> Temporal
>  by FaleYur
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Prologue: Mother Knows Best
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
The picture-frame cracked and distorted under a scarlet cloud of energy, crumpling the laminated memory inside like a hurricane attacking a shack. It revolved slowly, curling into a neat sphere of bronze, paper and glass before throwing itself violently against the wall.

The ball rolled slowly to rest at the trembling, powder-blue hooves of a unicorn, standing in the doorway. Tears dripped onto the lush carpet on which the former picture now lay, discolouring the fabric.

Silence reigned for a second before a light sigh came from behind the desk stationed in the middle of the room. The terrified unicorn at the door opened her mouth to try and rectify her situation, but a soft whisper followed the sigh, effectively shutting her down.

“Could you please repeat that dearie?”

The unicorn’s eyes dilated in terror. A quiet squeak escaped her lips instead of an answer, and the tall chair behind the desk swiveled to face her. Cold blue eyes appraised the quivering show-mare, not even trying to hide the loathing behind them. 

“I asked you a question.”

When no answer came from the unicorn, a red haze surrounded the periwinkle tip of her horn and slammed her head down into the desk, forcing her to kneel and grinding her cheek into the oaken surface. Tears pooled under her, wetting her coat and smudging the paperwork adorning the wood. 

The unicorn heard the chair get pushed back, and the hoofsteps coming from her tormenter began pacing back and forth behind her. Finally, Trixie spoke.

“P-please, I-I tried-”

A crimson hoof slammed onto the desk in front of her muzzle, shaking the sturdy piece of furniture. Hot breath washed over her free ear.

“You tried?” came the reply, lowered to a dangerous murmur. “You had the amulet in your hooves, the power of all its wielders inside you, and yet you failed to defeat a single unicorn? Again?”

“Y-you don’t understand!” Pleaded the show-mare, “S-she is so powerful, she-”

The glow surrounding her horn wrenched her head up, craning her neck backwards to look into steely irises. 

“You need not explain your failures to me, wretch.” She hissed venomously. “I should have known when I sent a reject to do my work that she would fail.” Trixie’s head snapped forward again, her muzzle colliding with the desk with a wet crunch. The magic restraining her dissipated, and she fell limply to the floor in a heap, clutching her nose. 

“It is obvious that I can no longer rely on you to carry out my bidding.” Continued the red unicorn. “I see now that Twilight Sparkle is obviously beyond your scope of power… or anyone else’s for that matter.”

Trixie rose to her hooves shakily, attempting to stem the flow of blood coming from her broken nose. “A-all I need is one more-”

“YOU HAVE HAD ENOUGH CHANCES!” the show-mare shut her mouth immediately, but the damage had been done. The balled up picture shot up and connected with her temple, sending Trixie back to the carpet and leaving a ragged gash along her hairline. 

The scarlet unicorn contained her rage before speaking again. “It seems that I must take matters into my own two hooves.” She mused, disregarding the bleeding form in front of her. Trixie stirred at these words and moaned.

“N-no…”

The pony laughed coldly. “Now, now dear, don’t argue with your superiors.” She crouched down to Trixie’s level, holding her head up in her magic. Tears mingled with the blood staining the show-mare’s ruffled fur. “Mother knows best.”

She dropped Trixie’s head to the carpet and trotted towards the door humming a happy tune. She opened the door and looked back at her daughter’s broken form with a smile. 

“Don’t you worry, mommy’s going to take care of everything...”

She closed the door quietly and walked down the hall of her estate with a fire in her eyes, Trixie’s echoing sobs following behind her. 

> (Act I) Chapter 1: Starswirl's Vault
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	“Go fish.”

The guard on the left side of the small table grumbled and reached for the stack of cards in between him and his friend. Sure, Go Fish wasn’t the most exciting game in the world, but it definitely helped pass the time. 

The pegasus on the right looked over his cards with a raised eyebrow. “Got any… threes?”

“Damn it Chrome!” cursed the disgruntled unicorn, hoofing over two ‘Threes’ from his hand with his magic. Chrome just smiled. 

“You’re gonna have to try harder than that Hilt.” He laughed, setting down his completed stack of ‘threes’.

Hilt stretched and leaned back in his chair. “I wouldn’t have to if Shining didn’t put us on guard in front of Starswirl’s vault!” He complained for the fifth time that day. “Who’s gonna come and try to break into a dusty vault full of useless scrolls?”

Chrome chuckled. “Whoever they are, I should be thanking them.” He pointed out. “You owe me at least a hundred bits by now!”

Hilt muttered something under his breath that comprised of a couple of suggestions where Chrome could put his earnings, but fished a pouch from inside his uniform just the same. He threw it to Chrome, who caught it in his wings with a pleasant smile. 

“Why thank you, my good sir!” he said in an atrocious Canterlot accent.

“Go stuff it Chrome.”

“Whatever. You wanna know what I think?”

“No.”

“I think you’re just still sore over the fact that I scored on our last club run.” Chrome smirked.

Hilt rolled his eyes. “The only reason that whorse-”

A polite, quiet cough sounded behind the arguing guards. “Please refrain from using such foul language in the presence of a lady.”

Both guards jumped in their chairs and scrambled for their weapons leaning up against the wall. Once they were in their respective positions on either side of the vault door, they noticed who had startled them. 

“Oh, Lady Lulamoon!” Chrome said nervously. “We were just… uh…”

She stared at the both of them with a cocked eyebrow. “I know full well what you were doing, dears.” She said flatly. “Now, do at least one part of your job right and open the doors for me please.”

Hilt flushed at the cold reprimand, but stood his ground. “I’m sorry ma’am, but Captain Armour has requested that this door stay locked to the outside for a while, following the recent events in Ponyville.”    

Lady Lulamoon thought for a moment, then smiled. “I thought as much. I’m glad to see Mr. Armour is taking threats seriously now.” She said sardonically. “While I appreciate your concerns, I can assure you the utmost confidentiality regarding your… lapse in judgement,” her eyes scanned over the card game on the table. “Assuming of course, that you open these doors immediately, my dears.”

Hilt shook his head again. “Apologies ma’am, but that would be a serious breach in protocol. I’m afraid you’ll have to come back when the vault re-opens to the public.”

Her smile dropped. “I see.” She said softly, appraising the two guards with new scrutiny. Her smile returned, though this time it looked sadistic. She looked at Hilt, who stared emotionlessly over her head. “Dear, I couldn’t help but notice that your helmet seems to be crooked. Would you mind terribly if I fixed it?”

A red haze surrounded Hilt’s head, and Chrome stepped forward defensively. “Ma’am, that won’t be nesses-”    

With a sharp twist of her magic, Hilt’s neck snapped like a dry twig, and his body instantly collapsed to the stone tiles with a resounding crash. Chrome swung his halberd at her with a roar of rage, but the older mare ducked it without breaking stride. A scarlet wave of energy solidified into a glowing lance, and Lady Lulamoon rammed the sharp end into Chrome’s sternum, piercing his armour with hardly any effort. The rod of magic punctured out his back with a wet splatter, sending red droplets spattering against the wall. She slammed the guard’s impaled body into the fortification and held him there, pinned to the stone by the spear of energy.

Chrome dropped his halberd to the floor and began grabbing at the lance sticking out of his body with desperate chokes. He coughed, sending spittle and blood onto the floor, dotting the growing puddle of gore underneath him. 

Lady Lulamoon stepped daintily around the carnage with a look of disgust on her refined features. “Now look what you made me do!” she said huffily, glaring at the stallion suspended by her spear a couple of hooves above the ground. 

Chrome spat a glob of mucus and blood at her, but it fell far short. Lady Lulamoon scowled in distaste. “One would think that you could give a noble the respect she deserves. No matter I suppose.”

The spear dissipated, and Chrome fell to the ground in a heap, splashing in his own pool of blood. He shuddered, clutching at the jagged wound in his torso, still spilling gore onto the formerly pristine stone tiles. He felt a hoof roll him over onto his back, and he looked up into the face of Lady Lulamoon with contempt.

He opened his mouth, but all that came out was a wet wheezing, as a red bubble formed and then popped on his lips. He gave a shiver, and then lay still, his eyes glazing over. Lady Lulamoon grinned evilly. 

“Follow your leaders into defeat little sheep,” She mocked, rolling him back over onto his side. “Watch from Tartarus as Celestia is dethroned, and sent to her rightful place at the hooves of the Lulamoons.”

She levitated the key out of Hilt’s armour and gently turned it in the lock. The great doors to the treasury swung open, and she laughed as she trotted into the vault, the dead stares of the two guards following her into the darkness. 

She walked amongst the shelves for a while, somewhat annoyed at the vastness of Starswirl’s vault. The pulsating light on the tip of her horn sent reaching shadows along the floor and up the pillars, before vanishing into the gloom of the treasury. 

Just as she was giving up hope, her eyes fell upon a podium, barely illuminated at the edge of her circle of light. She walked cautiously over to it, finding it suspicious that a large area had been cleared around the podium, run through with wide grooves that spiraled and twisted in random patterns, all connecting to the dais in the center.   

Circling the podium, she saw that a single book lay open on the dais, a quill beside it. It seemed to call her, begging her to just walk over and read its contents. Giving in to the urge, she ascended the podium, looking down at the book. A single riddle spanned the pages, leaving generous space underneath for somepony to write an answer.

This thing all things devours:
Birds, beasts, trees, flowers;
Gnaws iron, bites steel;
Grinds hard stones to meal;
Slays king, ruins town,
And beats High Mountain down.       

A smile split Lady Lulamoon’s face as she realized just what this book and its question represented. It was perfect. 

Smirking, she picked the quill up in her magic and wrote the answer underneath. Immediately, the dais rumbled, and the crimson magic surrounding the quill began to snake down towards the book against her will. 

Lady Lulamoon cried out as the book absorbed her magic, feeling her essence draining from her horn in droves, feeding the ravenous pages. The podium began to glow, and a blindingly bright fluid began to fill the grooves on the floor, trickling out in streams until they were almost overflowing with raw magic. 

The book released Lady Lulamoon from its grasp, sending the unicorn stumbling. She was weak, almost all of her energy sapped by the hungry book. She looked around in apprehension, realizing that the patterns drawn on the floor were not random at all. 

She looked over a giant rune -the biggest she had ever seen in fact- all of it filled with her magic. She began to laugh maniacally, the mad cackles bouncing off the walls and ceiling. 

“Stop her!”

The sudden shout brought an end to her jubilation. A group of guards spilled into the clearing, careful not to touch the raw magic residing in the channels. Lady Lulamoon glared at them in fury. 

“Lady Lulamoon!” Came a regal voice from behind the legion of royal guards. Her eyes widened at the sight of Princess Celestia stepping into view, flanked by a limping Trixie. “Stop this madness at once!”

She tried to make eye contact with Trixie, but the show-mare looked resolutely at the floor. She growled. “So even my own kin betrays me,” she spat venomously. “I expected as much… from a coward.”

Trixie winced at the harsh words, blinking away tears. “M-Mother, I-”

“Do not think me a fool, insolent wretch.” Lady Lulamoon said coldly, lighting her horn. A burning fury snuck its way into her mind as her magic was restored tenfold by the feed-off of energy. As her power grew stronger, her sense grew clouded by a fog of red creeping in at the edges of her vision.  “You have been plotting my downfall since you returned from Ponyville.”

Trixie’s eyes widened, and she looked up at her mother. “N-no, Never!”

“LIAR!” she screamed, her eyes glowing with excess magic being fed to her off the rune. Her eyes flicked around the room, taking in the slowly advancing guards. The encroaching red tint grew thicker, filling Lady Lulamoon with a sudden streak of madness. “You all seek to impede my progress! You seek to take my power away!”

Princess Celestia lowered her horn threateningly. “Lady Lulamoon, disarm your magic immediately or face the consequences!” 

She turned her attention to the Monarch, seemingly thinking about her intimidation. Then she grinned. “I Don't think so Celestia.” Her horn pulsed with power, and the rune on the floor matched it. "If nopony else will rise against your monarchy, then the responsibility falls on me." Realizing what was happening, the guards began to retreat as the Princess slowly backed out of the rune.  

Most of the guards were out of the circle before a shimmering wall of scarlet magic surrounded the rune, sealing three of them inside. Lady Lulamoon started to laugh again, her body shining with unsuppressed power. Bolts of light shot out of her, connecting with the trapped guards. 

Upon contact with their skin, they screamed in agony, flesh melting under the onslaught of magic, catching alight in mere seconds of exposure. Their bones ruptured and mutated, ripping out of their skin and branching out in rigid structures, while their bodies swelled, bending armour and splitting their charred flesh, abnormal muscles bulging and dripping blood onto the stone floor. 

The last thing to go was their minds, as they gave into the pain overloading their systems. The former ponies staggered around in wild lurches, falling into the raw streams of magic lining the floor. The ensuing howls of torment that drowned out Lady Lulamoon’s laughter were not from ponies. The feral creatures howled as their minds were torn asunder, madness setting in.   

The rune flashed once more, outlining the mad-mare and her creations in a blinding silhouette. Lady Lulamoon’s cackles were cut short as the rune collapsed in on itself, the fluid magic encasing all four figures in a sphere of energy, before winking out of existence with a deafening BANG!

The ensuing shockwave blasted everypony back but the Princess, safe in her personal bubble of shielding magic. She stared emotionlessly at the podium, now split down the middle by a large crack, spilling the book and quill to the now empty tiles. 

Expelling her protection, she walked slowly to the still open book. She gazed down at it, scanning the riddle, and it’s scratched down answer below. The four letters glowed with excess magic, sparking and spitting bits of burned paper at Celestia’s gold-clad hooves. 

TIME.  

> (Act I) Chapter 2: A Step Behind
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
The green earth pony woke up in a cold sweat, tangled in her bed-sheets. She blinked repeatedly, trying to expel the sleep out from under her eyelids. Once she was in an acceptable state of wakefulness, she peered around her room in confusion. 

The feeling had come from nowhere, permeating even her sleep-state, evaporating her dream in seconds. She had not felt a surge that strong since Mr. Whooves’ appearance in Ponyville months ago! And even then she had not been this affected by it. 

Shaking her head, the pony rose from the mass of bedding awkwardly, stretching and yawning in agitation. She stood by her window, peering out over the nighttime scene of Manehattan. She took in every minor detail, from the amount of lights on in the building across from her, to the shady-looking character standing in the mouth of an alleyway ten stories down.

Nothing seemed off, and everything was in place. The soft babble of the city was muted through the pane of glass, but she managed to pick out individual voices on the streets below her. All of it was nonsense really, but no information was useless information in her field of work.

She narrowed her eyes, scanning the cityscape again. The feeling was rarely ever wrong, and never when it was this strong. She crossed her small room silently, turning on the light as she opened the bottom drawer of her dresser. The drawer slid completely off the slides, and she placed it on the floor behind her. She reached down into the opening and pulled from within it a black briefcase, studded with tiny bumps and grooves. 

Replacing the drawer, she threw the case onto the bed, and closed the blinds on the windows. You couldn’t be too careful in today’s society. The latches flipped up with a touch of her hoof, and the briefcase opened with a small click.

Inside, on a bed of greyish insulation, lay a watch. But instead of a clock face, the watch contained four dials placed in a square on the black backing. While the first three dials were showing normal signs, with their needles pointing to green segments, the fourth and final dial spun repeatedly in a circle at a constant speed, letting out a tiny whirring sound. 

The earth pony paled. That kind of reading suggested catastrophic magical activity, the kind not seen since the return of Nightmare Moon. She gulped down her uncertainty, and put on the watch, noting the inscription on the back.

10-1-4-5: 2208 

She closed the case again, leaving it on the bed. It would disappear with her when she leaped, so she was fine for that aspect. Before leaving her room, she reached under her pillow and retrieved a long, serrated knife. She slid the knife into her jacket pocket on the hook and put the dark coat on.

Beep. 

The small notification from her watch caused her to freeze at the door handle. With an apprehensive sigh, she flicked a dial on the side of the face, and a wavering blue image was projected into the air an inch above the surface of the glass.

“Jade!” the voice hissed irritably, making the earth pony roll her eyes condescendingly. “Did you feel that?”

“No,” Jade said sarcastically, making the floating figure glare at her seethingly. “I’m just out of my obscenely comfortable bed at three in the morning because I feel like going for a stroll.”

The scowl deepened. “Not today Jade, of all nights. Teddy screwed up royally about sixty years ago in Zebrica, and now I have to fix his mess, as well as deal with this one.”

The green pony grinned. “You have fun with that Sigma. Do you have my dossier?”

The floating image snorted derisively. “Of course. What do you think I am, some slow, half-wit pony?”

This time it was Jade’s turn to furrow her eyebrows in anger. “No, you’re a slow, half-wit bug. Now send me the damn dossier so we can go back to our lives.”

The holographic changeling hissed at the insult, but a second later, another window opened up, displaying several files describing her primary target and the VIP’s that were assigned to her. Jade scanned over them quickly, recognizing some of the names vaguely. 

“This one is important Jade.” Sigma highlighted the second file, showing a small, purple filly with a short, stubby horn protruding from between her two-toned violet mane. “Don’t let the target get anywhere near her. Also, as Teddy’s in Zebrica, Atlas is in Stalliongrad, and Grace is in Fillydelphia, you’re on your own for this one.”

Jade looked surprised. “Are you serious? No one else in the TCA can assist? What about Omega? Or Dante? Or-”

“They’re busy!” came the abrupt response, effectively cutting her off. “You’re on your own. Don’t screw it up.” The changeling’s window closed with a blip, leaving Jade to grumpily stare at the other files, memorizing and organizing the information in her head near-instantly before shutting the watch down. 

Her thoughts turned to Sigma. If he wasn’t such an asset to the Temporal Control Agency, she would have beaten him into a green, chitinous pulp long ago. He had his good moments, but they were mostly overshadowed by his insufferable superiority complex. 

The door closed silently as she slipped into the hallway. She looked forlornly at the brass numbers 78 on the oak door, and trotted to the top of the stairs. She didn’t trust elevators, despite being born centuries behind the contraptions. The stairs were always reliable. 

When she reached the foyer, the desk clerk looked up from her book uninterestedly. “Headin’ out Jade?” she asked.

The green earth pony smiled, and replied, “Yeah, this place was nice, but I guess I’m moving on.”

The clerk cocked her eyebrow at Jade’s strange comment. “Uh-huh. Right. I’ll take your name off the room in the morning then.”

Jade nodded and raised her hoof up to the watch on her ankle, pressing knobs and buttons on the side with practised ease. She noted worriedly that the fourth dial was still spinning, though much slower now. 

The clerk opened her mouth to comment on the device, but it hummed loudly, and Jade winked out of existence with a pop. The clerk blinked in confusion. Hadn’t she been talking to somepony? She shrugged and turned back to her book.

She only had got a paragraph in, before a thin pony wearing a top-hat walked through the revolving glass doors. The clerk straightened into a professional posture. 

The top-hat wearing pony approached the desk with a pompous air. “I’m in quite a hurry to get put up for the night. I trust you have a room available?”

