> Post-Traumatic
>  by Jordan179
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Chapter 1: Back in Ponyville
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The train pulled into Ponyville Station as evening was falling.  The Sun was already down behind the White Tails, and the Moon was starting to climb in the East.  The air felt damp on Twilight Sparkle's face as she stepped down onto the platform, a harbinger of rain, something she could also sense in the ionization of the air.  Even in the center of town, she could feel the spring and its new life all around her, a sensation that had become more and more acute over the last year and a half, since she had become an Alicorn.

It should have cheered her.  It did cheer her, slightly.  But slight cheer was not enough to dispel the gloom and fear that shrouded her soul, making the whole world seem washed-out by shadow.  Her heart was still troubled by what had happened in that nameless little village in the Crystal Mountains, her mind oppressed by the implications.

"Hoo-wee!"  Applejack whooped as she jumped down from the train.  "It shore is good to see mah home town again.  Ah feel like a flea that's hopped back up on its favorite dog, Ah tell yah!"  Applejack's rustic accent was thicker than usual.

Twilight thought the metaphor strained, and the happy light that shone in Applejack's eyes seemed almost desperately bright.  Twilight wasn't certain.  Her ability to read others was in her intellectual rather than intuitive, though since her Ascension she'd experienced increasingly-frequent intuitive flashes into the nature of others.  This power was still intermittent -- but she felt as if there was something wrong with Applejack.

"Wowee, you're right!" shrieked Pinkie Pie, hopping off the train and bouncing around the station like a demented equine rubber ball.  "It's great to be back home!  Whee!!!"

Did Pinkie seem a bit too enthusiastic?  It was difficult to tell with her, of course.  Her normal state of consciousness was easy to mistake for clinical mania; it was only because Twilight knew Pinkie well, and had for almost five years now, that she sensed that something was subtly wrong with Pinkie's seeming good cheer -- as if Pinke were trying too hard.

Rainbow Dash whooshed out a window.  She wasn't supposed to do that; it was against the railroad's rules:  they didn't like to risk having to replace the panes on their passenger cars because some drunk or silly Pegasus misjudged such a move.  Rainbow Dash never cared about rules like that.  She streaked up above her friends, streaming her rainbow-colored contrail, and flew happy little patterns overhead, laughing exuberantly.

At least she didn't seem to be faking it.

Fluttershy walked down the steps.  She looked a little tired, but not too terribly-depressed.

She'd been energetic at the start of the return trip.  Twilight reasoned that the good feelings at the victory celebration had reinvigorated Fluttershy; the former followers of Starlight Glimmer were ecstatic at their liberation and directed most of this positive affect at their saviors.  From what Twilight understood of Fluttershy's amatovoric powers -- in part by analogy with Twilight's less-developed own abilities in that regard -- Fluttershy would have made a fair meal of all that ambient love.

Normally, on the trip back, Fluttershy would have basked in the love of her friends.  But they'd all been in a strange mood.  Most, including Twilight herself, had been depressed, quiet, and withdrawn -- unable to extend the love upon which Fluttershy fed.  Rainbow Dash had been atypically-aggressive.  As for Rarity ...

Rarity was the last to emerge.  She did not prance down the stairs, as was her normal wont in victory.  She did not trot.  She did not even walk normally.  She stepped slowly, her hooves dragging, her expression downcast.  Her gloom was deep, and obvious.

As she stepped down to the platform, she sniffed, opened her mouth to taste it in a full flehmen.  Her eyes darted about, taking in the sight of Ponyville in the gloaming.  Her ears perked up and she stood somewhat straighter.

"Beautiful," Rarity said.  "It is all so beautiful."  Her voice was thick with an almost-desperate passion, as if she feared that at any moment all this loveliness might be taken away.

After all it had before, three times in her life, and twice in the last half year, Twilight thought.  She'd shared in the experience each time save for the first, and being left out of that had only been marginally less upsetting than actually being Discorded.

Twilgiht cast her gaze about.  Where's Spike? she wondered.  He's supposed to meet us here.  She'd sent him a wire from the train, letting him know when they'd be arriving.

As if the thought had been a summoning spell, Twilight saw the small purple-and-yellow-and-green biped running toward her through the thickening mists.  "Spike!" she cried happily, filled with gladness at the sight of her foster brother.

"Sorry!" replied Spike.  "I got wrapped up in hoofball stats and lost track of the time.  I know I should have been here sooner.  I ran," he added by way of explanation.  "And got these for you all."  He tossed furled umbrellas to Twilight and Rarity, who caught them in their auras; then he tossed one more each to the other four mares.  He had not bothered to bring one for himself.

"No problem, Spike," said Twilight.  "Our train just pulled in anyway."  She smiled.  Spike was reassuringly part of her normal life, of home and family and friends and routine research, as opposed to meglomaniacal mages who wanted to rip away everything that made her who she was, whether from a mad hunger for power or in pursuit of an insanely egalitarian ideology.

"Thank'ee kindly," said Applejack, "but Ah don't need no umbrella for a lil' sprinkle like this, no more'n a muskrat needs water-wings."  She passed the umbrella back to Spike in one forehoof.

"Yeah, I don't need one either," added Rainbow Dash.  "I'm way too awesome.  I fly through thunderstorms for fun -- think fast!"  She passed the umbrella back to Spike, chucking it from one wing like a dart, though at a relatively safe speed, and aimed to miss both head and body.

Spike looked briefly worried, but plucked it out of the air with one dextrous hand.

"Good catch!" cried Rainbow, laughing heartily.

"Mac and I have been practicing," Spike informed Rainbow Dash.  He looked at Applejack.  "Your brother can sure throw some hard passes."

Applejack smiled, and Rainbow Dash got a mischevious expression.  Pinkie grinned, then glanced away as if at some imaginary audience and said "Meh.  Too easy."

Rarity, who had simply been staring with fascination at Spike since he arrived, finally spoke up.

"Spikey-Wikey!" she burst out, startling both Spike and her other friends.  "Your scales are ... simply ... fabulous!

"Well gee -- thank you, Rarity," Spike replied with a slight blush.  "You -- you're looking lovely yourself."

The statement was not entirely true, Twilight reflected.  Rarity was exhausted, travel-worn and had a rather disturbingly-intense expression as she regarded Spike.  Still, Twilight thought, I suppose that to Spike, Rarity is always beautiful.  Briefly, two images -- one of a cool, deadly dark-blue Alicorn mare with a mane full of starlight; the other of a blue-haired yellow Human stallion with desire in his eyes -- drifted before her mind, accompanied by the usual confusion when she thought too intimately of either of them, let alone of both of them at the same time.

I'm supposed to be brilliant, thought Twilight.  So why is my own heart sometimes such a mystery to me?

She regarded Spike, who was dreamily meeting Rarity's gaze.  I'm not sure that it can ever really work -- he's eight years her junior, not yet fifteen, and of another biological class than her own -- but at least for now, he knows whom he loves.  I wish I could be so certain.

"The way your skin glistens in the lamplight, Spike," Rarity continued.  "It's so splendid!  So real, and yet almost ethereal!"

"Um -- thank you again, Rarity.  It's because my scales are damp.  From the mist," Spike explained, starting to look a little uncertain, probably because Rarity was being overly-enthusiastic even by her own rather flamboyant standards.

"Your scales are wonderful," Rarity said, reaching out with one hoof to hook Spike into a hug.  Her motion was rough.

Caught by surprise, Spike made a small startled sound, a sort of half-choked query.

"You're so handsome!"  With that, Rarity lifted him and bussed him firmly on both cheeks, ignoring his lack of response.  She was about to kiss him full on the lips, when she finally got a good look at his expression.  What she saw seemed to shock her out of the frenzy that had claimed her.

"Oh," Rarity said, flatly.  "Oh."  Her face crumpled, and she put Spike down.  "I'm so sorry, Spike.  That was -- I should get back to the shop.  I have work to do.  Goodbye."  Her voice increasingly choked with emotion as she spoke, and that last "goodbye" was almost a vocalized sob.  Her eyes were brimming with tears, and she quickly turned away.  She actually galloped off toward the Carousel Boutique, clearly wanting to get away from this situation as fast as possible.

Spike stared in the direction in which she had departed, jaw dropping in literally open-mouthed astonishment.  "What just happened?" he asked, of everypony and nopony in particular.  He turned to his five remaining friends, who seemed scarcely less shocked at the scene they had witnessed.  "What did I do wrong?"  His voice was stricken.

Twilight was silent, uncertain of what to say.

"Nothing, Sugarcube," Applejack replied, her green eyes soft and compassionate, her tone gentle.  "You didn't do nothing wrong.  We had a rough time of it up north.  Rough on all 'a us.  Rarity just took it a mite harder than us, that's all."

"What happened up there?" Spike asked, now plainly worried.

"We met us one plumb mean mage," Applejack replied.  "Mean and loco.  Twah can fill you in on the details -- prolly will have to, in order to write up her report.  Ah bet she can explain it a lot better'n Ah can."

"Will Rarity be okay?"  Spike asked.

"Ah don't rightly know for sure," Applejack said first.  Then, as she saw the fear show in the little Dragon's eyes, she added:  "But Ah 'spect she will.  As you've prolly noticed, Rares is a whole passel tougher than she mostly lets on."

"Should I go to her?"  Spike asked.  "Help her?"

"I don't think so," said Twilight, finally coming to a decision on the matter.  "I would imagine that Rarity's rather embarrassed about the way she just behaved.  Right now, you should probably give her some space to feel better about herself."

Spike's expression showed that he plainly did not relish this advice, but he nodded.  "I suppose so," he assented grudgingly.

"Twah," interjected Applejack.  "mebbe somepony should check in on on Rarity, though.  Just to see how she's doing."

"I'll do it," volunteered Fluttershy.  "May I see to my animals first, though?"

"Sure," said Twilight.  She knew that the love of her animals would recharge Fluttershy's own empathic powers, rendering her more able to help Rarity.

She turned to Spike.  "You can come with me and help me organize my detailed report to Celestia."

She had, of course, dashed off a quick message to her Most Beloved Former Teacher as soon as she had gotten back to "Our Town," detailing Dashie to fly it to the nearest telegraph operator.    It had been a very simple message:



FOUND STARLIGHT GLIMMER LEADING THRALL CULT IN CENTRAL CRYSTAL MOUNTAINS STOP DEFEATED HER FREED THRALLS STOP SG DANGEROUS WARLOCK CAN REMOVE CUTIE MARKS EVEN FROM ALICORNS STOP WILL SEND FULL REPORT FROM PONYVILLE ON ARRIVAL STOP END



Twilight hoped that it was enough to ensure that Starlight Glimmer could not take the other Alicorn Princesses by surprise (as she did me being the implicit continuation of that thought).  

On the train ride back, Twilight had a nightmare of coming to Canterlot to find Celestia and Luna helpless victims of the Spell of Sameness, while a smirking Starlight sat on Celestia's throne, declaring herself to be the new rightful ruler of all Equestria.  Waking, she knew it to be nonsense -- the Royal Pony Sisters would be far from helpless, even in that situation, and the Guards wouldn't just submit to some random warlock -- but she still feared the worst, feared that Starlight had other powers as yet unrevealed.

For Twilight had a strong suspicion of from where Starlight Glimmer had developed the Spell of Sameness.  And if she was right, all Equestria was in terrible danger -- perhaps not now, but as soon as Starlight had recovered from her defeat, prepared her next plan.  Starlight might have bided her time longer in the mountains, ruling her petty little despotism, but Twilight had ruined that.  Twilight's failure to capture Starlight meant that Twilight's own actions had only made the danger to the Realm all the worse.

Spike looked briefly mutinous, casting a glance toward the direction in which Rarity had departed, then subsided.

"Bye for now, girls," said Twilight.  "I have a report to write.  I'll see you all tomorrow at my castle."

Her friends said their farewells, and then Twilight -- Spike riding atop her back, holding an umbrella -- trotted off to their home.

The night darkened, the mist turned to cold rain.

And somewhere, out there beyond that rain, Twilight knew that Starlight Glimmer was lurking -- and preparing to strike.
> Chapter 2: Initial Recoveries
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie stood watching Twilight and Spike walk off toward the castle, and Fluttershy toward her cottage.

"Wal," said Applejack, looking down the southwest road. "Ah'd better get me down to Sweet Apple Acres.  It's been almost a week since Ah've seen the ol' family farmstead.  Ah'm sure there's work there a-waitin' for me."  She took a half-hearted step in that direction, then turned back to look at her friends again, her expression wistful.  She felt strangely unwilling to part from her friends tonight.

"I told the Cakes that I'd be gone the whole week," said Pinkie Pie.  "I'm sure they can wait till tomorrow for me.  I could come with you and keep you company while you're working -- maybe even help a little?"

"Ah don't know," Applejack said,  "It's Sweet Apple Acres -- we Apples can handle it all by our own selves ..."

"Why Applejack, I'm an Apple too!" said Pinkie, bouncing right up to Applejack's nose and staring down her muzzles at her.  "At least a fifth cousin twice removed, maybe?  And I'm one of your best friends.  That means I get to help!"

"Yeah," said Rainbow Dash, trying to look casual, "and with Pinkie helping ya, you'd better have me to help you clean up after her help!" She smiled.  "Cloud Kicker's in charge of the Weather Patrol the rest of the week.  It's not like I'm doing anything more important ..."

A broad grin spread across Applejack's face.  "Wal ... sure, why not!"  She looked at Rainbow Dash narrowly.  "But Ah really do want you helping, then," she said.  "Not just sleeping on clouds when there's work to be done."  She started walking down the road, Pinkie Pie bouncing and Rainbow Dash flying slowly beside her.

"Eh," said Rainbow Dash.  "I work so fast that I run out of work to do.  I bet I get all my part of the chores done before you're nearly finished.  If I do, you do all the chores next time!"

"Yer on," said Applejack, giving her Pegasus friend a tight little smile.  "And if you don't, you do twice as many next time."

"Ain't gonna happen," said Rainbow Dash. examining her own right forehoof as if it was the most attractive object she'd ever seen.  "I'm just that much more amazing than you.  Beat you every time, and with time to spare."

"We'll see about that," said Applejack.  Despite her doubting words, her tone was warm.  She wanted Pinkie and Dashie with her when she was reunited with her family.  They both understood what she'd been through.  Her family couldn't.  She didn't want her family to have to understand.  Bad enough they'd experienced the Day of Discord; they'd been lucky in that Tirek hadn't gotten to Sweet Apple Acres before she and Twilight and the others had beaten the monstrous centaur.  She was really glad they'd never have to suffer the Sameness.

"How come Pinkie isn't doing this challenge?"  Rainbow Dash asked.

"Heh," said Applejack.  "You don't rightly want her to.  Pinkie's almost as hard-working as me, and she can move mighty fast when she's doing something."

"Yep!" said Pinkie cheerfully, bouncing all around the road, running up trees and poking her head down from the foliage.  "I'm super speedy!"  She began humming some song to herself, singing stray snatches of it, including the refrain 'Filli-Second.'

"You really liked that enchanted comic book," observed Applejack.

"Yeppers!" affirmed Pinkie, bouncing between trees like a living pinball.  "That's why I do her sometimes.  Filli-Second."

"Ah'm not even sure how that's possible," commented Applejack.  She often found herself saying that around Pinkie Pie.

"It's Pinkie-possible," laughed Rainbow Dash.  "That's why she's so cool."

The three mares laughed as they went down the road to Sweet Apple Acres, enjoying each other's friendship.





Rarity reached the door of the Carousel Boutique.  Am I being followed? she wondered, and cast a look behind herself.  All there was were the lights of Ponyville, shining wan through the cold mist.  As she stood there, the mist thickened, and it began to sprinkle.

Good gracious, she thought, I'll catch my death of cold standing around out there.  She opened her front door, stepped inside, and with a sigh of relief closed the door behind her and uncapped the soft magelights.

As always, the multi-spectral glimmer of the magelights off the lovely clothes surrounding her reminded her of why she'd stayed with magelights even as Ponyville electrified.  Magelights were more expensive than electric lights, but electric lights were harsh, and distorted colors seen under them.  With magelighting, Rarity could see the fabrics in their true colors as they would look by daylight, and thus work more accurately and precisely even when the Sun went down.

She drank in the beauty around her.  Her clothes looked wonderful on the poniquins, and would look even better adornng the right Ponies.  That was her job and her joy; to spread beauty around her, to make the whole world more fabulous.  Anypony could clothe a Pony, if all that was needed was material to retain body warmth in a layer of trapped air between coat and fabric.  It took skill and talent to clothe a Pony in such a manner that her hidden and beautiful dreams became apparent to all who viewed her.

Rarity remembered those hideous sacklike cloaks at Our Town, and shuddered.  When she'd first seen those, she'd known deep in her soul that there was something very wrong with the place.  Her rational mind had told her that it was just a little, out-of-the-way village, which couldn't attract a competent clothier.  She really should have paid more attention to her instincts about the clothes, and the still, small voice within her that had been telling her that the social pattern of the place was all wrong.

She should have warned Twilight.  But she hadn't wanted to be too finicky.  Rarity had a strong  sense of beauty, was easily repulsed by rather minor squalor, and when she went on missions with Twilight Sparkle, often found herself in places which were far from ideal.  Rarity was an aesthete, but no coward:  she would not let her friends down because the surroundings she had to enter were unpleasant.  Everything couldn't be pleasant summer picnics in White Tail Park, or garden parties at the Palace at Canterlot.

Pity they can't be, she thought.  Maybe someday, I can make the whole world beautiful.

Memory lashed at her.  Such arrogance!  she chided herself.  I can't even make my own life beautiful!  She walked into the room, pulled over a couch, and collapsed upon it.  What was I doing to Spike?  I was so needy, so hungry for his love, as if I were some sort of Changeling.  Or something less mentionable.  I terrified the poor dear little drake.  That look he gave me, as if he were horrified.  That's not what I want to see on somepony I'm about to kiss.

I finally showed him my true self, and he was revolted.  And why not?  I was behaving revoltingly.  That's not how one behaves when one wishes to share a first real kiss with a beloved.  That's more like a debauched old roue attempting to corrupt some innocent young schoolfilly.  Which is, of course, what I really am, despite all my pretensions.  I was corrupted when I was an innocent young schoolfilly, and now all I can do is spread my misery.  She buried her head in her forelegs.

Spike thought I was better than that, but now he's finally seen the real me -- pathetic and desperate, selfish, and of questionable morals.  A corrupter of innocence.  I am not a good Pony.  He's seen the real me now, and he'll never respect me as he did before.

It's a good thing that he's seen it at last.  That silly, self-destructive crush of his on a Rarity who never really existed can end, and he can move on -- grow up, find love with somepony his own age.  Somepony who can love him back as he deserves to be loved.  And as for me -- perhaps I'll just lie on this couch forever, until I waste away to a mummy, and then blow away in dust when somepony opens the door!  She rolled on her back, threw all her legs out in a helpless posture, wallowed in self-pity.

