythmic taps followed by loud echoes. He watched Stainless for a half a minute before asking, “Is that it?”
Perhaps he imagined it, but he thought he saw Stainless Steel’s white-furred face blanch. “Wuvy-Dovey Smoochy Land,” Stainless breathed. “We got a sayin’ in the guard: ‘remember the luvcats.’” He shook his head. “I can’t talk about it.”
They passed a high arch trimmed with crimson drapery, through which Brad could see a balcony with a golden balustrade. Stainless paused for a moment as if in indecision, and then he turned and passed through the curtains. A moment later, he called, “Hey, boy! C’mere! Ya gotta see this!”
Eager to get a fuller view of the ponies’ world, Brad pushed through the curtain and joined Stainless on the balcony. Into his face blew a cool wind sweetly scented with mountain flowers and a hint of freshly baked bread, and he breathed deeply in relief: he hadn’t fully realized it until just now, but even spacious buildings occupied by horses had close, stuffy air.
The sun, just above the horizon, shone into a perfectly clear sky that was already turning pale blue, though dusky pink stretched above the distant green hills, and a bright point, which Brad assumed to be Venus—if there were a Venus here—shone near the solar disc. In every direction Brad looked, he saw a gleaming white city of spires, almost all of which were of marble topped with burnished roofs of copper or gold, which shone like fire in the early morning light. Above the blindingly bright roofs stood tall brass poles hung with particolored banners waving and flapping in the wind. Below the tall buildings, he could spot clean-swept streets of limestone cobbles whereon ponies and other creatures bustled in droves as they went about their early morning business. The sounds of clopping hooves, of voices raised to call out greetings or advertise wares, of animals neighing or bleating, and of off-key pipe music all rose to his ears. He saw, surrounded by a flock of goats, what appeared to be an enormous, muscle-bound man with the head and horns of a bull. Across the way was a pony standing on a soapbox and shouting into a megaphone, though Brad couldn’t discern what he was preaching from this distance. He saw a Jersey cow, apparently on her way to make deliveries, waddling up the street with two huge milk cans strapped to her sides and a bell jangling on her neck.
But what amazed him even more than the city’s buildings or its inhabitants was the view beyond: the towers stretched for about half a mile, but then suddenly stopped, and behind them was a vast valley surrounded by hills and mountains that seemed impossibly far below, as if the city in which he stood were perched on the very edge of a high cliff. In the valley, he could see squares of farmland, and in the midst of them, on the edge of a meandering river, stood a cluster of quaint Elizabethan cottages with smoke wafting from their chimneys, like something out of a storybook.
Not far from that distant village, he saw a wide brown patch, an obtrusive blot on the green plain. At first he could not tell what it was, but as his eyes adjusted to the light, he thought he could make out rows of mud-stained tents.
“Hey,” said Brad, “what is—?”
“What’re you starin’ at, boy?” cried Stainless. “Look up!” With a hoof, he grabbed Brad’s head and wrenched it upward.
Brad gasped: another maze of spires and towers stretched overhead, but above them all was a gigantic flying boat, a man-of-war that had been lifted impossibly into the air. The wooden hull gleamed white, the bulwarks were trimmed in gold, and on the prow, beneath the jib-sail, stood a sculpture of an alicorn with wings spread wide and horn boldly pointed. The ship hung from an enormous, bullet-shaped balloon, which was also white, yet traced all over with images of hearts and vines. Around the balloon was a bewildering array of sails, as if someone had taken the rigging of a square-rigger, divided it in half, and pushed it out to either side to make room for a blimp. The sails were tightly furled and the rigging folded up against the balloon, and long ropes stretched down to several of the towers to anchor the flying ship in place. Clad in golden barding that glimmered with reflected sunlight, a string of pegasus ponies flitted around the ship like moths around a lamp.
The ship turned slowly back and forth in the wind. The starboard side was visible, and, on it, Brad noticed long rows of gun ports, though the ports were battened. There were two decks’ worth of guns along the whole length and an extra two decks’ worth under the area of the captain’s cabin. Brad counted at least seventy guns on this one side.
As the ship turned, he caught a glimpse of the stern, from which hung a gold banner painted with the words, “My other ride is a chariot.”
“Isn’t she gorgeous?” whispered Stainless, clapping Brad on the shoulder. “You almost never see ’er in port.”
Brad nodded. “It’s certainly pretty—”
“It?” Stainless cried. “It? She’s a ship, boy! Show some respect!”
“Fine. She is certainly pretty.”
“Hmmph. I take it you’re no airpony. That there, laddie, is the Solar Barque, Princess Celestia’s personal yacht. She almost never docks: usually, they fly supply boats out to ’er. The airship port’s further down the mountainside, out o’ the wind, you see, but the Solar Barque’s too big for it, so whenever they bring ’er in, they gotta anchor ’er to the castle.” He grunted, shook his head, and let out a long sigh. “Every guardspony dreams o’ servin’ on ’er.”
“Did they bring her in for the Council?”
“They must’ve. The princesses have their little summits every year or so, but the whole Cosmic Council don’t meet too often, so it’s a very big deal.”
As if on cue, an enormous banner several hundred feet wide unfurled from the top of the balloon and fell down the starboard side, across the folded rigging. On the banner was the image of a sun and moon encircled by a white pony and a dark blue pony looking as if they were chasing each other’s tails through the sky.
Stainless, with tears in his eyes, clicked his brass bell boots together, doffed his champron, and raised a hoof in a sharp salute.
Leaning on the rail, Brad gazed out at this strange world and nodded in quiet satisfaction. His heart beat slowly but loudly in his ears and drowned out the din from below as he realized that he now stood in the midst of the fulfillment of all his childhood flights of fancy. The Cosmic Council, which a moment ago had loomed large, mysterious, and frightening in his imagination, now looked like a mere nuisance. Silently, he promised himself that, whatever it took, even if he had to fight two-fisted against a platoon of guardsponies, he was as of this day through being locked in rooms, no matter how well-furnished and comfortable. He was going to explore this Equestria, and he was going to take Twilight with him.
“Why, boy,” said Stainless, “I believe you have tears in your eyes.”
“So do you,” Brad answered.
“Aye, I do. There are three things for which a stallion may cry, an’ love of a mare an’ love of a ship are two of ’em.”
“What’s the third?”
“None of your darn business.” Stainless sucked his breath through his teeth. “I don’ believe it!” he cried. “She’s here, too!” He pointed a booted hoof past Brad’s shoulder.
Behind the towers rose a black shape. At first, Brad mistook it for a telephone pole somehow rising from the midst of the city, but then he realized it was a mast topped with a crow’s nest, and it was rising from beyond the city’s edge. Beneath it, like an enormous egg, appeared the balloon of another dirigible, pitch black and undecorated. It continued heaving into the air, and around it flapped silver-clad ponies with dark gray fur and wings like bats’. Soon, the bulk of the ship appeared as well, as black as the balloon from which she hung. She was smaller than the Solar Barque, but ports for at least forty guns were visible along her side.
“She’s Princess Luna’s,” whispered Stainless Steel. “But she don’t bring ’er down much from the Aerie, least not in the daytime.”
“Let me guess, the Lunar Barque?”
“Good guess, but wrong. She’s the Selenic Maiden, but most just call ’er the Black Ship. An’ ’er crew’s made up o’ wraith ponies.” Stainless, with a deep frown now resting on his muzzle, shook his head. “Wraiths in Canterlot. T’ain’t never happened before, I can tell you that. Luna’s gettin’ bolder.”
“What’s a wraith pony?”
“Ha! What? That’s them out there flyin’ around the thing! But if you don’t know nothin’ about ’em, pray to your princess that you don’t find out. C’mon, lad, we’ve dawdled enough.” He spun around and trotted through the curtains back into the hall.
Brad turned to follow, but paused a moment and took a last glimpse over his shoulder. He spied, standing on the Black Ship’s prow, just behind the figurehead, a tall pony covered with a dark, fluttering cloak. The cloak moved with the wind, but also squirmed and writhed in a fashion that suggested it was alive, or that perhaps some serpentine thing were slithering about beneath it. At once, the cloak’s hood slipped back from the pony’s head, and then the cloak burst into a cloud of bats, which spun out into the air in an ever-widening spiral, flapping and shrieking. The pony, now fully revealed, was of midnight blue: a long, regal horn sat on her forehead like a crown, and from her back stretched tall wings shaped like a swan’s.
Like the moon suddenly appearing from behind a storm cloud, her luminous eyes turned on Brad: they shone with pale light, but at their centers were dark voids that made Brad’s spine tingle, as if he had peered into an ill-lit whirlpool only to discover, at its bottom, some cool and savage creature peering back. He sucked in his breath and staggered from the railing. He was both shocked and overcome with curious drowsiness, as if he had been plunged into cold water that first startled his senses and then sucked away his life. Without another glance, he ran through the curtain and sprinted after Stainless Steel.
When they at last made their way through the maze of the castle’s halls, they stepped out into a large plaza encircling the vast Council Chamber, which rose big and heavy like the Coliseum in the midst of Canterlot’s slender and elegant spires. Many ponies had gathered here, and Stainless Steel, with sharp barks and stern glances, turned away any who were overly curious. He took Brad through a narrow door and up several flights of twisting stairs. At last, Stainless ensconced him on a bench in a high balcony overlooking the chamber floor.
“You ain’t up on th’ agenda for a while,” Stainless explained, “so’s it’s best we jest settle in up here where we won’t cause a ruckus.”
Brad then realized exactly why Stainless Steel had been assigned to him: this stallion acted chummy to put others off their guard, but he knew how diplomatically to manage a guest. Brad fumed in silence.
The balcony encircled the entire top of the round chamber wall. The floor of the chamber was at least twenty stories below, but the domed ceiling was directly overhead. On the chamber wall, spaced every fifty feet, stained-glass windows, their complex designs too elaborate for Brad’s eyes to easily interpret, stretched all the way from the marble floor to the balcony’s underside, and between the windows were high-relief sculptures of solemn, richly clad ponies with crowns on their troubled brows. Upon the dome overhead was a painting of Princess Celestia rearing with wings spread wide, horn aglow, wild mane swept back, and wide eyes gazing down with soft benevolence. Directly above her horn was the dome’s central skylight, around which had been painted golden tongues suggestive of the sun. At Celestia’s hooves, various creatures, all much smaller than she, raised forelegs or arms toward her in supplication: among the creatures, Brad spotted pegasi, unicorns, and earth ponies, as well as centaurs, satyrs, griffons, and various creatures of myth that he couldn’t name off the top of his head.
Upon the floor of the chamber, rows upon rows of benches and desks faced a high dais, upon which stood a gigantic throne of some gray metal that Brad at first thought was silver, but then decided was platinum. Sculpted with images of dragons, the throne looked enormous even from this height, too big for anyone to really use. To its right was a stark, unadorned seat of black oak. Though much smaller than the throne, it too looked too large for use.
In front of these high seats were other thrones: in the middle was a throne of gold. To its left was a more modest throne of copper, and to its right a throne of brass. Further to the right was a throne of silver, though it was long, almost like a couch or daybed, and above it hung a loose, white canopy.
Ponies and other creatures gathered onto the balcony until it was packed and the crowd’s voices formed a continuous, echoing roar, but Stainless, with further fierce glances, turned away anypony inquisitive enough to approach Brad and address him. Most of the ponies wore suit jackets with bowties or neckties, or else gauzy dresses decked with ribbons and jewels. Five goats, bleating to each other in their own language, wore what appeared to be togas. Three tall, bipedal creatures with goat-like heads stood only a few feet away. They lounged against the balcony, chatted, and occasionally glanced Brad’s way: they wore suits and top hats similar to what he had on, though in different colors, so Brad concluded that Rarity had modeled his outfit off of fashion current among satyrs. That made him feel less self-conscious.
When he heard a loud stomping behind him, Brad turned and saw a centaur, its body as big as that of a draft horse, pushing through the crowd like a ship pushing through the sea. Any ponies in the centaur’s way quickly stepped aside.
Covering the centaur’s human-like half was fur the same bay color as the rest of his body. His thick muscles looked chiseled from stone, but his gigantic head was only vaguely human: his eyes, overshadowed with large, bony brows, were deep brown with no visible whites, and his mouth and nose together formed a short, blunt muzzle.
A pony in a white tie and evening tails bumped up against the centaur’s left foreleg. The pony issued a stream of obsequious apologies, to which the centaur replied with a grimace and a piercing whinny that sent the pony scurrying away.
In addition to the cacophony of noise on the balcony, Brad detected a cacophony of odors. Every pony wore perfume, so the balcony smelled like a cross between a barnyard and a botanical garden. Brad had no chance of rightly guessing what any of the perfumes he detected were supposed to represent, so he decided to content himself with imagining.
That was, until he noticed Stainless Steel flaring his nostrils and muttering to himself whenever elegantly dressed mares walked by: “That one’s on the prowl, but that one’s definitely not. Thinks she’s a social climber, does she? She’s not foolin’ anypony with that scent. If that’s her real ’mones, my mother was a mule. Who mixed that concoction? A kindergarten filly with a chemistry set?”
Whenever Stainless made one of his remarks, Brad inhaled deeply through his nose, but could not discern whatever it was the stallion was detecting: every breath smelled to him exactly like the last.
At one point, Stainless turned to him with a lopsided grin and said, “’Cor, boy! I’m tryin’ to sniff the ladies, but that slop you drenched yourself in is foulin’ me up. Every time I inhale, I get a big whiff o’ you.”
“I’m helping to keep you honest,” Brad answered.
“You’re ruinin’ my fun. Half the mares up here are lookin’ for their special someponies, but there you are, covered in friendship, makin’ ’em smell platonic to me—not to mention stallionish. It’s a right nuisance.”
Brad laughed.
The sound on the balcony died. Brad turned back around, leaned over the railing, and beheld a gray-maned pony in a white collar and red tie. She cantered smartly onto the dais and stepped to a podium. She spoke, and a pleasant feminine voice, clear and sharp, reached Brad’s ears. He couldn’t see a microphone, so he at first supposed that her voice had been magically amplified. However, he didn’t feel anything weird, so perhaps the chamber had been designed to make sounds from the floor carry to the roof.
“Fillies and gentlecolts,” the pony said, “I am Mayor Mare of Ponyville, and it is my great honor and privilege to be the official presider at this, the twenty-first Cosmic Council of Equestria.”
Stainless put his front hooves on the railing, pushed himself up, and whispered in Brad’s ear, “Presidin’ always goes to some minor elected official. It’s a big deal to get to do it.”
Only nodding in reply, Brad kept his eyes on the chamber’s floor. He squirmed and fidgeted.
Mayor Mare began reading a list of titles. As she recited names, ponies processed through massive double doors opposite the dais, marched in two rows up the chamber’s central aisle, and took their seats in the benches. Brad listened at first, but as Mayor Mare droned on, his attention wandered. She named the countess of Vaniskari, the grand duchess of Connemara, the viscountess of Oldenburg, the knyaz of Kabarda, the dauphine of Prance, and hundreds of others, all of them meaningless to him. The names continued and the benches filled for almost a full hour as Mayor Mare’s voice grew increasingly hoarse. A lackey in a tuxedo jacket appeared at her shoulder and poured her a glass of water, which she gulped between names and which the lackey frequently refilled. This led to a more amusing scene: after she had downed four glasses, Mayor Mare’s voice grew higher in pitch and less stately in tone, and she bounced back and forth behind the podium.
It was then that Brad noticed that most of the titles were feminine, and that most of the ponies piling into the benches wore dresses. He heard many duchesses, countesses and baronesses named, but only a handful of dukes, counts, or barons.
At long last, when the benches were full, Mayor Mare cried in a loud voice, “Make way for his royal highness, the principus of Spinosissimus, master of the Territory of the Sparkling Sea, and sovereign ruler of all Aquastria, King Leo!”
Then came a spectacle. With loud, rhythmic grunts, a team of harnessed pegasus ponies hauled up the aisle a great tank full of water. In the tank were brightly colored pebbles, waving strands of seaweed, and even a treasure chest, like the decorations of an aquarium. As the pegasi heaved and pulled, the great tank sloshed, creating a trail of puddles on the floor. Flitting around in the tank were what looked like gigantic fish: four of them, each bigger than a man, were dark blue with long snouts and with crimson-tipped dorsal fins that stretched above their heads like wild hair. In the midst of them was a fish with green scales, a copious belly, and a lionish but jovial face encircled by a bright orange mane.
“Ah!” cried Stainless Steel. “Leo’s brought mermares! I’ve never seen one! I’ve never heard of one leavin’ Aquastria!” He stretched his neck far over the railing and peered at the enormous tank with a look of unchecked hunger on his face.
The mermares thrust their long snouts out of the water, opened their mouths, and sung in notes as clear as those of glass bells, “Shoo be doo! Shoo shoo be doo! Shoo be doo! Shoo shoo be doo!” On both the balcony and in the benches, the ponies were suddenly in tumult.
Stainless sucked in his breath. “Cover your ears, lad! It’s siren song!”
Brad barely heard him, and the shouts and clamors of the ponies died in his ears. All he could hear were the pure voices of the singing mermares calling to him over and over, “Shoo be doo be doo.”
He came back to himself when Stainless Steel’s fetlocks wrapped around his waist and jerked him hard back down into his seat. He shook his head as if he’d suddenly snapped awake. “What? What happened?”
“You were about to throw yourself off, fool!” Stainless shouted. He glanced around at the other ponies and added in a hoarse whisper, “They say that, back in the old days, ’fore they were tamed, the mermares used to sing to earth pony sailors durin’ storms. Sailors’d jump overboard and drown.”
“Really? Why?”
“Why? You hafta ask? You nearly did it your own self!” He went to the balcony, placed his knees on it, and leaned his chin on his hooves. “Besides, I mean, look at ’em. They’re gorgeous.”
“No, I mean, why did the mermares—?”
“Hush, boy!”
The mermares ceased their singing, and the ponies calmed. Brad glanced around the balcony and noticed that several stallions, their ties askew and manes ruffled, were being held back by other ponies around them. Apparently, Brad wasn’t the only one who had tried to leap over the rail.
The big green fish thrust the upper half of his body out of the water and rested his pectoral fins on his copious belly. His dripping mane fell flat against the sides of his face. He called out in a deep, jovial voice, “Air-breathers! Landlubbers! My friends! Today, on this grand occasion, you shall all know the bounty of Aquastria! Behold!”
The mermares dove down to the treasure chest at the tank’s bottom. They threw it open and, from its interior, filled their pectoral fins with white pearls. They swam again to the surface and threw the glinting pearls among the nobleponies, again causing a commotion. This elicited several boos from the high balcony.
Leo uttered a deep laugh that shook his middle. “Fear not, my dear friends of the peanut gallery! You’ll not be left out!” At those words, a pegasus pony, her coat blue like the sky and her mane and tail an array of several colors, sped into the chamber and, at rapid speed, flew up to the balcony with a large bag in her front hooves. With a raspy chuckle, she opened the bag and zipped about in a wide circle, tossing pearls in her wake. The ponies and other creatures on the balcony cheered.
The blue pony paused and hovered in midair when she came to Brad. She scowled at him for a moment before swooping down and planting her muzzle against his nose.
“Just watch yourself, bub,” she said before dropping a pearl the size of a baseball into his hands.
She flew off, but Brad stood from the bench and shouted, “Roxy!”
The pony gave no answer. Instead, having emptied her bag, she flew down to the tank, slapped a hoof against the upraised fin of one of the mermares, and shot out of the chamber.
Brad sank slowly back into his seat. The pony, in voice and even appearance, had almost exactly resembled Roxy Dodgers, one of his best friends from back home. Brad had run cross-country, and Roxy had played soccer, and sometimes they’d lounged on the bleachers after practice and chatted about life. Like Rowellina, Roxy had also been a close friend of Twilight’s. Was it possible that all of Twilight’s human friends had discovered the way into Equestria and the secret of transformation?
In spite of the wonders around him, Brad felt suddenly homesick.
Stainless Steel leaned toward him and whispered, “Do you know her?”
Unsure how to answer, Brad whispered in turn, “Do you?”
“Heh heh. Everypony in Equestria does—or at least everypony with an int’rest in stunt flyin’. That was the Light Refraction of Satisfaction, Rainbow Dash!”
Brad swallowed. “Has she been here long?”
“Huh? You mean Canterlot? I think she lives in Ponyville—”
Brad shook his head. “Never mind.”
The pegasi hauling the tank brought it to the foot of the high dais and then, panting hard, unstrapped themselves from their harnesses, made a sharp salute to King Leo, and flew out.
Mopping her brow and still bouncing behind the podium, Mayor Mare called, “Make way for her royal highness, the hundred and first ruler of the crystal ponies, empress by the grace of Celestia, Princess Mi Amore Cadenza!”
Six crystal ponies, their deep violet bodies and diamond armor glittering with refracted light, cantered up the aisle. Each had a long spear wrapped in his right front fetlock and, by some trick Brad couldn’t quite discern, managed to walk with a smart, steady pace on only three legs. Once they had spaced themselves out evenly along the aisle, the soldiers stopped, turned, and raised their spears.
Princess Cadance, clad in a white dress trimmed in gold, walked up the aisle in the company of a large white stallion wearing a red jacket that Brad assumed was from a dress uniform.
Brad leaned toward Stainless Steel and whispered, “Shining Armor, I presume?”
“Aye. As prince consort, he’ll be expected to wait on ’er front hoof and hind hoof throughout the Council. Tradition, it is.”
“She didn’t strike me as the sort who likes to get waited on.”
“Depends on who’s doin’ the waitin’ and why, but she don’t put on airs, at least. Didja notice the stallions sniffin’ but tryin’ to hide it as she walked past?”
“No.”
“Well, you should’ve. That girl’s a walkin’ pheromone factory.”
Brad leaned on the railing and frowned down at the princess, who now settled herself into the copper throne as Shining Armor stood stiffly beside her. It occurred to him that his discomfort around her might not be due entirely to her magic; he knew he didn’t have the sensitive nasal apparatus of a pony, but he had some vague notion, from something he’d read somewhere, that humans weren’t entirely immune to the effects of pheromones. “She might have mentioned that to me, actually—”
Mayor Mare, looking more distressed by the minute, cried, “Make way for her royal highness, Princess Twilight Sparkle!”
Brad leapt to his feet, but Stainless threw a foreleg across his chest and pushed him back. “Down, boy.”
Twilight, dressed only in her crown, bell boots, and necklace, walked up the aisle unceremoniously and alone. The room fell deathly silent, and the sound of her boots clicking on the floor seemed unbearably loud.
Just as she reached the dais steps, her left wing unfurled and drooped. She stepped on it and, with a gasp, tumbled to the floor. With a clank, her crown fell off and rolled away. Twilight rose to her feet and chased after it. After a few seconds of fumbling, she snatched the crown up and, with head hanging, made her way to the brass throne.
Brad sighed and smiled. “That’s Twilight, all right. She might be a pony, but I’d recognize that trip anywhere.” His face turned hot when he realized he’d spoken aloud in a silent room, and his voice had carried. A tittering buzz of low laughter broke out across the chamber. On her throne, Twilight appeared to be trying to curl herself into a ball.
Mayor Mare had her front hooves on her podium and was jumping back and forth with one hind leg crossed over the other. “Make way for her royal highness, the baroness of Brumby, viscountess of Augeron, duchess of Balikun, ruler of the night, mistress of the moon, and coregent of all Equestria, Princess Luna!”
With piercing cries like bats, two gray-furred wraith ponies appeared. Hooked to heavy chains, they dragged up the aisle a long, dark chariot, upon which stood the regal, midnight blue pony Brad had earlier seen on the Black Ship. She wore a high crown of silver and onyx, and she wore a long, flowing gown of filmy purple, which did nothing to hide her lanky form. The wraiths continued to shriek, and once or twice they snapped at each other like snakes, until they brought the chariot to the base of the dais. Luna opened her wings wide, flapped twice, and rose into the air, expertly aiming herself for the couch-shaped throne of silver, where she quickly settled on her side with her foreparts supported on one knee and her hindparts stretched out. Her horn flashed, and, in a burst of light, the chariot disappeared, as did the harnesses of the wraiths.
A needle-like pain shot through Brad’s head, and he fell to his knees with a groan. Stainless merely glanced at him and shrugged.
The wraith ponies, now free of their chains, but with their heads lowered in a look of docile servility, climbed the steps of the dais and settled on the floor in front of Luna’s throne. Luna gave them a sultry glance of apparent disinterest before turning her gaze to Mayor Mare, who still danced behind the podium, now with her teeth grit.
“And now,” Mayor Mare practically screamed, her voice cracking, “make way for her royal majesty, the baroness of Camargue, countess of Augeron, countess of Criollo, countess of Comtois, marchioness of Brandenburger, duchess of Giara, duchess of Fleuve, princess of the unicorns, commander of the pegasi, chancellor of the earth ponies, conqueror of the griffons, empress of Hind, ruler of the day, mistress of the sun, defender of harmony, and princess of all Equestria and its several territories, protectorates, and vassal states—Princess Celestia!”
As Twilight Sparkle had done, Princess Celestia, clad only in crown, bell boots, and necklace, walked up the aisle alone, her mane and tail billowing behind her like smoke. But her crown was not the one Brad had seen before: it was much larger and decorated all about with several kinds of jewels. It rose above her head like a three-stepped tower.
“The tiara,” Stainless muttered. “The triple crown. She’s not worn it for years. My grandsire said he saw it once on her brow, but nopony’s seen it there since then, I wager.”
“What is it?” Brad whispered.