The clerk checked her list of occupied rooms. “Hmm... Yes, room 78 has been open for a couple months now, so you can have that one. Shame nobody’s used it really, it has quite nice accommodations.”  


***


The sphere of raw magic popped into existence in the middle of Canterlot Square, obliterating the fountain and sending cobblestones into nearby store-front windows. The sound of breaking glass and screaming filled the air, as the orb threw Lady Lulamoon and her three sadistic creations into the city.

Lady Lulamoon rose to her hooves shakily, drained of energy and soaked with water-runoff from the decimated fountain. The former guards shook their deformed heads and let out keening wails that echoed off the confines of the square, joining in the terrifying cacophony of panicking townsponies and stampeding hooves.

Just as Lady Lulamoon regained her sense of balance, the mutated ponies lurched towards a frightened shop-keeper who had just run out to see what was making the racket. The grey pony’s eyes widened as he saw the freaks, and he turned back to the door of his shop.

He never made it. The first mutant latched onto his back hoof, tripping him onto the street. In seconds, the other mutants had gathered around him, and the pony had time to scream once before the freaks ripped into him, tearing his limbs from their sockets and pounding his remains to a pulp. 

Blood trickled out from between the feral monsters, as they continued to beat and chew at the fleshy mass that used to be a pony. A gnarled, gory hoof flew out of the mess, landing at Lady Lulamoon’s own hooves.

She regarded it for a second, picking it up in her magic and turning it over, disregarding the steady dripping of blood staining the cobblestones beneath her. 

“Guards, on me!” shouted a voice over the madness.

Lady Lulamoon looked around curiously, the mangled appendage still wrapped in her scarlet haze. A large group of guards came running into the square, following a pony in a very elaborate suit of armour. 

The group stopped abruptly when they saw the freaks, but their leader unsheathed his sword and turned to them. “Send these demons back to Tartarus!” he rallied, and the guards nodded and drew their own weapons. “For Celestia!”

Lady Lulamoon sighed. Something had to be done about these guards. They would probably overwhelm her creations with numbers alone. Raising her head, she gave a long, sharp whistle. 

Both groups, consisting of the freaks and the guards turned to look at her. The scene seemed to freeze, as all the eyes in the square rested upon the crimson unicorn and her bloody trophy. All was quiet, except for the steady, drip, drip, of the blood smacking the stones. 

She smiled. 

With a flick of her magic, she threw the severed hoof at the group of guards, nailing the captain in the chest and leaving a large, bloody mark on his pristine armour. The guards looked in shock at the appendage in front of them, and the freaks cocked their heads, regarding the ponies.

Then, one of the mutant’s heads split vertically, peeling back its skin and revealing a dark pink maw with row upon row of tiny, dagger-like teeth. It let out an ear-splitting roar, spittle and blood flying from its mouth in ropy streams. 

The freaks charged at the guards, scattering all but the captain, who stood stagnant, either in bravery, or stupidity. He yelled as the first mutant approached, ducking and swinging upwards into the beast’s stomach. He rolled out of the way of the retaliating blow, into another freak, slashing his blade through its knee and sending it crashing to the ground. 

Lady Lulamoon watched in detached interest as the pony ducked and weaved between her creations with fluid motions, cutting and stabbing when he could, and drawing roars of pain out of them as their blistered skin parted under his sword. The captain was good, she’d give him that. 

He jumped over a low strike from one of the freaks, but a small push of scarlet magic stumbled his landing. He mis-stepped, and Lady Lulamoon giggled as he desperately attempted to regain his footing. 

The freaks took full advantage of her interference. A quick strike against his side sent the captain sprawling onto his chest, where he was pinned by the forehoof of one of the beasts. The branching antler-like bone structures on its back quivered, before striking downward with surprising flexibility, stabbing and puncturing through the captain’s back. He screamed in pain as the spines slowly lifted his impaled body high into the air, his blood streaming out of his suspended form and down the antlers. 

From his elevated position, he locked eyes with Lady Lulamoon, chocking out a wet gurgle for help. The mutant below him tilted its head to look at his captured prey, before rapidly splaying the individual stems of bone in different directions. The captain’s impaled torso was shredded into visceral pieces, spurting torrents of gore and entrails in every direction, most of it raining down onto the gathered beasts. 

The freaks seemed to revel in the red mist surrounding them, splitting open their toothy maws and devouring the torn chunks of pony lying on the stained ground. Even from the opposite side of the square, Lady Lulamoon could hear in brilliant clarity, the wet, slurping gurgles of the feeding mutants.

The intermittent screeches and wails from the freaks, coupled with their brutal efficiency in killing and their gaping mouths, reminded her ever so slightly of the old tales of wild beasts that lived in the dark, northern parts of the world, past Equestria’s borders. The animals, named Vraals by the early pony folklore, would hunt silently through the wastelands, creeping through shadows and devouring unsuspecting travelers foolish enough to travel near the border. 

Her creations were probably about as stealthy as an elephant, but their insatiable hunger proved too much coincidence for her to pass up the naming opportunity. Vraals they are then. Thought Lady Lulamoon smugly, as she watched yet another Canterlot pony be ripped to shreds by the magically altered guards.

A stroke of inspiration struck her, and she grinned as she created three tendrils of energy from her horn. With a touch of surprise, she felt little to no drain from the magic, when she should have been struggling with the output. 

She suspected involvement with her recent contact with the sphere of raw magic. Instead of having to pace herself to retain her magic, she felt like she was reaching into and drawing her energy from an endless pool, the tendrils barely registering with her as she snaked them through the air towards the Vraals. 

The Vraals, preoccupied with their feeding, didn’t notice the scarlet ropes of magic creeping up on them until it was too late. The magic shot out, striking the back of their necks and spreading around the girth of their throats fluidly, clasping them into crude collars. 

The Vraals reared and clawed at the magic, roaring indignantly at the solid energy. One of the Vraals noticed the leads snaking back to Lady Lulamoon, and it immediately set its smouldering rage in her direction. It shrieked and charged, the leash around its neck shortening as it got closer and closer to its target.

When Lady Lulamoon decided that it had come close enough, she solidified the rope, clotheslining the Vraal and sending it crashing to the ground, cutting off its shriek with a sharp gurgle. The leash softened again, and immediately the Vraal got to its hooves in another attempt at attacking her. 

Lady Lulamoon’s smile grew, and she sent a violent electric shock through the rope, bringing the Vraal to its knees. She repeated this process with the other beasts, stopping them in their tracks and causing them to claw desperately at their collars. 

She sent one final blast of electricity through the leash before letting them go slack, leaving the Vraals steaming on the cobblestones, twitching with muscle spasms.

Lady Lulamoon regarded the twitching, whimpering beasts on the ground for a second longer, before eyeing the crowd that had gathered at the edges of the square, looking on in a mixture of amazement, shock, and fear. 

Just then, the clock tower above their heads struck three, giving out a trio of deep, ringing gongs, making everypony in the vicinity jump. In the reverberating silence, a pony in a blue tailored suit stepped forward, toward the crimson unicorn.

“You stopped them…” he said timidly, looking back and forth between the slowly recovering Vraals and Lady Lulamoon. She glanced at the electrified tethers with interest, taking a quick, breathy laugh.

“I wouldn’t say, ‘stopped them’.” She said thoughtfully, holding a hoof to her chin reflectively. “They’re more like… under new management.” 

The suited pony’s thin smile faltered, and he began to back away unsure, his eyes growing to the size of dinner plates. Lady Lulamoon grinned evilly and threw the pony the rest of the way to the crowd with her magic, sending him tumbling across the bloodstained stones to land at the hooves of the frightened masses. 

The throng withered under her maniacal stare, some watching the pony, some watching the Vraals, nopony making eye-contact. Suddenly, Lady Lulamoon dropped the magical leashes, allowing the beasts to get to their deformed hooves angrily. 

The Vraals regarded the unicorn warily, watching her every move. She slowly lifted one hoof to point at the gathered ponies, and the beasts turned their heads to look at the crowd. 

“Dig in.”     


***


The air outside of Joe’s Donut shop crackled and distorted, bending and twisting around a fixed point a couple feet off the ground. An indistinct mass wriggled out of the torn reality, popping and fizzling violently. Then, the vortex rippled, tumbling a dark green pony in a black jacket onto the street.

The pocket of air vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving Jade to dust herself off from her rough landing. She grumbled something about her coat getting dirty and miscalculations, before taking in her surroundings. She looked around confusedly for a second, then caught sight of the towering turrets of Canterlot Castle in the near-distance.

“At least one thing works.” She muttered darkly, giving her watch a scolding look. The uppermost dials were spinning in sync, slowing down before coming to an abrupt stop facing directly up and quivering slightly. Jade sighed and began trotting in the direction of the castle, unaware of the golden eyes following her from the shadow of an alleyway, narrowing in recognition. 

Behind her, three BONG's rang out over the city, emanating from the large clock tower in the square.        
	
> (Act I) Chapter 3: The Seeds
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
Lady Lulamoon whistled as she trotted up to the doorway of a house, not too far from the square. Behind her, screams of terror and roars of fury could still be heard from the stragglers running from the massacre, cutting off one by one as the Vraals found and killed their prey. 

Lady Lulamoon gave a shake of her head, sending her slightly mussed-up mane spinning behind her. The beasts really were barbaric.

She arrived at the doorstep, making sure that her outward appearance looked acceptable. Then, she cleared her throat and knocked on the door. 

It opened a crack, and a single teal eye peered through at the unicorn standing on its doorstep. The eye widened in surprise, and the door swung open completely, revealing a mustard-yellow mare hopping from hoof to hoof in nervousness. 

“What’s going on?” the confused Pegasus asked quaveringly, looking at the street behind Lady Lulamoon apprehensively. “Are the monsters gone yet?”

Lady Lulamoon was about to answer, when a shrill shriek of terror reached both of their ears, coming from a few blocks down. The frightened mare in the doorway cringed, folding her ears against her head, while Lady Lulamoon tapped her hoof impatiently on the welcome mat. The scream went on for a second more, before cutting off suddenly with a warbling cry.

The Pegasus looked at Lady Lulamoon imploringly, shuffling her wings uncertainly. The crimson unicorn cocked her head, listening carefully. After a moment, she nodded happily.

“Yes, I think they got all of them.” Lulamoon confirmed reassuringly. “Now, might I have a minute of your time?”

The yellow mare didn’t look convinced. “But that sounded like-”

“Dear, I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about.” Said Lady Lulamoon forcefully, cutting her off. “I need to find the Sparkle residence, and it is of the utmost importance that I do. Time is of the essence and such.”

The Pegasus narrowed her eyes at the unicorn’s nonchalant appearance. She had a bad feeling about this mare… 

“Sparkle?” she said, feigning ignorance. “Hmm… Nope. Nada. I don’t think I know any ‘Sparkle’s.”

Lady Lulamoon raised an eyebrow at the mare’s pitiful attempt at discretion. “No?” she inquired sarcastically. “Not at all? You don’t mind then if I come in for a visit do you? I haven’t had somepony interesting to talk to in ages.”

With that, Lady Lulamoon pushed the Pegasus aside with her magic, drawing an indignant, “Hey!” from the mare as her house was invaded by the nosy unicorn.

Immediately upon entering the household, Lady Lulamoon walked briskly to the living room, ignoring the shouts coming from the Pegasus. She appraised the furniture, and turned to the hearth, devoid of flame at this time of year. On top of the mantle, a collection of pictures cluttered the brick, family members and friends smiling down on the unicorn. 

Amongst them, a small photo of a familiar mare and her foal stood out. Lady Lulamoon moved a family portrait of the pegasus, her husband, and their two small fillies out of the way. The picture was labeled, Victus, Iris, Lily and Dandy, but she was not interested in that particular portrait. 

Lady Lulamoon’s targeted picture showed a unicorn mare with a grey coat and a two-tone white and purple mane. A cluster of stars adorned her flank. On her back sat a tiny, deep purple unicorn filly, with a single stripe of pink showing through her violet mane. The filly was looking off into the distance distractedly, while the mare was beaming at Lady Lulamoon with a permanent smile set on her paper muzzle.

“Hey! I’m talking to you!” came the irritated call from the Pegasus as she caught up to Lady Lulamoon. “This is my house, and I- oh.” The tirade stuttered to a stop as the yellow mare realized what her unexpected guest was looking at.

Lady Lulamoon levitated the picture off the shelf with care, floating it in front of the Pegasus. “Friends of yours?” she asked sweetly.

The cornered mare spluttered frantically, racking her mind for an excuse. “I- uh, I mean- we- umm…” she trailed off, completely lost for words. Lady Lulamoon just tut-tutted disappointedly.

“You shouldn’t lie to ponies you know,” she reprimanded. “It might make them angry.”

A red haze of magic surrounded the Pegasus’ neck, stopping her would-be response and leaving her choking for breath. While the mare scrabbled at her throat, trying to dislodge the obstruction, Lady Lulamoon picked up the unused fire poker leaning up against the hearth. “And when ponies like me get angry…”

The Pegasus slammed into the floor, knocking out what little air remained in her lungs in a gasp. Without hesitation, Lady Lulamoon drove the iron bar through her outstretched wing, spurting blood onto the clean carpet. “They tend to do drastic things.” She purred, twisting the pole and ripping the muscles and tendons in the wing. The haze of red, which had never really left her, flickered jovially around her vision, seemingly enjoying the show going on in front of it.

The mare flailed, crying and screaming around the poker pining her to the ground. The picture of the unicorn and her foal was shoved into her tear-stained face, and the question was posed again.

“Do you know where the Sparkle’s live dear?”        

“YES!” the Pegasus screamed, relenting instantly. “Yes I know where they are! Please! STOP!”

Lady Lulamoon stopped rotating the poker and leaned in close, breaking her calm façade and baring her teeth at the injured mare. “Where?”

“742 Evergreen Terrace!” blubbered the mare almost incoherently, verging on the edge of shock. “Please! That’s where they are, I swear! Stop, please… stop…” she finished whimpering.

“See how easy that was?” Lady Lulamoon smiled, her face back to its normal happy expression. She wrenched the poker out of the mare’s wing, a fresh screech of pain echoing through the house. Lady Lulamoon placed the poker carefully back in its resting place, enjoying the new scarlet sheen coating the spike at the end. 

She was about to leave the house, when she was struck with an idea. 

“Oh, I almost forgot!” she quipped jovially, placing a hoof daintily on her forehead in mock disbelief. She sashayed back to the Pegasus, still lying on the floor and slapped her gently a couple times to get her attention. 

“I can’t have you falling unconscious on me dearie, not until I have corrected your lying problem!” she explained instructively. “Now, be a good girl and open your mouth for me.”

The mare didn’t hesitate, dropping open her jaw immediately, in too much pain to argue. Lady Lulamoon hummed and tittered, probing inside her mouth with her magic, grasping her tongue tightly. The Pegasus’ cries were muffled by the crimson magic inside of her jaw.

“Are you ever going to lie to anypony ever again?” the unicorn asked condescendingly. The Pegasus shook her head as much as she could and whimpered a stifled promise and apology, looking up into Lady Lulamoon’s eyes pleadingly. The crimson pony shook her head and laughed.

“Liar.”

If the Pegasus had screamed before, now she shrieked, as Lady Lulamoon began to slowly pull upwards on her tongue, holding the rest of her head down with a clasp of magic. The mare thrashed, and felt the skin on the inside of her mouth rip and tear, sending copious amounts of coppery flavoured blood into her mouth.

Rrrrrip-ip-ip-ip!

The membrane connecting her tongue onto the floor of her mouth snapped and tore, allowing Lady Lulamoon to pull the slippery appendage farther and farther out of the mare. The nerves screamed in protest, and the major tendon on the bottom of her tongue stretched as far as it could go, before giving way and ripping loose, hanging limply below the mass of flesh.

The last strands of skin snapped, removing the tongue completely from the screeching Pegasus. Her mouth flooded with blood, streaming out of the messy gouge endlessly, spilling out of the corners of her lips, down her neck and into her mane. The magical clamp kept her head in place, making her choke and gurgle in her own blood, while the rest of her body jerked and floundered, impacting the carpet with dull thuds.

The Pegasus coughed, spraying a cloud of red mist into the air, droplets of gore spotting her yellow coat. Her mouth quickly filled again, leaving no room for breath or sounds, other than a wet warble that was quickly cut off by the rising blood between her jaws. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, as the lack of oxygen started to get to her, slipping her away from the world of the awake.

Lady Lulamoon looked at the severed tongue in her magic, turning it over and playing with the dangling remains of skin disinterestedly. The figure below her gave a lurch of her chest, as blood filled her lungs and clogged her airway. Her face turned blue, splotched with red as she gave one last attempt at breathing. 

Sighing, Lady Lulamoon dropped the tongue into the Pegasus’ pool of blood around her head and relinquished her magical hold over the mare. She flopped to the side limply, pouring the contents of her mouth onto the floor, soon followed by that of her stomach. 

Lady Lulamoon wrinkled her nose at the acidic smell of bile mixing in with the heavy scent of blood. She sauntered over to the doorway, looking back at the convulsing Pegasus, lying and coughing wetly in a pool of her own fluids. 

“Next time I’ll use soap to wash out your lying little mouth.” She tittered, watching almost forlornly as the red receded again, staying at the edge of her eyes.

Fixing her mane again, she walked outside, reciting to herself quietly, “742 Evergreen Terrace… 742 Evergreen Terrace…” 


***


The door to the throne room opened with a slam, startling the guards standing casually at attention just inside. The two identical ponies stood ramrod still, as a clearly fuming Princess Celestia stormed into the room, not even stopping to close the doors behind her. 

Following her, looking slightly winded and flushed from yelling, was Stargazer, Celestia’s most trusted advisor and long-time friend. Their argument seemed to have abated as they neared the throne room, as neither pony said a word to the other, each instead preferring to stonewall the other.

One of the guards began to close the doors, but another figure ambled through the ornate archway, looking very uncomfortable and out of place. 

Trixie’s usual cocky and sure-fire demeanour had softened into quiet resignation in the presence of the Princess. Her mane was sticking up at odd angles, like she had just stepped out of a hurricane, and she was wringing her wizard’s hat stressfully in her blue-hazed magic. 

Princess Celestia stopped just short of her throne, looking up at its grandeur with a gaze that saw nothing. It was the shell-shocked look that each of the guards had seen many times in their long careers. It was the look of a pony who had witnessed something truly traumatizing. 

The tension in the room capped as Stargazer stood beside his ruler. The two still said nothing, preferring to stay in a stalemate. Trixie just looked lost, taking in the luxuries of Canterlot Castle with a gaping jaw and wide eyes, for a minute forgetting all about the dire situation that she had found herself in.

Stargazer sighed, taking the first step into conversation. “Princess, I did warn you-”

“You did nothing!” snapped Celestia, obviously resuming their argument where they had left off. “Where were you when Starswirl’s spell was activated? Where were you when she broke into the vault? When she killed those guards?”