Well, I suppose not, she finally decided.  I have orders to fill, work that's piled up while I was gone.  I can't get the dresses done if I'm wasting away to a mummy.  She rolled back onto her belly, sat up, contemplated the Boutique.  I might as well get started tonight, she reflected.  I got more than enough rest on that long train trip.

So comforting her sorrow with routine, Rarity went back to work.



  

Fluttershy flung open the door to her cottage.  "I'm home!" she declared joyfully.

As she stepped in her animals flocked around her.  Spike had been caring for them, and they were healthy enough, but they were never really happy when they'd been too long without seeing her.  She was their most trusted friend, their leader, their  Queen -- and in a very particular sense that sometimes worried her -- but not for long because she was too glad whenever they were around.

Angel Bunny hopped up and chittered at her, chiding her for spending so long away from home.

"I'm glad to see you too," Fluttershy said, "and I'm very sorry that I couldn't get back sooner.  I was being just a little bit held prisoner by a very mixed-up mage," she explained.  "I was really worried about all of you."

Angel Bunny hopped up and down, furiously declaring that he would rip that mage to bits for daring to keep Fluttershy from him.

"I don't doubt that you would," replied Fluttershy.  "And I don't doubt that Starlight Glimmer would have had a fight on her hands."  

Fluttershy was actually glad Angel hadn't been there -- she imagined that Angel would really have attacked the warlock, and perhaps gotten badly hurt, or worse, in the process.  Angel was sometimes a bit too brave for his own good, though also too brave for the good of anyone at whom he was seriously angry.  "Heh, you don't have a Cutie Mark for her to steal."

Fluttershy nuzzled Angel Bunny, and he calmed down, hugging her.  It was obvious that he had been badly worried about her, which is why he had been so upset.  Angel could be difficult at times, but his heart was most definitely in the right place.

The other animals clustered around Fluttershy, forming a rough circle around her.  Birds came out and flitted about her head.  Ferrets, rats, mice and a couple of badgers were all companionable in her presence, which brought peace between all species, even those who normally saw one another as predators or prey.  All those who were her special friends were hereafter friendly to one another, for their loyalty to their Queen transcended any previous considerations.  Fluttershy was herself barely aware of the psychic radiations by which she made this so, though she was glad of it.

Fluttershy warmly greeted each new arrival, reaffirming their special connections with her.  Finally she closed her eyes and stood there in perfect happiness, eyes closed, drinking in the love from each tiny soul.  She could have easily destroyed them, but it did not even occur to her that this was a possibility, for she felt love for them fully the equal of the love they felt for her.  She would never have harmed any of them, not even the least.  

She tapped only a little energy from each soul, gauging it by her empathic bond with them, making sure never to drain any dangerous quantity.  She paid and would pay for it by feeding them and tending to them, ensuring that they would enjoy happy and succesful lives, far beyond that of those of their kinds who did not share this symbiosis.  On her own, out of kindness and caring, long before she had realized what she was doing and why she was doing this, Fluttershy had formed her own Hive and Reconciliation; and hers would long outlast the cruel and dark domain that her parent was building hundreds of miles to the southwest.

As she did this, something huge and hairy came through the door.  She could sense his soul, his life, and without even turning, her own soul reached forth and caressed her large dear friend.  Harry, a full-grown male brown bear, reached out with his mighty clawed forepaws, either of which might have ended her life in a single motion, and swept her up into a loving embrace.  In that embrace she happily nestled as if a foal in the arms of her parents, and in his great strength she knew herself to be entirely safe.

The love flooded into her from Angel, from Harry, from all sides, feeding her and fully-restoring her powers.

You meant to take this from me, she thought to an absent Starlight Glimmer, not grasping what you were taking.  I'm sure that you thought you were doing good, thought that you were being nice and helping me make friends, that friendship was only possible between creatures that were all the same.  But I and my animal friends are all very different from one another.  And yet we are true friends.  So I know you're wrong about that.

I wish we could have been friends.  Sometimes the strangest people can make the best friends.  She smiled briefly, thinking of a pair of red-and-yellow eyes and a mismatched body and very strange soul which had, against all expectations, become very dear to her.  But you won't let me be me.  And you hurt my friends.  And if you try to hurt my friends again -- I will fight you.  I don't really want to, but I will.

I am Fluttershy, and I am free.

She basked in the love of her Hive.
> Chapter 3:  Library Research
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Library of the Castle of Friendship was now familiar to Twilight Sparkle, almost as well-known to her as had been the Golden Oak Library, the one she had lost to Tirek the Annihilator.  In a sense, any library was Twilight's home and native environment; books were voyages of adventure, and libraries the places where one began the voyages of the mind.  Nevertheless, some books -- and some libraries -- were more special to Twilight than others.

She had spent over four years of her life living in the Golden Oak Library, and it had become a very special place to her.  She had personally-selected many of the books, read all of them, and annotated a good number of them.  The building itself, crafted from a living tree by Earth Pony magic, had become dear to her.  It had been the first real home she had all to herself and her baby brother Spike:  before then, she had lived in a Palace suite at Canterlot, and before that, at home with her parents in the Sparkle Town House.

At the Golden Oak Library she had assembled for the first time with her new friends on the Quest of the Elements of Harmony, and there too had begun many of their other adventures together.  They had met there to plan their strategies; more often, simply to enjoy the company of one another.  It had been the home stable of their little herd.  It still pained her to reflect that the Golden Oak Library was gone for ever.

Twilight knew something of the bloody history of Tirek; she had heard it from the Royal Pony Sisters, who had in turn heard it from Wind Whistler and Firefly, who had fought the hosts of the demon centaur in a lost age six thousand years ago, when only the coming of The Megan had saved Ponykind from extermination at the monster's hooves.  In his time Tirek had destroyed cities, nations, whole species.  Compared to that, what was one single suburban library?

That day, Twilight Sparkle had truly learned the lesson which Princess Luna had once tried to teach her, regarding the difference between statistics and tragedies.  All that vast suffering, far crueller though it had assuredly been to the actual victims at the time, was emotionally as nothing to Twilight Sparkle compared to the destruction of her own library, her own home.  Sometimes she felt ridiculous for this reason, but it was nothing more than the truth.

Even the incredible deed performed by Discord and Pinkie Pie, traveling through time into their own personal pasts and braving the lash of Paradox upon their own selves, just to save some of her books, could not entirely take away the sting of loss for Twilight Sparkle, the horror at just how transient might prove what seemed the firmest and most secure portions of her life.  Somehow, despite all she'd faced, the idea that something might destroy her books had seemed unthinkable.

Though it had, of course, very much reconciled her with Discord regarding his original betrayal.  She was coming to realize that in some ways the Draconequus, for all his vast intellect and millennia of life and experience, was less cunning chessmaster than cranky colt, especially when he lashed out at others.  And she was also coming to realize that he was actually her friend, though a very annoying one.  (It also made it obvious to her how much Pinkie Pie loved her, though this was less of a surprise).

She was coming to like her new library, though.  It was physically huge, a vast circular chamber with crystalline branch-like extensions of the Castle-Tree buttressing the walls (and, Twilight suspected, possibly serving other purposes), and six rows of huge bookshelves -- each shelf large and sturdy enough for a Pony to stand in, amenable to sub-shelving should she decide to install such, climbing the walls.  Great high windows provided ample light by day, and by night (as was currently the case) the room was illuminated by the castle's own magelighting.  The room was large enough for a full-grown adult Dragon to occupy, though he would have been a bit cramped.  There were numerous side-halls, into which she might organize studies and special collections.  It was larger than the main libraries of many cities.

It was very obvious to Twilight that the Tree of Harmony had grown all this for her, in full awareness of her needs and desires, probably by reading them through her connection with her Element.  This, too, made Twilight Sparkle suspect that the Castle had functions beyond the obvious ones of home and fortress; she wondered at times if the whole building were not in fact, a gigantic crystalline calculating and data storage device, created by the same sort of scientific sorcery that had raised the Crystal Palace and the Great Library.  This struck her as strange -- wasn't the Harmony a force long antedating the Crystal Empire?  Or was it something that had sprung into existence only after the Cataclysm?  These were questions to which as of yet she had no answers.  As of yet.

The recent revelation of the vast, interactive holographic map of Equestria, capable of zooming down to the display of individual structures of interest, such as the Pie Rock Farm, supported her speculations that the Castle was intelligent, possibly in some sense alive, and linked in communication with the Tree of Harmony itself.  Either the Castle, or the Tree -- if there were in truth any meaningful difference between the two manifestations of the Harmony -- seemed to be able to scry events at least all over Equestria, and organize responses to them.  

Twilight had explored Our Town after Starlight Glimmer's defeat, and detected the thaumic residue of a powerful scryshield -- obviously meant to keep Princess Celestia from finding it.  The Castle had apparently seen right through that shield as if it hadn't even been there.  That implied both power, and sophistication in its use.  

The Harmony, as a force, was at least as strong as any one Alicorn, maybe as strong as all of them put together.  It had, after all, enabled them to decisively defeat Tirek, even swollen with the power of millions of Ponies, including all four Alicorns, plus that of Discord.  And it was directed by an intelligence -- perhaps not a Pony intelligence, but one which seemed quite friendly to Ponykind.

Twilight as yet had no need of sub-shelving, but she had filled many of the main shelves.  Celestia and Luna had generously donated many books to her from their own personal libaries, the main Palace library, the Academy, and the libraries of the University of Canterlot.  Cadance and Shining Armor had provided numerous rare old books from the Great Library in the Crystal City.  There had been the books Discord and Pinkie Pie had managed to save from the Golden Oak Library.  And numerous public and private organizations had donated books to Twilight, in gratitude for her defeat of Tirek.  In truth, the Friendship Castle Library was far bigger and more complete than any Twilight had ever before possessed, or even managed.

Right now, Twilight Sparkle was very glad of this fact.  Because the Golden Oak Library's collection had been much too limited to have permitted her to do what she was doing right now.  Which was, writing a complete report to Princess Celestia regarding her experiences at Our Town.

Including the deeper background.

Twilight had written the first draft of the report on the train ride back to Ponyville, of course.  There was no sense in letting all that time go to waste, not when it was important to ensure that Princess Celestia was properly apprised of the danger represented by Starlight Glimmer.  There was no sense in simply sleeping, or brooding about what she had undergone.  The first was yielding to base needs when there was duty to be done, which was neither the way of the Twilights nor the Nights, her maternal and paternal families.  And the second was simply irrational.

But the first draft lacked certain things.  It lacked, for instance, the sort of things she might learn from conducting research into what Starlight Glimmer had done before becoming an insane warlock.  Super-powered magic villainy is not, after all, not the sort of career path onto which most Ponies are placed by their proud parents.  And it is also the sort of career which requires not only great intelligence, but also a very special sort of education.  The typical Unicorn can manipulate small objects right in front of her nose to perform arts and crafts; she has neither the might nor the knowledge to do something such as rip loose a Cutie Mark, and its associated Talent, from one's soul.

Twilight had already found out where Starlight Glimmer had studied magic, and that made it fairly obvious to her from just what source Starlight had developed the Spell of Sameness.  In fact, Twilight had suspected this almost immediately after Starlight had first cast the Sameness on her, though this knowledge did her little good after the fact, as she would have needed the very abilities which Starlight had just stripped from her, in order to cast any counterspell.  And, of course, Starlight had already done her worst; Twilight protecting herself now would have been closing the cage door after the monkeys had fled, to employ a Zebrican proverb.

She had amused herself during her captivity trying to work out a counterspell -- it was more difficult than it would have normally been, without her Talent for Magic, but Twilight's high intelligence was innate and her theoretical understanding of magic the result of long study, and the Sameness had only slightly reduced her intellect:  even crippled by Starlight's spell, Twilight was still far, far smarter than were most Ponies.  She didn't dare write down her notes, for fear that Starlight might have their cell searched -- but, even under the dark cloud of the Sameness, Twilight's memory was just short of eidetic.

Twilight had worked out the counterspell, and gotten some use out of it -- she had woven it into the defensive shield she had used to shield the rebelling Our Towners against the warlock's wrath.  Starlight might or might not realize it, but unless she struck by surprise or devised a sufficiently-different variant, she would never be able to employ the Sameness on Twilight, or anypony she was protecting, ever again.

But of course she grasped the basic principle of the Sameness.  It was a terrible perversion of a spell she had miscast -- and then properly cast -- a year and a half ago, in the autumn of 1503.

Starswirl the Bearded's unfinished final spell, the Spell of Destiny.  The spell that had given her the final knowledge she needed to Ascend and become an Alicorn.

That provided the starting point of Twilight's researches.  For there were only a few possible sources for that spell -- very few, if as Twilight believed, Starswirl had devised it by studying Celestia herself, and Celestia's link to her Cosmic Self.  Most mages did not have the deep and personal trust of an Alicorn.  So it was unlikely that any other mages -- no, not even Meadowbrook -- had developed anything like the Spell of Destiny.

She considered all sorts of complex magical formulae for tracing Starlight's path.  She had, after all, some of her personal possessions, though unfortunately Starlight had been fairly careful to burn her hair and hoof clippings, depriving Twilight of the classic tools to find a Pony who didn't want to be located.  By now, however, Starlight had probably renewed her scryshields, which would make retrocognition against her very difficult.

In the end, Twilight did something much simpler.  She turned and said:  "Spike, could you get me that complete set of the yearbooks from Princess Celestia's Academy for Gifted Unicorns?  Um ..." she considered Starlight Glimmer's apparent age "... starting with the ones from 1470 to 1480."

Her first guess had been spot-on.  It had taken only a brief perusal of the "Special Achievements" section for 1475 to find out who Princess Celestia had selected for a special protege that year.

Twilight sighed.

"What's wrong, Twilight?" asked Spike.

Twilight showed him the picture of a cute filly standing next to Princess Celestia.  The picture was a colored sketch, of course -- color photography hadn't come in yet when this yearbook had been printed.  The coloration was accurate, though.  The filly was pale purple with a long streaked purple and light blue mane, done up with cute little white bows.  Her Cutie Mark was next to the picture:  a purple star with blue and white streams, making the filly's identity obvious even if the picture had not been captioned.  Her deep blue eyes were happy and innocent as she learned that she was about to become Princess Celestia's special student.

Look at her, thought Twilight Sparkle.  She could almost be one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders.  How could she have become the monster I met?  What went wrong for her?

"Cute filly," Spike commented, examining the picture.  Then his eyes panned down to the accompanying text.  "Starlight Glimmer!" he gasped.  "But isn't that ..."

"Yes," she said.  "She didn't start out evil, Spike.  Nopony does."

"She was chosen just like you!" said Spike.  His eyes were huge.

"Exactly," said Twilight.  "Just like me.  And just like Sunset Shimmer ... and Dawn Starfall."

"Wait a moment," pointed out Spike.  "The names ..."

"Yes, Spike," agreed Twilight.  "All from the Light Clan.  Our clan -- though Dawn would have a bend sinister in her coat of arms, if she had one.  I'll bet you, Spike, that somewhere, filed in the Palace Archives, there's some old prophecy that a mare from our clan would be the one to free Princess Luna from Nightmare Moon.  I wonder who made it?  Starswirl himself?  Or somepony else?  It doesn't really matter, now does it?"

"You're saying ..."  Spike looked incredulous.

"Yep," replied Twilight.  "Celestia's been looking for a while for a Chosen One who could save her Sister."  She sighed.  "Not that I blame her, really.  But ... what do Sunset Shimmer, Dawn Starfall and Starlight Glimmer all have in common?"

"Um ... they all went crazy and evil?"  Spike scratched his chin.  "Though Sunset turned around -- she was pretty reasonable and nice the last time we met her.  And Dawn eventually realized that her actions were too extreme; her friends helped save her from going completely round the bend.  Do you think Starlight Glimmer will stop being evil, too?"

"I don't know, Spike," said Twilight.  "I guess there's hope for everypony.  But that's not the point."

"What is the point?" he asked.

"Spike, they all went crazy," pointed out Twilight.  "I went crazy at one point -- when I enchanted Miss Smarty Pants.  If you hadn't been there to warn Princess Celestia of what was happening, I might have gotten somepony seriously injured, even killed, fighting over that doll.  I was lucky as it was that Big Mac's a really good stallion -- it's hard to geas a Pony into doing something he's really opposed to doing, and Big Mac's no murderer, so he responded to my spell with only non-lethal force.

"And," she continued, "what I did was warlockry.  Mind control magic is extremely illegal, and with good reason.  Even if you don't kill somepony, you can very easily drive her mad that way.  I'm also lucky that Princess Celestia decided that I was acting under diminished capacity myself at the time, and let me off with no more than a stern warning.  The penalties for aggravated warlockry range all the way up to death, though nopony's actually been executed for the crime in many centuries.

"If I had killed somepony, I might have gone mad with guilt over it.  Possibly even gone Nightmare."  Twilight smiled warmly at her baby brother.  "I was very lucky you were there, Spike."

"No problem," replied Spike, looking slightly away from her in embarrassment.  Then, recovering his composure, he said proudly  "I am your Number One Assistant, after all!"

"That you are," Twilight smiled happily at him.  Then her face fell.

"Is something else wrong?" Spike asked.

"No," said Twilight glumly.  "The same thing that was wrong before.  I was excited when I realized this, I wanted to confirm it, but now that I have ..."  Her voice trailed off.

"Now that you have?" asked Spike.

"Spike," she said, looking at him with dismay.  "How do I ask Princess Celestia why she keeps driving her special students mad?"

Spike gasped at the thought.

To that question, he had no answer.

> Chapter 4: Her Sense of Beauty
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rarity had laid out her most urgent job -- a full wardrobe of summer wear for Honey Moon, one of the leaders of Canterlot high society, and a second cousin-in-law to Twilight Sparkle -- and set to work on it with even more than her usual demoniacal energy.  When Rarity worked really hard, she entered an altered mental state -- she thought of it as her "work-trance" -- in which nothing existed but the job, in its arrangement a puzzle to solve and in its execution a path to follow.

She knew what she wanted and had to do; her telekinesis translated this into action almost without the intervention of conscious thought.  Fabrics, scissors, needle and thread all moved in a synchronized symphony, flashing so rapidly that the clothes seemed to be forming from the empty air.  Her telekinesis was so precise, and she so adept in its use, that Rarity could handle up to six simultaneous operations, and perform them flawlessly.  This was why she could run the Carousel Boutique alone -- Rarity could do the work of half a dozen highly-skilled mares, all by herself.

Now, she took comfort in her competence.  The world of young mares and younger drakes, of desire and conscience, of self-esteem and social approval; that was one she full well knew how to navigate, but it was complex.  Compared to that, the world of fabrics and their assembly into clothing was soothingly simple, complicated as it might have seemed to somepony without her signal capabilities.