“The triple crown, boy. The three-in-one. After she and Princess Luna struck down Discord, the chancellor, the commander, and the unicorn king all tossed their crowns at Celestia’s hooves and begged her to be the queen! One legend says she graciously accepted, but took only the title princess. Another says she cut their tongues out for blaspheming the One. Either way, every legend says the king also asked for her hoof in marriage and claimed he could love nopony else. She took his throne but refused him. That’s a mare for you, eh?”
Celestia sat down on the central gold throne, and Brad at once saw the meaning of the order of seating: from left to right, Cadance, Celestia, Twilight, and Luna formed a progression from morning to day to evening to night. The princesses of Equestria encompassed the cycle of time; only Leo, cavorting with his mermares in his giant fish tank, didn’t quite fit.
Mayor Mare ran to Celestia and whispered in her ear. A small smile formed on Celestia’s lips, and she raised her head and said, “I’m sure everypony is a little weary after all those lengthy introductions. Let us take a five-minute recess.”
A buzz of conversation arose as ponies began milling about or shifting in their seats. King Leo and the mermares blew bubbles in their tank and nosed them back and forth like volleyballs. Mayor Mare quickly galloped out through a small door at the base of the dais.
Brad jumped up. “Okay, I drank a lot of coffee this morning. Where’s—?”
“Oh, you’re kiddin’,” said Stainless. “The private facility’s on the bottom floor, an’ the public one’ll have a line a mile long. You can’t get in and out in five minutes.”
“So what? So we’ll miss something. Big deal.”
“Wrong, boy. You’re up in a few. In fact, it’s prob’ly time to head down.”
“How ’bout we head down to the private facility you mentioned?”
“No time for that. It’s in the back.”
Brad muttered, “Great. What’s the chance of another five-minute recess soon?” He took up his cane and tromped after Stainless, who with several sharp words pushed himself through the crowd. They made the staircase, which was lined with chattering ponies, and reached the bottom floor just as Brad heard Mayor Mare call out, “Now for our Council observers—”
“I knew it,” said Brad. “More introductions.”
“Just wait. You’ll want a look at these blokes.” Stainless led him to a small door, which he pulled open slowly to minimize its creaking, and beckoned Brad through.
When he entered, Brad found himself standing in the back behind the last row of seated nobleponies. Tall as he was, he had no trouble seeing over their heads to the dais, where Mayor Mare shook hooves with a withered pony with a lime-green coat and a robust pony with red fur and a silvery mane.
The mayor returned to her podium and announced, “The leader of the Benevolent Fellowship of Geldings, Chief Gelding Parsnip.”
The green pony, with a dignified air, turned his back on the crowd and raised a hoof toward the empty plantinum throne and wooden seat. In a reedy but clear voice, he called out, “May the One True Queen give light to the minds of the ponies gathered here, and may the One True Judge grant wisdom to the members of this Council.”
Stainless snorted. “Geldings,” he whispered. “They think the Queen and the Judge’ll return.”
“I take it you don’t?” Brad asked.
“Even if I did, it ain’t worth hackin’ off my knackers.”
Mayor Mare announced, “The head of the Sacred Order of Timekeepers, Chief Chronomaster Clockwork.”
Clockwork turned his back on the high thrones and faced the gathered ponies. He lifted a hoof and said, “May all those present make an especially delectable morsel when Lord Chronos inevitably devours them.”
Stainless chuckled. “In case you couldn’t tell, that’s the Timekeepers’ idea of a blessing.”
“Is that it?” Brad asked. “Can we get this show on the road?”
“Ain’t sure. I think—”
“The Bearers of the Elements of Harmony!” Mayor Mare shouted.
Brad groaned. “Oh, for cryin’ out—”
He stopped when he saw five ponies and one pudgy little dragon step through the high doors at the end of the aisle and walk toward the dais. He recognized Spike, of course, but he also recognized Paulina Pettifer, Amelia Jems, Faith Summers, and of course Rowellina Beattie and Roxy Dodgers, whom he’d seen as ponies already. Together, they stepped up onto the dais and clustered around the throne of Twilight. They looked much as they had in their yearbook photo, except they were horses.
“No way,” Brad whispered.
“Somethin’ wrong?” Stainless whispered back.
“Not sure. They, uh, remind me of some girls back home. Everyone called them the High Five. They were together all the time—”
Stainless grunted. “Those are Princess Twilight’s right-hoof ponies. You’ll always see ’em together.” He glanced up at Brad. “Didn’t she tell you about ’em?”
He frowned. “I . . . how long have they been here?”
“That’s the second time you’ve asked me that, and I still don’t know what you mean.”
“Never mind, then.”
“Lastly,” called Mayor Mare, “the personal guest of Princess Celestia, a visitor from another world.” Mayor Mare looked down at her notes, scanned them quickly, raised her head again, and said, “Brad.”
“You’re up.” Stainless thumped Brad on the back, pushing him toward the aisle.
Brad looked over his shoulder at him. “Aren’t you—?”
“Not on your life. Good luck, kid.”
With cane in hand and a large pearl bulging in unsightly fashion from his jacket pocket, Brad, his knees shaking, swallowed a lump and began the long trek toward the thrones. The aisle had not looked so long, nor the dais so tall, when he had been on the balcony above. Now the dais loomed over him like a mountain, on the top of which Princess Celestia sat like some regal bird of prey crouching above its nest. Higher still was the empty platinum throne, which Brad could easily imagine holding some impossibly huge white unicorn glaring down at him with angry eyes of fire. In his purple suit, top hat, and pink-striped bowtie, he felt like a child trying to impress the grownups by playing with costume jewelry.
His footfalls sounded loud in his own ears. Halfway to the dais, he remembered what Stainless Steel had said about doffing his cap. He wondered if he should take it off now and approach the princesses with hat in hand, or if he should wait and sweep it off when he was at their hooves.
Nervous as he was, he wanted to take it off now. But he thought it might look better if he waited. He held his head as high as he could, though he avoided looking any of them in the eye, lest they put the whammy on him again and knock him down.
At last, he reached the steps, and he found to his own surprise that he was out of breath. He took off the hat and looked up. It was twenty steps up to the thrones, and he could see now that the steps were steep.
Princess Celestia leaned forward, but she looked out over the gathered ponies rather than directly at Brad. “Young Brad,” she said, sliding to one side of her throne and making a space on her right, “there is a seat here for you—if you are able to claim it.”
The voices of the gathered ponies buzzed throughout the chamber. Brad’s fingers tightened on his hat brim until his knuckles turned white. She was trying to embarrass him.
Keeping his head down to make sure he wouldn’t make eye contact, he placed a foot on the first step of the dais. He pulled himself up and placed a foot on the next step. Then he did it again.
Ten steps up, he began to waver. Sweat appeared on the back of his neck, and he paused a moment, leaning on his cane. He could feel power emanating from Celestia. He felt as if, by walking into her presence, he was defiling a shrine: he had a sudden urge to take off his shoes and crawl up the remaining steps on his knees.
But he resisted and took another step. Fresh sweat broke out on his forehead. He could feel all of them now: heat from Cadance, calming warmth from Twilight, and a stark and lonely sensation, like an evening breeze over an empty plain, from Luna. For a moment, he thought he might faint and tumble backwards down the steps to the floor below.
Yet he did not. The various impressions of the four princesses filled his heart, but then they comingled and balanced one another. They did not cancel one another out, but each kept the others from overwhelming him. He took another step, and the sense of balance grew. He realized he no longer felt weak. He took yet another cautious step and then another, and then he marched up the stairs with a steady gait. At last, he reached the top and, still avoiding her eyes, sat down beside Celestia on her high golden throne.
“That was bravely done,” she whispered.
“Thank you,” he whispered rather too fiercely and too loudly. “Why did you do that?”
“You might have noticed how the ponies reacted when I invited you here. Ordinarily, the spot where you sit is reserved for my protégé. When she sits so close, I can explain things to her without disrupting the proceedings.”
“So Twilight sat here?”
“Yes. And before her, Cadance. Before her, Sunset Shimmer.”
“You mean Susan Shelby? What happened to her? I just remember her turning into some kind of monster at the Fall Formal, and after that my mind is blank—”
“She has been dealt with.”
Brad paused, considered those words, and swallowed.
“Since you have taken this place of honor,” Celestia murmured in his ear, “I think it appropriate to offer you a boon. Ask anything within reason, but do not ask that Twilight escape her trial, for that I cannot grant.”
Brad squirmed in his seat and, with his fists, clutched bunches of cashmere from the legs of his trousers. “Anything in reason?”
The school gymnasium was a smoking ruin. The stage was a wreckage of splintered wood, and burning streamers of crepe paper hung from the rafters or smoldered on the floor. The merely human students, overwhelmed by pony magic, had fainted senseless and now lay strewn about the room like toppled wax dolls.
Susan Shelby, also called Sunset Shimmer, had been distorted by rage and hatred into a towering, slavering beast. From her hands, she hurled fire that the Equestria Girls, partially transformed into ponies by the Element of Magic, deftly dodged.
Shocked by the newfound agility of her magically enhanced humanoid body, Twilight Sparkle, trying to find cover, backflipped through the air and agilely landed behind the DJ booth where Vicky Scranton lay unconscious.
“Give it up, Sunset!” Twilight shouted. “The power of friendship has restored my magic! You can’t win!”
“You think I’ll come quietly?” Sunset Shimmer roared. “You think I’ll just bow my neck and let you lock me in stone like you did to Discord? You took everything from me, Twilight Sparkle! You took Celestia, you took my princesshood, you took my popularity in this world, and now you’ve even taken my boyfriend! You can burn in Tartarus!”
“Give me my crown!” Twilight shouted.
“Never!” screamed Sunset. “It should have been mine to begin with!” Her fists burst into flame, and she threw another pair of fireballs.
Twilight grabbed Vicky and, shielding her as best she could, rolled out of the way before the DJ booth exploded.
Roxy Dodgers, now equipped with a pair of wings, zipped around Sunset and yelled, “Hey, tough guy! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
“Pathetic human!” Sunset snarled. She snatched at Roxy with a clawed hand, but Roxy flitted back and forth like a hummingbird and blew a raspberry.
Ducking low, Twilight sprinted across the room to where the other Equestria Girls huddled. Although most of her was still human, Twilight’s ears had reverted to pony form: since they were no longer mere inert lumps of flesh, she could rotate their pinnae toward sounds, capture noises unnoticeable to a mere human, and use them to gauge the distance of objects. Even without looking at her, and even though she moved quickly, Twilight could correctly estimate Roxy’s location and predict her movements from the sound of her flapping wings—but Roxy apparently didn’t realize that Sunset could do the same thing.
“Roxy, don’t get so close!” Twilight shouted. “Look out for—”
“Ack!” Roxy cried. One of Sunset’s claws ripped across the midsection of her dress and sent her tumbling to the floor.
Twilight changed her course, leapt sideways like a shying horse, and then went into a barrel roll, grabbing up Roxy in the process. Flapping her own wings, she dragged Roxy out of the way just before Sunset brought down a massive foot to crush her.
“Are you okay?” asked Twilight, cradling Roxy in her arms.
“Ugh.” Roxy clutched her side, and blood seeped from under her fingers. “Guess I’m not used to this pony thing yet—”
Twilight cast a spell. Her right hand sparkled with a violet aura, just as her horn had formerly done. She touched Roxy’s wound, and the skin closed. Roxy winced.
“I don’t know if we can do this without the Elements,” Twilight said, “but we have to try.”
“We can do it,” said Roxy with a weak grin. “Lead the way, Twilight. I know we can do it.”
“There’s no hope for you, Equestria Girls!” Sunset boomed, pointing to the jeweled crown on her brow. “Do you think a little unicorn magic can possibly defeat the Element of Magic?”
Twilight helped Roxy stand. Raising a defiant fist, Twilight said, “That’s not the only magic we have, Sunset Shimmer! We have the magic of friendship!”
“Friendship!” Sunset scoffed. “What is friendship? In the face of power like mine, it is nothing!”
“We’ll see about that!” said Roxy.
The other Equestria Girls leapt to their feet and gathered close to Twilight.
“Friendship is dreadfully important, darling,” said Rowellina as she flipped her hair.
“Durn tootin’,” said Amelia.
“Yeah!” shouted Paulina. “If you had friends, maybe you wouldn’t be such a big, mean, grouchy-mean-mean-meanie-pants!”
“Um . . . yay?” whispered Faith.
Together, the Equestria Girls leapt into the air. Faith, Roxy, and Twilight, flapping their wings, supported the others as, all together, they linked their arms in the form of the ancient emblem once worn by the One Judge.
“By the power of love and friendship!” they shouted.
To Twilight’s mingled shock and relief, a bright beam, colored like a rainbow, burst from their bodies and enveloped Sunset Shimmer in a whirlwind of light. From the midst of it, Sunset screamed.
The pressure of the spell’s back blast hit the Equestria Girls like a solid wall. They lost their grip on each other and tumbled to the floor in a heap. Twilight had the misfortune to land on the bottom of the pile; her wind was knocked away, and sparks flashed in her eyes. After a minute, struggling to breathe, she climbed her way out from beneath the others and rose shakily to her feet, only to find that the whirlwind of light had been replaced by a column of black smoke.
The smoke spread through the room and formed a thick haze. Twilight squinted through it as she cautiously stepped forward and saw, in the middle of the gym floor, a crater lined with blackened earth that had been fused to glass. Lying in the crater’s center, with steam rising from her body, was Sunset Shimmer, who had transformed back into a pony. At the edge of the crater lay the Element of Magic, Twilight’s rightful crown.
Twilight stooped, took up the crown, and placed it on her own head. Her friends gathered around her again and gazed down into the pit.
“So that’s a magic pony,” Amelia muttered.
Faith whispered, “Is that really, um, what you look like in the other world?”
“Yes,” said Twilight. “Well, more or less.”
Sunset lifted her head and shakily raised a hoof. “Twilight—”
“It’s over,” Twilight said.
Tears poured down Sunset’s face. “Don’t be a fool, Twilight. Look at the power we have! Think of what we could do here! Don’t give it all up!” She crawled slowly toward the crater’s edge, one hoof still imploringly stretched out. “Imagine it, Twilight! The humans have no princess, nopony to lead them! You and I can be their princesses—no, more than that! We can be their queens—!”
Clenching her fists and raising her chin, Twilight recited the words she had been taught to repeat since she was a little foal: “There is only One Queen,” she said. “There is only One Judge.”
Sunset stopped crawling and lowered her hoof. She sneered. “Do you still believe those old legends of the Geldings, Twilight Sparkle? Of the unicorn Queen who created the ponies in the Valley of Dreams? Of Magog the Mighty, who descended on a rainbow and wrote the ponies’ laws? Do you still believe the Ponycalypse of Starswirl, which says Magog will come back someday?”
“I don’t know,” Twilight answered, “but it doesn’t matter. Maybe the humans don’t have a queen or a princess of their own, but you’re not their princess, Sunset Shimmer, and neither am I. My kingdom is not of this world.” She raised her hand, and it again glowed purple. Under Sunset appeared a disc of bright light, into which she began to sink.
“No!” Sunset screeched as she struggled to grasp solid ground and prevent herself from being pulled into the vortex. “No! You don’t know what you’re doing! I’ll give you anything! I’ll give you power!”
“I don’t want power,” said Twilight. “I never wanted it.”
Sunset sank quickly, and now only her face showed above the disc. “Then why?” she moaned, her tears running thick and fast. “Why are you the new princess instead of me?”
“Because I didn’t want it. Nopony who grasps at power deserves to have it.”
Twilight closed her hand into a fist, and the disc of light evaporated, taking Sunset Shimmer with it.
The magic faded from the room. The crater in the floor disappeared as smoke and ash flecks coagulated into unburnt wooden boards and flew into place. The fires went out. Streamers, falling upward like a reversed rain, hung themselves anew from the rafters. The wreckages of both the stage and the DJ booth reassembled, leaping into place like marionettes pulled by puppeteers. The ears of the Equestria Girls shrank and changed shape, turning into human ears again. The girls’ long hair, which made them appear almost to have tails, returned to its former length. Twilight, Roxy, and Faith’s wings slipped into their backs.
Slowly, with many groans, the students lying around the gym sat up, rubbed their heads, and looked around in confusion.
Kneading a fist against his eyes and staggering slightly as if he’d just awoken from a deep sleep, Brad walked to Twilight’s side and grinned at her.
She sighed, scrunched her eyebrows, and offered him a sad, lopsided smile. “It’s finished,” she said.
“What happened?” he asked, his eyes turning up to the crown on her head.
“I got my magic back. We fought Sunset Shimmer. And we won.”
“You don’t sound happy about it.” He put his hands in his pockets and twisted his mouth. He didn’t sound happy either. With a twinge of jealously, Twilight remembered that Brad had courted Sunset before courting her.
She looked down. “I hope that, someday, Sunset will learn to accept friendship. But at least now, well . . .”
“You can go home,” he said.
A lump formed in her throat. Without saying anything more, she nodded.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Brad said, “Twilight, I know this is probably a really awkward time to say this, but, you know . . . I’d still really like that dance.”
Her cheeks warmed. Nervous, she twisted a strand of her hair around her fingers and whispered, “I’d be honored.”
With a grin, Roxy threw an arm over Brad’s shoulders and said, “Hey, how come you never ask me to dance?”
Brad playfully punched her in the shoulder. “Yeah, right, Roxy.”
Roxy laughed, but Twilight thought her face betrayed a trace of disappointment—or perhaps Twilight imagined it.
Vicky Scranton, instead of putting on more house music, went to the concession table. Olivia, carrying her cello and sporting a bowtie, walked onto the stage and sat down. Others soon followed: Fred sat at the piano, Betty took up her sousaphone, and Elias went to his harp. Together, they began to play a slow waltz.
Twilight had no idea how humans danced. She sucked in her breath when Brad took her hand in his and slipped his other hand to the small of her back. Gently but confidently, he led her through the movements. A couple of times, she stepped on his feet, but he didn’t seem to mind.
When she had first entered this world, she had found her new body ungainly and impractical, but now she realized that it had a beauty and grace of its own. She had been horrified, too, at the thinness, vulnerability, and sensitivity of this body’s skin, but, trembling in Brad’s arms, she was suddenly grateful for it. Becoming human had deadened her hearing and sense of smell, but had heightened other senses to an almost painful pitch; the feel of him so close, and the touch of his hands, almost overwhelmed her.
She stopped stumbling and stopped treading on his toes when she finally relaxed and allowed him to lead. He spun her once, and she gasped when he moved her into a dip, but he made these unfamiliar movements feel natural.
When the song ended, he stepped back, bowed, and brushed his lips against her fingers, sending an electric shock up her arm.
She swallowed, found her voice, and murmured, “You’re a good dancer . . .”
He shrugged. “A lot of us in the theater club took lessons at the community center.” He released her hand, gave her a wink, and added, “But this music’s a little slow, don’t you think?”
He ran to the base of the stage where his guitar case sat. He threw the case open, pulled out his Stratocaster, jumped up beside Olivia, and plugged the lead into an amp.
Olivia gave him a glance that appeared disdainful, but a slight smile graced her lips. She carefully placed her acoustic cello on a stand, walked behind the stage, and returned with an electric cello. The students erupted into cheers.
Brad played the opening riff from “Having Trouble with the Technology” by Tracer Vex. Vicky returned to her booth and added a backbeat, and then Olivia joined in. Soon, they were having an all-out guitar-cello duel while the students jumped around and cheered. Twilight merely laughed and shook her head.
Amelia swung by the concession table and returned with six bottles of apple soda. The Equestria Girls opened the bottles, clicked them together, and drank thirstily.
Amelia gestured toward the stage. “Ain’t really my style o’ music, but they are somethin’, ain’t they?”
“Somethin’ awesome,” Roxy said. Twilight glanced at her and was both surprised and a little disconcerted to see how eagerly Roxy watched the performance, her wide eyes never leaving Brad.
At Brad’s request, the Cosmic Council took yet another five-minute recess, and he couldn’t help but notice how Rainbow Dash, hovering a few feet above Twilight’s throne with her forelegs crossed in disapproval, watched him with narrowed eyes as he made his way out of the chamber.
In the washroom, as Brad crouched awkwardly over a pony toilet and struggled to keep his balance, he considered that he had probably wasted Celestia’s offer of a boon. Still, he could think of nothing he wanted to ask of her that she would grant. All he cared about right now was getting Twilight out of trouble.
Using the equine facilities was a chore. He still hadn’t mastered the bidet, so he ended up pouring a quart of water into his pants while trying to wash himself. He cursed under his breath, but could see no obvious solution to that problem, so he spent the next several minutes fumbling with the buttons on the front of his trousers. After that, he checked himself in the mirror to survey the damage: it looked as if he’d run off to the bathroom but hadn’t quite made it.
He tapped his cane rhythmically on the floor while considering what to do. He could wait until his pants dried, which would probably take a while, or he could walk back to the chamber just the way he was. If Celestia had stood in front of him now and offered him a boon, even up to half her kingdom, he would have asked her to dry his pants.
His indecision lasted only a moment: he pulled his top hat low over his ears, screwed up his courage, and decided to pile yet another buffoonish action onto the many he’d committed recently. He would march into the Council Chamber and announce to all and sundry that he couldn’t figure out how to use a pony bidet. No doubt the entire country would get a good laugh at his expense, but he considered that preferable to letting their minds go where they would when they saw what condition he was in.
Just as he turned to the bathroom door, he heard a knock and a voice. “Brad?”
The voice was Twilight’s.
“Twilight Sparkle,” he answered, “just the pony I wanted to hear and not see. We have to stop holding conversations through doors. Hurry and blow it up.”
He expected Twilight to laugh, but she didn’t. “What’s taking you so long?” she asked. “Did you fall in?”
“No, but, considering how ponies make toilets, it’s only a matter of time. I did have sort of a problem with the washy-thingy—”
“Is anypony else in there?”
“No.”
“Are you decent?”
“Never.”
She pushed open the door, looked him over, and giggled a little. “Well, this will probably hurt.” She pointed her horn at his crotch.
“Whoa!” he cried, crossing his hands over himself. “There are places I don’t want you—gyaah!”
He staggered back and moved his hands up to clutch his head. His ears rang for a few seconds, but after the unpleasant sensations of the magic spell had ended, he realized his trousers were dry—dry and very warm.
“Quick-dry spell,” she said. “It’s simple. They teach it in kindergarten.” A faint hint of pink appeared in her cheeks. “And, by the way, I, um, like your new outfit.” She turned swiftly and galloped away.
Brad thrust out his chin, puffed out his chest, and cocked his hat. “She likes my outfit,” he murmured, and then he walked back toward the Council Chamber with head held high. On the way, he shook his cane at the hall ceiling and said aloud to no one in particular, “How do you know when love is true? When you’re okay with her seeing you after you’ve wet your pants.”
“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Brad dropped his cane and spun around to find Princess Cadance standing about twenty feet behind, just outside the distance at which she affected him.
“Cadance,” he said, “we have to stop running into each other like this. No, really, I mean it.”
“When you didn’t return, Brad, Princess Twilight left her throne to find you.”
“I was on my own throne at the time.”
Cadance cocked an eyebrow, and a quizzical expression passed over her features. “Anyway, I thought it would be best if I followed.”
“You think we need a chaperone?”
She gave him a wide smile. “It so happens that I ardently recommend the chaperoning of youths, but no: I thought it would look better if you reentered the Council Chamber with me instead of with her.”
Brad’s annoyance evaporated. “Oh—”
“I don’t like it, Brad, but even I have to admit that the life of the court is not all about sincerity and openness. Appearances are also important. We have an expression here, ‘saving muzzle.’ Do you know what it means?”
“I can guess.”
“Twilight very much needs to save muzzle right now. So, then, will you do me the honor of escorting me back to the Council, Mister Brad?”
“Fine. Just keep your distance.”
“Of course.”
He snatched up his cane, and the two of them continued down the hallway, Brad occasionally looking over his shoulder to be sure Cadance wasn’t getting too close. “You really recommend chaperones?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“For someone who makes such a big deal of love, you seem awfully straitlaced.”
“Romance is all about rules, Brad.”
“That’s news to me. Seems like it’s about breaking rules—”
“Of course it is. But if there are no rules to break, what will romantics do then? How can lovers meet in secret by moonlight if they have no reason to keep secrets and nopony from whom to keep them? You cannot be a true romantic unless you have first learned how to be—how did you put it?—straitlaced.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Perhaps you will understand it in time.”
They turned a corner, and Brad halted when he found a pony’s blue-furred muzzle hovering in front of his face. Surprised, he involuntarily released a small yelp and staggered backwards.
“Where were you?” Rainbow Dash demanded. She was steadily flapping her wings, keeping herself aloft. She still had her forelegs crossed and a look of grumpy disapproval on her face, just as she had when he’d seen her last.
He sucked in his breath and felt sweat break out on his forehead as Cadance pushed past him.
“Hurry up,” Cadance said as she continued down the hall toward a pair of double doors.
Brad clenched his teeth, leaned around Rainbow, and shook his cane at Cadance’s back.
Rainbow took that as an opportunity to wrap a fetlock around his outstretched arm. “C’mon, weirdo. Everypony in Equestria is waiting.”
“Does it really take three ponies, including two princesses, to find me?” Brad demanded as she dragged him down the hall.
“Yes. You were taking forever.”
He tried to extricate himself from her grip, but found he couldn’t. He stopped walking, but she barely noticed, continuing to drag him while his feet slid across the floor.
Brad glanced around to see if any other ponies were present. Cadance appeared to be out of earshot, so he whispered, “What are you doing here, Roxy? How did you and the others find a portal?”