“I was... otherwise occupied.” The old, navy-blue unicorn said exasperatedly. “You of all ponies know that better than any. Or, was it not you that told me to discreetly prepare the castle and staff for Miss Sparkle’s imminent ascension?”

Celestia turned to Stargazer with an expression rarely seen on her face. Anger.

“Otherwise occupied?” She whispered dangerously, boring her glare directly into her advisor’s eyes, making the unicorn cower faintly. “You were ‘otherwise occupied’ for two days on a task that should have only taken a few hours? What warranted your disappearance? What could possibly have been so dreadfully important to you that it created a national security risk?”

Stargazer took a second to regain his composure, gulping his pride down. The two guards stared, aghast at the heated disagreement taking place before them. Princess Celestia had never become this unhinged before. Trixie was just becoming aware of the row going on in front of her, and thankfully had the common sense to stay out of it. 

“Your Majesty,” Stargazer began, steeling himself in the harsh light of the Princess’s gaze. “While your accusations are not without due grounds, I must remind you that in fifty-seven faithful years under you, I am entitled a couple of sick days.”

Celestia huffed, not giving him any room. “You have taken your fair share in sick days and vacation days Stargazer. Regardless of the personal issue, I expect an advisor of your standing to give some notice before he disappears off the face of Equestria.”

“Disregarding my vacation habits, what happened in the vault was… regrettable, Your Highness,” Stargazer continued, causing Celestia’s eyes to flash angrily. “But I do not believe that I personally-”

“The fact remains Stargazer,” The Princess cut in, “That your incompetence and foolishness have opened a new threat to all of us. I know full well that you were to be stationed in front of Starswirl’s Vault for extra security after you were done preparing the castle. And you know full well that it was within your capabilities to keep both the vault, and its contents safe from harm, as you are the second-most powerful unicorn I have ever met. So, why were you not at your post?”

Stargazer paused, readying himself to bite the proverbial bullet. “I am not a member of the Royal Guard, Your Majesty. It is not my priority, nor my duty to stand at attention for hours in front of a dusty store-room waiting for an assault that will never come.”

“Yet come it did.” Celestia pointed out wearily. “And it came the one time in over fifty years that you were not at your designated position.”

At this, Stargazer looked shamefully at the tiles below him. “I… There are no words to express the shame I feel now Your Highness. I did not see the importance of the task you had set upon me, and I disregarded it out of pure languor.” He met Celestia’s eyes again, resolve hardening his gaze. “I have made a grievous mistake, that much I understand. And the only way I can atone to that error, is to put an end to this perpetrator’s schemes!”

Celestia fell silent once more, staring back at her throne with a new expression. Sorrow. She turned to the two guards, who jumped to attention immediately, not missing a beat. Her eyes passed over them however, and landed directly on a very scared and confused Trixie.

“Y-Your Majesty?” she stuttered fearfully. “I-I, er, that is to say-”

“You need not explain your mother’s actions.” The Princess said quietly. “For they are nopony’s but her own.”

Stargazer stiffened. “Her mother?” he inquired irately, turning to face Trixie himself. “Your mother is responsible for this mess?”

Celestia sighed. “Yes Stargazer. Lady Lulamoon, for all her prowess in magic, saw fit to use it for the sake of power, instead of goodwill. She has abused that same power for mere personal gain, and has harmed many ponies through the act.” She stared harder at Trixie. “But we still do not know why.”

The show-mare froze. She knew that this question had been coming, but she never expected it to come from the Princess herself, least of all when she was in a testy mood already. Trixie gulped loudly and began to speak past the knot that had formed in her throat.

“M-my mother… she… s-she was disappointed in me, Your Highness,” she admitted, still having trouble admitting her loss. “S-she sent me to Ponyville to… to…” she stammered to a stop.

Celestia smiled gently, appeasing some of Trixie’s fears and encouraging her to go on. Meanwhile, Stargazer scoffed at the mare’s partial sentences. 

“S-she... I…” she knew that the Princess would not like this next part, and took a breath to weather the inevitable storm. “She sent me to Ponyville to face Twilight Sparkle in a magic duel Your Majesty, with an artifact that I know as ‘The Alicorn Amulet’. It was going to give me an edge against her…”

Princess Celestia stood stock-still as she listened to Trixie’s confession. She was seconds away from teleporting down to Ponyville to help her student, when she realized that her student’s aggressor was right in front of her. “Am I to assume then, that you failed in this endeavour?”

Trixie nodded slowly. “Even with the amulet, I was no match for her.” She whispered shamefully. “She defeated me with nothing but a doorstop!”

That made Celestia smile faintly. “Yes, my student has the uncanny ability to tilt the balance in her own favour despite overwhelming circumstances. Now then, how does this relate to your mother’s recent actions?”

The show-mare swallowed. “Mother… s-she plans to take her… revenge on-on Twilight Velvet, Your Highness.”

The Princess seemed taken aback by this. “And what reason does your mother have for taking revenge on Miss Velvet?”

Trixie muttered something unintelligible. Stargazer shook his head. “Speak up mare!”

The room seemed to wait in baited breath as Trixie spoke her next confession quietly.

“… Nightlight, Your Highness.”

Celestia blinked. “Twilight’s father?”

“Yes,” Trixie confirmed, looking up at the monarch with teary eyes. “My mother never wanted to marry my father. She wanted to have Nightlight as her husband instead. My mother tells me that they were only days away from getting married, when Velvet stepped in and claimed Nightlight’s heart for her own.” The show mare looked down shame-facedly. “Or, that is what she tells me...”

Stargazer nodded thoughtfully. “Love has led many a-pony astray... I see how this could be motivation for her acts of treason.”

Celestia sighed, looking down at her gold-clad hooves in dismay. “So we know the why, and the how. All we need now is what she plans on doing with Starswirl’s time spell.” She once again locked her gaze on Trixie, anxious for the truth. 

Fear was evident on Trixie’s face as she met The Princess’ violet eyes with her own. “She… she wishes to… I quote, ‘Remove the problem at the root’ Your Majesty. She plans to go back to a time where Twilight Sparkle is vulnerable and…”

The revelation hit the room like a giant brick. Panic creeped into Celestia’s expression, as her mouth fell agape. Stargazer just seemed resigned, the cogs seemingly turning inside his head to find a solution. 

“I… I...” stuttered Celestia. “I must go.” And she vanished in a flash of light, leaving four ponies in the throne room to comprehend the situation. 

Trixie’s lip began to quiver, and she collapsed onto the floor, sobs wracking her body and echoing back around the room.

The advisor cast a disdainful look at the mare, before setting his head high upon his shoulders and walking purposefully out of the throne room. 

And in the grand hallway, unseen by any, Stargazer smiled.
	
> (Act I) Chapter 4: The Streets Ran Red
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
“738… 740… aha!”

Lady Lulamoon stopped in front of the unassuming house, a vindictive smile on her face. She gazed at the unassuming residence, basking in her pre-emptive victory. It was almost assured.

She sauntered up to the house, lifting up the brass knocker in her red magic, and slamming the ornately carved figure into the oak so hard, the door flew off its hinges and landed on the threshold with a loud BANG! Carefully, Lady Lulamoon stepped over the shattered door, casting an apologetic look its way. The poor thing didn’t ask to be destroyed in such a brutal manner. 

“What in the hay-?” Came the outraged shout from the living-room, as a light blue stallion hurtled around the corner, skidding to a stop in front of his destroyed entrance-way. A look of shock befell his features as he took in the broken door, the bent hinges and the jubilant mare standing amongst the wreckage. 

“Miss me Nighty?” Lady Lulamoon asked sweetly.


***


Jade was not a brash pony. She had seen more than her fair share of idiots thinking that they were invincible and running directly into enemies, and it had taught her a valuable lesson. If you hear the screams of the dying, and the panicked shouts of the living, it is probably not the greatest idea to follow them, as you are probably going to your own demise.

So of course, when her watch had started directing her to the epicenter of the chaos that was downtown Canterlot, she was starting to doubt the technology a little. 

The tracking device was crude, and Jade realized that despite all the thought that the scientists had put into it, it was basically a glorified magnet. A magnet that pointed with the main hand directly at any source of latent magical energy large enough for an inter-temporal jump, but a magnet nonetheless. 

She moved stealthily towards the bloodcurdling screams with trepidation. All of her instincts that had saved her on many different occasions were all yelling at her to turn around and forget her duties. But her sense of that very same duty compelled her to take step after careful step forward into the fray. 

She came to the mouth of an alleyway leading to the town square, and her fight-or-flight instincts reared their heads once more. She ducked quickly back into the temporary safety of the alley, the scene automatically memorized and burned into her brain. 

Dozens of ponies, or what remained of them, were scattered about the square, the cobblestones beneath them stained with their blood. Many of the fallen bore mangled bits of golden armour, signifying the presence of royal guard. 

But even worse than the dead ponies, were their attackers. Hulking bundles of flesh-splitting muscle with terrifying spines of bone, and gaping maws tearing the fleeing ponies up by mass, their long spindly teeth quivering every time they roared their victory of the hunt.

The green earth pony retreated back into the alley before any of the beasts could see her. 

Jade began to hyperventilate, pressing her back up against the brick wall of the building behind her, and shutting her eyes. She took long breaths to calm herself down, looking around the alley for anything she could use to her advantage. 

When she found nothing of the sort, she heard the ever-useful advice her mentor had given her: Nopony ever looks up Jade. Look to the skies, and you will find your way through almost any situation! 

A wise sentiment, even when Jade realized the irony that the old pony she had trained under had been picked off by a low flying Skriyc on one of his adventures. Jade looked up obediently anyway, and saw a fire escape ladder hanging tantalizingly above her head. 

She smiled and jumped up, catching the bottom rung of the ladder and hoisting herself up onto the grated platform with ease. Taking the stairs three at a time, she found herself on the rooftops of Canterlot, looking out over the city from her new elevated position.

She almost wished she hadn’t.

If the scene in the square had been bad from ground level, it was nearly unbearable from an aerial perspective. Now she got to watch with a great view as the ponies below got picked off one by one by those freaks of nature. Her tracker spun between the three of them weakly, their altered bodies radiating a little bit of magic, but Jade knew that they were not the real problem in this case. Her feeling had been too strong for merely some mutants to kill. 

She ran deftly and silently across the rooftops, keeping one eye on the tracker, and one eye on where she was stepping. She knew from experience that falling through somepony’s ceiling in the middle of a genocide was generally bad news. 

She leaped a gap between two buildings, tucking into a smooth roll at the end to break her fall, but at the same time taking her gaze off her watch. When she looked back down at it, the tracker was pointing to her left, no longer in front of her. 

Stopping in her tracks, she looked to her left at the adjacent buildings across the street, then down at the street itself in dismay. There was no way she was going to make that jump, and she was still hesitant about returning to street level. 

Weighing her chances, she relented, diving off the building and catching herself on an awning, rolling off safely to the ground. She sprinted across the street, holding her breath and praying that the abominations had not seen her. 

Erring on the side of caution, she ran for the next couple blocks, looking behind her the whole way, and putting her endurance to the test, while gaining some distance between herself and the creatures. She glanced at her tracker, and was relieved to see that the arrow pointed just slightly to the right of her. 

That relief disappeared when she rounded the corner, and was blown to the ground by a magical explosion that sent out a shockwave of energy into the surrounding houses, ripping some from their foundations, and cleaving others into neat pieces.

Rolling back to her hooves and doing her best to avoid flying rubble, she looked in astonishment at the sheer level of destruction displayed by the explosion. It had left a sizable crater where the street used to be, a glassy, steaming hole in the formerly-perfect road. 

A light-grey unicorn stood on the edge of the crater, looking exhausted and staring into the hole in disbelief. A blue form lay crumpled a few meters away, half crushed by the ruins of a fallen building. 

Jade regained her bearings, and began to approach the unicorn, when cold, low laughter echoed around the boulevard, oppressing in its existence. From in the crater, a scarlet unicorn rose, crackling with excess energy and sending involuntary streams of lightning into the ground. She levitated up from the middle of the crater, laughing and spreading her hooves wide in obvious challenge.

Beep.

The shrill alert from Jade’s watch confirmed the presence of her target. She looked down and saw that the arrow was pointing directly at the rising, power-saturated pony in front of her. At the sound of the beep, the crimson unicorn snapped her head towards Jade, revealing pure white eyes glowing with power, and a sadistic smile locked into position on her twisted face. 

Jade’s eye twitched. 

It’s never easy is it?    


***


Nightlight didn’t even get to answer the question before he was blown off his hooves and through the wall of his kitchen. Clouds of drywall powder filled the air, making him cough as he regained his hoofing. Glancing up at the gaping hole in his wall, he saw a sight he hoped never to behold again in his life. 

Icani Lulamoon.

His ex-marefriend stepped daintily through the ragged hole in the wall, smiling her chilling smile the whole way. She never broke eye-contact, instead meeting his frightened eyes with terrifying intensity. 

“Well?” Lulamoon asked beseechingly, “Did you miss me? Because I missed you, Ni-”

A yell of rage followed by a loud bang sounded from the doorway, accompanied by a haze of violet magic, as Lady Lulamoon was flung sideways into the counter, crashing into the appliances. Nightlight almost sighed in relief, until she got back to her hooves, the smile on her face not affected in the slightest. 

“Don’t you touch him!” Twilight Velvet yelled from the doorway, fury burning in her gaze. The crimson pony’s head turned to look at her attacker. “I don’t know why you’re here, but if you know what’s good for you, Lulamoon, you’ll get out of our house!”

Lady Lulamoon just giggled at the threat. “It’s nice seeing you too, Vel!”

Velvet glowered. “I’m only going to tell you once more. Get. Out.” Her horn started to glow pre-emptively. 

Nightlight staggered over to his wife, still disoriented from the blast. “You would do well to heed us,” he warned, wincing as he spoke. “Velvet was always more than your match in magic.”

“Yes,” conceded Lady Lulamoon, her voice dropping, but leaving her good natured expression fixed upon her face. “I suppose that’s why you chose her over me, wasn’t it Nightlight?”

Nightlight’s brow furrowed as he listened, feeling a little bit of guilt build up inside him. He quashed it swiftly. “No, Icani, I left you because you were an over-obsessive, psychopathic bitch. It was never a contest of who was stronger.” Lady Lulamoon’s eye twitched slightly upon hearing her first name, but didn’t bat an eyelash at the insult.  

“You really want me to leave so soon?” she asked, pouting her lip out. When both ponies voiced the affirmative, her smile widened, but a shadow fell over her expression. “Without so much as even meeting your daughter?”

Nightlight and Velvet froze, horror befalling each of them. It was obvious that they hadn’t expected this approach. Nightlight shook himself off and took an aggressive step forwards, now glaring at Lady Lulamoon. “Don’t even-”

“Daddy!” Nightlight stopped mid-step. All three ponies looked to the stairs at the left of the hallway. A small, dark purple filly stood a couple steps up, looking at the scene in rapt, innocent attention. A rolled up flyer was encased in her shaky magic. “I heard crashing. Are you guys okay?”

“Awww,” Lady Lulamoon crooned. “Aren’t you just the cutest little filly in all of Equestria?”

“Twily, go back to your room,” said Velvet urgently. “Mum and Dad have some things to talk about with this pony.”

“But Mom! Princess Celestia just sent out the notices for her school and-”

“Listen to your mother Twilight.” Nightlight’s voice had dropped an octave, and he was keeping a keen eye on Lady Lulamoon for any sudden movements. All three unicorn’s horns were glowing in suffused power. “Go upstairs.”

“But-”

“Go!”

Twilight gave an ‘eep!’ and bolted back up the stairs, just in time for Lady Lulamoon to cast a black ball of energy from her horn. The ball flew at the two unicorns, who both raised defensive shields just in time for the black sphere to explode against them, filling the room with tendrils of electricity. A scream could be heard from upstairs, and Nightlight’s shield dropped from the single blow, falling to his knees in pain.

“Night!” shouted Velvet. She cast her own sphere at Lulamoon, who brought up a shield just as they had. Instead of just hitting the glowing wall of energy however, the ball split into hundreds of smaller projectiles that hurtled towards Lulamoon from all different directions. At once, Lady Lulamoon’s barrier split into just as many pieces, flying out to catch each individual ball and absorb the energy, directing it back to Velvet in a beam of crimson light. 

Velvet ducked the beam, letting it sweep over her head and cleave a burning swath in the wall behind her, melting its way through their house and into the next. Nightlight had got back to his hooves again, and fired a burst of energy at Lulamoon, just to have her conjure a glowing sword out of thin air and deflect it into the cupboards. 

The cupboards exploded, and plates, bowls, spoons and knives clattered off the floor, creating a ringing cacophony of shattering ceramic and bouncing steel. Immediately, the utensils lifted themselves off the tiles in a violet glow, and shot themselves at Lulamoon. The plates that remained intact flew up in front of Lady Lulamoon and allowed the forks to sink tine deep into their surfaces like they were made of butter.

Lady Lulamoon laughed, tossing the impaled plates aside and letting them break on the floor next to their companions. “Really you two, this is just sad!” she exclaimed, gesturing to the wreckage of the kitchen with her sword. “I know you can do better!”

Velvet growled and summoned a blade of her own, leaping forward and meeting Lady Lulamoon in the middle of the room, bringing their swords together with a shockwave of energy. Velvet leaned back, taking the pressure from her opponent and using it to her advantage as she ducked Lady Lulamoon’s over-exaggerated swing and sliced up into her exposed ribcage. 

Lulamoon vanished in a flash of light, appearing behind Velvet and bringing her weapon down on her head. Just before it hit, a blue shield formed under her blade, stopping it short. Velvet whirled around, slashing in a low strike against Lady Lulamoon’s ankles, but the unicorn jumped over it with ease. 

While she was in the air, Lady Lulamoon lashed out behind her with her hooves and struck something solid. She heard Nightlight gasp in pain and stagger back, while his shield disappeared from his lack of concentration. 

Velvet rolled to the side, leaving Lady Lulamoon’s sword to split the linoleum and leave a gash in their floor. She and Lulamoon traded blows, leaving nicks and scratches on both combatants, while Nightlight blinked stars out of his eyes. 

Velvet pushed Lady Lulamoon back with a vicious blow, and took the time to yell over her shoulder at her husband. “Get Twily and go! I’ll catch up!” 

Nightlight was about to argue, when an upward strike from Lady Lulamoon poked a hole in the ceiling, and a frightened cry rang out from upstairs. He nodded to Velvet, before sprinting out of the room via the gaping hole left from his first meeting with Lady Lulamoon. 

Velvet looked around to see Lady Lulamoon preparing a teleport, and she instantly cast a teleportation dampener over the house. Lulamoon’s horn fizzled, but much to her frustration, Velvet had effectively diffused her spell, leaving it null. 

She threw a withering glare at Velvet, before blowing a lock of crimson mane out of her eyes and lunging back at the mare that had ruined her life with renewed vigor. She grinned wickedly as she saw Velvet’s slashes begin to weaken, growing tired from the constant upkeep of the teleportation dampener. It was only a matter of time before she collapsed from the exhaustion.