Deep in her work-trance, she did not at first notice the soft rapping at her door.  When she did, she knew whom it almost certainly was; no official, and only one of her friends, would knock so diffidently.

"Fluttershy?" she asked, reaching across the room with her aura and opening the door.

It was, in fact, the pink-and-yellow Pegasus, merely a bit damp under an umbrella most Pegasi would have scorned to carry in such a light rain.  But then, Fluttershy was decidedly not an average Pegasus.

"Darling, come in," Rarity urged her friend.  "Let's get you dry," she added, as she floated in a towel.  "I'll put some tea on for you."  With another flourish of telekinesis, Rarity reached into the kitchen, drew out two of the newfangled pre-measured tea bags she'd purchased on her last trip to Canterlot, positioned them in her teapot, filled the teapot with water, turned the gas on to a burner on her stove, lighted that burner with a match, and put the pot on the burner.  She did this all blind, feeling with her aura, and did it perfectly, without even paying the task more than cursory attention, save an exploratory touch of telekinesis to make sure that the burner was safely lit.

Most Unicorns couldn't have done any of this.  But then, Rarity was decidedly not an average Unicorn.

"Oh, thank you," Fluttershy said, as she stood just within the door, towelling herself off with deft motions of her mouth and wings.

She did not, Rarity noted with approval, shake herself dry, as many Pegasi would have done.  But then that would have been inconsiderate and unladylike, and above almost all, Fluttershy was considerate.  And a lady of the absolutely highest breeding.

Rarity conducted Fluttershy in to her parlor, where they made small talk.  In due time, Rarity telekinesed in the tea and some biscuits and jam -- she had nothing fresh in the house, as she'd been away for the last week; she'd really have to go shopping tomorrow.  Rarity deemed it rude to launch right into serious conversation, save in an emergency, without first providing refreshments.  And she had a very good idea why Fluttershy had come to check in on her, and Rarity wished to postpone that serious conversation until she had marshalled her own wits for that engagement.

Finally, though, Fluttershy had been made comfortable, and Rarity had no more excuses available to avoid facing the music.  Which, perhaps, might not be so bad.  The others had no doubt sent Fluttershy to check in on her after her own uncharacteristically-disgraceful conduct less than two hours earlier.

They had sent Fluttershy, of course, because she was one of Rarity's two best friends -- and they couldn't have sent her other one, given the nature of Rarity's own actions.  Rarity had actually been worried that he might show up on his own.  That would have been embarrassing.  Right now, she wasn't sure she could bear to face him.

Though -- the work had calmed her.  She was definitely less upset than she'd been before.  It occurred to her that it was distinctly possible that she hadn't ruined everything.  She wasn't sure about "probable," but definitely possible.

First, however, she had to face Fluttershy.  Which meant, of course, that first she had to draw her out.  For it was an invariable rule that, if Fluttershy wanted to interrogate oneself, one first had to persuade her to do so.  Fluttershy was quite expert at making one feel that doing anything but this was terribly cruel; and when one had finally persuaded her to ask her questions, one would find it almost impossible to lie to her, even by omission.  This was a form of manipulation almost as powerful, in its own way, as was Fluttershy's Stare.  

None of this, of course, had escaped the awareness of Rarity, who in her more direct way was an even more capable mistress of social manipulation.  Normally, she found Fluttershy's little social games rather enjoyable.

None of this meant that she could actually resist Fluttershy all that well.  Almost nopony could really resist Fluttershy, when she really wanted something.  It was a very good thing that Fluttershy's desires were generally humble and modest ones.  Had she been malign, or even just normally-ambitious, those sweet, innocent-seeming blue eyes might have conquered their owner her own Realm.

Besides, Rarity really needed to talk it over with somepony, and Fluttershy was one of her best friends.  Also, having spent time in that horrible little room with her, and being herself far from conventional in her affections, she was also one of the few Ponies who might understand.

"So, Fluttershy," Rarity asked, taking a sip of tea, "to what do I owe the pleasure of your renewed company this evening?

"Oh," said Fluttershy, "it's really nothing ... maybe I should just go ..."

"That would be quite rude of me," pointed out Rarity, "since you've gone to the trouble of traipsing through this chilly night to see me."  As well you know, on some level, or you would never have given me that out.  Rarity had known Fluttershy, increasingly well, for going on fifteen years now -- most of both of their lives.  She was fairly sure that, as the 10-year-old filly Rarity had first met, Fluttershy had not been aware that what she was doing was a form of subtle social manipulation.  Now, Fluttershy was almost 25, and Rarity was fairly sure that she did at least some of it with full conscious purpose.

Not that Rarity, of all Ponies, saw anything immoral in this.  She manipulated Ponies too -- the main difference being that her own machinations were generally far more direct and energetic.  Also, Rarity had been doing it on purpose since -- actually, she couldn't recall any time before she knew she was manipulating other Ponies.

"I guess ... well I suppose ... if you don't mind me asking ..."  Fluttershy wavered on the edge of posing the question that she had obviously meant to form ever since she had stepped out her door into the chill rainy night.

"I certainly don't mind you asking," Rarity reassured her.  "Indeed, I positively insist that you do."

"Well ... um ... it's just that we all noticed you acting very strangely when you got off the train.  You kind of, well, went into some sort of trance.  And then you hugged Spike ... and, well, then you ran away."  Fluttershy looked at Rarity expectantly.

"Yes," nodded Rarity.  "I did these things."  She wanted to talk to Fluttershy about what she was feeling, but a certain perverse pride made her insist on being directly asked first.  She supposed it was rather like the rules of a formal dance.  Rarity liked formal dances.

Fluttershy waited for more information, and when it did not follow asked "Are you all right, Rarity?"  Her big blue eyes gazed into Rarity's with obvious concern.

Direct, honest caring from a friend, thought Rarity.  My one weakness.  Well, that and ice cream.  And fine clothes.  And beautiful gemstones.  Which Spike's dear precious scales so resemble .. no, I mustn't think those thoughts.  All right, one of my many weaknesses.  I'm a shameless hedonist.

Rarity sighed.

"All right?" she asked.  "Well, I suppose that by many definitions I am all right.  I am young, healthy, in the prime of my life; I am intelligent, well-educated, attractive, and successful in my chosen career.  I am widely known and respected, and I have some very true friends, yourself being not the least among them."  She smiled warmly at Fluttershy at that last part, and Fluttershy returned that smile, blushing slightly at the compliment.

"These are not things that all Ponies can honestly say about themselves," Rarity continued.  "So, looked at one way, I am more than merely 'all right.'  I am, in point of fact, quite fabulous."  As she said this her muzzle rose, her ears perked up, and she broke into a dazzling smile.  For just a moment, she really did once again feel fabulous.

But for just a moment.  Then she remembered that terrible little room, that insidious voice, the way the world had been dim and dreary in there; and now shined too brightly, as if she were lost in a fever dream -- and she remembered exactly why she no longer felt fabulous at all, and the smile vanished from her face.

"And yet I am not fabulous," said Rarity, ears once again drooping.  "I am actually very ordinary.  I have been fortunate in many things, and the self I show the world, even to my dearest friends, is in a sense a lie and an illusion.  I am selfish and vainglorious and lecherous.  I am weak, not strong -- and I fear that I may be broken."

"Rarity ..." said Fluttershy softly, then paused, expressing with her eyes the caring  for which she clearly could not find the words.

"Yes," stated Rarity,  "I've attuned with Generosity.  I am generous -- perhaps my only real virtue.  but having one virtue -- and some talent, and power -- does not make me good.  Nor, I fear, all that sane."  She looked down at the floor, formulating her thoughts very carefully.  "A good Pony does not attempt to molest an innocent colt.  A sane Pony does not do this to the younger brother of her dear friend, right in front of that dear friend.  Whom, parenthetically, I would now expect despises me almost as much as I now despise myself."  She looked back up and met Fluttershy's gaze.  "Do you now despise me as well?  I would not blame you for it."  She tried to say this last part calmly, but she could hear her own voice quavering, and feel a moistness in her eyes.

"Rarity ..." repeated Fluttershy, her own eyes glistening, but her gaze now very direct.  "How could you ..."

Rarity cringed.

"How could you imagine," Fluttershy continued, "that I would possibly despise you?"  She reached out and stroked Rarity's cheek with one hoof.  "Rarity," she said, "you are one of the best friends I have ever known, and the only other Pony who really understands me.  You ... when I was at my lowest, you raised me back up again, helped me see that I was good, that I wasn't unlovable.  You have encouraged me, given me the confidence to face the world.  You have always been there for me.  Well, I'm there for you, too."

Rarity's eyes misted over, and she practically fell into Fluttershy's embrace.  "Oh, Fluttershy," she sobbed.  "Do you understand?  You were there with me -- you were all there with me -- but do you understand how it felt for me?  I know you suffered too -- I know I'm being dreadfully selfish, but I need to tell someone!"

Fluttershy held her, wrapping her long forelegs around Rarity's withers and forward barrel, stroking her gently, sheltering her friend.  "You can tell me," said Fluttershy.  "I'll understand."

"It was so gray," said Rarity, turning her tear-streaked face toward her friend.  "So bleak."  She wept a bit longer, then said "I suppose I'm not explaining myself very well.  Let me try again."  She gathered her wits, partly regained her composure.

"All my life," she said, "I've had a certain sense of beauty -- of pattern -- of harmony, I suppose.  It may be arrogant, but I think I can see the Harmony in everything, see how it all fits together to make a greater Harmony.  Do you see what I'm saying?"

"I think I do," replied Fluttershy.

"I can look at a thing of beauty," continued Rarity, "and be almost mesmerized by it, drinking in and tracing and learning the patterns that make it beautiful, until I know it so well that I've put it into a sort of mental storehouse of patterns that I can recall and look at whenever I will, view it and take it apart and put it back together with other patterns, to make everything beautiful, make it all better."  She looked at Fluttershy.  "I believe I've explained some of this to you before."

"You have," replied Fluttershy, nodding encouragingly.  "But I don't mind if you do again."

"I'm accustomed to beauty," Rarity said.  "I see it everywhere.  If what I'm looking at isn't beautiful, I can see how it could be made beautiful, and I want to make it beautiful.  Clothing, buildings, Ponies -- did you know that there are no truly ugly Ponies?  Because, even if they're really fat or skinny or even sick, there's something beautiful inside them, and I can see how to present them to bring that beauty out.  That's what I do.  That's what I'm meant to do.  Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Fluttershy softly.  "I do understand."

"Only," Rarity said sadly, "there have been a few times in my life when I've lost it.  My ability to see beauty.  Once, when I was around ten, I was very sick -- a bad flu -- and at first I was a bit delirious.  I could see patterns everywhere, but they made no sense.  That was frightening enough, but then my fever got really high, and my aesthetic sense simply stopped working -- I still have no notion why.  I would doubtless have been very depressed, if I hadn't been near-dead -- I fell faint, and when I woke up about a day later, my fever was down, and the world was normal again -- by which, I mean beautiful.

"I remember when you got sick," Fluttershy said.  "I didn't know you nearly died."

"I didn't really know either, at the time," Rarity admitted, laughing at herself.  "I was only ten -- I simply took for granted that one fell ill, and recovered.  It wasn't until years later that my mother let slip that I had almost perished."

"I'm very glad you didn't," said Fluttershy.

"Likewise," agreed Rarity, and smiled.  "The next time I lost my aesthetic sense, it was when I was fourteen.  In Fillydelphia."  The smile vanished from her face.  "I -- my little Diamond -- you know what happened ..."

"Yes," said Fluttershy.  "You don't need to go into it."

"What I never told you," Rarity said, "was that after that happened, there was a period of days during which I could see no beauty in the world.  None whatsoever.  Everything was ugly and base, and I felt as ugly and base myself.  That's why I wanted to ... not experience anything any more.  Because I knew my world would never again be beautiful, or good."

"But you were wrong," Fluttershy pointed out with unusual insistence.  "You had your whole life ahead of you.  A life full of beauty and all sorts of goodness."

"True," Rarity agreed.  "Though at the time, the reason I chose to live was more due to the awareness that if I destroyed myself, Rush Rocks would win."  Her eyes narrowed.  "And I was not about to permit a cad such as him any sort of victory.

"I regained my sense of beauty when I decided to live," Rarity continued, "though it was muted for awhile.  It was when I returned to Ponyville on summer vacation -- when I told my parents what had happened, and found to my happy surprise that they neither despised me for my folly nor had lost faith in my ability and general worth -- that the world once again became really beautiful, as it had been before.

"I know, of course, why this happened to me.  I am, perhaps, a somewhat moody Pony.  Normally, I am cheerful and creative.  That is the Rarity most Ponies get to know, and want to know.  But there are times when I am in -- well, an extremely dark sort of mood.  I despair, and when I despair, I cannot see the beauty in the world as clearly as I otherwise might.

"Despair is a terrible emotion for me.  When I despair, everything is muted and gray; I feel worthless; life seems pointless.  It might drive me mad, if not for two things:  I know from experience that it will pass; and I know I am not alone."  Rarity looked affectionately at Fluttershy.  "I know that I have friends.  That I am loved."

"I'm glad I can help," Fluttershy said softly.

"You do help, darling.  You're one of my two best friends in all the world; I am really glad that you are here."

Then Rarity's smile faded, as she realized that she must explain her worst fear to Fluttershy.
> Chapter 5: It's a Dirty Job
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh, this so very much not cool," grumbled Rainbow Dash.

The storage barn was half-full of big bags of fertilizer, tanks of water, and barrels of something which smelled worse than the fertilizer.  There was a big vat of the sort that one might use to tread grapes, standing on a framework, with an oversized faucet and valve attached to the botom part of the side.  Next to it were a wagon and lots of empty tarpaulin bags.

"Nah, it's pretty cool in here," Applejack said.  "Fact is, the temperature's just right.  Any cooler and the blend wouldn't flow too well; any warmer and we'd be right uncomfortable with what we're about to do."

"You can't be serious," said Rainbow Dash.

"Mixing up the feed for mah apple trees is durn serious," Applejack said.  "If'n we don't do it jest right, the trees won't get fed right, and if the trees don't get fed right, the apples don't grow tastin' right, and the trees themselves could wither and die."  Her voice quavered slightly at the prospect of the death of apple trees.  "Every spring, we Apples have to mix up the nutrients so as that the apple blooms bloom like'n they should, and the apples grow all healthy and dee-licious."

"But ... can't you just get the right kind of fertilizers from the store?" asked Rainbow Dash, flitting over to look at the bags of fertilizer.  "These look like regular fertilizers -- they say 'Barnyard Bargains' on them."

"What you're lookin' at is an integrated supply chain," said Applejack proudly.  "We get a discount on supplies from Filthy Rich, on account of we're one of his best suppliers for apples.  That particular fertilizer was made from guano, imported overseas from South Amareica, and manufactured in Manehattan, then brought to Ponyville by freight train.  Cain't get much more regular than that."

"Then what are we supposed to be doing?" asked Rainbow Dash.  There was a tone of incipent panic in her voice, implying that she wasn't about to relish the answer.

"Oh, that's simple," explained Applejack.  "Store-bought fertilizer's good enough for most farmers, but we Apples ain't most farmers.  We make a special mix of extra nutrients.  Then we put some water in the vat, add the fertilizer and the extra ingredients, and mix it all up into a slurry ..."

Pinkie Pie looked around the barn with interest:  her big blue eyes open wide and a large smile spreading across her face.  She might have been contemplating the industrial process involved, or simply its potential for comedy.  She leaned over a half-open bag of fertilizer.  Suddenly her mouth opened, her impossibly-long tongue emerged, and she licked the fertilizer.

"Pinkie!" scolded Applejack.  "That's for the apple trees to eat, not you!"

Pinkie made tasting motions.  "Hmm ..." she said.  "Nitrogen ... potassium ... and phosphorous, mostly.   As ionic oxides.  Chemical-licious!"

"Yup," said Applejack, deadpan.  "That's yer basic fertilizer.  Now when you get to the trace compounds that mah apple trees need to blossom perfect-like, that's where we go to the special mix."

"Whoa, whoa, time out," said Rainbow Dash, making a "T" in the air with her forelegs.  "Since when did you and Pinkie become, like, egghead chemists?"

"Ah'm no chemist," said Applejack.  "But Ah know fertilizers.  Ah have to know them, on account of Ah'm a farmer.  If'n you don't know about fertilizers and soil chemistry, then you ain't likely to grow good harvests.  It's in all the almanacs, and the farm magazines.  An' Pinkie here was a rock farmer.  That's geology ... how do you say it? ... geochemistry ... combined with understandin' the ley lines of the Earth-currents."

"Yep!"  Pinkie nodded enthusiastically.  "You gotta know about rocks!"

"And licking the fertilizer?  Is that more secret Earth Pony lore?" asked Rainbow Dash.

Applejack's mouth quirked imperceptibly.  "Nah," she said.  "As far as Ah know, that's just Pinkie being Pinkie."

"Maud bites the rocks!" Pinkie interjected, grinning happily.

"So what's the point of this whole setup?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Well, when we've mixed the slurry and stirred it up real nice and good, then we drain it off into these water-proof bags, close them up and stack them on the wagon.  That gets a load ready for spreading on the trees.  Which Ah'm gonna do tomorrow, as that's work you want to do by daylight."

"Makes sense," said Rainbow Dash.  She sniffed.  "Why does it smell so bad, though?"

"Oh, that's the special ingredients," Applejack explained.  "Ah cain't tell you all that's in them -- it's an Apple family secret, an you ain't Apples --"

"I am!" cried Pinkie happily, boucing up and down next to Applejack, and smiling winningly at her.

Applejack sighed.

"All right, Pinkie's sort of an Apple, bein' that she may be mah fifth cousin ..."

"Twice removed!" giggled Pinkie.

"But you ain't," said Applejack, looking at Rainbow Dash.

"Huh," commented Rainbow Dash, crossing her forelegs, obviously miffed.

"But Ah can tell you what one big part of it is," said Applejack.

"And that is?" asked Rainbow Dash.

"Manure," replied Applejack, smugly.

"Manure," repeated Rainbow Dash, flatly, wrinkling her nose.

"Yup," said Applejack.  "But not just any manure.  We go out into the Everfree Forest and collect the scat of all sorts o'beasts, which feed off strange foods and absorb magic from them.  But they cain't digest all the magic, you see, and some they don't need no more.  So what they cain't digest and don't need, it ..."

"I think I get the idea," said Rainbow Dash.

"It's a beautiful and natural process," said Applejack, meaning it fervently.  Suddenly she caught a motion in her peripheral vision.  "Pinkie, no!  Don't do that!"

There was a slurping sound.

"Oh, gross," said Rainbow Dash.

Pinkie licked her lips.  "I think I know what the special ingredient is made out of!" she declared brightly.

"Right now I am so glad my name isn't Cheese Sandwich," Rainbow Dash said.

"You an' me both, partner," replied Applejack in an aside to her.

"Meh, I'm not too proud to do a geek gag," said Pinkie, looking right at you readers.