Rainbow Dash paused, let go of his arm, and spun around. “What? What are you talking about?”
He tapped his cane on the floor and leaned on it. “C’mon, don’t play dumb. You didn’t seriously think I wouldn’t recognize you, did you?”
Rainbow’s eyes narrowed and she peered close into his face. “Have we met?”
Brad backed up a step. “I know who you are, Roxy. We’ve known each other since we were kids. This pony thing isn’t even a good disguise. Why are you pretending? What are you up to?”
Rainbow flew up almost to the ceiling and said, “That’s it, I’m outta here. Get back in here, or you’re gonna make this thing take all week.” She spun and zipped up the hall, disappearing through the doors.
Shaking his head, Brad rejoined Cadance and entered the Council Chamber. “I am going to get to the bottom of this,” he muttered to himself.
“Brad, wake up.” Something soft and fuzzy pushed against his cheek. Then the soft thing split open to reveal a moist interior, and a set of hard teeth nipped him.
“Yow!” He sat bolt upright, and laughter rippled through the chamber.
He blinked and rubbed his eyes. Sitting in Celestia’s throne for several hours, pressed up against the princess’s warm side and listening to the droning voices of Equestria’s various lawmakers, Brad had dozed off, and now that he was awake again, he realized he’d been drooling on the shoulder of the sovereign ruler of all she surveyed.
With a scowl, he glanced up at Celestia’s face. Celestia, after biting him, had turned her attention back to the bespectacled noblemare who stood in the middle of the floor and read a lengthy speech about water rights in the eastern provinces.
Celestia had a faint, amused grin on her face, and Brad knew it was at his expense.
He shifted in the seat. The throne’s straight metal back was uncomfortable, so after he squirmed for a few minutes in search of a new position, he ended up leaning against Celestia again. “I thought this was supposed to be Twilight’s trial,” he whispered.
Her grin faltered. “This is the Cosmic Council, Brad,” she whispered back. “It does not meet regularly, so when it does, there is inevitably much business to deal with. Be patient.”
“I don’t know why, but I expected government in a fairy kingdom to be less boring.”
Her grin returned. “Ah, I had forgotten what it was like to have a squirming, fidgety child beside me during the Council. Thank you, Brad. You bring back fond memories—and give me an entertaining distraction. The duchess of Faroe can be quite dull, can’t she?”
“You’re welcome. When’s dinner?”
“If you’re bored, you can brush my hair.”
“In front of everyone?”
“Why not?”
He crossed his arms and tried to follow the arguments of the droning duchess. “Sorry, but I’m a one-pony kind of man. I only brush Twilight.”
“Admirable. I think.”
At last, the duchess stopped speaking, and Brad assumed she was finished. A few polite claps came from the gallery.
“You make a strong case,” Celestia called. “Does the marchioness of Percheron have a counterargument?”
Another mare stood up from amongst the gathered nobleponies. “Your Majesty, the dam is vital to the wellbeing of our province. We are dependent on both the reservoir and the power.”
Celestia turned to Clockwork and Parsnip, the Chronomaster and Gelding who sat at a table near King Leo’s water tank. “Have the observers any comment?”
Clockwork cleared his throat and said, “A compromise may be in order, Your Highness. If the dam’s outflow can be increased without harm to Percheron, perhaps enough water for Faroe’s irrigation can be provided. I could have my Timekeepers in the region begin a study.”
“Do so,” Celestia answered. “I expect the results in a month, and I will decide the matter then myself.” She paused. “Unless there is any objection from the Council.”
Nopony made a sound, and the two nobleponies, after scowling at each other, resumed their seats. Mayor Mare rapped a gavel on her podium and read off the names of yet more ponies with more grievances to bring.
Brad squirmed again. Even though this was supposed to be a meeting of all of Equestria’s rulers, he was increasingly getting the impression that it was Celestia’s one-mare show.
She leaned her head down to him and whispered in his ear, “You are witnessing a fossil of Equestrian government, Brad. The rural nobility has been losing importance for a few hundred years now. The new centers of power are the cities—Fillydelphia, Manehatten, and Las Pegasus—where the money is.”
He swallowed. He’d talked back to princesses a few times already without consequence, so he replied, “And when the nobles lose power, it goes to you?”
“Partly. The ponies have grown accustomed to letting princesses make most major decisions, which is why you hear no objection when I offer to judge cases myself. But part of the nobles’ power has gone to the entrepreneurs and merchant barons, as well as to the elected governments of the towns and cities where they reside.” She inclined her head to the table where Clockwork and Parsnip sat. “And in spite of how they look, those two are dangerous. They want power, too. But you’ve not yet seen Equestria’s real power, for it does not send representatives here.”
“What? What is it?”
“Just a moment. I need to listen to this.”
Brad tried listening too, but only heard a boring speech about land rights in the western provinces. He tuned it out and began to wonder if he should have gone ahead and brushed Celestia’s mane, just to have something to do.
But then he heard a loud bang, almost like a gunshot, from the back of the chamber, and a voice cried, “Halt there! Don’t move or I’ll—aiee!”
The voice cut off with a scream. A unicorn guard, clad in golden armor, flew high into the air. One of the nobles in the back jumped from her seat and caught him in a levitation spell, which sent a piercing shriek into Brad’s ears. He winced.
After that, all was noise and confusion as desks and ponies were flung from the floor. There were roars, snarls, whinnies, and the sound of breaking wood. Ponies screamed and neighed. The nobles jumped from their seats and clambered over each other to get out of the way as six enormous brown monsters galloped through the midst of them, upending desks or smashing chairs as they headed for the dais. The monsters tossed aside anypony unlucky enough to be in their way.
Celestia’s eyes narrowed. “I’m sorry, Brad, but I have to do this.” With her mane and tail whipping as if in a high wind, she stood from her throne, and her horn glowed white like a bright beacon. In the next moment, Brad tumbled to the floor and writhed as a sharp pang split his head open.
When he came back to his senses, a pair of pony’s forelimbs cradled him. He whispered, “Twilight?” But then he looked up into the concerned face of Princess Luna, and he gasped.
She let go of him, and he sat up. Celestia had encased the entire chamber in a levitation spell: everything glowed with a golden aura, and all the ponies, desks, chairs, and papers which had flown into the air now settled gradually as if they were falling feathers. Standing before the dais, also surrounded by the golden glow, were five huge buffaloes, identical to those Brad had once seen in Yellowstone Park, except the largest wore a headdress full of feathers. Beside the five large buffaloes was a smaller one with a coat of light beige, and beside her was a bay earth stallion with a sandy mane. He also wore a headdress, though it held only a few feathers.
Several guardsponies lay scattered across the floor, but one, a stallion with an orange coat and a blue crest, still kept his hooves and now pointed a spear at the largest buffalo’s face.
Once everything in the room had settled, Celestia closed her eyes for a moment, and the glow of her horn faded, as did the room’s golden aura. “Chief Thunderhooves,” she said, “what is the meaning of this?”
With a snort, the big buffalo tossed a scroll onto the floor. In a deep, rumbling voice, he called, “Is this the famed equity and justice of the Great White Pony?”
“Explain,” Celestia replied.
“You promised us our sovereignty, but these settler ponies continue to build their towns on our ancestral lands!” He stomped the dropped scroll, twisted his hoof, and tore the parchment in half.
Celestia took a deep breath, closed her eyes for a moment, and said, “This is not an internal matter. I will deal with this myself, without the Council—”
“No!” Thunderhooves roared. “You will not relegate us to a back room, Your Majesty! Everypony will hear our plight!”
“You are a sovereign nation, not an Equestrian province—”
“In that case, these settlements are an act of war. Your ‘Cosmic Council’ will hear us, or we will go on the warpath instead.” Thunderhooves swatted the spear from the guardpony’s hooves, sending it clattering to the floor. “And get that out of my face!”
Celestia paused for a moment, and then she turned around. “The request is irregular. Sister?”
Princess Luna, still sitting by Brad’s side, said, “No objection, sister.”
“No objection,” said Cadance.
Twilight sat up straighter as if startled. “What? Oh! No objection.”
King Leo lifted his face above the water of his tank and guffawed. “These unexpected guests are most entertaining, and they have done much to enliven a dull meeting! No objection!”
With a harrumph, Clockwork stood from his seat. “Your Majesty, this is the Cosmic Council, the center of civilization for all the world. We cannot allow sav—”
“Quiet,” said Celestia. She turned to the pony standing by the buffaloes’ side. “Braeburn, are you here to represent the settlers?”
He inclined his head toward the smallest of the buffalo. “No, ma’am. I’m here with my wife.”
“Very well. Flash Sentry?”
The orange guardspony spun around, clicked his bell boots together, and dipped his head. “Your Majesty.”
Brad felt a chill run down his spine, and he slowly rose to his feet. The guard’s voice sounded exactly like his own.
The princesses must have noticed as well, for Celestia glanced back at Brad, and Luna rubbed a hoof against her chin and frowned. Twilight bit her lip and sank lower in her throne.
With a slight shrug, Celestia said, “Flash, fly to Appleloosa and tell Sheriff Silverstar we request his presence, and the presence of any representatives he wishes to bring—”
“What is this?” Thunderhooves roared. “Are you delaying—?”
“Do you wish the Council to reach a decision without hearing both sides?” Celestia snapped. She raised her voice and called, “Raven!”
A clatter came from somewhere behind the high, platinum throne, after which a white unicorn mare in heavy horn-rimmed glasses galloped out with several roles of parchment clutched in one forelimb. She slid to a stop by Celestia’s side, collapsed to the floor, and dropped her parchments, which tumbled down the steps, unrolling as they went. After regaining her hooves, Raven adjusted her glasses and, grinning sheepishly, said, “Um, yes, Your Majesty?”
“Go with the buffaloes and draw up a formal petition for them. They are to have the ambassadorial suite during their stay, and tell the Geldings to give them whatever they request.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Parsnip, the withered green pony, stood from his seat beside Clockwork. “If you wish, Princess, I can see to their needs personally.”
Celestia smiled. “That will not be necessary, Parsnip. I wouldn’t want you to miss the Council.” Then she turned to the ponies gathered around Twilight’s throne, who had watched these proceedings with their eyes wide. “Applejack,” said Celestia, “if you like, you may go with your cousin.”
“I, uh, reckon maybe I better,” replied the orange pony who resembled Amelia Jems. She took to her hooves and walked down the steps.
Rainbow Dash flapped into the air. “I’m goin’, too.” She landed between Braeburn and the smallest buffalo and said, “Hey, Little Strongheart. Long time, no see.” She raised a hoof, and Little Strongheart met it with her own.
Applejack, Rainbow Dash, Braeburn, and the buffaloes, led by Raven, filed quietly out of the chamber.
Half the room was in shambles. The buffaloes had cut a swath of destruction straight up the one side of the chamber, leaving behind a path strewn with shattered wood. Many of the nobleponies, their elegant clothes ragged and dirty, were picking themselves up from the floor. Several guards, some of them with crumpled armor, were doing the same. Littering the front of the dais were several unraveled, crisscrossing scrolls, making the steps resemble a house that had been attacked with toilet paper on Halloween.
With his pectoral fins, King Leo slapped the water in his tank and released a deep belly laugh. “These buffalo leave an impression! I like them! Celestia, give them everything they want!”
Celestia sighed. “I think, my little ponies, it may be best to call a recess until tomorrow. We will resume immediately after I have raised the sun. I wish you all a good night.”
Now Leo laughed even more loudly, and he lifted a full half of his body from the tank. “Ah! But our time together is not over, my friends, my landlubbers! Tonight, and every night of the Cosmic Council, each and every last one of you is invited to my feast! You shall all know the bounty of the Sparkling Sea! Tonight, by my decree, the cider shall flow like water!” He lifted his fins as if in benediction, and his mermares raised their snouts and hummed. The motley crowd in the high gallery responded with stomps, whistles, and catcalls.
The nobleponies didn’t bother to file out with the same pomp and solemnity with which they had filed in. While everyone was leaving, Brad ducked through a side door, got lost in a maze of hallways, and eventually found himself taking fresh air on a high balcony overlooking the city. The sun, heavy and red, hung near the horizon, and the roofs of Canterlot blazed like fire. A cool breeze whipped through the many pennants and caressed Brad’s face. He peered off into the distant valley, which was now hazy in the fading light, and again he noticed the wide brown blot of the tent city.
Stainless Steel, now bearing a broad dent in the side of his peytral, stomped onto the balcony and huffed. “There you are! You want me to miss King Leo’s party, boy? I hear those pretty mermares won’t let a stallion’s sarsaparilla glass get empty! Let’s go!”
Brad chuckled, leaned back against the golden balustrade, and gestured to the dent in Stainless Steel’s armor. “I see you got up close and personal with a buffalo.”
Stainless snorted. “Aye, gonna have to take this into the armorer, I will. Now, are you ready? I’m a hungry stallion, and good eats like this don’t show up every day.”
Brad languidly pointed toward the distant tents. “I tried to ask you before. What’s that?”
Stainless looked where he pointed, shuddered, and shook his head. “That? Why do you want to know about that? That’s a mistake, it is. My mistake. And Celestia’s. And a lot of ponies’.”
“What kind of mistake?”
He stomped a hoof, and his bell boot rang against the marble floor. “Why do you ask me? Ask a princess, if you really want to know.” He sharply shook his head. “I can’t talk about it, as I said already.”
Brad shrugged, straightened, and said, “Lead the way. I could use some food myself.”
To get to the feast, Brad and Stainless Steel had to walk back through the cavernous Council chamber, where custodians were now dutifully clearing away the wreckage. After a long march up the center aisle, they made their way into a receiving hall, plush like a Victorian parlor, where a heavy crystal chandelier hung overhead. At the corners of the sculpted ceiling were high-relief images of chubby pegasus colts with widespread wings, and frescoes on the walls depicted pastoral scenes of ponies strolling through lush landscapes. The largest frescoe showed a castle with spires much like Canterlot’s, except they were bright pink.
Standing in the center of this room was a great marble statue of a strange, bipedal figure, almost like a cross between a pony and an ape. It had a sloping forehead, a horse-like muzzle, and thick, hunched shoulders. On its forelimbs were talons like those of a bird of prey, and with one of these ghastly appendages it pointed to an enormous, heart-shaped ruby embedded in its chest. At this monster’s hooves, for its back legs were hoofed, stood two high tablets engraved with Roman numerals.
Brad paused and gazed up at the statue, which must have been at least ten feet tall. “Who’s this?” he asked.
Stainless grunted. “Magog. The One True Judge.”
“The one the Geldings think will come back?”
“Aye.” He shook his head. “If that’s really what she’s like, she can stay gone, far as I’m concerned.”
“It’s a she?”
“’Course. They may have been primitive in the Valley of Dreams, but they knew better than to let a male run the place. Are you ready? I’m starving, and I want a slab of that kelp cake I hear Leo brought.”
“Kelp cake? Suddenly I’m not hungry anymore.”
“Is it my fault you’re a picky eater? Let’s go, boy!”
Brad stepped around the statue to head for the outer door, but he stopped when a shock of cold and a feeling of drowsiness overcame him. He staggered back.
Princess Luna, with her waving mane full of stars, stood near the door. She peered at Brad and frowned. “I am sorry. Am I too close?”
“It’s all right,” Brad said. He put a hand on the statue’s base to steady himself. “You just startled me, is all.”
She blinked her bright eyes and smiled. “Excellent. Young Brad, I require you to sleep with me tonight.”
Brad took a moment to process that. “Excuse me?”
Luna huffed. “Surely you are aware of what you are?”
“Yes. I’m taken.”
She blinked again, incomprehension plain on her face. “I’m afraid I do not understand. You have all the marks of a potential Adept. I intend to train you.”
“Adept at what?”
With a scowl, she whinnied and pawed the ground. “Has nopony told you? Cadance? Celestia? Twilight Sparkle? Have they not mentioned your obvious sensitivity to magic—?”
“They said I was allergic or something.”
Luna lowered her head to the ground and let her misty hair fall across her face. “Has everypony forgotten the ancient lores?” She snapped her head up again and walked toward him. Her eyes glowed like a full moon, and he fell back against the statue as she neared him. His knees grew weak, but her gaze fixed him, and he could neither drop to the ground nor look away. “You are not allergic,” she said. “You are receptive. You have the potential to be a great Dreaming Adept, and I can train you!”
She reached him at last and placed a hoof against his forehead. The cold touch of her silver boot stunned him.
“Tonight,” she hissed, “you will sleep under my hoof, and I will bring you through the Gate of Horn to the Deeper Slumber, where you will behold the greatest secrets shrouded by time.” She grinned, and Brad could see that, where a normal pony simply had a gap in her teeth behind her incisors, Luna had a pronounced set of sharp canines.
She took her hoof from his head, and he slid hard to the floor. She turned to Stainless Steel and said, “You there, see that he eats only lightly at the feast, and that he takes no intoxicants. Bring him to my chariot at ten o’clock.”
Stainless bowed his head. “Yes, Your Highness. Of course.”
Sometimes, after school, Brad and Roxy liked to unwind with a game of one-on-one. Brad parked his custom Camaro on the street, and then they could use the whole driveway to shoot hoops with the beat-up old basket hanging over the garage.
Roxy was tough, agile, and fast, but she had the same problem with basketball she had with everything else: she could never quite understand that it wasn’t a full-contact sport. Brad could give her a run for her money, but he lost as often as he won, and he typically came away from these games with scrapes and bruises. At least Roxy didn’t try to mash his face into the cement the way she mashed kids’ faces into the field when she played soccer.
It was a sunny afternoon, though the air was cool. Birds twittered, and tufts of white blew lazily from the cottonwood trees. Brad and Roxy were both drenched in sweat. In the narrow space between the house and the neighbors’ garage, the ball made a loud, hollow sound when it hit the pavement, a sound that somehow simultaneously evoked both the cozy feel of suburbia and the spanning desolation of a deep canyon. Occasionally, some of the neighborhood kids rode by on their bikes and shouted taunts at each other as they went.
Roxy was winning by two points. Brad had the ball, but she clung close to him, as she always did. He tried to fake her out by moving the ball behind his back, but as he had no one to pass to, she wasn’t buying it. He moved in for a layup, but she jumped at him; with a hard thump, they collided in midair, and his shoulder blades and the back of his head slammed hard into the garage door. Lights flashed in his eyes. He landed on his feet, and he staggered, but he stayed upright because he was wedged between the garage and Roxy, who ended up with her face rammed into his chest and her fists clenched against his shoulders.
They stayed that way for a moment. The ball bounced and then rolled away. Brad could hear Roxy breathing hard, so he looked down at her unkempt mop of multicolored hair. She trembled faintly.
“Hey, you’re not hurt, are you?” He put his hands on her shoulders and was surprised by how thin they were. He could feel the points of her shoulder bones, tiny and sharp, sticking out just behind the muscles. She was tough, wiry, and quick, so it was sometimes easy to forget just how small and slender she was.
After almost a minute, she pulled away from him. She bit her lip, and she kept her hands balled up just below her face. She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
He gave her a light, playful punch in the arm. “I think you won. I gotta go get cleaned up: I’m meeting Twilight at the Sweet Shoppe.”
He walked past her to get the ball, but, struck by an idea, stopped and turned. “Hey, you wanna come with?”
She still wasn’t looking at him. “What? Oh. Nah. I don’t wanna be in your way.”
“My way? We’re just hanging out. Hey, you and Twilight didn’t have a fight or—?”
“Nah. We’re cool.”
Brad stooped and picked up the basketball, which had rolled into the strip of grass beside the house. “Well, that’s good. I like to think my two favorite girls are getting along.”
Tucking the ball under one arm, he paused a moment and stared at Roxy’s hunched back.
Finally, he walked to her and tousled her hair before he headed for the porch.
Even though he’d spent most of the day listening to boring speeches and dozing against a pony’s warm flank, Brad was tired. The Cosmic Council had given him a lot to take in, and he wanted to go somewhere quiet where he could process it, so it was with reluctance that he followed Stainless Steel into the banquet hall.
Once there, however, he was glad he came. King Leo and the mermares of Aquastria certainly knew how to have a good time.
Inside the cavernous hall, ponies and other fantastic beings of every size and shape made a ruckus. Long tables lining two walls were so loaded with food that their legs bent and groaned under the weight. Everywhere, creatures stuffed their faces with bowls of seaweed and with delicate pastries and cakes, or else they drank from pint-sized tankards of cider or punch. Many of the upper-class ponies huddled in a knot and looked on with disapproving glares, and a few even marched toward the door in a huff, but others had their ties loose or their fine hats askew, and they mixed freely with the unwashed rabble who had filled the Council Chamber’s upper gallery. Ponies talked loudly and laughed still more loudly, and over the thick odors of horse and perfume hung the intermingled scents of baked sweetmeats, fried vegetables, and the briny, salty smell of the sea.
All around the hall, high, arched windows let in the pale light of the full, rising moon. That light attempted to cast a pallor across the proceedings inside, but it could do nothing to dampen the hall’s warm glow, for the ceiling overhead hung with sparkling chandeliers, and recessed lighting bathed the walls in red and gold like that of a smoldering fire. What’s more, in the middle of the room, a great, many-tiered fountain stood, and it shone with the green light of lanterns hidden in its depths. The fountain consisted of an enormous bath of greening copper, shaped somewhat like an upturned cake mold, jutting from the sides of which were the shapes of giant seahorses made of beaten gold.
Jets spurted from the seahorses’ mouths, and those jets fell across King Leo himself, who perched in a curtain of sparkling water on a high throne. The throne sat on a great base of black, glossy basalt carved in high relief with the images of breaching dolphins, and the throne itself was of gold encrusted with pearls and diamonds; it was sculpted all about with the shapes of clams, starfish, swordfish, and other creatures of the sea.
Around the king, in the bowl of the fountain, the mermares cavorted. With delicate lashes overhanging bright, limpid eyes, and with slender snouts set in permanent pouts, they giggled and cast sultry glances upon any stallions who drew near.
Beside the fountain stood a large display of artificial boulders. One of the mermares, her cerulean dorsal fin glimmering crimson at its tips, lounged on those stones under a sunlamp. With a seashell comb wrapped in one pectoral fin, and without any apparent interest in the revelries, she combed out her thick, disheveled mane and ignored the stallions who gawped at her.
As soon as Brad, with Stainless Steel by his side, stepped through the high, double doors and into this brightly lit chamber, he saw Princess Celestia, her white coat dappled by the colored lights, drop to her knees and hocks before Leo, who released a booming guffaw that echoed even over the many chattering voices. A mermare knocked the jewel-laden tiara from Celestia’s head. It fell into the water with a splash, and everyone in the room released a raucous cheer. The same mermare heaved herself halfway out of the water and placed on the princess’s head a high, conical hat printed with letters that even from a distance Brad could see spelled “Dunce.” Then all the ponies standing close enough to do so took pieces of cake in their pasterns and threw them at the princess while she tipped her head back and laughed.
“What is this?” Brad cried.
“Ah,” said Stainless Steel, who reared and rubbed his front hooves together, “it’s an Aquastrian thing! Sea ponies are backwards to us land folk, so, at their big parties, they upend the natural order. Soon, no doubt, King Leo will appoint some lowly serving filly to be princess of the feast, and then everypony, Celestia included, will have to obey that girl’s whims for the rest of the night.”
“I’m surprised Celestia agrees to play along.”
Stainless started, and he cocked an eyebrow. “Eh? You don’t know Princess High and Mighty too well, do you, boy?”
Brad chewed his lip for a moment. “I guess not.”
“Aye. Every day, she has to put up with the bowin’ and hoof-kissin’ and an’-it-please-yous, but she’s always lookin’ for an excuse to let her hair down—figuratively speakin’, o’ course.” Stainless shook his head. “Right headache for the guard, her always sneakin’ outta the palace. Message comes down, ‘Princess is missin’,’ an’ then we’re frantic for the next few hours.”
He gave Brad a crooked grin. “Eventually we find ’er—usually in a beauty salon or a cake shop.”
With that, he reared again and clapped a hoof to Brad’s shoulder, nearly bowling him over in the process. “Now, me boy, you’re on your own for a while! I’ve had enough of your sorry mug. I intend to get me some o’ that kelp cake, an’ then I intend to have a cozy little talky-talk with one o’ them mermares. The blue one with the crimson tint in ’er hair has struck my fancy—see ’er lyin’ there, lookin’ all sassy?”
“Good luck,” Brad replied.
His dented armor clanking, Stainless cut a line straight for a buffet table, shoving ponies aside as he went.
Brad’s stomach rumbled, so he did his best to make his way to the other table against the opposite wall. But a pink pony, the one who looked like Paulina Pettifer, leapt up in front of him with a tray of curious hors d’oeuvres, each like a butter tart in appearance but wrapped in green seaweed and topped with some kind of red jelly.
“Isn’t this the greatest party ever?” the pony cried, and she scooped up three of the tarts and popped them in her mouth. Around the food, she said, “Want some?”
Brad took one, bit into it, and immediately regretted it. It was like biting into a gummy chunk of salt. With some difficulty, he chewed, swallowed, and immediately felt sick.
The pony stuck out her free hoof and said, “I’m Pinkie Pie!”
“Hi. I’m—”
“You’re Twilight’s very special somepony, except you’re not a pony, but she wasn’t a pony either, and when you met you liked each other a whole, whole lot, and she spilled coffee all over your shirt, but you didn’t get mad, and you thought she was crazy because she said she was a pony, but she wasn’t crazy, and when you found out she wasn’t crazy, you followed her home because you just liked her so, soooo much!”