***


Nightlight’s heart thudded painfully in his chest as he sprinted up the stairs, slipping a little bit on the carpet at the top. From below him, the sounds of clashing swords and magical discharge echoed through the house, reminding him of the urgency of the situation he found himself in. 

“Twily!” he shouted, bolting toward her room without a second’s hesitation. The door crashed open under his charge, and he whipped his head around frantically, trying to find his daughter. The closet door ripped itself off its hinges with the force of his magic, and he tore up the rest of the room in a similar fashion, until a squeak came from under the bed. He stopped instantly.

Slowly, he kneeled down and lifted the covers with his hoof, softly pushing them onto the bed. Underneath, his daughter cowered, with her hooves over her ears and her eyes scrunched shut against the still raging battle downstairs. The flyer from earlier lay beside her, forgotten. 

“Twily…” he whispered gently, reaching his hoof for her quivering form. “S’okay Twi, I gotcha…”

Twilight gasped when his hoof touched her foreleg, and her eyes snapped open. Nightlight recoiled slightly as his daughter threw herself at him, hugging him around the neck and crying into his shoulder. He stroked her back and stood up, doing his best to drown out the sounds of downstairs with his reassurances to Twilight. 

A loud slam ruined that plan, as something heavy hit the ceiling under them, shaking the floor slightly. Twilight cried out in his hooves, burying her head into his chest.  

The crashes and bangs from below resumed, moving towards the front door, and Nightlight rushed over to the window. Sure enough, the two fighters had taken the battle to the streets, swinging their blades and casting shots of magic at each other fervently. 

He watched from afar, holding Twilight close to his chest. He didn’t know what to do; protect his daughter, or aid his wife…

Luckily, he didn’t have to choose. Velvet blocked a wide swing from Lady Lulamoon, sending her stumbling back. The smile had been wiped off her face, and was now twisted into a furious grimace as she fought with her rival. Velvet wasn’t much better, as she wore a fury filled expression that nopony could break through to. She was in a duelist’s mindset, and the only thing that mattered was the enemy in front of her.  

Before Lady Lulamoon could take a step back into the fight, the stones around her feet warped, climbing up her hooves and anchoring her in place. She looked down in shock, dropping her guard for one second. That was all it took for Velvet to slam the flat edge of her blade into the top of Lulamoon’s head, knocking her to the ground. 

With Lady Lulamoon dazed, Velvet stabbed her sword into the cobblestones in front of her, backing up to her doorway and rearing onto her back hooves. Nightlight realized what she was planning at the last second, and dived back from the window, turning his back to the blast to protect Twilight. 

The explosion rocked the street, making his daughter cry out in terror and tighten her grip. A massive shockwave brought the sound of smashing wood and pulverized glass to his ears, and he put a shield around him and Twilight to save them both from flying rubble.

When the tinkling of glass had faded, Nightlight opened his eyes warily. He was about to breathe a sigh of relief when the building under him jerked violently, sending him tumbling across Twilight’s room. He clutched one hoof around Twilight, and tried to get back up, but a second tremor shook him to the floor yet again. Then, the house began to tilt.

His eyes widened, and he scrambled for the doorway, which was becoming a steeper and steeper slope each step he took. The bookshelf next to the door tipped over, clipping his side and sending him sprawling back, letting go of Twilight.

As if in slow motion, his daughter left his grip with wide, terrified eyes, tiny hooves reaching out to pull herself back into his embrace. He reached out, brushing her hoof with his, but just missing her as he fell backwards faster than she did. In a last ditch effort, he tried to use his magic, but his shock-filled mind couldn’t gain the concentration, even in his sluggishly moving world. 

He watched in helpless agony, as his daughter opened her mouth to scream, only for the brass-framed globe that previously rested on her desk to connect with the back of her head. 

He yelled her name once, just before he crashed out of the window. The tiny glass shards cut his back, but his attention was only for the limp form of his daughter, tumbling through the air. A small spurt of red flew from the spot where the globe had struck, splattering his face.

Then, he hit the pavement. 
	
> (Act I) Chapter 5: The Puppeteer
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
Velvet ducked another blow, growling in frustration as her opponent knocked away her counter with a twist of her magic. She leaped backwards into the wall of the kitchen as Lady Lulamoon swung downwards in a vicious arc, missing her by centimeters. 

She held her sword up in the ready position again, breathing hard and watching the scarlet unicorn retreat a couple paces at the tip of her glowing violet blade. Velvet locked eyes with Lulamoon, each doing their best to glare the other to death then and there. A few strands of her mane drifted down in front of her, severed by her close call just seconds earlier. 

Lady Lulamoon sniffed in derision as they circled each other warily. “Getting grey hairs there dear?” she almost laughed before Velvet’s sword whistled through the air, causing her to side-step and deflect the slash. 

The grey mare chuckled darkly. “I’d ask you the same, but I wouldn’t be able to tell through all of that mane-dye.”

This time, it was Velvet who was forced onto the defensive, as a flurry of blows rained down on her from the furious unicorn. One of the attacks slipped through, and she hissed in pain as the sword slit a small gash in her shoulder.

Velvet was getting worried now. The last time they had seen each other, Lady Lulamoon was just a pompous brat, whining about the misfortunes that had befallen her on her own behest. She was most certainly not the aggressive, violent, and admittedly skilled unicorn that she was dueling with now. Back then, Lulamoon would be hard pressed to join physically in any contest, let alone one that could get her seriously hurt. In fact, all those years ago, Velvet was sure that she could take the crimson unicorn in any test of magic she was given. And now here she was, examining a cut on her shoulder from that very same mare. 

But, she reminded herself,  I don’t even have to win. All I have to do is hold her off until Night can get Twily out of-

She was cut off from her thoughts by a sharp jab flying her way. She twisted around it, feeling the blade skim her back and graze some of her fur off. Using her momentum, she twisted onto two hooves and swung her sword in a backhanded strike that aimed for her enemy’s vulnerable foreleg. To her shock, another sword appeared out of nowhere, stopping her own blade and pushing her back, throwing her off balance and stumbling back. 

Velvet caught herself before she could fall to the ground, and skipped away frantically from the two flying swords that took turns in trying to cleave her in half. She erected a barrier just in time to stop symmetrical slashes from connecting, and threw the shield forwards into Lady Lulamoon. The translucent wall slammed into the unsuspecting unicorn, pushing her through the hole in the wall left by Nightlight and into the hallway. 

Lady Lulamoon tumbled onto her back, coughing and winded. Velvet capitalized on her distraction, jumping through the hole and stabbing down at her foe’s head.

Time seemed to slow down as the blade descended on Lulamoon. Velvet could see every small cut that she had made on her body, every bit of dirt and debris that clung to her coat from their tumbles. She saw the struggling rise and fall of her chest as Lulamoon desperately tried to regain her ability to breathe after her launch through the wall by the shield. She saw the misty wetness of her eyes as she brought the sword closer and closer, Velvet’s own fury-filled expression mirrored in those blue orbs, the point of the blade growing larger and larger in the reflection. 

Shunk.

And she couldn’t do it. The tip of the sword buried itself into the carpet beside Lady Lulamoon’s head, quivering slightly in place and sinking deeper and deeper into the floor. Velvet realized her teeth were clenched, and hot tears were escaping her eyes as she looked over her downed, grinning opponent. 

Wait, grinning?

Velvet realized her mistake too late. She felt her hooves leave the floor before she felt the crushing weight of Lady Lulamoon’s spell ramming into her, sending her into the ceiling. As she fell back to the ground, she heard a frightened cry from upstairs, inside Twilight’s room. 

She lay on the ground, her daughter’s yell from upstairs ringing in her ears. Velvet managed to get herself up onto one knee, looking up at Lady Lulamoon in rage. Her sword ripped itself out of the carpet and swung hard at Lady Lulamoon. In seconds, the two unicorns were back to brawling outright, using swords, magic and their own hooves to inflict damage onto the other.

Slowly, they moved down the hallway, clashing blades and ripping wallpaper into shreds as they went. The door was blown off its hinges completely as Lady Lulamoon dodged a blast of magic, and she quickly stepped out of it into the dusk-lit Canterlot. 

As they moved into the center of the street, Velvet felt her anger rise in her vision, tinting it red. This was her family, her family, and this ghost from her past was threatening to take it away. The thought drove her strikes to come on faster and faster, hardly leaving her opponent any space.

Velvet blocked anther swing, and saw her chance. Channeling energy through her horn and into the cobblestones at Lady Lulamoon’s hooves, she warped the solid stone to cover them, like Lady Lulamoon had stepped ankle deep in fresh cement. 

Lady Lulamoon’s eyes darted to her restraints, and that was all it took for Velvet to swing downwards at her occupied opponent. 

Again, it seemed like time slowed down, and Velvet was forced to watch as her sword descended on Lulamoon, slicing through individual hairs in her coifed mane. Again, she faltered, twisting her blade at the last second and simply bashing the flat edge of the sword down on her head, instead of cutting her in half. 

She watched Lady Lulamoon crumple, released of her stone shackles. Velvet cursed herself for her second lapse in the course of five minutes. She hardened her resolve, and brought the sword into the puddle of semi-liquid cobble, charging a spell even before she jumped out of the immediate radius. 

For a second, nothing happened. Then, Velvet released her spell, coursing an inane amount of energy into the ground beneath the sword, using it as something like a lightning rod. 

It worked too well. The resulting expulsion of energy was violent, much more so than Velvet had intended. The wave of energy slammed into her knees, crumpling them as she flew backwards, head over hooves into the wall of her house. 

Her ears were ringing, and everything looked like one big blurry canvas that some demented artist had thrown paint all over. Smudges and streaks of colour whipped around her vision as she tilted her head this way and that, trying to regain equilibrium. 

Velvet rose shakily to her hooves, stumbling away from the building. She heard the tinkling of falling glass that had been shot up into the air, now returning to earth in a symphony of ringing clinks. Then, something behind her snapped loudly. 

Velvet turned, just in time to see the top floor of her house begin to tilt forward, crushing the few supports that remained from the blast. She ran, limping slightly away from the collapsing structure as fast as she could. She skidded to a stop at the edge of her crater in the street, looking back as the house finally broke, the second story fragmenting and crashing to a bone-jarring, ground shaking halt. 

Her breath caught in her throat as she watched the splintered mass of wood and concrete cease moving, the varying chunks of structure rolling and sliding to a stop in front of her. A thought crossed her mind. A terrifying, heart-wrenching thought, that escalated into a broken yell of anguish as it left the guilt ridden mare. 

“TWILY!” 

Her eyes flicked frantically over the mass of rubble, searching for something, anything that would mean her daughter had not been caught in the backlash of her momentary fury. Instead, a different shape became clearer as the dust settled, coating the surrounding area with a fine layer of powder and debris. An un-moving, red-stained, powder blue shape.

“N-Ni…” the name caught on her tongue, spreading a rising feeling of panic through her muddled mind. Velvet couldn’t seem to comprehend the sight before her, a sight that she alone was responsible for. As the air became clear, the crumpled, half-crushed form of her husband broke its way through her consciousness, numbing all her other senses. Because of her, Nightlight was…

“No.”

It was not her fault. As much as the cruel voice in the back of her head told her it was, no matter how many tears slid off the end of her chin and splattered onto the grimy cobblestones, there was another who was responsible. Another who was guilty, who had hurt her family. 

Her senses came back in a rush, and a low, lilting laugh reached her ears. She turned towards the crater, watching in shocked revulsion as the spotless, perfect form of Lady Lulamoon rose out of the smoking hole, head lowered and laughing evilly. 

“Hehehehe…” the rumbling chuckle pounded its way into Velvet’s head, knocking out all coherent thoughts. Standing at the edge of the crater, she had never felt so small, as if her very existence was a detriment to everypony. As if she didn’t matter. 

Lady Lulamoon lifted herself up above street height, until she was level with what used to be the upstairs story of Velvet’s house. 

Then, she raised her head. 

Velvet’s pupils shrank to pinpricks as she gazed into the glowing, un-earthly light of Lady Lulamoon’s eyes. The magical energy in the air was palpable, tangible enough to cut through with a knife. Velvet’s legs shook with the effort of merely standing as her enemy’s mere presence oppressed her body and mind. 

Lady Lulamoon grinned, spreading her forelegs out to the side in open challenge. Her scarlet fur crackled with energy, overflowing and sending bolts of energy into the cobblestones around the scene. Complete silence took over, encompassing the boulevard and being broken by the distant cries and screams that had resumed at some point in the fight. They created a chilling atmosphere, permeated by snaps and pops as Lady Lulamoon’s lightning contacted the ground, leaving lines of blackened scorch marks that dug trenches in the stone. 

Velvet panicked internally, running through possible escape scenarios, none of which bore fruit. Her thoughts turned to Nightlight, crushed under the house that she had collapsed. She thought of Twilight, either caught in the rubble or dead, bleeding and hurt in the wreckage. 

She forced herself back to escape plans, but the mental picture of her little filly, deformed and broken on the floor of her room kept lurching her back into despair. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t do it. She cou-

Beep.

The shrill alert brought Velvet out of her mental breakdown. Fortunately, it also took Lady Lulamoon’s attention off of her, and onto the unlucky earth pony standing on the corner of the boulevard. 

The green pony’s stance faltered when she saw Lulamoon’s eyes, and her gaze shifted to the large, shiny watch on her raised hoof. 

Even from where she was standing, Velvet could see the exaggerated eye roll, and the expression of exasperated disbelief that crossed her features.

The magical charge in air intensified, warning Velvet of what was about to happen. A half-formed warning stuck on her lips as she watched a stream of red light streak towards the earth pony, crossing most of the distance in the blink of an eye. 

The mare moved impossibly fast. In the remaining time it took for the blast of magic to reach her, she was already bolting for shelter, leaving the blast of energy to fly harmlessly past her and impact into the line of houses across the way, detonating in a crackling ball of stone and timber.

Lady Lulamoon grunted in frustration, casting more spells at the fleeing pony, all of them missing, sometimes by tiny margins. By the time it took for the mare to get out of sight behind a house, the surrounding street had been ripped to pieces, and the house all had collateral damage.

Velvet’s jaw hung open. She had never seen something living move that fast, and it was an incredible sight to say the least. A sniffling cry came from behind her, interrupting her admiration. She whipped around, and saw something that both lifted her spirits and broke them at the same time. 

Twilight was lying next to her father’s broken form, tears cutting through the layer of dust and blood that coated her features. The little filly sobbed uncontrollably into Nightlight’s side, shaking his inert body and moving her mouth in silent pleas of life. Her flyer from before lay forgotten in the dust beside her. 

Velvet cast a quick glance over her shoulder at Lady Lulamoon, relieved to see the unicorn still tearing houses apart in furious search of her agile quarry, and paying her no attention. Without any further delay, she ran to her family, sadness settling deep into her soul. 


***


Stargazer’s face was lit with a vindictive grin as he sauntered into his luxurious room in the castle. Celestia really had gone all out in providing him with comforts to enjoy during his lengthy stays in Canterlot. 

Closing and latching the door quietly, he took a quick look around the room, noting that everything was as undisturbed as it had been when he had left. Everything, he noted, except for the open cider bottle on the coffee table, and half-full cup that accompanied it. 

Cautiously, he trotted over to the large, spotless windows, and looked with pride out onto the glamorous city beneath him. It seemed almost a shame when his magic drew the curtains sharply shut against the cityscape, bathing the room in shadow. 

“What news from our mistress?” he asked quietly into the darkened room. 

For a second, nopony answered. Then, a cold, analytical voice spoke from the door he had just entered through. 

“She is your mistress Stargazer, not mine. You would do well to remember that.” It spoke condescendingly. 

“Ah, but of course,” acknowledged Stargazer amiably. “I know just how hard it is to gain your full loyalty, Riftbringer.” He spoke the honorary title mockingly, expecting the following growl of irritation that came from the pony at the door. “Or do you not go by that title after you abandoned your previous allies?”

“I did not abandon them,” the mare retorted, moving slowly around the room to stand at the window beside Stargazer’s, staying out of the light rays falling between the curtains. “They should have known not to trifle with matters beyond their control.”

Stargazer smirked, allowing his gaze to flit for a moment to his compatriot. “And you consider yourself under that category? Something they couldn’t control?”

This time it was the mare’s turn to find amusement, the corners of her mouth lifting slightly at the remark. “Obviously. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this pointless conversation, now would we?” Before Stargazer could reply in turn, the pony cut him off with a low warning. “And your mistress should remember that fact if she ever thinks that she can follow in their hoofsteps.”

The smile fell off of the advisor’s face as he took in her words. If it were any other pony, he would have scoffed and disregarded her threats. But in this case, Stargazer knew that she was willing and able to follow up on those promises.

He cleared his throat in an effort to hide his fear, a fact not missed in the slightest by the pony beside him. 

“At any rate,” he continued, “I believe you still have not told me the news. And I know just how much you hate to waste time, Prævaricator.” he cast another glance at the pony, who again stiffened at the name. “Not that it matters to you, does it?” 

“You use these titles, though I left them behind long ago.” She said darkly, causing Stargazer to flinch slightly. “I would watch my tongue, if I were you, advisor, lest you find it removed from behind your lips.”

Stargazer glared at the mare, before turning around haughtily and sitting down at the coffee table, reaching his magic for the bottle of cider. “And who is watching yours?” he murmured softly, the verbal jab lost to the mare at the window because of the quiet lapping of cider falling into the cup. The golden liquid flowed into the glass, filling it back up completely and dancing flickeringly in the thin beam of sunlight. 

The pony stayed at the curtained window, twisting her head slightly to keep her eyes on Stargazer. “The witch has reached her destination, Stargazer. Fifteen years ago, she is tracking her target through the streets of Canterlot. What has happened is happening, and it is perversely altering our reality.”

Stargazer smiled at this through his glass of cider, though he didn’t quite grasp the concept of time travel. “And has she caught the usurper?”

The mare was quiet again as she listened to the soft splashing of the cider hitting the bottom of the cup again. “If she had carried out her plans accordingly, do you think we would still be in each other’s presence? Or would this conversation never have happened?”

The advisor thought about that for a second, the drink half-way to his lips. If Lulamoon had succeeded in her efforts, wouldn’t this whole operation be moot? Or would things still travel in the same pattern, only altered by different events and happenings spread few and far in between? Of course, it was possible that Lulamoon had utterly failed in her endeavours, though it was unlikely. More likely, she had deviated from the plans somehow, in order to make sure that her messing about in the past was not noticed by some of the more… undesirable characters in the universe. Time travel was a fickle thing, he thought musingly. 

“I will be in contact,” said the mare, ripping Stargazer away from his thoughts. “When I receive more information, I will come to you.”

Stargazer nodded, draining the glass for the second time. A comforting buzz fell over him, opting him to stand back up and approach the mare at the window, who currently was appraising something on her hoof. 

“Send her my regards, will you?” he asked sardonically, causing the mare to pause in her twiddling of the watch strapped to her forehoof. 

