> Treacherous Mists
>  by Autocharth
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1 - Tomatoes Are Thrown, Quests Begin
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Chapter 1 - Tomatoes Are Thrown, Quests Begin

*

It started, as many things do, with a dream.

Black water churned beneath her, a raging maelstrom that fell away into an endless abyss. Her legs straddled something rough and scaly that moved beneath her with a will of its own. Crackling, chaotic energies rushed past her in tremendous winds. The sky crackled with energy and her body felt strange, as though she was in two places at once. From beneath her, the furious waves suddenly off to her side, distant, and she stood side-by-side with two others within the skeleton of a city. She didn’t know them, these strange bipeds with violet skin, but she loved them.

No sounds reached her. They spoke, yet not a single word reached her ears, these presences that followed her as her surroundings shifted back to the eagle-eyed view of the dark, chaotic vortex.

She turned her head, catching sight of a leviathan with gleaming red scales that shone despite great wounds and even greater exhaustion. It was a dragon, more magnificent than any she had seen. She couldn’t let it distract her. She had to do this, she had to prove her worth, had to live up to the promise of her golden eyes—

Golden eyes?

She awoke with a gasp, her chest heaving. Vertigo struck and she flailed, covers knocked aside. It faded just as quickly as it had come, leaving the sweat-bathed mare to stare at the ceiling of her room. Her heart pounded, a frantic weight within her chest. For a moment she entertained the notion it was trying to punch its way out with each forceful beat.

Drawing in a slow, steady breath she forced herself to calm down. It was still night, the starry sky twinkling through between the curtains, and she didn’t want to wake—

“Twilight?” asked Spike. He peeked at her from his basket.

She hid her wince at the sleepy whisper. Lifting her head, Twilight Sparkle smiled apologetically at her little brother. “I’m fine. Go back to sleep Spike, you need your rest.”

The little dragon ignored this, pulling himself up the side of her bed. She smiled as she noted the pillow he still managed to clutch against his chest, like an amorphous teddybear. He looked at her with half lidded-eyes and ran a claw across his emerald crest, worry clear in his eyes.

“Sounded like you were having another nightmare,” Spike said. “Like last night.”

This time she couldn’t hold back her grimace, but she hoped it was too dark for him to see it. “You need to go back to bed,” she repeated. “Little dragons need a lot of sleep.”

“So do big ponies,” he pointed out stubbornly. “And I’m not the one having nightmares all week.”

They were both still whispering, despite the fact everyone in the building was now awake, all two of them. Twilight’s breath blew out, a gentle sigh as her ears drooped. How was she supposed to make him go to bed? The little drake was watching, peering through the darkness at her, and though she couldn’t see the look in his eyes, she could imagine the stubborn gleam to them.

“It’s nothing, Spike. It will pass in a day or two, it’s probably just something I read nagging at me. It certainly won’t pass if we stay up all night arguing and losing sleep,” Twilight told him.

“Uh huh.” Spike raised a scaly eyebrow at her. “Sure it will.”

Twilight groaned. “I promise, it will go away.”

“What if it doesn’t? What if it gets worse and you can never sleep again?” Spike demanded. He gestured frantically, as if this could happen at any moment.

Closing her eyes, Twilight bit back another groan. ‘He’s not going to let this go, is he?’ “I’ll…” Inspiration struck. Her eyes popped open and she blurted, “I’ll ask Princess Luna to help. If it doesn’t go away, I’ll see if she can help.”

She waited with baited breath. Ordering him to bed again would do no good; she could only hope this would convince him. In the gloom, lit by the silver of the moon shining through the window, she saw him scratch his chin thoughtfully.

“Spike—” she began.

He said, cutting her off, “Okay.”

Her mouth clicked shut and she blinked a few times, her intended piece on why he should listen to her pre-empted. She gave him a narrow eyed look, wondering when the bit would drop. 

'There's no way it's that easy,' she thought.

He proved this by crawling across her bed, plopping down his pillow and taking a clawful of her bedsheet. With a jerk he pulled it up, until it draped over them both.

She couldn’t help a fond smile as he snuggled in against her. “Oh, I guess you think you’ve outwitted me, huh smart guy?” Amusement tinged her quiet question.

“Yep.” She couldn’t see him grinning, but she knew it was there, a sleepy, toothy little grin.

Letting out a chuckle, Twilight adjusted the covers and curled a foreleg around her little brother. “Good night.”

*

Spike yawned as he stirred amid the covers. He reached for the warmth that was his sister-mother-boss figure, seeking comfort in her cuddly fur. He pawed at the bedding for nearly a minute before lifting his head. Yawning again he struggled free slowly, slithering to the floor and casting a sleepy gaze across the otherwise empty room.

‘Wait...where’s Twilight?'

His eyes popped fully open and the little dragon looked around the room. The sleep was gone from his eyes in an instant, but the room remained a Twilight-free zone.

“Twilight?” He called, waddling towards the door. She failed to answer. “I guess she’s in the bathroom or something.”

Shrugging it off, Spike padded downstairs. His feet made barely any sound on the stairs, his steps light but slow. The little dragon made his way down, humming quietly. He glanced across the main room of the library as it came into sight, smiling when he saw his caretaker turned away from him, standing at one of the bookshelves.

“Morning, Twilight!” He called to her. She jerked, the book in front of her falling off the shelf. Spike stared, pausing and watching as she swayed in place for a moment. “Uh, Twilight?”

“Hm? Wha’? Spike?” Twilight staggered, legs buckling for a moment. She looked around in alarm. “Why am I out here? Was I sleepwalking?”

“I guess, you were just kind of standing there,” Spike said with a shrug. He pointed at the book on the ground. “Wait, were you sleepreading?”

Twilight scowled as her assistant began to laugh, holding his belly and bending over from the force of his mirth. He let his laughter go on, clutching his belly until he felt her magic brush past him. Through the giggles he glanced up. The book she had been sleepreading slipped back into place in the history section.

“Yes, I suppose I was. You can stop laughing now, Spike, or I’ll try my hoof at breakfast again,” she said, her tone bordering on threatening. It certainly worked, Spike’s laughter petering out. 

“Come on Twilight, that’s not funny! Last time I was sick for a week, and I can eat pretty much anything.” He shuddered, hurrying down into the library proper and past her.

The library itself was fine, to all appearances, no more than the one book disturbed by the sleepreading. The sounds of an normal Ponyville morning filtered in through the open windows, a soothing, familiar background music that left both unicorn and dragon relaxed.

She fixed him with a faux glare before letting it drop. The dragon waddled before her into the kitchen, and she let him. Her cooking wasn’t quite that bad, at least she told herself it wasn’t. The fact her friends had all banned her from touching anything in their kitchens was just because they were worrywarts. It wasn’t her fault certain breakfast cereals were combustible.

“Alright, alright, you can fix us breakfast,” she agreed. “After breakfast, the schedule says....”

Spike rolled his eyes, mouthing ‘schedule’ sarcastically as he began to pull out pans, mix and ingredients. Twilight pretended not to notice. Her schedule floated up in her arcane aura, revealing its secrets to her. She frowned for a moment before shaking her head and reading the answer aloud.

“Abjuration!” she announced. “I might never be Shining’s equal in Abjuration, especially shields, but I have a down-scaled version of his shield. Do you think Applejack has any rotten apples she can spare?”

“Yeah,” Spike said with a nod. “She wouldn’t let me eat any. Something about ‘unhygienic’.” He shrugged.

“Why would— ugh, never mind. dragon physiology is too confusing to deal with first thing in the morning.” Shaking her head, Twilight put the schedule away. “I wonder who we can rope in to test my shield…”

*

The wind roared, and she loved it. The world was open to her, an endless expanse of blue sky and fluffy clouds that was all hers. Air rushed past her, slithering through feathers and across fur. She could feel every tug on her mane by the fantastic forces that fought her.  It made her grin, smirk, as she defied it.

The sky was hers.

She banked, her moment of introspection vanishing as she slammed into a cloud. Her hooves struck the condensed water, the magic that let her walk and touch it as though it were earth sending a tingle down her spine. It was the magic that ran through her veins and coated every feather, natural power that she used to shape herself into an arrow that pierced the heart of the cloud. It’s centre gone, her magic pulsed through the remnant. Instead of whatever natural laws could dictate its response, the pegasi magic coursed through it until nothing was left.

Rainbow Dash smirked. ‘Awww yeah!’

A rainbow bounced between clouds, clearing them in a blaze of aerial swagger and acrobatics. She gloried in her own prowess. Who could clear the sky above Ponyville as fast as her? No one, that’s who!

“Rainbow Dash!”

She twisted about midair, landing with a suddenness and force that made Twilight jump. The pegasus snickered as she watched Spike scramble to stay on Twilight’s back.

“Heh, what’s up? Need The Dash for something? Got some monsters to slay? Evils to banish? Cider to drink?” The energy expressed in her performance spoke in her rapid-fire questions, Rainbow Dash’s good mood almost contagious for the pair.

“Actually, I was hoping you would help me with some study—” Twilight began.

“Boring!” groaned Rainbow Dash.

“—by throwing rotten fruit at her!” Spike continued over Twilight’s shoulder.

That got her attention. Rainbow’s eyebrows shot up. “What, really? And she won’t get mad?” she asked the dragon, an eager look in her eyes.

“Not at all!” Spike assured her. He paused for a moment, thinking. “Well, not at you.”

Rainbow Dash rubbed her forehooves together, grinning widely. “Count me in! I’ll try not to crack that egghead of yours with the ol’ Rainbow Dash Fastball.”

For a moment, Twilight imagined having friends who weren’t eager to throw rotten fruit at her. It was such a lovely fantasy, but she was dragged back to the unfortunate reality that was her nefariously grinning friend.

“We were just going to Sweet Apple Acres now. Hopefully Applejack has some rotten apples she doesn’t need…” Twilight paused. “Not that I hope she’s had bad enough luck to get rotten apples or apples she has to throw out, obviously, since she needs to sell healthy apples and get as few rotten apples as possible.”

Spike and Rainbow Dash rolled their eyes at the same time. The little dragon poked her in the back of the head.

“Don’t worry, Twilight, Applejack won’t take it like that,” he said.

“I don’t know, maybe we shouldn’t ask, what if I offend her? The implications of a request like that could hurt her feelings if she thinks I don’t have faith in her apple farming abilities!”

Rainbow looked at Spike. “Has she been staying up all night reading ‘friendship guides’ again?” she demanded.

He shrugged, and neither drake nor mare acknowledged Twilight’s flat look of annoyance. “Nah, she’s been up because-”

The dragon found his mouth suddenly jammed shut by telekinetic force.

“Because nothing at all! I’ve been sleeping like a baby. I’m just really eager to practice my shield spell, that’s all. Actually, I’d like to practice my anti-magic spells, but there’s nowhere in Ponyville I can really do that,” Twilight said. She hurried the conversation on before Rainbow Dash could get a word in. “Maybe we should ask if anypony in the market has any rotten fruit they don’t want anymore?”

After a moment of giving Twilight a look to show she wasn’t fooled, Rainbow Dash let it go and said, “Ripe Red was complaining about a bunch of his tomatoes being ruined by something, want me to fly over to the market and get them?”

“Yes please, that would be very helpful. We’ll still ask Applejack if we can borrow an empty field. Thank you,” said Twilight with a smile.

Rainbow chuckled. “Hey, if I get to throw tomatoes at you, I’m willing to make a little effort. This is gonna be fun! See you there!”

She went from standing to flying in an instant, accelerating into the sky. Well honed pegasus magic cut away friction, a rainbow trail marking her flight across town. Twilight watched her go with a smile.

‘It’s nice to have friends who are always willing to help!’

Spike tapped the back of Twilight’s head again. “Mmph!” 

“Hm? Oh! Sorry.”

*

“Six bits.”

“Uh, two bits?”

“Six bits.”

“T-three bits?”

“Six bits.”

Fluttershy took a deep breath. “Four bits, and that’s as high as I’ll go….if that’s alright with you.”

Ripe Red hm’d in thought for a moment. “Five bits, and that’s as cheap as I can give you this many delicious, ripe, perfect tomatoes.”

“Four bits,” she repeated. She stared at him, trying to make it clear that she wasn’t going to back down.. It wasn’t quite a Stare, but it got her point across. “Or I’ll….I’ll just go without.”

“Tch, fine, four bits it is!” He pushed the tomatoes to her, scooping up the bits she placed before him.

Fluttershy smiled as she gently slipped the tomatoes into her saddlebag. Another market day, another improvement in her haggling. Maybe next week she could—

Her feathers twitched, and almost without thinking she stook a step to the side. Just in time too, given the rainbow blur that shot through that spot an instant later. Rainbow Dash checked herself before she wrecked herself, or the stall.

“Hey, Ripe, got any rotten stuff I can throw?” Rainbow asked. She blinked when he just pointed past her, his other hoof busy wiping tomate guts from his face, eventually turning to look. “Oh, hey Fluttershy. What’re you doing here?”

“I, um, I was buying..tomatoes…” Fluttershy trailed off. She stepped past her friend to offer the tomato vendor a handkerchief from her saddlebags.

“The only rotten tomatoes I have, you blue menace, are the ones I’ll throw at you if you do that again,” muttered Ripe Red. He gave the handkerchief back, his face relatively clean. “And I was about to sell those!”

“Aw, come on, those can’t have been worth much,” Rainbow Dash said with a roll of her eyes.

Ignoring the public menace, he gestured to the stock of tomatoes next to him. “You paid, Fluttershy, take your tomatoes while your friend pays me back for ruining those ones! Seven bits, Miss Dash!” 

“What?! Seven? What, do I look like I’m made outta bits here?” demanded Rainbow. “That couldn’t have been worth more than two bits.”

“Seven. Bits. You can haggle when you don’t destroy them first,” he barked.

Fluttershy cringed, quickly getting her new tomatoes as the pair bickered. She waited for it to end, which it did after only a few minutes of arguing. Rainbow Dash grudgingly agreed to pay five bits for the tomatoes, and more for a barrel of tomatoes unsuitable for sale.

“Come back soon,” Ripe called after them. “And bring the barrel with you!”

Rainbow Dash just grumbled about tomato selling con-artists. She huffed under the weight of the barrel, but carried it next to Fluttershy as the pair trotted through the market.

“Uh, I hate to be rude, but why did you buy so many rotten tomatoes? I don’t think it would be healthy for you to eat them like that,” Fluttershy said. She glanced at Rainbow’s back, and at the barrel, trying not to make her doubts obvious. “A-are you sure you’re not hurting your back?”

“I’m...fine…” Dash growled. She grinned despite the strain. “Gonna throw ‘em...at Twilight….”

“Oh my! Why would you do that?” asked Fluttershy with a gasp.

“She...wants…me to.” Rainbow glanced at her meek friend. “Wanna help?”

For a moment, there was a heavy, pregnant silence.

“....w-well, if she wants tomatoes thrown at her…” Fluttershy mumbled. She looked around, as if someone might have heard her.

“That’s…the spirit!” wheezed the straining pegasus.

“Can I come?” asked Pinkie Pie.

Rainbow Dash nodded. “Su-ah!” She would have jumped in surprise, if it wasn’t for her load. Instead she just stumbled in distress. The barrel’s weight shifted, heavy wood pressing against her wings and back muscles as it began to tip towards Fluttershy.

“Bump!” With a bounce, Pinkie pushed Fluttershy aside with her hips and threw her forelegs up to stabilise the barrel. “I got it!”

“You got it? You caused it!” Rainbow Dash exploded, glaring at her friend as they struggled to get the barrel back in place. “It nearly fell on Fluttershy!”

“But I’m fine. Thank you for pushing me out of the way, Pinkie Pie,” said Flutterwhy with a smile for her fluffy-maned friend. She helped push the barrel back onto Rainbow Dash and get it centred so it wouldn’t fall. Pinkie stayed in place, relieving the weight a little. 

“It’s okay, Fluttershy. Sorry for surprising you, Dashie, I just wanted to join in. I saw you walking and talking with all these tomatoes, and I thought ‘wow, Dashie must be really hungry! But those aren’t nice tomatoes, so she must be—’” Pinkie began, cut off by a blue wing covering her mouth.

“Pinkie, do you want to come throw tomatoes at Twilight?” asked Rainbow Dash as quickly as she could. She waited until Pinkie nodded, then drew her wing off. “Alright, but you have to promise to stop talking.”

Pinkie’s nodding grew more eager.

“Uh…” Fluttershy gave Rainbow Dash a worried look. The athlete sighed.

“Just don’t tell me the rest of the story, and help me with this thing.”

“Mhmm!” agreed Pinkie. 

*

“But darling, it’s apple-scented!”

Twilight paused for a moment. That was not a statement she had expected to hear. Well, she was well prepared for shouts of ‘apple’ in all its shapes and forms, but not ‘darling’. 

“Rarity!” gasped Spike. He ran a claw along his crest. “Am I clean? Twilight, how do I look?”

“You look fine, Spike. I wonder what Rarity is doing here,” Twilight wondered aloud.

“I told ya, I ain’t gonna fall for that a third time! Last time ya said that, it was peaches! Peaches! Granny didn’t speak to me for a week,” they heard Applejack say. The pair came into sight shortly after, Applejack warding off Rarity and a bottle of perfume.

“Oh, come now, it was a lovely scent. Surely you don’t think I did that on purpose, did you? No, no, no, darling, it was all a little misunderstanding. This time, I’m sure it must be apple,” Rarity said with a flutter of her eyelashes and a winning smile.

Applejack was having none of it. “Lemme smell it first then,” she suggested.

“You’ll try it?” asked the fashionista. Her eyes twinkled with delight.

“After ya let me smell it. Pass it here,” Applejack replied.

Rarity pulled the floating bottle back, just out of reach of Applejack’s hoof. Her voice lost its glowing cheer. “You know, I’m sure that’s not needed. If you’ll just let me give you a little spritz…”

“I think it is, sugarcube.” Applejack smiled, though it was hardly pleasant. The two exchanged looks, Rarity’s nervous, Applejack’s triumphant. They both knew Applejack had caught Rarity, and there really was no way out of it without Rarity admitting her subterfuge.

“Uh, hi?”

Rarity’s eyes lit up. “Oh, Twilight, darling, what a delightful surprise!” She exclaimed. She all but threw herself at Twilight, giving her friend a hug and another for Spike. “Whatever are you doing here?”

“I just came by to ask Applejack if I could borrow a field. What are you doing here?” Twilight asked, though she had a pretty good idea already. 

“Hi, Rarity,” added Spike, contributing as much as he could.

“Hello there, Spikey-wikey, how are you?” she cooed. She gave him a pat on the head, smiling at his woozy grin. Turning back to address Twilight, she said, “Oh, just a little visit. Whatever would you need a field for?”

“I think that’s somethin’ I should be askin’,” Applejack remarked. She trotted over with a nod of greeting. “So...yeah, that. Not that I mind, sugarcube, just wanna know before ya start conjurin’ castles and giant crystals start sproutin’ from the ground.”

Twilight laughed at the very idea. “Build a whole castle out of crystal with magic? I’m not a princess, Applejack, just a well-trained unicorn.”

“Er, I didn’t say crystal castle...”

“I just need a wide, clear area to practice a shield spell. Rainbow Dash is getting some rotten tomatoes to test it,” Twilight explained. Her smile faltered at the looks on her friend’s faces.

“Tomatoes? As in...to throw at you— the shield, I mean?” Rarity asked, watching Twilight with a very carefully controlled expression. 

Twilight nodded. “Yes.”

“Rainbow Dash...is gonna throw tomatoes at ya?” Applejack leaned in as she asked, raising an eyebrow at her friend. “Am I hearin’ ya right, Twilight?”

Again, the unicorn nodded. “That’s the plan,” she confirmed.

Their dispute forgotten, Rarity and Applejack exchanged looks. Rarity cleared her throat.

“I don’t suppose, given that you do want to test your spell as best you can, that you might...want a little bit of additional help?” she asked.

“Er, you mean…” Twilight furrowed her brow.

Applejack pushed Rarity to one side, ignoring her yelp. “We wanna throw tomatoes at ya,” Applejack explained.

“To help you, she means!” Rarity shoved Applejack away, smiling widely at Twilight. “We want to help you.”

“Yeah, what she said. Ya can use the south field if ya want, nothin’ growin’ there right now.” Applejack smiled, a little indulgently, as Twilight and Spike followed the direction she pointed. “We can practice there all we want. Y’all head over, I’ll wait for Dash.”

“Great! Thanks, Applejack, I really appreciate this. Come on, Spike, let’s set up.” With a grateful smile Twilight set off towards the south field, Spike bouncing on her back and his eyes on Rarity.

*

The wet squelch of a tomato splattering filled what was normally a rather homey orchard, tomatoes juices ran down Twilight’s face.

“Right on the horn! Ten points!” Rainbow cheered, punching the air. “And Rainbow Dash pulls ahead!”

“How unladylike. It isn’t a contest, darling— ha! Ten points, I believe that puts me ahead, does it not?” Rarity asked with a flutter of eyelashes at the scorekeeper, who all but melted.

“Y-yeah, you’re in the lead…” Spike nodded, smiling dreamily in her direction as he added another ten to her total.

Applejack ground her teeth, protesting, “Now that ain’t fair, y’all are in front of her, how am I supposed to hit her horn from over here?”

Twilight twitched. She raised a hoof, wiping tomato juice from her jace. “Do you really have to—”

She snapped her eyes shut just in time, and felt it hit home.

“Yay! Horn shot from behind! Goooooooo me!” Pinkie waved her hooves in the air, bouncing and cheering.

“You’re just behind Rainbow Dash,” Spike told her. He missed the scowl Twilight sent his way, too busy consulting his notes.

“Like I was saying, do you really-”

Tomato flesh and horn met with a thunderous — to Twilight, at least — splattering noise.

Fluttershy gasped, hooves flying to her mouth as her wings fluttered, keeping her stable. “Oh my! I’m sorry Twilight, I didn’t mean to get you while you were talking.”

“Don’t worry about it; she wants us to make her work for it! We throw tomatoes, she tries to catch them first, everypony wins,” Rainbow Dash reasoned, flying a loop around Fluttershy. She broke off, past the pile of tomatoes, and kept going until she was circling Twilight like an eagle, tomatoes at the ready. “Think fast!”

Twilight wiped tomatoes juice out of one eye in time for it to go wide. Three tomatoes came flying at her, launching point spread out along a foot in Dash’s ring. It was an act of instinct, sizzling the juice off her horn with raw magic and slapping them aside. The first just exploded, the second denting from the force, but her telekinetic field caught the third barely half inches from her face. She sighed in relief—

—and found out how big a mistake that was. Tomato guts spilled down her brow, the skin hanging off her horn.

“Heh, ten for me,” Applejack said with a satisfied chuckle.

“Alright, time to stop.” Twilight didn’t bother wiping the guts of the tomatoes from her face. She waited a moment for any more. None came so, with a true sigh of relief, she wiped the juice away—

Five tomatoes bounced off her shield. The shimmering barrier faded a few seconds later, and Twilight trotted out of the tomato strewn battlefield, the worst of the tomato based debris removed. She still dripped slightly with tomato juice.

“Time out, for real this time,” she said dryly. Only Fluttershy and Rarity had the good grace to look embarrassed. Rainbow Dash, less so.

“Hey, you said you wanted us to test you. We were just testing you when you weren’t expecting it, Twi’; gotta be flexible,’ the pegasus said. She grinned as she landed at Twilight’s side.

“Well, unfortunately for that, I expected—” Twilight began.

“Like this!” Dash leaped, hoof brushing through Pinkie’s mane. It came out with a tomato, soft and ready to burst, that mashed against Twilight’s horn. She was gone before Twilight and a half dozen tomatoes in her arcane grip could get her, laughing her way into the trees with a cry of “I win!”

“Remind me to never ask that mare for help ever again,” Twilight muttered. This time nopony attacked her with tomatoes, although the fever pitch with which Rarity went to work cleaning her mane bordered on an assault.

“Well, uh, you did want us to catch you off guard,” Fluttershy pointed out, ducking her head at the heated look Twilight threw her way. “Sorry.”

Twilight sighed. “No, I’m sorry. You’re right, I did want you to do that. My shield spell might be powerful enough, but I’m still not very good at acting fast enough.”

“Don’t worry, sugarcube. Couple more rounds like that an’ there won’t be nothin’ that can get ya. Wish we coulda seen more of that shield of yours. Ya sure ya don’t want me to get Mac? We can take turns kickin’ it, see how ya handle that,” Applejack offered. She held out a towel for her friend.

“That would be so amazing, watching you kick it and kick it and kick it-” Pinkie’s mouth moved at a mile a minute, much like the bouncing mare herself.

“Buck it, sugarcube.”

“Right! You’ll buck it and buck it and buck it again and again until it goes and goes bang! all over the place!” finished the exuberant party pony. “Just ‘cause we couldn’t help you break it with tomatoes doesn’t mean we can’t still help.”