"Who are you talking to?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Oh, nobody," said Pinkie Pie.  "Just nobody."

"If you're finished eating mah special ingredient, maybe we can get to work?" Applejack suggested.

And so they did.


***


A couple of smelly hours later, the tarpaulin bags were all full, as was the wagon.  There was also a good amount of fertilizer, special ingredient and mixture spattered all over the storage barn, the equipment, the wagon and the three mares who had been working with it.

"Wow, this sure is a messy job!" commented Pinkie Pie, surveying the damage.

"Yeah, I have to say that you Apples sure aren't afraid to get yourselves dirty doing honest and necessary work," commented Rainbow Dash.  "Is it always like this?"

"Ah cain't rightly say that it is," said Applejack.  "See, most times we don't whiz around the inside of a barn carryin' open buckets of fertilizer," she explained, looking pointedly at Rainbow Dash.

"Eh, I was just trying to do it faster," the blue Pegasus explained.

"Hee hee," said Pinkie Pie, laughing at Rainbow Dash.  "She got you good!"

"Also, cousin Pinkie," added Applejack, "most times we don't have 'fertilizer fights.'  That's just asking for trouble.  Do you Pies throw rocks around on your farm?"

"Oh no," said Pinkie.  "My daddy told me that it wasn't funny at all.  And he looked so sad about it with that big bump on his noggin that I just had to agree with him!"

"Ah am coming to deeply sympathize with your family," said Applejack.  She looked around the barn.  "Well, we did the worst part."

"Now we relax?" asked Rainbow Dash.

"No -- now we do clean-up," announced Applejack.

Rainbow Dash looked around at the dirt-spattered barn and groaned.


***


An hour later, the barn was clean, and so were the three mares, courtesy of an impromptu shower under one of the water tanks.  Applejack produced towels to dry off, which was welcome in the cold April night, and they trooped into the Apple farmhouse kitchen.  There, Applejack set coffee to brewing, and made them all sandwiches.

"Don't that feel good!" announced Applejack as she served the coffee and sandwiches.  She stretched under her towel, flexing what looked like each and every one of the muscles along her powerful frame.

"Well, they're good sandwiches," allowed Rainbow Dash, munching on one of them, and trying not to make too obvious her fascination with Applejack's motions.

"No, silly, she means doing honest and necessary farm labor, and doing it right," explained Pinkie Pie, tucking into another sandwich.

"You got it," said Applejack.  "After we eat, we can go to bed, content with having accomplished something."

Pinkie nodded vigorously.  "It's just like making the cupcakes," she said.  "Well, only we don't make the cupcakes out of your special ingredient, which is good because cupcakes made from your special ingredient wouldn't taste too good, and I know this because I tasted it and apple trees might like it but it would be all yucky for cupcakes for Ponies!"

"Eww," said Rainbow Dash.  "Not while we're eating."

"Which proves my point!" said Pinkie.

Applejack laughed, overcome by a sudden warmth toward both of them.  "Ah'm lucky to have friends like you," she said, smiling.

"You're a super-duper friend!" replied Pinkie, grinning widely.

"Yeah, you're pretty cool," added Rainbow Dash, trying and failing to sound casual about it.

"Ah'm just glad we're over all that with Starlight Glimmer," Applejack said.  "Feels good to be back in mah own home again, feelin' like mah own self again, 'stead of being trapped in that room an' not even able to be mahself."  She hugged herself with her forelegs, as if she felt a sudden chill.  "Brrr!"

The other two mares nodded, their smiles fading as they remembered.

"I kept finding things funny," said Pinkie Pie, "and then I couldn't laugh at them.  It was like my sense of humor was being squelched under the wettest wet blanket I could imagine.  It made me sad."

"I wanted to break out and kick some flank," said Rainbow Dash.  "But I couldn't get up the energy.  And then after we did get out, when we were chasing her?  I was so slow, could barely fly!"  There was a brief look of fear in her eyes, which was as suddenly veiled.  "It was lame," she said.  "Really lame."

"Ah couldn't break down the door," said Applejack.  "Ah gave it mah best double-buck and hardly rattled it on the hinges.  And Ah felt like Ah had no spirit to keep on trying.  Like Ah wasn't me any more."

"It really sucked," agreed Pinkie Pie, leaning up against Applejack's side.

"After a while, Ah just stopped struggling against it," said Applejack.  "Wasn't doing me no good, and Ah figgered Ah should conserve what was left of mah strength for when Ah got a chance.  Ah figgered Ah'd get a chance, if'n Ah just waited.  There's always a chance, right?"

Rainbow Dash nodded.  "You just gotta be ready for it," she agreed.

"I was nervous when we first went in," Pinkie Pie said unexpectedly.  "Really nervous, cause I knew something really bad was going to happen to us in there.  I wasn't sure just what, cause my Pinkie Sense didn't tell me, but I knew we were all going to survive and not get hurt too bad so I didn't try to twist anything, cause I was afraid that if I twisted the wrong thing, I'd make it worse.  See?"  She looked at her friends, and was meant by total incomprehension from Rainbow Dash, partial comprehension from Applejack.

"Ah think Ah understand," said Applejack.  "Ah hope you're not blaming yourself for not warnin' us more."

Pinkie looked stricken and screwed her face up.  "Maybe kinda sorta," she admitted, moisture glistening in her eyes.

Applejack put a foreleg around Pinkie's barrel and gathered her in to her side.  "You did warn us, Pinkie.  Remember?  You said the smiles were wrong."

"I did!" Tears began to flow down her face.  "I did!"

"Ah understood what you were telling us," Applejack said.  "When the Equal Ponies said things -- 'bout how happy they all were -- Ah could tell they was lying.  Not lying direct, but saying what they wanted to believe, if'n you get mah meaning?  Ah knew there was something dreadful wrong in that town, but Ah just figgered that we could handle it between all our abilities."  She frowned.  "Ah was wrong.  Only thing is, Ah didn't realize just how wrong until it was too late."

"I shoulda said more," Pinkie sobbed, burrowing into Applejack's side.  "I think that I really got us hurt."

"Hush now, sugarcube," Applejack said, holding her and stroking her mane.  "You did the best that you could.  And you was right.  We didn't get hurt that bad -- Twah figured out how to get us out of there, like'n she always does, and Fluttershy did her part, and in the end Twah beat that warlock in a face-to-face magic duel, and we came out of it all right.  No need to fret."

"I didn't know what was going on but I knew they were creepy because they didn't even care about winning!  How lame is that?" Rainbow Dash commented.

"Pretty lame," Applejack agreed, smiling at Rainbow Dash.

Pinkie Pie poked her head out of Applejack's mane and wiped her tears away with a single motion of her hoof.  "Yeah," she said, smiling shakily.  "Lame."

"I mean, if you're gonna have a contest," Rainbow Dash continued, "of course you care about who wins.  It's the whole --"  Suddenly, her features shifted into a look of almost-comical dismay.  "The contest!"

"Eh -- ?" asked Applejack, before she realized what she had also forgotten.  "Our chores!  We was supposed to be having a contest on who was doing them faster!"  She looked at Pinkie Pie.  "Were you keeping track ...?"

"Um ..." Pinkie looked embarrassed.  "I forgot?"

Rainbow Dash groaned.  "Pinkie!"

Applejack made a strange convulsive sound.  Then she started snickering.  Then giggling.  Then laughing, loud and unrestrained.

Pinkie joined in, her laughter almost like that of a little filly, but with the throatiness of a mare full-grown.  She collapsed against Applejack's side, laughing uncontrollably.

Rainbow Dash glared at both of them for a moment.  Then she found it impossible to maintain her expression of outraged dignity.  She joined in the laughter, guffawing and banging her hoof on the table.

"Hey!" came the clear, young but very annoyed voice of Apple Bloom from upstairs.  "Some Ponies are trying to get to sleep up here!"

They only laughed louder.

After a while the laughter died down.  The three friends smiled at one another, glad to be alive and sane and whole, and glad to be together.

"Well," said Applejack, "Ah'm going to bed.  Ah already made up the guest room for you two jokers.  Got a nice big bed."

"She snores," Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash said simultaneously.

They climbed the stairs and went to sleep, putting the nightmares of the past behind them, and dreamed good dreams.


> Chapter 6: Diamonds and Butterflies
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"My worst fear," Rarity said, "is that one day I will sink into despair and never recover, that I shall lose the beauty of the world for ever and ever.  I don't much fear death, but I do fear unending ugliness, within which I would drift, gradually becoming base and vile, unable to even perceive how I might once again be fabulous, let alone assist anypony else in expressing their inner beauty.

"In the last half-year," Rarity continued, "my nightmare twice seemed about to come true.  When Tirek drained our magic, my aesthetic sense was muted.  I still had some of my Talent, but it was weakened -- Twilight later told me because my natural magic was no longer there to power it.  It was as it was before I got my Cutie Mark, save that I was exhausted, and no longer had the natural exuberance of a little filly.  It was -- just barely -- tolerable, though I was frightened that I might never recover my former abilities."

She looked directly at Fluttershy, her eyes sad.

"Yes.  I was terribly selfish.  You must all have been feeling at least as bad as I -- you, in particular, were devastated by Discord's betrayal of your friendship, and the love he had so recently declared for you -- but in my craven misery, I ...  All Equestria was in danger, yet all I cared about was my own fate.  All I could do was cling to Spike, and try not to disgrace myself by openly weeping.  Spike noticed -- but he didn't let anypony else know.  As always, I could trust my dear Spike to keep my secrets."  She smiled briefly, then winced, as she considered that she had perhaps ruined that friendship.

"What Starlight Glimmer did," Rarity said, "was worse.  Far worse.  I don't pretend to fully understand how it was even possible -- my own knowledge of Unicorn magic is mostly concerned with telekinesis -- I think Twilight was working it out in those papers she was writing on the train ride back.  It felt a little like what Twilight did to us by accident, right before she Ascended -- but Twilight's spell only mixed up our Cutie Marks, confused us as to our true Talents.  Starlight's spell -- to me it felt as if part of my soul had been torn from me.

"Was it like that for you?" Rarity asked.

Fluttershy screwed up her muzzle in concentration.  "Well," she said, "I felt really drained.  As if I'd been flying all day; completely exhausted my wings.  I think that taking our Cutie Marks also took most of our magic, of all sorts -- I couldn't use any of my other special abilities -- I could just barely sense emotions, and I don't think I could have Stared anypony to save my life.

"I knew that Starlight had weakened all of us," Fluttershy continued, "but I didn't understand what she'd done until I tried to talk to that bird -- and I couldn't.  I realized that she hadn't just drained my magic and taken my Cutie Mark -- she'd taken my Talent as well."

"How did that make you feel?" Rarity asked.  It was obvious to her that Fluttershy, like herself, had wanted to talk about this for a while.  It had been one topic of conversation they had studiously avoided on the ride back.

"At first, sad," said Fluttershy.  "Talking with animals is one of the things that gives me the most joy in life.  My animals are my friends.  I love them, and they love me in return. They'd probably still like me, even if I couldn't talk with them, but I'd never know again for certain what they wanted to communicate.  I knew that if I couldn't get my Cutie Mark back, I'd never be able to talk with my friends again!"

Her jaw firmed.  "And then, I got mad."  Her brows lowered.  "We never asked to join Our Town -- we had just traveled there to see if they needed any help.  We never told Starlight Glimmer that it was okay to take our Cutie Marks.  She just decided everything for us, and she took something very special from me without even knowing what it was, because she'd decided to reduce me to her idea of what a Pony should be.  And that I had to accept it, just because her magic was stronger and I couldn't stop her.

"She had a whole complex philosophy, I found out later -- more than just what was on those records she was playing, she talked to me about it in detail when I was over at her house -- but she was really just being a bully.  I hate bullies," Fluttershy said.  "It was at that moment, when I realized of what she'd robbed me, that I decided that I owed her no honesty -- that it was all right to betray her."  Fluttershy turned troubled eyes on her friend.  "Did I make the right choice?"

"Fluttershy," Rarity said firmly.  "Starlight Glimmer ambushed and imprisoned us.  She did not use us honestly, and we were not bound in honor to treat her any better."

"I know," said Fluttershy, regretfully.  "But I want to be nice ..."

"Nice, yes," said Rarity, "and you are once of the nicest Ponies I have ever known.  But remember the rest of what you explained to me about the way to be nice and still win the game -- 'and tit for tat.'"  At Fluttershy's startled expression, Rarity laughed.  "Oh, I have paid attention to your discusssions of Game Theory.  And what happened to Starlight Glimmer was a textbook case why one should not enter a game planning to play nasty.  If she hadn't attacked us, she would very likely today be still ruling her horrid little town."

Fluttershy thought about it.  "I guess you're right," she said, "in terms of Game Theory.  Though at the time, I was just angry.  And worried about what might happen."

"You mean if we didn't get our Cutie Marks back?"  Rarity asked.

"That, too," Fluttershy admitted.  "But mostly what would have happened to Starlight Glimmer and her followers."

"Happened?" asked Rarity.  "I'm sorry ... I'm not sure what you mean ..."

"When I didn't show up for my weekly tea ..." Fluttershy said.

"Eh?" asked Rarity.

"... with Discord," Fluttershy finished.

"Oh," said Rarity.  Then "Oh!" as the full implications hit her.

"Yes," said Fluttershy.  "Discord and I have been getting, well, closer," she explained, "and I fear he would have been quite cross with the Ponies of Our Town.  He might have ... over-reacted."

Rarity shuddered at the thought of Discord, over-reacting.  "It's probably for the best that her own Ponies overthrew her, then," Rarity commented.  "So, how do you feel about it now that it's over?"

"Glad that it's over," Fluttershy said.  "It was unpleasant.  And scary."

"Scary?" asked Rarity.  "For me that's too mild a description.  It was my worst nightmares, come true.  Rather, to be more precise, it was the exact situation that my worst Nightmare came into being in a misguided attempt to avoid.

"No beauty," Rarity explained, her voice flat and toneless.  "Nothing fabulous, not ever again.  No achievements -- no point even trying.  No grand passions, no brilliant match.  If I was lucky, a very ordinary marriage, perhaps blessed by foals ..."

"Actually," Fluttershy interjected, "Starlight Glimmer was undecided between arranged marriages and temporarily-assigned breeding partners in her plans for a Society of Sameness."

Rarity stared at her in surprise.

"You see," Fluttershy explained, "Starlight felt that some of the most painful and emotionally-destructive competitions were those between mares for husbands.  So she wanted to do away with marriage entirely, but she ran into the problem that -- with no marriages -- there might not be a next generation.

"At first, she tried to have everypony mate at random, but most of the mares and even some of the stallions balked at this.  Then she thought about arranging marriages, but if she did that without asking the Ponies she wanted to have marry each other, they were upset; if she asked them, then they would just be competing for husbands and wives again.  And, under the sameness, most of them really didn't want to mate all that much anyway.  So she never really solved the problem."

Rarity's mouth gaped slightly open in shock.  "But -- all those foals --"

"Some of them were born before their mothers joined Our Town," replied Fluttershy.  "Others -- most of the mares didn't want to mate at random, but some were just fine with it, or didn't mind enough to stand up to Starlight on the issue.  And of course they were mating on their cycles -- the point was to get pregnant."

"Ugh," said Rarity.  "Also, ugh.  Those poor mares -- those poor foals.  How could they bear living under such a custom?"

Fluttershy nodded.  "It horrified me, too."  She looked directly at Rarity.  "I know what it's like to grow up fatherless.  And just because I'm in love with more than one being doesn't mean that I'm willing to ... with just anyone."

"Oh," Rarity replied, remembering that the mare to whom she was speaking was a bastard, and had known it since she was old enough to grasp the very concept of illegitimacy.  "Oh, Fluttershy.  I didn't mean --"

"I know," said Fluttershy.  "I wasn't offended.  And it's different for those foals than it was for me.  They haven't been born to a proud and ancient family, rejected for their birth.  There's a whole generation of them in Our Town.  They'll be each others' friends."

"Did their parents love one another?" Rarity wondered.  "Could Ponies love each other under such a cold system?"

"Mostly, they were apathetic, and afraid," Fluttershy said.  "But there was some love in Our Town.  Party Favor, Sugar Belle and Night Glider were all very good friends -- and I think that Party Favor and Sugar Belle felt even more for one another.  And Double Diamond ..."  Fluttershy's face grew sad.  "... I wish he hadn't been the one who needed to lead the rebellion."

"Why?" asked Rarity.

"Because he and Starlight Glimmer loved one another," Fluttershy explained.

Rarity's eyes widened.  "But I thought she disapproved of voluntary ..."

"She did," Fluttershy continued.  "It didn't change how they felt.  Though they didn't seem very happy -- I think because she had to keep her secret from him, and follow her own philosophy."  Her ears drooped.  "I don't think they love each other very much now."

Rarity considered the point.  "No," she said, "I don't suppose they would."  She sighed.  "It's sad to think of love shattered like that.  But it's very hard for me to feel much sympathy for Starlight Glimmer, all things considered."

"Because she hurt us?"  Fluttershy's tone was unusually challenging.

"I suppose," said Rarity, lowering her head and pursing up her lips.  "Because she hurt me.  Because she caused me to hurt ..." she winced, closed her eyes.

"Hurt whom?"

Rarity opened her eyes, looked up and away.  "Do you know what I think the most beautiful thing in all the world?" she asked Fluttershy.

Fluttershy shook her head.

"More of a 'who,' really," said Rarity.

Fluttershy's eyes widened.

"He's beautiful, on the outside and within.  Have you ever noticed how the sunlight iridesces off his scales?  It's as if he's wearing a suit of gemstones, but infinitely finer and more subtly-colored than the most valuable gems I've ever seen.  And I've seen a lot of gems in my life," Rarity added.  "His eyes are so alert and alive.  The way he turns his head in that sudden way -- almost like a bird's, but in his gaze there's such intelligence!  He's small, but have you ever held him?  He's rock-hard with muscles, he's stronger than most full-grown stallions, and someday he'll be truly mighty ."

Fluttershy nodded.

"If it were just how he looked, I could just, oh I don't know, put him on a pedestal and have him decorate the boutique," Rarity laughed at the thought.  "But he's also so good.  He's like a Canterlot prince in Dragon form, or rather like what I thought Canterlot princes were like before I actually met one.  He's brave, and honorable, kind and uncomplaining.  And his mind -- Fluttershy, he's brilliant!  He understands everything you tell him, and you don't need to tell him more than once.  He's picked up half my business skills just by hanging around and helping me with odd jobs.  He doesn't even realize how intelligent he is, because he spends most of his time in Twilight's shadow, and she's one of a kind.  He's incredible ..."  Her eyes shone with admiration at the thought of him.

"You really do love Spike," Fluttershy said.

"Of course I love him!" said Rarity.  "Who wouldn't?"

"Most mares couldn't see past his species ..."