Pinkie reared, leaned on his shoulder, and hissed into his ear so loudly that he winced, “And you kissed!” Then she dropped back to the floor and fluttered her eyelashes.
“Uh . . . yes. That’s right. I suppose Twilight told you all that?”
She shook her head. “Mm, nope. Just a hunch.”
“Do you know someone named Paulina, by any chance?”
Pinkie cocked her head. “Is she somepony you knew back home, who walks on her hind legs, but she’s pink like me instead of orange like you, and she has a mane just like mine, and she loves to throw parties just like I do?”
“Yes! You do know her?”
“Never heard of her!” Pinkie spun around and, humming to herself and with her tray of snacks still balanced precariously on her foot, pranced back into the midst of the crowd. Brad lifted his top hat and scratched his head.
He finally made it to the table and loaded a plate with all the foods he could find that looked unlikely to be overloaded with sea salt. He found a dish of stewed, garlic-flecked seaweed that looked promising, and he picked up a few cakes, but to his disappointment, when he began eating, he discovered that these dishes were almost as bad as Pinkie’s hors d’oeuvres. He supposed it was nothing strange that ponies liked their salt.
After he’d taken a few bites out of everything and eaten half the seaweed, which was the most palatable of the over-salted dishes, he found a wastebasket and dumped the rest of the plate’s contents inside. Then he made his way to a far corner, where he spied what looked like a bar.
He planted himself on a barstool. To his surprise, he saw behind the bar the pony who looked like Amelia Jems, the one Celestia had called Applejack. She had an apron tied around her barrel and was wiping out pint-sized tankards with a washcloth. Brad could smell the sweet, rich scent of apples, which he decided must be her perfume.
She cocked her battered Stetson, gave him a grin, and said, “Howdy, pardner. Brad, ain’t it?”
“That’s right. And you were, uh, Applejack.”
“Shore am. I hope nopony’s been too hard on ya. Any friend o’ Twilight’s a friend o’ mine, so put ’er there.” She grasped Brad’s right hand between her front hooves and practically dragged him over the bar as she shook until his teeth rattled. When she released him, he fell heavily back onto his stool.
With front hooves resting on the bar, Applejack asked, “Now, what can I do ya for?”
Biting his lip, he shoved his throbbing right hand between his knees. “What have you got? Give me something stiff.”
“Stiff? Like, expensive? Bar’s free, courtesy o’ King Leo, just like the rest.”
“Huh. Well, I’m underage anyway.” The pain in his hand ebbed a little, so he tried to shake it out. “What are my options?”
Applejack tipped her Stetson back. “Welp, we got the best cider in Equestria from Sweet Apple Acres, the finest sarsaparilla from Hoofington, the sweetest pineapple juice from Horseshoe Bay, and the best milk around from Byre Pierre.”
“I’ll try the cider.”
“Comin’ right up.” She tapped a barrel and soon thereafter thumped a full tankard onto the bar in front of him. He discovered he was quite thirsty after all the salty food, so he drank deeply. It was very sweet with a good deal of sediment and a mild hint of alcohol.
“Whaddaya think?” Applejack asked. “My family makes it. When it’s fresh, ponies line up for miles.”
“It’s good. I’ll take another.”
“You got it.” She filled his tankard again.
“So, that pony who came in with the buffalo, he’s your cousin?”
Applejack wiped down the bar and sighed. “Yep. Cousin Braeburn. I was hopin’ he an’ the buffalo’d come to the party, but I’m thinkin’ they won’t. We were in Appleloosa a few years back, and I thought everything was all squared away when we left. Guess I was wrong.”
“Did I hear right that he married a buffalo?”
“Little Strongheart. They took a shine to each other soon as they met.”
Brad tapped his fingers on the bar. “Any chance Twilight—?”
“Sorry, sugar cube.” Applejack patted his hand with a hoof. “I don’t think she’ll be here tonight either.”
Brad heard a loud whump to his left as a pony landed in the stool beside him, and then Rainbow Dash’s raspy voice cried, “Applejack! Cider! Stat! I’m dyin’ o’ thirst over here.”
“One cider comin’ up,” Applejack replied. “Doin’ pretty good business here, what with all the Sparklin’ Sea salt snacks gettin’ everypony parched. At this rate, I’m gonna run out.”
Brad turned sideways to see Rainbow balancing her haunches on a stool and leaning on the bar. “Well, if it isn’t my old pal,” he said. “The Light Refraction of Satisfaction herself.”
She glanced at him. “Oh, it’s you. Aren’t you supposed to have a guard?”
“My handler decided he had more pressing business . . . Roxy.”
“Stop calling me that!”
“Look, I just saw Paulina, and she pretty much blew her cover. You can stop pretending.”
Applejack sidled back over with a new tankard, which she passed to Rainbow.
Brad looked back and forth between them. “I know who you guys are. How did you get here? Why are you ponies? Why does everyone act like you live here all the time? Have you been coming back and forth for years? Are you leading double lives?”
Applejack furrowed her brow and looked to Rainbow, who shook her head and circled a hoof around one ear.
“Uh, sorry, pardner,” said Applejack, “I think you lost us.”
Rainbow guzzled her cider, slammed her empty tankard on the bar, leapt into the air, and said, “Thanks for the cider, Applejack. I’m gonna go hang with Electra.” After a sharp glance at Brad, she turned and flew toward the big fountain where the mermares played.
Brad leaned against the bar and watched as Rainbow landed on the rocks beside the lounging mermare, at which point the mermare finally showed some signs of interest. She sat up, and she and Rainbow began talking animatedly.
Back home, Roxy was a close friend whom Brad could tease, and who would tease him right back. Rainbow Dash’s grumpy attitude was getting under his skin, so he thanked Applejack, and then he jumped from his seat and did his best to push his way through the press.
By the time Brad arrived at the rock display, Stainless Steel, apparently having satisfied his appetite for kelp cake, was looking to satisfy a different appetite. He stood beneath the rocks and tried repeatedly to get the mermare’s attention while the mermare studiously ignored him and continued talking to Rainbow Dash.
Up close, Brad was shocked by how big the mermare was: her fish-like body was at least three times the length of a pony’s. Standing beneath her boulder and calling up to her in affected tones of tenderness, Stainless Steel looked utterly ridiculous.
“There’s just something about you,” Stainless crooned. “I can’t quite say what it is—”
The mermare’s eyes narrowed. She finally paused in her conversation, looked down at him, and replied, “Get lost. Land and sea don’t mix. That’s mermare law.”
“Then what do you say you and me find a quiet corner and break a few laws, sweetheart?”
“Are you for real?”
“Entirely.”
The mermare crawled over the boulder on her pectoral fins until her face hovered just an inch above the stallion’s. “And do you know why that’s the law, little pony? If this were the old days, I’d sing you down into my lair, and then I’d do to you whatever I liked, and when I finished”—she put the tip of a fin under his throatlatch and lifted his chin—“I’d cut you open and scoop out your insides, just as if you were a clam.”
For emphasis, she flicked out a long, sharp, wickedly barbed blue tongue.
Stainless gazed into her green eyes and licked his lips. “Could be worth it—”
With a grunt, the mermare shoved him away and, with her dorsal fin bristling, crawled backwards up the rock.
Brad walked up behind Stainless Steel and clapped a hand onto his armored withers. “You, my friend, are smooth with the ladies.”
“Bah!” Stainless cried. “What would you know about it?”
“Not much. I’m just the boyfriend of a princess, is all.”
Stainless snorted.
“Treat her like a princess. That’s the ticket. So says one of the books Cadance pushed on me.”
“I need some sarsaparilla,” Stainless grumbled, and he turned around and swayed toward the bar.
“Honestly,” said the mermare as she took up her comb and began to play with her hair again, “I should have just told him I’m married.”
Rainbow started. “Wait, you’re married?”
A faint pink showed in the mermare’s cheeks. “Engaged, actually, but telling him that might not have gotten rid of him.”
“Engaged to who?”
The pink in the mermare’s cheeks grew a little brighter, and her dorsal fin flexed and rippled. She combed more vigorously. “Wally—”
“The narwhal?”
“I’m drying out,” the mermare said. She hurled herself backwards off the rock and landed in the fountain with a reverberating splash.
Brad examined the boulder and decided he could climb it. He wedged his fingers into a crack and pulled himself up until, huffing, he landed in the vacant spot beside Rainbow Dash.
She jumped to her feet and glared at him. “Are you following me around?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I admire your work. Stunt pony, right? I hear you’re one of the best.”
She continued glaring for a minute, but her face finally relaxed, and she sat back down. “I am the best.”
“I know you are. You’re just like her.”
“Her who?”
“Roxy.”
“I’m not—”
“Let’s say I believe you. I don’t understand what’s going on here, but you are exactly like someone I know back home—well, except for the pony thing. But I think you must not be her. You’re like her, but you’re not her.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she’s my best friend, and she tells me everything. If you were her, you’d tell me about this.”
Rainbow clicked her front hooves together and glanced sidelong at him. “Friend, huh?”
“Yeah. What say we call a truce? I’ve made big trouble for a friend of yours. I didn’t mean to, but that’s what I did, so you’re mad at me. I understand that. Well, I’m sorry.”
After another minute, she stood and faced him squarely. “Some ponies say you only followed Twilight here because you wanted to be a prince.”
“I don’t know anything about titles, Rainbow Dash. I followed Twilight because I love her.”
“Would you hoofie-swear on that?”
“Whatever it is, I’ll do it.”
“You hold your hoof out . . . oh. Well, I’ll take your word for it. For now.” She caught him by surprise when she rammed her muzzle up against his nose and added, “But I’m watching you, bub. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.” Rainbow sat down again and reached a foreleg over the lip of the boulder to a small ledge below. When she pulled her leg back up, she had the neck of an electric guitar wrapped in her pastern.
Staring at it, Brad started to salivate.
Rainbow rested the guitar on her right stifle and strummed. It must have been a magical guitar, as it apparently didn’t need an amp. The chord Rainbow played sent a small needle of pain into Brad’s forehead.
He rubbed the space between his eyebrows. “You play?”
“Eh, only a little—”
“Can I see it?”
She scowled again, but, after a moment, gingerly passed him the guitar. “Careful with it.”
“I’ll treat it with love.” He looked the guitar up and down. It looked exactly like one from his world. He put the strap over his shoulder, plucked a few notes, and adjusted the tuning pegs. The magically enhanced sound pierced his brain, but he decided to grit his teeth and ignore it: this wouldn’t be the first time playing guitar had given him a splitting headache.
The volume control and tone controls were in the usual locations, but the guitar had only a three-way pickup selector, unlike the five-way selector on his Fender Stratocaster. However, when he pulled the selector to a space between the neck and middle positions and played a few chords, he was pleased to find that both pickups worked. The guitar snarled just the way he liked it.
He tweaked the tone knobs a little, leapt to his feet, cranked the volume all the way, and jumped straight into a fast-paced rendition of one of his favorite heavy metal numbers, “It’s Hard to Slash My Wrists with a Safety Razor,” by Scimitary.
The guitar was loud. He had assumed that, without an amp, it couldn’t possibly have a very high volume, but it almost blew him off the top of the rock. His head pounded as if about to split open, and tears ran from his eyes, but he fought through the pain: he had played this hundreds of times, and he could do it no matter how he was feeling.
The chatter throughout the hall ceased. Everyone stared. Some of the upper-class ponies turned up their muzzles in distaste, and a few mares even put their hooves to their foreheads and pretended to faint. Others, however, especially those who had been in the upper gallery, cheered and hooted. After a few moments of initial confusion, they fell into a steady pounding of their hooves on the floor, and Brad responded by playing with even greater gusto.
Beside him, Rainbow Dash, with eyes bulging and jaw slack, rose slowly into air.
Brad paused for a moment, tweaked the tone for a brighter sound, and made the guitar squeal, eliciting a new round of cheers. At last, when he thought his head couldn’t possibly take any more, he ended with a grand crescendo and dropped to his knees.
Over the whoops and stomping applause, he cried, “Thank you! Thank you! I’m Brad, lead guitarist of Flash Drive, and I’m here all night!” He bent at the waist, but the pain in his head made him go limp, and he nearly pitched forward to the floor, except Rainbow Dash caught him by the shoulders and held him back.
After Brad slumped onto his back, Rainbow flew up into the air and shouted, “That was awesome!” Then, looking around, she lowered herself to his side, tossed her mane, and said, “I mean, you know, it was okay.”
“Thanks. Here’s your guitar.” Sitting up, and almost unable to see through the tears pouring from his eyes, he pulled the guitar from his shoulder and handed it over.
“Can you teach me to do that?” Rainbow asked.
“Sure. You just put your fingers . . . oh. Well, maybe I can. But definitely not right now.” He tucked his head between his knees and felt sick.
On his watery throne, King Leo raised a golden scepter and shouted, “We have found the one! We have found the one who must reign over our feast! We have found the one to be crowned Princess of Fools! Let him stand forth!”
Six pegasus ponies immediately leapt to the top of the boulder, seized Brad, and, in spite of his protests, dropped him at the edge of the fountain before Leo’s throne.
A mermare swam up to him with Celestia’s three-tiered crown, which she set upon his brow. It was heavy, and his knees buckled. The mermare whispered in his ear, “You are sovereign over this feast, and whatever you decree shall be, but remember—your proclamations may have consequences beyond the term of your rule.”
“Where is the court jester?” Leo yelled. “Let her stand forth and salute her new ruler!”
Princess Celestia, still covered in chunks of cake, and with her misty mane now clotted with frosting and hanging limp, stepped out of the crowd, stood before Brad, bent her knees, and cried, “Hail Princess Brad!”
“Hail Princess Brad!” the ponies echoed. All dipped their faces to the ground.
Brad leaned back against the edge of the fountain. “As my first act as princess,” he shouted, “I declare that Rainbow Dash is to be my serving girl for the rest of the night, and that she shall go get me another mug of cider! I’m dry!”
“Not for long, you’re not!” thundered Leo. He laid his scepter on the finrest of his throne and leapt into the bowl of the fountain, producing an enormous splash. Then the pegasus ponies picked Brad up under his arms and threw him roughly onto the vacant throne, right at the intersection of the fountain’s waterspouts. He was immediately drenched.
He merely sat there stunned for a half a minute, after which Rainbow Dash, her brow furrowed in annoyance but a gleeful smile nonetheless covering her muzzle, reached through the curtain of water with a tankard in her hoof. “Your cider, Your Highness,” she said. Brad took the tankard, but the saltwater from the fountain immediately filled and overflowed it.
“One more thing, Rainbow,” he said quietly. “Could you, um, get me a towel?”
She flew away laughing.
The throne stood almost two stories high. Figuring he could use the sculptures of clams and starfish as handholds, he tried to climb over the edge, but everything was wet and slippery, so he tumbled. For one terrifying moment, he thought for sure he would break his neck when he plunged through the shallow water, but two mermares breached, caught him gently in their fins, and swiftly conveyed him back to the fountain’s lip, where they set him down. One of them, apparently in compensation for the embarrassments and abuse, kissed him swiftly on the cheek. The kiss filled him with warmth and immediately eliminated his headache.
Rainbow landed beside him and held out the towel he’d requested. He did his best to pat himself off while ponies around him laughed.
Rainbow Dash watched him with a broad smile.
He looked down at the fine suit Rarity had made him, which was now soaked through and was already beginning to show crisscrossing patches of white from the salt. “Ah, man,” he said. “Rowellina, er, I mean Rarity, is gonna kill me for this. She should kill me for this.”
After that, Stainless Steel, shaking his head, walked up. “Can’t I leave you alone for five minutes, boy?” Shoving his muzzle against the small of Brad’s back, he pushed him toward the double doors at the end of the hall.
“Ah, c’mon, Stainless,” Brad replied as he stumbled along and continued to work futilely with the towel. “I didn’t cause any trouble Leo and his mermares weren’t causing already. And Celestia apparently doesn’t mind.”
As he moved through the crowd, several ponies gave him hearty claps on the shoulders with their hooves. He winced.
“Of course she doesn’t mind,” said Stainless as he gave another hard shove. “She loves this sort of nonsense, but what she thinks isn’t what matters. The ruler is the least free pony in the kingdom. Don’t you know that? They teach that in kindergarten. We need you to look like a candidate for princehood, not like an apish buffoon.”
“Says who?”
“Says Cadance, who’s more savvy than Celestia about some things, and so says my mistress, or she would if she weren’t so wet behind the ears. Fortunately, it’s time to get you outta here and off to a place where you can’t do no more harm.”
Stainless stopped pushing as soon as they reached the door, and Brad spun around.
“What? The party’s just getting started. Why—?”
Stainless grunted. “Luna has called you, remember? It’s time to go.” He opened one of the doors.
“I’m supreme ruler of the feast. Tell her our meeting is canceled.”
“Your dominion ends at the walls of the banquet hall. Luna is outside. Move it, boy.”
He snatched the huge crown from Brad’s head and passed it to a guard standing by the door. Then he gave Brad a hard shove in the chest, sending him over the threshold.
“There,” said Stainless. “You stand where you have no jurisdiction, which means you’re my charge again. Now get along.”
Brad clenched his fists. “I’m sick of being handled.”
“You wanna get cozy with a princess, you better learn to like it. The princesses spend their lives being handled. Now move.” Stainless stepped out, closed the door, and trotted away up the empty, moonlit hallway.
“C’mon, boy,” he called over his shoulder.
Brad stood still for a moment and fumed. But then, at last, with his wet shoes sloshing and squeaking on the marble floor, he followed.
When Brad stepped out onto the elevated portico outside the castle’s main entrance, he looked into the moonlight-washed courtyard and saw a long car, midnight blue and decorated with spikes. Chained to it and lounging before it were two of the wraith ponies, probably the same two who had lain before Luna’s throne throughout the Council. Their platinum barding glistened dully, and their bat-like wings fluttered in a faint breeze. One of the wraiths lifted his head and stared at Brad. His golden eyes caught the light like a cat’s.
Stainless Steel patted Brad on the back. “Have fun, boy. I’m headin’ back to the party. I think that mermare likes me.”
Brad glanced at him. “Don’t waste your time. I hear she’s engaged to an aquatic mammal.”
“What?” Stainless held a hoof to his chest. “I like water! I’m a mammal!”
“Sorry. You just can’t compare.”
“Hmmph. Well, there’s other fish in the Sparklin’ Sea. Anyhow, nighty night.”
He turned to go, but Brad grabbed his saddle. “Do I really have to do this?”
“You wanna say no to the princess of the night?”
“Kinda.”
“I wouldn’t. She’s the mysterious, reclusive sort, but she ain’t one to mess with. Two things to know about her: never tell her no, and if she challenges you to anything, for the love of Celestia, lose.”
“How about you come with me?”
“Not on your life.”
Brad looked over his shoulder at the wraiths. One still stared with shining eyes and now opened his mouth to reveal a forked tongue and a set of sharp, needle-like teeth. He hissed like a snake.
Brad turned back to Stainless Steel. “Please?”
“Sorry, boy. I’ll see you in the mornin’—if you’re alive and sane, that is. Cheers!” With that, Stainless trotted back into the warmth and light of the palace’s halls, and the castle’s heavy doors reverberated like thunder when they closed.
Brad’s heart beat hard. His palms went slick, so he tried to wipe them on his clothes, but his clothes were still soaked with saltwater. He took a step down one of the palace’s steep, curving staircases, and he found his knees shaking.
“Okay,” he muttered to himself. “I can do this.” A few more steps.
At last, he reached the ground, and he tried his best to look casual as he strolled up the cobbled walkway toward the wraiths. His mouth went dry, and a lump formed in his throat. He thought for a moment about giving the wraith ponies as wide a berth as possible and diving straight into the car, but he steeled himself, set his jaw, and decided to walk up to them instead.
The one was still staring, and his tufted ears perked forward. Brad stepped to within a few feet of him, raised a hand, and said, “Uh, hello?”
“’Lo yerself,” the wraith answered in a thick brogue. “’Er Worship is waitin’ fer ye, so what be the ’oldup?”
Brad blinked. Somehow, he hadn’t expected the wraiths to talk. “Sorry. I got caught up in the party. Um, I’m Brad, by the—”
“I know who ye be!” the wraith snapped. “Me name’s Shivers. This ’ere is D’Artagnan.” He climbed to his feet and thumped a hoof to his chest. “We be chariot steeds. So, let’s get this over with, wot?”
Feeling relieved, Brad nodded. “Sure.” He started for the chariot, but Shivers snorted and stamped.
“’Ey! Ain’t they got no courtesies where ye come from, lad? Are ye too good to greet th’ help? Is that it?”
“What?”
Shivers snorted again. “Ye walk straight for yer seat an’ ye dinna even sniff me nose! Do ye think just because we’re wraiths we ain’t got no manners?”
Brad stood still for a moment, trying to think of an answer. Finally, he simply raised his palms and repeated, “What?”
With a grunt, Shivers, his chains and armor clanking, walked to him, craned his neck, and took several sharp puffs right in front of Brad’s face. His breath was hot. “Ye stink o’ th’ brine,” he said. “Them filthy mermares is inside, I ken. Tartarus take the lot of ’em, dirty monsters.”
“They seemed nice enough to me.”
“Aye! Course they did. They bat their eyes and sing sweetly to lure ye down, an’ they promise eternal love.” Shivers bared his sharp fangs, and Brad leaned back. “But all they want is yer seed, lad, an’ once they have that—”
He drew a hoof across his throat.
Brad chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. “You know, I get the impression some ponies don’t trust you guys so much either—”
Shivers hissed and pounded the ground with both front hooves. Brad leapt backwards.
“She promised eternal night!” Shivers howled. “Our dams an’ sires, fer forty generations, passed along th’ promise, told us we’d ’ave our vengeance on th’ sun-lovin’ cowards! But she lied! Lied!”
He bared his fangs again and leaned forward, as if revealing a confidence. “Ah, but we be loyal, see? We wraiths serve the dark princess even if she ain’t be bringin’ no ever-night, an’ we even make all nicey-nice with Celestia—Tartarus take her, too—who hunted us down fer a thousand years an’ forced us to live in caves an’ holes.”
Brad’s heart began pounding again. He tugged at his collar and said, “Well . . . I, uh, hope all that works out for you. I’m just gonna go ahead and get in the chariot now—”
“Hey!” Shivers shouted. He cocked his head toward his companion. “Ye ain’t sniffed D’Artagnan’s nose yet!”
D’Artagnan, looking bored, whinnied softly. With a fresh lump in his throat, Brad lowered his face to meet the pony’s nose with his own. D’Artagnan merely snorted, turned his head aside, and spat on the ground.
With that unpleasant business finished, Brad sought refuge in the dark car, in the back of which he found a broad, thinly padded seat. He had barely seated himself when Shivers and D’Artagnan reared, spread their membranous wings, and, with shrill cries like bats’, leapt into the air.
A sharp wind cut through his wet clothes, and Brad felt his stomach slide into his groin. Glad for the chariot’s high back, he hunkered down to avoid seeing the ground drop away as they shot upward into the dark sky. As they flew up into the darkness, the over-salted food he’d eaten threatened to make an unwelcome second appearance.
After a moment, the flight leveled out, and he dared rise to his knees and peek over the side. Canterlot stretched far below, a cluster of tall spires ablaze with lit windows and fiery lamps. The city appeared to hover, and he thought he could make out, far below it, a lake and a river glistening with moonlight. It seemed that Canterlot really did sit on a high cliff.
Aside from the lights of Canterlot, the land was pitch black. The night was cloudless, the stars overhead shone bright and cold, and the Milky Way formed a thick band through the heavens. Brad searched for familiar stars and was surprised to discover the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. It seemed this world, if it had the same stars as Earth, must really be in an alternate universe and not simply somewhere else in his own.
Overhead, some dark shape silently blotted out a swath of the stars, and Brad groaned and sank down into his seat when the wraiths shot upward toward it.
He could easily guess where they were taking him: that dark stain in the sky had to be the Black Ship.
Brad wasn’t much of a reader, but he had a vague taste for science fiction and fantasy. When he had first seen Luna’s menacing dirigible, he had thought this world was the manifestation of all his childhood daydreams. He had been eager at last to leave his locked room and explore Equestria’s expanses.
But now he wanted his locked room again. All he could think of, as the flying car hurtled upward toward the silent and lightless craft, were the black ships in Lovecraft’s Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which carried their unwitting human cargo to the flabby and pestilent monsters of the moon, who sacrificed their prisoners to the dark outer gods.
The chariot drew steadily closer to the ship, but no more details became visible. The Black Ship was indeed entirely lightless: only the starless patch in the sky grew bigger and gradually transformed from an amorphous blob into the defined silhouette of a square-rigged sailing vessel.
It seemed, however, that some of the stars—dozens, in fact—had broken loose from the sky and now fluttered around the ship like moths around a flame, winking in and out and then reappearing. Brad watched these flitting, yellowish lights with growing curiosity until he realized that he was not seeing stars at all, but moonlight glinting from the eyes of the Black Ship’s crew of wraiths.
Shivers and D’Artagnan at last pulled up alongside the ship and hovered. Somehow, the chariot hovered too and did not drop when the forward movement ceased. There was a coarse rasping of wood on wood, by which Brad heard rather than saw a plank extend to the chariot’s side.
“Welcome aboard, mate!” a voice called from somewhere in the blackness.
“Cor!” Shivers shouted. ‘Give ’im some light there, Cap’n! He’s a sun-lovin’ ninny what canna see ’is hoof afore ’is face! Do ye want ’im to fall to ’is death, an’ the princess lose ’er prey?”
“Arrh!” the voice from the ship cried. “Ye there, ye idlin’ milksop! Lay larboard an’ bring a lamp!”