“We were hardly going to throw stones at her, were we?” Rarity shuddered at the thought. “Imagine if we had managed to bring down her shield and one of them struck her! Imagine all the, ugh, blood! I much prefer just throwing tomatoes.”

Twilight looked at the ring marking the first wave of tomatoes. Even if her shield had proven strong enough to withstand tomatoes, and stones were too dangerous, she did need to practice it. 

‘This practice wasn’t a waste though,’ she reasoned. ‘I managed to do fairly well until Pinkie got me in the snout and made it hard to see with all that juice. Besides, practice never hurts.’

She cast a look towards the apple trees, noting the hint of rainbow plumage. “You can come out now, Rainbow Dash,” she called, “I promise not to try to get you.”

After a few moments the pegasus rejoined them, grinning. She peeked over Spike’s head at the score, squealing at the sight of her own. His attempts to wave her off only led to Rainbow Dash snatching the notebook for a game of keepaway Pinkie was all too happy to join in on.

“That’s mine, give it back!”

“Fly up here and grab it then.”

“Aww, Dashie, he can’t fly!”

“I know, Pinkie, that’s the point.”

“Thank you everypony for acting like adults,” Rarity said, rolling her eyes at the trio. 

Twilight ignored the commotion, replying to Applejack, “I’ll think about it. It probably would be a good idea to do that—”

For what had to be the umpteenth time, a noise interrupted her. This time, Twilight found herself didn’t scowl or complain. She looked towards Spike at the crackle of fire rushing from his maw. It was a much more welcome sound than the rip of tearing tomato skin.

“Whoa!” Rainbow Dash dived out of the way of a gout of green fire. It swirled, fire becoming ash and ash becoming paper. She caught the scroll before Spike could. "Hey, a scroll from Celestia! I wonder what it's about."

The scroll was ripped from her hooves, careening over to Twilight. She didn’t let a second pass, opening it. Her eyes ran back and forth down it, a look of concern appearing on her face. A cluster of worried friends grew around her, ignoring the smell of overripe and rotten tomatoes 

“What is it?”

“Is everything okay?”

“Has something dreadful happened?”

Twilight rolled up the scroll, troubled, and looked at them. The questions came to a standstill. “I...don’t know,” she said, uncertainty in her voice. “The Princess wants us to come to Canterlot, immediately, and to come prepared for trouble. Equestria needs us!”

*

“Equestria needs a faster train!” 

Applejack pulled Rainbow Dash back into the train, closing the window behind her. “The train is fast as it needs to be, now settle down, we’re nearly there.”

“Hmmph.” Rainbow Dash crossed her forelegs. “I still say it’s too slow.”

The train rattled on, unperturbed by her complaints. Despite her accusations, it sped along the tracks towards Canterlot with all the speed that could be expected of the express. The shining jewel of Equestria was closer every time Twilight looked out the windows. She sat next to the window, one hoof resting on the window sill, the other laid over Spike as the little dragon napped against her side. A strange feeling came over her as she watched the city grow larger. It was the city of her birth, but she didn’t feel like she was coming home. Canterlot, no, Canterlot wasn’t her home. It was a beautiful city she had been too absorbed in study to really explore, and even as she had studied in its heart, it had been distant.

‘I hope it’s not too serious. Maybe Princess Celestia just wanted to chat?’ Twilight furrowed her brow. ‘The scroll wouldn’t have been worded so urgently if that was true. Besides, I’m sure she has plenty of friends to chat to, like...uh...like...’

Did Princess Luna count? Twilight frowned thoughtfully.Who were Princess Celestia’s friends? She must have them, the unicorn was sure. She was, after all, the Princess. Who wouldn’t want to be her friend?

‘Exactly,’ whispered a voice in the back of her mind, ‘Everyone would want to be friends with the Princess. Imagine the favours such a ruler would bring. Imagine the benefits reaped by her friendship.’

Twilight gasped softly. Her eyes grew wide for a moment as it clicked.

“Is something wrong?” Rarity, concern colouring her voice, asked.

For an instant, Twilight felt... furious, there was no other word for it, that Rarity was eavesdropping on her. How else would she have heard the gasp against the rattle of the train and their friends talking? What was she planning that she had such nerve?!

“Darling? Are you alright?”

“Hm? Oh, s-sorry, Rarity, I just...I’m fine,” Twilight lied. Her smile was shaky and she didn’t look Rarity in the eye. “Nervous, you know.”

Rarity made a little noise of sympathy. “You just remember we’re always here if you need to talk, okay?” She patted Twilight on the shoulder before giving her some space.

Twilight waited until Rarity was gone before turning back to the window and letting her unsteady smile fall.

‘What the hay was that?! She just happened to overhear me, why did I take it so badly?’ She chewed on the thought, puzzling so intensely over it that she didn’t notice they’d arrived until Pinkie Pie appeared on the other side of the window.

“We’re heeeeeeeeeere~,” she sung, muffled by the glass she was pressing her face right against.

“Gah!” The unicorn shrieked, jerking back with a thud. Twilight rubbed the back of her head as she sat up, giving Pinkie a glare. The party pony just replied with a wide, glass-pressed grin. ‘That insolent— I mean, Pinkie Pie is just being Pinkie Pie,’ she told herself, shaking off more of the uncharacteristic affront. Picking Spike up in her magical grip, she cradled him in it. ‘I’ll let him sleep a little, until we get to the castle.’

Her friends were all waiting, with various expressions of amusement, outside. Fluttershy hurried over to fuss, but Twilight gently dissuaded her and pointed out they should get moving. 

“Finally!” Rainbow Dash exclaimed. “Last one to the castle is a gnarly dragon egg!” She took off, a rainbow trail left in her wake.

“Hey, ya can’t fly, that’s cheatin’!” yelled Applejack as she began to gallop after her, powerful hooves pounding on the cobblestones.

Pinkie squealed in delight. “Race time! Come on girls, let’s go!”

Sniffing haughtily, Rarity raised her nose. “I hardly think such a display is appropriate in Canterlot. I shan’t act in such a way in the Princess’ own city.”

“I know the Princess wanted us to get to her quickly, but the way Rainbow Dash is going she might hit somepony,” Twilight added.

“And, well, I’m not fast enough to really make it much of a race,” admitted Fluttershy.

“Well, I guess we’ll just have to keep the Princess company until you slowpokes catch up. Bye bye!” With a wave, Pinkie took off, bouncing with inexplicable speed. Her unusual gait cleared the obstacles presented by other ponies.

“...Uh, did Pinkie just say…” Twilight said, gulping as the idea of leaving Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie alone with Princess Celestia conjured images in her mind. The words ‘banished’ and ‘dungeon’ made themselves readily apparent shortly after.

“What are we waiting for?!” shrieked Rarity, already charging up the road towards the castle. “Imagine the indignity! The disgrace! The scandal!”

Fluttershy and Twilight exchanged looks, exasperation and amusement in equal measure, before setting off after Rarity. 

*

“So I said ‘we’ll see who’s nuts’ and I kicked him, twice, right in the—”

“Princess!” Twilight cried, bypassing the last door between her and the muffled sound of Rainbow Dash’s voice with a blink of magic. She panted, mane askew, and blurted, “Rainbow is just exaggerating! She only kicked him once!”

Princess Celestia, Sol Invictus, Solar Aspect of the Celestial Cycle, sat upon a plush array of cushions in the centre of her study. On all sides, souvenirs and trinkets from centuries of politics and birthdays lined the walls. An axe from the Minotaur President sat between a tome of Zebrican poetry and a gold-bronze disc decorated in cog-like patterns. A gem with a hundred perfectly cut edges reflected the sun into green beams. These and more surrounded the Princess with splendour and wonder. She looked upon her most faithful of students and, with all the dignity of such an ancient being, giggled. It was such an unreal moment Twilight wasn’t sure if she was dreaming, or if perhaps she’d hit her head in her rush. But no, Rainbow Dash was joining in with laughter that had the pegasus rolling on the floor and there was Applejack trying and failing to suppress her guffaws. Pinkie felt no such compulsion to contain herself with her high pitched giggling.

“Oh, Twilight Sparkle, it is good to see you.” The Princess rose and swept Twilight into a hug, nuzzling her faithful student. “Regardless of the cause, I’m always pleased to see you and your friends.”

“My friends...yeah…” Twilight agreed, the powerful hug almost robbing her of breath. Her earlier conclusion came back, driving itself like a nail into her thoughts. ‘I don’t think Princess Celestia has friends...’

She felt an aching pang in her chest for even thinking it, and told herself she must be wrong. It wasn’t something she should even think about around her mentor, it was just too much! Twilight hugged the Princess back, telling herself it was all her imagination.

"T-Twilight, I'm here! What have those scoundrels done?!" Rarity burst through the door, chest heaving, her mane a mess of wayward strands, and froze. She stared at the hugging pair. Every eye in the room was on her. 

"Good afternoon, Lady Rarity," Celestia said with a faint smile.

"Hey, Rarity," added Rainbow Dash with narrowed eyes aimed at her friend. "What was that about scoundrels?"

Pinkie Pie sidled up to the pegasus. "Psst, Dashie," she stage-whispered, "I think she meant us."

"Yeah, Pinkie, I know that. I was trying to subtle!"

Twilight felt a few of her brain cells die. “I think you mean ‘be subtle’, Rainbow.”

“Yeah, that, I was subtling,” Dash went on nonetheless, “Totally subtle. I can subtle good.”

"Oooooooh! I get it!" Pinkie said, head bouncing in agreement. “You can subtle good!”

Rarity ignored them in favour of bowing hastily. "Princess, I'm so sorry! I hope they haven't said or done anything to offend you. Applejack, why didn't you keep a rein on them?"

"Me? Why the hay am I s'posed ta foalsit them two?" Applejack demanded, rising from her lounging seat on the floor to stand in front of Rarity. "They're grown mares— well Rainbow Dash is, most of the time."

Princess Celestia cleared her throat. "They weren't any trouble, I assure you. Quite the opposite, really."

"We had fun!" Pinkie cheered. She threw a hoof across the Princess's  neck. "Right, Princess? I didn't know you could have so much fun without punch and cake.” She gasped. “Maybe we don't need cake for fun!"

"Let's not go too far, Miss Pie," Celestia hurried to say.

Rainbow Dash suddenly grinned, and darted to one of the walls. "You're not one to talk. At least we look, what's the word, presentable?"

She turned back without warning, revealing a mirror she'd taken from Celestia's collection of souvenirs. Rarity laìd eyes on her reflection and, for but a moment, she stared. She beheld her sweat-marred makeup. She saw her wild, unruly mane. Her shriek pierced the heavens themselves. It might have kept on going if Rarity hadn't been carried away by a flash of magenta magic. She winked from one point in space to another.

"Sorry, Princess. I sent her to the powder room down the hall. She'll be back in a minute, Twilight explained. She wanted to facehoof at the antics of her friends, and her relief at Fluttershy's quiet arrival a moment later was palpable.

“Sorry I’m late, I… I got a bit lost in the castle,” Fluttershy mumbled as she slipped into the room.

Less apologetic was Spike, who stomped in with a foul expression. “You dropped me,” he announced without waiting even a moment, eyes on Twilight.

The unicorn winced. ‘So that’s what I forgot about...’ “I’m sorry, Spike, I really am. I just, you know, panicked.”

“You panicked and dropped me!” the dragon corrected her with a scowl.

“I know, I know, I’m sorry! I promise it won’t happen again.” Twilight yanked him over into a hug, and whispered, “Please, Spike, not in front of the Princess. A new tub of ice cream when we get home, okay?”

After a moment of consideration, Spike nodded and hugged her. “Deal,” he whispered.

Celestia chuckled, and turned her head to Fluttershy. “There is no need to apologise, either for Rarity, or yourself, Fluttershy. Once Rarity has returned, we can talk of the reasons I called you here today. A few minutes lost to let her regain her poise are nothing to worry about.”

Twilight sighed in relief, and put away her fears for the moment. She was confident that Rarity would know that this was important, and when the red-cheeked unicorn came trotting back only ten minutes later, Twilight had her trust validated. Considering how long Rarity could spend touching up her appearance and fussing over her mane, it was among the fastest visits to the powder room Twilight had seen her friend take.

“I am dreadfully sorry, Your Highness, I just don’t know what came over me,” Rarity said with a barely noticeable tremor in her voice. She bowed awkwardly, rising only when the Princess gestured.

“You need never fear offending me, not any of you. After all you have done for Equestria, you’ve earned the right to speak your mind and say whatever you wish, whenever and wherever,” the regal alicorn told them. She smiled warmly, rising to her hooves from the bed of cushions she had been relaxing on.

“Chimichanga!” Pinkie Pie grinned at the looks that earned her. “She did say whatever!”

“I did,” Celestia agreed, chuckling for a brief instant. Her mirth faded after a moment, and again Twilight wondered how often her mentor was able to laugh without pretext to it. How many nobles told jokes the Princess had to laugh at simply for the sake of politeness? How rare must a real, genuine chance to relax and laugh be...

‘Stop that. Listen,’ she scolded herself, focusing just in time to hear the Princess begin.

“I have a task I would like the six of you to venture forth on,” began the Princess. Her horn glowed and a map of Equestria appeared hovering in the air before them. Dots began to mark towns and villages east of Canterlot. “A strange series of events have begun to occur. Over the past month, reports of strange creatures have reached my ears. They only appear in a town or village late at night, and always stealing what I can best describe as supplies; food, water and, oddly, stone working tools.”

“Stone working tools? Why would they need those?” Twilight asked. She leaned forward, staring at the map with rapt eyes.

“Better question is, why didn’t they just buy the food like everypony else?” Applejack added, watching the map with a frown. “Heck, even if they don’t have no money, I can’t imagine anypony would let’m starve.”

Celestia nodded, the shimmer of her horn changing slightly to highlight some of the map’s dots. “I’m afraid I can’t answer those questions. If I knew anything else about them, I would not call them simply ‘creatures’, but the descriptions of them...they match nothing I have ever heard of before, let alone seen.”

“And you want us to go flying and catch them red hoofed, right?” Soaring up to the map, Rainbow Dash studied it with a grin. “Do we get cuffs to use on them?”

Magic wrapped around her tail, and yanked her down as Twilight answered, “I don’t think the Princess wants us for just that, Rainbow Dash. If she just wanted to arrest them, she has the Royal Guard for that.”

“Very good, Twilight,” said Celestia with a look of pride that made Twilight want to squeal in delight like a little filly again. “My faithful student is correct. Nopony has been hurt and despite their great size these strangers have fled rather than fight. I would like the six of you and Spike to find them, and attempt to communicate with them.”

Spike perked up, eyes going wide at being included, and grinned. Twilight glanced at him for a moment, confused by his excited reaction.

Rainbow Dash, on the other hoof,  did a bad job of hiding her disappointment. “So, no epic action battles or busting out the Elements of Harmony?”

“I’m afraid not,” the Princess confirmed with a small curve at the edge of her lips suggesting a suppressed smile. “I won’t treat them as criminals until I have a better reason to. If they had been actively hurting my little ponies when taking food, that would be a different matter, but I feel it best to extend a hoof in peace first.”

“Sounds like a mighty fine plan, if ya don’t mind me sayin’ so. Maybe they just don’t know how we do things here, and need a lil’ help,” Applejack suggested, earning an approving nod from the Princess.

“I assure you, Your Highness, that we’ll make sure it all ends—” Rarity started to say.

“—with a smile! Oh, and a party!” Pinkie cheered.

Rarity ever so gently slapped a hoof over Pinkie's mouth. "We'll make sure it ends as peacefully as we can," she finished.

"We'll do our best, Princess. We won't let you down!" Twilight said, and six voices joined her in making this promise.

Princess Celestia smiled, a warm, soft expression that filled them with confidence. It was the trust in her eyes that did it; the assurance that she believed in each and every one of them.

Twilight felt Spike clutch her a little tighter. Despite their exposure to the Princess and her charisma, it was still extraordinary when she focused all her ancient wisdom and knowledge on you, and gave you her trust.

'Imagine how strange that is for him, to have someone trust him,' whispered a grim voice in the back of her mind.

'I trust him,' she thought, yet a little seed of doubt wormed its way in despite her assurances. 'I do!'

It echoed in her mind, heavy with the weight of guilt. She pushed the thoughts aside, promising herself a long talk with Spike when they got back.

Her internal dialogue was disrupted by a blur of rainbow colours leaping past her to the door. Rainbow Dash pushed it open, hovering there. She looked over her shoulder at the others.

"We going or what?" She demanded.
 
"We, uh, don't know where to go, Rainbow Dash," Fluttershy pointed out. She ducked behind Pinkie. "Sorry."

A glow startled them. The magical map lit up as Celestia's hornlight intensified. Conjured paper formed, ink imprinted on it as the alicorn manifested the map physically. It rolled up, a ribbon binding it neatly, and it flew over to Twilight.

“Take this. It has the places these strangers have been seen, including the last known town where they were sighted.” Celestia raised a hoof to stop them. “The descriptions are strange; they speak of towering bipeds. They leave pawed footprints. Do all you can to reach a peaceful compromise, but do not put yourself at risk.”

“Hey, I’m a biped, don’t worry. We bipeds talk the same language,” Spike assured her. He put his hands on his hips, chest puffing up proudly. “We can talk about feet!”

After a few moments, Spike became aware that he was receiving a few odds looks. He raised his hands defensively.

“Listen, you wouldn’t get it. It’s a biped thing. Besides, everyone I know has hooves!” he explained.

“Come on, I wanna meet the plot hooks! Come ooooooooooon!” whined Pinkie, grabbing Twilight and dragging her towards the door.

“We’ll be back with good news soon, I promise!” Calling back as she was pulled out, Twilight’s heart warmed once more at the trusting smile. Her doubts and fears were pushed aside, and she pulled Pinkie’s hooves off so she could walk on her own. 

*

The train rattled to a stop, and Twilight considered whether it would be an abuse of her close student-teacher relationship with Celestia to bring forward a petition to have all nuts and bolts on trains tightened, or a muffling spell cast all over. They were all far too noisy, and it was a welcome relief to step onto the train station platform.

It wasn’t very hard to find where the strangers had found food; the door to the town’s general store lay next to its frame. Whatever they were, they had made short work of the door and the frame around it. Glass from the shattered door’s window had been swept into a pile, along with the remains of the door itself.

“Applejack, Rarity, come in with me and we’ll talk to the owners. Everyone else, check around town, see if anypony else saw anything, or heard it.” Brow furrowed as she thought, Twilight tried to remember everything she had read from detective novels as her friends split up. “Spike, can you look for footprints?”

“Sure thing!” With a salute, Spike dropped to all fours, staring at the ground with incredible intensity. He walked slowly, penetrating the earth with the sheer focus of his probing stare.

Twilight left him to it, walking up to the door and knocking on the broken frame. She waited, looking back at Applejack and Rarity as the two followed her.

“Come in!” Someone called at last. “Mind the glass! I think I got most of it....”

The insides of the store looked little better than the outside.

“I thought this place was robbed a few days ago,” Rarity remarked, shuddering as she beheld the disorganised chaos. She flushed at her comment being caught by the owner as a mare appeared from behind the counter.

“Huh? Oh, the robbery, right,” the mare said with a shrug. “I cleaned that up already. They totally wrecked my store, but it’s okay now!”

Rarity shuddered. “It’s...it’s very you,” she agreed, although it was more of a guess. She took in the mare’s messy, unkempt mane and decided she was probably right.

“I’d hope so. It’d be terrible if it was very somepony else.” The mare gasped. “Like if it was Ordered Goods. I hate that guy. With all his ‘systems’ and ‘alphabeticalness’. Ugh, his store sucks! Bric-a-Brac’s Bric-a-Brac General Store is way better, and that’s my store! Here! Where you are now!”

Applejack gently poked Twilight. “Y’all alright there, sugarcube?”

It took a few seconds for Twilight’s brain to get back in order. Order was exactly what this place needed, but she had to focus. She had a job. She had a mission from the Princess. That was what was important right now, not this disorderly, chaotic mess. She tried to block it all out and just keep her attention on the shopkeeper.

“I’m...fine. Excuse me, Miss, we’ve been sent by Princess Celestia to investigate the robbery. I was hoping you had seen the creatures that did this,” she began, taking a notepad from her saddlebags.

The mare grinned. “Wow! The Princess sent you? That’s amazing! You must be really important!”

Rarity coughed delicately. “She is, darling, but the questions…?” she asked with a hopeful smile.

“Oh! Right! Well, lemme think….I heard a loud crash, which I think was the door, and came rushing down! I was so sure Ordered Goods was sabotaging me by sneaking in at night, but no! It was this big...thing!” Bric-a-Brac explained, gesturing wildly and energetically with every word.

Applejack raised an eyebrow as she asked, “A thing?”

“What kind of thing? Could you describe it for me?” asked Twilight. Her horn glowed, dipping a quill in an inkpot that floated out of her bag.

“Uh, it was...big?” the shopkeep answered with a shrug. “I couldn’t see much since it was dark and all, but it was big, with those things, you know, the wriggling things griffons and dragons have on the ends of their arms.”

“Fingers?” volunteered Rarity after a moment’s thought.

“Yep! Those things! It had those!” Bric-a-Brac nodded, beaming. “It had hands, and fingers!”

Twilight nodded, noting it down. “How big was it?” she asked. 

Bric-a-Brac grinned. “Bigger than my door!” 

Feeling a twitch developing, Twilight shook her head. An idea came to her. “Rarity, can you measure the door? Miss, how much bigger than your door? Did the creature look like it was bent over or in anyway compressing itself to fit through the door?”

Behind her, Rarity took the tape measure Twilight had been sure she would have on her, because Rarity was a firm believer that a fashion crisis could strike at any time, and set about measuring the the door frame.

Bric-a-Brac rubbed her chin, frowning softly in thought. “Huh, I’m not sure. I think it was about the size of that shouty Minotaur guy who came through town a while back. He was soooooo tall! Oooh, maybe it was taller than him!”

Bit by bit, Twilight began the excruciating process of extracting every bit of information she could from the disorganised Bric-a-Brac. The shopkeep was proving herself to be as mentally chaotic as her store layout belied, going off on tangents at the drop of a hat and distracting herself with the most inane of subjects. Between the three of them, they managed to get down relatively relevant facts. Twilight bade her farewell with much relief, and left the store to find the others waiting just outside for them.

“Alright everypony, tell me what you found.” Quill at the ready, Twilight’s mind became a calculative space of facts and logic, correlating everything that poured from the mouths of her friends.

“So, this mare with a really cool bike said she heard—”

“A friend of a friend of a friend said her friend saw-”

“I, uh, I-I didn’t actually, um, end up asking anypony…”

“Done!” Twilight announced. She held aloft the scroll upon which she had gathered everything they knew.

“Oh, lemme see!” Pinkie said as she reached for it.

Twilight pulled it away. “Let me read it first! Ahem; the unknown creature, hereafter referred to as ‘the creature’—”

Rainbow Dash groaned. “Come on Twilight, I don’t wanna die of old age before you finish!”

“Hereafter referred to as ‘the creature’,” Twilight repeated, forging ahead with a minor glare at the interruption, “appears to be between eight and twelve feet in height, with a margin for error of up to four feet upwards, based on the door frame and the damage done to it. The creature appears to have skin or hide hard enough that the splinters and similar pointed dangers from breaking the door frame broke against its skin, rather than the reverse. Given the way the door was knocked outwards, and the debris from the door frame did the same, the creature also possesses substantial physical prowess.” 

“Substan-wha?” Pinkie stage-whispered to the others.

 Rainbow Dash leaned past Applejack, similarly stage-whispering back, “It’s really bucking strong. Like, Big Mac strong.”

Twilight cleared her throat and continued, “Only when inside the store did it make noise, and while making its escape. After it fled, nopony else in town was able to confirm they saw it. This suggests the creature is particularly physically powerful, with a strong, muscular build based on Bric-a-Brac’s glimpse of its silhouette, and that it possesses scales, skin or hide that is extremely tough, perhaps as tough as dragon scales. Some kind of Minotaur would be the main consideration, were it not for the pawprints it left in its wake here and in other towns, as well as a confirmed lack of any kind of horns, since it would be impossible for Bric-a-Brac to have not noticed them.”

“This is real interestin’ and all, Twi’, but it ain’t much help for findin’ the thing, is it?” Applejack pointed out.

"Hm, I suppose not. But it is interesting! When we meet this creature every extra thing we know will help us," Twilight replied as she went back over notes. “The possibilities for what this creature is are endless. Even Princess Celestia has no idea! Imagine what it might know!”

“Great, that’s just great.” Rainbow Dash circled the group, slowly rising. Her gentle ring suddenly changed into a sharp turn as she set off down the road. “There’s Spike! He looks like he’s found something! Come on!”