"Pshaw!" said Rarity, waving a hoof dismissively at such shallow Ponies.  "Well, at first ... yes, I thought it was impossible.  But then I did some ... ahem, research ..."  She didn't want to explain the exact nature, or the reasons, for this research, but she greatly feared that Fluttershy, with her wide-ranging knowledge of biology, already had an embarrassingly-accurate estimation of her motives.  "Did you know that there's even a name for the children of a Dragon and a Pony?  They're called ki-rin.  They're all the rage in East Neighsia ..."

Fluttershy nodded.  "And his age?" she asked.

"Hmm, yes, well there's the real problem," replied Rarity.  "I could never make my mind up about that.  I know he was hatched almost fifteen years ago, so if he were a Pony he'd be full-adolescent by now, almost a stallion.  He's obviously not a 'baby' as Twilight keeps calling him, he's too intelligent and, um, emotionally-advanced."  She did not want to go into details about Spike's emotional advancement, or on what precise basis she made this judgement -- she felt her cheeks begin to burn as she even considered the issue.  "I think that he's in some sort of late childhood or early adolescence, but he doesn't seem to be growing as fast as he should.  I'm not sure why."

"Not a lot is known about the details of the Dragon life cycle," Fluttershy said.  "They don't like to talk about it.  The Dragons, I mean.  I think they don't want to reveal potential vulnerabilities."

"So I'm not sure how to treat him," Rarity said.  "If he really were a baby, I'd never ... I mean ... it would be impossible.  Even if he were a normal Pony colt of Sweetie's age.  But he's not -- how can I treat him as if he were just a colt when he sometimes acts so mature?  But I know he's not a normal Dragon adolescent, let alone adult -- I've seen adult Dragons, they're immense.  Even the adolescents, like Luna's friend Fischfootur, are bigger than Big Mac."  She sighed.  "I don't really know what Spike is.  But I know that, whatever he is, I love him."

"Have you told him?" asked Fluttershy.

"He has to know," said Rarity.  "Isn't it obvious, from the way I treat him?  He's my best friend -- along with you, of course.  My assistant, my confidante.  There's certainly no male creature I trust more than Spike.  I -- I've become so used to having him at my side.  I don't know what I'd do if he didn't want to be with me any more."  Her ears drooped.  "And of course I've made a huge mess of things."

"How have you done that?"

"When I came back to Ponyville, I was incredibly happy to be back, to see everything again, and see its beauty.  When I saw Spike, I was overwhelmed by his beauty.  I just wanted to hold him and kiss him ... and I behaved like a mad lovestruck fool, right directly to him and in front of everypony else.  I ... you know, I nearly kissed him right on the lips."

Fluttershy looked at Rarity oddly.  "Um, that's hardly terrible."

"I've never done that before, not with him," Rarity said.  "I've been avoiding it, because when I start doing that I'm admitting to him, to myself, and to everypony that I'm in love with him.  Such a first kiss has to be romantic and special.  Not something one does on impulse in a spring drizzle in front of everypony."

"I wasn't aware that it was that complex," replied Fluttershy.

"I wasn't ready for that," Rarity said.  "I'm -- he's still too young.  He's not yet fifteen, and he looks younger than his true age.  I'd be a wicked old temptress, seducing an innocent little colt.  And he is innocent, in so many ways -- far more than I was at fifteen.  He's almost as innocent as Sweetie Belle."  She sighed.  "I was going to wait at least another year.  Maybe two.  I didn't expect what would happen when I lost my aesthetic sense -- and then got it back."

"Maybe it's better this way," Fluttershy pointed out.  "If you waited too long, he might have fallen in love with somepony else."

"Spike?" asked Rarity.  "Well yes, of course he could -- that's one of the reasons I've feared it might never work.  The other reason, of course, being that I might fall for somepony else."  She smiled wryly at Fluttershy's look of surprise.  "Oh, darling, I know my own flaws.  Believe me, I know my own flaws."  She frowned.  "I wonder who he might fall for?"

Fluttershy remained silent.  Rarity could tell from the conversational patterns that Fluttershy had a very good idea of whom Spike might fall for, and thinking about it, Rarity had the same idea.  Rather than risk a sororial rupture over an event that had not in fact yet happened, she decided not to make it real to herself by either dwelling on the thought or asking Fluttershy to speak it aloud.

"Never mind about that," said Rarity.  "It doesn't matter now.  The fact is that I've blown it."

"How have you blown it?" asked Fluttershy.

"Fluttershy, did you see the look on Spike's face when I was about to kiss him?  He was frightened of me.  I showed him my true self -- the self I keep hidden under my mask of manners and decorum -- the randy, selfish little filly who just wants pleasure, regardless of the consequences.  And he was repulsed by what he saw."  Rarity lowered her head, let her mane hang down in a manner which -- had it been a bit longer -- might have covered her face in a gesture more characteristic of Fluttershy than of herself.  "As well he should be," Rarity finished her statement in a tone like death.  "I am not a good Pony."

Fluttershy stared at Rarity in what looked very much like disbelief.

"Rarity," she said.  "Spike wasn't afraid of you.  He was afraid for you."

The words penetrated Rarity's depression.  "Eh?"  she asked.  "Do you really think so?"

"Yes," said Fluttershy firmly.  "He knew you'd been off on an important mission, you came back acting very strange, and he was worried about you."

"He was?" Rarity asked.  "Wait, you're just trying to cheer me up.  I know how your empathy works.  You can sense love, and of what sort, and that's about it, isn't it?"

"Yes, that's about it," replied Fluttershy.  "But I'm not stupid.  I can figure out things from what kind of love I sense, and when I sense it.  For instance, I've known for a very long time that you love Spike.  And that Spike loves you."

"Well of course, darling," said Rarity.  "His crush on me has always been obvious.  And he did love me -- until I ruined it all by acting like a madmare ..."

"No," said Fluttershy, very firmly, and with an undertone of anger.

"Fluttershy ...?"  Rarity was genuinely alarmed.  She'd rarely seen her friend this worked up about anything, and some of the few times she had seen her like this, it had been the precursor to The Stare.

"I'm sick and tired of seeing you torment yourself over a stupid little mistake," Fluttershy said, her voice almost breaking into a shout at points.  "Spike loves you.  Present tense.  He always will love you.  Future tense.  In my whole life as an empathic emotivore, I've rarely tasted any romantic love as pure and strong as that Spike has for you.  It's even stronger than the love you have for him, and that's pretty strong.  He was still loving you when you started hugging and kissing him.  When you acted crazy, it stopped being tinged with lust and switched to protectiveness, because he was afraid for you.  You haven't lost his love.  Not by a long shot.  Do. You. Understand?"  Stray flickers of The Stare played about the edges of her eyes, but so far Fluttershy was reining it in from full awakening.

"Oh," said Rarity.  Her momentary fear turned to gladness.  "Oh, Fluttershy.  Thank you!"  She reached out and hugged her friend tightly.  "I've been a fool," she babbled.  "If it's true love, then a little mistake wouldn't destroy it.  You're right!  Thank you!"

"Mmph," said Fluttershy.  "Um, you're welcome."  Her voice was once again mild.  "I'm glad I could be of help.  Um, you're kind of crushing me."

"I'm sorry," said Rarity.  She smiled at Fluttershy, and they both laughed.  "So you think that it could work in the long run?"

"I don't know," said Fluttershy.  "I'm the wrong Pony to ask, if you're looking for 'normal.'  I'm in love with more than one person, and one of the people I love isn't any more a Pony than is Spike.  I was raised by a lunatic who thought Dragons were going to come eat us all.  My sanity is shaky and my morality a work in progress.

"But, if Love has any power at all -- I think you and Spike have a chance," said Fluttershy.  "At least a chance."

"I can work with that," said Rarity.

She was an expert with improvisations.
> Chapter 7: Cupcakes and Culpability
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, Twilight had completed her researches, or as much of them as she could without access to the Restricted Section of the Library at the Palace of Canterlot.  She expected that, eventually, she would have to go there as well -- it would be nice to see Adamant and Westwood again.  She would not be at all surprised to discover that one or more of Starlight Glimmer's early projects, perhaps undertaken when Starlight was still Celestia's student, had been stamped with a WCP code number and placed in containment.

Twilight never noticed any such before, when she had interned with the Night Watch, but then not even she was influential, curious or reckless enough to actually examine every single Restricted Object.  Some of them, after all, activated upon perusal, or contained serious memetic toxins.  By the nature of things, dark magic was inherently dangerous.  It was best to deal with most of the Restricted Objects at second hand, by report from Night Watch officers and researchers who carefully restricted their individual exposures to these banes.

So, Twilight Sparkle used as her sources primarily the school yearbooks, the Junior Achievers' Biographical Dictionary, and the back issues of the Canterlot newspapers (which those journals had kindly supplied her castle library) to construct her profile of Starlight Glimmer, which she appended to the portions of the report she had written on the train.  She might have done this quite rapidly, were not Twilight -- as always -- a perfectionist:  she insisted on cross-checking and cross-referencing as much as possible.

Neverthless, in a few hours the report was almost completed, and Twilight had assembled a fairly complete outline of the life of Starlight Glimmer; or at least of those portions of it which had come to attention in the public record.  Which -- given that she had taken the dark and dangerous road of warlockry -- was obviously far from the whole story.  Twilight Sparkle herself had chosen a far brighter course, and yet any biography of her drawn from such superficial sources would have missed so many important details of her life as to enable the writing of a whole series, with the occasional adventure books expanding considerably upon the public record, and the remainder composed of amusing comedic tales.

Twilight herself was well aware of the dangers of presuming too much on the basis of incomplete information; she said so explicitly more than once in her report.  Nevertheless, her researches suggested some obvious starting points from which the Night Watch might begin their investigations.

Starlight Glimmer had been born to a  in an affluent quarter of Fillydelphia to a minor branch of the vast Light Clan, a very distant cousin of Twilight Sparkle's mother Twilight Velvet, on October 21st, the Year of Harmony 1462; she was thus now forty-two years of age -- almost exactly as old as Twilight Sparkle had estimated.  She had excelled in primary school, and her combination of high intelligence and great magical potential had earned her a scholarship to Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns.  At her entrance examinations, she had not merely cast a perfect dermosigmatic divination upon Inkwell, who had made herself available for this purpose, but also gained her own Cutie Mark and revealed the Marks of two other foals, indicating an extraordinary aptitude for dermosignomancy:  the magic of understanding and aiding the expression of Cutie Marks.

Twilight Sparkle had been shaken by reading this, though she had half-expected something of the sort. The parallels with Twilight's own case were obvious, and she could see how if Celestia had been searching for some specific signs from prophecy, she might have hoped that Starlight would be the one to free Luna from the Nightmare.  Twilight could even see how dermosignomancy might theoretically accomplish such a feat, by enhancing the true identity of the Shadow-ridden host and enabling it to drive out the extradimensional invader.  A different approach to Luna's liberation, but it might have worked -- had Starlight Glimmer been the heroine for whom Celestia had hoped.

Twilight Sparkle mused upon her discovery.

It did not surprise her at all that Starlight Glimmer had such vast talent.  What Starlight had done in the end had been foul, of course, but it was the sort of foulness requiring great magical ability.  No ordinary warlock -- to the extent that "ordinary" had any meaning applied to warlocks, since each warlock perverted her own special gift of magic, in her own specially-horrible way -- could have either devised or cast the Spell of Sameness.  

It was not quite Alicorn magic, because Starlight Glimmer was not quite an Alicorn, but it was of the same magnitude.  It was magic of a complexity which could have been cast perhaps only by four Alicorns, and perhaps by a dozen or so non-Alicorn mages in known history, among whose number Twilight reckoned Starswirl the  Bearded.  It was magic that bespoke incredible potential, possibly the potential to become an Alicorn -- and it had been unspeakably befouled and perverted by its wielder.

As far as Twilight Sparkle knew, there were only two Ponies on Earth right now who knew how to cast the Spell of Sameness.  These were Starlight Glimmer -- and Twilight Sparkle herself.  For Twilight was Magic; she could cast any spell she had ever witnessed, and she had more than witnessed the Sameness -- she had been its victim.  So it was that Twilight knew how the Spell of Sameness worked; she understood its every dreadful convolution.  She had deduced a complete knowledge of its underlying principles.

And the knowledge weighed leaden upon her soul.


***


When Twilight Sparkle had been a filly, she had rebelled against the whole concept of "forbidden knowledge."  One memorable afternoon some nine years ago when she was fired with the certainity that came from being thirteen and knowing that she was a big filly now, she had a truly epic discussion with Celestia upon that very topic.

All knowledge, Twilight argued, is good and valuable.  All knowledge contains clues as to the nature of the Universe and hence can be restricted only at the price of hobbling equine progress; moreso,  since knowledge can be easily replicated, in a cultural-evolutionary sense, information wants to be free.

Twilight remembered how Celestia had smiled upon her as she made her passionate argument for intellectual freedom; a smile not of mockery but of approval for her student's youthful idealism and spirit.  Celestia had never been one to crush dissent; she had always encouraged Twilight to explore and question what she had been taught.

"The unexamined idea," Celestia had told her more than once, "becomes dogma.  And dogma bars the gates to Enlightenment.  Heed what you are taught, but do not believe it blindly; for even the wisest may have erred.  Always ask how each new piece of knowledge fits in with what you already know, and be alert for contradiction -- for the accepted Paradox is the death of Reason."

At this time, Twilight had simply thought that it had been an awesome argument for intellectual freedom.  Now, after having learned something of the deeper nature of the Multiverse, and having spent m any happy hours in the company of Pinkie Pie, Twilight knew that Celestia had been telling her a truth with many deeper levels of meaning.

So, when Twilight had advocated the complete freedom of information, she had constructed her own case upon the intellectual foundations Celestia had laid.  Thus -- she now realized -- it had probably not come as a complete surprise to her mentor that she should have reached such conclusions.  Indeed, Celestia had probably been smiling at her in pride that Twilight had worked through to the logical implications of Celestia's earlier statement.

Celestia was like that:  she taught less by rote than by guiding one's own mind to the discovery of new ideas.  Now that Twilight was grown and had essayed her own mentorships, she understood how difficult a teaching technique that was in truth, and it made her appreciate even more the skill and patience of her Most Beloved Teacher.  One concomitant of this method, of course, was that Celestia could not merely decree error, especially if the error is subtle.  Instead, Celestia must demosntrate it -- preferably, in such a manner as to make her student see the error herself.

This, of course, could be far more embarrassing for the erring student than a mere contradiction -- especially an erring student as conscientious as was the young Twilight Sparkle.  It did, however, have the virtue of fixing the lesson firmly into her mind -- every such mistake burned itself into her memory in fiery letters of shame, a reaction which Twilight had only in the last few years begun to realize was excessive on her part.

In this case, Celestia's lesson had taken the form of a story.

"Suppose," she had said, "that there was a way to make a Pony immortal?  Any Pony, not just an Alicorn, nor even a powerful mage.  The Pony would be maintained for the rest of his life ..." (Celestia had actually used the male pronoun here, which Twilight found strange at the time; but not until much later did Twilight grasp her Teacher's likely reason) "... in unending youth and health and vigor.  Would this not be a wonderful spell?" Celestia asked.  "One which only the most jealous of tyrants would supress?"

Twilight nodded in enthusiastic agreement.

"Now," Celestia added, "suppose that things were precisely as I have proposed, but with some additional conditions.  This immortality might be obtained and maintained only through the consumption of an alchemically-prepared food, of which the beneficiary must partake every year to retain his immortality.  And ..." she paused, perhaps for deliberate effect, "... the preparation of each such meal for one Pony requires the equine sacrifice, by terrible tortures, of another Pony."

For the moment, the exact meaning of what Celestia had said, in her calm angelic voice, did not register on the thirteen-year-old filly.  When it did, the horror hit her like a kick to the head.  Her eyes widened and she gasped in disbelief.

"But surely," Twilight finally said, "No Pony would do such a thing!"

She had been so naive then, the adult Twilight realized, looking back on it.  She had been far from perfect, of course, even if her filly self had not clearly seen her own flaws.  But she had been basically good, basically moral -- as she still was now -- and she had not yet emotionally grasped that some Ponies might be more willing to yield to evil temptation.

"You think not?"  Celestia's tone had been tinged by bitterness, something which surprised Twilight, as this was an emotion she rarely heard in the voice of her Teacher.  "The alchemist in question was looking for a means to extend equine life -- a worthy enough goal.  She experimented with hormonal therapies, and rediscovered telomerase -- a natural component of living cells, which strongly affects the aging process, as was known to the Ancients.  She found that through the Law of Similarity, the telomerase of a living creature could be rejuvenated by the ritual preparation and consumption of the flesh of another living creature.  All true -- and thus far, she had not sinned.

"The problem, of course, was that her technique required the flesh of a creature of the same species as the beneficiary.  The flesh of creatures of other species was, you see, insufficiently Similar.  And, although she had begun her eperiments with mice, she was not at all interested in maintaining immortal mice, but rather Ponies."  Celestia's face was sad.  "What was worse, she could find no means of powering the transfer save by life force, and could obtain life force of sufficient affinity to the flesh to be consumed only by using that of the Pony from which the flesh had been taken.  She had to kill that Pony, and slowly, with sufficient torture to press its soul into relinquishing its connection to the form."

"That's terrible!" Twilight remembered having said at that point.  She wondered if this she had sounded as inane saying this at thirteen as it seemed in her memory.

"She tried to make it as pleasant as possible, at least for the beneficiary," Celestia said.  "You must not imagine her engaging in bloody cannibal feasts, with great gobbets of steaming meat.  She took the flesh, granulated it, and baked it with milk and flour and sugar.  She baked it, in fact, into cupcakes."

At that point Twilight had realized where she'd heard part of this story before.  "The Cannibal Cupcakes of Horror-Pie?" she asked.  "But that's just a Nightmare Night tale -- isn't it?"

"Horror-Pie is indeed just a Nightmare Night tale," Celestia said, nodding.  "Harmonia Pie, on the other hand, was quite real.  She was a brilliant Pony, a true polymath -- in addition to being an alchemist and baker, she was also a metallurgist, a glasswright, and a gifted musician and singer.  Her mind was truly amazing; she conversed with erudition and spoke with passion and considerable rhetorical force -- rather as do you, my Faithful Student.  I like Ponies like that; when first I met her, I liked her very much.

"She played at my Court more than once," Celestia said, "some three centuries ago," closing her eyes at the memory.  "She had tremendous skill on the violin, and the voice of an angel."  She opened her eyes, smiled at Twilight's expression.  "I did not, of course, then know she would become a murderous cannibal.  She may have even started her experiments by then -- she already looked uncommonly young for a mare of almost sixty.  But I just assumed that it was the natural vigor one sees in some Earth Ponies."

Twilight's mind was reeling at this confirmation of the truth behind the terrifying old tale, and she felt revolted by the revelation of implied similarities between its villain and Twilight herself.