“Aye aye, Cap’n!” called another voice, and then a flickering, orange light pierced the darkness.
By the light, Brad could make out the faces of several wraiths awaiting him on the ship. Most were guards in dull platinum barding, but one, which Brad assumed was the captain, was marked with an eye patch and topped with a tricornered hat.
He could also make out the plank, a thin sheet of black wood that weaved and bobbed in the air as the wind tossed the dirigible. He took a deep breath, put a foot on the plank, and paused a moment to consider Shivers’s use of the word prey.
The plank bucked, and he immediately pitched forward onto his face. He reached out and wrapped his arms around the plank to keep himself from falling.
He heard bouts of coarse laughter as ponies’ legs reached out, wrapped their fetlocks around his arms, and dragged him aboard.
“Look lively there, mates!” the captain shouted. “He ain’t got ’is airlegs! Haul ’im in like a halyard!”
“Heave ho!” the wraiths shouted with more rough chuckles, and then they dragged him onto the ship.
“Welcome aboard,” the captain repeated.
“Thanks,” Brad gasped. He tried to stand, but the ship’s cables creaked, and the ship swayed, and he fell to his knees again.
Through the darkness, Brad heard a feminine, regal voice call, “Captain Reaver, bring our guest aft.”
“Aye aye, Yer Worship!” the captain yelled back. With his teeth, he yanked the glowing lantern from his crewpony and held it out to Brad. “Ye be wantin’ this, I reckon,” he said around the lamp’s handle.
Brad took the lamp, stood again, and wobbled back and forth as he followed the captain toward a set of stairs leading up to the poop deck. He held the light low in order to see the deck and get an idea of his footing, but he still tripped repeatedly.
As he placed a foot on the stairs, he felt again a strange sensation of loneliness and quietude, as if he were standing on a high, windswept plateau, yet at the same time he felt a drowsy sense of dread, as if he had plunged into water, peered into the depths, and beheld some dark and hungry creature peering back.
Princess Luna was near. No doubt it was her voice he’d heard.
“Steady, mate,” the captain said, and he pushed a shoulder up against Brad’s hip.
“Thanks.”
“Can ye make it? Them stairs is hard for a greenie.”
“I’ll make it.” The stairs were steep, and Brad had to lean forward, grasp them with one hand, and inch his way up on his knees. The higher he climbed, the greater his sense of desolation and loneliness grew.
“I thank thee, young Brad, for coming at our summoning,” Luna’s voice said somewhere in the darkness ahead of him. “Thou hast suffered much these past days. Were I in thy place, I would shun companionship and wish to contemplate my fate alone.”
“I’m more of a people person,” Brad replied as he reached the top of the steps and stood upright. He nearly tumbled backwards down the stairs, but the captain nudged him in the seat of his pants, so he fell forward instead. The candle in the lamp went out, and the lamp rolled away into the darkness.
Rubbing his scuffed nose, Brad rose to his knees and found he needed no light to see Luna, who stood at the helm with a silver-clad hoof upon the wheel. Her midnight blue coat glowed faintly, and her misty mane twinkled with stars. Her hair blew in a breeze all its own, and its outer edges were indistinct, so it appeared that the whole of the night sky flowed out from her. Her eyes were bright, and as she turned them on Brad, he could see several emotions, from anger to sadness to glee, running across them like clouds scudding over the moon.
“Thou art welcome aboard the Selenic Maiden,” Luna said. She turned her bright but stormy gaze on the captain and added, “I shall take my guest to my cabin. If you would take the wheel?”
“Aye, Yer Worship.”
Princess Luna walked toward Brad, and as she approached, her bright eyes filled all his vision. He felt again the touch of her silver boot against his forehead, and then he fell senseless.
When he came to, he found himself lying on a cushioned divan in a small, windowless, but richly appointed chamber. Brocaded drapes hung from the walls, and a thick rug covered the floor. Against one wall stood a desk topped with a large chronometer, a sextant, and a map weighted at its corners. Lighting the room were hanging oil lamps, which flickered and dripped as the ship rocked. All the colors of this chamber were blacks and reds and rich purples, and over everything hung a rich and heavy scent of incense. The room, despite its beauty, felt cramped, oppressive, and close.
Opposite the desk was a door, which, when it opened, flooded Brad with fresh sensations of loneliness and drowsiness. Princess Luna walked in, closely followed by a wraith with a severely lined face, a high, stiff collar, and a sloppily tied bowtie.
“Ah, thou art revived,” Luna said. “Good. I have something that shall strengthen thee.” She inclined her head to the wraith. “Starch Pudding, serve him.”
Silently, the wraith placed on a low table in front of the divan a weighted cup filled some steaming brew.
Brad’s hand shook as he reached for the cup. When he tasted the drink, he found it to be tea laced with some bitter herb. As he sipped, the sensations Luna produced in him ebbed.
She smiled. “Doth it please thee?”
“The taste isn’t great, but I’m feeling better.” He swallowed hard and took another sip. “Can I ask, what’s with the thees and thous? You weren’t talking like that before.”
Her grin widened, and she showed her canines, which gave her a fierce, savage look. “I remember the more refined speech of an older and better age, and I am still more comfortable with it than with the vulgar talk of modern ponies.”
“I see.”
She put a hoof to her breast. “I daresay I prefer the air to the ground nowadays. Because this time is peaceful, the ponies have grown soft, and thus the peasants are uppity and forget their proper place. But on a ship, there is danger as a matter of course, so the old hierarchy remaineth intact: the airponies keep to the forecastle as they ought, their officers keep amidships, and the captain hath pride of place at the stern.”
She leaned toward him, and her toothy grin caused sweat to bead on his forehead. “Dost thou know that even I, princess though I am, cannot order the captain in the running of his ship? I say to him, ‘Take me here,’ or ‘Take me there,’ and he doth exactly as I wish. But were I to say, ‘Reef the topsails, unfurl the jib, and run the engine at half power,’ he would scorn me and ignore me, or perhaps rebuke me, for the ship is his domain. Is that not wonderful?”
For a long moment, she continued to smile at him as if expecting a response. She seemed strangely thrilled to have a ship captain she couldn’t order around.
“That’s great,” said Brad.
“’Tis marvelous, for it sheweth that even a princess must know her place in the order of things.” Luna moved toward the chair before her desk, and Starch Pudding, without the slightest change in his grave demeanor, placed a cushion on the seat before Luna settled herself onto it.
“We owe thee an apology,” Luna said. “One such as thee hath not appeared in our land for many a year. Even Celestia hath forgotten the old lores—though she never took the interest in them that I have.”
Brad sat up and rubbed his temples with his free hand as he finished his drink. “One like me? You mean a human? There have been humans here before?”
Luna tapped a hoof against her chin. “Perhaps. But nay, I mean one with such sensitivity to magic. ’Twas a rare condition, even in my day.”
Brad’s hand was steady as he set the cup down on the table.
“Herb lore, too, is much neglected in this decadent age,” Luna said. “Had Princess Cadance fed thee this, much suffering couldst thou have avoided.”
“What is it?”
“Tea. ’Tis one of the few pleasures of an airpony, who calleth it ‘water bewitched.’ In this case, he speaketh rightly, for I have put a magic herb in it.”
“What herb?”
“Nightshade.”
Brad coughed and doubled over. “But that’s—”
“Nay, I have taken the hurt from it. A stone pulled from the gizzard of a cock on the night of a full moon when Jove blazeth in the Twelfth House, if crushed and mixed with any potion, destroyeth all poison. Knowest thou not this?”
Brad rubbed his throat. “It’s news to me.”
“Then thy education is as shoddy as any modern pony’s. A pity. But despair not!” She leaned toward him, and her eyes gleamed. “When we two enter the Deeper Slumber, I shall take thee to read of the Ponykotic Manuscripts, and thus shall I initiate thee in the secrets of the arcane arts. Art thou not excited?”
“About that—”
“But we have a journey still before us, young Brad! For I dare not take thee, fresh and untrained, into the blackest realms of Dream unless we slumber within my wards. Without the protections I shall place upon thee, thou wouldst go mad with terror! Therefore to my fortress we fly, and there we make our bed.”
“Bed. Ah. Yes, I wanted to say—”
“In the meantime, however, we have an hour to while away. Playest thou chess?”
Brad blinked. “What?”
“Chess. Dost thou play? ’Tis a noble game, but I take thee, by thy simple ways, for a peasant.”
Brad rubbed the back of his neck. “Funny you ask that. When I was seven, my dad started paying me a dollar every time I played chess with him. Dad was weird about some things—he always said a real man should know how to chop wood, fix an engine, build a deck, and play chess. I don’t know why that was his list of manly things, but it was.”
His shoulders drooped, and he stared at his cup on the tabletop. “I miss my dad . . .”
“Thou playest,” said Luna with a nod. “That pleaseth me.”
She turned her chair around to face him, and she swept the empty teacup to the floor, from whence Starch Pudding, apparently straining to keep his dignity, picked it up. Unfolding the top of the table, Luna revealed a chessboard, which she then turned sideways to expose a secret compartment, out of which she pulled a set of elaborately carved pieces of ebony and ivory.
The pieces, Brad saw, resembled ponies. The white pawns looked much like Celestia’s gold-clad guards, and the black pawns looked like Luna’s platinum-barded wraiths. The white rooks were finely carved images of Canterlot’s spires, whereas the black rooks looked like some sort of squarish black tower. Some pieces were apparently different in this world: the “bishops” were ponies carrying pocket watches, and the “queens” looked much like the armored pawns, only bigger and with crowns built into their helmets. The “kings” were Celestia and Luna themselves, except Luna’s piece looked somehow darker and more malevolent than the real princess did, and was clad in purplish armor.
After she put the pieces in their places, Luna turned the board so that the black was on Brad’s side.
She smiled thinly. “Prithee forgive my manners, young Brad. It is of course the custom to let the guest play as Celestia, but since I never play as Nightmare, thou must. Thou dost understand this, I assume?”
“Of course,” said Brad, who didn’t.
Luna grinned so widely that she again showed her well-developed tusks, and, across her bright but stormy eyes, signs of pleasure now passed more frequently than rage or sorrow.
With the solemn expression unchanged on his craggy face, Starch Pudding stepped up behind Luna with a notepad on one hoof and a quill in his mouth, apparently to record the game. Luna opened by moving a pawn to e4, Brad replied with a pawn to e5, and thus it began.
Luna played a rapid and aggressive game. She could not keep her seat: instead, while Brad studied the board during his turn, she paced back and forth like a caged animal, and she snarled whenever she thought he was taking too long. Twice, the emotion seething in her face broke forth into full-fledged wrath when Brad made a brilliant move. Then she pounded her hoof hard on the board, the pieces scattered, Luna’s eyes flashed with white light, and thunder cracked outside. The first time this happened, Brad cringed back, but, like a desert thundershower, the storm of rage passed as quickly as it came: Luna calmly magicked the pieces back to their places on the board and continued as if nothing had happened. Thanks to the tea he’d drunk, her magic produced only a heavy pressure in the back of Brad’s skull, but no pain.
At last, after a surprisingly short but exhausting time, Luna danced around the room with a wide, toothy grin splitting her muzzle. “Huzzah! Checkmate! I win! Thou art defeated, thou churl, thou cur, thou saucy varlet! Thy army lieth strewn at my hooves, vanquished and disgraced! Thy princess is mine, to do with as I will! Thy fortresses are breached, and thy land is in flames! I shall seed thy fields with salt, beat thy cities to dust, see thy ponies driven before me, and hear the lamentations of thy mares! What sayest thou, mine enemy? How likest thou them apples?” She reared up onto her hind hooves, a deafening peal of thunder ripped through the room, and the whole ship tossed and buckled. Stunned, Brad slid to the floor.
He blinked. “I, uh . . . good game,” he said. He wiped sweat from his forehead. Pride had not allowed him to follow Stainless Steel’s advice and lose to Luna on purpose, but he was relieved to have lost fairly. He now understood why Stainless had given him such a warning in the first place: Luna did not seem the sort to take a loss in a sportsmanlike way.
“’Twas a good game indeed!” Luna cried as she settled again into her seat. “A battle for the ages. Starch Pudding, hast recorded it?”
Starch Pudding pulled the quill from his mouth. “Aye, Yer Worship,” he said.
“Ha!” cried Luna. “Excellent! Later, I shall study my strategic brilliance.” She sat back in her chair, folded her forelegs over her breast, and offered Brad a smug smile. “Ah, ’tis good that thou playest, Brad.”
He shrugged. “I’m not real good in most subjects, but I’ve always done okay at math. I mean, music is mathematical, and so is chess, in a way—”
“Chess is war!” Luna cried as she leaned forward and again pounded a hoof on the chessboard. “It teacheth cunning and strategy. It is essential for one who is to do battle in the Dreaming.”
“Do what?”
“I take thee to war, Brad. Did I not tell thee?”
“No, you said something about sleeping with me, to which, by the way, I kind of obj—”
“Of course! It is not in this peaceful, quiet world that the greatest battle lies! Every night when the ponies rest, the princess of the night rides to war on their behalf. Thou art a recruit in my army.”
“Army?”
“Indeed! When the sun falleth and the moon riseth, monsters creep out from Everfree and Leota, determined to devour ponies in their beds. My elite guard and I march forth to vanquish them. Why, just three nights ago I wrestled six owlbears. At once. ’Twas most grand!”
“I, uh, would kinda like to pass on the bear-wrestling—”
“Certainly, for thou art small and weak. But thou mayest yet do battle, for just as monsters corporeal sneak forth at night to devour ponies’ bodies, so monsters incorporeal sneak forth to devour their souls and drag them into Acheron. We go to fight in dreams.”
Brad felt the sweat bead on his forehead again. He raised himself back onto the divan and said, “If you don’t mind, I really prefer to rest while I’m sleeping—”
Luna tipped her head back and laughed. “Ah, mortals! Thou crackest me up!”
A quiet knock sounded on the cabin door. Starch Pudding glanced at Luna, who gave him a curt nod. When Starch Pudding opened the door, the captain appeared with his tricornered hat in his hooves. “Yer Worship,” the captain said, “we’ve reached yer Black Tower, an’ we are prepared to take ye Selenic Maiden into ’er berth.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Luna replied. “Do so. I sense stirrings in the Dreamtime: dark things are ahoof, and I am eager to test the mettle of my new protégé.”
The captain nodded and retreated. Starch Pudding closed the door after him.
Luna’s grin became hard and cunning, and Brad swallowed a lump.
13. If This Feeling Is Brad, then I Don't Wanna Be Right
XIII. If This Feeling Is Brad, then I Don’t Wanna Be Right
“Is it true? Is it true about you and the new girl?”
Students bustled in the hallway. A low din filled the air, as did the odors of stale sweat and week-old chewing gum. Brad slammed his locker shut and turned to confront Roxy, who glared at him with her backpack slung over one slim shoulder and a soccer ball tucked under the opposite arm. She had come to school in her workout clothes again.
Since gossip always flew around Canterlot High, Brad had known ahead of time that his first date would become common knowledge, and he had also known that he could expect some opposition, some ribbing, even some insults.
But he hadn’t expected them from Roxy.
“What about us?” he asked.
She backed up a step, and her angry expression faltered. “I just . . . I mean, I just heard you two are dating—”
“I took her for burgers and fries, so yeah, I guess we are.”
Roxy set her jaw and looked away from him. She shrugged one shoulder, shifting her pack. “Well, I mean, if she asked you out, I guess it’s only polite to—”
“I asked her.”
“What?” She snapped her eyes back to his face.
“What’s the matter? Afraid I won’t have time to hang out?” He lightly punched her free shoulder. “Hey, that’s not gonna happen. Pals for life, right?”
He held up one pinky, expecting her to link it with her own, just as she did when they whispered promises to each other behind the schoolhouse more than a decade ago. But she didn’t.
“I don’t think she’s your type,” she said, her voice low.
“Huh?”
Chewing her lip and hunching her shoulders, she stepped closer to him, almost close enough to whisper in his ear. “Brad, on the first day of school, she walked in on all fours, made horse noises, and told everyone to call her ‘Sunset Shimmer’—”
He tousled her hair. “C’mon, I know Susan’s a little weird, but she’s gotten more normal since then. She’s nice. A bit stuck up, maybe, but—”
“She can hardly walk down the hall without tripping over herself, and have you heard the way she talks?”
“That stuff doesn’t bother me.”
Roxy slapped his hand away and flipped her ponytail from her shoulder. “She acts, I don’t know, almost as if her body’s not hers, as if she’s wearing it instead of being it. The way she has trouble walking or holding things—”
Brad snatched up his guitar case from the floor. “She’s just got poor coordination, Rox. Not everyone can be a star athlete like you.”
“And what’s wrong with being an athlete?”
“Nothing.”
“Athletic girls intimidate you, huh?”
“What?”
“Maybe you just want a girl you can feel sorry for.” She bent her knees and held out a hand to an imaginary someone. “Oh, Susan, did you trip? Let me help you up!” Clasping her hands, batting her lashes, and raising the pitch of her voice, she added, “Thank you, Brad! You’re such a—”
“Knock it off.”
Shrill and loud, the morning bell sounded through the hall. Tucking his books under his arm, Brad walked away, but Roxy called after him, “Maybe I should get a boyfriend. What would you think of that?”
He kept walking. “Good luck.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Gritting his teeth, he spun around. “Exactly what it sounds like. Good luck.”
“Is that a challenge?” She marched toward him.
“Not everything’s a challenge, Rox. You don’t have to compete with me for number of dates.”
“You don’t think I could get a guy to like me, do you?”
Ordinarily, Brad would have replied with something noncommittal or encouraging, but now his jaw tightened, and he clenched his fists. “I’m sure you could,” he hissed, “if he’s into boys.”
That’s when she punched him.
As Brad approached Princess Luna’s dark tower and his own dark fate, Twilight Sparkle, back in Canterlot, lay under the soothing ministrations of her friends.
She was exhausted. She had spent the day squirming on her uncomfortable throne and waiting for her trial to begin—waiting for accusations to thunder through the Council Chamber, waiting for the steady buzz of gossip, and waiting for the incredulous stares, disapproving glances, and lewd chuckles.
But none of that had happened, and thus the agony was prolonged for another day.
The nobles and their petty squabbles had been torture to her, and she hadn’t heard a word they’d said. Ordinarily, she might have been keenly interested in the minutiae of their disputes: after all, she had studied the natural law theory of Thomas Equinus and read the entire works of Blackspony on common law, but today she had been worthless as a princess: she had spent the Council session struggling not to look at Brad and feeling a twinge of jealousy that he was leaning against Celestia. She wasn’t entirely certain if she was jealous because someone else was sitting in her old seat beside her mentor, or because Brad was leaning against somepony other than her.
Thankfully, right now, she could put all of that behind her. The stress of the day ebbed. There would be plenty of time for further stress tomorrow.
Thanks to her princesshood, Twilight had, for her personal use, a lavish suite complete with jewel-encrusted furniture from the Crystal Empire, heavy cat-hair rugs from Purrsia, and a four-poster bed hung with the finest silks from Saddle Arabia. The ceiling overhead was sculptured, overlain with gold, inset with mirrors, and rimmed with an elaborate cornice featuring high-relief images of winged pegasi wielding spears. Pervading the room was the scent of periwinkle, which wafted from a vase on the vanity, where a filly de chambre had recently placed a fresh bouquet of Twilight’s signature flower.
In the midst of this opulence, Twilight lay on a crushed velvet pillow with a pair of cucumber slices over her eyes as Rarity daubed her face with a mud mask. Meanwhile, Fluttershy dug her hooves into Twilight’s shoulders and tried to work the tension out of her muscles. Spike, with a brush in his claws, worked on her tail. She sighed.
The door slammed open, and Twilight started, knocking the cucumber slices from her eyes and causing Fluttershy to jump back with a squeak. Applejack walked in, closely followed by a bouncing Pinkie Pie and a hovering Rainbow Dash.
“Whoowee!” Applejack cried. “Every barrel empty! Ol’ King Leo’ll have to buy more if’n he wants to keep the party goin’ tomorrow. This’ll surely help the farm.”
“Whee!” Pinkie shouted as she performed a cartwheel. Even from across the room, Twilight could smell sea salt on her. “I got to make my super salty-sweet seaweed snacks again!”
Rainbow rolled her eyes. “Yeah, the trouble is convincing anypony to eat them.”
“Brad ate one!” Pinkie shouted as she twirled. “He thought it was dee-licious!”
“But he’s a freak,” Rainbow said, “so he probably has freak tastes.”
“Rainbow,” said Twilight, “he’s perfectly ordinary where he comes from.” She looked away and added, “I mean, not ordinary ordinary, but—”
“We know what you mean, darling,” Rarity said as she began filing one of Twilight’s hooves. “I’m sure Mister Brad is a perfect gentlecolt when he’s not, er, under stress.”
With a chuckle, Rainbow lowered herself to the floor next to Spike, threw herself onto her back, and put her front hooves behind her head. “Yeah, right. He was awesome on the guitar, though. It must be because of his freaky . . . freaky . . . you know, those things he has to hold things—”
“Thumbs?” Pinkie asked as she bounced around the room on her tail.
“No, I’m sure that’s not right—”
“He played guitar?” asked Twilight. “At the party?”
Rainbow sat up and threw her hooves in the air. “It was so awesome! Er, I mean, it was a’ight.” She rubbed her hooves together and looked away.
Behind her mud mask, Twilight frowned.
Applejack surveyed the others’ work for a moment, shrugged, and then shoved one of her hooves in a curry mitt and nudged Fluttershy aside. Twilight winced as Applejack dug into her withers with the mitt’s nubs. “He seemed like a nice feller,” Applejack said. “A little crazy, but he knew good cider.”
“Yow! Ow! Applejack, not so hard!” Twilight scurried out of Applejack’s grasp and rose to her feet.
“What? It’s s’posed to be hard. Gets the blood flowin’.”
Twilight fluttered her wings for a moment, took a deep breath, and tried to regain her tenuous grasp on calm. Rarity levitated a washcloth to her.
“Thank you.” Twilight took the cloth and scrubbed the mud from her face. “Can I tell you girls something? I know I’m not supposed to, but I was sort of planning to see him tonight, maybe just for a few minutes—”
From behind her, somepony said, “Normally, I would of course approve, but tonight, I’m afraid it won’t do you any good.”
Twilight gasped and spun around. The other ponies took to their hooves, bent their knees, and bowed their faces to the ground.
Princess Cadance stood in the doorway with an easy smile on her face. “I’m sorry to barge in, Twilight. I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”
“N-no,” Twilight stammered. “I mean—”
“Oh good.” Cadance cantered into the room and briefly sniffed Twilight’s nose. “I am of course very much in favor of secretive meetings by moonlight. Quite romantic. Is he a good climber? He could scale the garden wall . . . no, wait, he plays an instrument, doesn’t he? He could serenade you beneath your window.”
Feeling a blush rising in her face, Twilight looked away. “I’m a little surprised to hear you say something like that, Cadance—”
Cadance put a hoof to Twilight’s chin and met her eyes. With a mischievous smile, she said, “You know, back when we were still in academy, your brother once raised a ladder to my bedroom window.”
“He what?”
“I pushed him backwards off it, of course, but I still thought it was cute.” Her gaze turned distant as she settled herself onto the floor beside Rainbow Dash. “He recited poetry as he climbed, and he was right in the middle of a verse just as he reached my sill. Didn’t miss a beat when I shoved him, either, but kept right on reciting as he tumbled into the darkness.” She sighed.
Rainbow Dash stuck out her tongue and silently pretended to shove her hoof down her throat.
Cadance rolled her eyes. “Of course, I found out later that he cribbed the poem from one of those role-playing games . . . anyway, has Brad ever raised a ladder to your window, Twilight?”
Twilight’s face was burning. “O-of course not. He would never—”
“Too bad. If you rebuff him and he doesn’t wander off, it’s a good sign that he’s worth keeping.”
“How ’bout if you break his neck?” Applejack asked.
Cadance clucked. “I put a bubble spell under him, so he landed softly. And really, he was in the ROTC program. He should have been on his guard.”
A knock came at the half-open door. All turned to see a white unicorn with a severely cropped pink mane poke her head in. “Mistress?”
“Oh! Goodness!” Cadance jumped to her hooves. “Excuse me, I left my protégé in the hall. You’ve all met Lovestruck, haven’t you?”
Lovestruck stepped through the door, ducked her head, and nickered.
Lovestruck was a lithe pony, almost as sleek as Rainbow Dash, with the lean body and well-muscled neck of a horn-fencer. She was beautiful, and she had an open face with bright green eyes and an easy, comely smile, but at her entrance, the room chilled: Applejack cleared her throat, Rainbow Dash grumbled, Rarity coughed delicately into her hoof, and Fluttershy cowered. Only Pinkie continued bouncing around the room, apparently oblivious.
“Has my mistress been lecturing you?” Lovestruck asked. “You must forgive her for her old-fashioned notions.” She sauntered to Twilight, sniffed her nose, and then moved to offer the same greeting to the other ponies. “She still thinks real courtships should play out like two-bit love novels.”
“I don’t see what’s wrong with that,” Rarity muttered, but she forced a smile as Lovestruck touched her muzzle.
“Even she will have to admit, however,” Lovestruck continued, her smile thinning, “that her own romance, though trumped in the papers as a ‘real-life fairy tale,’ was, when compared to the cent-dreadfuls they sell in the book stalls, less than romantic.”
Cadance’s eyebrows knit, and her face took on a decidedly longsuffering air. “I would make no such admission.”