“Spike found a clue!” Pinkie cheered as she bounced down the road, detective hat inexplicably atop her head. “Let’s go investigate!”

Stifling a protest that her notes still needed to be alphabetised, Twilight hurried after Rainbow Dash. They met the dragon halfway towards the edge of the little town, and he beamed at them as he came to a stop.

“I found pawprints! They’re huge, like, bigger than Minotaur hooves!” he explained, cut short for a moment as he went from the ground to Twilight’s back in a flash of light. Holding on, he pointed beyond the town. “They were leading that way, towards the forest. I was gonna follow them, but I thought you would want to know first.”

“Good work!” The unicorn smiled, a telekinetic pat on his head spikes making the little dragon beam in pride. “We need to catch up with it before it’s too far away.”

“On it!” Rainbow Dash had barely had the chance to flap her wings before she was stalled midair. She glared down at the source of her lack of progress. “AJ, let go!”

Applejack spat her tail out. “Now hold on, don’t just go flying off like that. What if this thing ain’t friendly? We all hope it is, but if it ain’t, we can’t just let ya go alone.”

“I’ll take Fluttershy then, we’ll be fine,” Dash said with a roll of her eyes.

Freezing, Fluttershy stared up at the friend who wanted to take her, alone, to find the ten foot tall monster capable of shattering a door frame with ease. 

“Perhaps not, darling. Let’s stick together for this, if you can hold yourself back just a smidge,” suggested Rarity. She shared a smile with Fluttershy, patting her friend on the shoulder. “Safest for everypony.”

Scowling, Rainbow Dash nonetheless slowed down to keep pace with the group, though it was clear she dearly wished to zoom ahead again. By the time they reached the nearby forest, Twilight had sent Dash into the sky to watch from above as a compromise. It wasn’t all good fortune for them however, as they came to a bank of wide stones in the ground.

“I can’t tell where the pawprints are now. Girls, spread out and check the edges of the rock, where the grass is again. Hopefully we can keep following them,” Twilight said with a frown. She stopped only a moment after she started, a soft call from Fluttershy drawing attention to the pegasus.

“Uh…” Fluttershy pointed along the ground. “It went this way. I mean, I think it did.”

It looked just like the rest of the ground to Twilight, and she looked around. None of the others looked as though they could see anything different, and slowly their eyes went to Fluttershy.

Flushing, she reached down to run her hoof across the edge of the stone. The moss shifted gently beenather her hoof. “You can see here, where the moss has been is just a little bit different along the edge,” she began to explain.

‘Of course she knows how to navigate a forest,’ Twilight realised. She resisted the urge to facehoof at her own unthinking ignorance. ‘She deals with creatures that live in the forest everyday, and I know some of them don’t like taking their medicine. How many must she have had to track down when they’re sick?’

“I trust you, Fluttershy. If you say that’s the way to go, that’s the way we’ll go.” Twilight started in the direction Fluttershy had pointed.

“Go Fluttershy!” cheered Spike, punching the air as they passed her. She blushed, and as each of her friends praised her, the fire in her cheeks grew.

“I-it was nothing,” she mumbled shyly. The only reason she didn’t look away to hide her blush was to keep an eye on the barely perceptible trail leading them through the forest. It lead them through the forest, further and further from pony-made trails and paths. Eventually Rainbow Dash dropped back down to join them, grudgingly admitting the foliage was making it impossible to see anything.

“The only thing this way is a hill,” she had to say as they traversed the forest.

“Maybe they found a cave?” Pinkie suggested. “Caves are such fun, maybe they’re spelunking!”

Twilight began to pick up speed. She sensed something, the faint touch of magic on the wind, and her pace grew from a trot to a gallop. “We might be about to find out…” 

“Hey, how come nopony grabs her tail when she runs ahead?” whined Rainbow Dash. She followed with a snap of her wings, darting between branches.

“That’d be rude,” Applejack said with a smirk, galloping under Rainbow Dash.

Twilight burst into the clearing and Spike nearly went flying as she ground to a halt. She knew they’d failed instantly. A campfire, not so much as a spark left in its blackened cradle of ash, and the remains of a camp were spread out before her. The hill rose above them, a rocky outcropping thrusting from the earth. Her friends began to arrive behind her as the unicorn studied the camp intently.

“We were too slow,” Spike said, heaving a heavy sigh. “Crabapples.”

Correcting him absently, “Language, mister,” Twilight said without looking away from the camp site. Her horn tingled, a faint whiff of foreign magic brushing her arcane senses.

Applejack had stopped at the edge, and frowned at Rainbow Dash when the pegasus ventured into the remains of the camp. “We didn’t miss ‘em by long, an’ by the looks of it there’s more than one.”

“That explains why they’ve been taking food and supplies,” Twilight agreed. Her expression turned to a mask of concentration, her horn igniting. Confusion furrowed her brow. “Strange. Someone worked some kind of magic here, but it’s not a kind I’m familiar with.”

That got raised eyebrows all around, and Spike looked indignant.

“But you know everything about magic! How can you not know?” he exclaimed, leaning forward from his perch. “Are you sure you haven’t just forgotten it?”

Flattered as she was by his belief in her knowledge, if not the idea that she might forget anything about magic, Twilight shook her head. “I don’t know everything, Spike, and you know that. Even if I can’t identify this magic, I can still follow it. It’s so distinct from the natural mana around it, I think I could follow it halfway across the world now.”

“Then we’d best hurry along then, if nothing else is of concern,” Rarity suggested. She levitated a handkerchief from her saddlebag, delicately dabbing her forehead. “Hopefully they haven’t gotten far, I’d hate to meet such newcomers without looking my best.”

“Too bad you didn’t give that much thought to seeing the Princess,” Rainbow Dash cackled. The glare thrown her way bounced off her ego’s deflector shields, despite the dagger-pointedness Rarity put into it.

“Hmm…” For all the apparent good fortune of this strange new magic, Twilight felt something aside from her mounting curiosity. There was a piece of the puzzle missing here.

Fluttershy was the first to notice, and she looked at the unicorn worriedly. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

Twilight sighed, and said, “Not….wrong, exactly. We know why they needed supplies, and why they had to keep going for food from towns, but I can’t help but wonder about those tools. What use are stone-cutting tools in the wilderness?”

*

The snap of stone cracking filled the air.

Shan Quan-ti, noble mogu captain of the Shan’ze clan, drew his hand back and idly dusted his knuckle. His manner was almost relaxed, until you looked in his eyes and saw the fury peering from beneath a heavy brow of dark blue.

“Do you know why I struck you, spiritbinder?” he asked in the tone of one inquiring about the weather. He watched the smaller mogu below him, wounded cheek pressed to the ground in display of abject submission.

'Because you are a shortsighted fool.'

“Because I have failed you, my lord,” answered the smaller mogu with not a trace of his thoughts upon his face. His terracotta orange skin had none of the noble armour that clad the lord above him, adorned only in the thick belt and kilt of a spiritbinder. “I swear, my lord, I need only time—”

With a casual kick, Shan Quan-ti silenced him.

“I struck you, Zhiyuan, because of your excuses,” he went on. “I do not want to hear of reports on what has failed. I do not want you to tell me what will not work. Do you know what I want?”

This time the spiritbinder said nothing, keeping his face pressed to the ground. He listened to the silence around them; the others would never be so foolish as to snicker or sneer, unwilling to risk opening themselves to Shan Quan-ti’s wrath, yet...

'They are laughing at me. I know it,' he thought and the flush of heat in his chest grew with each moment. A hand grasped the thick beads that hung around his neck, and the lesser mogu gasped as he was pulled up. His eyes locked with his lords, and he silenced his thoughts as he kneeled before the Shan'ze Lord.

Quan-ti stared into his eyes. “I want to hear what you need for your next test. I want you to succeed.” The threat went unsaid, the possibility of failure dismissed in his eyes as surely as his underling.

Zhiyuan saw the heat fade from the mogu lord’s eyes. Slowly, he raised Zhiyuan further, until the spiritbinder was standing on his own. He let go. Thick fingers brushed dirt from his servant’s shoulder, almost gentle. His expression didn’t change as the brush became a strike, across the mouth with the back of his hand.

“That," explained the lord, "was for not answering when I asked you a question.”

Zhiyuan kept his gaze lowered until his master had turned away. His hands bunched into fists. He imagined himself striking now, while Quan-ti was vulnerable, but whatever grip ambition might have on his senses fell quiet.

'He will kill you. A true Shan is never relaxed, never unguarded.'

He looked up, glancing over the other mogu. They lay about their camp, the second in as many days. The sight of Honghui the scout laid out, unconscious, soothed the ache in his jaw. For all the failure of his work so far, at least Zhiyuan had not exposed them to the locals. 

'And these fools would kill me anyway.'

Taking the stone-cutting tools in hand, Zhiyuan grumbled under his breath. They were ill-suited to him, and he wondered how the strange, hooved creatures used them.

‘How am I supposed to make even the most basic of Quilan with these?’ he wondered, raging silently at the boulder he was ordered to craft into a Quilan vessel. ‘Does he expect me to use these to make anything of actual use? The rock isn’t prepared, or even the right kind!’

“Zhiyuan.”

The spiritbinder spun, bowing instantly. That awful ache grew in his chest, like a knife resting against his heart. The emotions he loathed fought to explode from him despite all his control, and he wondered in a moment of irrationality if Shan Quan-ti was a mindreader.

“Yes, my lord?”

The mogu noble gestured towards the forest they had left only a few hours ago. “There appear to be natives coming. Following our trail.”

Zhiyuan opted for silence. The ache of a scar that split the crags of his arm reminded him of a lesson all mogu learned. Doubtless Renshu would be experience that lesson again, and again, until he would remember it the next time he failed to cover their trail. it would, the spellbinder mused silently, at least provide entertainment.

“They are far enough from their filthy villages that they will not be missed. Extract the soul of whichever you judge to be the strongest first, then the next…” Quan-ti stopped, catching something of Zhiyuan’s emotions in his expression. The noble’s eyes narrowed. “You hesitate?”

“I have only the capacity to contain a single soul, my lord,” Zhiyuan hurried to explain. His expression trembled, the mask of control almost slipping. “I lack the resources to craft a vessel for more than one before they would be lost, and the effort of keeping the additional souls from fading would be deny me the power to craft the weapon you desire.”

Shan Quan-ti grunted, leonine face wrinkling in a stony scowl. “Very well,” he barked with a dismissive gesture. “Extract the soul of the strongest.”

“And the rest?” ventured the spiritbinder.

A chuckle shook the noble mogu’s frame. “I tire of skulking like rodents and eating only stolen food. Do well in your task and you shall have a haunch of the fattest of the natives.”

Zhiyuan bowed once more, holding back the urge to lick his lips or do something so filthy as drool.He had glimpsed fat flanks of the natives, their plush coat hiding no doubt juicy flesh. The images hung in his mind, dancing before his eyes as he worked, until those images became fantasy of his teeth closing and grinding down tender steaks.

*

A shout from Rainbow Dash was the first warning they had that they were close. The moment they had cleared the forest she had taken to the sky, and now her need to soar was paying off.

“I can see them!” She called. Swooping down, the pegasus flew just above her friends. “Looks like there’s ten, I think.”

“Ten? Really?” Twilight tried to keep the skepticism from her voice, but she was knew she was fighting a losing battle on that front. "Are you sure? Not that I think you'd be wrong, but ten is more than I expected."

“They can’t have enough food to feed ten of them, the poor things,” said Fluttershy, voice trembling with the same worry Twilight expected for any creature in need from her.

Rainbow Dash snorted. “I dunno, they looked plenty tough enough from up there. They’re just over the next hill, in the depression.”

“May I suggest we not simply run up to them?” Rarity asked, and she began to slow. They slowed with her. “If we come just running over like bats out of Tartarus, we could frighten the poor things.”

“Good idea. I can go first, and you follow just a few paces behind me,” said Twilight, raising a hoof as protests began to bubble up from her friends. “I can teleport back if something goes wrong, and I did follow them via their magic, so we might have a common interest.”

“Welp, I dunno about lettin’ you put yourself in danger, but I’ll trust ya to stay safe.” Applejack patted Twilight on the shoulder. “We’ll jump in if we need to, though.”

Rainbow Dash nodded as they crested the hill. “You’re darn right we will! I mean, look at these guys!”

A protest about judging by appearance rose to Twilight’s lips, but it was stalled by her first sight of the creatures. She stared, taking them in before forcing herself to start approaching. They seemed to already have spotted her, their eyes on the pony, and they were just standing there. Twilight smiled. The band of creatures were waiting.

‘I was about right. Fourteen feet, maybe, and their skin looks like stone...are they stone? A kind of gargoyle?’ she wondered, glancing back at her friends following a few metres behind her.  Rainbow Dash was clearly raring to go, and Applejack was just as clearly making sure their flighty friend didn’t jump the gun. This left Rarity on Pinkie Pie duty, which for once didn’t seem hard. The way Pinkie was looking just as confused as everypony else wasn’t at all reassuring. 

‘Stay calm. They’re big, but they’re clearly thinking creatures. We can make peace,’ Twilight thought, stepping forward without missing a beat. This was the moment Princess Celestia had sent her for.

“Excuse me….hello! My name is Twilight Sparkle, and I—” Twilight brought to mind every time Celestia had spoken to dignitaries, every soothing tone to calm the irate noble. When it came to diplomacy, she knew, who better than Princess Celestia to study?

The leader grinned. At least, she was fairly sure it was the leader. Beautiful, orante armour covered its shoulders and clasped its waist, for all it’s hard, harsh designs.  The creature barked something, almost a word a word, and stepped back as she approached.

“I...uh, I was wondering if we could….” the unicorn began, her voice faltering with each word as they backed away. 'What am I doing wrong? Is my voice too high? Too low? Soft?'

Another, skin as orange as a terracotta bowl, stepped forward. The tang of magic in the air grew sharp, and she noticed the faint glow around his hands. Too late, Twilight realised the magic was more than passive. It was being shaped into strange formations, energy twisting into a...spell?

“...talk…” she finished, eyes latched onto the display of alien magic.

Claws snapped shut over her soul, invisible constructs of magic that seized the immaterial within hert. Ice crept over her soul, a chill that permeated more than mere flesh. Her mind froze, and her body locked up. The strange spellcaster’s eyes caught hers and she couldn’t look away. It was, she noted in the little part of her head that sat there taking notes, similar to the magic she had followed but ever so slightly different. Utterly unlike anything she had been taught. Distantly she heard her friends screaming her name, and the other monsters — because what else could they be? — were charging forwards, spears and swords raised to the sky and war-cries on their lips.

‘My friends...’ It jarred her paralysed will into action. The shadowy talons reaching from the spellcaster trembled, their progress slowing. Her eyes watered as she forced her magic to awaken. The monsters were about to pass her now, weapons ready, gleeful murder in their eyes, as they went straight for her friends.

The alien spellcaster’s expression lost its smugness. Confusion and fear appeared in its eyes. With a snarl it pushed its hands towards her. Dark magic swelled and the deadly chill grew. Its stony expression grew uncertain knew something was going wrong, but not what. A small part of Twilight felt a little alien thrill at that.

The spell of soul removal continued to eat into Twilight, arcane forces working to sever the bond to her body. It faltered as it sunk into her, twisting when her own magic began to flow. It was a desperate act, the like of which Twilight had only performed once as a child, the day she earned her cutie mark.

Twilight screamed. Everything dissolved into a blinding flare of magenta light. Her grip on the world slipped away, and blackness overtook her until she had only a moment of awareness. It was a moment dominated not by a sight or a sound, but a thought. A warning; a threat that made her will buckle.

“You are not prepared!”

> Chapter 2 - Wickedness is afoot. Er, ahoof.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The first thing Rarity was aware of was the throbbing pain in her skull. The second was the dirt. It was everywhere. 

‘I’m in Tartarus. That’s the only explanation.’

She felt the grits on her face, in her mane, mixed into her tail, all over her side! Filthy, unclean, untidy dirt! The strength of a mother lifting a carriage to save her child, the power of a stallion throwing himself across a room to shield his loved one, filled her as she rose from the earth with a shriek of disgust. Rising not just to her hooves, but into the air, Rarity experienced a familiar feeling a few moments later.

Falling.

“Wow,” she heard, dimly, in the scratchy tones of her least willingly fashionable friend. “That’s some pretty sweet hang time.”

Her hooves hit the ground, the shock of the landing running through her, yet one thought overtook the sensation in her mind; ‘I hope I didn’t crack a hoof.’

There was another thought right behind that, nagging at her. Rarity blinked, sharp sunlight lancing into her eyes as it grazed the mountains to the west.

‘West...but it's not that late...’

A leg draped over her shoulders, pulling her over with a yelp. She found herself unfortunately close to Rainbow Dash as the pegasus grinned at her, hooves digging through the dirt with each tug. 

“That was awesome,” Rainbow Dash crowed. She waved a hoof towards Twilight. “It had nothing on Twilight, but, you know, it was still cool.”

Shrugging off the hoof with her glare fading, Rarity turned towards Twilight. “Something Rainbow Dash concedes is ‘awesome’, darling? I admit, the last thing I recall was that dreadful creature casting some spell, and then…”

“Then a feelin’ like Big Mac kicked ya in the brain?” Applejack asked. She rubbed a hoof against her mane. “Feels that way to me. What happened?”

“Twilight sent them running!” Rainbow’s voice rose, and she followed its example as she took to the air with a flap of her wings. She mimed punching something, hooves swishing around.“How’d ya do it? Pow, right in the kisser! Blast ‘em to the moon with some super unicorn spell?”

Pinkie emerged from behind Twilight, despite almost certainly not being there before, and threw a hoof over the unicorn’s shoulders. “Oooh, I bet she used some sorta super-duper spell! Maybe even an Alico—”

“Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie, please,” Rarity stressed the word. Magic rushed through her coat, gathering dirt, as she gestured at them. ‘And weren’t you going on about how awesome it was, Rainbow? Despite not knowing, apparently.’ She squashed the thought before it could show on her face. “Give Twilight a chance to actually talk, and perhaps we’ll find out, hm?”

The pegasus rolled her eyes, but she slowed and she crossed her forelegs over her chest. “Okay, fine, I’ll shut up. Geez, can’t have fun on adventures anymore, can we?.”

Pinkie gave no answer, at least, none for them to hear. Instead she ran a hoof across her lips. Blinking, Rarity was sure it had just been a very odd smile. There was certainly no way Pinkie had just zipped her mouth shut.

Almost certainly.

...probably.

Rarity shook her head and looked at Twilight. “Go on, darling, and take your time. None of us are in a rush, are we, Rainbow Dash?”

Rainbow Dash scoffed, cross her forelegs with a pout on her lips. “I get the message, Rares.”

“Thank you, Rarity.” Twilight took a deep breath, long enough for them to settle around her. By the time she opened her eyes, Rarity had already fished an emergency manebrush from her saddlebag, and sent it floating over. “Oh, uh, thank you. Again.”

Rarity could swear she almost felt the intensity of Rainbow Dash’s glower, yet she gave no sign of it as she replied, “Think nothing of it. You were about to say?”

“Right, yes….so, you all remember what happened up until their spellcaster attacked?” asked Twilight.

“Yeah, we remember that part, we wanna know how you kicked its flank so hard its family felt it!” urged a certain pegasus.

Fluttershy raised a hoof, wincing as attention swung to her. “Um, are you sure it was an attack? Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. M-maybe they thought we were attacking them? I felt like I was watching a bit too aggressively.”

“...really, Fluttershy?” deadpanned Dash.

Rarity caught a glimpse of purple and green wobbling as a shiver ran through Twilight, and it wasn’t until the unicorn paused to adjust him with her magic that Rarity realised it was Spike on Twilight’s back. She grimaced. ‘I completely forgot he was with us. Oh Rarity, you silly mare.’

Twilight’s voice dragged her away from her thoughts, ears pricking up at the words ‘dark magic’.

“—that he was using; it was unmistakably the worst kind. I think he was trying to strip away my soul.” Twilight’s words were lost in the gasps they earned. Her smile was shaky, though she didn’t seem to notice it herself. “Girls, I’m fine, I manage to disrupt it just in time with a burst of magic. It wasn’t very refined, I admit, but it got the job done. It...may have also been what knocked you out? Sorry girls, it’s not very easy to aim that sort of thing.” 

“Oh no, no one blames you,” murmured Fluttershy. “We know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt us.”

“Totally!” Rainbow Dash said with a nod.

“Darn tootin’!” Applejack agreed. A chuckle rumbled out. “As much chance of you trying to hurt us as there is of Pinkie Pie goin’ a day without sugar.”

“Quite right!” added Rarity. She trained her eyes on Twilight’s horn, a frown forming as she watched it. “I’m far more concerned about you,darling. Now, I might not be the mage you are, but even I know that any kind of raw magical burst can be rather dangerous to the unicorn involved, can it not? Your horn looks fine, admittedly.”

A frown marred Applejack’s expression, brow furrowing. “Wait, that can happen? How dangerous? Twi’, you didn’t do nothin’ foolish, did ya?”

“...maybe a little, but I was desperate,” admitted Twilight. She winced, rubbing her horn. “Few unicorns are capable of actually letting out that much power in a single instant, and as one of the few who can, I can assure you I would never be so uncareful as to hurt myself. It was a bit raw, yes, but Princess Celestia taught me a lot about managing magical outbursts.”

"Oh my... are you sure you're alright?" Fluttershy came forward, her feather-light steps bringing her to Twilight's side. "I think Spike packed some bandages..."

 A scowl lit Twilight's expression. "I don't need bandages. I'm fine. I don't need any help."

Rarity met the scowl with a skeptical look and a step that carried her forward to catch Fluttershy's abrupt retreat from the scowl. She took a moment to reassure Fluttershy with a smile, before turning a disapproving look upon Twilight. Years of practice on Sweetie Belle exerted themselves upon the unicorn.

"We're just concerned, as well we should be. You just told us it was dark magic. There's no reason to be upset," said Rarity. She patted Fluttershy on the shoulder, a gentle pressure urging the pegasus towards Twilight again as the scowl melted away.

Twilight flinched, rubbing the back of her neck. "I...you're right. I'm sorry, Fluttershy, I didn't mean to snap at you.”

Before the last word was out, yellow hooves found their way around her. Twilight froze as she was enveloped in a hug that stole away the look on her face, and settled her nerves.

"It’s alright," Fluttershy murmured. "It must have been so hard, doing that on your own."

Twilight visibly relaxed as her eyes drifted shut, shoulders slumping. It was a lovely sight, which made Rarity feel just a little bad as she crept up. She peered closely at Twilight's horn, her gaze scouring each groove on it for scratch or dent.

Something bright flashed by, a moment of brilliant colour blurring. A warning was on the tip of Rarity's tongue, but Rainbow Dash's landing — when had she taken off? 'I swear, that mare cannot keep her hooves on the ground.' — missed by a hair. She closed her mouth, but her eyes said all she wanted to say on the matter, with the sort of implied word that led to bleeps.

Unfortunately, Rainbow Dash was far too busy pulling the hugging pair apart. Her constant air of confidence might as well have been a wall between them where Applejack's frown or Rarity's disapproval were concerned.

"Twilight's way too good at magic, so don't worry. You blew it up, right? Bam, boom, the day is saved? What happened next?" She demanded.

Twilight began to answer, lips forming the first syllable, but hesitated. She frowned. "Next?"

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, and swung her hip to give her friend a nudge. "Yeah, you know, next. After you made that one go kaboom?"

Rubbing her forehead, Twilight wore a perplexed expression. Her brows dipped as they furrowed closer.

"Come on, it must have been awesome," urged Rainbow. She shrugged. "Not as awesome as I'd do if I had magic, but that's kinda a given. I bet it was still pretty cool."

"Give her some space, ya featherbrain," Applejack groused, a flat stare bouncing uselessly off Dash's hide. "She just had ta face off against some real nasty critters.

The pegasus looked back when she felt Rarity's hoof on her shoulder. A faint frown on her lips, Rarity watched the light dawn in Dash's eyes until she glanced at Applejack, then Twilight.

"...sorry, Twilight," she mumbled, looking away. "Take your time and stuff."

Shaking her head, Twilight favoured her with a forgiving smile. “It’s fine. I guess that sort of magical outburst had some aftereffects, even on me. They just ran away, I think. It’s all a bit blurry. I’m just glad they didn’t think to do anything while I was out of it.”

“I hope they think about what they did,” murmured Fluttershy. She sighed, ears dropping. “It’s so sad, that they stole and did such nasty things. We didn’t even get to tell them what they did wrong.”

“Fluttershy, darling, as much as I’d love to agree, I’m simply relieved they made themselves scarce.” Rarity shook her head, shuddering. She didn’t want to imagine what they might have done had they remained, yet she felt the possibilities crawling their way with sinister intent into her mind. “Pinkie Pie, you seem very quiet. Is something wrong?”