"But how could she actually do things like that?" Twilight had asked Celestia.  "How could she justify such monstrous murders to herself?"

"It's interesting that you worded your question that way," replied Celestia.  "For, of course, the point of this story is that she did commit such murders.  And she could not have done this without first justifying it to herself.  For -- mark this well, Twilight -- she was not evil at the start.  Few ever are.  She wanted to benefit all Ponykind.  And that was her justification."

"Because if she died she couldn't perfect her process?" asked Twilight.

"Very good!"  Celestia beamed broadly at Twilight.  Then the smile faded.  "She wanted to find a way to enable flesh other than that of a Pony to be used as the key ingredient in her Cupcakes.  Or, failing that, to distill the crucial element so that the death of one Pony might support many Pony-years of life.  And she might have succeeded, had she the medical science of the Ancients at her disposal.  But, of course, she did not.  So she felt herself forced to go on killing and killing.

"And it gets worse.  For Harmonia Pie had a husband -- Adventurine.  He was also her assistant, and her best friend, and they felt for each other the sort of passion which love songs celebrate.  Oh yes, my dear student, love is possible even between those who commit monstrous evils.  Mark this well, Twilight -- villains need not be the two-dimensional figures that they are portrayed in popular tales.  Even the worst tyrant was once a playful little colt, and possibly a hopeful swain, eyes starry with love  Each is to himself the Hero, rather than the Monster, in his own tale."  At that her eyes had automatically darted in the direction of her garden, something whose significance Twilight Sparkle had not understood at the time.

"And her husband had a sister, who was named Honesty, though she was not at all honest, save in her loyalty to her brother and sister-in-law.  Honesty was the best friend and confidante of Harmonia, and was Harmonia's other hench-pony.  Harmonia could not let her beloved husband and her dear best friend perish either; besides, she argued to herself, she needed their help to complete her great work.  

"So there were three of them, and they must needs kill three Ponies per year added to their own lives.  You may see from this that the roster of their victims soon became rather a long one, especially since their crimes continued for about a century.  And their horrid murders went unsuspected!"

"How did they get away with it?" Twilight had asked.  "They'd killed some three hundred Ponies!"

"And more," said Celestia.  "Remember, they needed to kill three Ponies a year in a protracted ritual of slow torture.  To get these three, they sometimes had to kill twice or more as many whom they could not capture and slowly kill.  By my guess, before the end of their career, Harmonia Pie and her associates had murdered at least a thousand Ponies."

"And nopony noticed this?" Twilight's tone had been skeptical.  She had wondered if this was all some macabre joke on the part of her sometimes tricky mentor.

"The times were unsettled," Celestia explained, "and the roads unsafe.  Banditry was all-too common in some provinces.  They adopted disguises, went to those provinces, and lured these robbers to attack them.  The alchemist and her friends were smart, strong, skilled and had access to unusual pyrotechnics, poisons and other preparations.  They would slay some of a gang, and make captive the survivors, then bear them back to their own lair to suffer a far worse fate than any of my laws would have dealt them.  For not even in capital cases would I deem death by torture.  And they more than once seized the treasures of successful bandits, and used them to support their own researches."

"They were playing live-action Ogres and Oubliettes," commented Twilight.  "For keeps."

"An apt analogy!" Celestia complimented her.  "Indeed, and that is rather how they viewed their actions, as one can tell from their journals."  At Twilight's look of surprise, Celestia nodded.  "Oh yes.  They kept journals.  Remember, they were scientists, and they thought of themselves as heroes, ridding the land of brutal criminals in pursuit of their greater goal of defeating death.  The Night Watch has some of them in their archives.  No, I will not show them to you, not until you are older -- they would make upsetting reading for one of your tender years."

At the time this statement had upset Twilight -- she thought that at thirteen she was certainly old enough to read some musty old tale of historical murders -- but she wisely remained silent on the topic.

"You may wonder that none of them died in such dangerous pursuits.  The fact is that I simplify the story -- the three who I named sometimes recruited additional assistants, though they did try to keep their numbers small -- the more who knew their secret, the greater the danger of discovery, and in any case there were few they could trust to both be honorable enough to keep the secret and ruthless enough to join them in their dark crusade.  Most of their assistants were chosen from among their own offspring -- over their protracted lives, Harmonia Pie and Honesty Miter gave birth to numerous foals.

"These additional assistants were less experienced and capable than were the original trio, who were by then quite hardened and skilled in the foul arts of murder.  Some fell in battle with the bandits; some to other hazards of the roads; some lost faith in the quest and retired to more normal lives; and some tried to betray their parents and were slain for their treachery -- mostly by Honesty, who was considerably more ruthless than were her brother and sister-in-law.  Honesty never really formed strong bonds with any Ponies other than Harmonia and Aventurine, and even her own children rather feared her.

"Harmonia and Aventurine had numerous sons, many of whom left lines whose descendants live today, and most of whom are unaware of their infamous foremother.  But above all they had three daughters, who from eldest to youngest were named Proserpina, Crucible and Cupcake.  Proserpina participated in the murders out of the desire to survive and a sense of duty to her mother; Crucible enjoyed them entirely too much; and Cupcake, alone, was innocent of any killings, and I am not sure that she even suspected her family's avocation, for she was in some ways very much like a foal, even though she lived well beyond the natural span of years of even an Earth Pony.

"Nevertheless, she too must be supplied with the Cupcakes of Life, and so it was that this cannibal clan was now slaughtering at least half a dozen Ponies per year, and some years a dozen or more, in order to maintain their existence," continued Celestia.  "I cannot pretend to know their inwardness:  I have lived longer than them, and as monarch I have made decisions which have had the effect of killing more than they ever slew ..." 

"Surely not!" gasped Twilight.  "You are a good and merciful Princess!"

Celestia smiled fondly.  "I am happy that you think so, my Most Faithful Student, and of course I try to be, but as the autocrat of the Realm, I must from time to time make decisions in which I know that no matter what I decide, it will statistically result in the deaths of some Ponies.  Suppose, to take a common example, that I wish a railroad to be pushed through some trackless wilderness, to serve a town a the end of this route.  If I order this railroad built, I know that it is likely that there will be accidents in its construction; some Ponies will die when their tools slip, or they stumble off cliffs, or by the premature detonation of their blasting powder.  Yet if I decide not to build the railroad, then the continued impoverishment of the town it would have served will mean less food, less medicine, and less opportunity for the citizens of that growing town, and thus they will live poorer lives and die younger than if I had built the railroad.  And if I choose to make no decision, then it is as if I had decided not to build the road, with the added problem that both town and railroad company await my decision, and until then can make no certain plans.

"Life is often a choice of evils, Twilight, in which all paths involve sacrifice, and perhaps some injustice.  And as Ruling Princess, I must discern which path involves the least sacrifice, the least injustice.  I choose as best I can, knowing that some shall suffer and die, some fail to receive their proper recompense, whatever course I choose.  This is part of the responsibility of power, the burden I put upon my back when I yoked myself to the Cart of State.  It is a burden I must bear to some degree alone, for however many Ponies may help me, in the end I must make the crucial decisions.

"And it is a burden that to some degree is shared, because of my officials who advise me and carry out my orders, the best of them know full well what they are doing, and they know that in proposing one or another course of advice, they are increasing the likelihood that some shall suffer or die, and others live longer and better lives.  If you continue to be an attentive student, it is possible that you shall someday be one of those officials, or ...."  Celestia seemed about to say something, then reconsidered.  "In any case, you may someday bear some share of the burden, and though you may be eager to be of use to me now ..."

Twilight remembered that she had been excited at the time, her eyes no doubt shining and ears perked up.

"... I warn you that it may be a heavy load, even for a Student as Faithful as you, and with a mind as agile as yours."  Celestia sighed.  "In any case, I am undying like those alchemists, and I have slain more than them in my time, whether by mistaken decisions, or directly in defense of the Realm.   But I may truly say that I never had to bake any Ponies into cupcakes to achieve my ageless life.  I was born that way ... I attained immortality without having to work for it."  She smiled sardonically, and laughed.  "Though from time to time there have been those who wished to relieve me of that condition, and had I not worked hard to stay alive, I would not be here to teach you now!"

And for a moment, Twilight had seen beneath Celestia's usual good cheer, and shivered as she sensed Celestia's true age.  Even though, then, she had not yet known that the Celestia she saw was but the fleshly avatar of something far, far older.

"So passed a century.  Harmonia and Aventurine had settled in North-Dunnich on the the Miskatrottic River in Morgan Province, but folk had come to mark their age, began to wonder why it was that they did not wither and die like other Ponies.  Harmonia had chosen the place partly because it was within a day's journey from Arkhoof, and the treasure-trove of lore that was contained in Miskatrottic University there, but those very same scholars might guess her secret.  It was getting on time to move, a move which they accomplished in 1277.

"And here, ironically in her very sentimentality, Harmonia made a mistake.  For she had been born in South-Dunnich, on the White Tail River -- about a hundred miles southwest of this very spot on which we sit right now -- in 1140, about 137 years earlier.  Her age was wearing upon her; she felt apart from the changing world.  She wanted to go home, to recapture the memories of her fillyhood.  She and her friends kept their birth names, correctly surmised that none, or very few, still lived who might connect the Harmonia and Aventurine and Honesty who returned with the trio who had left a century ago; her story being that they were descendants of those who had left South-Dunnich so long ago.  

"What she did not consider, after a hundred years of living by murder and trickery, in defiance of my laws, was that she would still arouse some suspicions.  She would have done better to have chosen some new town, somewhere that her trio was unknown.  And, certainly, she should have changed their names.  Had she done that, perhaps she would be alive today.  Or perhaps not."  Celestia looked off at something known only to her mind's eys, and said sadly.  "We are none of us infallible, not even those of us who manage to attain -- or happen to be born to -- immortality."

"And then the Night Watch caught them?"  Twilight had eagerly asked.

"Not quite, said Celestia.  "Life is not always as neat as a virtue-tale!"  She smiled gently at Twilight, to take the sting off her comment, and then continued.  "No, she and her followers returned to South-Dunnich, which was a town then dying, for the town's old industries, brought by immigrants from the North-Realm some eight centuries past, were dying, outcompeted by the new methods of wind and water and steam which were being born in the great cities of the Eastern Coast.  South-Dunnich is still there, dreaming in the shadow of the White Tail Mountains, but it would not exist today were it not for Harmonia."

"How come?" Twilight had asked in surprise.

"Harmonia brought with her the treasure she had reaved from generations of bandits, much-increased by labor and investment over a century of effort," Celestia explained.  "And, at least more importantly, she brought her own skills, and those of her followers, and these were far from negligible.  To the dying town, such monies and talents were like the draft that feeds the roaring furnace of some great factory.

"Harmonia first built a bakery, of course, both for mundane reasons and for the preparation of her terrible sustenance.  But then she constructed a water-powered saw mill, a fulling mill and a glass-blowing shop, among other enterprises.  The fires of industry had come to South-Dunnich, and the town began to ship its goods down the White Tail River and up the Avalon, to appear in the shops of Canterlot itself.  Ponyville, of course, did not yet exist; but the place was on the trade route, and a tavern appeared north of the river, to serve the river-ponies and waggoners.  The young Ponies of South-Dunnich found jobs in the new factories instead of leaving home for ever, and the old town revived.

"So it was that new good sprang from old evil, and the wages of sin were prosperity," said Celestia, her voice tinged with sarcasm.  "Harmonia and her friends had evaded all punishment for their crimes, and Harmonia herself became established as a respected leader of the town.  Indeed, they formed a town militia, which was energetic against the river pirates who then preyed on the boats along the White Tail.  And if some of the river pirates they caught -- perhaps as many as half a dozen to a dozen a year -- never made it to trial in my courts, who noticed?  Who cared?"  Her tone was now openly bitter.

"But surely somepony must have noticed!  Somepony should have cared!" Twilight had cried out in frustration.  "What were you doing!" she had demanded -- then cringed, a moment later, aghast at her own temerity.

"I ..." Celestia looked uncomfortable.  "At that time, I had ... other preoccupations.  And I truly had no idea what was going on.  The Realm was then less well-organized, and governing far more difficult.  There were no airships, no railroads, no steamboats, and neither telephones nor even telegraphs to speed messages.  It was a different time, Twilight, and distances loomed larger than they do in your modern world.  Who noticed the deaths of a dozen criminals a year?  Who cared about them?"  Her ears drooped slightly.  "Yet I was their sovereign, the ruler of honest subject and criminal alike.  Justice was my responsibility.  I should have noticed.  I should have cared.  I ... did not.  I ... failed them."

Twilight had immediately hated herself for having provoked that reaction.

"Forgive me, Beloved Teacher," she had said, bowing her head.

Celestia smiled at her, and gently stroked her mane.  "There is nothing to forgive," she said.  "You are expressing my own ideals.  And, if you are becoming less the mouse and more the manticore, it is from your own greatness of heart.  Besides," she had added, "the Realm shall need a manticore, in what is coming."

And Twilight had not, at that time, understood Celestia's last sentence.

> Chapter 8:  A Matter of Perspective
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Starlight Glimmer had been twelve, going on thirteen, when she had been accepted into Celestia's school and chosen as her special student.  She had doubtless been happy, judging from that yearbook picture and others Twilight discovered.  She must have been still very innocent. 

Was she already being corroded by envy and despair?  Twilight had spent two days trapped in that horrid little hut, with little to do but listen to Starlight's hatefully-hypnotic voice, endlessly intoning her litany of despair.  Starlight spoke of the futility of effort, the worthlessness of distinction, the meaninglessness of all mortal achievement.  To believe her words, Ponies could only be happy if they lived like semi-intelligent beasts, caring for nothing but food and shelter, striving to do no great deeds, aiming for mere survival.  To believe Starlight, she was completely content leading her little settlement beneath the Crystal Mountains.

But before then, Starlight had -- inadvertently -- given the lie to her own claims, for Twilight had marked the jealousy in Starlight's tone when she spoke of Twilight's own Ascension.

At the time, Twilight had thought little of that vicious bite in Starlight's voice.  In her life, Twilight had become used to jealousy from many Ponies -- first as a brilliant primary school student, then as Celestia's special student at the Academy, as a national heroine, and more recently as an Alicorn Princess.  Unicorn mages tended to be especially jealous of her, and she had been unsurprised by the emotion coming from Starlight Glimmer.

But after Starlight had imprisoned her, she had gone over every moment of their earlier conversation, repeatedly, with all the power of her eidetic memory pressing up against the suppressing Sameness.  And, in retrospect, Starlight's jealousy shone clear -- and was very much at odds with the cult leader's expressed ideology.

Because, of course, if "to try was to fail," why would Starlight Glimmer be jealous of the fact that Twilight Sparkle was a Princess?  Indeed, why would Starlight be especially jealous of this honor, but that it was a distinction for which at one time Starlight Glimmer had reasonably hoped?  It was that insight which had led her to suspect that Starlight had been also been one of Celestia's special students.

Sunset Shimmer learned that she might Ascend, Twilight Sparkle thought, and went mad with ambition.  Twilight had first fought, and then befriended, that strange lonely mare, self-exiled to an alien world in a form not her own -- and had come to realize that she and Sunset were not so different under their skins.  Sunset was brave, brilliant, driven by passion and fury, rather like Twilight herself in a slightly bad mood.  And when she came to trust one, she showed an underlying vulnerability, even sweetness.  Sunset was far from inherently evil; Twilight was certain she had simply cracked under the pressure of her expectations.

She had not liked Dawn Starfall nearly so well -- Dawn had struck at Twilight through her family, and Twilight was far less forgiving of harm done to her loved ones than of harm to herself --  but even in that vicious street rat, Twilight had seen similarities to her own nature:  the cold calculation, the courage, and sheer determination.  Now, there was Starlight Glimmer.  And all four of them, including Twilight herself, of the Light Clan.

What happened to you, Starlight Glimmer?  Twilight asked herself.  Where did you go wrong?

She had dived into the school yearbooks, hoping for some clue.  Had Starlight Glimmer immediately failed of her early promise, had she plunged into deep academic waters and sunk without a trace, Twilight would have seen clear motive for Starlight's later actions.  But Twilight saw no evidence of this -- nor had she really expected such.  Starlight had to be a genius, in order to be so skilled at both magery and leadership.

What she expected was a burst of tremendous achievement, followed by some sort of emotional breakdown.  That pattern was far from uncommon among the gifted; Twilight had seen it happen to several promising students, and it had nearly happened to Twilight herself on more than one occasion.  The highly-intelligent could sometimes suffer emotional instability -- such had been the case with the Moon filly she'd hung out with at the Academy, the one who shared her own love of reading, what was her name again?  For some reason Twilight's mind slipped off the memory, and right now she couldn't be bothered to think through the blockage.

That was not what she saw, not at first.  Not only did Starlight Glimmer get top grades, winning one academic honor after another, but she seemed to have friends.  In picture after picture -- thought it was the somewhat cold and formal black-and-white photography of decades past -- Starlight was shown surrounded by other Ponies, some of whom regarded her with obvious affection.  She was escorted to dances by young stallions.  She seemed happy and sociable -- far more sociable than Twilight herself had been at that age.  She did not seem like a mare who would one day take to warlockry and found a cult.

Twilight wanted to understand.  She needed to understand.  She greatly feared that there were paths she might tread that would end with herself going mad, becoming a Nightmare, cackling madly about ... compulsory friendship?  The Early Evening that would last forever?  She wasn't quite certain in what direction she might go insane, and didn't want to find out the hard way.  She knew much of Luna's fall; she thought she knew why Sunset had slipped; she didn't really like Dawn but had managed to comprehend her as an overconfident mare rather than a monster.  She felt it was important that she understand Starlight.  The more she understood about madness, the better she might grasp hold of the trail of sanity.

And that was very important, the more so because she had succeeded in her Ascension.  She had great power now, but Luna's power had been and was greater, and yet Luna had gone mad.  Power was no guarantee against madness, against evil.  Quite the opposite.  Power corrupted, and great power corrupted greatly.  Only through an understanding of one's limitations, an adherence to morality, and an acceptance of the responsibility that came with power might a mere mare hope to handle the power of a goddess without losing her mind.

Then, Twilight thought about herself and her own friends, whom she had known now for almost five years, and hoped to keep on knowing for decades.  Even back in school, when she'd been far less sociable, she'd had a set of at least acquaintances, whose roster had remained roughly stable for at least a few years -- Lyra Heartstrings, whom she still knew casually, had dropped out early, in some sort of scandal; there was ... she thought a moment ... Minuette, the Lemon girl, and Twinkle-whatever, and that Moon cousin whose name she could never remember clearly -- all right, they hadn't been that close with her, but the point was that she did things with them, and -- if anypony had documented these activities (which, come to think of it, somepony had, in the late 1490's editions of the very same yearbook Twilight had just used as one of her primary sources) -- it would have been apparent that she'd stuck with them.