“Really?” said Lovestruck, cocking an eyebrow. “Did Shining Armor ever slay a dragon for you or unmask his dastardly twin brother as the heroes do in the cheap stories? For that matter, did he even so much as bend his hock, pledge lifelong fidelity, and ask you to be his bride? As I recall, you had to propose to him, and when Queen Chrysalis had you at her mercy, it wasn’t even Shining Armor who came to save—”
Cadance cleared her throat, and Lovestruck’s mouth shut with a snap.
Turning to Twilight, Cadance said, with a smile obviously forced, “I taught Lovestruck my compatibility equations, of course, but she seems to have decided that those are the only important things we do, and that the rest can be thrown out.”
“The rest is mumblety-peg,” said Lovestruck with her nose in the air, “but the equations are science. Nopony can have an ideal romance, not even you, but everypony can have compatibility. Why, we could make everypony in Equestria happy if we just matched each mare with her perfect stallion and cast a few quick spells.”
“As I said before,” said Cadance, “there are ethical matters to consider—”
“The only ethical matter is maximizing happiness, which we could do if you overcame your quaint hang-ups.”
Cadance thumped a hoof on the floor. “Love magic is a serious responsibility! We must respect things like privacy and spontaneity and the desires of the noble families—”
“Spontaneity!” Lovestruck cried. “The groom sweeps his bride into a carriage for the honeymoon, and then they immediately start marking a calendar with her estrus cycle. Where’s the spontaneity in that?”
Coughing and hacking, Rainbow Dash rose into the air. “’Scuse me. Something caught in my throat.”
Cadance glanced at her and then settled to the floor again. “Perhaps we could discuss this another time, Lovestruck. In private.”
“Ah, yes,” said Lovestruck with an exaggerated sigh. “The old-fashioned discretion of the traditional matchmaker.”
“And the obedience of the student. I expect you to practice both. Sit.”
Without another word, Lovestruck swished her tail and lowered her hindquarters to the floor.
After clearing her throat, Cadance turned back to Twilight, forced another smile, and said, “I came to tell you, Twilight, in case you didn’t know, that Brad is with Princess Luna tonight.”
Twilight’s wings shot open. “What?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know the details, but it was your guard who escorted him away—”
“Stainless did?” Twilight scowled and muttered, “Where is he?”
“Last I saw, he was drinking too much sarsaparilla and trying to chat up Leo’s mermares, but he should be back in the barracks by now—”
“I’ll get ’im,” Rainbow said, and she streaked toward the door.
Cadance turned her head, blocked the doorway with a shimmering blue force field, and brought Rainbow up short. “The barracks of the Canterlot Royal Guard, Rainbow Dash. No mares allowed.”
“Lame!” Rainbow shouted.
“But it makes having a suitor there more exciting,” Cadance replied.
Twilight rubbed a hoof against her forehead. “Um, Rainbow Dash, could you just find a night watchpony? Tell him Princess Twilight wants to see Stainless Steel of the Sundown Guard. He’ll take care of it.”
“On it,” Rainbow said. Cadance lowered the force field, and Rainbow Dash zipped out of the room.
Cadance watched the door for a minute, and then she turned back to Twilight. “Twilight, listen. I have a confession to make: I’ve been playing a game with you—”
“You let me find Brad after you locked him up,” said Twilight.
Cadance raised one eyebrow.
“But I didn’t realize what you were doing,” Twilight added, “until I saw you’d put How to Nuzzle a Mare in his room.”
Cadance blinked a few times, and then she lowered her head and chuckled. “Ah, I should have known you could see through me.”
“I appreciate the gesture, Cadance, but Brad and I don’t need reverse psychology. We love each other enough as it is.”
“I’m sorry, Twilight. I could tell from the moment I met him that he was susceptible to it, so I got carried away. He has a strong rebellious streak.”
“I know.” Twilight lowered her eyes and, in spite of herself, felt a grin spreading across her muzzle. “You could see it in the way he took to Rarity’s clothes. I mean, they look nice here, but back in his world, no guy would ever dress like—”
“Now, wait a minute!” Rarity cried. “That outfit is in accordance with the latest fashion—”
“Fashion here, Rarity,” said Twilight, her grin widening. “And for satyrs. Not in his world, for men. But he liked it, just because it was different. Just because he thought it would turn heads. He’s like that.”
She lay on the floor, crossed her front hooves, lowered her chin, and muttered, “He’s a very silly boy.”
Cadance’s eyes widened and turned moist.
Loudly clearing her throat, Lovestruck levitated a file and began rasping one of her hooves. “A match made in heaven, I’m sure, but what about the here and now? Mistress, have you run compatibility equations on Brad and Princess Twilight?”
Cadance stabbed her with a glare. “Twilight didn’t ask me to run them.”
“But did you?”
Cadance chewed her lip for a moment before she turned from Lovestruck and said, “What I wanted to say, Twilight—before I got distracted—is that I don’t think I’m the only one who’s playing a game. There are forces at the Council that want to take advantage.”
“Timekeepers?” Twilight asked. “Geldings? I already knew—”
Cadance shook her head. “I learned a few things while I lived at the castle, things Auntie might not have taught you. The Geldings claim absolute fidelity to the One Queen, but they have grown dependent on Canterlot. Aunt Celestia has no trouble with them. The Timekeepers are much the same: Chief Chronomaster Clockwork will take any opportunity to backstab Chief Gelding Parsnip, but he isn’t much concerned with us alicorns so long as his position stays cozy. No, your problem will probably come from another source—Celestia is in talks right now with the Weather Board.”
Twilight bit her lip.
Cadance looked again to the door, as if checking whether Rainbow Dash had returned. “There are some who want to restore Pegasopolis.”
Twilight raised her head. “There hasn’t been a Pegasopolis for over a thousand years.”
“I know. It’s a small group, but they’re young, active, and loud. They say foolish things about re-establishing the Equestrian Order and the commandership . . . I hate to say it, but they have sympathetic ears on the Weather Board, and you know the Black Capital has a hoof in everything that happens at the Council—”
Cadance paused and looked over Twilight’s shoulder. Twilight turned her head to follow Cadance’s gaze, and her eyes fell on Fluttershy, who trembled and released a faint squeak.
“Fluttershy ain’t even been to Cloudsdale for years,” said Applejack quickly as she threw a foreleg across Fluttershy’s withers. “Well, ’cept that one time. But, I mean—”
“I don’t expect trouble from Fluttershy,” Cadance said quietly, “but there might be trouble for her.”
Fluttershy released another squeak and curled in on herself. Spike waddled to her and gently patted her back.
“Shoot,” said Applejack, cocking her hat. “She’s the best caretaker in five districts. Ain’t no earth pony can talk to critters an’ varmints like she can.”
Cadance shook her head. “That isn’t what I’m getting at. If this new faction has its way, all pegasi will have mandatory military duty, like in the old days.”
Fluttershy shook, and Spike patted her again.
“Why?” Twilight cried. “The Equestrian Order disbanded because we didn’t need it!”
“It disbanded because Celestia ordered it,” Cadance repied.
Cadance shut her mouth and raised her head when Rainbow Dash’s raspy chuckle came from the hall. A knock sounded at the door, and then Stainless Steel, his dented armor loosely buckled and his champron askew, stumbled in. Rainbow Dash floated in lazily after him.
“The way you took out them sky gremlins,” said Stainless. “That was a thing o’ beauty.”
“Well, yeah, I was pretty awesome,” said Rainbow, rolling her shoulders. “Couldn’t fly for months after that, though—”
A fresh and thoroughly genuine smile crossed Cadance’s face.
Twilight thought for a moment that she was probably supposed to rebuke Stainless Steel, but, fortunately, Rarity beat her to it. “Ahem,” said Rarity, her voice stern, “Rainbow Dash? Mister guard?” She batted her lashes.
Both Rainbow and Stainless stiffened. Stainless thumped a hoof against his head in a slovenly salute, and his champron rang like a bell. “Oy! Your Royal Pain, what’s the big idea of gettin’ a stallion up at all hours of the night in peacetime?” He winced and rubbed his hoof against his temple.
Cadance inclined her horn toward him. “You’ve drunk too much sarsaparilla,” she said, and her horn glowed blue.
Stainless frowned and stopped rubbing. Then, with a slight sway and a dippy grin, he returned to attention.
“Stainless,” said Twilight, “where’s Brad?”
“What?” Stainless cried. “Am I my princess’s boyfriend’s keeper?”
“Yes.”
“Oh . . . right.” He squinted and tapped his hoof against his chin. “Hm, interestin’ question. If I were permitted to make an edumacated guesstimation, Your High an’ Mightyness, I might say that, by this time, he’s prob’ly somewhere in the vicinity of Princess Luna’s colon.”
“Stainless Steel!” Twilight shouted, rising to her hooves. “Luna does not eat ponies!”
“Well, now, he ain’t no pony, as I think most of us have noticed. But she took ’im to the Black Ship, an’ unless she plans to stay in port tonight, I’d guess that, right about now, they’re pullin’ into the Aerie.”
Twilight scowled, muttered to herself, and paced.
“Twilight,” said Cadance, “surely you don’t think she’d hurt him? I’ve gotten to know Luna, and though she’s intimidating at first—”
“I know that, Cadance.” Twilight cast a glare at Stainless. “But I want to know why I didn’t know about this.”
“I got an order,” said Stainless. He still swayed, but he now wore a solemn expression. “I followed it. I may be your stallion, but I can’t just up an’ say no to another princess, ’specially one who outranks you.”
“You still should have told me.”
Without a word, Stainless bowed his head to the ground.
“I would like to know what Luna’s up to,” Cadance murmured. “Perhaps she thinks he knows some secret lore because he’s from another world—?”
“I can’t say I caught the gist of her mummery,” Stainless answered, “but she said crazy stuff about teachin’ him to dream.”
“Dream?” Twilight halted, spun, and stared wide-eyed at Cadance.
Cadance shook her head. “I’m sorry, Twilight. I don’t know anything about that kind of magic.”
“It’s dangerous. What is Luna thinking?” Twilight ran to the window, threw it open, and gazed out into the night. The sky was clear, and the stars overhead shone bright and cold. A faint, cool breeze, scented with the hyacinths and rhododendrons of the garden below, tousled her mane. Her hooves trembled on the sill.
“She won’t hurt him,” Cadance said.
“On purpose,” Twilight replied as she stared at the shimmering moon. “But Luna doesn’t understand some things. She fights owlbears every night and slays nightmares. She doesn’t get it that other ponies don’t.”
After a pause, she added, “Maybe I could fly up there—”
Stainless snorted. “No offense to Your Highness’s freshly minted flyin’ skills, but there ain’t nopony gettin’ up to the Aerie without a ship and a wraith to navigate.”
Rainbow landed beside him, stretched her wings, and then cracked their joints. “I bet I could do it.”
Stainless glanced sidelong at her and snorted again. “Not even the Light Refraction of Satisfaction can fly that canyon. Not in the dark.”
“I can fly Ghastly Gorge,” Rainbow replied. “What do you think of that?”
“Ever done it at night in a hurricane?”
Rainbow leapt into the air again. “Ah, what do you know? You’re just a unicorn.”
Cadance stiffened.
“I know ships, lass,” Stainless replied with a chuckle. “I don’t have to be a pegasus for that. I can read the wind as well as you, and I know what your sixteen point five wingpower means against the wind in Latigo Canyon—it means nothing.”
Rainbow dove down, stuck her muzzle to his, and tapped a hoof against his chest. “I make the wind, bub.”
Pinkie paused in her bouncing, giggled, and said, “And sometimes she br—”
“Do you really think you can do it, Rainbow Dash?” Twilight whispered.
“In my sleep,” Rainbow replied, still glaring in Stainless Steel’s eyes.
Twilight paused, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay, then. If you can get to the Aerie, tell Luna I don’t want her to take Brad into the Deeper Slumber.”
“Deeper Slumber,” Rainbow said. “Got it.”
Cadance glanced back and forth between Twilight and Rainbow. “Are you sure about this? We don’t know for certain that Brad’s in danger, and there’s no sense risking Rainbow Dash’s—”
“I’ll be fine,” Rainbow said, landing again and beginning a set of push-ups. “It’s no sweat. I’d like a good night flight. And besides”—she paused in the middle of a push-up—“Brad seemed like a cool guy. Maybe me and him could, I dunno, hang out.”
Turning from the window, Twilight watched as Rainbow Dash moved through several more stretches and warm-up exercises. Her mind flew back to the Fall Formal at Canterlot High, to the way Brad looked on stage as he played his guitar, and to the eager grin on Roxy Dodgers’s face—
Twilight swallowed a lump.
With a jump and a powerful flap, Rainbow sailed over Twilight’s head and alighted on the windowsill.
“Well, darling,” said Rarity as she dusted off her front hooves. “I think that’s more than enough excitement for you tonight. Some princesses ought to get their beauty sleep before the big day tomorrow.”
“I agree,” said Cadance with a yawn. “Twilight? Your guard—”
Twilight glanced again at Rainbow Dash and then gave a weak smile to Stainless. “Stainless Steel, you’re, um, excused.”
Stainless bowed his head low again. “Thank-ee kindly, Your Uppityness. I do indeed believe I must retire, as my bed is callin’ me with its sweet siren song.” He made an about-face, marched for the door, and muttered in a voice barely audible, “I just wish there was a siren in it.”
“Well,” Rainbow called, “good night.” She leapt into the dark.
Cadance nodded. “If we’re lucky, this will end without incident. Come, Lovestruck.”
Lovestruck took to her hooves, ducked her head, nickered, and murmured, “This was worth a little loss of sleep,” as she followed Cadance out the door.
Spike pulled aside one of the sheer silk hangings of Twilight’s ample, feather-soft bed. Twilight’s five friends gathered around her for a moment, and then, nudged by Rarity, Twilight climbed into the bed and burrowed under the covers.
Fluttershy flew to the ceiling and blew the fireflies out of the lamps in the chandeliers. The fireflies flitted through the window, and Applejack closed the shutters after them. Now the room was pitch-dark aside from the rectangle of light flowing from the doorway. The ponies quietly made their way out; Spike shut the door after them, and then he tiptoed to his basket. For a minute, he tossed and turned, but soon all was quiet aside from the steady rhythm of his snoring.
In the darkness, Twilight, with her head almost buried in a down pillow, stared up at the bed’s black velvet canopy, which glistened with faintly glowing jewels that mimicked the stars of the night sky.
Sunset Shimmer lay crushed in defeat. Princess Twilight again possessed what was rightfully hers. All of Canterlot High had beheld the power of friendship. This night, the night of the Fall Formal that would live forever in legend, the Equestria Girls had known victory—and to the victors, of course, went the spoils.
The spoils came in the form of pizza.
After their death-defying magical battle, the girls were famished, so Brad magnanimously offered to blow the hard-earned money from his part-time job and take them to a popular pizzeria: known as the Pizza Prison, this rundown but much-loved restaurant was a favorite hangout for high school students because it was cheap, delicious, and open late. It proudly sported barred windows and a dingy, dimly lit interior full of shoddy, rough-cut tables and creaky benches. Over the front door hung a crooked, weather-beaten sign that in flaking paint proclaimed, “Guilty . . . of great pizza!”
In contrast with its homely décor, the Pizza Prison was now full of girls clad in glittery dresses with hair piled high in ribbon-bedecked updos. While the girls chattered and tittered and gobbled pizza, a small knot of boys, still immaculately dressed in stiff formal wear, whooped and hollered over the beat-up video game consoles in the back.
The cramped interior was warm from the closely packed bodies, and pervading the restaurant were the delectable scents of frying grease, cooking vegetables, and heady spices. It would almost be cozy if it weren’t for the noise and the hard seats.
Brad sat in a corner booth with all six of the Equestria Girls; the table wasn’t big enough for the lot of them, so they were jammed together like the proverbial sardines. Once ensconced in the booth, Brad found himself with Twilight tucked under his left arm and Rowellina wedged against his right side. It wasn’t especially comfortable, but he didn’t complain: it was late, and he was tired, but he could certainly think of worse places to be than squeezed between six beautiful ladies.
In high spirits, the girls were full of giggles. Amelia and Roxy hurled cheeky challenges and good-natured insults at each other. Rowellina had let her hair down, and she graced the conversation with tinkling laughter as she scratched Spike, who lounged in her lap. Even Faith Summers, though her cheeks were crimson, talked more than usual.
With his top button open, his bowtie loose, his jacket askew, and his arm around Twilight’s bare and slender shoulders, Brad mused that the party might be more fun if he had a few of his guy friends in the group or, even better, just Twilight by herself.
“Ah, yeah, the Starving Inmate’s Pepperoni Pizza!” Roxy shouted as a weary-looking, aging waitress brought a steaming dish. “AJ, pizza-eating contest. Go!”
Once the pizza was on the table, Roxy snatched two slices, slapped one atop the other, and bit into both at once.
“Hey, you’re cheatin’!” Amelia cried, and then she grabbed up three slices of her own.
Rowellina sniffed, stuck her nose in the air, delicately slid a slice of pizza to her plate, and ate with knife and fork. Spike peeked over the top of the table and whimpered softly.
“Now, now, Spike darling,” Rowelina said, “it’s not at all proper for a dog to beg.”
“Whee!” Paulina yelled as she jumped up onto the table, grabbed what was left of the pizza, folded it into a giant, gooey ball, and somehow stuffed the whole thing in her mouth.
After she swallowed, she slid back into her seat, threw her hands in the air, and shrieked, “I win!” The others alternately groaned and laughed.
Faith leaned from her seat and peered toward the kitchen, presumably looking for the vegetarian pizza she’d ordered.
Snuggling close, Twilight pressed her head to Brad’s shoulder and chuckled softly. Her crown still glittered on her brow, and now its point dug uncomfortably into his neck.
“You look exhausted,” he said.
“I feel exhausted. I could sleep for a week.”
His hand caressed her smooth shoulder, and she nuzzled closer, though that sent the crown’s sharp prominence straight up under his jaw. He winced.
“I hope you weren’t too hard on Susan,” he said.
For a moment, she bit her lip and didn’t answer him. When she spoke again, her voice was low. “I did what I came to do.”
“Does that mean you have to go home soon?”
She grew still. She didn’t pull away, but there was suddenly a distance between them. “Let’s not talk about that right now.”
Roxy leaned across the table and slugged Brad in the shoulder. “Hey, stallion, you gonna join the party or what? You can cuddle your pony later.”
She tried to punch him again, but he met her knuckles with his own. “Aren’t all of you ponies now or something?”
Rowellina laid down her fork and patted her lips. “I was wondering about that.”
Twilight sat up straight, blinked, and breathed deeply as if waking from a nap. “I’m honestly not sure what happened, but I think some of my pony magic must have passed to all of you, so . . . maybe. Maybe you really are Equestria Girls—”
Paulina jumped to her feet. “Ooh! Ooh! We should totally become, like, superheroes! Whenever monsters are destroying the town, we’ll shout, ‘Equestria Girls, pony up!’ And then we’ll all turn pony, and we’ll fight—”
“Uh, Paulina,” said Roxy with one eyebrow cocked, “how often do you see monsters destroying our town?”
Paulina smiled. “Once so far.”
“Oh . . . right.”
“I just wish I’d seen it,” said Brad. He held out his thumbs and forefingers to frame Roxy’s face.
She stuffed the rest of her pizza in her mouth. “What’re you doing?”
“Trying to picture you with horse ears.”
“I looked awesome. But what was especially cool was the wings.” She frowned, leaned back, and stared at the ceiling. “Though I’m not sure why I got wings if I was turning into a pony—”
“Some ponies have wings,” said Twilight.
“Really? Sweet.”
“We got plenty o’ ponies out on the farm,” said Amelia around her pizza slices, “and ain’t none of ’em got wings.”
“Wait a minute,” said Rowellina, her face ashen, “if we’re ponies, does this mean we have to go to Amelia Jems for grooming tips?” She shuddered.
“What I’m thinking,” chirped Paulina, “is that, if we’re all part pony, maybe together we make one full pony—”
“So,” said Roxy, punching Brad again, “you’re surrounded by six girls who are part horse. Whadda ya think of that?”
“Sounds hot,” Brad answered.
Twilight shoved him. “Brad!”
He drew her close again, but this time snatched the crown from her brow and planted a swift kiss on her forehead. “Hey, I said I don’t care what you are or where you’re from, didn’t I? I meant it.”
“But—”
“I just wish I’d seen you with your wings and pony ears.”
She looked away from him, and her cheeks turned red.
Roxy threw her hands into the air when the waitress walked toward the table with another steaming pan. “Ah, yeah! The Pizza Prison’s Hungry Hard Laborer Special! Five kinds of meat! My prayers have been answered!”
As the waitress snatched up the empty dish and placed a flesh-slavered pizza in its place, Faith whispered, “Um, excuse me, I’m just wondering, you see, I ordered, um—”
But the waitress apparently didn’t hear her, since she turned and walked away.
“Hey, Roxy,” said Amelia with a wicked grin as she slid another slice to her plate and unscrewed the cap from a bottle of hot sauce, “Tabasco-eatin’ contest.”
“No fair, AJ!” Roxy shouted. “You know I hate hot stuff!”
“Guess I win, then.” Amelia took an enormous bite out of her pizza, and Tabasco Sauce dribbled down her chin.
“All right, you’re on!” Grabbing a slice in one hand, Roxy snatched up the bottle with the other and poured until her pizza oozed red.
“Roxy,” said Brad, “remember the last time.”
“I can handle it.”
“I’m not gonna play nursemaid for you tonight.” He reached across the table, snatched the slice from Roxy’s fingers, and bit into it himself. The Tabasco’s vinegar stung his mouth.
Roxy slapped her hand on the table, but then she simply shrugged, grabbed a couple more slices, and ate two-fisted.
Faith fidgeted as she stared toward the kitchen.
Gazing down at the pizza, Twilight said, “I don’t mean to kill the mood, but could anyone tell me, erm, exactly what animals—”
“Cow,” said Roxy with her mouth full, “and pig. They’re delicious.”
“I thought you said it was five kinds—”
“Yeah. Ham, bacon, pepperoni, sausage, and more sausage—two meats and five ways of making them bad for you. That’s why it’s magic.”
Twilight sighed. “Well, I guess I’ve eaten cow already.” She pulled a slice of pizza onto her plate.
“That would be my fault,” said Brad. “I took her to Burger Bum on our first date.”
“I didn’t know what was in the burger,” said Twilight.
“And I didn’t know she’d never eaten meat,” Brad added.
Roxy scowled. “Burger Bum? Do you ever take girls anywhere else?”
“Hey, I’m on a budget.”
“Why? Paying insurance on the Camaro?”
“Ah, lay off, Rox. You know my dad got me that car, and yes, it’s a money hole. But I’m paying for tonight, ain’t I?”
Rowellina was sipping her soda, but Amelia slapped her back so hard she spewed across the table.
“Ya hear that, Rowly? The man is payin’, so it’s almost like your first date.”
With a scowl, Rowellina dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I’ve dated before, Amelia . . . once. Sort of.”
Amelia chuckled.
“I admit the meat tastes good,” said Twilight. Taking a sip of her own soda, she added, “But this is the worst sarsaparilla I’ve ever had.”
“Whenever we order out for pizza at home,” Brad mused, “my dad always lets me have a beer—”
Faith perked up when the waitress came back with yet another pizza. Brad and the girls rearranged their cups, their plates, and the pitcher of root beer to make room for it beside the remains of the Hungry Hard Laborer.
“Hm, the Condemned Prisoner’s Last Meal Combination,” said Roxy as the waitress set the pizza down. “Well, that’s okay. I guess I can pick the vegetables off.”
“Um, excuse me,” Faith whispered, but the waitress turned around and headed back to the kitchen.
“Roxy Dodgers,” said Rowellina with a sniff, “you are an athlete, so you ought to eat healthy food. You need your vegetables.”
Roxy stuffed another slice of pizza in her face. “Meh, I need my energy. I need my protein. Besides, Faith here eats enough veggies for all of us.”
Faith looked down at her empty plate, and her lower lip trembled.
Brad glanced sidelong at the untouched, meat-covered slice on Twilight’s plate and felt a vague pang of guilt. He tugged at his collar. “Uh, Twilight, you know you don’t have to eat that if you don’t want to.”
She patted his hand. “It’s okay, Brad. I accept how you eat.”
“I guess I still feel a little—”
“It’s okay. Back home, we make burgers with oats or hay, and I just never imagined things would be different here.”
“Yeah, but you ordered the Panhandler Pastrami Burger—”
“Where I’m from, ‘pastrami’ is a way of cooking hay.”
“Hay?” said Roxy. “You actually eat hay?”
“I love hay. To be honest, I’m kinda looking forward to being able to eat it again. And grass. And alfalfa. And oats. Rolled oats are great, of course, but there’s really nothing quite like raw, whole oats, with the husks still on—”
Brad coughed into his fist and shifted in his seat.
Rowellina leaned back and dabbed her lips again. “It’s funny, but I always imagined that magic ponies ate rainbows or something—”
“Rainbows taste pretty bad,” said Twilight.
At that, Paulina leaned over and clamped her teeth on the top of Roxy’s head.
“Hey!” Roxy shouted.
“They taste like hair!” Paulina declared.
Brad squirmed in his seat. As Twilight lifted her pizza slice toward her mouth, he nudged her. “Hey, uh, wait a minute, didn’t Faith order the Bread and Water Diet Vegetarian Pizza? Maybe they forgot it. Let me out and I’ll go check—”
“Ah, let her eat the meat pizza,” Roxy said. “Twilight, humans eat meat. You might as well enjoy your canines as long as you’ve got them.”
“Faith doesn’t eat meat,” Brad said.