She flicked a knob on the side, and a soft ticking sound filled the air. The mare took a step away from him, readying herself for the jump. In doing so, she passed under a sunbeam making its way through the curtains, briefly showing a rough-looking, but impeccably clean jacket adorning her slim form. 

Intelligent golden eyes peered out of the gloom at Stargazer, looking old and haunted, but clear in their purpose. “I will.” He turned to leave, when she called back to him once more. “Oh, and Stargazer? I think I tasted something foul in the cider. You should have it checked.” 

And then she was gone.

Stargazer appraised the spot she had occupied warily. What had she meant, he should have it checked? Something foul?

With an annoyed flick of his magic, he drew the curtains back to their original positions, letting sunlight stream back into the room, lighting up every corner. He couldn’t be too careful with ponies like her. Even when she was gone, it felt like he was being constantly surveyed. 

He capped the cider, but left both it, and the cup, sitting on the table; it was going to be a long rest of the day, and he was going to need it tonight.  
	
> (Act I) Chapter 6: Wibbly-Wobbly
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
The first blast had been easy to dodge for Jade. The magical build-up had been all too obvious in giving away the red unicorn’s intentions. All it took was a few quick steps to the right, and the beam of destructive energy flew over Jade’s shoulder and into something behind her, which exploded into tiny shrapnel, raining bits of whatever it was down onto her sprinting body. 

The next few shots had been harder, and Jade was forced a couple of times to leap over them, the discharge of energy singeing her stomach and legs. 

Jade cursed fluently as a particularly accurate beam blew away the street under her, sharp fragments being propelled into upper body and creating several lacerations on her green coat. She could feel their sting, but she forced herself to keep running, drawing the crazy unicorn’s attention away from the bystander that had been standing at the edge of the giant crater. 

How the crater got there, Jade didn’t even want to guess. 

She dived through the window of a house, glass shattering and peppering the carpet inside with tiny, sharp pieces. Pieces which Jade immediately landed in, causing another stream of swears to escape her mouth. 

She got up, wincing as the glass fell from her many cuts, red droplets following their descent. A terrified squeal brought her attention to four huddled figures, hugging each other in a corner of the room. The ponies looked at her in terror, eyes wide with apprehension. 

Shit. Jade thought furiously. These houses are still inhabited. I should probably-

A shrill grinding sound was heard as one of the walls crumpled and collapsed, leaving a veil of drywall dust clouding the hole. A beam of crimson magic cut horizontally through the fog, searing the air around it. 

Jade ducked under the beam, rolling to the side as it started to slant diagonally to intercept her. The arc of energy slammed into the ground, igniting the carpet and instantly melting the larger chunks of glass still lying on the floor. Jade launched herself up just enough to clear the beam, twisting in the air and landing smoothly on her hind legs behind the swath of the arc. She started to grin in momentary victory, until she remembered the family cowering in the corner. 

As she turned to face them and shout a warning, the beam cut across the rest of the room, colliding into the screaming, huddled forms with a visceral snap. A haze of blood sprayed onto Jade, and she watched, horrified, out of the corner of her vision as the four ponies were eviscerated in seconds, the arc of light swishing around in random patterns and decimating what little lingered of their bodies, painting the three remaining walls a dark, wet crimson.

The beam fizzled out of existence, only for a soft glow to take its place and surround the house. Jade galloped for the back door, bucking it off its hinges and escaping into the back alleys, just before the glow solidified and collapsed in on itself, crushing the house to dust. 

Jade had little time to admire the power of the unicorn, before a new arc of magic blasted through a house to her left, cutting it in half easily, and setting it on fire. The unicorn’s attacks seemed to bleed raw energy, as if the crazy pony had too much of it, and was trying to use it all at once. Despite this, she seemed to be barely slowing down, timing each of her strikes and blows perfectly and seamlessly, weaving an effortless streak of destruction. 

And it was all aimed at Jade. Great. Just splendid.

She darted into another house, grimacing at the fresh screams floating through the air behind her. She could stop for nopony; her mission, and the VIP’s were too important. She climbed up the stairs of the house, slamming the window open and climbing out onto the roof. The rough shingles provided good grip as she scaled up to the top, getting a good vantage point on her target. 

Despite her height and element of surprise, the arc of magic that ripped through the roof at her hooves proved that her plan had backfired rather quickly. Jade scrambled back, tripping on the apex of the roof and tumbling down the other side. Rolling at the last second, she leaped off the crumbling house and through the upstairs window of the next building, again landing in a pile of shattered glass. 

“Bucking hell!” Jade shouted, limping through the hallway she had landed in with renewed energy. “Enough with the glass, for Faust’s sake!” This unicorn was good, she’d give her that. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

She stumbled down the stairs of the building, running through a door leading to a spacious garage. She looked around the room, which consisted of hanging canvasses splattered with various colours and designs, and many tables, all cluttered with paintbrushes and pencils.

Jade jumped when she heard hooves alight on the floor above hers, walking slowly and calmly to the stairs she had just descended. Jade weaved quietly through the room, stepping tenderly around the cans full of brushes and the hanging art that adorned the garage, careful not to make a sound. If the unicorn didn’t know where she was, she couldn’t-

Creeeeeaaak.

As soon as she heard the groan of the door opening, she dove into cover behind a fresh canvas, still dripping paint, and held her breath. She lay on the floor in an uncomfortable position, waiting for a hint of a sound beyond the insolated room. Just when Jade thought that she couldn’t stand still any longer, the door slammed shut, creating a clanging echo throughout the garage. 

In the quiet, Jade could hear every step that the unicorn took, the clop of hooves resounding in the enclosed area threateningly. Slowly and silently, Jade stood up, crouching low and moving around the room to counter the unicorn. She froze when she heard a small ‘tsk-tsk’ sound from the other side of the garage. 

“You can come out little pony,” a quiet, elegant voice broke out. “I know you’re in here… I followed your trail…”

Jade looked down, panicked, and saw that the cuts on her chest and legs were bleeding quite profusely, leaving a tiny trail of red from where she had lain behind the canvas, and around the corner. She winced at her stupidity, and kept moving on three legs, using the other to try and staunch the flow of blood. 

Again she heard the voice. “All I want is to know how you seem to know all of my moves before I use them.” it explained condescendingly. “It gets quite annoying to watch a mere earth pony dance around my magic like it’s a game.” The voice spat the phrase ‘earth pony’ as if the very mention of the race made it filthy.

Jade glowered at the floor beneath her current hiding spot. It annoyed her to no end that even in a completely different time period, the different races were still segmented by the same status-quo, put down and stepped on. She could never stand these ponies, and it took all her will-power not to yell out something offensive to get back at the unicorn. 

She darted in between two tables, glancing quickly to the side and seeing her target with her back to her, looking underneath tables and poking at canvasses. Jade grinned, and looked ahead again, moving stealthily toward the door. 

“I could always just destroy the entire room you know.” Jade grimaced at the thought, but kept tip-toeing to the exit. “You’re only alive right now because I’m having an absolute blast searching for-”

Bleep!

Jade froze, and looked in horror down at her watch, which was now proudly displaying a line of holographic text across its crystal screen.

Jump charge capacity: 25%. Minor time manipulation enabled.  

“You’ve got to be bucking kidding me.” 

“Ah! There you are!” the tone was sickeningly jovial. “Now if you’ll just stay still…”

Jade was already moving by the time the attack came her way, sliding across the smooth cement and knocking over a table full of paint and brushes. The cans of coloured dye rang deafeningly on the hard floor, spinning and spilling their contents all over, dousing Jade’s hind hooves as she scrambled back up, only to hit the deck as another shot flew at her, this time blowing a hole in the wall.

“Come on,” cooed Lady Lulamoon, obviously enjoying herself immensely. “You can’t dance forever pretty!” She readied a new spell, and fired, the beam starting to curve in the air, following the earth pony with deadly accuracy. Jade lunged off a table at the last second, but the beam still grazed her left front hoof, sending her tumbling to the floor amidst a puddle of art supplies and blood. 

Jade screamed, clutching her hoof to her body tightly. In her long career of Time-Jumping, she had been shot, stabbed, burned, flayed, tortured, beat, imprisoned, and scarred. Nothing compared to the sudden, splintering pain that cycled through her hoof and blackened the skin, blowing nerve endings and spreading across her leg slowly, moving up. And this had been nothing but a glancing blow. 

Lady Lulamoon smiled in relief. “There! Now wasn’t that easy?” Jade didn’t answer, instead yelling in pain as the spell burrowed beneath her skin, adapting to fit its task and causing indescribable agony. Getting jerkily to three of her hooves, she moved towards the ragged hole in the wall with determined purpose. Lady Lulamoon just laughed, trotting after her with all the time in the world. 

Jade gasped as the spell moved into her knee, digging through the cartilage and muscle, steadily travelling towards its goal. Her heart. Her vision began to blur around the edges, her breathing came quick and halting. But Jade’s will-power remained locked onto the one chance at survival, her one viable escape route. 

An escape route that promptly shuddered and sealed back up, the chunks of wood and concrete flying back into place flawlessly, leaving no cracks in the wall, all the while surrounded by a crimson glow. Jade reached out in disbelief, finally reaching the wall and laying her good hoof on the sealed section.

Her thoughts grew muddled as the spell spread, clogging her veins and restricting her blood-flow. She became light-headed and slid down the wall dejectedly to her knees, whimpering in torment. Damn it… 

Lady Lulamoon sauntered over, nudging the kneeling pony lightly, giggling sadistically as she keeled over on the spot, gasping for breath. The little ground-pounder had put up quite the fight, she had to give her that. 

Jade rolled into a vague sitting position, propped up against the wall. The blur at the side of her vision was encroaching inwards, covering her world. S-stop it… she pleaded with herself. Stop giving up… she moved her hooves one by one, just to make sure they were all still there. She was very aware of the looming red shape leering down at her, waiting for her to draw her final breath. 

Then, something shiny on Jade’s hoof caught her eye. Shaking her head as much as she could, given her current state, Jade cleared her vision somewhat, peering dementedly down at the blinking watch strapped to her hoof. 

If she had had enough energy, she would have face-hoofed.

Right. She sighed inwardly, laughing a little at herself. 

Lady Lulamoon frowned. What reason did this pony have to laugh? She growled deep within her throat and bade her magic to work faster. As much as she wanted to enjoy this, she still had some old acquaintances to take care of, and this pony stood (or lay rather) in her way. 

Jade raised her hoof up to her eyes, squinting both at the exertion, and at the blurry, dancing dials on the machine. As much as she could make out, it was currently about 4:30 PM, and her charge was at 26%. It would have to do. 

The lower-left dial on the watch stopped spinning. Slowly, it moved backwards with a quick ticking sound, landing about three minutes earlier. If Jade was lucky, the watch would have enough energy to carry the action out.

Lady Lulamoon was confused now. Was the time of day really that import to this pony? Doing some mental math, she estimated the current time to be about four o’clock. An hour since she had entered the time-frame. Deciding that an hour was far too much already, her horn began to glimmer, preparing a spell to finish off the concentrating pony. 

She never got to use it. 

With a slight pop, and a smug smile, the green earth pony winked out of existence, leaving behind nothing but a trail of blood and paint. Lady Lulamoon blinked. 

She screamed. 

A feral screech of rage and confusion echoed through the garage, emanating from the furious unicorn standing in front of what used to be her victim. Now it was only a multi-coloured puddle on the concrete. 

Lady Lulamoon broke down, wailing and stamping on the area that used to hold the bloody ground-pounder. Again and again she brought her hooves down, cracking both them and the cement beneath them, splashing globs of paint all over herself in her blind rage. 

Then, she ceased to exist.


***


Jade warped back into reality in the hallway just outside of the door to the garage, this time appearing on ground level, but stumbling all the same. She leaned up against the door tiredly, closing her eyes and trying to ignore the throbbing pain in her leg, and the light-headedness that washed over her as the malicious spell set back to work attacking her heart. 

She hoped she had the right time. Otherwise this would just be a waste of time and resources. And Sigma hated wasting resources. Wow, she thought to herself suddenly. I really am getting tired if I’m worried about upsetting Sigma.

She grinned a bit, before she heard the sound of smashing glass and subsequent loud cussing from the floor above. Right on time.

The blurriness that had been held off momentarily by the rush of adrenaline had come back with a vengeance, clouding back into her sight almost immediately. She pressed harder into the door, both for stability, and for a distraction against the pain coursing through her. Then, that too began to fade away. 

She found herself fighting to keep her eyes open as the spell reached her heart. She no longer felt the agony she should no doubt be feeling, and instead a contented feeling of grogginess settled over her. 

Jade had just wrenched her eyes open for a third time, when a fuzzy green shape came hurtling around the corner, limping slightly. The blurry form came to an abrupt stop a couple of meters in front of her, almost tripping over her own hooves. 

Jade grinned sloppily at the hazy green blob, a trickle of blood seeping out of the corner of her mouth and running down her neck. 

“Hey sexy,” She greeted, slurring a bit as her heart slowed even more, and the feeling of sleepiness rose. She leaned against the door, motioning lazily with her good hoof.  “Don’t go in here. It’s not as cool as it looks.”     

The blurry form said something to her, but it was lost somewhere in the comfortable blankness that was becoming Jade’s entire world. 

And then her heart stopped completely. 
	
> (Act I) Chapter 7: What A Father Would Do
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
Nightlight hurt. 

It wasn’t just a normal, ‘burn your hoof on the stove’ hurt, or a ‘stubbed your hoof on a stool’ hurt. It was more like a compressing, burning, all-consuming hurt. Not that he even comprehended the pain.

Beneath his closed eyelids, he could hear screaming, and something akin to explosions, but that couldn’t be helped right now. Not when he was this sleepy. He lazily dragged his front hooves over the rough surface of his bed, subconsciously noting the little cuts that appeared in his fetlocks as they dragged across tiny, sharp bits of something. 

His hoof landed in something by his waist. He could feel whatever it was soaking into his fur, but he just snuggled farther into the hard mattress, not caring about anything in particular. 

Until something soft poked into his side. 

He stiffened reflexively. Velvet usually slept on the other side of the bed. So why was the poking coming from his left? There could be only one answer. 

“Twily?”

The name came out as a wet mumble. Something was tickling the back of his throat, and he fought the urge to cough as long as he could, knowing it was a fruitless effort. All at once, the coughing started, a coarse rasping that hurt his throat, scratching it raw. And it didn’t stop. Over and over he coughed, convulsing and hacking as he writhed on the ground. And suddenly, he was aware of the pain.

He slammed his hooves into the ground, whipped his head around, and did anything he could to distract himself from the awful, awful sensations floating through his senses. He yelled as he brought his hoof down again, cracking the appendage. 

He almost passed out. Nothing he had ever felt, not the crushing force of his blanket around his back legs, not the pounding, pulsing headache that wrought hell on his thoughts, could have prepared him for the splintering, nerve destroying pain that coursed through his hoof as it broke.

Nightlight screamed, he cried, he begged for it to stop, to leave and never come back. He held his limb to his chest, fully aware of the grinding agony that swept through him as the two ends of bone slid along each other, ripping muscles and popping cartilage out of place. 

Distantly, he could hear another voice, heartbroken and crying above him, but he didn’t care. The pain was taking over, driving him to the brink of insanity. At the edge of the cliff he perched, waiting to be thrown off into unthinking oblivion. He never did. 

Instead, a warm, smooth feeling spread though his limb, caressing the shot nerves and splintered bone. He could see a bright mulberry light shining through his closed eyelids as he slowly stopped writhing, allowing the feeling to sweep through his arm and set the bone, sealing it with an inaudible crick. 

Nightlight gasped, free of his agony. For a few more blissful seconds, he pressed his eyes closed harder, resisting his rise back into the real world. The world that had become his nightmare. When he finally snapped his eyelids open, everything came back to 

Nightlight in a rush of colours and emotions.

He saw he and his wife duelling Icani Lulamoon in their kitchen. He saw Twilight huddled under her bed, tiny hooves pressed resolutely over her ears in a futile effort for silence. He saw the devastating wave of power, the building falling with him and Twilight still inside. He saw the globe strike the back of his daughter’s head. And then nothing but pain. 

The soft thing poked him again, this time connected to a whimpering voice. “Daddy?”

Nightlight tilted his head to the left, almost crying with relief when he saw his foal, covered in dust and with a large bump protruding from the back of her head. But alive. 

“Twily…” Nightlight’s voice cracked with joy as he reached for his daughter. “You’re okay Twily…”

Twilight let the dirty, blood spotted hoof touch her with a rush of revulsion. But when she remembered who it was connected to, she leaned into the touch, new tears streaming down her already matted cheeks. The hoof stroked her mane, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her ear lovingly. 

“I… I told you it’d be okay, right honey?” The stallion asked rhetorically, a small smile splitting his features. “And it’s okay… you’ll be okay…”

Twilight clutched at her father’s hoof with both hers, pressing it into her chest possessively. “Y-yeah. I helped you daddy, I-I did it, and we’ll both be okay… right?”

Nightlight chuckled, despite the inane amount of energy it seemed to expend. “You sure did Twily. Y-you did it all by yourself, just like I knew you would… my talented little filly…”

The purple foal held back a loud sob, gripping her father’s hoof tighter. No more words were said, and the only sounds that were heard seemed distant, surreal. With his free hoof, Nightlight dabbled in the wet pool at his waist, his mind slowly beginning to make the connection. He followed the pool to where it sprung from his body, and stopped when he felt the solid mass of concrete pressing into his waist. 

Tears escaped from his own eyes as he averted his gaze to his lower body. He didn’t see it. All that confronted his vision when he looked for the source of bleeding was a large slab of his house, jutting out of the pavement where his back legs were supposed to be. He sighed and laid his head back, allowing his hoof to fall back into the pool of blood with a small splash.

He finally realized his predicament. No amount of healing magic from his special little filly could help him now. No matter how many bones she mended, he knew that the growing puddle of his blood was far too much to fix. He was dying. 

And his daughter was watching him.

Enriched with a new sense of purpose, he lifted his head up and looked Twilight straight in the eyes, tears blocking both ponies from seeing fully. He started to pry his hoof away from his daughter gently.

“Twilight.” He whispered. The filly pulled herself after the retreating hoof, grasping it again just over his chest. Nightlight didn’t get an answer. “Twilight. Let go of my hoof.”

She shook her head, letting a choking sob pass her lips. The sound was heart-wrenching to Nightlight, and he brought his other hoof up to push her off of him. When he started to apply pressure, Twilight collapsed, crying into his fur, never letting go of her captive limb. If she did, then her dad would leave. And he couldn’t go. Not yet… not ever.

Nightlight felt his energy quickly leaving him. But he wouldn’t let Twilight see him like this anymore. If he could spare her the hurt, he would. He would do anything for his little filly. He was about to plead with her again, when he heard hurried hoofsteps behind him. He twisted his head uncomfortably, and looked into the shining eyes of his wife, beholding the scene with a hoof clapped over her mouth in horror. 

“Velvet…” it was getting harder to talk, something Nightlight was very aware of. His wife stepped lightly over, as if the slightest disturbance could kill him. Which, at this point, it very well could. He reminded himself analytically. 