Starlight -- didn't.  The fillies and colts around her changed from year to year; sometimes semester to semester.  As she grew older, the stallions who escorted her to dances were different each time.  She obviously had no truly close friends or coltfriends.  She was often in a crowd; yet she must have usually been quite alone in there.

Again, Twilight recalled Starlight's recorded rantings, and the questions Sugar Belle and her friends had asked their party when they had first come to Our Town.  Starlight believed that any differences between friends would inevitably break them apart.  Had that been her experience in the School, or afterward?  Had she been popular, like some mares Twilight had observed in her schooldays, or like Rarity or Pinkie?  Had she been self-contained, like Twilight herself?  Or had she constantly made friends; desperately hoped to keep them; but always wound up losing them?

After all, was not the whole point of her insanely-Equalitarian, self-mutiliating ideology to keep friends, by making them so similar that there could arise no possible point of dispute between them?  The philosophy was poorly-grounded, because Starlight's concept of friendship was fatally-flawed -- part of the point of finding friends was to learn from different points of view -- if everypony was identical, there would be nothing new to learn from anypony else.  What might have caused Starlight Glimmer to miss such an obvious aspect of getting to know other Ponies?

Starlight demanded complete conformity from her followers, Twilight rememberered.  Everypony smiling all the time, the same way.  Standardized clothing and hairstyles.  Dancing and marching in perfect step.

Rather like the Guard, Twilight realized.  There was no way she could miss that analogy, having stood so many times watching Guard formations drill -- part of being the younger sister of Shining Armor.  And more.  The Lights have always been of a military tradition, she knew.  It dated far back -- before even the Realm, according to some family legends, to the time when a remnant of Unicornia had held out behind inadequate wards against Discord.  Indeed, there was no way Starlight Glimmer could have avoided such an awareness of the Light family tradition.  The Biographical Dictionary listed her kin -- and some of them were Guard veterans, most bearing Light-traditional names.

The literal uniformity of the Guard, both in their training to march in formation and instantly obey orders, and which extended as far as simple illusions cast on Guard armor to make everypony in a particular Guard formation appear to have the same coloration, had clear purposes.  The training ensured that, even in the fog and fear of battle, Guard units would stick together and do what their officers commanded, creating a unit cohesion and morale which ultimately aided survival and brought victory; the uniform appearance made it easy for Guards to tell friend from foe, even in a confused melee.  And to some extent, it helped the Guards psychologically identify with each other, to think of themselves as alike, as members of a unit.

Starlight would have known this.  The identity of Cutie Marks among the Equal Ponies would have been a side benefit, from her point of view, of the Spell of Sameness.  The common clothes and hairstyles, however, was clearly intentional.  Dancing, marching and flying in step had been used since Tri-Tribal times as a means of coordinating the movement of militas and imbuing them with team spirit.  Had Starlight meant her Equal Ponies to be a military force?  The idea almost seemed ridiculous, given the relative power of Celestia, who led a nation of over 83 million Ponies, compared to Starlight Glimmer, who had a hundred or so followers.

But perhaps not.  Celestia was tolerant, and there were a lot of odd little sects in this or that isolated rustic village.  Had Starlight Glimmer not ambushed Twilight's party, had they not learned about the Cutie Mark Vault, Twilight might have simply gone home, written a casual report, and Celestia missed the significance of what Starlight was doing.  She had a lot on her mind, after all.  Our Town could have continued under Starlight's rule, grown stronger, and -- at some future date when the Realm was torn by other troubles -- waxed in power.

It would have been a slim chance, with the risk of betrayal and failure at every point.  Starlight obviously would have preferred to have had her commune grow larger before being discovered, so that the cost of stopping her in terms of blood would have seemed not worth the gain in bringing her to justice.  Had she really been able to get Twilight on her side, she might have been able to somehow combine their power and attempt some sort of coup or other ploy to change the nature of the game.  

The more she thought about this, the less Twilight could believe that Starlight's plan had been slow growth and the settlement of the lands under the brow of the Crystal Mountains.  Since befriending Applejack, Twilight had learned to see things from the perspective of a farmer, and there was a reason why those northern lands had remained vacant so long, even as Equestria's population was booming with the wealth of the Industrial Revolution.  They were cold and mostly-barren.

Also, Twilight knew Celestia's strategies, and Starlight would have known them as well.  More than once, dissidents had gone out into the wilderness and formed communes and colonies in pursuit of this or that crankish purpose.  Sometimes they failed, and when this happened Celestia welcomed the survivors back, all but the worst of their crimes to be forgiven.  Sometimes they succeeded, and when that happened, Celestia recognized their land tenure with formal grants, and encouraged emigration to the newly-opened region.

In a matter of generations the original, ideologically-motivated populations would be swamped by the immigrants.  More normally-governed settlements would spring up all around their communes, and the newer generations of the fanatics lured into the larger Equestrian cultural stream.  If the fanatics tried to use force to keep their old domination, then the Watch would put it down as crime, or the Guard suppress outright rebellion.  Most of the time, this was not necessary, and there was little or no blood shed.

Thus, Celestia seduced even those who dissented against her to serve her ends in the long run, promoting the growth of Equestria.  Celestia played a long game -- and she almost always won.  Starlight would have read the same histories as had Twilight, and heard many of the same stories in her Beloved Teacher's own dulcet voice.  She would have been well aware that any plan based on slow and steady growth would only lead to Our Town, in a few generations, becoming like any other part of Equestria in all important respects.

No, she had to have been planning something more radical.  Something which she perhaps now could not do, given that she had lost her following -- but it was dangerous to rely on mere probability, when dealing with such extreme fanaticism.

Twilight didn't understand Starlight's magic well enough to be sure of what she was and was not capable.  What was certain was that what had actually happened had stopped Starlight before she could get too far.  But not, unfortunately, stopped her decisively.  The real threat was not, and never had been, the poor confused Equal Ponies; they were just misfits who had sought acceptance and found thralldom under a mad warlock.  Freed from her power, they would now attempt to re-establish their lives in a saner manner. 

The real threat was, of course, Starlight Glimmer.  And Twilight Sparkle had no way of figuring out what she meant to do, save by trying to understand what she could do, and what she would want to do -- which was to say, to figure out just what magic she had learned, and the motivations driving her character.

The key must lie in her ideology.  It was pretty extreme, and Starlight Glimmer had seriously tried to implement the most radical parts of it.  It was not so much the details of the ideology, as the general tone.  What sort of Pony would actually want to run or live under a system which deprived one so completely of personal autonomy?  Even Starlight Glimmer herself would have had to at least outwardly conform to many of her own rules:  that was apparent from the fact that she had hidden the retention of her own Cutie Mark from her followers.

The most shocking aspect of it, of course, was Starlight Glimmer's attempt to abolish marriage.  Twilight had heard Fluttershy's account of this, and it had given her a turn.  Not because she was unfamiliar with the concept -- Twilight was erudite, and this was a clearly-recurring theme in the history of philosophical bad ideas, all the way back to Hayto's The Common Polity.  Nor was she unfamiliar with the practice:  neither her Beloved Teacher, after all, nor her dear friend Luna, had ever wed in over two and a half millennia of life on Earth.

Just because Twilight Sparkle was herself quite sexually-conservative did not mean that she was unaware of other possible modes of behavior.  She had been raised in the Court at Canterlot, which was one of the greatest centers of all manners of intrigue on the whole continent.  She knew in general what went on at some of those country house parties, though she did not participate.  And though the Lights were an old and honorable House, some of them were not entirely innocent of affairs extramarital.

No, the really disturbing part of it was that Starlight Glimmer had apparently wanted to abolish Love, at least in the sense of specific friendly or romantic love.  The reason, of course, had been that she wanted all loyalty to center on the community, of which she herself woudl be head.  Strong friendships, the bonds between lovers or spouses, these would have interposed themselves between the individual Pony and the tiny Realm which Starlight ran.  They constituted a risk to unity, as had been demonstrated by the friendship of Party Favor, Sugar Belle and Night Glider.  They must be discouraged.

But in doing so, Starlight Glimmer was opposing herself to some of the most basic emotional and social drives of all Ponykind.  The Undying Ponies of Paradise Estate had not wed, but they had loved; they had not simply mated catch-as-catch-can, and still less had they been assigned breeding partners.  And of course they had formed friendships:  some of them had endured for millennia.

Love and Friendship were fundamental to all equinity.  Fighting against such fundamental forces was clearly futile.  Why had Starlight Glimmer chosen to do this?

Her decision was even more mystifying given that Starlight Glimmer's actual power had been limited by consensus.  The warlock had severely limited resources, and not much in the way of a secret police, such as would be required to enforce truly organized despotism.  Starlight Glimmer was obsessed with imposing a complete equality not only of wealth but of talent; not only of circumstance but even of friendship and love.  This goal was clearly more important to her than were any mere practicalities.

Obviously, Starlight Glimmer considered all differences to be evil.  To be the ultimate evil.  An evil that would destroy all equine relationships.

There was but one step left on this journey of understanding.  Twilight Sparkle trembled to take it, but it was her clear duty.

Applying Starlight Glimmer's implicit belief system, and using Twilight's own personality and values as the origin point of her moral coordinates, Twilight Sparkle considered her own friends ...

Rarity Belle -- a shallow, superficial, absurdly-flirtatious intellectual lightweight, trading on her looks and making sleazy half-mendacious promises to lure stallions into doing her bidding; a parvenu with absurd ambitions, a nakedly-mercenary social climber.  Shamefully seducing Twilight's own younger brother; whether from hopes of marrying into the Light Clan, or simply because Spike's youth and inexperience made him an easy victim.  Whether she meant to sleep with him or not, in either case, her behavior was disgusting.

Spike himself -- tagging after Rarity as if he were neither a Light nor a Dragon, demonstrating absolutely no pride, either of House or Kind.  Emotionally-dependent, defining himself solely in terms of assisting others, no real intellectual or social ambitions of his own.  Spike was almost as greedy and shallow as Rarity herself -- perhaps the two fools deserved one another!

And Fluttershy -- her informant regarding Starlight's ideology.  Pathetic shyness and false diffidence concealing passive-aggressive manipulation.  High-born but decadent, rightly rejected by her proud old Wind Clan, dishonorable both in love and in war.  She'd seduced Rainbow Dash and broken her heart; taken advantage of Bulk Biceps to his near-destruction; and whored herself to Discord.  She always flinched before the fire -- she'd almost gotten them all killed on Mount Smokey, and just when Twilight could have used her help in keeping Spike safe during the Dragon migration, she'd run out on her friends.  She wasn't even entirely an Equestrian Pony -- she was half-Changeling, a repulsive thing that pretended to Friendship, the better to feed on Love.  Superficial sweetness and beauty, hiding a deep and ugly corruption.

Rainbow Dash, herself.  Boastful, blustering -- and as thick as solid stone.  Claiming to be loyal -- but, in practice, often either tricked or blundering into betraying her friends.  Physical prowess masking psychological weakness.  Discord hadn't even needed to use his powers on Rainbow Dash to break her!  Naive and silly, impulsive and thoughtless -- nearly brainless.  Twilight was ashamed to associate with such an imbecile!

Applejack was hardly any better.  She'd had the chance to better herself by a sophisticated Manehattan education, and thrown it all away to bury herself on an apple farm.  She was stubborn, and sometimes refused to accept reality -- most obviously, that Landscape Carrot, missing for seven years now, wasn't ever coming back.  Yet she continued to search for him, wait for him, even though it was painfully clear that he'd never return to fulfill his Intention.  Rustic fool!

And as for Pinkie Pie?  Silly and childish and irrational.  Bouncing through life with the delusion that everything could be solved by laughter and parties and smiles.  How could a full-grown mare of twenty-four still see the world with the eyes of a silly little filly?  She cheated, of course -- she had those impossible powers to keep her from ever having to face the real world.  Twilight despised Pinkie Pie!

As she came to each cruel conclusion, her world darkened, the happiness she normally drew from her love for her friends dying piece by piece, a shadow blotting out the Sun of her soul.  Who next would prove merely equine, merely fallible, imperfect?  She thought briefly of her Beloved Teacher, and recoiled in horror.  No!  That would be near to blasphemy!  Instead, she turned her gaze upon the entity closest to her whom she had not yet judged.

Herself.

In the merciless light of her own ideals, she was wanting.  Weak ... self-indulgent ... vain ... unpleasant ... clumsy ... stupid.    Her self-loathing grew.  She felt her mind distorting, a whine of magical feedback rising in her brain, pain building ...

... and just before she might have done herself irreparable harm, she realized what was happening, saw the danger, and flung off the mindset as if it were a pair of goggles, literally screaming in utter revulsion.

"Gah!" cried Spike, coming out of a nap to stare at her in horror.  "Twilight!  What happened to you?"

Twilgiht's bleary eyes -- there seemed to be something wrong with her vision, some sort of psychic residue that dispersed as she blinked it away, beheld Spike.  Her dear baby brother, her loyal Number One Assistant, good and honorable, noble in conduct and pure in love, choosing to help her, choosing to love Rarity, giving of himself because he had the heart of a true hero beating within his small scaly purple-and-green frame.  And, the others ...

Rarity ... generous and kind, caring deeply for Spike in return, trying to bridge the gap of age and species with her fabulousness, trying to balance the demands of love and morality, convention and desire, a good and honorable Pony who strove to make the world beautiful.  Fluttershy, whose concept of equinity extended beyond her own species, beyond even sapience, building a new morality in which all life could live as sisters, her heart overflowing with kindness and compassion for all the Universe, whose sweeteness had moved even Discord to reform.  Rainbow Dash, whose great heart and high courage were like something out of an old legend, who was too good and pure to even fully-understand any foul motivation.  Applejack, her best friend, the sister of her heart, who loved loyally and lived honorably, who would go to any lengths to help a comrade:  tough as leather and sweet as a sugarcube.  And Pinkie Pie, whose high spirits and laughter were like a gage thrown down by Life to Death, a denial of any necessity for Tragedy, an affirmation of love and friendship in the face of an uncaring Universe.

The best and noblest friends whom any Pony might ever have, and in the distorting lens of Starlight Glimmer's world view, they had seemed false and treacherous scoundrels!  What must merely ordinary Ponies seem to the warlock?  How base, how ugly?  No wonder she had gone mad, turned her great talent to bad ends, if this was how the world looked to her all the time!  No love, no friendship, only endless despair and evil.  The only ones she felt she could trust were those who parroted her beliefs, but had been reduced to lesser levels of power by the Sameness.  And even those had turned on her in the end!

In that moment Twilight Sparkle pitied Starlight Glimmer, for she must hate herself as well, just hate herself a little bit less than she hated everyone else in existence.  But in that pity was mingled fear, because if this was how Starlight Glimmer viewed the world, then she had absolutely no reason not to try the most dangerous, the most doom-laden spells, if she thought this could end her pain, which she imagined to be the World's Pain.  And Twilight Sparkle had also studied the secret magic of Star-Swirl the Bearded, magic deemed with good reason to not yet be safe in the grasp of ordinary Ponies, or even most extraordinary ones.  She knew what some of those spells could do, if wielded unwisely.

She looked again at Spike, whom she had briefly and unjustly despised, and she felt a great guilt.

"Oh, Spike," she whispered.  "I'm so sorry."

"Sorry for what?" Spike asked, puzzled.  "Scaring you?"

"I scared you?" asked Twilight.  "By screaming?"

"Well," said Spike, "that, and the fact that you were leaking dark magic from your horn and eyes.  Which -- your eyes, I mean -- were starting to glow, and I think your pupils were becoming slitted; sort of like mine, but creepy instead of handsome.  Basically, you were starting to look like you were going Nightmare.  And I should know what that looks like.  You'd be the fourth Nightmare I've seen, if that did happen."

That, Twilight reflected, thinking upon what had happened to Rarity two and a half years ago, would be right.  We lead perhaps a too-adventurous life.

"I was trying to understand how Starlight Glimmer saw the world," Twilight explained, "and I made myself think like her.  I think I accidentally triggered some sort of Friendship Magic effect.  Or dark Friendship Magic.  Or anti-Friendship Magic.  Something like that.  And I sort of short-circuited my soul.  And started going mad.  And because I'm an Alicorn, if I'd gone mad, I might have gone Nightmare."  She shivered at the full realization of this.  "Which might have had some very bad consequences."

"What?" Spike asked in alarm.  "You mean, worse ones than you going crazy?  Or becoming a Nightmare?"

"Well," said Twilight, "when Luna went crazy, she cursed a whole village to become undead monsters.  And wrecked her own castle.  And levelled a good part of a city.  So -- short answer -- yes."

Spike stared at her in utter horror.  "Yes," he finally agreed.  "Those would be some very bad consequences."

"The only good thing about the situation," Twilight decided, "is that there aren't any Night Shadows around right now to possess me, so I might just come out of the Nightmare state on my own.  Before leveling my castle or Ponyville or casting any horrible eternal curses."

"How do you know there aren't any Night Shadows around?" Spike asked.  "Not that I'm complaining or anything," he added hastily.

"Oh," said Twilight, "that's because this castle is pervaded with the power of the Harmony.  They can't get in here.  So as long as I stayed in the castle, I'd be safe."

"Well, that's good news," commented Spike.

"I wonder how long I would have stayed in the castle?" Twilight mused.  "Never mind.  The point is, I think I now know what makes Starlight Glimmer tick."

"Which is?" asked Spike.

"She's incredibly intolerant and pretty much hates everyone," Twilight said.  "Including herself.  Oh, and she may know enough magic to, in theory, end the world."

"What?!" yelped Spike.

"Only in theory," pointed out Twilight.  "It's not that easy to end the world.  If it was, it would have been done long ago, by some mad warlock or another."

"Um, I guess that's a relief," Spike said.

"But we don't want to give her time to figure it out," said Twilight.  "So we need to warn the Sisters, so that they can counter whatever it is she tries to do before she can do it."  She wrinkled her muzzle.  "In some cases, do it before she does it even after she does it."

"Uh -- that doesn't make any sense," pointed out Spike, raising one talon by way of objection.

"Of course it does," said Twilight with a smile.  "In a temporally non-linear fashion.  Which is how some of Star-Swirl the Bearded's magic works."

"Why do I think sometimes that you like logical puzzles so much that you enjoy them even if they mean that the whole world is in danger?" Spike complained.

"Because I do," said Twilight, smiling broadly.  The world is so beautiful when you don't hate everyone in it, she thought to herself.  I never noticed it before until I saw it from Starlight's perspective.  I feel positively giddy with happiness right now!  "Now come on!  I know exactly what to write, now.  Let's get this report finished and sent to Canterlot, before Starlight recovers and comes probing at the Sisters' defenses!"