Eyes turned upon the party pony, taking in the oddly focused expression.

“I think…” Pinkie started, voice so long she had them leaning in to hear.

“Yes?” prompted Rarity.

“That…” Each word came out as though forced, slipping through clenched teeth on a face of pink awash with, to Rarity’s eyes, a furious concentration..

“Yeah?” urged Rainbow Dash.

“Something…” Pinkie’s brow furrowed.

Twilight leaned in. “Something?”

Pinkie’s expression slipped, and her features moved faster than Rarity could keep track of. They settled on frown. “Is gonna happen!” she declared.

For a moment, perhaps two, no sounds violated the silence. Their wordless stares went unheeded, Pinkie already off in her own little world, until Rarity finally broke.

“Well, as helpful as that is, perhaps we should go looking for the brutes?” she suggested. Tone light, Rarity turned away and raised a hoof to her eyes. “Hmm, where could they have gone? Back into the forest?”

Rainbow Dash let out a snicker, the beat of her wings as she retook the air joining it. “If they did, we’ll just find them again, and this time, we’ll be prepared. No more miss nice Rainbow Dash!”

“That’s a shame, I’d like to meet her one day.” Applejack’s grin might have been evident in her voice, but when Rarity looked the farm-mare had her muzzle buried in her saddlebags. “Lemme just grab that map.”

“No!”

Once again Rarity felt her hooves leave the ground, though they returned to the earth much more swiftly this time. She wasn’t the only one; she heard hooves hitting dirt all around her, and the beat of Dash’s wings faltering for an instant.

A bright blush lit Twilight’s face, luminescent under her fur. “Uh, sorry, I just meant...no, I think we should go back to the Princess. She needs to know about these creatures using dark magic right away. If their spiritbinder can use spells like that, there’s no telling how much damage they could cause.”

“I-if you’re sure, but we’d be leaving them all on their own out here,” Fluttershy mumbled, tone coloured with emotions all too frequent with her.

‘Is she worried about them or about what they might do?’ wondered Rarity. She didn’t voice her thoughts, merely glancing at her meek friend. “I have to agree that we would just be leaving them out here, without anything to stop them from getting up to mischief.”

“The hay is a spiritbinder?” Rainbow Dash muttered. She raised an eyebrow at Twilight, then held up a hoof when the unicorn opened her mouth. “Wait, never mind! Turn that lecture mode off before I fall asleep.”

Twilight’s ear twitched slightly, but her mouth snapped shut with a click. 

“After Twilight scared them off, they might not want to meet anypony,” said Pinkie, a frown in voice as much as on face. "They'll hide and do spooooo~ky things."

Twilight twitched again, very slightly, as Pinkie began to prance. She dodged forehooves that dangled in an undeniably spooooo~ky fashion as Pinkie bounced around.

"As... creatively as Pinkie is putting it, after what happened, I agree. I think they'll be too cautious to do anything else," Twilight explained. Her face turned away, neck craning. "I'm not sure when Spike will wake up, so we can't rely on his fire-mail."

"Sounds like we wanna get a move on, then," Applejack said. Her side was presented to them, saddlebags pushed by an orange hoof. "Twi', Rarity, pass yer bags over. Dash, take Fluttershy's."

"Uh..." Rainbow Dash raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"We're stronger, sugarcube, and if we wanna get to the train fast, we better prove it." Applejack shot her a grin. "Unless you ain't up to—"

Dash's other eyebrow joined the first. "Gimme that!" 

Fluttershy squeaked, the smack of underbarrel on dirt as she ducked. She went down, but her saddlebags defied expectation by going up. With her eyes screwed shut she didn’t see Rainbow Dash fly on ahead, rolling her eyes as she slipped the saddlebags over her back.

"You're so on, AJ!" The flap of wings underscored Rainbow Dash's declaration as she got the saddlebags settled. "Last one there has to model for Rarity!"

Applejack's eyes widened, and in that moment Dash became a blur of colour.

"Hey, that's cheatin'! Get back here!" Orange joined blue in a rush of movement, Applejack's jaw snapping in pursuit of a flicking rainbow tail that danced forever just out of reach.

Lips pressed into a thin frown, Rarity's mane bounced with each shake of her head. "Why, I never! That should be the reward!"

Her ears flicked back, catching the faint giggles from Fluttershy and Twilight. She smiled, as she trotted along in the wake of their friends. She didn't even shout or complain when a third blur, pink and more pink, passed above her with a gust of wind that ruffled her mane.

*

"You cheated."

Rarity could only name the tone as petulant, as much as the pegasus using it. She glanced from her sketchpad, magic steadying her pencil against the trundle of tracks and rumble of engine. The groan from Applejack captured her attention for a moment, pencil going still.

Mist crept up the window between farm mare and distant farmlands, fogging the countryside for a moment. She turned enough for Rarity to catch sight of narrowed eyes and furrowed brow.

"If I'd known y'all were gonna carry on like this, I woulda letcha win," grumbled Applejack. She raised a hoof, and Rainbow Dash's mouth snapped shut on the retort waiting to burst out. "I don't mean it, you know I'd never give anything less than my best. But the bellyachin' is wearin' thin. Landsakes, we're almost at Canterlot and yer still goin' on about it!"

Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her neck, faint colouring under her blue cheeks. "Geez, sorry AJ, didn't realise it was getting on your nerves. I don't actually think you cheated, but come on!"

A giggle bounced around the room. "I think somepony is scared of Rarity making her pretty," teased Pinkie.

“I’m not scared of anything. Fluttershy, tell them about the time I beat up that bully who was five times my size!” Rainbow Dash ordered. Her wing wrapped around Fluttershy, curling and pulling until her friend was at her side. “Go on!”

Fluttershy blinked. “Um…”

Rarity indulged herself with a roll of her eyes, and turned. Their bickering fell into the background as she laid eyes on Twilight. Rarity’s forehead creased, lips turning down as she watched the scholar by the window. Paper rustled, and her pencil slipped into a brace on the pad, before she got up and crossed the aisle between seats.

“Twilight? Are you alright?” she asked. She smiled, and in the back of her mind a thought whispered a hope that it would reassure her friend.

“Hm?” Twilight blinked, and shook herself. “Oh, yes, I’m fine. Spike still hasn’t woken up…”

The little purple and green bundle between her hooves failed to react to his name. Rarity nuzzled Spike, white hoof running across his scales. Her saddlebag was lit by a glow, faint light within peaking between the flaps before her magic slipped them back closed.

“I’m sure he’s just tired. Perhaps this will...oh, hmm, no,” said Rarity, a sigh on her lips. Light bounced from the gem retrieved from her bag, hanging above Spike. The aura of her magic shifted, brushing against his cheek, and still nothing. “Well now, that is unusual.”

Twilight’s breath slipped out in a sigh, and her gaze returned to the window. Canterlot and its towering mountain speared the sky before them, rays of the dipping sun shining on either side of the natural spire.

“Celestia will know what’s wrong,” she said, and her voice carried such certainty Rarity found herself nodding. “She’ll be able to help.”

“Of course she will, she is the Princess, after all,” agreed Rarity.

“Celestia can always help. She knows so much, and she’s had so long...she has to know what I need to know. She has to have it,” Twilight muttered. Her ears flicked to and fro, knocking hairs loose amid her mane.

Rarity's eyebrow rose. "Twilight?"

"Hm?" Blinking, Twilight looked to her. Eyes focused on something a world away aimed through Rarity.

"Are you sure you're alright?" asked the fashionista. She grimaced, lifting a hoof to gesture at Twilight's mane.

"What? Yes, yes, I'm fine, just..." Twilight's gaze snapped back, as if seeing the unicorn in front of her for the first time. She shook her head, and a hoof rose to brush her mane into a semblance of order. "Just worried about Spike. That's all."

'I hope so,' Rarity couldn't keep the thought from creeping forward. Her expression gave no hint of her thoughts, though she stayed by Twilight's side until the train shuddered to a stop in Canterlot.

Twilight trotted out glancing in every direction, hooves clattering on the tiles of the train station. A guard’s whistle cut through the hubbub with a sharp shrill, Rainbow Dash darting overhead. She passed a sign and scoffed at the circled wing crossed by a line.

“No flying in the station!”

“Hey, we’re on royal business here!” Dash shouted. Her tongue waved in the air, a rough raspberry answering the guard as she darted around signs.

Rarity checked her rush, skidding to a halt in front of the guard. “I do apologise for my friend, sir, but we have urgent business with Princess Celestia. Do excuse us.” 

“Have an apology cupcake!” Pinkie wrapped the guard in a one-hoof hug. She grinned as he stared, and his hoof found nothing when he went to push her away. Bounce by bounce she fled.

The guard stared at the cupcake. He blinked, taking in its picture perfect appearance. Moist frosting, solid yet not crusty, shone before his eyes with light that caught on sprinkles of divine design. Truly, there had never been such a pastry. The essence of cupcake, distilled into mortal form, left in his hoof. He saw nothing save the cupcake, lost in its wonder and majesty.

“Well, that’s one way to get outta a talkin’ to,” Applejack muttered.

“Everypony loves cupcakes.” Pinkie bounced on, giggling as she went over ponies.

“If only everypony loved manners,” said Rarity with a sniff. She cast a gaze at Rainbow Dash, and found not a hint of remorse on her friend’s face. The beginnings of a sigh stirred, yet a soft slither reached her ears first. She looked, and a gasp slipped out. “Look out, Spike’s—”

Light raced across Twilight’s horn even as she turned head, aura lashing out in an instant. Magenta shot through with flecks of gold swamped his sleeping form. Limp hands drooped past the mist of magic supporting his body, brushing cobblestones before Spike rose. Rarity eyed his claws, gently nudging them.

“Poor thing. Can you keep him stable on your own, darling?” she asked.

Twilight nodded. “I’ve got him, don’t worry.”

The dragon settled onto Twilight’s back, snuggling and squirming in his sleep. The glow of her magic persisted, and Rarity found her lips turning down. She gazed into the magenta aura, delicate brow furrowing.

‘Gold...no, just a trick of the light, surely.’ Rarity nodded to herself. Yet she found her gaze returning to Spike, and slipping up to Twilight’s horn, more than once on their walk to the castle.

*

The splendor of Canterlot Castle opened before them, guards bowing, and Rarity’s mouth trembled as a squeal of delight fought to escape.

“Geez, Rares, we’ve come here heaps of times now. Aren’t you over it yet?” Rainbow Dash asked. A hard flap took her over a chandelier, loops casually woven through the air leaving a trail of rainbow across the ceiling.

“I will remain awed at the majesty of Canterlot Castle so long as it remains such a delightfully perfect place. The home of royalty should be appreciated, after all,” answered Rarity with a sniff. She raised her chin with a huff. “And stop flying about up there!”

“Yeah….no.” A grin graced Dash’s face, which only grew at the Look thrown her way.

Words mustered for as sharp a reproval as she had ever given, Rarity froze before she could unleash her retort. A twitch ran through her ears, becoming a shudder as it spread. Eyes narrow, she knew her expression was surely turning ugly despite her best efforts.

“Uh, Rarity, is something wrong?” Fluttershy asked.

“Listen. Can’t you hear it?” The fashionista gestured ahead. “It’s him. Ugh, why now?”

The maze of the castle gave way after only moments. Rarity saw a hall the same as their last visit, save one difference. One very loud difference.

“I demand you stand aside!”

A groan tumbled from Twilight’s mouth. “Not him…”

“I’m afraid I can’t. Her Highness gave very specific instructions.” One hoof raised, the guard motioned at the pony before him. It did little to deter the shouting stallion.

“I am a prince and I will not be denied by some random guard! Out of my way this instant!” demanded Blueblood. 

The guard sighed. “You’re a prince. She is the Princess, and she said she didn’t want to be disturbed. I’m afraid that’s final.”

“How dare you! Who are you to deny me the right to see my auntie?” The prince’s hoof stomped on the plush carpet, with as much figurative impact on his demands as it made physically.

‘Now, now, Rarity, remember, you’re a lady. A lady does not hold grudges.’ She told herself that a few more times, withering glare never leaving the prince. He wasn’t even looking, and she wondered if it was because he was too absorbed in the argument or in himself. ‘Stop that. I won’t sink to that level.’

Still, she smiled when Twilight ignored him entirely.

“Excuse me, but we need to see Princess Celestia. It’s urgent business, and I know she must be busy, but she sent us out personally,” Twilight told him. She turned her head, a hoof raised to stroke Spike. “Please.”

With a smile, the guard stepped aside. “Of course, Miss Sparkle. Head on in.”

‘A lady shouldn’t take such pleasure in this, but oh, it is sweet.’ The thought bounced through Rarity’s mind, and lit a smile on her face as Blueblood’s mouth fell open.

“Wha— how dare— You said nopony was allowed in!” he exploded. He pointed at Twilight, jaw clenching for a moment. “Yet you let her in!”

“Of course. Twilight Sparkle is always allowed to the see the Princess.” Looking past her, the guard nodded. “Oh, and the rest of you can go in as well.”

“...what?!” 

Rainbow snorted. “Didn’t you hear him? Outta the way, thunder-flanks, we’ve got a Princess to see,” she barked. A flap of her wings carried her over him and at the door, twisting in time to slip through it as it parted.

They filed past, and the guard couldn’t quite hide the smirk lurking on his lips as they did. His spear fell the moment Rarity passed, cutting off Blueblood.

“Just them, your highness.”

Rarity tried to contain her giggle, she really did, but there was only so much one mare could take. She might even have let loose a cackle, had Princess Celestia not captured her attention. The door closed behind her, with only a moment to spare.

“Twilight! You’re back sooner than I expected.” Celestia rose, a golden glow sweeping away the documents before her. She smiled at them, rising from her desk to greet them. “Did you find the creatures? You could have sent a letter ahead, I could have had some dinner prepared.”

“Aww, that would have been great, ‘cause I’m super hungry, but we can’t!” Pinkie announced. She bounced over Applejack, under Rainbow Dash and rose with a bundle of purple scales in her hooves. “Spike is sleeping and we can’t wake him!”

“Pinkie—” Before she could go on, Twilight’s mouth snapped shut. She watched for a moment before shaking her head. “She’s right. We found the creatures, and they attacked us. I… lost control, trying to counter the spell their caster used, and the result knocked everypony out. They fled, but Spike hasn’t woken up.”

Celestia grasped Spike in her magic, sitting and bringing him into her forehooves. “I see. Don’t worry, my little ponies. I’ll do everything I can to make sure Spike is fine.”

A cheer rose around her, and more than a few smiles. Rarity watched Twilight’s shoulders slump, tension draining away.

“Thank you, Celestia, I was so worried. I should…” A yawn drew Twilight to a halt. She shook her head, rubbing her forehead. “Sorry. Right, the creatures—”

“I think,” Celestia said, silencing her with a look, “that perhaps it can wait until you’ve had a rest. Magical surges can be exhausting, and not eating on the way back hardly helped.”

Already, Rarity saw the tension flooding back into Twilight. Her shoulders squared, and the unicorn held back a groan.

“I made it all the way back, I should tell you everything I can n-now,” Twilight asserted. “We only scared them off. You need to know everything we found out.”

“Which we, darling, can tell her. You told us everything, so we can tell her while you go rest. To think none of us noticed how tired you were! Off you go, take a nap, or something.” Rarity batted an eyelash as she turned to the others. “Rainbow Dash, you know all about naps. Tell her to take one.”

The pegasus snickered. “I’m an expert at taking them...but I gotta agree with Rarity and the Princess. We can tell her all about it until you can talk without yawning. What, were you drinking coffee on the train and you didn’t tell us?”

“Everypony needs rest and, uh, I don’t know much about magic, but if you need to sleep, you should,” added Fluttershy. Her voice gained an edge as she want on, “And you shouldn’t have hidden how tired you are. You can’t push yourself like that, it's not healthy.”

“Take it from me,” Applejack said with a shudder. “Get some rest. We got this, sugarcube.”

When Twilight looked from her friends to her teacher, Celestia just raised an eyebrow with a distinctly knowing look. The unicorn deflated with a groan.

“Alright, I get it. You’ll wake me when Spike is alright though, won’t you?” Twilight asked, even as she shook her head and rubbed her eyes.

“I promise, Spike will be perfectly fine.” Placing her snoring bundle on a pillow Celestia stood and draped a wing over Twilight’s back. Step by step she guided her student to the door, through her friends. “Trust me.”

After a moment, Twilight gave a weary smile. “I will. Thank you, Celestia. You’re...you’re one of the best friends I could ask for.”

Rarity only caught a moment of something on Celestia’s face, emotions flashing by too fast for her to track them. Only one stood out, in the wide eyes of their ruler.

Joy.

The door closed behind Twilight, and finally Celestia turned back to them. The smile on her face seemed to leap out at them, and Rarity felt a warmth in her chest at the reflected joy. Sunlight for the soul, were she to put it into words.

“Now then, my little ponies, tell me about these creatures of stone as I work to cure our young friend,” the Princess instructed them. Returning to her seat, Spike and pillow both laid before her, she turned her attention on them. “When Twilight awakes, let’s be sure she has a pleasant surprise waiting for her.”

*

Familiar halls slipped past Twilight in what felt like a flash. She yawned, fighting drooping eyelids with every step on her journey to her quarters. They threatened to drop all the way, yet never did.

‘I can’t believe how hard this is hitting me. I felt fine on the train.’ Twilight shook her head, fighting the exhaustion that leeched at her strength. Her eyes closed for a moment, screwed shut against the weakness that assaulted her.

“Miss Sparkle?”

Twilight yelped, a surge of magic welling up across her horn. Arcane energy flexed instinctively as she spun, and found a wide-eyed stare awaiting her. The maid fell back as the wild eyed unicorn blinked.

"Uh, Miss Sparkle? Are you alright?" She asked. The maid was watching her, and Twilight forced a smile onto her face.

"I'm fine, just looking for my room," she said, a laugh forced to rattle from her throat. All the maid did was take a step away.

"I think you got a bit turned around, Miss," remarked the maid. "This is the west tower.”

A frown found its way across Twilight's face. "No, that can't be right...."

Her aura flashed across a door, yanking it open. She stared at the empty courtyard, eyeing the flagstones suspiciously, and the wall beyond that rose out of sight.

The maid cleared her throat. "Would you like some help finding your room, Miss?"

"How did I...No, I’ll be fine. Thank you,” Twilight answered. She smiled, a wide, shaky smile at the maid as the servant nodded and retreated. Their eyes never left the other’s until, with a faint creak, a door closed between them. The moment it clicked shut, a groan fled her in a rush. “Oh Celestia…”

‘How did I end up here? This is the wrong building.’ She chewed at her lip for a moment. A look confirmed the maid’s words; this was the west tower. She groaned again, eyes closing, brow wrinkling. ‘A lovely view of the city is hardly what the Princess told me to get.’

‘Something is wrong here.’

Her eyes snapped open. Twilight’s head turned, scanning the walls. Nothing seemed different. Further into the tower she trotted, each step carrying her forward as she searched. It began at the back of her mind, barely noticeable, a little twitch that sent shivers down her spine.

‘What’s is it?’ Now a tingle beset her horn. Her expression scrunched as she focused, reaching out with her arcane senses. ‘I should investigate.’

Before she knew it, Twilight found her hooves on the stairs. Magenta light shone out before her, pictures of nobles, busts of historical figures and more assorted ornaments Twilight had long grown familiar with. She rolled her eyes as she passed yet another of Blueblood. Her lips turned down, a frown spreading as she descended into the tower’s innards.

‘Okay, checklist! There doesn’t seem to be anypony around. There’s nothing obviously wrong. What does the west tower hold aside from the telesco—’ The clop of her hooves fell silent. Twilight’s mouth formed an O, eyes widening. ‘The wards!’

Gone was the trot; she galloped, hooves pounding. Her aura rushed ahead of her, a wave of magic that seized the door at the bottom. The guard she found in her way, a startled expression on his face, leaped aside. The door groaned as it was yanked open, hinges creaking under the pressure.

“Sorry!” she called, head barely turned to see him. The swish of wind made her look forward, and a shriek burst from her, light catching on gleaming spear tips. Hooves slammed into tiles, momentum fighting her.

“Identify yourself!” snarled a stallion, a glare aimed through the open face of his helm. Magic burned across his horn, a matching blue aura wrapped around the spear in her face. 

“T-Twilight! It’s me, Twilight Sparkle, you know, Celestia’s student? Element of Magic?” Twilight’s face was split in a wide, nervous smile. “Listen, I think something is wrong.”

She felt his eyes run over her, and they narrowed as they met hers.

“This is a restricted area,” said the guard, tone as glacial as his stare. “Are you aware of that?”

“Yes, of course, that’s why I’m here. I need to see the ward anchor.” She took another step forward, and yelped as the spear slipped closer. “I think something is wrong with it.”

She saw the emotion flash in his eyes. Her progress was yielded, stepping back from the advancing spear. The clink of metal and rustle of cloth filled her ears. Much as she wished to turn to see the other guards, Twilight kept her gaze trained on the stallion before her.

‘Oh gosh, this was so stupid. Why did I rush down here? This is a restricted area, I knew, that! But they seem unusually aggressive. Something must be wrong.’ Her brow furrowed, and the thought slipped through her mind like an oily viper. ‘What if...what if it’s them?’

“I’m afraid nopony, not even the Princess’s student, is allowed near the ward anchor without explicit permission of Princess Celestia.” His head jerked in a sharp nod towards his soldiers. Not a word passed her lips in response before the air around her hooves was lit by magical auras. “Until we can confirmed your identity, I’m afraid we’ll have to hold you. We wouldn’t want an infestation.”

‘Infestation, what does he mean?... wait, no...they must be changelings! Oh no!’

A cry was torn from his lips as her horn burst into sudden light. Light became energy, a rush of power that rippled from Twilight. Splinters and shining spearheads bounced and clanged from the walls, twisted weapons given a moment to ring before the thud of bodies and clatter of armour replaced them.

‘Hurry! I need to get to the anchor!’  She ripped the rug from beneath her hooves with a blast of telekinesis, thread coursing over stone and wood until a trap door was revealed. Will became reality, her magic seeping through the seal. Twilight’s eyes were set on the door, and she barely a thought applied to the sheer telekinetic force that snapped the lock.

Light streamed past, casting her shadow into the basement. Twilight leaned down with narrowed eyes.

‘Stairs. Always stairs into ominous basements.’

Sharp eyes took in all she saw; down into the gloom she hurried. Torchlight faded, and in its place a soft gold that touched her eyes like sunshine filled the hidden basement. Twilight blinked, and blinked again, as sunlight became moonlight. Hoof raised, she took the last step off the stairs and her mouth dropped open.

Light played across the air before her; gold and silver mixed and twirling, glowing energies flowing from floor to ceiling. Magic made physical hung before the unicorn and it stole her breath away. Years old memories came to life, of gleaming crystal carved with runes of gold. Silver ran through them, and Twilight traced them with her eyes.

‘The old one was only gold...’ she thought, and a smile spread her lips. ‘It’s so beautiful. But they’ve done something to it. I have to fix it.’

Her smile faded. Magenta flecked with gold and green sparked against the field of colour, shades clashing and impressing against it towards its heart. Twilight grunted, her breath drawing in a ragged, unsteady flow.

Twilight pushed, shaping her magic into a spell from the depths of her memory. It came in flashes, a moment years old, until she formed the key seen for only an instant in years long past, and with a touch of her will the magic around the crystal opened. Parting like a veil before her she drew forth the crystal. Each facet shone with scintillating light that bounced and played over her.

'Fix it!'

Her aura grew, gold and silver swallowed by waves of gold-green-flecked magenta. Arcane threads spooled and wove with a deft flick of her will, building force.

'Now!'

She struck. Her spell flew into iridescent depths of the crystal spell matrix. Groans and creaked filled her ears, a sharp, shrieking note undercutting them. Twilight's ears went flat, brow furrowing, but her magic never faltered or failed.

'What—'

Cracks ran from heart to edges in an instant. Smoke rose from runes as the energies bound within fled. Her ears were assaulted by the mad cacophony, making her teeth grind. Sparks flew overhead, spitting from a hundred cracks with blinding fury. Hooves overhead, she ducked, the cold stone beneath her chin a sharp contrast to the billowing magic around her.

'What happened? What did they do? I must have played right into their hooves!' Her heart beat, pounding in her ears, even as the fury above began to fade with final whines of broken spellwork. 'I need to warn the Princess!'

'Now, why would I let you do that?'

Twilight blinked. Her head came up and her gaze roamed the spell chamber. 

"Hello? Who's there?" She called. Her expression changed, fire in her eyes. "Did you do this?"

A laugh came back, low and coloured by a mocking tone. It rang in her mind, an echo she couldn't ignore. Her breath began to quicken, fighting her efforts to find calm. 