“N-Night?” she began, stuttering through her tears. “Night? …Oh Celestia, Night. Oh my Celestia… No. Nonono-”

“Dear,” Nightlight interrupted weakly. It was enough to stop Velvet in her tracks, staring in wide-eyed disbelief at her husband’s mangled body. “Velvet… please, you need to take Twilight and-”

In turn, he was interrupted by Twilight, who shot her head up, glaring at him through her tears. “No. No, I’m staying with Daddy. ‘C-cause you’ll be okay.” She turned her attention to her mother. “He’ll be okay right? Tell him he’ll be okay!”

Velvet was trapped. She looked undecidedly between her pleading daughter and her desperate husband, both telling her different things with their wide eyes. 

Help me with him.

Don’t worry about me. Please! Take her and go!

In the end, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then, she walked forward, toward the two. She leant over Nightlight, touching his face before pulling him into a kiss. When they broke away, their locked gazes told each other everything that had never been said, everything that now could never be said.

Velvet looked up at her tear-stricken daughter, who was watching and analyzing the scene in rapt attention. Twilight’s eyes widened as she realized what her mother’s decision was. A light-purple haze surrounded the filly, lifting her into the air kicking and screaming. 

Twilight held onto her father’s hoof for as long as she could, ignoring Nightlight’s pained expression as his daughter was yanked away from him.

“NO!” she screamed, her little hooves slipping on the blood-coated fur on her father’s arm. “NO! I CAN HELP HIM! LET ME GO! DADDY! DADDY!”

Nightlight choked on his reply, only partly due to the blood filling his throat. His heart broke as he watched his daughter, his Twily, be taken away from him.  It’s for the best.

“It’s okay Twily.” He managed with a smile, although he doubted she heard him over the sound of her yells. “I told you it’d be okay… I didn’t lie. You’ll be okay.” 

Twilight stopped flailing, holding onto only the very tip of his hoof now. She looked into his guilty expression with a look of rage on hers. “IT’S NOT OKAY! IT WONT BE OKAY! I CAN HELP YOU!”

Nightlight closed his eyes, trying to stop the cascade of fear and pain from leaking around his eyelids. He breathed, calming himself for what he was about to do. He opened his eyes again, staring at his daughter coldly. 

“No Twilight, you can’t. Stop trying to help me.”

It was like watching the air deflate from a balloon. The grasp on his hoof relinquished immediately, and Twilight was levitated, sobbing brokenly onto her mother’s back, all her rebellious energy sapped from her bones by one statement.

Stop trying to help me.

“Daddy?”

“No.” the tired response came, erasing all doubt. “No more. Go with your mother. Don’t argue with me, just go.”

“B-but, Da-”

“I said GO!”

Twilight stopped pleading, breaking down into the small comfort of Velvet’s back. Her daddy yelled at her. He never yelled at her…

Nightlight turned his attention to Velvet, resolutely demanding her understanding. “Velvet… go to the castle. If anypony can keep Twily safe, it’ll be Celestia. Make sure Shining's okay at Victus' sister's place, and go, f-fast as you can, and don’t stop for anything. G-got it?” 

Everything was quiet for a moment. Then, the crumpled, forgotten flyer enveloped itself in a blue glow, levitating and tucking itself snugly into the crook of Twilight's arm. The filly looked at it with a quivering lip, then at her father. He smiled weakly at her, an act which only served to increase her tears.

Velvet was still floored by the anger behind the yell, but nodded her head in understanding of his plan. As long as she had known Nightlight, she had only seen him raise his voice twice before now, once at Icani Lulamoon, and once at his own parents when they objected to him marrying a ‘commoner’. This revelation shook her to the core as she saw first-hoof how protective a father could really be towards his children and those he loved. She cried openly, but quietly as she turned away from her beloved, her husband, her Nightlight. She knew that if she looked back, even once, that she would lie down next to him and snuggle into his broken body until it was cold and stiff, rotting in the middle of the streets of Canterlot.

She noticed Twilight looking back at her father’s body, and turned her daughter gently around on her back so that she was facing forward. The action brought out a little bit of a struggle from Twilight, but it was quickly forgotten in the new flood of tears escaping her. Twilight burrowed her face into her mother’s mane, voicing her sadness unabashedly in wails of anguish. 

Velvet wanted to do the same, but she had to stay strong for her filly. Her tears dripped off her chin silently, leaving an indistinguishable trail back to the one pony she had ever loved. The stallion who had sacrificed everything for his family. 

Nightlight watched the retreating figures disappear down the street, and raised his gaze to the gleaming towers of Canterlot Castle in the backdrop. He let his head flop back finally, looking up at the beautiful blue sky, only marred at the edges by towers of black smoke that drifted up from the city.

He let his eyes drift closed, covering everything in a dark, inky blackness. The only thing he was aware of was the terrible sounds of dying ponies and burning buildings in the background. That, and his own ragged breathing getting slower and slower. 

The last thing he heard was the heavy, scraping footsteps of three separate creatures, each of them not quite equine. They snuffled around the scene, and broke out into the keening wail of a predator stalking its prey.

And Nightlight knew no more.   
	
> (Act I) Chapter 8: Timey-Wimey
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Great. Just splendid.

Jade thought as she darted into another house, grimacing at the fresh screams floating through the air behind her. She could stop for nopony; her mission, and the VIP’s were too important. She climbed up the stairs of the house, slamming the window open and climbing out onto the roof. The rough shingles provided good grip as she scaled up to the top, getting a good vantage point on her target. 

Despite her height and element of surprise, the arc of magic that ripped through the roof at her hooves proved that her plan had backfired rather quickly. Jade scrambled back, tripping on the apex of the roof and tumbling down the other side. Rolling at the last second, she leaped off the crumbling house and through the upstairs window of the next building, again landing in a pile of shattered glass.

“Bucking hell!” Jade shouted, limping through the hallway she had landed in with renewed energy. “Enough with the glass, for Faust’s sake!” This unicorn was good, she’d give her that. But that didn’t mean she had to like it.

She stumbled down the stairs of the building at a sprint, rounding the corner-

And nearly running flat-out into a bloody, paint covered pony leaning against the door to what looked like the garage, one of her hooves playing absent-mindedly with the corner of her black jacket. A jacket that looked vaguely familiar…

Just as Jade was about to shove her out of the way and run into the promising safety of the garage, the green earth pony grinned, despite the worrying amount of blood dripping in rivulets out of the corner of her mouth. 

“Hey sexy,” she started. Jade froze in her tracks, taking a good look at the beaten pony. She had to resist an angry face-hoof. The familiar looking pony’s smile grew, and she lazily flicked her hoof toward the door she was leaning on. “Don’t go in here. It’s not as cool as it looks.”

Then, she promptly collapsed, sliding down the door and leaving a streak of blood and acrylic stains along the wood panels. 

Jade growled. “Seriously? What did I do wrong?” the pony gave her no real answer as she lay, presumably dead, on the hallway carpet. She stepped over herself angrily, leaving her future self to bleed out on the floor. She couldn’t help it if she was an idiot in another part of the timeline. 

Soft hoofsteps sounded above, alerting Jade to the immediate problem at hoof. Her counterpart was already gone, leaving only her colourful streak of bodily fluids against the door that presumably lead to her death. For a crazy second, Jade considered going into the door, just to spite herself. 

She shook the thoughts out of her head, and used the only other door in the hallway. When she opened it, she darted out of the house and into the street, making sure to stay out of sight from the house. She slipped into another alley, moving along the wall carefully, not wanting to make the same mistake as her now past self. 

That was one of the interesting aspects of the job, Jade mused. Every once and a while, on a dangerous mission, she would stumble into a situation that she just couldn’t handle, either almost dying or finding it too difficult. When these rare occurrences happened, she was always surprised to find a future version of herself, usually beat up and exhausted, greeting her with a, “Hey sexy.” That was when she knew that something with what she was doing was about to go very awry, resulting in her death, or the death of her assigned VIP’s in a way that she could prevent.

Jade thought back to the first time she had been forced to warn herself away from imminent death. She had learned since then, although the possible consequences of a slip-up involving her different timelines still scared her immensely.

It was on her first real mission that she ran into trouble big enough to cause her to lose her life. It had been a shock, and somewhat of a strange relief to see herself standing backstage of the mayor of Manehattan’s victory speech, with a large caliber round through her left lung from a would-be assassin. She had thought that her watch was like the key to immortality, an instant reset button whenever she so chose. This was an assertion that had been stomped out upon her return to base. 

She flinched while running, remembering the verbal lashing that had occurred the day of her ‘death’. 

“You mother-bucking imbecile! Weren’t you listening in Basic?”

She hadn’t listened in Basic, for the record. It was in the debriefing room after the victory speech that her excitement of never dying was crushed into smithereens. From the two and a half hour scolding and demotion that had occurred, Jade had managed to find out that this abuse of her power not only was a serious breach in protocol, but it also threatened the very stability of space and time. 

At the time, Jade had been incredulous, casting doubt onto Sigma’s claims. Then, she was told what could have occurred. 
In her Basic Jumper Training, (or the part she had listened to anyway) Jade had learned that the common phrase, ‘Mother Nature doesn’t build in straight lines’ applied to literally everything. The common misconception of time is that it is a linear system, travelling in a straight line, forever forwards. This was not true. Time, it turned out, was represented in a giant circle, moving in oscillatory-like waves. 

It was true, albeit, that the circle would never actually connect with the beginning, instead spiralling inwards infinitesimally. It was an enormous spiral, moving just shy of the last rotation, but never touching it. It was explained -in dusty and graphic detail- how every function of time worked, and how it was represented on a graph.

She had gotten a quick overlay of this during her reprimand, leaving her sitting in the uncomfortable chair, waiting for the colonel’s rage to cool down. To her dismay, it never did, instead escalating into more heated yelling as he ‘kindly’ informed her of how her ‘Fancy-shmancy watch’ actually worked. 

An hour later, she was no closer to discovering what she had done wrong. She had, though, discovered that her watch used a strong magical pulse that was imperceptible to a normal pony’s senses to bring the oscillatory waves of time closer together in a targeted area, creating a shorter wavelength. It was explained to her in a much calmer voice by Doctor Linctus that it performed much like the 
Doppler Effect, with the distance between the waves getting smaller and smaller the closer it got to the point of reference, or in this case, Jade. 

At the point where it collided with the immediate space surrounding the point of reference, the waves of time get so close together that they start to repel each other, kind of like the same ends of a magnet. The waves will gather so close around the watch, that all matter, that being light, space, and sound, are all pushed away from in between the coalescing waves, leaving a tear in physical space. The time waves can never touch, so by halting their forward progress, one could control the size of the rip to a certain degree. 

This presented a problem for researchers when they first harnessed this knowledge and ability. The very first pony to actively test this system was obliterated, as his biological structure was classified as being a part of ‘all matter’, and he was literally pushed to pieces by the repelling energy of the time waves. Scientists later discovered that by bending the waves closest to the point of reference, they could create a form-fitting bubble of time that protected both the subject’s atomical structure, and their necessities, such as a stable body temperature and integrity of their bones.

From there, the time-bubble encompassed pony would exit their frame of time through the rip, angling themselves so that when they left their timeframe, they would move on the inside of the gigantic spiral of time and intersect with another segment of it, either earlier, or later down the spiral. As the spiral is always moving, not angling yourself properly could result in a complete miss of your intended target, falling too short or too far above the intended point in time. When you re-open the rip in the other time frame, the first thing you had to do was close up the rip, and carefully move the waves of time back into their original positions to avoid literally breaking all of time. 

It was at this point that Jade was dawning on the fact that she may have royally screwed up. What if she had accidentally crossed over her own rip while it was still open by going back to the same space that her past-self had occupied? Her eyes had nearly bugged out of her head when Linctus explained to her that she had actually done just that. 

He then went on to compare their way of traveling through time, and the normal way of traveling through time. While normally, we moved forward at a constant rate, it was like passing through a closed door by turning the handle and pushing. Their improvised ‘shortcuts’ through time resembled something more like encountering a closed door, and then blowing it open with gratuitous amounts of TNT. It didn’t just open the door, it blew open the wall, creating a much bigger space than what was needed. 

The colonel had informed her none so nicely, that jumping backwards or forwards in time anywhere within the frame of exactly ninety-point-two-seven hours, or three-point-seven-six days from the original jump, was risking the structural basics of the universe. 

Although the rips close up, the large tunnel that led to it still exists, very slowly healing itself. If one were to cross into the pre-dug space of one of these tunnels, it is not only uncomfortable for the Jumper, but also uncomfortable for the universe. 

Uncomfortable as in, ‘Could unravel reality’ uncomfortable. These intersecting tunnels through time were labelled, mala meus, or just simply mala. Translated directly from ancient Latin, it apparently meant ‘My Bad’. As it was a big problem, scientists set about trying to find a way past it. Instead, they found a limitation that proved both a relief and a curse.

They found out that the maximum amount of times that one could pass through their mala was approximately six. Past that, the theory was that the spiral of time would degrade quickly to the point of collapse. This, of course was only a theory, as the universe had not been pushed to the point of near destruction yet. And Jade was determined that she would not be the one responsible for the collapse of reality. 

She bolted across the street, mentally kicking herself in the shins for her carelessness. She hadn’t had reason to create a mala for a good year and a half, as far as she could tell. It was hard to tell how fast actual time progressed, especially when you spent most of it either underground, or in inter-temporal rifts.

Another one of those incessant beeps sounded from her watch. She skidded to a halt around a corner, pressing her back up against the hard stone and breathing rather heavily. Even with her extensive training and endless drills that were imposed on her in Basic, she was still surprised at how out of shape she was. She hadn’t run this far since popping up accidentally in a dragon’s cave when she mistimed a jump. 

Jade cast a hasty glance down at the device, her body still tensed to run for her life from the inevitable flying beams of death from her unshakable pursuer. After a couple of seconds, she realized that no beams of energy had flown her way for a while now, something that had completely gone over her head when she had been running. 

She peeked her head around the corner, and saw nothing but an empty street. Well, mostly empty. Aside from the occasional screaming city resident, there was nopony to be seen, least of all a malicious, scarlet coated one. 

Thoroughly confused, Jade looked closely at her watch, consulting it more carefully. Nothing seemed amiss, until she brought up the tracker. 

Jade watched in shocked dismay as she watched the tiny, red holographic dot moving swiftly over the blue screen. But the dot was not following her. It was going in the opposite direction. Her heart dropped into her stomach when she realized where the dot’s path was taking it.

With another muttered curse and a swelling sense of panic, she bolted after the blinking dot, hoping against hope that she wasn’t too late.


***


Icani Lulamoon didn’t get mad.

At least, that’s what she kept telling herself, over and over as she chased the infuriating green earth pony through building after building, always one step behind. She had aborted using her destructive magic now, as it proved nothing except to weaken herself, however slightly. Instead, she would wait until the pony tripped up. 

Except she never did. 

Still reciting the mantra, a lady must never lose control, she nonchalantly blew the door off another house, growling as she saw the flick of a tail round the corner, just out of her sight. Lady Lulamoon trotted past a bloodstained door, her every intention set on catching and killing the elusive pony in the most painful way possible. 

That was, until she heard the keening wails of her Vraals in the distance. 
She daintily cocked her head toward the sound, flicking her ears slightly and she felt like she was coming out of a kind of trance. Why was she wasting her time with one pony? No matter how irritatingly intrusive the pony was, her own quest for power remained her top priority.

Casting one more malicious look in the general direction of the fleeing pony, Lady Lulamoon huffed and turned her tail, teleporting on top of a nearby roof to better see her beasts. Once she was on top of the roof, she felt a particular twinge of anger toward herself, as she realized the obvious advantage of teleportation she held over her green prey. 

No matter. She was done with that ground-pounder now. Eyes on the prize, Icani.

It did not take her long to pinpoint the Vraals, with their frequent screeches, the plumes of smoke and the cries of hapless victims getting in their way. Lady Lulamoon smiled. It would not be long before they found Velvet and her usurper offspring via the mental message she kept coursing through their mangled brains. 

Find them. Kill the mare. Leave the foal.

In quick bouts of teleportation, Lady Lulamoon jumped her way across the rooftops of Canterlot, curiously trailing the path of fire and blood left in the Vraals’ wake. With rising amusement, she realized that Velvet was heading towards the one place that could possibly save her. The castle. 

Not that she’d ever get there in time.

And with that thought, Lady Lulamoon closed in.
	
> (Act I) Chapter 9: Haven
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Velvet had never been so scared in all her life. 

She had birthed two foals, dealt with her husband’s narrow-minded parents, and took part in a magical duel to the death with a psychopathic unicorn, who obviously wanted nothing more in life than to end her. 

But none of that stood up to the adrenaline-pumping, breath-catching terror that shot through her as she sprinted down yet another cobbled street, remaining just a few steps in front of her pursuers. She was very aware of Twilight gripping her neck, her small face buried in her mother’s mane as she ran, the foal bouncing uncomfortably on her back. 

One of the freaks roared again, a grating, piercing sound that made Twilight sob harder into Velvet’s soft mane, and made her mother run just a bit faster, fully intent on keeping the abominations away from her little filly. 

Velvet had never felt this terrified. Tear tracks streaked their way down her face, cooling and dripping off her snout with the force of both the wind, and the speed of Velvet’s galloping. She gasped in exertion, her lungs burning as she rounded the corner, listening to the cobblestones behind her being ripped up under the jagged claws of the things chasing her. 

She could almost feel the leader of the pack breathing down her neck, its hot, blood-filled breath making her skin tingle as it washed over her. She could smell the remnants of its previous victims, what remained of their eviscerated bodies tinging the gleaming teeth red. If she stopped for a second, if she looked back, it would be over. Twilight would be killed, and Nightlight’s sacrifice would have been in vain. 

A fresh wave of tears cascaded down her muzzle at the thought of her husband. When she had left, he had still been breathing, although with difficulty. How long had he lasted after she had abandoned him? How long had he lain there, crushed under the pieces of their house, watching the city burn around him?

And the freaks… they had caught on to Velvet not too long after leaving their home, sniffing them out and tracking them like it was a sick game of hide and seek. Had the beasts come across Nightlight? Had he lain there, helpless as the three former ponies approached him, hide glistening with gore, teeth gnashing in delight as they surrounded and devoured her beloved? Was that him that she could smell coming out of the monster’s mouth, his blood that was flecking Twilight as she hung onto her mother for dear life? 

With difficulty, and a sob, Velvet pushed the thoughts out of her mind, trying to focus on the task at hand. She had always been a practical mare, and she knew that there would be plenty of time to pay her respects later. The analytical way these thoughts came across Velvet left her shuddering mid-step, almost biting the dust in front of the predators. 

She was disgusted with herself, that she could feel so indifferent about his death. That she could have left him so easily, even if it was at his own behest. The only thing that kept her going at this point was her final promise, and the means to complete that promise clinging tightly to her, crying loudly into her fur. 

She heard the beasts getting closer, and frantically threw a spell behind her at the feet of her pursuers. She heard them screech in surprise and pain as the cobblestones erupted around them, flying up at them with vicious speed. 