“That’s her problem.”
Twilight lowered her pizza slice back to her plate. “It is interesting to me . . . ponies can’t eat meat, or at least not really. Not very much of it. But humans can, and it’s important to your diets, but some choose not to eat it anyway. That’s amazing. I mean, I guess there’s some things I could go without eating if I wanted, like cupcakes, but I couldn’t just decide to give up grass—”
“You can’t give up cupcakes!” Paulina shrieked as she slammed her fists on the table. “You’d die!”
“Let me out,” Brad said again. “I’ll check on the pizza.”
“Just let her eat the meat,” Roxy answered. “She says she doesn’t mind.”
“Why don’t you lay off, Rox?” Brad snapped.
“Why don’t you?”
The table went silent, and Brad and Roxy glared at each other for half a minute.
“Let me out please,” Brad said.
“Me too,” said Roxy.
Without a word, the Equestria Girls slid out of the booth and stood aside. Brad marched to the front of the restaurant with Roxy close behind, but instead of going to the counter, he headed out the door, and she followed.
Brad hadn’t realized just how stuffy the Pizza Prison was until he was in the parking lot and a cool night breeze blew into his face. He took a deep breath of the fresh air and whirled on Roxy. He was about to berate her, but paused when he saw her with her back slightly hunched and her hands clutching her own shoulders. It reminded him of the time she had slammed into him while they were playing basketball: she acted tough, so he was always surprised whenever something reminded him of how small she was. In her blue evening gown, with a rainbow-colored sash around her waist, she looked pretty but slightly ridiculous, like a child playing dress-up.
“What’s your damage?” he asked.
“Have you really thought this through?” She didn’t yell, didn’t sneer, didn’t even move. She asked the question calmly.
He turned away from her. “I don’t know what you’re—”
“You two, talking about how you’re gonna get married, how your love is gonna last forever. You’re stringing her along.”
“I am not—”
“You are. She has to go home. Have you thought about that?”
He didn’t answer.
“You haven’t, have you?”
“I have,” he snapped. “I just . . . I just don’t like to.” Shoving his hands into his pockets, he stared up at the night sky. Most of the stars were hidden by the streetlights, but a few shone through. “I’m not even sure I believe it, Rox. At first, I thought she was crazy. And as for tonight, well, I didn’t see it—”
“It happened. It’s real.”
“I know. I just can’t make myself believe it.”
“Then you better start. Your pony princess has to go back to Sparkly Magic Pony Land and rule over all the rainbows and butterflies.”
Slowly, Brad turned around to look in her eyes. She still had her hands on her shoulders, still hadn’t moved. Her face was deadpan, unreadable.
“Do you hate her?” he asked.
“No. She’s one of my best friends.”
“Then why do you talk like that?”
Roxy dropped her arms to her sides and walked up to him. She halted only when she was an inch away. “Because her world isn’t ours. The way she talks about it, it’s like some place for little kids, and all the people or ponies or whatever who live there are like little kids. She is like a little kid. Haven’t you noticed?”
He tugged at his collar. “Well, I mean, she’s new here, so she’s a little naïve—”
“No, Brad. She’s super smart. She learns quick. By now, she probably knows more about this place than you or I do. It isn’t because she doesn’t know, but because that’s just how she is.”
“What are you saying, Roxy?” He looked down at her again, but found that her expression still hadn’t changed. She swayed slightly on her feet.
When she gazed up at him, the few stars in the sky reflected from her eyes. She took her lower lip between her teeth for a moment, but after she released it, she whispered, “I’m saying, Brad, that maybe you need to grow up.”
It was tough, and she worked up a good sweat doing it, but that didn’t bother her in the least. Lovestruck enjoyed working up a good sweat.
Princess Cadance, perhaps afflicted with a bout of nostalgia, was staying with Shining Armor in her old room at the palace, a broad and luxurious one-and-a-half-story suite hovering at the top of one of the palace’s many towers, which came complete with its own observation deck, a pegasus flight beacon, and a waterfall gushing from its underside. There, Cadance had made her home from the tender age of eleven, when she ascended to alicornhood, to the age of seventeen, when she graduated from academy and Princess Celestia sent her to Manehatten to learn to live on her own and hold down a job.
Having enwrapped herself in a glowing green levitation spell, Lovestruck rose toward Cadance’s room high above. Lovestruck was quite skilled at levitation, but self-levitation was extremely taxing for even a powerful unicorn, at least if she wanted to rise more than a few feet from the ground. Still, Lovestruck knew she could do it: she could cast love spells, after all, and for a pony who could work magic as powerful as that, levitation was foal’s play.
Her teeth were clenched, her horn was red hot, and perspiration had thoroughly matted her fur when she at last brought her four hooves down onto the wraparound porch encircling Cadance’s suite. Pushing past some well-manicured bushes and ferns in the neatly trimmed flowerbed, she made her way to a broad bay window, magicked open the latch, and slipped inside.
Once she was in, Lovestruck paused a moment to let her eyes adjust to the darkness. The architecture was grand, what with gold-gilt Ionic pilasters in the corners, a broad pair of gilt double doors set with crystal windows, and a heavy vermillion drapery hanging from the ceiling in place of a cornice. But the furniture was simple enough: Cadance and Shining Armor, both fast asleep and snoring faintly, were nestled together in a narrow bed too small for two, and beside them on a dented nightstand was a garish purple lamp that had been out of style for over a decade. Squinting through the dimness, Lovestruck observed similar beat-up and out-of-fashion items, including a gauche vanity, beside which stood a cardboard box of vinyl records.
Taking another glance at the bed to make sure Equestria’s favorite lovebirds were indeed fast asleep, Lovestruck flipped through the records and smirked at the names of bands she’d never heard of, such as Ponies without Hats, Stallions at Work, and Rein Astley. In the entire batch, the only name she recognized was Bruce Springsteed, who even today was still known throughout Equestria as “The Boss Stallion.”
Lovestruck snorted faintly. Well, of course Cadance couldn’t have listened to Nine Inch Tails, Coldhay, or Sapphire Shores back when she a teen, considering that those groups didn’t exist yet.
Lovestruck tiptoed to the bed and gazed down at her sleeping mistress and the stallion beside her. She wondered sometimes what Cadance ever saw in this lug: whenever she spoke of their romance, Cadance usually recalled how awkward Shining Armor had been back in academy, when he was a coltish youth with a tousled mane and a penchant for chess and foolish tabletop games. He sounded comically unappealing.
Lovestruck cocked her head and chewed her lip. Much as she hated to, she had to admit that Cadance may not have chosen poorly: after all, the Royal Guard had certainly made a stallion out of Shining Armor. Deep chested and muscular with heavy hooves and rakishly unshorn feathers, the Shining Armor of today revealed not a glimpse of the silly and socially awkward colt he must have once been.
Shining murmured and shifted in his sleep, and one of his hooves slid out of the bed and thumped against the floor. It was a ridiculously small bed for two ponies, and surely Cadance could have taken a more luxurious suite if she’d wanted it. Did she really pine so for the youth she spent in Celestia’s shadow that she insisted on staying in her old room, in spite of the inconveniences?
Lovestruck looked around again and wondered why Celestia had kept this room intact, changing none of the furniture and even leaving in place the items Cadance had left behind. She imagined that Celestia did this for all her protégés; perhaps somewhere in the School for Gifted Unicorns were rooms of Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle, preserved like mausoleums.
For one wild moment, her head spun as she wondered if Cadance would someday do the same thing for her—if there might in time be a memorial to Lovestruck in the Crystal Palace. The thought made the back of her mouth taste sour, and she silently vowed to remove or throw away all her things when she moved out.
She snuck past the bed and headed for the roll-top writing desk, on the top of which sat a weathered canvas valise. Lovestruck knew this valise: Cadance carried it whenever she made what she delicately called “house calls.”
Lovestruck froze when she heard a muffled groan and a faint thump from the bed. She cast a glance back: Shining Armor had rolled over again in his sleep. Wiping fresh perspiration from her forehead, Lovestruck magicked the valise open and rifled through the papers inside.
She flipped through several tables and diagrams, most of them love calculations for crystal ponies. There was one confirming that Citrine Star was a good match for Chimney Sweep, and another suggested that Moondust and Silver Arrow would have trouble, but that they could make it work. Lovestruck’s eyebrows knit as she flipped through chart after chart without finding what she wanted.
At last, a grin overspread her muzzle when she saw the names she sought atop a page crammed with figures: Twilight Sparkle and Brad.
As rapidly as she could, she stuffed the rest of the papers back into the valise, ran to the window, and slipped out into the night. Hunkered down behind the bushes, she read the chart by moonlight.
Well acquainted with the difficult art of reducing romance to mathematics, and familiar with her mistress’s neat but miniscule writing, Lovestruck quickly deciphered the page. In spite of her need for stealth, she chuckled to herself.
Cadance was an expert observer. She had, as Lovestruck could tell from her notes, poked and prodded and deliberately irked Brad across several conversations in order to bring out the essence of his personality. “Athletic,” Cadance had written, “but proud. Opposes authority.” Around the words, “Academically disinclined, and dislikes reading,” Cadance had drawn a red circle.
Lovestruck’s eye hovered for a moment over the phrase, “Curious tendency to effeminacy.” That was curious, and it struck a note somewhere deep in Lovestruck’s mind, reminding her of something she couldn’t quite recall. She’d think of it in a moment.
Twilight’s side of the chart was more complete than Brad’s, of course, since Cadance had known her longer. Twilight’s half took into account every nuance and paradox of her personality. Brad’s side was sparse, but still contained sufficient data for a skilled matchmaker to arrive at a preliminary conclusion. That conclusion Cadance had penned in bold letters at the bottom of the page and underlined in red:
NOT A MATCH.
Now Lovestruck put a hoof to her mouth, doubled over, and did her best to stifle her laughter. Oh, it was too funny and too tragic! The boy for whom the princess had moved heaven and earth, whom she had traveled to another world to obtain, for whom she faced ignominy and disgrace—not a match!
Lovestruck had suspected, and now the cold equations confirmed: the alleged love between Twilight Sparkle the princess and Brad the man was an adolescent fatuity and nothing more. Of this Lovestruck was entirely convinced; she took it on faith. Science had spoken, and in that court there could be no appeal.
Lovestruck had many talents, and one was a photographic memory. She knew Twilight and Brad’s chart by heart, so she opened the window a crack, levitated the paper back into its place in Cadance’s valise, and then steeled herself to make the harrowing drop to the ground below.
Before returning to her quarters, Lovestruck spent a few minutes flirting with a platinum-clad night guard on a veranda overlooking the castle’s private garden. Guardsponies made easy marks: as Lovestruck knew, stallions always joined the EUP for one of two reasons, either to protect mares or to impress mares. Either way, they weren’t hard to lure.
She always wore a perfume that made her smell as if she were in season, so when she batted her eyelashes toward the guard, he was more than happy to shirk his duty and chat her up. She kept one flank toward him and spoke to him over her shoulder in order to emphasize the graceful curves of both her neck and hip. She watched his nostrils twitch as he spoke, and she noted a tremor entering his voice. She dropped a few calculated double entendres, batted her lashes again, swished her tail, lowered her hips just slightly, and acted coy. After a few minutes, she could tell from the dilation of his pupils, his more rapid breathing, his inward-turned hooves, the glow in his cheeks, and the bashful turn of his neck that the guard was falling hard.
That’s when she blew him a kiss and trotted off with her muzzle in the air. If she ever saw that particular stallion again, she’d pretend she didn’t know him.
At last, she made her way through several hallways and up a dozen flights of stairs to her tower room, where she dug under her bed and pulled out her easel and sketchpad, on which she’d scribbled several charts and equations in her manic, halfway illegible penponyship.
Lovestruck’s first passion was of course amore and all things thereto related, but her second and almost equal passion was sports. She had been captain of the fillies’ polo team back in Fillydelphia Academy, and, since moving to the Crystal Empire where the ancient martial arts still thrived, she had become skilled both in the joust and in the noble but almost extinct art of unicorn horn-fencing. She had even developed an interest in the crystal ponies’ tiny ewe races, and she bred her own stock of racing ewes.
As an admirer of all things athletic, Lovestruck maintained an interest in pegasus stunt flying. She of course kept an eye on the Wonderbolts, but she also watched minor venues where civilian pegasi were free to strut their stuff. Thus, she had followed the career of Rainbow Dash, the flight school dropout and small town weather manager who was the only pony in all of Equestria able to produce the legendary Sonic Rainboom.
A few years previous, Rainbow Dash had appeared frequently at the cinema in the PNN newsreels because she was doing battle with a persistent batch of sky gremlins, whom she at last defeated with a Double Sonic Rainboom that nearly destroyed her wings. Before that time, Lovestruck had already noted a few intriguing anomalies in Rainbow Dash’s personality, and the PNN interviews allowed her to produce a more in-depth psychological study of the up-and-coming flyer.
Lovestruck flipped through her sketchbook until she found her chart for Rainbow. She ran a hoof over it and sighed. “Ah, my dear, dear Rainbow Dash,” she murmured. “I daresay I know you better than you know yourself, especially since reflection is not your strong suit. Bossy, arrogant, a great athlete—abused by other foals when you were younger, I’ve no doubt. ‘Too coltish’ they called you, didn’t they? Yes, I know how that goes.”
Lovestruck’s teeth clenched and her grin turned hard as she remembered her days at the academy.
“I know all the signs, Rainbow,” she continued as her eyes pored over Rainbow’s data, checking for errors. “Throwing yourself into athletics, ‘adopting’ a younger filly as a sort of informal protégé, and probably even deliberately affecting a lack of interest in all things romantic, hm? You’re trying to make up for what you lack, never admitting what you really want.”
She made a few minor adjustments and continued, “But it’s not your fault, Rainbow. Why, ages ago, before ponies turned to follow the Ordinances of Magog, any stallion would have seen you as a great prize—a mare who could rule his other mares and keep them in line. In the past, you would have been boss of a herd, but now they say you’re ‘too masculine.’ It’s a pity: you were simply born at the wrong time, my dear little anachronism. You and me both.”
Lovestruck hummed to herself as she filled in the information from Brad’s chart next to Rainbow Dash’s. The theory built into the love equations had it that an individual’s personality was incomplete by itself, but that when two came together, they could make up for each other’s defects and compensate for each other’s imbalances. An ideal match always involved similar interests, so the two could strive for the same goal, but also complementary personalities, so they could complete each other. Brad and Rainbow Dash were both athletic, and they both took an interest in music, but they contrasted in other, more fundamental ways, so—
Lovestruck reached the end of her chart and drew forth her abacus. She clicked the beads back and forth for several minutes, scribbling with her quill pen all the while, until she at last drew her conclusion.
Then, because she was in the privacy of her own room, she tipped her head back and laughed long and loud.
At the bottom of the page, in big, bold letters, she wrote,
SOUL MATES,
and she circled the words in red.
High up the slopes of Mount Eohippus, where frigid winds whipped and howled, Rainbow Dash shivered on a ledge at the mouth of Latigo Canyon. Her ears lay back, and she pulled down her goggles to protect her eyes from the icy blasts. Around her were nothing but barren, sharp rocks, which shone a sepulchral blue under the heavy moon. The rocks were clean, scoured constantly by wind, but a few tiny pockets of powdery snow hid in their cracks and crannies. Narrow and twisted, the canyon stretched out toward the mountain’s lonely, rugged peak; crisscrossing the crevasse’s high, steep sides were fissures and gouges stark black with shadow, and jutting from its rim were jagged points glistening with moonlight.
Rainbow Dash did not know it, but she was the first pegasus pony to stand in this place for over nine hundred years.
Her mind wandered back to the party earlier that evening and the sight of Brad’s strange digits flickering across her guitar. She couldn’t get that image out of her head. He had seemed to her at first like a mere weirdo, but now that she knew him just a little better, she had to admit there was something appealing in his easy manner and lopsided grin.
She scraped a hoof across a stone at her feet. She was chilled. As a pegasus, she could handle thin air without any loss of mental acumen, and she had a layer of down in her coat to keep her warm at high altitudes, but even so, the biting wind in Latigo Canyon was no laughing matter. She had to move, and she had to reach the Aerie or find other shelter quickly, or she was likely to freeze to death.
This flight, this challenge, was almost perfect: ponies knew she was attempting it, so she had bragging rights if she succeeded, but nopony was there to watch her in case she might fail. She didn’t like to admit it, but she had exactly one abiding fear—embarrassment. Whenever she attempted anything in public, a spike of fear always snapped into her heart, a fear that she might fail. But right now, she had no fear at all, and even though her gums ached in the cold, she spread her lips in a wide smile.
Once more, an image of Brad floated into her mind, but that wouldn’t do; she had to concentrate. So she cast the image aside as she stepped over the ledge, spread her wings, and flew.
His silver armor shone with cold light like the moon’s, but the spear in his hand blazed with golden fire. His palms were sweaty, his hands growing weak; the rein in his left began to slip through the fingers of his metal gauntlet.
Princess Luna was between his legs. She spared him a sharp glance, but her eyes had turned to blazing white flame. “Drive!” she shouted, and then she surged forward.
The great monster before him, covered in a mismatched jumble of waving arms and legs, held Rainbow Dash in a pincer like a crab’s. It had already crumpled Rainbow’s barding like a tin can, and she screamed.
Brad roared an inarticulate battle cry. He forgot everything Luna had hastily taught him, and the spear slid from his grasp as it struck the monster’s hide. One of the monster’s arms swung down, and the back of its gnarled hand struck Brad full in the chest, dislodging him from the saddle and sending him backwards over Luna’s croup.
As he fell, he saw Luna rear, and her horn crackled with lightning. He heard her yelling something, but he could no longer understand her words. After that came the lilting voice of Luna’s page, crying the emergency spell.
Through the black clouds overhead, a great square-rigged ship in full sail burst into view. Brad’s back struck the ground. The crackle of electric current met his ears and the stench of searing flesh met his nose. The monster’s snarls turned to high-pitched shrieks, but over the cacophony, Brad heard Luna laughing. She shouted, “The veil is rent! Pipsqueak, thou hast called it down from the Lighter Slumber! We are saved!”
The ship plummeted toward them, and the wasteland dissolved to inky blackness. All sensations of fatigue and pain disappeared. Then the blackness, too, dissolved, and nothing was left except pure, white light.
Brad’s head swam with shadows. When he opened his eyes, he at first saw nothing but a blue expanse, yet he felt soft sheets and heavy blankets around him, so he supposed himself in his bed at home. He was warm and comfortable, so, with a yawn and a stretch, he turned onto his side, and his arm fell across something furry and warm.
Like a lock falling into place, his mind snapped fully awake. He realized he was not at home in his own bed, but somewhere in Equestria—apparently in bed with a pony.
His stomach clenched up.
A few apropos but unprintable expressions passed through his head as he sat upright. Then a few more passed through when he realized he was wearing nothing but an ill-fitting terrycloth bathrobe.
. . . An ill-fitting but exceptionally soft terrycloth bathrobe. For a moment, he ran his fingers over it, distracted by its luxurious texture and wondering where he could get one cut to fit him, but then the pony at his side yawned, smacked her lips, blinked her eyes, and looked up at him.
“Oh,” she said. “Hey.”
“Rainbow Dash,” said Brad. “Dammit, why are you in bed with me? I definitely do not remember—oh, damn it all to hell, it was the tea, wasn’t it?”
Something behind Brad stirred, and he realized that what he had been propping himself against was not a pillow. He turned around and found himself staring into the eyes of Princess Luna, against whose shoulder he had presumably spent the night lying.
“Excellent,” said Luna. “Thou art awake. I had thought I might be forced to arouse thee.”
“You keep your arousals to yourself.” Brad tucked the bathrobe around his legs and skittered away from her.
Rainbow yawned again, stretched her forelimbs, hopped off the bed, and shook herself like a dog. Her long forelock stood in ratty bunches around her face. “What’s your problem, anyway?”
“What do you mean, what’s my problem? What are you doing here? What am I doing here?”
Luna sighed. “I feared as much. Tell me the last think thou dost remember.”
Brad looked at her again. Her expression and voice were both perfectly calm, but that parade of emotion still flowed across her luminous eyes like a raging river.
Brad opened his mouth to answer, but then paused and frowned. “The last thing—?”
Luna nodded.
“Uh, we played chess—”
One of her eyebrows lifted, and Luna turned her face from him. “Then I must explain it all again. I suppose it can’t be helped.”
Rainbow Dash spread her wings and lifted into the air. “Wait, you don’t remember last night? Anything about last night? But you were awesome last night!”
“Indeed,” Luna added. “I was most satisfied, especially considering that it was thy first time.”
Brad blinked. “What?”
“The Dreaming,” Luna said, her voice now tinged with a faint hint of impatience. “I took thee into the Deeper Slumber, as I said I would. I was thy princess and thy steed, and we did battle against the forces of Nightmare. ’Twas glorious!”
“No . . . and how did you get here, Rainbow Dash? And for that matter, where am I—?”
Rainbow groaned and rolled her eyes.
Luna hopped gracefully from the bed. “Come, Brad, let us rise and meet the new day. I shall explain—again.”
Muttering to himself, Brad made sure the bathrobe was tightly closed about his frame, and then he followed. He sucked in his breath when his feet met the ice-cold floor.
At last, he took notice of his surroundings. The bed on which he had spent the night was large and luxurious, a featherbed, no doubt, as evident from its softness. The sheets were silk, and piled upon them were pillows encased in intricately embroidered samite. The frame of the bed appeared to be a single piece of cast gold made with high, spiraling pillars at its four corners, which together supported a Persian dome, also of gold, the underside of which was a canopy of dark blue silk studded with diamonds arranged to represent the constellations of the night sky. Sculpted into the imposing bedframe were high-relief images of wraith ponies like those Brad had met on the Black Ship the night before. They swarmed around the high pillars and flew across the dome, and under the bed itself, on the platform, sculpted wraith stallions were depicted swooping upon terrified earth pony mares. Intermixed with the sculptures, and apparently carved into the gold with a chisel, were strangely shaped and elaborate runes that Brad thought almost seemed to spell words he knew, though when he looked at them directly, they held no meaning for him.
Surrounding the bed was a blank floor of dark basalt blocks, deeply carved into which was a vast druid’s claw. Some gummy black substance filled its grooves. Surrounding the pentacle was the carven image of a serpent devouring its own tail. Outside this protective circle stood five tall stanchions, also of gold, holding smoldering censers. Brad’s nose twitched, and he detected the heavy scent of olibanum.
Beyond the stanchions was inky darkness, though hints of murmuring and skittering in the distance suggested that the chamber in which he stood was vast.
“There was little danger last night,” Luna said, “since thou slept within my wards. Thou couldst have died, ’tis true, but thou couldst not have been Destroyed.”
“Destroyed?” Brad’s teeth chattered, and he wrapped his arms around himself.
“Indeed. For one who ventures into the Deeper Slumber unprepared, there is always the chance of corruption by the dark influences of the House of Silence. But come, we have much to do today, and I believe my hoofmaiden hath readied my bath.”
“Where are we?” Brad asked again.
Luna laughed and tossed her head, causing her starry mane to whip in its mysterious wind. “I am sure I told thee at the first: we have come to the Aerie, Brad, my stronghold.”
She lifted her head, and her horn glowed like a beacon. The small circle of light around the bed expanded, and now Brad could see that he was upon a platform at the top of a massive stone pyramid set with steps, like a temple of the Aztecs. This imposing dais stood within a vast chamber, the walls of which were of blank basalt cut into cubes, each three or four times the height of a man. Luna’s light did not quite reach to the ceiling high overhead, but Brad heard rustling and squeaking and shrill cries that suggested this enormous hall was home to a colony of bats. He smelled only dust and heavy incense, however, so he supposed that Luna had some magical method of preventing these bats from befouling her home.
The bats disconcerted Brad a little, but they were nothing compared to the wraiths, who lounged on the high, steep steps of the pyramid. They stretched themselves out languidly and sometimes even draped across one another, as if they were snakes. They also hissed like snakes and sometimes yawned widely to show their needle-like fangs. Their slit eyes glinted yellow in the light of Luna’s horn, and they stared at Brad with expressions cold and cunning.
The pyramid was at least six stories high, but far below, at the base of the steps, Brad could see strange instruments of brass, shelves of books, and a table laden with scrolls, all surrounding a vast pentagram of beaten silver set into the floor, in the center of which was a dark stain, like a burn.
“Whoa,” Brad muttered under his breath, “this princess is metal.” In his head played one of his favorite songs from the band Redressed Several Times Over, “Satan Is My Homeboy.”
He heard squeaking and chattering behind him, and when he turned around, he saw a sight still more horrible than all the others he had thus far beheld in Luna’s dreadful Aerie: there, crawling out of the silken sheets of the bed and stretching its furry little paws as it yawned, was a large, bushy rodent.
Brad’s heart stopped, and he swayed on his feet. One cheek twitched as he raised a hand and pointed. “Uh, uh, uh—”
“Ah, Tiberius!” Luna cried. She swept up the rodent in her hooves and rubbed its nose with hers. “How is Mommy’s little Tibby-wibby-kins? Who’s a good little opossum? Yes thou art! Yes thou art!”
Brad clutched his chest and ran his tongue across his dry lips. “Opossum,” he muttered. “I hate oppossums—”
Rainbow Dash hovered at his shoulder. “Bad experience?”
“I don’t wanna talk about it. Was I in bed with that thing all night, too?”
“Dunno, but probably. I didn’t notice ’im last night.”
“I just got up, and this is already the worst day ever.” He turned to Rainbow and poked a finger against her breast. “Not a word to Twilight, got it?”