'I? I did nothing. This...it was all your work,' taunted the voice. No matter where she turned, she found nothing as it continued, 'Your time is done, pony. It's your turn to sleep.'

Her next blink came slower. Weight dragged them down, even as she fought to keep them up. Shudders ran down her spine, nerves twitching. A groan slipped from her lips, and she raised her hoof as she lifted her head. Before two steps had been taken her muscles locked, and hoof came to a stop.

‘No...stop...’

‘Never,’ hissed the voice. It rushed through her like fire, and burn with a touch that lit her with agony no mind had been meant to know. ‘You. Are. Mine.’

Twilight Sparkle closed hers eyes, bright magenta fading.

Nothing moved. No sounds gave the room life.

First came a twitch. A shudder followed, life springing back into her limp form. The chamber was silent as the purple unicorn sat up. Muscles relaxed and straightened, resistance fading as she stretched her body. 

Her horn came to life as a lantern of toxic green aura, igniting in foul brilliance. Wisps of magenta streaked and faded through the shimmering energy, A breath drew in air, the taste dancing across her senses with the scent of burnt ozone. A smirk spread unfamiliar lips wide. Fel-light flared, and faded saved for a oily rune that shone with solidified magic. The flare came, again, and a second rune was born. A third. A fourth. Until six runes burned before her in an arch.

The air shimmered and rippled between them. Where flares had lit the room with moments of brilliant blindness, fel-lightning flickered with sudden intensity. Claws slipped from the ether to grasp the disturbance. Reality creaked and groaned with sparks of energy and gasps of foul air as they began to pull. The far wall vanished behind a veil of emerald and purple, a vision of stars torn open by claws of stone.

“What a delightful surprise.” Stone paws grated against tiles as the first emerged. Unearthly void gave way to mountainous skin. Shan Quanti stepped forth, a smile upon his leonine face. “You succeeded.”

“Of course,” she sneered, stolen eyes narrowing. “What were you expecting?”

The portal bulged, echoing with a cacophony born of the stomp of earthen paws and the scrape of blades against sheathes, spear butts pounding the floor, as the room slowly filled.

Illidan chuckled, a small, sardonic smile twisting a face not his own into a smirk. “Betrayal?”
> Chapter 3 - Mogu Attack
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The study, with its array of souvenirs, diplomatic gifts and random knick-knacks accumulated over centuries, was blissfully noisy. Even as she kept her attention on Spike, Princess Celestia smiled, ears cocked towards the most noisy pony her study had ever hosted.

"Then Twilight left, and you told us to tell you everything!" Confetti exploded around Pinkie as she concluded her tale. She dropped to the floor, a smile stretching across her face. "And that's how the Grump stole Hearthwarming. My, what a Grump he was, until he tasted some sweet Pink Pie."

"I— pardon?" Celestia looked up from Spike with her brow furrowed. 

“Pink pie! It’s made with cotton candy!” Pinkie rummaged in her saddlebag until out came a paper plate with a slice of very pink pie. “Want some?” 

Celestia stared at Pinkie, but the party pony just sat there, a smile on her lips. 

“...”

Behind Pinkie, Applejack gave the Princess a helpless shrug.

"...I see. Perhaps later," said Celestia, suppressing a sigh when the delicious pie vanished from sight. ‘It does sound good...now now, focus.’

The Princess returned her attention to Spike, a frown marring her expression. Her aura spread across his scales, sunlit magic seeping around his spines, delving into him. In the grip of her magic, Spike was bright in her senses, draconic magic flooding his veins with each beat of his heart. Almost indistinguishable was the violet energy that threaded through him. This she left alone in her search, slipping her probe past it.

"Uh, excuse me, but, if it's okay with you...." Fluttershy's voice drew her eyes from the dragon. Her gaze landed on Fluttershy and the mare flinched. “Would you mind if I go? I need to, uh…”

“She has to go go,” Rainbow Dash threw in, foreleg thrown over her friend’s shoulders. She snickered at the red blazing on yellow cheeks.

A smile carefully concealed, Celestia nodded. “Of course. It’s just down the hall.”

“Thank you, Princess.” Fluttershy shrugged off Rainbow’s leg and rose. She got a whole two steps before she was stopped by a call.

“Since you’re up, wanna get something for us to eat?” Dash asked, attention already diverted to a shiny axe. She moved on to the next of the endless selection of keepsakes lining the shelves. “I’m starved.”

Fluttershy’s ears drooped, her friends adding their requests before she could get a word out. The meek mare gave them all a flat look for a moment before sighing.

“Alright, if you want,” she agreed. Fluttershy slipped from the room before anypony could think to ask her to get dessert too.

Celestia watched it all with a smile, though her eyes had fallen back to Spike. Her awareness traced the flow of natural magic through him, finding nothing. Her smile became a frown, and she looked closer.

‘His sleep isn’t natural, but...where is the force causing it?’ Her frown deepened.

“Be careful,” she said absently.

Rainbow Dash paused, hoof hovering above a spiked ball of bronze and gold. Celestia didn’t say anything else, not even looking up, and Dash slowly stepped back with flushed cheeks.

Eyes narrow, Celestia sharpened her focus and drove in a pulse of hunting magic. She let possible spells slip through her mind, blind cures to risk if nothing was found, but she discarded each one after the other.

It would be a lie, to say she lost track of time. In the back of her mind the fierce energies of the Sun burned, a furious cacophony dulled by millennia of familiarity. Each minute that slipped by with Spike still asleep she recognised. The Princess sighed, her horn glowing once more.

‘Hopefully this spell will—’

A scream, a shriek, brought Celestia to her hooves before a moment had passed. The cry hung in the air, punctuated by the stamp of metal-shod hooves pounding across plush carpet. Her magic wrenched the door open before she had reached it, and the guard stumbled out of her way.

At the edge of her hearing, Celestia heard Rarity’s own cry.

“That was Fluttershy!”

*

A quiet hum filled the bathroom. Fluttershy smiled, ears raised to catch the sound as it bounced through the grandly built chamber. She let her reflected smile reassure her, and her humming grew, sounding further into the opulent reaches of the room.

The air grew humid, and without warning the sound like glass breaking shot through the room. The hum died, a strangled note squeaking from her throat as a crack rang out. Instead of a hum, she yelped, and dropped into a huddle. Quivering, Fluttershy let the darkness behind her eyelids comfort her.

‘Somepony else is in here? Oh goodness...’ Her cheeks felt like they were on fire, blazing merrily. The red crept along under the yellow, unrelenting even as she forced one eye to slowly open. “H-hello?”

One ear swiveled, twisting atop her head as it sought the sound, while the other pressed against her mane. The other eye began to open, and her head rose as the silence stretched on. Fluttershy eyed a jug, pottery cracked from mouth to bottom, that sat in ruin. Her gaze tracked from it to her hooves, and she frowned.

‘It must have fallen over,’ she decided. She sighed with shoulders sagging, and stood completely. ‘How silly of me, acting like that. Why can’t I be more like Rainbow Dash?’

Even the opulence of royalty, Fluttershy found, gave way to certain necessities. The little drawer, hidden almost too well for her to find, under the sink yielded a dustpan and brush to her searching and she took it to the mess. Humming began to fill the room again, easy work giving way to familiar habits. 

Light washed over her back, turning the wall purple. Blasts of displaced air rushed over Fluttershy’s back, and she spun with an eep. The floor welcomed her as she stumbled, muscles locking up in an instant.

Stony muscles rippled, and a sound to match, a snarl that boiled from an earthen throat, slammed into her. The urge to shrink, to become so small none would ever see her, exploded through Fluttershy’s mind, and for a moment she wondered if she had shrunk.

As it turned out, Fluttershy found the fist cracking into the floor next to her was just very big. Her gaze rose, from fist to wrist, to arm to face, until she stared into the eyes of death.

It snarled, hot, stinking air blowing her mane around her

Fluttershy gave the room sound once more. A lot more sound. Such sound that it pierced stone walls, bouncing down halls until it reached celestial ears. Her mouth snapped shut, some primal instinct screaming at her to duck. She hit the floor with a yelp, the crack of plaster behind her as dust rained down on her. The shaft of its spear, taller than she was long, ripped a line across the wall above her.

Pain radiated through her skull, yanked upwards by her mane. Whimpers escaped her as she was held up, eyes closed against the sneering expression on the stony face. She smelled every breath, hot and heavy with the faintest scent of granite. 

“P-please...d-don’t hurt me…” She squeaked, trembles running through her so thoroughly its grip slipped slightly. Fluttershy tried to make her wings move, trying to make them open and relieve her mane of load-bearing duties. The muscles groaned in protest, and her trembling grew every moment her body fought itself.

Slowly, she opened her eyes. It’s face was….well, anypony else would have instantly labeled it a face only a mother could love. Despite herself, Fluttershy found herself wondering what its mother would look like. It was a strange thought, hardly appropriate to a monster in the bathroom, yet it wormed its way past the frozen fear in her mind.

It grinned, lips stretching from cheek to cheek, and began to shake. It took her a moment to realise what the sound rolling from it was; laughter. It was a hard sound; deep and dark, each note rumbling out. Fluttershy didn’t need to speak its language to understand a ‘no’ when it was laughed in her face.

“Oh.”

She cried out as its arm pumped, bouncing her by her mane. Fire ran across her head as her mane threatened to pull from her skull. Fluttershy screamed again.

In answer, the door wrenched open. Armour clattered as guards flooded into the room, spears aimed at the creature. Fluttershy looked at them, and tried to say something other than pained screaming.

'They'll get hurt! Please get the Princess!' The thoughts bounced about, but none found their way to her mouth, given it was far too busy with emoting pain.

"What the— put her down and surrender, in the name of the Princesses!" Demanded a guard. He gestured with his spear, advancing a step. "How did you get in here?"

"What is it?" Another muttered. He sidled across as he came in, slowly working to flank the beast. "How did it get—look out!"

For a moment Fluttershy saw nothing, her mane pulling tighter. She felt movement through the blinding pain, and crack of splintering wood. Laughter, the monster's, filled her ears again. Trying to curl into a ball wasn't much help, she found, nor was it doing much good for the guard she saw hit the wall. He went down, remnants of his spear bouncing from his armour.

"You monster!" Screamed the other guard, lunging forward with spear lashing out and up.

Her captor's spear slashed, and this time she got to watch as it met the guard's. Finely made, if rarely used, met simple and thick. The creature grinned, and she closed her eyes as its blade tore down the haft of the pony weapon, splinters flinging into the air. A metallic clang rang from the creature's chest, bent spearhead bouncing away.

She tried to close her eyes before the spear hit him. Between the sealing veil of eyelids, Fluttershy watched the alien spear jerk and twist, a narrow slice of red running across pure white coat before the wide blade spun to present its flat. The guard staggered, ringing in his ears.

The monster grunted and swung again, one-handed blow crashing against the guard's helmet for a second time.

"S-surrender...." groaned the guard. 

"Yes," agreed a voice that opened Fluttershy's eyes. "Surrender. Now."

Sunlight spilled forth, bathing the room in the glory of the summer sun. The blaze in Celestia’s eyes outstripped the glow of her magic. She filled the door, wings half-open.

“Release her.”

In a way, it did.  Fluttershy felt air rushing past her, the root of her mane like daggers of pain in her head as it swung her. The pressure vanished, and her vision filled with Celestia’s startled expression.

“Gotcha!”

Her sight became a rush of blue and the sense of momentum in another direction entirely. Fluttershy pressed against Rainbow Dash, holding on even as they stopped.

“You can open your eyes now, ‘Shy.”

Rainbow Dash was quickly proven wrong. Her eyes opened, but Fluttershy jammed them shut against blinding light. A roar exploded from the creature, rattling fixtures and her nerves.

Princess Celestia didn’t shy away from the roar. Her magic swirled, a golden wind that shifted into a blast. It shot across the room and changed again. Links of immaterial metal formed and joined, only for the invader to swing his spear down. He let go, hand clearing the snapping manacles that tipped the chains by a fraction of an inch. They spun and wrapped around the spear, anchored in place.

A moment was all he’d earned. Celestia met his eyes, nailing his gaze in place for a heartbeat. Muscles tightened in a moment, and he threw himself forward with a wordless roar. Powerful muscles propelled him all of an inch before his feet flew out from under him. She watched his eyes widen, and he crashed to the ground. A second pair of manacles bound his wrists, and his struggles didn’t so much as budge them an inch from the wall.

“Cease your struggling, intruder,” she commanded. Celestia glanced at her little ponies, and waved a hoof at them. “Please, girls, stand aside for the guards. Is this one of the creatures you encountered?”

“Eh? Oh, sorry,” Applejack chuckled, stepping out of the door. She looked back at the invader, wincing as it snarled. “It sure is! Did they follow us?”

“Oh, oh, my ear was feeling itchy and my left back hoof was twitchy! Maybe that means the creepy rocky monsters are around,” suggested Pinkie. She popped up over Celestia’s shoulder, giving the creature a glare. “Or maybe it means they’re being mean and scaring poor Fluttershy! Come here Fluttershy, let Auntie Pinkie hug you to happiness!”

“Uh...I’m fine, thank you.” Slipping out of Dash’s hold, Fluttershy’s side pressed against the wall, each step taking her closer to the door. She closed her eyes, another roar rattling her skull.

Foreign words, thick with emotion, exploded from the intruder’s mouth. The chains creaked, magical material straining with each thrash. The links bounced when he relaxed, then snapped taut as he tried to wrench himself free.

“Those chains are magic, I'm afraid you cannot break them,” explained Celestia. She stepped closer, keeping her eyes on the creature and well out of reach. “I ask you, explain yourself. Please. I have no wish to hurt you—”

“Die!” Spittle rained on the floor, flecks of saliva erupting from thick toothed maw. The chains rattled and groaned, thick muscles jerking in constant strain despite his utter lack of progress. "Die!"

Celestia sighed, the unseen wind in her mane dying for a moment. Her gaze left him, and the colours swirled like an ephemeral curtain between them. "I see." 

The voices of her little ponies filled her ears, and she let it wash over her as only a thousand years of practice would allow. She held up a hoof, horn glowing.

“Girls, please take Fluttershy to my study. Wait.” Sunlit magic swept across the floor, and shrapnel gathered. Limp forms rose, and the noise pollution faded, as the guards were carried across the room. “Doctor Care should be two floors down. Go down to her, and tell her to prepare for more patients.”

“More?” asked Applejack, jerking her glare from the monster. Light reflected from her eyes, air rushing in as the guards faded in an instant of light. “Oh, uh, right. Ya sure you don’t want us to help out? These things musta followed us back!”

Shaking her head, the Princess fought to keep from looking at their captive again. His lips still moved, screaming the same word without a sound leaving them, and she refused to look in his eyes again.

‘Such hate…’

“You are helping, because once you have done that, I’m sure Twilight will have found you,” said the Princess with a smile. She added, a hint of amusement in her voice, “the alarm will wake her.”

“Alarms? Like, a super quiet dog whistle alarm?” Pinkie cocked her head to the side, rubbing a hoof in her. “I can’t hear-”

“WHAT FOAL DARES ASSAULT OUR PALACE STAFF? FACE ROYAL JUSTICE!”

*

Zhiyuan grunted, pain shooting through his shoulder. He stayed there only a moment, raising one hand to the wall. Heavy eyelids blinked rapidly until the throbbing lights faded, and the world was right side up again. He let a smile splay his thick lips wide, a chuckle held at bay only by his willpower as he watched the brutes slowly clamber from the ground.

His companions’ health faded from his mind as he looked around. Everything was small. Too small. Zhiyuan spat, and pushed away from the wall.
‘
‘Even the stone is soft,’ he thought, a sneer marking his observations as his steps took him from the courtyard they had been dropped in.’Soft as the livestock.’

 The sound of laughter behind him drew his attention back to them. A splash of bright green was the first sign of the livestock they had found, and its scream of surprise and pain entertained him briefly. One of the warriors laughed again, pulling his prey up and turning to the other with a look of challenge. 

“Cease your games,” Zhiyuan snarled. A simple effort of will lit his staff, shifting shades of purple-black burning between the blades, and he pointed it at one. “You. Go west. You. Go East. If you must, at least play with the livestock somewhere else.”

The soulbinder turned and strode into the building before they could reply. They couldn’t see the smile on his face, or the fear in his eyes, as he left them with orders. Zhiyuan refused to let them see his own tentative grasp on his power.

‘That’s right, I’m his favourite,’ thought the mogu. ‘I’m in charge, and you both know it!’

“Leave it,” he heard one grumble to the other. “I want to kill some of the livestock. Hand it over.”

“We wish, we—” began the other. His wishes were lost to time as another sound overwhelmed his voice.

“WHAT FOAL DARES ASSAULT OUR PALACE STAFF?”

Zhiyuan felt the stone against his back before he was conscious of moving. He stared at the wall, finding his mouth suddenly dry as the Voice screamed incomprehensible words. The grind of each syllable rang in his ears like mortars had been rammed in them.

“What,” he hissed, unsure why he was being quiet, “Was that?”

“FACE ROYAL JUSTICE!”

Bravery was the domain of warriors, but Zhiyuan found enough to ease off the wall. He peered from under the arch, and found a perplexing sight. Stony wrinkles formed, and his jaw went limp.

It was livestock, like the others. Yet, it was different. It stood head and shoulders above the others of its kind, and its horn burned with midnight blue energy.

‘Magic.’

It could be little else, lest he concede the livestock had some other weapon capable of seizing a full grown mogu warrior and ramming them against the wall with enough force to leave an impression. The midnight aura pressed against mogu muscle, and it was winning.

‘The stone is just...soft.’ It sounded weak, even to him.

“En garde!” That blue aura vanished, sunlight returning as darkness fled for all of a moment. The clash of steel on steel rang through the courtyard, and Zhiyuan shook himself back to his sense. The dark livestock was grinning, as if dueling with adrenaline and rage as surely as it dueled the other warrior with the first stolen spear had been all it was expecting and more.

Feeling returned in time for his jaw to clench, and he held his staff tight as if it might be stolen too. The soulbinder trembled.

'Livestock, using mogu weaponcraft...' Zhiyuan spat, then opened his maw in a sneer. 'It will fail-'

"Ha! Your swings are slow and clumsy, strange, fat intruder!" The livestock's words were so much gibberish, but Zhiyuan heard the confidence in it as easily as the warrior. He watched the brute grind his teeth. A warning on his lips, Zhiyuan hesitated,

The moment he had passed. With a snarl the warrior leapt, arm extending with spear in hand. His voice rose in triumph, blade scraping against stolen spear haft.

The livestock, however, lacked a very simple limitation. Zhiyuan saw it, and a curse rose to the tip of his tongue. Magic gripping its spear, it fell back. What the spear did not do was follow it, grasped in whatever appendage such a creature might use. It’s wielder retreated, skidding across grass, and the spear advanced. Metal struck stone. Above the shriek of clashing forces and the mogu warrior roared in pain.

Stepping back, Zhiyuan spent a moment considering the future, the livestock, and how one was unlikely to continue should the other intercede. The hall, small and cramped as it was, looked all the more inviting by the second.

'He can deal with the livestock,' Zhiyuan decided. The hall needed investigation. Clearly. ‘I’ll let him distract them. It’s his job, he should be able to do it.’

The mogu fled, the sounds of battle following him.

*

“Luna has such a delicate, gentle touch in the Dream,” said Celestia, smiling at her little ponies. “She likes to be a bit more blunt when dealing with physical issues. I’m sure she can deal with any of these creatures in the palace gardens. For now, I’m concerned with any of the others who are inside the palace itself.”

She let them share mixed looks before they disappeared, popping away in a room clearing burst of light. The luminance leveled out, only to darken, normal light fading as the Princess frowned. She said nothing, simply looking the room over. The intruder’s soundless threats ran on, spittle dripping from his maw the closer she stepped.

“I wonder what you are,” she murmured. The flow of her mane, dancing in an endless wind felt only by her, died slowly until she felt it resting on her neck. “And I pray I am wrong.”

*

The crunch of crisp, lively green grass beneath his treads rang like alarm bells in Zhiyuan's mind. The door closed behind him, another in the endless halls within the palace. He hadn’t even trashed it. The mogu shook his head, a faint sigh on his lips as the sounds of panic faded away. The palace still rang with livestock shouting and, if he strained, one or two bellows of his kin. He spat.

‘Let them do their job. I can find something of use.’ Zhiyuan stepped further into the garden, glancing back at the door as if it might burst open at any second. ‘I’m no mere distraction.’

 He cast his gaze across the gardens, tightening his already taunt knuckles. No foe leapt out. The dark pony didn't reveal herself. He swatted a bush, staff ripping through hedges. Each moment he kept searching, hunting with every step he took for the lone animal that would announce his presence. Tension built, and his grip on his staff grew tighter. Yet, the deeper he went, the more apparent it became.

He was safe.

A sculpture dias’ provided somewhere to sit, the mogu growling and snapping off the stone pony’s horn that poked his back. All around him was the stench of lovingly cared for plant life, dotted with statues and decorations. The mogu turned his head from one to the other, leaning back until his weight pressed against the statue again. Something snapped.

Pinpricks of purple light lit upon his fingertips. They danced and flickered, echoes left in their wake that joined into a chaotic mess of energies. Crude lines joined the points as the soulbinder whispered. One hand rose to his face, each whisper shaping the magic as much as the gentle gestures he carved before his eyes. First one, and the world became a place of mists that seeped from every direction. Life and magic, forces arcane and natural, slithered around him. The second, and mists became auras, Countless shades filled his vision, and he clutched at his face for a moment.

“Grah.” Zhiyuan shook his head. ‘Focus.’

Rising, the mogu let the colours flood in. His eyes ached for every moment the spell spun its way through them. His staff stabbed the earth, digging in as he took his tentative steps towards another statue, No, not just a statue. A horrible mishmash of creatures. 

His eyes snapped to it, and he recoiled. Madness in sculpture. The moment he laid eyes on it, something rose within Zhiyuan. A curse exploded from his mouth, hand trembling with suppressed emotion. The mogu marched towards it as his stomach revolted, but he pressed on. Grass crunched, and the distant noise of violence and alarm filtered through the wind rushing through countless leaves, vines and flowers. All these things filled his senses, yet none dominated them the way the statue did. None screamed in his mind like this.

He tasted the air, gasping in a chuckle at the scent the statue carried.

Power.

That’s what it was. Power skinned in stone. He felt it twisting below the surface, primal energies he barely understood. What need had he to understand more than that, though, when the power was so obvious? Zhiyuan was a mogu, and any true mogu knew that unclaimed power demanded only one reaction; claim it.

‘All that power. I should take some of it. All I need is part of it.’

Zhiyuan nodded, stepping up. ‘All that power,’ he thought, ‘I should take it. I only need a piece for now.’

The horn, ridged and curved, felt like simple stone beneath his hand. His fingers curled around it, nestling between irregular bumps as they squeezed into a fist. The mogu jerked; a grunt of surprise left his lips when the horn failed to snap off. Brow furrowed, Zhiyuan tried again. His staff hit the ground, and he seized the horn in both hands. Muscles bunched and tensed, then burned, yet the horn remained as it was.

“I will not,” spat the soulbinder, dark light blossoming in his eyes, “lose to a statue.”

‘Go on, pull harder,’ wheedled a voice.

‘Go on, pull harder,’ Zhiyuan thought, and suited actions to words. He groaned, but the pain in his arms faded away. The power was so close, within reach, yet still simple stonework defied. Stone denied him with each tug.

‘Keep going,’ came the whisper. ‘Nearly there.’

“Nearly...there…” he huffed. He could feel it; he was close. Something awaited him, a reward to dwarf a warlord’s randsome. “Rrgh. Break! Break!”

‘One more! Just one itty bitty more tug and— yes!’

Zhiyuan fell back, a brief cry of shock silenced as he fought not to trip onto his backside, stumbling until he hit another statue. Gravel crunched under foot, and a stone wing snapped off. It was ignored; what care had he for the livestock’s ornaments? The horn was cradled in his hand, a smooth break across the base. His face split in an grin, holding it up to admire.

For a moment, he was sure he heard someone laughing.

Lumbering to his feet, Zhiyuan cast a glare around the garden. The horn went into a pouch, and he took a moment to tie the mouth shut tight. Kneeling, he reclaimed his staff from the ground. For a moment, the mogu looked down at it. He glanced at the statue, expression shifting, until at last the soulbinder shook his head.

‘Oops. Just your imagination, big guy.’

Surely, he decided, it had just been his imagination.

*

Normal services were, to put it lightly, disrupted when the invaders appeared. They appeared across the palace. Green-purple flames burnt the air, cutting a wound in reality for all of a moment before the void was filled with stone-skinned monsters. Wide, ugly faces carved by a sculptor obsessed with symmetry gave broad snarls and narrow sneers. High noted shrieks bounced through labyrinthine corridors, not quite covering the words roared in some alien tongue.