To Velvet’s dismay, the stones only succeeded in aggravating the freaks, as they rushed forward with renewed vigor, personal revenge flying into the mix of predatory instincts and telepathic prompts from their master. 

Velvet’s breath came in ragged gasps, her chest heaving as she tried to keep her lead ahead of the predators. Just as she thought she might collapse from the strain, the castle came into view, towering, like a perfect flower above the burning city. How had Lulamoon worked so fast? The scope of the destruction took up a large swath of the city, and yet this whole thing had only started a couple of hours ago. 

With new energy, she sprinted to the ornate gates of the castle, her teary eyes making out the forms of at least a dozen guards standing vigilant in front of them. The sight didn’t deter her in the slightest, even when a sharp shout came from the guards, warning her to stay back by order of the princess. Velvet couldn’t care less if the order was issued by Faust herself, the beasts were not going to get their way with her filly today. 

What did almost make her falter, was the gleaming spear points that were leveled at her as she got nearer to her safety. 

“Please!” she screamed, the cry coming out raspy and shrill. “Please, they’re right behind me, help me!”

The guards halted as they saw the lumbering forms of the Vraals careen into view, seething in rage and blood-lust. The soldiers reluctantly moved to let her past, one of them opening the gate and letting Velvet slip in without so much as a nod of acknowledgment. Then, the guards got back into their formation, just as the three beasts slammed into their ranks, scattering bodies and ripping though armour effortlessly.

Velvet took this in as she ran, trying to cover Twilight’s eyes as her daughter looked on in rapt attention at the gory battle. Soon, the guards lay dead, nothing left but visceral body parts and dying screams fading into the din. The Vraals threw themselves at the locked gate, snarling and biting down on the golden bars, distorting the metal.

Velvet made it a little bit farther, before collapsing on her knees in front of the staircase leading into the castle. A panicked shout of, “Velvet?!” made her look up into the eyes of a familiar-looking guard as he knelt next to her and Twilight. 

Velvet’s world was a blur, colours and sounds melting together in a cacophony of exhaustion and fear. She got her head together long enough to gasp out an instruction to the guard beside her. 

“Victus? G… get her inside!”

The soldier nodded understandingly, and began to peel Twilight off of Velvet’s back, only to see the filly hold on tighter, screwing her eye shut in dread. Her mother reached a numb hoof behind her and began caressing Twilight’s mane, brushing it out of her face. 

“Twilight, listen to me, okay sweetheart?” she began, carefully assessing her daughter’s reactions. “You have to go with the nice stallion, okay? You remember him, he’s Victus, one of D-daddy’s friends. He’ll keep you safe, I…” Velvet’s mouth was suddenly dry. She knew the improbability of the statement she was about to make. “I promise.”

Twilight stared at her with her beautiful violet eyes, the orbs glassy with unshed tears. “Is… is dad going to be okay? He said he would be… he doesn’t lie…”

Velvet choked down a sob, hugging her filly to her chest. She couldn’t bring herself to tell the truth, to see the last flames of hope die in her daughter’s eyes. “Y-yes Twily,” she lied through her sobs. “He- he’ll be here, he’s going to show up, and everything’ll be fine… it’ll be okay…”

They were silent for a while, both crying and hugging on the steps of the castle, listening to the relentless pounding of the Vraals on the wrought gates. Velvet gave her daughter one last kiss to her forehead, before levitating her to the ground in front of the empathetic-looking Victus. 

The stallion took off his helmet, allowing the enchantment on the armour to lift and leave dark red fur in its wake. He knelt to Twilight’s level, placing the helmet on the stone beside him with a clink and reaching out a hoof to the foal. “Come on, kiddo. Let’s get you safe.”

The small purple filly took one last look at her mother, who nodded tearfully, and then tentatively grabbed the guard’s hoof, clutching at it like it was a lifeline. 

The stallion left his helmet on the ground where it lay, allowing his natural colouration to show through. He knew that it would help calm the filly down if he looked somewhat normal. After all, he had two of his own who were the same way with strangers. 

He locked eyes with Velvet, and nodded. “And where are you off to?”

Velvet looked down, half ashamed, half enraged. The feeling inside her had been growing since her duel with Icani, and now the burning need for recompense smouldered in her heart. While Lady Lulamoon lived, Twilight was at risk, that much was certain. “I’m… going to find somepony.” She said flatly. 

The red stallion stared at her sadly. “I understand. Just… make sure you come back in one piece Vel. You have a filly here that needs you.”

Velvet almost reconsidered. She almost gave in and stayed here, safe with her daughter. And then she remembered Nightlight, dying and bleeding on the cold stone street. She thought of his last words to her.     

Velvet… go to the castle. If anypony can keep Twily safe, it’ll be Celestia. Make sure Shining's okay at Victus' sister's place... Go, f-fast as you can, and don’t stop for anything. G-got it?

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Twilight would be safe. Nightlight would be avenged. And Icani would pay.

“Please, just make sure she gets to the Princess,” Velvet whispered. “I can take care of myself.” And with that, she turned around and trotted shakily to the gates, barely comprehending the three monsters waiting for her there, still beating at the defenses. 

She’ll be okay… she’ll be okay… she’ll be okay…

Then, the gates broke down, sending the Vraals streaming into the courtyard.


***


Jade heard the clanging, entire blocks before she reached the castle. 

Her previous tiredness forgotten, she all-out sprinted towards the castle, hoping against hope that she was not too late. 

She skidded the corner without missing a beat, not pausing at all at the sight of the beautiful gates crashing down under the onslaught of rage from the Vraals. The legion of guards behind the wall tensed, lowering their weapons in readiness.

Make every second count.

The freaks hit the ranks of guards, but instead of being completely torn apart like Jade had seen before, they held their ground, dispersing and getting the attention of all three of the monsters on a couple of ponies at a time, all the while jabbing and stabbing at them when their backs were turned. 

It worked for a couple moments, until one of the beasts broke free of the circle of soldiers, and thundered up the path- straight towards a pale grey unicorn striding down to meet it. With a small jolt of panic, Jade realized that the unicorn was the second VIP. 

And she was walking right at the magical killing machine with fire in her eyes. 

No, I’m not losing another one!

Jade gained speed as she galloped through the broken gates towards the fight between the two Vraals and the remaining guards. From inside her jacket she pulled her long knife, spinning it gracefully in one hoof. She ran for the brawl, letting out a cry of exertion…

And leaped.

She pushed off from the ground, flying over the first guard’s head by a whole meter and landing with her two rear hooves on the back of one of the Vraals. The instant her hooves touched the altered skin, she sprang again, coiling only for a moment before soaring in a graceful backflip over the rest of the battle, not missing a step as she landed. 

The beast roared its indignancy at being used as a spring-board, but Jade was already gone, gaining quickly on the run-away Vraal approaching her VIP.

She saw the Vraal tense in anticipation, back-spines twitching unnaturally. It roared at the unicorn in front of it, unaware of the earth pony approaching from behind. It coiled, ready to pounce at its target, but Jade was in motion, racking her knife back behind her as she flew, directly on course with the Vraal’s back. 

As Jade landed, she twisted with a loud cry and plunged the knife hilt deep into the thick hide of the beast, causing an ear-splitting wail. She barely comprehended the look of shocked recognition on the unicorn’s face as she ripped the knife out, tossed the blade high into the air and spun around, slamming both hooves into one of the branching spines on its back.

Looking back on it, she had been sure that would work. She would have stabbed it, threw the knife into the air, and bucked one of the spines off the Vraal’s back, jumping over the beast’s head, catching the knife as it fell and plunging the blade into its skull.

What actually happened, was that everything went according to plan, until the ‘bucking the spine off’ part. As opposed to the scheduled clean snapping sound she should have heard, her hooves instead made a dense thock sound, and she bounced off its back and onto the stones in front of it, slightly dazed. 

The knife fell beside her with a disappointed clatter.

Jade shook her head, and looked up, straight into the mouth of the Vraal. She barely had time to curse her luck before she dived under the bite, leaving the Vraal to slam its mouth into the ground where she had been lying only moments ago. Her knife went skittering into the lush grass a few meters away.

She rolled out from under the Vraal, jumping to her hooves in disbelief. On the Vraal’s back, the spines stuck out, stalwart and perfect as ever, hardly a crack to be seen on their surfaces. The Vraal dug its face out of the dirt and turned furiously to its aggressor, forgetting about the grey unicorn still standing in the same place, looking stunned. At least part of my plan worked.

Unfortunately, Jade was now faced with a slight problem. A vicious killing machine stood between her and the only weapon she had brought with her. She stood against a being twice her size that was armed to the teeth, and all she had was her bare hooves. 

I’ve had worse odds.

The Vraal roared again, and charged her, flexing its claws and gnashing its teeth. Just before it reached her however, a jet of violet magic burst on its side, sending it flying sideways and missing its mark by inches. Jade looked in appreciation at the unicorn, who was leveling her horn at the Vraal again, preparing another spell. “Much obliged!” 

The unicorn grinned, before letting loose another spell at the Vraal, knocking it back down mid-rise. It shrieked at her, spittle flying out of its maw in rage, a fact largely ignored by both mares. Jade ran for the patch of grass that her knife had landed in, searching frantically with her hooves in the thick foliage. She could hear the unicorn blasting the Vraal again and again behind her with magic, and the clangs and yells of the ongoing battle between the rest of the guards and the two other beasts.

The magic blasts stopped for a moment, and Jade’s ears twitched. Instinctively, she dove to the side, just as the Vraal came barrelling past, just missing her again. From her splayed out position in the grass, Jade cast a reproachful look at the unicorn, who looked exhausted from her endeavors. 

The Vraal looked confused now. It had two ponies in front of it for almost a minute, and had yet to kill either one. Its vision narrowed in on the green one lying on the ground, and charged again. 

Jade panicked, scuttling backwards as fast as she could go, away from the beast, but it was still catching up. Suddenly, her hoof touched something hard amongst the lush, soft grass. Desperately, she wrapped her hoof around it, bringing it to bear in front of the charging Vraal and closing her eyes. 

SHUNK.

SNAP. 

After a couple of seconds had passed, and Jade realized that she was not in fact dead, she opened her eyes a crack. 

The jagged, broken end of a spear stuck out of the Vraal’s right eye, displacing the eyeball slightly. From the wound, a dark red, almost black liquid spurted, pooling on the grass under its head and getting all over her hind legs. Jade looked at her hoof, and lifted up the broken end of the spear she clutched to her eye level. 

“Huh.” She murmured, tossing the broken handle away and standing up with a breathless laugh. “That could have gone worse.”
	
> (Act I) Chapter 10: Cutting The Strings
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	
Twilight plodded hastily along beside her armoured escort, struggling slightly to match her own tiny hoofsteps to his long, powerful gait. The guard noticed her plight and slowed down, allowing her to run at a comfortable pace while holding his outstretched hoof in a tight, fearful clamp. 

Most ponies would have trouble hobbling at a decent speed with only three hooves to work with, but Victus had gone through rigorous training for the feat, insisted upon by his clingy foals. When the two little fillies weren’t climbing his back or hanging off his wings, they were leading him around with each of his sturdy hooves clutched in their adorable, inescapable grasp. 

The guard and the foal moved with a hasty urgency through the large doors of the palace, both trying their best to ignore the sounds of battle going on behind them. As the doors closed behind them, Victus breathed a sigh of relief, slowing his trot to a walk and turning his attention to Velvet’s daughter. 

She had grown since last he had seen her, although that was to be expected. Still, two years had done favours to the small filly, as he could see by her healthy body and lengthening horn. Victus doubted that Twilight remembered him at all, and had probably just gone with him at her mother’s insistence. He decided to break the ice to calm her down before she got too uncomfortable in the presence of a stranger. 

“So,” he began slowly, choosing his words carefully. “It’s, uh… been a while, huh ‘Twi?”

Twilight stiffened at the name, puffing out her lip and raising her head indignantly. “Only daddy can call me that.” She said softly, tenseness flooding her shoulders. 

“Yeah, Nightlight always did have an affinity for abbreviations.” Victus mused, mostly to try and gain himself some sort of association with the filly. Twilight looked up at him, confused. 

“You… you knew daddy?”

Victus chuckled as their hooves came into contact with the plush rug in the hallway. “Sure did kiddo. Weren't you listening to your mom? I knew him way back when, when he was still a nerdy little colt in grade school.” He cast a sideways glance at Twilight, gauging her reactions. “Y’know, when dinosaurs ruled the earth.”

That earned him a small giggle. “He’s not that old!”

The guard smiled. “Are you sure? Because I’m pretty sure I remember me and him riding to school on stegosauruses and pterodactyls!”

“Nuh-uh!” insisted Twilight, now smiling a little. “Stegosauruses weren’t around at the same time as pterodactyls, silly!” she thought for a moment. “Or maybe that was the dimetrodons…”

Victus looked surprised. “The what-rodon?”

The filly looked up at him with an excited face that said, ‘you’re about to learn something!’. “The dimetrodons! They kinda looked like stegosauruses, only they had a frill on their back instead of pentagonal spines that helped regulate their body temperature. They lived in the Permian era!”  

Victus gaped. “…How old are you again?”

Twilight’s chest puffed out proudly. “I’m ten-and-a-half, mister Victory!”

“Victus,” he corrected gently, still astounded by the amount of knowledge the foal contained. “You know a lot for a mare your age.”

The radiant smile coming off Twilight was positively infectious. He had hit the good stuff with that comment. “Mom says that too!” she leaned towards him conspiratorially, causing them to stop in the middle of the hallway. “She says I know more than daddy, but daddy knows a lot of stuff.”

Victus chuckled again, thinking of his school days with Nightlight. At first, Night’s parents had objected to him going to a normal school instead of an all-unicorn school, but Night had won the argument in the end. Good thing too, because he probably would have lost it at a formal school. 

“See?” Twilight continued, offering him a crumpled, dirty, and ripped flyer in weak telekinetic grasp. Victus took it from her with his wingtip, and held it out in front of him. 

“Princess Celestia’s school is taking students again?” 

Twilight nodded confirmation. “Yup! My audition’s next Tuesday! Dad says I’m gonna get it for sure, but I just learned how to turn a page with my magic… I don’t think I’m good enough…”

Victus smiled reassuringly and patted her on the back with a wing. “I’m sure you’ll do fine kiddo. Once this whole fiasco blows over, I’m sure you’ll pass with flying colours!”

Twilight got quiet at that last remark. “Yeah. Once this is all over…”

The guard noticed her sudden drop in enthusiasm, and grimaced understandingly. “You’re worried about your dad, huh?” the filly nodded tearfully, sniffling. 

“Well, I’ll tell you what,” Victus consoled, “Your dad may not look like much, but he’s a fighter. This one time, there was this kid who was getting bullied pretty much every day, and your dad got sick of it.”

Twilight looked up, intrigued. “W-what’d he do?”

Victus grinned in nostalgic remembrance. “I remember what he said to a tee. The kid had just got pushed over by three of the bullies, and Night just walked over and said, ‘You guys are just a bunch of egotistical morons. If your stupid egos were any bigger, you wouldn’t fit in through the door to class!’.”

Twilight’s eyes shone. “Really? What happened next?”

“Uh,” Victus rubbed the back of his head with a wing. “The bullies stopped picking on the kid…”

As young as she was, Twilight could see the exception hanging in the air. “But…”

“But,” he continued, “One of them turned around and clocked your dad in the face.” Twilight grimaced. “He had that bruise for weeks! But after the bully hit him, he just got really quiet… and the next thing we knew, the bully was hanging upside-down from the flag-pole!”

Twilight gasped. “Really?” she thought for a second. “Was the bully hurt?”

Victus shook his head. “Naw, just scared out of his wits. Night got a suspension, the kid got a scare, and I got a laugh. All’s well that ends well.”

They rounded the corner in a thoughtful silence, one in deep thought, and the other in nostalgia. As they trotted towards the throne room door Victus couldn’t help but notice the lack of guards in front of the door. Understandable, as there was a disaster going on outside. Getting uncomfortable, Twilight spoke again. 

“Aren’t you worried about your family?”

Victus nodded sagely. “Yes, of course I am. I would have abandoned my post to collect them already if the kids weren’t in Cloudsdale visiting their aunt. Your brother's with them too, from what I understand. As far as I know, this isn’t happening there, so as long as Dandy, Lily and Shining stay put, they’ll be fine.”

A look of revelation passed over Twilight. “Oh! You’re Dandy’s dad! I remember her from Magic Kindergarten!” she shuddered at the memories.

“Yup, Iris and I were lucky enough to be blessed with both a unicorn, and a pegasus foal!” He looked slightly confused for a moment. “Though I don’t know how…”

Twilight still was unsettled. “What about your wife?”

Victus gave a booming laugh as they approached the door. “Believe me, she’ll be fine. If her right hook is any judge, Iris could fight off one of those beasts outside with her wings tied behind her back!”

Twilight smiled thoughtfully. She had been scared of Victus a couple of minutes ago, but now she thought he was pretty cool. Even if Dandy had been kind of mean to her in school.

Victus smiled as the foal at his side tightened her grip on his foreleg, not out of fear, but out of comfort. He was a couple of steps away from the door, and reached out his hoof to knock on the ornate golden designs.

A slight pop behind them made his hoof stall in its action. Against his better judgement, Victus looked over his shoulder at the source of the sound.

A cold blade drew a scarlet line across his throat, almost invisible against the red fur on his neck. 

Victus stood for a second more, gasping raggedly through the hole in his neck, watching the carpet below stain with the blood gushing from his ruptured arteries. Then, he fell limply to his knees, keeling to the floor with a dull thud, Twilight’s screams echoing in his ears.


***


Outside in the courtyard, things were quieting down a little. 

In addition to Jade’s kill, the two other Vraals had succumbed to the relentless stabbing and slashing of the royal guards, the last of them letting out another keening wail before three separate spears entered its neck at different angles, sending the beast twitching to the ground. 

The remaining guards cheered as it hit the floor, a couple of them electing to make sure that the Vraals were finished. Black, foul-smelling blood poured in torrents from their decapitated necks, and the heads were thrown into a pile off to the side for later disposal. 

Velvet still stared at Jade as the green earth pony tried her best to get the grass stains out of her black jacket, to no avail. Velvet realized that this was the very same pony that had distracted Icani after their duel, and was in no shortage of questions for her. 

“Are you following me?” First and foremost.

Jade froze in her cleaning, twitching her ear in acknowledgement to the inquiry. One of the first rules to be abided by when becoming a Jumper is to avoid direct contact with your assigned VIP or target if at all possible. She could either come up with an excuse to cover for herself, or she could come clean and make the whole next part of the operation cleaner and easier. 

“In a sense,” Jade admitted, abandoning her futile cleaning efforts. “Though I assure you, not with any malicious intent.” She cocked her head slightly. “Actually, completely opposite of malicious intent.”

Velvet just looked confused, though she had seen no reason to distrust this pony as of yet. “Then why are you following me?”