“Word about what? Your fear of opossums?”
“No, she knows about that. I mean about this.” He gestured toward Luna’s elaborate bed.
“Yeah, she is gonna be kinda mad about that.”
“Not a word, Rainbow!”
Rainbow scowled. “Sorry, but she’s gonna ask.” Still flapping her wings, she began to lower herself toward the floor far below. Luna, with her opossum clinging to her mane, walked down the steps, and though the wraiths hissed and snarled and snapped, they moved aside for her. Brad swallowed a large lump and, wincing from the cold stinging his feet, followed.
“What are you going to tell her?” Brad shouted at Rainbow’s back.
She looked over her shoulder. “The truth. Don’t worry—I’ll tell her you were awesome.”
“Don’t tell her that! Yow!” A wraith champed at Brad’s bare heels, and he stumbled as he jumped out of the way.
Luna also cast a glance over her shoulder. “You might wish to know,” she said, “that this Aerie was formerly a fortress of the pegasi. When Equestria was young, the city we now call Canterlot was Unicornia, ruled by King Bullion. The three tribes had recently made peace, so the Equestrian Order under Commander Hurricane constructed this fortress to protect Unicornia’s water supply: the Aerie sits, you see, atop the springs that feed the Latigo Falls, which flow through Canterlot.”
“Makes sense,” Brad said. Another wraith bit at him; he lost his footing and fell hard on his rump.
Luna continued, “It was Star Swirl the Bearded who anointed Celestia and me as princesses, though we at first intended only to be the ponies’ guardians, not their rulers. However, after the king, commander, and chancellor threw their crowns at my sister’s hooves and declared her the sovereign lady of all the land, she immediately disbanded the Equestrian Order. Celestia, you see, believed that with her skill in diplomacy and my skill in the fight—and with the Elements of Harmony—we had no more need of the pegasus ponies’ warlike ways. Thus the Aerie became neglected.” Luna lowered her head and said more quietly, “So, as I grew distant from my sister, I took it as my own.”
Brad rose again to his feet and rubbed his bruised backside. Rainbow Dash still had her back to him, but he noticed that her ears had swiveled around to point behind, apparently listening to all that Luna said.
“From the history I have learned since my return,” Luna continued, “I am made to understand that the three tribes formed a new military alliance to protect the kingdom once I was . . . ah . . . indisposed. That was the EUP, which in these days has degenerated into the Royal Guard—little more than a color guard, really—and the Wonderbolts.”
They reached the base of the pyramid, and one of the wraiths there gave a long, low chuckle. Rainbow Dash glared at him.
“Aye, the EUP,” the wraith said. “’Twas General Firefly decided to take the Aerie back from us wraiths, it was. She and five hundred pegasi came to storm the place—and a wraith ripped out her throat right in front of the main gate. The wraiths know he gave her fair warnin’, but the ponies claim his attack were unprovoked. Unprovoked! She ’ad a battalion at her back, but it were unprovoked, eh?”
He rose to his hooves, shook himself, and hissed at Rainbow, “History almost repeated ’erself last night, didn’t she, Missy?”
Rainbow Dash flew down and pressed her nose against his. “I coulda taken you.”
“Wanna test that?” He champed, forcing her to leap back.
Luna turned a cold glance on him. “Shivers, I expect better manners from my servants toward my guests.”
Shivers bowed his head. “Aye, Yer Worship. I dinna mean no harm, but she’s a saucy little chit, she is. Looks like one what needs a few nips from a stallion to settle ’er down.”
Rainbow ground her teeth together.
Contempt plain on her face, Luna turned from Shivers and said, “One good thing did come of it: by defending the Aerie, the wraiths protected my library and my wards, which my sister would have burned and destroyed, not knowing what she did. Had she accomplished this, all knowledge of the esoteric sciences would have disappeared for good, and the ponies would have been undefended against the malice of the Nightmare Realm during all my absence.”
Shivers gestured back up the stairs toward the bed. “Aye, we follow the Dark Princess, even when she be in chains. This tower, me lad, is the barrier between this world and yon world o’ dreams. ’Twere it to fall, Equestria would fall, and then all the world. The ponies hunted us wraiths without mercy for a full thousand years, but all that time, by keepin’ this tower, we kept them sane and kept their souls out of the torture pits of Uhnuman, the ungrateful nags.”
Brad looked back up at the high pyramid, his head tingling and hs heart thudding loudly in his ears.
“’Tis a dark business,” said Luna, “and one that hath much risk. Many of the creatures of the Deeper Slumber are pneumophageous, feeding on the souls of mortals, and the means by which we combat them are often as dark as they are. That darkness consumed me once, and I committed deeds I can nowise undo. Behold.”
She reared, exposing a set of scars on the inside of her right hind leg.
Luna’s voice echoed throughout the vast chamber. “Too proud of my power, I conjured divels and demons and had truck with the spirits of the middle air. The names of the lords of Acheron I carved into the flesh of my inner right thigh so that, within this circle before thee, I might call them up and make dark pacts. So long as the scars remain, the divels cannot touch me, but should these names be somehow effaced, the owners of those names would drag me in an instant to my eternal torment.”
With a ringing thud, like a doom bell, she landed on the floor again. A few minutes passed, during which all was silent in the great hall aside from the chattering of bats in the darkness overhead.
Brad cleared his throat. “You know,” he said, “I think I’d like to pass on this whole dream-warrior thing.”
Luna tipped her head back and laughed. “Ah, it will be fun! ’Tis an adventure! But come, we must ready ourselves for the day.” She shook her head and muttered, “Why must we have these meetings in the day? This hath utterly ruined my circadian rhythms . . . Starch Pudding! Where art thou, wastrel?”
“Here, Yer Worship.” The same stiff wraith Brad had seen the night before, with the same stiff collar, appeared at Luna’s shoulder, his face locked in an expression of disdainful gravity.
“Ah, good. Prepare tea for young Brad by my recipe, and put some of it in one of those fancy modern bottles—”
“A vacuum-sealed container, Yer Worship?”
“Indeed! So that he may have it with him in Council. And order Mandrake Root to prepare the bath.”
“Aye, she’s anticipated yer request and stands ready, she does.”
“Excellent!”
“Will ye sup, Yer Worship?”
“Nay, Starch. We shall travel to Canterlot and there, with my sister, break our fast with pastries and the juice of oranges! Come, Brad! Come, rainbow-striped one! Come, Tiberius! Let us away!”
Luna cantered off. Brad and Rainbow Dash looked at each other for a moment, shrugged, and followed. As they went, Shivers called, “’Ey, Rainbow Dash, now that ye have spent a night in yon princess’s bed, just remember there be another bed in this here Aerie what could use a warmer like yerself, and in which ye be always welcome.”
At that, the other wraiths sent up a chorus of cold laughter. Rainbow Dash ground her teeth again, but she continued on her way and didn’t turn around.
“Do you know him?” Brad asked.
“We met last night,” Rainbow answered through clenched teeth, “and he’s a complete jerk.”
“I gathered that much.”
“I flew here cuz Twilight asked me to, and that jerk wouldn’t let me in.”
“So what did you do?”
She chuckled, and some of the tension went out of her limbs. “I flew right past him.” She polished a hoof on her breast. “Gave ’em all a good show of my aerobatic skills—I dodged a few other wraiths, made a few quick moves, and had them all flappin’ around, runnin’ into each other, tryin’ to grab me. Luna stopped us with a spell, so then I explained how I came here because Twilight didn’t want you goin’ into the deep sleep thingy.”
“What did Luna say?”
Rainbow shrugged. “She said you were goin’ in anyway, so I said, okay, then I’d go in with you. And that’s how it went down.”
Brad nodded. “Okay, I think this is starting to make sense. I have just one more question.”
“Yeah?”
“Why the hell am I naked?”
Rainbow laughed.
A few minutes later, Brad was standing in the Aerie’s bath and protesting to a young wraith pony, neither still a filly nor yet quite a mare, who wanted to dress him.
“Milaird,” said the pony, “we spake on this yestereve, we did, when I disrobed and bathed ye. Dinna ye remember?”
The bath contained a broad pool recessed into the floor and abutting a rough wall of natural rock, down which poured a meandering, foaming stream of water. In the waterfall hung large satchels, which, Luna had said, held cloves, chrysanthemum blossoms, and other spices. The pool was dark, so dark Brad couldn’t see the bottom. But his teeth still chattered and his feet were numb, and he saw no rising steam, so he was sure the pool could not possibly be heated.
Luna, apparently unbothered by the cold, swam back and forth with easy, powerful strokes. “Thou must forgive him, Mandrake Root,” Luna called. “His memory hath been warped by his ventures into the Deeper Slumber. A lich struck him.”
“Are you honestly telling me,” said Brad, “that, last night, in this very spot, I let you take my clothes off?”
“Aye,” said Mandrake Root. “They were befouled with the stench o’ mermares. But I have laundered them for ye, I have.” She gestured to a small niche where Brad’s suit, freshly cleaned and pressed, hung on a rod.
“I didn’t even take them off myself?” he said. “I let you do it?”
“Aye.”
“Now I’m sure somebody slipped me something last night.”
“I am me mistress’s hoofmaiden. ’Tis me duty to entertain her guests.”
“That’s not a kind of entertainment I’m looking for.”
Mandrake Root furrowed her brow and ran a hoof along her short-cropped mane. “I dinna ken, milaird. As I told ye before, ’tis a disgrace for a laird to dress and undress his own self. That’s servant’s work, that is.”
“Why? Are your ‘lairds’ such imbeciles that they can’t even put on a shirt?”
Mandrake Root’s brow furrowed again, and plain confusion settled on her face. She looked to Luna.
Luna dunked her head under the water for a moment. When she surfaced again, she gulped air and tossed her wet mane. “Do not bother explaining, Mandrake Root. He wot not our ways, as I told thee before, and we wit not his. It is enough that we bear one another. But Brad”—she turned her bright gaze on him, and her face grew stern—“we have a saying here: ‘When in the griffon territories, do as the griffons.’ Say they nothing similar in thy land?”
“Well,” said Brad with a clearing of his throat, “I guess they do—”
“Is it considered polite in thy land to refuse the hospitality of thy hostess?”
“Uh, no. I don’t think so.”
“Neither is it here. So then, shew me whatever respect thou wouldst shew a householder of thine own kind. I offer thee the services of my hoofmaiden: accept them graciously, and I shall consider it a kindness to me and mine.”
Mandrake Root blinked her large eyes at Brad, smiled, and made an equine imitation of a curtsy.
Brad rubbed his temples. “You’re putting me in a tough position. You see, there are a few different things going on here. Where I’m from, no hostess offers to have a young girl take a guy’s clothes off or put them on—”
Luna climbed from the pool, and her opossum waddled up to her with a hairbrush in its paws. Luna clicked her tongue, and the opossum scrambled up her foreleg, over her shoulder, and onto her withers, where it began to brush her mane. “Allow me to cut this short, young Brad,” Luna said. “Thou didst explain yestereve that, in thy world, to walk about unclad is a mark of shame. I assured thee, as did my hoofmaiden, that to our equine eyes, thy strange body is but as that of the creatures of field or forest. Thou didst then agree, therefore, that there was no shame.”
“I don’t really know if I can explain the concept,” Brad said. “We have a thing called modesty—”
“We have it also,” Luna replied, “but it pertaineth to a mare’s concern for her scent or her demeanor, not her clothes. That would be not modesty but vanity.”
“What about a stallion?” Brad asked.
Mandrake Root laughed. “A modest stallion? ’Tis a funny thought.”
Although he didn’t remember, Brad could guess why he had acquiesced the night before. He was inclined to acquiesce now just to stop to the argument, but one thing prevented him—Rainbow Dash was climbing the rough cliff beside the waterfall. Luna and Mandrake Root he didn’t mind so much, but for whatever reason, the thought of dropping his bathrobe in front of Rainbow was painfully embarrassing.
It’s probably because she reminds me of Roxy—
“Geronimo!” Rainbow shouted. She let go of the rock, spun once in the air, and dropped straight into the bath, producing a wave that rose up and splashed over Luna and Tiberius. The little opossum squeaked pitifully, and Luna’s eyelids lowered into an expression of annoyed longsuffering.
Rainbow instantly shot out of the pool. “Great Celestia, that is cold!” she shouted.
She lowered back toward the ground, looked at the dripping Luna, and giggled sheepishly. “Ah, heh heh. Oops.”
“’Tis fed by Latigo Spring, rainbow-colored one,” Luna said. “’Tis pure and clear and runneth whence the snow never melteth. Of course it’s cold.” With that, she reached into the pool with a hoof and splashed Rainbow, who gasped.
Once those two were occupied with flicking water at each other, Brad turned to Mandrake Root and said, “Okay, make it quick.”
Mandrake smiled. “Aye, milaird.”
Luna’s crew looked like something out of some bizarre production of Treasure Island with an all-horse cast, but even though they dressed and swaggered like Hollywood’s imaginary cutthroats, the wraith ponies were plainly efficient sailors, as even Brad could tell, though he knew nothing of ships. As soon as Luna had led him and Rainbow Dash into the vast cave where the Selenic Maiden was moored and told the captain to put her underway, the entire ship became a flurry of scrambling wraiths, hearty singing, and loudly shouted but unintelligible orders. Brad had barely crossed the plank before the ship lifted, broad steel doors rumbled open, and the Selenic Maiden hove out into the reddish predawn light.
Luna again wore her dark cloak, which whipped about her in a fierce, freezing wind. Although she had said the night before that she could not interfere with the working of the ship, she took a trick (as the wraiths called it) at the wheel, her mouth and eyes set with a mixture of concentration and pleasure as she guided the ship down the narrow and hazardous Latigo Canyon.
Brad and Rainbow, unable to do much else, huddled on the deck by her side, hugged themselves, and shivered.
“You actually flew up this canyon last night?” Brad shouted over the wind.
Rainbow nodded. “It was awful!” she shouted back.
“How’d you do it?”
“I was awesome!”
Too miserable to speak further, they merely listened to the raging of the wind and the hoarse, shouted orders of the mate. Whenever the mate gave orders to the helm, Luna shouted them back with a hearty, deafening boom.
Captain Reaver, holding his tri-cornered hat in place with a hoof, walked back and forth on the poop deck. For the most part, he observed silently, though every once in a while he stepped forward to converse quietly with the mate, after which the mate would holler new orders to the ponies on the masts or else run to the speaking tubes by the wheel to issue orders to the engine room.
After everything was running smoothly, the captain saw to his passengers; he stepped up to Brad’s side and offered a smile full of gold and silver teeth. “Ain’t no pilot to take us in an’ outta this port, me lad,” he said, “but ’ave no fear: nary a wraith can take a trick as yon princess. That there is a true airpony, that is.”
“I think I’m lucky,” Brad said, “that I don’t know enough about ships to know if I should be scared that we’re sailing down this narrow canyon in this high wind.”
“Aye,” the captain replied as he clapped Brad on the back. “If ye did know, ye’d piss yerself.” With that, he went back to his pacing.
Brad again felt the sensation of lonely plateaus and empty skies; the effect of the tea was apparently wearing off, and Luna’s magic was beginning to press on him again. He didn’t dare try, in this wind and on this swaying deck, to open the Thermos and pour himself a drink, but at least Luna’s magic was quiet and tolerable, unlike the roiling heat of Cadance or the debilitating awe of Celestia. Nonetheless, under her influence, he sank into a brown study and contemplated dark things until the Selenic Maiden at last entered the open skies.
Once the ship was free of the mountain and had begun venting hydrogen as it wound its way toward Canterlot, Luna turned the wheel over to an airpony and stepped forward to the fo’c’sle. Brad poured himself a cup of tea and, not expecting it to have remained so hot, burned his mouth.
“Have you seen Luna lower the moon?” Rainbow asked.
“No,” Brad replied as he sipped cautiously from his cup, “I don’t think I have.”
“Then come on. You don’t wanna miss this.”
Once they had left the canyon and begun to drop along the mountain’s steep side, the ride was smooth, so Brad had little trouble keeping his footing or holding his cup upright as he followed Rainbow to the ship’s prow where Luna stood just behind the bowsprit. In every direction, the horizon glowed a deep, expectant red, and the stars overhead were beginning to fade. The black of night had already turned to a rich purple.
The moon was round and full. Luna gazed at it, and, as Brad watched her, he saw the turmoil of emotions in her eyes momentarily cease. All at once, her face became a mask of calm, like a placid lake reflecting the moon at midnight.
Her horn glowed with silvery light, and the moon began to creep gradually downward, appearing to grow larger as it did so until it was enormous. Once, in his own world, Brad had watched a full moon set at dawn and had seen the same strange illusion.
At last, the moon sank beneath the rim of the world, and then the red glow at the horizon grew brighter until the fiery edge of the sun appeared in the east.
Luna’s horn ceased to glow. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. The feeling of dark vistas and loneliness swept across Brad again, so he drank his cup dry, and the feeling passed.
“Does it make your magic stronger?” he asked.
Luna smiled. “Couldst thou sense it? Yes, it doth. It also extendeth my life. It was once a great burden and torment to the unicorn ponies to move the sun and moon, and many lost their magic when they did so. But Celestia and I only grow more powerful.”
In the land below, the light of the sun dissolved the darkness into long shadows. Smoke rose lazily from the chimneys of the little hamlet nestled in the valley, and the flaps of that strange tent city near it waved in the wind. Again, Brad peered at the tents and wondered.
He heard Luna give a long, low sigh. When he glanced at her, he saw that she was looking at the tents as well.
“Can I ask?”
“Hm?” She turned her eyes on him.
“The tents.”
“Ah.” Luna looked away and sighed again.
A twinge of irritation appeared in Brad’s chest, but he decided not to ask further.
“My sister’s greatest folly,” Luna whispered. “Thou art looking, young Brad, on the last remnant of the once-great kingdom of Wuvy-Dovey Smoochy Land.”
“Of what?”
“It lay to our south, beyond the Forest of Leota. In all the world, there was no kingdom more peaceable: the love and goodwill of the luvcats rival even that of the ponies. So it is no wonder that Chrysalis and her Changeling swarm were drawn to them as flies to a corpse.”
“Gross!” Rainbow shouted.
“It was Princess Twilight who defeated Chrysalis in single combat and freed the luvcats,” Luna continued.
“Wait,” said Brad, “my Twilight did that?”
“Yes, of course. Do not interrupt. Princess Twilight bound Chrysalis and her swarm with a magic ward, one from which they would no doubt free themselves in time. So Celestia led a force into Wuvy-Dovey Smoochy Land to gather the remnant of the luvcats and bring them here to safety.” Luna snorted. “Most of the luvcats perished in Leota, of course. The guardsponies name it the Trail of Blood.”
Luna smashed a hoof into the bulwark, turned, and marched aft.
Brad looked to Rainbow Dash, who simply shook her head and floated after Luna.
“I’m still confused,” Brad muttered. Then he followed.
Amidships, Luna spun and faced Brad and Rainbow. “My sister hath never understood war. She thinks all can be resolved with sweetness and much talking. She could have crushed Chrysalis, but instead she let her slip through her hooves!”
“I thought there hasn’t been a war for years and years,” Brad said. “That’s what—”
Luna cut him off with a bitter laugh. “Yes, of course. It is the ‘Celestial Peace,’ after all. ‘Peace, peace,’ they say, when there is no peace.”
Luna pounded her hooves against the deck, and Brad thought he heard the wood crack. “There is war, a war for their lives and their very souls, and they do not know: on the moon are two races, those of Light and those of Nightmare, and they have no rest from war. The more we fight the Nightmare in the Deeper Slumber, the stronger the Light will grow. You and I, Brad, and all we can recruit—we can push the Nightmare back until at last the Light besiegeth Uhnuman itself and its iron walls fall.”
Grinding her teeth, she hissed, “Chrysalis serves the Nightmare. She is what she is because she hath prostrated herself before the House of Silence. We should have destroyed her. Mercy is not for the likes of her!”
With another snort, she pulled the hood of her cloak over her face and turned her back on Brad and Rainbow.
Several minutes passed, after which Luna said quietly, “Rainbow Dash, tell the director I will hear his case.”
Rainbow spun in the air. “Really?”
“Yes, really.”
“Yes!” Rainbow pumped a hoof.
“I only said I will hear him!” Luna snapped. “But the time may indeed have come for what he proposes. The EUP is weak, and our enemies are gathering. If desperate measures are required, then desperate measures we shall use.”
After raising the sun, Princess Celestia staggered into her private boudoir, walked to a corner, and pulled down a samite drape, revealing a tall mirror. For several minutes, she gazed at her reflection. The magic of the sunrise flowed through her, and it had left her calm, composed, serene.
But then the calm left her like the tide receding out to sea. She fell against the mirror, pounded one booted hoof against its unyielding glass, and sobbed.
“I am discovered,” she cried. “He knows! He knows everything! It’s over!”
“Auntie?”
At the sound of that voice, Celestia looked up. Reflected in the mirror, over her shoulder, was Princess Cadance.
“I came to take you down to breakfast,” Cadance said. “We’re supposed to have it together before the Council, remember?”
“I do remember.” Celestia stood straight, closed her eyes, took a deep breath—
“What’s wrong, Auntie?”
Celestia trembled, and her head sank. After a minute, she whispered, “Oh, Cadance, my long reign is ended.”
Cadance laughed. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
“Please heed my advice: create an aristocracy in the Crystal Empire before it’s too late.”
“Auntie—”
Celestia whirled. “I mean it. Look at me.” She held up a hoof. “When Star Swirl anointed me and Luna, we insisted that we would be only guardians to guide and protect the ponies. But then the rulers gave me their crowns. I took them, because I thought I could make peace. Over the years, more and more, the ponies came to me to make their decisions, and I made them, because I wanted peace. Eventually, the noble families acquiesced all to me and merely reveled in their land and money, doing nothing, happily ceding their power until Equestria’s aristocracy became a sham, and I let them do so, because I wanted peace.”
She heaved a long, weary sigh. “So I awoke one morning to discover that I, who once upon a time wanted only to guard and guide, had slowly but surely become a despot.”
“You are not a despot, Auntie.”
“I have too much power, too much for one pony . . . and now I’ve found it is an easy thing for another pony to take a despot’s power—”
Cadance touched Celestia’s neck. “What are you talking about?”
“Last night, I met the director of the Weather Bureau. He stood before me and, with perfect calm, almost boredom, as if he were reading a grocery list, recited my every folly, my every mistake, my every sin—everything I thought I had kept hidden from all the world. He knows, Cadance. He knows my every thought, he knows my innermost rooms. Though he made no threats, his point was clear: from now on, Canterlot is a puppet; the true capital of Equestria is Cloudsdale.”
With a small smile, Cadance faced Celestia squarely and placed a hoof on each of her shoulders. “Aunt Celestia, I know you. Everypony in Equestria knows you. There is nothing for the director to blackmail you with. What can he do, announce your love of cake—?”
Cadance’s voice trailed off, and her eyes moved over Celestia’s shoulder to the mirror—the high mirror set in a horseshoe-shaped frame rimmed with jewels. Cadance’s brows came together.
“Is that a replica?” she asked.
“No, Cadance,” Celestia whispered. “It is the prototype.”
“There’s another? Then Brad—”
“I don’t know how to link it to his world. There is only one world to which it opens, at least for me.”
Cadance dropped her hooves to the floor and took a step back. “I don’t understand—”
“Cadance,” Celestia whispered, “you know how I have asked you never to use your magic on me?”
“Yes—”
“Use it now.”
“But—”
“Do it.”
Cadance took another step back. She gazed on Celestia’s face for a few minutes, but then at last she closed her eyes, and her horn glowed. She stood that way for a great while. Slowly, her mouth fell open, and tears squeezed out from between her eyelids and poured down her face.
“Oh, Auntie,” she whispered, “how long—?”
Celestia’s mouth had gone dry, so she licked her lips before she spoke. “One thousand and fourteen years, four months, and twelve days. This is my greatest folly, Cadance, and by it I have endangered the whole world.”
“I never knew,” Cadance murmured. “You seem always so calm, like a warm summer day—but underneath you burn like a forest fire.”
Celestia walked past Cadance out into her grand boudoir full of delicately carved furniture encrusted with jewels. “Fate gave me a kingdom, but demanded I give up my heart in return. For over a millennium I resisted, and now I will pay the price.”
“You could fight.”
“You can’t fight fate, Cadance. Nopony can. Not even the One True Queen could fight it.”
“But you can fight the director.”
Her back to Cadance, Celestia shook her head. “My sister and I are the last of the line of Argyte. I have betrayed what was entrusted to me, so when the One True Judge returns, she will not permit me to enter Paradise.”
“Celestia, stop it!” Cadance marched to her, put a hoof to her shoulder, and spun her around. “You built Equestria with your own hooves! The Valley of Dreams was the Queen’s, but this land is yours! This whole land is—no, this whole land is you, your very body and soul. You’ve poured everything of yourself into it!”
She waved toward the mirror. “This means nothing! So what if you’ve held back one small thing when you’ve sacrificed everything else? Forget the director and his veiled threats! Nopony else would hold this against you.”
“What did you see in my mind, Cadance?”
“Love—love burning strong. How is that a fault?”
“Did you see the name of the one I love? Did you see his face?”
“No.” Cadance paused, and she clenched her jaw. “Why, Auntie? Who is he?”
A single tear coursed Celestia’s cheek. “Oh, Cadance, my dear, dear Cadance—his name, the name of the stallion I love, the name of the only stallion I could ever love . . . is Sombra.”
Cadance caught her breath, but she said not a word. She turned away from Celestia, and after several minutes of silence, she sank heavily to the floor in a faint.