In the kitchens, cooks scrambled away as fruit went flying.  Kitchens were rarely a place of violence, save perhaps during exceptionally stressful services, so it was hard for them to prepare for a violent invasion. Shoulders that were too broad slammed into cabinets. Legs too tall crashed pots and pans in a cacophony from benches. A barrel shattered, spilling wine in an alcoholic tide that sloshed over the creature’s feet. It’s heavy blade fell with reckless abandon and mocking glee across everything in its sight. Cloves of garlic and spice racks fell to into the mess, rattling down as it chased the chefs from their domain.

The menagerie became… well, a menagerie, but a significantly less organised one. Cage doors buckled under mighty blows. A roar, unlike any heard within the royal collection set avian lungs to their own chorus, and howls to match from a dozen other species. The scamper of tiny feet was lost beneath the bellow of rage and screams of fear, the clip-clop of fleeing ponies galloping from a creature none had been trained to deal with.

The heart of the Royal Guard gave out, falling back, blockading the exits.

All across the palace, the invaders thundered into reality and lay waste to their surroundings. The alarm went up, and chaos descended upon the once placid castle.

The study was quiet. Nothing moving. Nothing disturbed the peace left in the Princess’s personal domain, until a flicker of green danced above the desk. One flicker became two; they danced, all in an instant joining to a form a larger third that curled and grew in less than the time it took to blink. It wasn’t meant to blink, anyway.

The Eye of Kilrogg was not made to blink. It could only see. See it did; its slit flittered across the flickering emerald sphere. It bounced as if on a wind that touched nothing else, a gentle caress from the unseen carrying it from end to end.

In the shine of polished bronze, the Eye snapped into focus.

“Yes,” cooed the voice in Illidan’s ear. It twitched, and he scowled with each word murmured to him. “That’s it. Take me there.”

“That’s what you need?” demanded Illidan. His expression grew feral, and Twilight’s face became an alien mask upon him as her stolen hoof pressed to her throat.

“Take me there,” Quanti repeated.

Heavy weight pressed upon the demon hunter. Her spine screamed at him, and her neck buckled against his demands. Thought and resolve lost to gravity and simple mass. He held back a grunt, rough stone fingers sending sparks of pain through his scalp.

“Now.”

‘I’m going to kill you,’ Illidan promised. The floor beneath him softened, stone replaced by carpet. He pulled his head away with a jerk and a snarl, and promised himself again: ‘And you’ll never see it coming.’

He glared through Twilight’s eyes, muzzle scrunched and eyes alight, until a whisper of her memories drew his gaze from the mogu lord. Celestia’s study was colder, somehow, than Twilight’s last visit here. Empty, as if it had become a place lost without the mare in charge dwelling within its hallowed confines. It took an effort of will not to smirk, and it was an effort Illidan decided not to bother with. He looked across the shelves and swept the tat and litter away.

“Perfect.” Quanti held up his prize, a bronze cog dwarfed by his hand. “I have what I came for. Take us from here.”

Illidan dropped a book into Twilight’s saddlebag without looking. “In a minute.”

The mogu’s brow drew together. “I’m sorry,” he began, and he almost sounded sincere. “What did you say to me, livestock?”

“I told you,” answered Illidan, just as sincere, “wait a minute. It’s not that hard. You just count to thirty twice.”

He didn’t need to be looking to feel the reaction. It was not altogether unexpected; Illidan simply found himself not caring. It was hard to fake the politeness in place of respect, even in the face of animal frenzy.

“What did you just say to me?” Quanti crossed the room in two strides. The shadow of his fist fell across the pony. “You forget yourself, beast.”

It was odd, mused Illidan, how this body worked. The odd-twitch of an ear moving so far, twisting towards the mogu, was like nothing of his own body. He watched books pass him by, leaning in to scan the titles.

“You’re blocking my light,” he said.

The shadow hovered there, unmoving. A smirk grew upon his muzzle.

Quanti’s rancid breath hissed out, and he growled, “I have what I want.”

Illidan pulled the flaps of the saddlebags shut, turning his head to glance across a row of souvenirs. “I could cast myself from this place. I could leave you behind to face the masters of this palace.”

“Hmph.” Quanti snorted. “This serves us nothing. Our alliance remains as it is.”

Green light flashed, a fountain of sawdust spewing as the desk of fine oak collapsed in on itself. The fel light in Illidan’s eyes shone like a torch, it’s beam focused on the mogu lord. Nothing moved, and for a moment he watched the emotions in the mogu’s eyes change.

‘I missed this.’

“Then be silent.”

Illidan turned, a grunt slipping from his lips as he felt the weight of the saddlebags settle. His glare turned to them, and he scowled.

“Let’s go. The less time I spend in this beast of burden, the better.” His horn burned with fel-green and sparks of magenta. The elf-in-pony smirked again as the mogu restrained a flinch. “The fruits of my plan are—”

A creak whined through the room. Their eyes snapped to the door in time to see the plume of a helm poke in.

“I’m telling you, I heard some...thing…” The guard blinked, expression going slack.

Shan Quanti was, in Illidan’s mind, many things. He was not, however, slow to react. Half a desk was airborne even as the guard began to shout, a snarl on the invader’s lips as he released it in a hail of papers and stationery.

Momentum and weight fought a wave of orange magic. Magic won. Quanti had all of an instant to watch the desk hover before it retraced its path. Thick oak, worn away only by two centuries of royal paperwork, crashed against the noble mogu. Plane Cut’s masterpiece, presented on the eve of the Summer Sun Presentation, exploded across the room, stone-bound muscle propelling fragments away.

‘Why,’ wondered Illidan, oak shrapnel bouncing from the fel glow that swathed him, ‘Do I know who made that?’

The glow focused, a idle effort of will gathering it around his horn.

“Lady Sparkle, get away from it!” yelled the guard. The door pushed open around him as he advanced, spear drawing alongside him. “We’ll protect you.”

Illidan snorted. “I highly doubt that,” he sneered with a glower. “Fool.”

Guard, door and the hallway behind him vanished in an wave of toxic green. The study smouldered quietly, the thieves gone.

*

Applejack cocked an ear, and looked at the pleasantly warm coloured ceiling. It was rather soothing, though she was somewhat suspicious of the deliberate nature of it. She pushed her hoof down, a squeak rising in response.

“Anypony else hear that?” she asked, glancing around.

“Which sound do you mean, darling? The alarms, the sound of guards running hither and thither, or Rainbow Dash?” Rarity asked. She glanced down one hall, frowning. “I saw some guards run in that direction. Perhaps we should avoid that direction, yes?”

“That way!” Rainbow Dash pointed, and squirmed, tugging at her tail. It went tight, but her colourful strands didn’t budge from the hoof pressing down on them. “Let go already!”

“So you can fly off on your own? No chance, sugarcube,” said Applejack. She shook her head. “We work out which way to get, then we go together. Got it?”

“Please, Rainbow Dash, we need to stay together. What if you ran into one of them?” Fluttershy shuddered, voice shaking. “You could get hurt.”

Dash snorted. “The only one hurt would be them,” she spat.

“But what about us?” Pink hooves found their way to Rainbow’s shoulders, and the pegasus was suddenly pulled and pushed in frantic shakes. “What’ll we do without you, Dashie?”

“Pinkie!” Dash brought her hoof up and pushed, sending Pinkie sliding back. She turned her mane into even more of a mess with a few shakes of her head. “You’ll be fine. Twilight probably needs help.”

“You mean Twilight and her magic that made them run away from her? That Twilight?” Pinkie pointed out.

Dash’s jaw worked silently for a moment. “...okay, point, but….oh, alright! I’ll stay and protect you, since you guys need me more than Twilight.”

“How gracious of ya,” drawled Applejack, sharing an eye roll with Rarity. She pointed down the hall. “Now come on, we gotta check out what’s going on, together.”

“Aww yeah! Ready or not, you big rocky freaks, here come the Elements of Harmony!”

“Landsake, Dash, slow down!”

*

“Ah, Zhiyuan, just in time.”

It was never safe when Quanti wore such a smile, the soulbinder had long since learned. He dropped to his knees, fighting the breath that threatened to remain beyond his labouring lungs’ grasp.

“My...lord…” He gasped.

“I do hope you found something of value, soulbinder. Our ally may have achieved his aim, but I want something to show for this.” Quanti held out his hand, and his smile fell away. A cold lump of fear found its way into Zhiyuan’s throat. “Well? Take it.”

A heartbeat passed, and Zhiyuan’s eyes found the stick of stone nestled within his master’s hands. ‘I’m safe. I still have time.’ He bit back a sigh, and reached for it. “Shall I activate it now, master?”

“No,” answered a voice, and both mogu found themselves glaring at the livestock next to them. Illidan’s expression existed in a near-perpetual scowl, Zhiyuan had noted, and whatever success he had found hadn’t changed that.

“Are you ordering one of my minions, Illidan?” Rage filled his master’s eyes, and Zhiyuan wished he had mastered some art that would take him from this place.

‘Be quiet. Don’t provoke him,’ he thought, willing the sentiments to carry to their erstwhile ally.

Perhaps he had succeeded in some way. Illidan snorted and looked away. “I meant,” he snapped, “That if you do it now, we’ll be that much more noticeable. As it is, we shall be found soon as it is without your soldiers leaving them be.”

“There, sister!”

The cry drew Zhiyuan’s gaze up. Every word was alien, but the voice… he knew he had heard that voice. His grip on his staff tightened, and he took step back as he beheld the dark one in the skies above.

“We’ve been discovered,” hissed Illidan. Fel-light gathered upon his horn. “We need to go.”

Shan Quanti narrowed his eyes, but the look he gave the soulbinder lacked the venom Illidan earned. He nodded. “Do it.”

Zhiyua closed his fingers around the stone. His lips tingled as they formed words. Within the confines of his fingers, a violet rune came to life. Another followed, and then a third. The fourth word brought a wave of nausea across him. Pain raced through him as the runes became a sickly green. It was a pleasure to tighten his hold. The stone cracked under the pressure, but the sound was lost. Fire leapt past them. Zhiyuan raised his hand to cover his head, a snarl on his lips.

“Release my student!” A sun burned before them, and all he could see within it was the face of a war-god glaring at them.

*

One Princess above, another below. Celestia swept through the gardens. Already she’s left half a dozen invaders in her wake, bound by magic. “Where—”

Branches and twigs scythed across her face, wall of hedge disintegrating into a leafy spray. The warcry of the invaders assaulted her ears in the brief span of seconds before her hoof reached its face. A heavy tremor ran through her leg, and the ground shook beneath her.

“How many of you are there?” She muttered, frowning as she conjured manacles. “How did you get into the castle?”

It snarled at her, throwing up dirt and grass with each thrash. It’s expression vanished beneath the clinking armour of her guards as they swarmed it, very real chains in their hooves.

“Take it to the others, and be careful,” she instructed. Already she was walking away. “I must find—”

“There, sister!” Luna pointed. Her eyes widened. “They have Twilight Sparkle!”

Celestia felt something in her chest snap. It took a moment for her to realise she was moving, and another to see the looming of ornamental bushes and hedges that barred her path. To go over, and lose a scant second going from galloping to flying, was the first thought she had.

Instead, she let the fire that burned within her show itself.

Prized gardens and tenderly cared for shrubbery dissolved in a torrent of fire. Green growth hissed and smoked for all of an instant before ash took its place, and a further instant removed even the ash.

Celestia emerged, framed by charred hedges. Grass crumbled beneath her, ash spraying from each step and dirt cracking as sudden heat flash-fried it into glass.

“Release my student!” snarled the Princess. She wasn’t sure when, but her wings were spread wide, and her power fought her control. Twilight was too close. She had to remember that. There was too much risk of hurting Twilight in the rush to save her. “I will not allow her to be foalnapped by you, invaders!”

The furious light of her might had turned the garden bright, burning more fiercely than the sun above as she stalked forward.  Her eyes trained upon the pair of invaders, tracing their forms, and in her mind she saw instead a pair of blackened, charred silhouettes. 

Twilight cocked her head to the side, her frown melting slowly.“‘Foalnap?’” she echoed. “No one is being kidnapped.”

“What? Twilight, what’s wrong with you? Please, get away from them,” Celestia ordered. Her power strained at her will, a glow in her eyes that bespoke the racing of her heart and the faint whisper that told her something was wrong here, more than she knew.

“There’s nothing wrong with me. It was just so much effort, inviting my mogu friends into the palace.” A smile graced Twilight’s face, and she took a step away from her captors.

“Twilight, I don’t understand…” Celestia cast about for something to explain this. The solar glow dimmed as she raised a hoof. “Please, come over here, quickly!”

A sneer twisted Twilight’s features. “My friends here have invited me to visit their world. I’m afraid I’ll be taking my leave of you…” She chuckled softly. “Looks like you’ve lost another student.”

Something had snapped, when Celestia heard the invaders had Twilight. This time, something broke.

Twilight let out a triumphant cry. “Fool!” she howled in a voice barely her own. Fel-green swamped her, strings of magic that danced around the unicorn. They touched upon the mogu, curling over them.

The door burst open, spilling ponies into the courtyard. “Twilight!” cried five voices at once.

Luna’s cry fell from above, a bolt of shimmering midnight drawn from the heavens. “Halt!” 

Twilight Sparkle, protege and friend, met Celestia’s eyes, and then she was gone. Flames of blue filled Celestia’s vision, freezing fire searing through the grass. Her stare took in the emptiness, until it caught something within the flames. 

“Damnation!” Luna hit the ground with a thud and a snort. From within the dark fire, a single column of magic returned to her, cold flames fading from the haft of an invader’s spear. “I was too late! What happened?”

Celestia drew in a breath. It was inexplicably difficult. She wondered why. “Twilight...Twilight teleported them.”

“Indeed, I saw. ‘Tis a great shame!” Luna glanced to the side, eyes flicking away. “A shame which is mine. Had I been but a moment swifter, she may not have been forced to act.”

‘Forced?’ “Forced?” Celestia forced the word out. A weight she hadn’t noticed fell from her shoulders. ‘Yes. Forced. They must be doing something to control her.’

It was a reasonable thought.

It was also a comforting lie.

Luna nodded, a hoof pressed to her chin as she gazed upon the group. “Surely those foul creatures have some hold over your student. I had hoped my warning would allow her to delay, that I might strike them, but I was wrong. I am sorry, sister.”

“Sorry?” Shaking her head, Celestia trained her sight on the cold blue blaze. “There is nothing to apologise for. You did the best you could. We...we all did.”

“We were the ones who were too slow!” spat Rainbow Dash. She scowled, forelegs folded over her chest. “Argh, if we’d come this way sooner, we could have helped! All we did was stand there and those monsters foalnapped Twilight!”

Celestia looked back in time to see her sister nod at the pegasus, yet...Luna’s eyes met hers, and they narrowed. The Princess of the Moon’s face was but a mask, and not a hint of her emotions presented themselves to Celestia. Of her own expression, she was not sure she could say the same.

“I know,” said Celestia, breaking away to smile at Twilight’s friends. She knew their names. She knew their histories. The only thing that mattered right now, however, was that they were Twilight’s friends. “I know you did all you could. None of you have any reason to reprimand yourself.”

“Indeed,” weighed in Luna. Her gaze hadn’t budged an inch. “Nopony here should feel guilt. We must move forward, and find Twilight Sparkle.”

Move forward. She grasped the words, and the sentiment behind them. ‘Luna could be right. She must be right, and the only way to find out is to follow Twilight!’ Celestia’s long stride carried her easily to the flames. “I will find her,” she promised. “Luna, if you would please—”

Cheeks puffing up, Luna blew on the flames and they dwindled in an instant.

“Thank you. Please, everypony, gather around me.” Her horn glowed, the shimmer of her magic. The world opened before her, a creeping awareness of the gentle tides of Equestria’s magic. There was no challenge in finding the touch of Twilight’s magic. How could she not? It was as familiar as her own. More familiar, in many ways, than her sister’s. She breathed in, and the taste of Twilight’s magic filled her senses.

“Pinkie, stop pushing,” said Rainbow Dash, pushing Pinkie back. Or attempting to. The actual result was that Dash found herself wedged between Celestia and Pinkie as her friend strove to pull them all in close to the Princess.

“She said to get around her, Dashie! When Pinkie Pie gets around somepony, she does it with a hug!”

“I’ve got….” Celestia’s voice trailed away. She frowned. ‘What? This...no…’ “Something is wrong. Twilight’s magic is wrong.”.

Bile rose in her throat. It wasn’t just incorrect. It was wrong in every sense of the word. Something perverse that made her cringe laced the aura. 

“Your Highness?” Rarity asked, frowning. “How can Twilight’s magic be ‘wrong’? I don’t understand.”

Shaking her head, Celestia dismissed it. “We will deal with it when we find Twilight,” she said, taking a breath. “That comes first. Are you ready? I’m not sure where this will take us, so everypony, be careful.”

The flap of wings announced Luna’s flight, the dark alicorn hovering before her. “You must take care yourself as well. While you find your student I shall organise the palace, and prepare against another attack.”

“Thank you.” She smiled at her sister, another burden falling from her shoulders. Celestia looked down at the smaller ponies. “Are you ready?”

“We’re ready, Princess. We won’t let them hurt Twilight,” said Fluttershy. She pushed herself up, standing, for once, straight and firm.

“Princess Luna, please do remember to check on Spike. We left him with the doctor, and he still hasn’t woken up. We can hardly return with Twilight only to find something has happened to Spike, can we?” Rarity asked, and beamed when Luna nodded to her. “Oh, thank you so very much.”

Rainbow Dash gave Pinkie another push, and puffed out her chest. “I was born ready! Let’s go kick some evil monsters in the face!”

“That’s a yes, yer highness” added Applejack.

“Then prepare yourself. I don’t know what awaits us...but we will get Twilight back.” Her eyes darkened, and the gentle wind that flowed through her mane began to grow. Flickering ethereal strands snapped in invisible hurricane winds. The light within became without. She grasped the wrongness within Twilight’s magic, and followed.

*

Magic was a subtle art, and in hooves as old as hers, Celestia had done works in her time that few mortals could match in skill or finesse. She had woven mystical energies into castings delicate and fine, able to slip past wards of impossible complexity and density. At times, she had surprised herself with, quite simply, how easily a gentle spell could do so much when lesser mages simply brute forced their way to success.

This was not one of those times.

Solar light marked their arrival. Rough stone greeted her, and sparks rained down upon the party of ponies around her. Pure white feathers reflected her light, shining avian limbs spreading wide. The cries of her ponies reached her ears as sparks rained down, crude runes guttering and spitting around them.

“Break the runes!” She ordered, horn already lit. A lance of magic rushed out to bisect one, and then another, a red-hot wound carving across the wall.

“Hi...ya!” The crack of a striking hoof brought another rune down. A rainbow curved from one to the next, bouncing from each with vicious cracks.

“Applejack, behind you!” Pinkie flung her hoof out, a disc spinning through the air. It skimmed across the farmer’s hat, a grunt escaping Applejack as she hit the ground. Behind her, a creamy explosion scattered delicious pie filling as the rune beneath it smoked and spluttered weakly.

One by one, the runes fell silent and still, until only Celestia’s magic lit the cave. She drew her wings in, and strode forward.

“Princess, where are we? Those things coulda fried us all!” Applejack said. She patted down her hat and settled it back on her head. “Never seen anything like it in my life.”

Celestia nodded, and said, “Runes, though rather crude. Makeshift, almost….as for our location, I believe underground.” 

“Yes, darling, the fact we’re in a cave rather gave it away, don’t you think?” volunteered Rarity. Her aura delicately adjusted Applejack’s hat. Applejack’s hoof forcefully put it back the way it had been.

“Pfft, yeah, well no stupid ‘runes’ are gonna stop me. Where’s Twilight at?” Rainbow Dash flitted beneath the rents in the walls.Her hoof brushed across jagged stone, tracing the cave’s uneven walls. 

“Some of these look big enough to go somewhere.” Bouncing to one, Pinkie stuck her head into it. “I wonder where they go!”

“Just a moment, and I shall know. They will not hide Twilight from me.” It was the work of a moment for Celestia to peer into the ether once more. It was, she knew, less a real plane of reality and more simply her senses attuning to the ever-present tides of magic.  

The violet haze hung before her, filling her vision the moment she arrived. It stank of unknown corruption, setting the contents of her stomach churning.

“Twilight is nearby!” Celestia hurried the moment she felt the ground beneath her hooves. Stale air brushed her wings, unfurling to loom at her side. Dirt beneath her hoof crunched and hissed, in the instant she touched it, and cracked. A print of glassified, flash hardened minerals, was left in her wake, and then another, and another, one for every step she took.

"Princess!" A voice cried out, but each step carried her further and faster ahead. Her hooves trod across stone, uneven rock flattening beneath her. Light bloomed before her, seeping past jagged edges and broken stone. A rent in a wall, a tremendous wound ripped into the buried chamber.

'The Makers...' Her breath rushed from her. Gears and pistons of bronze metal, banded in copper and iron, glistened in torch light. 'An Engine of the Makers!'

The voices that struggled to reach her, the hint of wings flapping and hooves racing, faded as she picked up speed. There was no time to wait. Celestia advanced. The clip of her stride changed, new noise bouncing from walls cut from the earth. A crack told her, as her hoof came down, of the tiles replacing unhewn rock.

“Twilight!” Her voice carried down corridors of ancient stone. Crude torches lit the passages, flickering in the wind of her passing, flames dancing against makeshift bowls of clay. She passed from the light of one, and her horn glimmered. The Princess raced through each pool of light, and the light followed her. Fire died, a glow suffusing her.

A corner yielded roars of triumph. Celestia saw the invaders, their eyes alight with glee, before the flames of their torches was stolen. The glimmers of their light caught on descending steel. Generous as she was, Celestia spent but an instant returning them their light, and more. She stepped aside, agile as a cat, and their strikes sunk past her, a pair of brilliant scarlet scars in the darkness. A cry rose from one, and his blade clattered to the floor as it hissed and popped. The other found less luck in his fate; molten metal dripping between fingers and hands.

Celestia simply slammed them aside, arcane glow throwing them against the walls and pressed on. The light of her magic surrounded her, growing to push back the darkness until it struck the gate they had been guarding.
‘Twilight…’

Her horn blazed.

‘I’m coming!’

A hot lance struck out, a single point of impact where the doors met. For but a moment, there was nothing. For but a moment, the door seemed to hold. Only a hint of red, the glow of blocked light, gave away her work. Celestia took a step forward.

The door gave way. From within, solar heat ate away at Titanic craftsmanship, becoming a shell of stone sloughing in molten rivers past her as her magic brushed it away. Cooling flakes rained upon the room within, and Celestia stepped through.

There was so much she should have cared about. So much she would have. The heart of an ancient engine, awake with eldritch energies. A chamber lined with engravings, images of worlds wrought by hands of fire and metal.

All Celestia cared about was the shimmering haze within an alcove, and the pony stepping into it.

Blurs ate at Twilight, a fuzzy shape in the glow. The edge between pony and portal fuzzed and shifted, a violet shadow in the light.

“Twilight! Please, come back!” Hooves pounding, Celestia crossed the room at breakneck. A crack was all the warning she got before a stroke of lightning coursed through the air, arcing before her and through her. “Ah!”

It was a mere buzz, a moment of distraction to blast the trap rune to dust. She swung back towards the portal, and froze.

The violet blur of a pony had turned. Green flames burned within the silhouette, twin lights where Twilight’s eyes should be. In perfect Equestrian, a voice growled from the portal.

“Twilight Sparkle is no more.”

Wind blasted from the portal, a buffet of arcane tides scattering dirt and dust as blinding as the growing light.

“There is only Illidan!”

The portal flared.

“No!” screamed Celestia. Her mane whipped about her in the wind, and she thrust her horn forward. “Twilight!”

The crescendo rose, and fell, an instant of gut-wrenching nausea in the hands of Titanic engines. Darkness came, the glow of Celestia’s horn a feeble torch in the gloom. Dead machines and cracked gears sat in silence. Where life had rushed through their steel veins in crackling magic, the machine was empty and quiet as it came to rest, stillness in the empty metal engine. Celestia was alone.

And Twilight was gone.

> Chapter 4 - The Stars Beckon
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spike had never found it hard to wake up. Waking up was, objectively, a very simple thing to do. In fact, he usually did it without thinking about it. It just happened. One moment you weren’t awake, the next you were. Sometimes there were a few stages in the process, true, where you were slightly more awake than you had been before, but in general it didn’t take much effort to go from not being awake at all to being ever so slightly awake.

Unless you were Rainbow Dash taking a nap, obviously, but since Spike self-evidently was not, the fact he wasn’t able to wake up was sort of getting to him. How he was aware of his unwaking state without being awake was a question all in its own. Despite not having read any books about how brains worked - he’d burned a few, but he was pretty sure that didn’t count as anything but property damage - Spike was willing to bet this was...unusual.