Jade grinned. This was the good part. Either Velvet would try to understand and agree to help her, or she would freak out and start running as fast as she could in the opposite direction. Jade took a breath. 

“You have been assigned to me by the Temporal Control Agency -TCA for short- to make sure that no harm befalls you from forces including, but not pertaining to, aliens, rouge agents, assassins, power-hungry anarchists, incensed magicians, various forms of the undead, allergic reactions, high falls, feral beasts, psychotic masochists and most importantly, the mare you know as ‘Icani Lulamoon’.”

Velvet looked like she was going to interrupt, but Jade forged onwards, wanting to get this all out of the way early. Nine times out of ten, it worked out in her favour to let her VIP’s know early on what exactly was going on, and why exactly she was doing it. The other one time was when her VIP had actually turned out to be a sentient, shape-shifting puddle that had taken on the form of her VIP. That had been particularly painful. 

“Mrs. Lulamoon, or the one you fought against in your house, is actually the Icani Lulamoon from about fifteen years from now, who got pissed at your daughter’s success and Celestia’s praise to your family. On a jealous whim, she broke into Starswirl’s vault of magic spells and activated a time-traveling spell that sent her back to now, in order to stop your Twilight from achieving Celestia’s favour and becoming her student.” 

“Wha-”

“I’m not finished!” Jade exclaimed. “Due to the highly experimental and dangerous spell that Lulamoon used, the resulting bleed-off of magic from crudely ripping a rift in time has enamoured her to the point of insanity. It’s like getting a high off of Zap, only you have a pretty much unlimited pool of magic to draw from, which makes Lulamoon not only unstable, but very powerful. Wait,” Jade stopped herself with an outstretched hoof and a look of pondering. “Have you guys created Zap yet? No? Okay, never mind. It’s basically a debilitating hallucinogen that accelerates dopamine and epinephrine in your system to unbelievable levels, causing a really good feeling and lots of bright colours.

“Anyway, the TCA appointed me to guard you and your family from any and all of the aforementioned dangers, because apparently you guys are important to the timeline for some reason. I didn’t really pay attention to the dossier, but Twilight does something super important about fifty years from now, and any disruptions in the regularity of her pre-determined life will alter her existence so that she does something completely different, something probably catastrophic. Also, Lulamoon’s time rift is crossing over mine, creating an abnormality in the universe that we call a mala. If she does anything too drastic to agitate it, like, oh, I don’t know, cross over it four more times in the course of three days, the universe will collapse and time will stop working properly, crossing timelines over one another randomly, and crashing a bunch of delicate things into each other that are pretty important. So yeah, that’s why I’m following you in a nutshell, and why we should probably make sure your daughter is safe.” Jade bit her lip, thinking about anything she may have missed. There was always something.

“Oh yeah!” Jade exclaimed in recollection. She puffed out her chest proudly. “I’m a Time-Jumper!”

Jade didn’t envy the ground under Velvet’s jaw.

Once the thoroughly confused unicorn had picked her chin up from the floor, Velvet studied Jade in a way not unlike worry for Jade’s sanity. “Okay…” the doubt was evident in her tone. 

Jade sighed impatiently. “Oh come on! I just saved your life twice in one day and killed a magically altered pony with nothing more than my knife and a discarded spear! Speaking of my knife…” she dropped to her knees and began searching the grass again for her blade. 

Velvet approached the pony carefully, wary of her despite the seed of truth that had been planted in her brain. “So… you know about Icani Lulamoon?”

Jade stopped searching for a moment and rolled her eyes. “Yes, I know of Lulamoon. I know her place of residence, habits, favorite food, the works.” She turned around seriously. “She’s allergic to bananas.”

Velvet began to comprehend Jade’s earlier speech about the recent happenings. Something registered in her mind that chilled her to the bone. “Wait… you said that Twilight’s in trouble?”

“Yeah,” confirmed Jade, still rummaging for her weapon. Why did Celestia have to plant such thick grass? “But she’s probably okay, Lulamoon’s only just entering the castle now.”

“WHAT?”

“Aha!” Jade exclaimed as she procured her elusive knife from the grass and plants. “Found you!” stuffing the weapon into her jacket, she turned happily and asked none to politely, “What was that?”

“She’s in the castle!?” yelled Velvet, making Jade comprehend the ominous implications of her statement. “I thought you were supposed to protect her!”

Jade’s eyebrows knitted in realization, and she lifted the watch to her eye-level. Sure enough, the little red dot on her tracker was steadily approaching the green one, who was just outside the doors of the throne room accompanied by a grey dot. 

She was about to lower the tracker and run for the castle doors when a shrill beep emanated from the watch, signalling a disruption in the temporal curve of the universe. Seconds later, another dot -this time black, with the numbers ‘10-1-4-5’ inside it- blipped onto the screen, just behind the green and grey ones. 

Then, the grey dot disappeared.

Jade froze in shock and disbelief. The analytical part of her mind informed her that there were now three mala in existence in this time frame, three away from destroying the structural integrity of the universe. The other part of her mind focussed completely on the numbers inside the little black dot that was now heading slowly towards the green one. 

10-1-4-5.

“Shit.”
	
> (Act I) Chapter 11: Of Knives and Needles
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

	Lady Lulamoon sauntered into the castle doors with all the time in the world, and none of the cares. She walked past the last remaining Vraal as it killed one more pony before being brought down spectacularly. She passed the shell-shocked form of Velvet standing and looking aghast at the green earth pony getting shakily to her feet in front of another dead Vraal.

If it were any other time, Lady Lulamoon would have stopped and killed both of them, just for the fun of it; old times’ sake. But right now, she had a mission to accomplish, and a goal in sight.

She had just seen the retreating forms of Twilight and a guard disappear inside the front door as she entered the courtyard. As Lady Lulamoon stepped daintily around the carnage on the grass, she cast a furious look at Velvet, who still had her back turned. It would be oh-so easy just to plant a spell or a spear in her back, but even one second of distraction, and she would miss her deadline.

So with a long-suffering sigh of disappointment, she entered the doors of the palace with no blood shed on her part. The sacrifices a lady must make to achieve her ends were nigh-impossible to handle, but she would manage. 

Despite being a mare of high standards and ranking, she had only ever been in the castle twice before, and never in another timeline. The changes were subtle, but they existed. The tapestries on the walls that muffled her quiet whistling were a darker pallor than they had been in her time, probably something to do with Princess Luna’s return. 

Lady Lulamoon snorted disparagingly. Luna was pathetic, a snivelling grub at the hooves of her sister. And still, Celestia paled in comparison to the pure magic pulsing through Icani’s veins. The pool of magic that she had noticed when she first stepped into Canterlot Square from the rift had been impressive, and ever since then, it had only grown in power, along with her confidence. 

Celestia would fall, and the world would know of the full power of the Lulamoon branch. The Princesses would acknowledge her as their better, or they would be destroyed. 

The thought brought Lady Lulamoon comfort as she continued her stroll in the grand castle. 

She sped up when she heard light conversation floating around the corner, that of a small filly and a guard. Lady Lulamoon smiled as she rounded the corner to see the guard raise a hoof to knock on the throne room door. 

Suddenly, there was a small popping noise, and a green pony wearing a clean, dark jacket fizzled into existence, waiting only a second to gain her bearings before she swung her weapon in a wide arc toward the guard. 

The blade caught the soldier’s neck as he turned, spraying blood and bits of his trachea all over the wall and floor with the force of the swing. He gasped for a second, then fell over, twitching one more time before laying still against the soft carpet of the hall. 

Immediately, the filly began to scream, falling onto her flank and pushing herself away from the body on the floor beside her. She pushed herself into the door and kept screaming, with her eyes locked on the corpse of her guardian. 

It was a good thing the doors to the throne room were mostly sound proof.

The pony in the jacket silently approached the filly, ignoring the high-pitched screams of terror that escaped her mouth. The pony stowed her weapon in her jacket, stopping a few steps away from the foal on the ground, looking her over emotionlessly. Then, she turned her head to look at Lady Lulamoon standing in the doorway, and nodded in acknowledgement. 

“You’re late.” She said softly.

Lady Lulamoon huffed, trying her best to disregard the screaming filly as her companion was doing, but to no avail. “Yes, well I ran into a couple of roadblocks on the way here, Riftbringer. And mind your tone against your superiors!”

That brought a grin to the pony’s face as she turned to face Lulamoon completely. “Roadblocks you say? That couldn’t possibly be Miss Velvet could it?” she smirked more at the look of unrestrained fury of Lulamoon’s muzzle. “I will say this once more Icani, so do well to understand; you are not my superior, no matter what you have Stargazer, or yourself thinking.”

With that, she turned back to the now whimpering filly curled into a ball at the foot of the ornate doors. She was still looking at the guard’s dead stare. 

“Look away little one,” the jacketed pony whispered, gently turning the foal’s head away from the scene to look at her. “Look at me, okay? You’re going to be fine.”

The purple filly sobbed in terror. “That’s what mommy said…”

The pony barely hesitated at the remark, pulling out a small needle full of a colourful fluid out of her coat. “Your mother is a smart pony, little Twilight,” she kept the filly’s eyes trained on hers as she rested the tip of the needle against her side, under her heart. “But she cannot tell the future. Nopony can.”

She jabbed the point of the needle into Twilight’s side, drawing a gasp of pain from the filly. Once she depressed the plunger however, her expression became one of bliss, and then tiredness. The filly opened and closed her mouth a couple of times, but eventually her jaw became slack, and she closed her eyes.

The pony stayed by her side until the contents of the needle were evenly distributed through her system, shutting her down. She rested a tender hoof against Twilight’s chest as her breathing slowed, her heart beats abating.

With a sigh, the pony lifted Twilight’s body off the floor and onto her shoulder, then walked over to close the guard’s eyes. He hadn’t lived long to feel the pain at least.

With one more look at the bloody scene, she locked eyes with Lady Lulamoon. “Shall we go?”


***


Jade had been running a lot lately, though most of the time it had been away from danger, and not towards it. 

She killed that rule where it stood, on grounds of imminent catastrophe. 

She could hear Velvet behind her, keeping pace with little difficulty. Perhaps I should get back into exercising, Jade mused silently. Not that it was meant as an insult to the unicorn, but Velvet seemed a little… pudgy to be running so fast. Jade left herself a mental message never to piss off a worried mother; apparently they could defy the limits of possibility.  

But all of this was on the back-burner of Jade’s mind as she raced through the halls of the castle. When they had first come in, two guards had tried to stop them because they evidently weren’t supposed to be there anymore. Those same guards were currently lying in a pile at the foot of the steps, one of them having been thrown down the stairs head-first, and the other dropped with a roundhouse kick to the jaw.

Jade felt bad for the unfortunate guards, but in the face of crisis, Jade thought that they would much prefer a sore head and bruised joints rather than a temporal disaster that would rip apart the universe as a whole, destroying reality. 

She would never let it show, but Jade was panicking. She knew exactly what the black dot on the tracker had meant, and in relation, what it meant for her mission. She just hoped that her watch had got it wrong. 

Her hopes were dashed at the sight beheld her as she took the last corner at flying speeds. She stopped in her tracks, mind racing, realizing that if it hadn’t before, shit had hit the fan. 

Shit in the form of two ponies, one of them a scarlet unicorn with a maniacal smile, and the other a green earth pony with a black jacket, and the limp form of a foal on her back. The two froze as Jade gaped at them, disbelieving.

“No…”

The green earth pony narrowed her golden eyes at Jade, who returned the favour. Lady Lulamoon just laughed as Velvet entered the room, stumbling at the sight before her. Her eyes flicked over Icani, before flitting in shock between the two identical ponies having a stare-down in the middle of the hall. 

“Oh, and here’s the rest of the family!” cackled Lulamoon gleefully. Velvet glared at her, but neither of the green ponies moved an inch, each calculating the other in a pre-emptive game of cat and mouse. The merest flutter of an eyelash could bring victory to one, and defeat to the other as the silent game of wills commenced, deciding the end of the battle before it began.

Jade was focussed. Her organized mind played out the versions of the oncoming battles, one after the other, each taking place in the span of a heart-beat. 

We rush, duck first blow, take knife- no, I lose. 

I hang back, throw knife, dodge- I still lose. 

We charge, I block, she stabs, I duck, kick, roll- nope, forgot about Lulamoon. 

Rush, block kick- no. 

Rush, jump, stab down- no. 

Charge, spin jacket, and dive under blind strike, swipe up- nope.

Charge, grab her knife, block underhoof, and twist her, break- no, she wins still…

Unless…

The tension in the room is palpable as the pony across the room from Jade breaks her concentration to put Twilight down. In the infinitesimal millisecond it takes her to complete the action, Jade is in the air, drawing her knife from inside her jacket, at the same time unbuttoning the left cuff on her sleeve. 

Simultaneously, Velvet loses her patience with Lulamoon, and fires a spell at her hooves, blasting cobblestone all over the room and burning up the lush carpet. Lulamoon retaliates, and the two are soon locked in an even-sided battle of spells, but Jade doesn’t even notice. 

The other pony twists to the side as Jade’s knife comes down where her neck used to be, moving smoothly out of the way as if she was expecting the move in the first place. She probably was, thought Jade dryly as she ducked the retaliating knife slash coming her way. 

The pony’s hoof shot out, heading straight for Jade’s abdomen in a dark green flash. Jade spins to the side, trapping the limb under her free hoof, swiping her knife down at the exposed chest of the pony. She doesn’t even bat an eye as she launches off her hooves, spinning rapidly in a full rotation in the air, and bringing Jade down, hard on her back into the carpet, finishing up with a stab with her own knife. 

Its Jade’s turn to roll to the side as the knife shears away part of her mane by her ear. Jade bucks straight up, flinging the pony high into the air in a sort series of twists and flips. Jade is waiting for her when she lands, giving a few vicious swings of her blade that come close to hitting her opponent, but miss anyway. 

The other pony catches Jade’s last slash on the hilt of her own blade, pushing to the side and throwing Jade off balance. Jade stumbles, and is punished by a sharp blow to the side of her head, snapping her body back to center, just in time to see the shining blade of the knife descending on her forehead. Jade raises a foreleg, catching her opponent’s strike on the outside of her arm before letting go suddenly, allowing the full force of the blow to go over her head as she rams her hoof into the other pony’s side. 

There’s a brief exhalation of air, before the pony’s knee comes up sharply, catching Jade on her exposed snout. Jade recoils, barely managing to catch the swing of the knife in her other hoof, guiding it to the side and following up with a left hook to the pony’s temple, which she ducks, managing only to sustain a glancing blow instead of a debilitating one. 

The knife come up from below Jade, forcing her to throw her head back in a painful position, while the blade of the knife parts the skin under her chin, throwing blood droplets into the air. Jade brings her head down again sharply, ramming her forehead into the other pony’s, with a crack that both worries her, and satisfies her. She delivers two short jabs to the pony’s chest and shoulders, keeping her on the defensive, always dodging and moving, waiting for the desperate strike that will undoubtedly come. 

It comes in the form of a jarring block and a sharp kick that knocks the breath out of Jade’s lungs. Jade barely manages to slide the next punch under her arm and wrench it there, leaning backwards and head-butting again. Only this time, the other pony reciprocates. 

Their skulls collided, and Jade saw stars, recoiling and unintentionally loosening her grip on the other pony’s forearm. The pony capitalized by clocking her across the face again and stabbing down quickly with the knife. 

Jade smirked amidst the pain, and brought her left forearm up and across her body, sliding the blade of her opponent’s knife into the ajar button-hole on her left cuff she had prepared earlier. The tough material of the jacket caught the blade, and Jade twisted violently, wrenching the knife from the pony’s grasp and throwing it across the room in one quick motion. 

Jade reared back, over the disarmed pony, who was still stumbling from loss of her weapon, and plunged the knife down onto the exposed side of her neck. 

Shink.

Jade and the pony locked eyes, so close they could feel the other’s quick breaths washing over their snouts. She looked up to the point where her knife had entered the pony. 

Jade stared with wide eyes at her knife, which had come to rest, not inside the neck of the pony as she had hoped, but had cleared her target by millimeters, ripping the material of her jacket and leaving a small cut on the back of her neck. Jade coughed, and blood spattered the side of the other pony’s face. It was then that Jade became aware of the burning spike of pain that was lancing into her left lung.

Jade looked down to the sight of an empty needle jammed securely into her left side, the long metal spike traveling between her ribs and puncturing a lung. She could feel the breaths coming harder and harder to her as her body leaked air out of the lung, and blood into it.

Jade locked eyes again with the other pony, who stared at her for a second, before wrenching her hoof down, and snapping the needle-point off inside Jade. She gasped in pain, gritting her teeth against the agony, staring resolutely into her own golden eyes.

Her doppelganger lowered Jade to her knees almost gently. Jade's copy's leaned forward quickly, whispering two distinct words into Jade's ear, unnoticed by any save the two Jumpers. Then, just as quickly, she leaned back and delivered a vicious punch to the spot where the needle-tip lay buried under Jade's skin. She grunted as she felt the needle go farther inside her lung, almost poking the other side. One more blow from the other pony, and Jade felt the sharp metal do just that, rupturing through the other side of her lung and allowing more blood to stream into the organ, making Jade choke.

The other Jade dropped her, and Jade fell to the floor, convulsing in pain and clutching the spot where the syringe had entered in a desperate attempt to quell the life flowing from her wound. 

The Jade still standing gave one more kick to the one on the ground, before walking over to where Lady Lulamoon had Velvet against the ropes. One more spell, and Velvet’s concentration broke, shattering her flimsy shield and leaving her to get pounded by spell after spell from Lulamoon, each one making her scream in pain. 

“We’re leaving.” Declared the other Jade, trotting over and grabbing Lady Lulamoon’s arm. 

Lulamoon just laughed maniacally. “Oh, but I haven’t had this much fun in years!” she declared, still hitting Velvet with her magic. 

“You misunderstand,” said her companion softly. “You think you have a say in the matter.” With that, she picked up Twilight’s body again, and trotted to the center of the room, readying her watch. Lady Lulamoon rolled her eyes and gave a last little, “Ta-ta!” to Velvet before walking over to the Jade standing in the middle of the hall. 

“Remind me again why we can’t just kill them?” Lulamoon whined ungratefully. 

Jade responded calmly, though she was close to snapping at the unicorn. “Because, if you kill Velvet, there will be no one around to help my past self. The wound I gave her was debilitating, but not lethal.” She finished her preparations for the jump and looked up at Lulamoon, glaring. “She won’t die if she is treated, but if you kill Velvet, and my past self does die, then I would cease to exist, and this stupid, fool-hardy plan of yours would never come to fruition.” She pressed a button on her watch, which spat two small glowing rods out of the side. One, she gave to Lulamoon, and the other, she stuffed into Twilight’s limp grasp, holding the filly’s hoof around the device manually. 

Lady Lulamoon grumbled once more, but with three separate pops of energy, they were gone, entering their rift and jumping to a different time, leaving the mother, the Jumper, and the guard to lay in pools of blood in their respective places on the floor.

Two of them weren’t moving.