‘Not that unusual is really unusual anymore,’ thought the little dragon with a mental eyeroll. He paused, floating in the white void that he thought surrounded him.

After a moment, he tried to look around. This turned out to be somewhat difficult, as he wasn’t entirely certain he had a neck. Then again, he found himself frowning - or did it just feel like he should be frowning?

‘Maybe this is a dream?’ he suggested to himself, floating in a void he wasn’t sure existed, because he was kind of having trouble finding a frame of reference for what he was experiencing. ‘Princess Luna? Are you there? Twilight said you could visit dreams. Are you in mine?’

…

‘...I guess that’s a no?’

…

‘I’m going to take that as a no. Great. Even the Crusaders are more important than me.’

So, he floated. Or hovered. Or just….was there. If there was a there to be there. Possibly he was here. but that must surely also be a there from some point of view, so one must mean the other….right?

‘My brain hurts!’

That was about when the sensation of burning filled him and Spike found that it wasn’t just his brain that hurt.

*

For a moment, he hung on the precipice. His senses stirred and distorted, sluggish to adjust to the rush. Sounds filled his head with noise he couldn’t think past, and hard hooves jostled him, setting his teeth on edge as the world poured back into his awareness.

It was, for an instant of joy, a rush of emotions and sensations. The void between sleep and waking had been nothing; no breath, no heartbeat. Now his blood pounded through his veins, a flow of life he hadn’t missed until it was gone. The air tasted alive; with but an instant awake it filled his lungs in a way he had never noticed, because he had always been breathing. It wasn’t exactly optional, after all.

It was so easy to take things for granted, and even easier to never notice it.

On the other hand, one always noticed Princess Luna’s voice.

“Behold, my little ponies! He hath awoken!”

Eyelids like leaden weights struggled to rise, and sharp bright light lanced into his eyes. He yelped, and the light disappeared behind the barrier of his hands.  The babble of voices grew and grew, dulcet tones mixed with harsh croaks and soft murmurs that mixed into a mess that pounded his head. His hands held tighter than ever over his eyes, and slowly the pressure seemed to drive back the pain.

“Everypony, please, he needs some space!”

Like an alicorn from on high, Rarity’s voice washed over Spike. The chaos around him faded away and from somewhere deep inside, came the willpower to open his eyes again. He shuddered until the light muted, a shielding array of purple appeared between him and it. Soft hooves held him, until vague blobs and blurs became the face he spent so very long imagining.

“Spike, darling, are your eyes alright?” she cooed, faint glow preceding the weightless that held him up.

“I’m fine,” said the dragon. His cheeks warmed, and she raised an eyebrow.

“Are you sure? You look a tad feverish. Not that anypony would blame you, not after…” Rarity’s voice caught, and she looked away. Light slipped past her fabulous curls, but no shudders or yelps followed its touch upon his eyes as they narrowed.

Spike wiggled his feet until the weightlessness faded, and found himself the centre of attention. “After what? I just had a long, weird nap….right?”

He looked to one side, and Rainbow Dash found a sudden interest in art, eyes flicking away from him, and when his gaze turned to Pinkie, she joined the pegasus in her study of the portrait on the opposite wall.

“Well, it wasn’t exactly a...a nap, dear.” Again, Rarity stopped almost as soon as she had started. Her jaw worked wordless for a moment. “Not at all, in fact. Do you remember what happened?”

His claw scratched across his scaled cheek, cupping his chin in thought. “Well, we were in that forest, following those…” His pupils shrunk; his eyes widened. “Monsters! In the forest! We were following them until Twilight went to talk to them and then….uh….”

Spike blinked, and in the back of his mind, he became aware of a ringing bell. An alarm, in fact, that had been ringing somewhere back there unnoticed since his eyes opened. Maybe before. It had him turning again, taking in the familiar setting.

The palace; weird, but he had been asleep. Princess Luna, her magic focused on a quill that seemed intent on not so much writing as carving her words into a notebook. One finger went up, then a second, and a third rose when he glanced at the bogstandard guards by the door.

A flash of purple, the swish of Rarity’s mane when she leaned forward to pat him on the shoulder, turn the ringing into a shriek. Sparks bounced and flared in the immature pathways of Spike’s mind until he found the thread of thought pulling him straight towards the most obvious of answers.

“Where’s Twilight?”

He didn’t need to hear Rarity’s answer. The look on her face was enough. Perhaps she wasn’t quite the open book to him that he was to her, but Spike was by no means illiterate in the reading of ponies. The dragon saw her lip tremble, and her eyes cast a look towards Princess Luna. His gaze tracked hers, darting through the room to the significantly princessless spot.

“Uh, the Princesses are going to expl-”

“Where,” he repeated, a rasp in his voice, his eyes widening and pupils shrinking, ‘is Twilight?!’

*

Princess Celestia, the Sun Herself, stood in the ruins of her office and felt. She felt so many things, try as she might she could name only a few of them. She drew in a breath, crisp air tainted by ozone rushing in, and shuddered.

‘I’ll have to call in specialists to clean this. The maids will have a devil of a time cleaning this without their help.’

She stepped forward, splinters cracking underhoof each time her hoof came down on what had once been most of her door.

‘Deep Grain should be able to replace the door, and he was quite hopeful of royal patronage to get his business started without his father’s help.’

She held to the thought, and she looked upon the room in search. The broken window, cracked and ruined. The mess of souvenirs, scattered with abandon, gave her yet more time.

More time. Princess Celestia looked upon the ruins of her office in search of time, and thoughts, and yet still she heard it.

‘This is your fault.’

She closed her eyes. All was still, from fetlock to wings to celestial mane. Invisible winds stirred no more, leaving her gossamer mane to hang around her as if a garish parody of a shroud.

‘You failed her.’

Her hoof nudged aside half a chair leg, sweeping it aside to reveal the debris below, and that soon put the charred ruins of half a book in her sight.

‘I failed her.’

She hung her head, letting a weight greater than gravity could ever compare to drag her face from above to below.

‘Just like I failed Luna.’

“Ah ha!”

The aura broke. A yelp burst from her royal muzzle, and her hooves slammed down an instant later. Stare became glare, and it fixed itself on Celestia’s muzzle. Her mane jerked, snapping about her like a hurricane until her eyes settled upon the darker alicorn watching her. Like the flip of a switch her mane fell again.

“Oh, Luna. My apologies. I was somewhat engrossed in thought,” she said with a slow shake of her head. A smile came on, faltering for a moment before she forced it up. “Did it work? Is Spike awake?”

“Indeed he is, and most confused.” Princess Luna strode into the room, splintered door and desk grinding beneath her hooves with each step. “The magic was just as you suspected, but t’was nothing to a dreamwalker.”

“I knew you could do it,” said Celestia, a smile upon her face. If it trembled for a moment, her sister deigned not to point it out. The solar alicorn strode through the wooden rubble, the tearing of carpet fragments shifting and catching on jagged wood following her with every step.

Her sister turned with her, dark hooves matching bright step for step. “You were right. The magic was unmistakably Twilight Sparkle’s-”

A gasp, nearly covered, slipped out. When Celestia’s hoof fell, a sharp thud rang out as plush carpet failed to guard the floor beneath from the force.

“-and unmistakably corrupted,” continued Luna. The stars in her mane bounced with the shudder than ran down her spine. “I can scarcely imagine a more foul magic. T’was a thing of darkness, though no shadow I have ever felt has been so...disturbing. Where could she have found such a magic that has escaped our notice?”

Celestia glanced to her side, eyes narrowing. “Twilight found nothing. It was the creature who stole her body. She is innocent in this!”

A moment too late, she caught Luna’s expression. She gasped, pressing her hoof to her lips.

“Luna, I’m sorry. That was...I’m sorry.” She reached for Luna. She blinked as her hoof extended, and for the barest of seconds, she saw not Canterlot, but a castle built of the stone of another age. 

Luna turned from her, the stomp of her trot beating in time with Celestia’s heart, each pound against her chest sending a sliver of pain into her heart, and her snarl hung upon the air; “You don’t understand. You just don’t understand!”

“I understand.”

Reality came in two words, and the eyes of her sister. Dryness stilled her tongue, and Celestia looked away. Creases marred her features, and she hid her face from Luna’s sight.

“I said,” murmured Luna, the weight of her hoof on Celestia’s neck holding her back, “I understand. I did not mean to imply your student had made my mistake.”

“No, Luna, I didn’t mean to...that was...I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that, or to hurt you.” Sighing, she let her sister bring her face back until they gazed upon one another. “I’m sorry.”

Luna shook her head. “You need not apologise. When I spoke of understanding, I meant it. Know this, sister; I trust Twilight Sparkle, and I know she would never turn against you, no matter what power might be offered to her. The creature that has stolen her body is surely fighting her for control every moment.”

It was a rare sight, to see Celestia chew her lip. Yet now she did it, and her gaze intensified. “Luna...is this the voice…” Her voice skipped a beat, fading. “Do you speak with the voice of experience?”

Experience. Celestia’s heart hung heavy in her chest, and her stomach housed a cold flutter, but she kept her gaze steady, her eyes unflinching. Tears pressed against her will, boiling to escape, but not so much of a drop found its way from her eyes. ‘I know this is hard to ask, but I must…’

A wave of her hoof, and Luna banished the moment that passed. “I do. Always, no matter the actions of Nightmare Moon, I was there in her heart. Whether I cried in pain or urged her forward, I was there. I did not realise the trap until it was too late, that my voice had been silenced. Twilight Sparkle is surely trapped, but I doubt she was fooled. If she was taken, she would not have invited it in. She may be taken, but she did not give herself to this entity, of that I am sure.” 

Her weight shifted, hoof going from shoulder to nose to give a gentle poke.

“And you, my dear sister, know this as well. Whatever mistakes I made in the past, I refuse to believe she has made, or you truly believe she has made them.”

The words left Celestia before she could stop them, and her hooves found their way around the smaller alicorn in the same instant. “Oh, Luna, thank you.”

A smile graced Luna, and she returned the gesture. “Anything for you, Celestia. We will save Twilight Sparkle. I promise.”

Celestia smiled, no hint to her tears or their cause left in her expression, nuzzling Luna for but a moment before raising her head, an ear cocking. She felt Luna shift against her, dark coat against bright.

“It would seem my responsibilities come to me,” she mused. With the softest of sighs they parted, smiles shrinking moment by moment with their embrace gone, that physical reassurance lost. With each step, they diminished, until Celestia’s lips were pressed thinly, razor straight.

“The study is this way!”’

“I think you will find it is this way, in fact.”

“Landsakes, girls, stop arguin’ and follow me, it’s this way!”

Royal carpet took the strides of alicorns, and no sound escaped. Perhaps, between voices that rose with each exchange and thick, plush carpet, it was forgivable that they came upon their subjects unnoticed.

”That way? You got it all wrong!” insisted Rainbow Dash. Her breath blew across Applejack’s face, orange fur rippling minutely.

The farmer glared, eyes narrow. With a poke she sent the pegasus back from her, and she smirked, “You ain’t got a clue, sugarcube,: she retorted. With a swing of her head, she had her stare set on another. “Same for you. It sure as slop ain’t that way.”

In a single sniff, Rarity packed enough disdain to make a noble green with envy. “Is it just me, or are your ‘country-isms’ getting more crude by the minute?”

“Now wait just a pig-swaddling second-”

“The royal study,” she cut in, “Is clearly in this direction.”

“If you wanna take the long, wrong way, maybe,” said Dash with a snort worthy a thousand disbelieving pegasi.

“If we were lookin’ for that, we’d go your way,” Applejack growled. “Some of us pay attention to where we’re goin’.”

Rainbow’s wings snapped, wind raising her, and earning a snicker when her friend flung her hoof out to catch a hat in its bid for escape. “Excuse you, but I’m a weatherpony. That means I gotta be able to recognise geography and junk. If I can do it from the sky, I can do it in a stupid hallway!”

Celestia lowered her gaze, watching the three, to another three. Spike’s claw lay in a mass of elegant pink mane, and a mess of curls claimed his other hand, but neither pony flanking him protested. Pinkie’s head merely bounced between ponies, as if caught in the world’s most enrapturing three way game of ping pong.

When her eyes fell on Fluttershy, they met the meek mare’s. Fluttershy blinked, and their stare expended for moments not with words, but with emotions that bridged with no need verbalising exactly how each felt on what was happening.

“Uh, girls…”

“With all due respect, darling,  you are hardly a mare I would trust navigating a paper bag, much less a castle as fine as this.”

“Hey, my house is pretty much a mini-castle made of clouds, and I get around that just fine!”

The hint of a throat being cleared followed, and Fluttershy experienced what another pony might call annoyance. The sound found itself eaten alive within the chaos of arguing, and left nothing its wake.

“That’s cause ya live there, an’ you smash through the walls when you feel lazy.”

“Why shouldn’t I? It’s convenient!”

“Excuse me, but-” began Fluttershy.

Applejack all but growled, narrow glare fixed on Rainbow Dash

“Please, everypony, calm down,” Fluttered begged.

“Girls! Your argument is upsetting Fluttershy!” cried Rarity. making a sharp gesture with her hoof towards Fluttershy as she said it. “You really must rein yourselves in, and listen to me.”

What overtook Fluttershy’s face was not an expression she was familiar with. Her expression fell, lovely features drooping as she just stared at the three in front of her. Mouth hanging open, she turned back to the princesses with the faintest of sighs.

With a smile meant to reassure, Celestia finally let the little show end with but a clearing of her throat.

“I do hate to interrupt, but perhaps you took a wrong turn already?” she asked.

It was almost wrong, to find such amusement in the way Rarity’s eyes tried to leap from their sockets. Celestia tried to keep from smiling, she really did, and she even did better than Luna. She extended a wing, letting it cover the snicker on her sister’s face. Applejack’s sudden stillness provided less mirth, but the reaction didn’t go unnoticed.

Well, not by the Princesses at least.

“Nah,” said Rainbow Dash. Her chin sat on her hoof, and her eyes pierced the length of her chosen hall. “I’m way too good to get it wrong.”

“If you say so,” Luna agreed.

A grin lit Rainbow’s face. “Finally, one of you gets it!”

Words croaked from Applejack through numb lips. “Uh, Dash?”

“I told you, it's definitely this way!” the pegasus snapped.

“That’s not-” tried Rarity.

With a growl that verged on the subvocal, Rainbow Dash spun in a flurry of wing and rainbow-maned fury. “I know what I’m talking about! So just follow me and we’ll find the prin...cesses…”

Celestia smiled at her.

‘These three would make wonderful jesters, if they argue like this all the time.’

She let the thought bounce about for a moment, grasping the imagined levity of it before events whirled it away. All too soon, she brought herself back to the moment with a wave of her wing.

“If you would all follow me, my little ponies, we have much to discuss, and here is hardly appropriate.”

Spike spoke out, his gaze sharpened into a glare, “No! Enough stalling! Before we go anywhere else, somebody please, just tell me where Twilight is!”

Celestia stopped, her expression slack for a moment, and spared a glance with her sister. Luna winced, the look in her sister’s eyes sending a shiver of alarm down her spine. Her words, when they came, were swift but sure as only those coming to the rescue could be.

“Twilight Sparkle is… lost, my young friend. Not only lost to us, but I fear lost in her own mind, lost in contention with the will of another. What we must speak of is how to bring her back to us, both in body and mind.”

Rarity was quickest on the draw, shaking herself free from the shock the news had brought even as the others stared in numb surprise. A sapphire glow surrounded Spike, lifting him onto her back. “Then time is of the essence, yes? I must agree that the hallway is hardly the place to hold such a talk.”

“Indeed. Grave tides threaten to sweep us from our hooves. If we are to resist them, we must collect ourselves.” With a brandish of her wing, wind rushed past to the distant click of a door opening in answer. “Come! My sister’s study may be in ruins, but mine remains intact.”

Her stride gave no chance to question her; Princess Luna strode forward, sweeping them along with her. There was a simple expectation that they would follow, a certainty that she need not look back to see them trailing her, and it dragged them along before a single protest reached their lips.

Spike clutched Rarity’s mane, claws curling through her vibrant hair. His eyes tracked the Princess, latched onto her as surely as he was to Rarity. He blinked, and suddenly the room was different, minutes gone by unnoticed. Magic tugged at him, until the little dragon was settled at her side as Rarity sat. She smiled, and he back at her, for just a moment, before a throat was cleared and their attention drawn away.

“This is not an easy thing to talk of,” said Celestia, and in her eyes gleamed something of how much she meant that. Her gaze ran across each of them, and she sighed. “My sister spoke truly. Something evil has stolen her body and fled with it. The place we followed her - it - to was ancient, and its secrets many. How, I cannot answer, but they took flight across worlds.”

Silence greeted her, jaws hanging open and eyes so wide they seemed moments from popping free.

“Across worlds? What...what do you mean? Where did they take Twilight?!” Spike’s voice rang through the room, the sharp edge of fear piercing the pall of shock Celestia’s words had cast over the room.

“She means precisely that, young Spike,” answered Luna. Her tail flicked, a scowl on her face as she sat on the dark lounge chair. “Our world does not exist on its lonesome. The Engine of Creation that gave birth to our world has forged others, though we know little besides the fact that they exist.”

“Those meanies came from another world to abduct Twilight? Well, that’s just so rude!” Pinkie exclaimed, leaping from couch to coffee table. “I bet they’re the evil enchanters, and I already have a song about them!”

“Not now, Pinkie, we’ve gotta launch a rescue!” Her hooves slammed down, and as Pinkie wobbled, Rainbow Dash leaned over the table. “That’s what we’re doing, right? We’re gonna follow these monsters and kick that thing out of Twilight!”

“That is our intent, yes, but it won’t be easy.” ‘Nothing concerning the Makers ever is,’ Celestia thought, keeping it to herself.

Rainbow Dash shook her head, rainbow mane flying about. “Of course not, but we can do it! Whatever you need us to do to save Twilight, you can count on us.”

A smile lit Celestia’s face, and the laugh that came filled the room with light. “Ah, Rainbow Dash, Loyalty chose so very truly. If anypony can save Twilight, it is you six. I promise you this; we will save my student.”

A grin revealed itself beneath the brim of her hat as Applejack leveled her stare at the princess. “I don’t know much about magic and traveling worlds and such like, but if we needa kick somethin’ outta Twilight, I’m your mare.”

“If only it were so simple a matter,” Rarity murmured. She fixed the Princesses with a look, brows furrows. “Your Highnesses, is this...is it like…”

Luna grimaced, glancing away.  “Nightmare Moon?” She waved off the apology before it could be voiced. “Fear not my feelings, lady Rarity, for the comparison is an apt one. We have already asked ourselves this.”

The weight of their stares, and all that shone within them, brought her eyes back to them. Her gaze hardened.

She said, at last. ”The corruption within the spell cast upon young Spike was alien and foul, but t’was not the working of a Nightmare, nor did it carry the taint of a maddened spirit. Simply put...“

“...we don’t know what it is,” finished Celestia. Her lips twisted into a frown. “Which alarms me, given the nature of its allies. Something dark and twisted, yet they were clearly children of the Makers.”

“The Makers?” Spike shook his head, the question falling away. “Never mind! They left from this ‘Engine’ place, right? So let’s go back and follow them.”

“Again, it is not so simple. They destroyed the gate in their wake. We must seek another path into the stars, if we are to follow,” Celestia said, 

“Oh, oh, do we have to go up?” Pinkie grinned. “I had the best idea for how to go up into the sky really, really fast. If we fix the part where everything catches on fire, we’ll be in the stars in no time at all!”

Luna felt a stab of concern for her study, and her eyes beheld in her mind the image of it as a mirror of her sister’s. She shuddered. “Neigh, Pinkie Pie, we need not go up in quite that sense. Tis another direction that our path lies.

“North,” said the Princess. Unnoticed, the doors to her sister’s balcony swung open and they found themselves drawn up and in her wake. One by one, they joined her, gazing into the distance. Her hoof rose, jabbing towards the frozen roof to the world. “We must go north.”

Spike blinked, cocking his head to the side.“To the Crystal Empire?” asked the dragon. He shuddered. “Can somepony else be the one to tell Shining Armour? Or give me, I dunno, a suit of armour?”

“No, Spike, if we wish to find Twilight, we must go beyond those shining spires. For some of us, we must go even further,” said the Princess, her voice discoloured by a tremble of emotion.

A light tap announced her landing, and Rainbow Dash leaned forward on her perch. Bright blue contrasted the alabaster stone rail as she scuffed it casually with a lazy swipe of her hoof.

“I don’t get it. I thought the only thing past there was ice and a bunch of yaks,” she pointed out. Her ears swiveled, twisting towards half a dozen sharp breathes. “Oh, come on, I do the weather, I have to look at maps every now and then.”

“To say nothing of the remarkably accurate account of Yak culture in Daring Do And the Wooly Skull,” added Celestia. A rare smile was sketched across her muzzle, and she almost giggled at the pegasus. “You could swallow a fly like that.”

“Uh...right. So, yaks are up there, and lots of ice….what else?” Rainbow Dash asked, her brow furrowed as if she wasn’t sure who the alicorn next to her was. A delicate cough from behind made her eyes roll. “Your highness.”

The smile fell away; there was no hint it had ever been there. Expression unreadable, Celestia stared at something only she could see. 

“Send word to your loved ones. If we are to save Twilight, we- you- may be gone for some time. I will ensure they are seen to. We must go north, and further.”

When she turned to address them, the stars of night wrapped her in light. They sparkled and shone, so distant, yet their light still surrounded her as if in halo, as if, perhaps, a sign.

“To the Tower of the Gods.”

*

When sunrise came to the Crystal Empire, it did so unexpectedly, and with guards unprepared. Not, it must be said, because they were lax. It was simply beyond any reasonable expectation that sunrise would occur at shortly after one in the morning.

“Please excuse me, gentlecolts,” said Celestia, a smile as radiant as the fading light of her magic washing over the guards. She raised her hoof in a gentle wave. “We’re simply passing through.”

“Er…” Pushing his helmet from where it had slipped over his eyes, the guard glanced across the group. “Your Highness, we weren’t expecting you. Either of you. Uh, any of you.”

“Think of it like a surprise party, just without the party,” Pinkie advised with a nod of deep wisdom. She frowned. “But wait, what’s the fun of a surprise without a party?”

“Truly, joyous Pinkie Pie, you pose a question for the ages,” Luna admitted. “Noble guards, we must ask that you delay reporting our arrival, for we must depart post-haste.” 

The pair exchanged a look, and the unicorn’s horn glowed.

“Your highness…” began the hornless guard. His stare tightened for an instant, and drew in their gaze.

Magic washed out, light hanging upon the air in a gossamer glow that spun about the room. They ignored the squeals and gasps and glares until the light faded, and the unicorn nodded.

“They’re ponies,” he said. “Except the dragon, obviously.”

Celestia’s eyes lit with understanding, and she sighed. “You were making sure we weren’t changelings. Of course. I should have remembered Shining Armour’s precautions.”

The pegasus guard nodded, scraping a faint bow. “Yes, Your Highness. Sorry, but Captain Armour is very, uh, firm on the matter of keeping changelings out of the Crystal Empire.”

“Said he’d feed us to a manticore if any of us let one in,” added the unicorn.

A gasp brought ears and heads turning, though their attention failed to dissuade Fluttershy as she shook her head.

“Oh no, you can’t feed a manticore a pony,” she said, a tremble carrying in her voice.

“Fluttershy, darling, I’m sure-” Rarity said.

The caretaker continued, “They aren’t good at digesting a whole pony all at once, it would give them an awful tummy ache. I hope Shining Armour has something to soothe it if he does that.”

The silence lasted a moment or two, long enough for a blush to light her cheeks. The faintest of slaps echoed in the great crystal halls, blue hoof on blue face.

“Wow, ‘Shy, that’s totally the thing about that we should worry about,” she growled in deadpan, rolling her eyes. Her hooves pumped, a pushing motion at the guards. “You guys good then? We gotta go, important saving the world business.”

“Just orienting ourselves, Rainbow Dash, never fear,” Luna said, a wave of her hoof from pegasus to ground swaying the mare to land. “Hold fast, the delay has been enough to prepare. Our journey continues!”

And with a flash of light, it did.

“...you’re telling the Princess and Prince about this,” muttered the unicorn.

“...great.”

*

Sensation followed in the instant of teleportation, and it brought a razor blade of chill through too-thin coats and bared scales. Snow crunched underhoof, the howl of freezing winds rushing through the vista before them. It brought a smile to Celestia’s face, and she shared it with Luna, as the moon lit crags of ice with shafts of reflected lunar light bringing a hundred lights to the night.

“Whoa…”

Which of them said it, it would have been hard to say. There was no need to, for she saw it in their eyes and their expression. Her head turned, and her smile grew. She left her sister basking in this, soaking in the moonlight, and took a few steps.

“There.”

How it had escaped their notice before, none could ever have known. One moment, there was nothing ahead but more and more, the endless expanse of snow and ice that capped the world. A frozen mane that decorated the pinnacle of the world with the beauty and danger of winter, beyond the control of even the most skillful of pegasi weather-workers. A crown of rime and frost, unseen and no less resplendent because of it.

The jewel of this crown shone in the moonlight, a tower that thrust into the sky. A single shaft, ice clung to its root, and clouds gathered against its pinnacle. Sheers icy spikes wrapped it, a collar of frozen thorns, yet none brushed against the bronze pillar.

“Beautiful, is it not?”

Her voice spun them around, and Celestia smiled with the faintest hint of amusement hidden in her curving lips.

“Uldian, the Tower of the Gods, where the Makers presence is ever felt. Do not feel embarrassed, my little ponies, for being captivated.” She gestured, taking in the expanse before them. “Since the dawn of our world, Uldian has looked upon it, and guarded it.”

Spike gulped. “That sounds...really old. Like, really, really old.”

Luna nodded, a soft smile on her face. “The oldest, young Spike. Uldian was thrust into our world in the throes of its birth.”

“It’s birth? Okay, wait, you guys know how the world was made? ...the world was made? By who?” Rainbow Dash groaned, hooves dragging through her mane. “Don’t tell me Daring Do’s theory about a giant explosion is wrong! It sounded so awesome!” 

Applejack eyed her friend, brow raised. “You know those books ‘a yours are fictional, right?” She jerked her head towards the alicorns. “Granny told me the Princesses made Equestria when I was a filly.”

Her eyes narrowed and aimed towards a giggle-snort, locking onto the bouncing pink mane of yet another friend from whom the sound came.

“Equestria wasn’t made when you were a filly, silly,” laughed the party pony. She grinned. “It was made-”

“Enough!” Luna cracked her hoof against the frosty ground, and the tumble of distant snow falling brushed their ears. “Time is of the essence, and though the mysteries of the past we might reveal to you are great, they are as vast in number as they are in scale. There is simply no time for us to share such secrets. Let us enter Uldian, and summon the Herald.”

“Uldian?” Rarity slapped a hoof over her mouth, flushing as the nocturnal mare’s head swung towards her.

“The Tower,” Celestia said. Her wing cut a stark contrast against her sister’s fur, curling over her back until the alicorn sighed and softened her expression.. “Please excuse Luna. As beautiful as coming to this place is, she is right. I promise, when Twilight has returned to us, we will explain everything.”

Luna harrumphed. “You need not apologise for me, sister. My temper overcame me. Uldian…” The word twisted her mouth into a scowl. “Let us be about our business.” 

“O-oh, please don’t be upset, Princess.” Shivering against the cold, Fluttershy smiled. “We’ll save Twilight, and we can all leave soon. I know we can do it.”

“We can.” Almost underheard, Spike mumbled the words. His eyes raked the Tower, and his jaw set. “We definitely will.”

The harsh cut of her scowl long since faded, Luna wore a soft look. “Yes,” she murmured, and her eyes darkened. “We will, and we can forget this place once more.”

Down a path followed by royal hooves, cut curling and winding through spires and cliffs, the party passed in near silence. Only the clop of hooves and  the pant of breath disturbed the glacial silence. Ever present, the Tower loomed. In arctic night, the tower was a sun, turning silver brilliance into bronze radiance that lit the world like day.

Hues of reflected light shifted in the last stretch, a changing net of colour that cast from the tower, as if to capture the sky. So many sights since the last dawn had given the six mortals pause, and yet still the world found time for another. It rose before them in chains and wire, and at first, it seemed as though the ice had granted them yet another vision of natural beauty. Only in the subtle changes, the soft eminence that changed in time with the heartbeat of miniature stars dotting the links in this arcane fence was its true nature revealed. Not ice, but crystal.

Shapes loomed, and with each step they took, something stirred. Their pace unhalting, the alicorns continued on, and only the beat of wings and the crunch of a single pony’s hooves told the princess’s which of their subjects still followed them.

Through the links, eyes glared into life with a snap of energy and fixed on them. Celestia’s ear twitched, and a golden veil rose behind her before Rainbow Dash hit the ground. Wings frozen by the will of the guardians, her muscles paralysed, she was in no position to dispute as she was laid gently next to Applejack, and the pair could only stare.

“Halt.”

Celestia disobeyed, ice crunching underhoof as she stepped forth and stood tall. “I am Celestia, Solar Aspect of this world, warden of the Titans. By right of our charge, open the way.”

With a flicker, the guardian’s eyes moved until they found the stiff backed alicorn beside her. “Security protocols engaged. Access may not be granted to singular Aspects.”

With a roll of her eyes, Luna sighed. “By right of our charge, the Lunar Aspect demands that the way be opened. Our purpose is one, and our cause our duty. Now be gone, bothersome construct.”

Whatever protocols existed within those blazing eyes, it turned out none addressed lack of respect. The eyes on the guard dimmed silently before blazing back to full strength. “Access granted. Uldian opens.”

The light itself seemed to flicker inside the arc of the gate before returning to normal and Celestia strode through, waving the others to follow her. As they approached the majestic doors of the tower, the princess stopped and held up a hoof for the others to stop their approach as well. Great statues of crystal flanked the door, kneeling on but one pair of legs, shimmering weapons grasped in digits on their forelimbs. Perhaps the only thing recognisable were the beards, from which stern expressions carved in diamond glowered silently. The group soon realized the reason for Celestia’s hesitation as the heads of the soldiers turned upwards and her voice rang out.

“There is no time to tour the innards of Uldian, my little ponies, we shall have to take the direct route. Guardians! Engage Aspect protocols. Take us with our companions to the Tower Pinnacle.” Celestia wasted no emotions on the orders, though she felt a hint of a smile at the corners of her lips when a groan issued from behind her.

“Aww, come on, an ancient magical tower built by gods and we don’t even get to explore it! This would have been great for my Daring Do story!”

The guardians had no response for such a thing, and no response for any save the Princess. Their eyes flickered, the glow of ancient magic lighting them for a moment. “Aspect protocols approved. Expedient ascent transport engaged. The Aspects and their companions may proceed.”

The great doors began to open on their own with a massive groan as a pearly white light began to seep out. Celestia, nodding to the guard statues, lead the others through the doors as the world was drowned out by the bright light.

*

Hooves touched down. The girls stood around the princesses, and blinked at the world around them, for indeed on every side, the world was laid out before them. Faint wisps of clouds faded in and out of sight beyond the bronze and gold rim, and above only the stars were higher than they were.

“My word…” Setting her sight on a distant peak, Rarity gasped as the clouds simply gave way. Hints of vapour floated, translucent, where the cloud had been. “I’m seeing through clouds…”

“And up way higher than we should be!” Rainbow Dash sniffed, nose twitching as she swept her gaze across the vista. “You guys should barely be able to breathe, and it should be way colder.”

Celestia laughed, the burst of mirth sweeping the awe from her subjects. She smiled, a hint of knowing in her eyes. “This is the least of the mysteries of the Makers. A simple trick of magic, if their creations can be even called that. I told you; they made this world.”

She heard a gulp and her eyes flicked, ears twitching as she fastened her gaze on Fluttershy. 

“They sound…” Fluttershy hesitated, and peered around them. “..scary.”

“Scary, yes, but of benevolent purpose. They bring order and harmony to chaos, and build among the stars. This is why their constructs can help us. We’re going to summon a being to us, a creature of great knowledge and power,” Celestia began without preamble, meeting the eyes of each in succession. “He may look shocking, and he may say strange things, but his aid is our only way to follow Twilight in any timely fashion.”

Luna’s muzzle twisted with an ugly scowl. “With time, we could pierce the veils of space to follow her...but only with time, far too much. We cannot allow Twilight Sparkle to remain in the claws of those creatures or her possessor that long.”

“Indeed. Come sister”, Celestia said as she trotted towards a raised platform at the center of the roof, “we must begin the calling.”

The princesses destination was a large ritual center inscribed into the raised platform, with six faceted crystals encircling it, floating idly. The sisters stood together at the foot of the steps of the platform as they closed their eyes and their horns lit with power. They pulsed, beating in time with a rhythm only they could hear. At first, only their horns glowed and flared, until a thrum ran through the tower. The beat grew, caught within the tower itself, and amplified, until stands of light in six familiar colours began to form. 

They spun, hovering above the floor in a circle. Beneath them, panels folded away and metal slid away as if oiled, not a squeak or creak disturbing the elegant shifting of plates. Like called to like, and gems that matched the shimmering magic emerged with pointed tips that caught the magical light in their crystalline formations. The crystals glowed, captured magic running down strands of thick coppery metal, and the beat of the magical working’s heart was taken within them.

Sweat built on royal brows, marring fur as dark as night and bright as day. Eyes closed, Celestia pushed her head forward and her horn blazed with energy. She gasped and her breath was stolen at the same moment as her sister’s horn joined hers in shared brilliance. The crystals ate and ate, devouring the magic as their colours flashed and pounded to a rhythm only they knew.

Then, it was done. Wavering, legs trembling, the alicorns went limp for a moment and the crystals’ light died away with a final flare. The only sound left was the panting of tired princesses, and unsteady breath of the smaller creatures behind them.

“Uh…” Rainbow Dash glanced over the crystals, her eyes drawn to the one that had settled to a dull red. “Shouldn’t something be kind of happening now?”

Rarity yanked her eyes from the purple crystal, and shook her head at her friend. “Patience, dear. The princesses know what they’re doing.”

“Indeed we do,” agreed Luna. She craned her neck, brushing aside her mane as she looked to the stars. “We have sent forth the summons, and...yes. It appears we have been heard.”

It began small, but then, all things do.

A pinprick of light, a dot of flickering white fire. It flashed and flared, bright against the bronze beneath, above and beside. Alone,so small, it was nothing but a single flickering flame.

Until there was another. Coalescing from the light of the first, their combined brilliance brought a third into being, and together they summoned the fourth. Less than a second has passed, and in the space of a single blink, more had summoned. Lines burned against their eyes, and Rainbow Dash wasn’t the only one to shield her eyes.

A galaxy came to life a star at a time, light breaking against the air until it became a skin of celestial energy. Tall, towering, it loomed over them - not a pile, but a figure with limbs fleshed with starlight and joints of coldly burning suns.

“Translocation complete.”

The stars shifted, twisting until two that burned brighter than any other looked down upon them. Celestial bodies danced into an arm, stars twinkling as knuckles and joints, their light shining as if cast into flesh.

“I have been called, and so I answer.”

Eyes shining as if to light the depths of space, the celestial giant looked upon them, and his voice boomed. In his gaze and his voice, he spoke with a weight that shook the breath from mortals and a distance greater than the mere physical separation.

“I am Algalon the Observer, Herald of the Titans.”

Delicate gold rang on polished bronze, and glittering silver clinked at its side. Day and night stood together before this galaxy given shape, and met his eyes.

They bowed.

“Herald, you know me. Though only a few scant years have passed, your kindness has not been forgotten. As I stood before you, I do so again.” Celestia’s voice became bright, a glow to his thunderous boom. “I am Celestia, Solar Aspect.”

The giant inclined his head. “I recall your words still, Solar Aspect. That your world survived the taint of the Anomaly...pleases me. Your wisdom remains with me, and my calculations have grown clearer.”

Stars winked, died and flared in their paths, for a moment almost sketching the slightest of smiles upon a face from which stone might draw inspiration for indomitability. Applejack, her gaze on his face, blinked, and looked again for it. Her gaze found nothing but the cold light of his star-born expression, stoic and unmoving.

‘Did he smile, or did I imagine it?’

She was forced to look away, eyes diverting from the sudden supernovas his had become.

Whether she was returning his smile, or simply gifting him with her own, Celestia let the radiance of her power warm it. “It pleases me to hear that, Algalon. I have often wondered, since you showed mercy, whether what I said truly helped. No heart is heavier than that burdened by uncertainty in one’s own deeds.”

“Never was uncertainty intended in my creation, and yet, it seems it is what drives mortals to go beyond the limits they were meant for,” mused the giant. He shook his head slowly, starry beard swinging. “Yet I sense I was not summoned for discussion. You are in need, and as I swore when the Anomaly was sealed once more, I shall grant you audience.”

Celestia bowed her head. “That is all I ask, Herald.”

“And that is why you earned it.” His eyes grew to greater intensity, and looked up, peering beyond the limits of sight. “Analysis commencing…”

Luna pushed past her sister, shaking her head. “We have not called upon you, Observer, for an analysis of our world. We have asked for you to open the path to another.”

The image formed from her midnight blue glow, shimmering into the shape of the mogu. Its expression of fury and pain brought a smile to Luna’s face, almost a smirk as the faint wounds across its chest resolved within the ghostly form.

Algalon frowned, eyes flickering from beneath his furrowed brow.

“Analysis commencing...identity confirmed. Mogu. Classification: earth-shaper constructs. Weaponised by Highkeeper Ra against the Old Gods of Azeroth. Granted sentience by the Fist of Ra-Den.” The pause he took was thunderous in its silence, flaring solar brows crashing into a celestial furrow. “Conclusion reached. Error detected. They should not be here. They have gone where they were never intended. They have come to your world.”

“You’re darn right they did!”

He turned the cold blaze of his eyes upon the pony, bathing her orange fur in starlight.  She gave her hat a tug, and the light splashed instead across its broad brim. She began to sweat, matting her fur, but she stared on. Applejack looked into the supernova eyes, and they in turned looked back. Alarm bells rang within her skull, knocking thoughts and fears aside as surely had her declaration had brought his attention, telling her an inescapable fact;

He was studying her. The giant of stars looked upon the farm pony, and in whatever lurked within the white suns of his mind, it unmade her and rebuilt her as if to find why she said what she did.

“I...I don’t pretend to understand what ya are, or why the Princesses can summon ya,” she said, heavy lips moving with effort. “But if you can help, we need ya. There ain’t no time to wait.”

“Fascinating.”

She jerked; a violent twitch shook the mare from hoof to head, and the link was broken.

“I have seen the tenacity of life, and yet it continues to surprise me.” His lips of stars curved down within his galactic beard. “And my sorrow at my flawed calculations grows. You have called for me to aid you.”

“Indeed we have, Herald,” replied Luna, impatience colouring her voice. Her hoof tapped, a steady, constant tink of silver on bronze. “And we must ask it with haste, as fair Applejack said.”

His eyes twinkled, quite literally, and starry features furrowed. “To alert the Makers? Or to take action? You wish for aid, yet even I am limited. I observe the creations of the Titans; I order re-origination, should I find them corrupted. I was never made to give aid.”

“Yet you did.” 

His gaze fell upon Celestia, and if she felt the weight of galaxies in his stare, it broke across her like water.

“You aided us, when Discord broke free.”

“I gave no aid. Inaction is not aid,” the giant returned.

Celestia shook her head, eyes hardening. “Algalon, upon this very tower as Discord brought chaos to the heart my nation, you did act. You listened. You listened to me, and you gave the mortals with me the time to stop him.”

They felt it, each of them, for the moment that he glanced through them, six mortal hearts trembling against the weight of his judgement. “I listened, yes, but I can do nothing to punish the mogu for their violations. That is not my purpose.”

“Which is why we shall not ask for that, Herald!” Luna declared. Her hoof rang across the floor, punching through the chill air. “They have taken one of ours, and we must reclaim her. Herald of the Makers, we bid thee open the way to their world that she might be returned to us.”

A face made of stars was hard to read, it turned out, yet still his brow furrowed once more. “You desire translocation? You would abandon your duties for but one of your charges?”

“We abandon nothing,” spat Celestia. Her mane whipped about her, stirred from gentle astrals winds to snapping gale. She blocked the stares her subjects wore from her mind, and her breath hissed through her teeth. At last her mane fell about her shoulders, the gossamer drape all but frozen. “I apologise, Herald. That was rude of me, though no more than your own assertion.”

Algalon turned his head to the side, as if to peer at her from another angle, to see more. “Politeness is not among my purposes either, Aspect. One rarely requires tact when putting worlds to the Maker’s purifying torch.”

“Did that sound really bad to anypony else?” asked Rainbow Dash, shuffling ruffled wings back into place. “Putting places to torch means burning them, right?”

Her lips slapped shut, a visible shiver running down her spine when she found Princess Luna fixing her with a Look.

The giant waved his hand almost lazily. “I offer no niceties or kind lies, and expect none. I am the Observer, and I speak the truth as I have seen. You ask me to facilitate a transition between worlds the Titans never intended. I cannot.”

Luna snorted, thin jets of steam bursting from her nose. “You said the same when we begged but a day to prove the infestation had not won the day, when Discord was free. You said it was never intended. That you could not.”

“You gave us the chance to do the right thing once, Algalon. We will never abandon our ward, but Twilight Sparkle, the pony who was taken from us, she must be saved.” With a yielding step, Celestia cleared herself from his sight. From above he saw them all, and now the alicorns flanked their mortals. “These six mortals are exemplary, strong in heart, will and dedication. If you cannot grant us passage, grant it to them. Please.”

Heads turned and eyes widened, but her stare was only for the giant.

“You want us to go with this guy to another world?” spluttered Rainbow Dash. She pulled herself into the air, and set a glare upon the strange being. “He’s totally shady- I mean, not literally shady, ‘cause he’s made of stars, which is weird too, but he was talking about burning worlds! I didn’t even know there were more worlds and this guy has been going around burning them!”

Celestia’s lips thinned, and her mane swept about her as she shook her head. “There is not time to explain everything of the universe’s nature, and I fear you would not understand their full scope, but whatever his actions, they have been done with a purpose.” She grimaced. “A purpose I would not abide, were it my decision, but it is not and there are beings greater than Algalon who command his actions.”

“Commands he is, if not defying, then bending for our sake,” added Luna. Her stare brought the pegasus back to the floor, though Rainbow Dash never let them force her to lower her head. “This may be our only option.”

From beneath the brim of her hat, Applejack peered at the giant, then at the alicorns. “So…” she began, her frown carried in her voice, “Why don’t ya’ll go? I don’t mean to be rude, Princesses, but yer a lot more magic than us. I bet it’d take ya five minutes to go and bring back Twi’.”

Hers wasn’t the only gaze that Celestia found searching her for an answer, and though her lips parted, for a moment no sound passed them.

“Their duty.”

Algalon stirred, and Applejack gulped. Only the brim of her hat shielded her, yet she felt his gaze.

“Beg pardon, Sir Herald?” asked Rarity. Her smile might have been forced, but between the silent, unexpressive dragon riding her and the scale of the being she addressed, few could find fault with her for it. “But does Applejack not have a point? I do hate to seem critical, your highnesses, but surely Twilight would be safer with you?”

She jumped, and were it not for the same hoof that had wrapped itself around her neck, Spike would have fallen to the ground. Rarity huffed, and her glare went ignored as Pinkie pouted.

“Aww, but girls, don’t you want to save Twilight?” Her brows met, and the thought of them clicking with a doubtless confused noise manifested itself in the imaginations of her friends. “We can all go!”

To her relief, Rarity found herself freed, and Pinkie hovering above her. The party pony wilted in the face of Rainbow Dash’s glare.

“Don’t even ask that! Of course we want to save her, but they’re the Princesses! If they come too, we can fix this and be home in time for dinner. We can be home before Twilight’s been gone for even one day and this will be just another story where we all go home happy and everything is fine,” she growled. The pegasus screwed her face up, and her eyes burned. “So don’t you dare accuse me of not being willing to do anything to help Twilight, but I was kinda expecting the Princesses to do the same-”

“We cannot.” In the dead air of the tower, Celestia’s murmur rolled over them.

Arguments were frozen on tongues, glares chilled of their fire. They stilled, and her voice wash over them. 

“The fact remains; it is you who must go. A whole world awaits you, my little ponies, and I know that working together, you can overcome it and bring Twilight back to us. All six of you.” Here her gaze found Spike’s, and he found himself sitting taller on Rarity’s back. “Find her, and save her, and we will unlock the magic needed to bring you home. It costs so much to ask this of you, but you are the only ones we can ask. I know you would go to Tartarus for Twilight, and I know none of you would refuse to go after her. We will be with you, in spirit if not in flesh.”

She let her words sink in, and a tension she could never admit to flooded away with each nod, each agreement, they began to voice.

“We’re ready to face whatever you ask of us, your highness. You can trust us,” said Rarity. She smiled, and reached back to loosen Spike’s grip upon her mane. “We won’t let you down.”

Spike nodded. His stare was lost in the crystal, gazing into its shimmering depth as if it might yield to his will alone and spit out Twilight. His hand fell away from her mane, and pushed up to stand on Rarity’s back as around him his friends chorused their resolve.

“Whatever it takes, we’re gettin’ her back.”

“I guess we won’t have time to throw Algalon here a welcome to Equestria party, will we?” asked Pinkie with a frown, hoof bouncing off the floor in an impatient tap-tap. “We really need to get after Twilight, before she starts to miss us.”

Rainbow Dash was not so circumspect in her scowling impatience. “Yeah, yeah, let’s get started, Twilight is waiting for us,” she urged.

“I, uh…” Fluttershy shook her head until her mane had floated clear of her eyes, and they grew firm. “I agree. Let’s save Twilight.”

From on high, as they always had, Celestia gazed down upon them. In the ethereal glow, her eyes shone and her voice trembled, “Oh, my little ponies…my dear little dragon...”

They were swept in, a great wind of gold pulling them in a flailing tide into Celestia’s grip. The overpowering hug was over almost as soon as it had begun, and the faint aches and sudden dislocation were all the princess left them to remember it by.

“Thank you.”

Whatever reply they might have had, whatever could be said in the face of this display, Algalon’s voice rolled over them before they could be made manifest.

“Time is of the essence. Approach the translocation matrix, travellers. Ulduar, and Azeroth, awaits.”

The centre of the platform shimmered, and from it rose a spear of crystal. Bonds of bronze and silver circled it, containing the trembling energies flaring with each pulse of its heartbeat. He gestured, and they followed, trotting to the crystal. Sparks of light bounced within it, complex patterns constrained by its banding. He reached out, and lightning danced between starry palm and crystal. They twisted and snapped, swirling into formations.

“Translocation calculations initiating.”

The floor began to glow, a ring of light beneath them. Rarity yelped, hooves flailing as gravity lost its hold upon her. She glared through the glow at Rainbow Dash as the mare cackled.

“What, don’t like floating?” the pegasus teased.

“Hmph! Well, some of us prefer to have our hooves on the ground, thank you very much,” retorted Rarity, suppressing with all her might the urge to roll her eyes. She was, after all, a lady.

“Nngh.” With a click of her teeth and a grunt, Applejack snapped onto her hat, it’s bid for freedom ended. “I gotta agree there,” she mumbled around it.

Raising her voice, Celestia’s voice rang around them, “Just stay calm, it will begin soon. I know you can do this. Find Twilight, and we will bring you back. Please, find her!”

“Beginning translocation…” intoned the giant, and the light flared.

“Remember your Elements, and...oh, damnation!” With a snarl, Luna ripped off her saddlebags, and six glowing bundles came free. “Your Elements!”

Had the growing throb of energy silenced itself, the moment may have been comical. Seven pairs of eyes widened to comical proportions, and save a single starry jaw, every mouth fell open.

“Quickly, before you’re gone!” They blinked away, an instant of magic whisking them from the princess to the ponies. Six points of midnight magic spat them out within the Titanic device’s light, a deep, dark blue that flared into a dozen colours beyond mortal sight.

“Luna, no!” A second too late, Celestia cried out.

Hooves wrapped around her bundle, pressing it to her chest, Applejack was the only one to find her gravity defying drift take her into sight of Algalon’s face, and then only to notice the tremor that beset his extended hand.

She gulped. “Aw, crabapples.”

“Error. Translocation...disrupted…” His voice rose, coloured by something that would have had fear pour from any reasonable being’s pores. Coloured light broke across him in a dozen shades, tides of energy sweeping by with each moment as the process broke down. “Matter destabilised...I cannot…”

Her mistake slapped Luna in the face, and it lent her the speed to dash towards the giant and the swirling energies that grew with every moment.  “No, stop, wait!” she shrieked.

“Hold on!” roared the giant, and with a shout he was lost beneath the flaring of his stars. A pillar of stars at the height of their fury had replaced him, silver starlight blazing across them. “Translocation…”

The world vanished within the riot of twisting space and screaming physical laws. Mortal voices mixed into the shriek of violated physics, scraping against the blackboard of reality.

“...begins!”

With a final bellow, the world went silent and the light vanished, leaving the alicorns alone atop the tower, save perhaps for their fears and the weight of guilt.

“What have I done…” Luna cried out. Her hooves rang a ragged, beaten tune against the floor. “What have I done?!”

Far away, too far to answer, six stars fell upon a world. A world at war.