They pitched into the papers.  Spike rewrote the parts that Twilight had jotted down on the train; Twilight hammered out the biography, psychological evaluation, threat assessment and strategic predictions regarding Starlight Glimmer.  For once, Twilight went for speed rather than perfection:  this was a timed test, and she wouldn't get an "A plus" if Starlight was able to seize the key contents of the Star-Swirl the Bearded Wing, or break into the Night Watch's Secret Archives, while Twilight did her third and fourth drafts.  And right now, she felt a vague disquiet at the notion of pursuing complete perfection -- it reminded her unpleasantly of the horrible world that lived in Starlight's perceptions, because she could not accept reasonable equine flaws and harmless differences.

Two hours later, they were finished.  They had edited and collated the multi-section report, placed it in a nice cream-colored envelope, folded it in neatly, tied it off with a multi-colored ribbon, streaked like her mane, and closed it with a blob of hot purple wax the colors of her eyes, using her new seal, which said "Princess Twilight Sparkle" around an engraving of the Friendship Castle.

"Send it to ... Princess Luna," Twilight decided.  "She'll actually be awake now, and there's no point in waking Princess Celestia out of a sound sleep."

Green magefire flared, and the letter was on its way.

They then awaited a reply.  Improtant reports, such as this one, usually received a swift acknowledgement.  Twilight fully expected that Luna would consider this report to be urgent.

She was not disappointed.  A mere five minutes later, she received a reply.  It consisted of two letters, both from Princess Luna.

The first one read:



Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle,

I did receive and scan over your initial detailed report regarding your defeat of the warlock Starlight Glimmer.  Rest easy in the knowledge that my Sister and I have warded our Selves and the Palace alike against her.  She shall not find us easy victims.

I strongly advise you against making further use of that Mind-Masking to comprehend Starlight Glimmer.  There is a very great danger that you might damage your own Mind in such attempts.  You are too important to the Realm to take such a risk.

My Sister will probably wish to converse with you in the near future.  I shall first pay you a visit, and soon -- though I have one or two matters to which I must first attend.  Then we shall meet, to discuss our Plans.

Your Friend,

Luna Selena Nyx,
Princess of the Moon



The second one was considerably less formal.  It read:



Mine Own Dear Friend Twilight,

I am saddened and angered to hear of the Suffering Thou hast endured in the Service of the Realm and Pursuit of Harmony.  I wish that I might have been there, to Destroy the Warlock before she might have done Thee harm; or failing that, suffer alongside Thee, my dear Benefactor.  I again do caution Thee against Masking as Starlight Glimmer.  I Pray Thee, dearest Twilight, do not risk Thy fine Mind and sweet Soul, for they are precious both to the Realm, and to mine own Self.

Eternally Yours,

Luna Selena Nyx,
Who was Moondreamer Finemare

Post Scriptum -  Lady Rarity Belle hath unquiet dreams, and might well be warded by the company of your Number One Assistant.  I urge thee to let him go to her.



The effect of the two papers, together, was rather like that of a military missive followed by a mash-note -- which was not uncommon for Luna's letters to Twilight Sparkle.  She read the first one out loud to Spike; then folded the second one and put it away.  "Boring stuff about, um, past business," she explained to Spike.  "You wouldn't be interested."

Spike glanced at her skeptically.  She was a terrible liar, where her Number One Assistant was concerned.

Which reminded her.

"Spike," she said.  "you really helped me a lot tonight.  Thank you.  Now, I know it's late, and she's probably asleep, but if you really want to check up on how Rarity's doing ---"

"Okay thanks I gotta go see ya!" said Spike, and dashed out the door.

Hmm ... thought Twilight.  I guess he really did want to check up on Rarity.  I hope she's not too mad at him showing up at her door in the wee hours of the morning.

She sat and awaited Princess Luna.
> Chapter 9:  Nightmares and Awakenings
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rarity was back in the hut.

Everything was gray and bleak and ugly, Rarity herself most of all.  She was an animal, a thing that inhaled and exhaled, drank foul-tasting water and ate tasteless hay, and in due course excreted the resultant wastes from her other end.  She did this until she knew in her heart that she was nothing and nopony, just a brute beast whose only purpose was to serve the ends of Starlight Glimmer, and the great multi-bodied entity that was Our Town, of which Starlight Glimmer formed the head.

When she realized this, they finally let her out to serve the community.  She worked under Dashing Cape, the stallion whose name was a perhaps a crueller mockery than most of the names of the adults in Our Town, because all he could make were shapeless, vaguely-rectangular sheets of sackcloth.  She had once found them very ugly, but now they were no uglier to her than was anything else in her meaningless world.

She had an Idea:  she made tunics and jackets of the same fabric:  the better to keep the Equal Ponies warm in the winter.  Starlight praised her notion, and everypony smiled at her.  The garments were hideous, but then so was everything, so it didn't matter.

Every three weeks her cycle came, and she suffered a vague discomfort in her private parts.  She knew, of course, how this discomfort might be relieved, and sometimes did so, alone in her narrow, uncomortable bed.  She thought of nothing much in particular when she did this:  it was merely a physical sensation to be produced by rote physical exertions, relieving a physical need.  At such moments, a Pony might have imagined a tender and passionate lover, but a beast neither needed nor was capable of such emotional illusions.

She also emitted marescent during the three days of her cycle, and the stallions noticed, and looked at her with a dull sort of interest.  Sometimes, they even showed a bit.  Ponies might have been embarrassed by this, but they were also mere beasts, and this meant no more to them than it did to her.  She did not care enough to show any interest in return, and mares always chose, so she remained unmated.

Eventually -- after months or years of her new gray life, she did not know, because she bother any more to pay attention to the passage of the days and seasons -- she tired of her tri-weekly discomfort and hollow relief, and decided to mate.  She did so by the most obvious means:  when her cycle came again, and Dashing Cape gazed at her with a vaguely-aroused expression, she swished her tail between her own haunches, passing it over her moist privates, and flicked it gently across his nose, giving him a good long whiff of her marescent.  Then, she turned her rear toward him, twitched her tail aside, and looked at him inviting over her shoulder.

It was a behavioral display as old as the Primal Plains, and it had just one meaning:  Mount me.  It was also an extremely vulgar and immoral display for any mare to make to anypony save her beloved, which Dashing Cape was not:  he was a hearty, jovial and friendly stallion, especially by the muted standards of the Equal Ponies, and Rarity liked him full well, but back when she had been a Pony she would never have been willing to give herself to him.  However, that was when she'd still imagined she had a self to give, and that self Fabulous.  Now she was but a beast, and beasts are far less complex in their emotions.

He mounted her.  Rarity had not been virgin for a decade; she had also not had full intercourse for nine of those years, so it was slightly painful.  It was however slightly more pleasurable, or at least relieving; her instincts told her that this was what she was supposed to do when in estrus.  Dashing Cape was her ally and comrade, and he was far from cruel:  he supported himself and moved in such a way as to avoid hurting her.  Nor was he exceptionally kind:  she was not, after all, his beloved, merely a mare who had emitted the right scent and given him the right signals.  There were neither fond words nor tender caresses, merely an opening and positioning and entering, mechanical friction reduced by natural lubrication, an itch being scratched by that friction; some mutual heavy breathing and grunting, a sensation of being flooded within, and then it was over and done with.  It had been a simple biological function, no less and certainly no more profound on either of their parts than eating one of Our Town's tasteless meals.

Afterward, Dashing Cape was friendly toward her, perhaps slightly friendlier than he had been before.  He neither despised nor loved her for what had passed between them; he presumably felt a certain increased positive affect associated with her presence, now.  Such would be the normal conditioned response of a beast to receiving pleasant stimulation.  He seemed happy.  Or, at least, content.

Rarity was not.  She felt nauseated at her own actions.  She felt as if she had betrayed somepony or something, though she could not imagine whom or what.  Surely it could not have been herself, her own sense of Fabulousness.  Starlight Glimmer had taught her that any such self-image was naught but a hypocritical lie; she was nopony, and contained nothing special.  This truth, once acknowledged, made her life much easier, since she no longer wasted her time and effort aiming at any ideals beyond simple survival, simple Sameness.

Still, the sensation of sickness would not abate, and she took to her bed, pleading illness, which was also a good way to dissuade Dashing Cape from offering to join her -- though she could not understand why she right now could not bear the sight of him.  She was ahead of her work, anwyay -- even Equalized, she was still a very precise and rapid telekinetic -- and she felt that she needed the rest.

She napped the rest of the day, and awoke in the evening, and lay on her straw-stuffed mattress under her blanket of surplus sackcloth, and she could not help but think of a huge double king-sized bed with a down mattress and silk sheets, such as she might have slept upon a lifetime ago.  And someone -- image of a pair of slitted, alert archosaurian eyes, a shimmer of scales -- with whom she had never shared that bed, but might have wanted to, someday, had her life remained Fabulous.  Dangerous delusion, self-lie, he wasn't even a Pony.  What would have been the point?  Though the stories she'd read had caused her to believe that Dragons and Ponies might be inter-fertile ...

And thinking about that, she realized that there was a possible consequence to what she had done with Dashing Cape, aside from the strange self-loathing that she felt rising from the forgotten depths of her soul.

She might have made herself pregnant.

She thought of the possibility of a foal, young and innocent and new to life, laughing and playing, because such was foalish nature, imagining itself unique and special, because nopony had told it that there was anything wrong with doing so.  A foal, loving and trusting its mother.  Loving and trusting her.

The possibility filled her with a transient happiness -- until she realized the rest of the foal's fate. 

Growing up in Our Town, gradually learning the limitations of its life.  Learning that it was not special, not unique, that it was useless to strive, futile to dream.  Realizing its Talent, manifesting its Cutie Mark, only to have both ripped away by Starlight Glimmer, forever suppressed by the Sameness.  Growing to adulthood, in a world with neither love nor marriage, eventually mating out of base biological instinct -- as she had just done -- reproducing genetically so that yet another generation could be born to hopeless, loveless despair, forever and ever, generations of meaningless lives, from now until the time that somepony stronger than Rarity finally smashed Starlight Glimmer's dreary dream.  Which would doubtless happen someday, but probably not before the last drop of what had once made Rarity Belle so Fabulous was squeezed out of her soul by the Sameness.

She felt a rush of energy -- and a painful pressure on her flanks.  Her horror at her own actions, at the future to which she was submitting, had briefly brought her back to herself.  She had to escape, for she knew that this surge would not last long.  Already, she could feel her will fading, her strength lessening as the Sameness sapped her spirit.

A failed escape would be worse than no attempt at all, for she would be recaptured and re-educated even more thoroughly.  This might happen again and again, her will being weakened more and more each time, until there was nothing left of the old Rarity, until she was naught but a helpless husk of her former self, kept alive and enslaved, a womb to breed new generations of slaves, and a horn to clothe them.

She must not let this happen!  But how to get away?  Starlight would send the Pegasi after her -- even under the Sameness, Night Glider was a swift flier and expert tracker; and the others would follow, swarm her, bring her down.  With but a fraction of her normal energies, Rarity knew that she would be but a mediocre fighter.  She was no longer Fabulous.  She would be overcome by the odds.  It seemed hopeless.

Then she remembered Fillydelphia -- and that there was another way out.

Ignoring the pulse of pain at her flank, she reached out with her powerful and precise telekinesis -- she knew that she could maintain this for only a short time, under the suffocation of the Sameness -- and the sharp shears she used to cut the sackcloth came to her, limned in the glow of her aura.

She regarded the shears.  Well-made -- they had been bought outside Our Town -- and honed to a razor's edge, by a seamstress who was no longer Fabulous, but still a perfectionist in the few aspects of her life she still could control.  They would do.  For a moment, she considered using them to fight -- but they would be a puny weapon against the magical might of Starlight Glimmer; and if she used them on anypony else, she would simply be slaying one of Starlight Glimmer's other victims.

She had no right to choose death for any of those victims, save one:

Herself.

She turned the shears in her aura, pointing them directly at her heart.  Even with the Sameness sucking at her soul, she still had the skill and strength to end her life, either instantly or by wounding herself beyond anything the pathetic medical facilities of this Talent-drained village could hope to muster.  All she needed was the courage to strike true.

She knew that she had the courage.

As she prepared to strike, she briefly wondered why she was doing this, whether her situation was really hopeless.  She cast her gaze to her window.  Outside the stars shone; the Moon was rising.  It occurred to her that elsewhere, hundreds of miles to the southeast, Manehattan glittered bright and beautiful in its sparkling waters, a jewel in its bay.  She suddenly wanted to see that great city again, to live.  She wondered if death were really the braver choice.

Something seemed wrong with her mind.  She felt her Sameness Marks throb, and imagined that it must be due to Starlight's spell.  Though it never felt like that before, came the stray thought.

She dismissed her doubts, and once again prepared to strike.

At the last moment, she mourned one bright dream, that would now never have the chance to come true; and she fixed almost desperately on his image.

I'm sorry, Spike! she thought -- and something hissed in pain and rage, and swirled at the corners of her vision.  She whirled in confusion, to see the mass of animate void, blacker than midnight, that roiled and flowed back into cohesion in the corner of her room's ceiling, its two -- or were there three? -- yellow eyes glaring at her in hatred.

She shrieked, and whipped the shears around to point straight between the vile orbs, and cried out "What on Earth are you?"  and in the instant of asking that question she knew, knew precisely what this was -- and that it had come not from Earth, but from the Moon, and before that from a dreadful domain of dead stars and eternal dark despair.

"Night-Shadow!" she named it, in a voice full of loathing.  She knew its kind far better than did most other Ponies, even among those who even knew they existed -- for she had once -- for a brief but terrible time in her life -- been ridden by one.

The creature hissed again, and abruptly flowed toward her, extending pseudopods of seething darkness.

She remembered the counter to it just in time, and concentrated hard.  The image of Spike, holding the Fire Ruby, his eyes full of love for her, leaped into the front of her mind.  She felt a warm rush of Love within her.  The ebon tendrils struck her -- and splashed away into steam.

The Night Shadow squalled, and shrank back before Rarity's Love for Spike.

"Why are you here?" Rarity demanded.

*... help you ...* came the single comprehensible thought amidst a snarl of alien static, sounding like the telepathic version of a badly-garbled telephone connection.

"Help me?" asked Rarity suspiciously, pointing the shears right at the Shadow, though she was far from certain that mere metal could do anything effective to its alien substance.  "How?"

*... captive ... need power ...* it attempted to explain.

"You offer me the power to escape Starlight Glimmer?" Rarity asked.  "Of what sort?"  She narrowed her eyes at the thing.

*... us .... together ... Nightmare ...*

"No!"  Rarity knew now what it offered.  The Night Shadow's magic, combined with her own, would no doubt be stronger than Starlight Glimmer's.  The last time she had become a Nightmare, she had been stronger even than the unaugmented Princess Luna.  The promise was genuine ...

... and false.  The Night Shadow, once she allowed it in, would possess her, ride her, drive her to its evil ends.  When she had been a Nightmare, she had betrayed the Realm ... fought her friends ... she had even hurt Spike.  To be thrall to a Night Shadow was even worse than was the Sameness!

The Night Shadow hissed in rage at her rejection.  Its mind-voice shrieked through a shower of static.

*... Dragon ... hates ... you want ... can have! ...*  it pointed out.*... Why ... die? ...

"Just a mo-ment," Rarity interjected, her tone sing-song.  "Even if my darling Spikey-Wikey ..." she saw with satisfaction the Shadow squall and shrink at the little flare of Love that the thought of Spike sparked in her.  "Even if he were cross with me like that, that would have been for something I did after we defeated Starlight Glimmer and left Our Town.  So -- how am I once again her captive?"

The Shadow snarl-squalled, then hiss-rattled.  *... ambush ... tricked ... misfortune? ... it asked hastily.

Rarity raised an eyebrow.  "That seems rather improbable.  And how have I been in this place for months and months with nopony to come looking for me?  I have friends -- very much including my darling Dragon -- who wouldn't simply let me rot in durance vile."  She sniffed herself.  "And I can't smell Dashing Cape on me any more ... and I don't remember bathing before I went to bed."  She spun the shears in her aura.  "No more weakness," she observed.  A quick glance at her right flank, where three familiar blue diamonds were emblazoned.  "I've got my Cutie Mark back!" she crowed in delight.

Realization struck her.

"This is all a nightmare!" Rarity declared.  "I was never back in Our Town!  I'm sleeping safe in my own bed in Ponyville!  And I never --"

Her eyes narrowed, and she almost growled at the Night Shadow.  "You vile thing!  You tried to convince me that I -- and his capes were atrocious!"  It was not really about the capes, of course, but Rarity did not deem it worthwhile to discuss sexual morality with a formless horror from beyond the stars.

The Night Shadow let out a shriek impossible to describe in terms of any equine vocal equipment.  It quivered with rage, and gathered itself up to attack.

Rarity prepared for battle, her aura grasping various objects about the room.

And the Moon exploded.

Or, to be more precise, it flared into a great pale lovely light, cool and silvery and greatly cheering.  Even more cheering was the Shape which formed from that moonlight:  a dark blue Alicorn, blue mane glistening with stars like a personal night sky.  Her beautiful blue eyes blazed with wrath as she regarded the Night Shadow.

"Foul fiend!" Princess Luna shouted.  "Thou darest to torment mine own friend?  Back, begone to the oblivion that spawned thee!"  A spray of silver-pinkish energy washed from Luna's horn and played across the Shadow, who wailed in anguish, shivered and burst apart.  The fragments fell into the sky, somehow drawn upward into the orb of the Moon.

Rarity was not exactly sure just how Luna had accomplished what Rarity had just seen her do --- the kind and level of magic employed was far beyond anything the fashion designer had ever formally studied.  She had sensed the side-scatter from the spell, and it felt somewhat similar to the Love Rarity had previously employed to hurt the Night Shadow, but far more powerful, and the emotion pulsed in a way which Rarity would have had no idea how to perform, even if she had known how to channel that sort of thing through her horn.  The Love seemed fierce and protective; Rarity briefly wondered if this sort of amative analysis was what Fluttershy could always accomplish with her empathy.

Regardless of how Luna had done it, she had certainly helped out Rarity in her time of need, and done so in a highly-impressive manner.  This deserved recognition on Rarity's part.

"Oh, bravo!" cried Rarity, clapping her hooves together.  "Magnifique!  You certainly showed that Night Shadow what for!"

A complex series of emotions flickered rapidly across Luna's face.  Then she smiled, inclining her head to Rarity, and said:

"'Twas nothing, Lady Rarity, but Our duty to any Subject of the Realm, who by her own fealty hath the right to expect Our protection, from these vile enemies of all Ponykind."

For a moment, Rarity felt sadly unappreciated.

Then Luna smiled warmly, and added:

"Let alone a Lady to whom I owe mine own personal gratitude many times over, for helping liberate me from Nightmare, for being a true and loyal friend to Princess Twilight Sparkle, and for thy many signal services to the Realm, and personally to my Sister and own self, not the least of which has been thine own great artistic Talent.  Thou art brave and good, Rarity Belle.  It is mine own honor to help thee -- and thou art most truly Fabulous."

"Why -- why thank you, Your Highness," replied Rarity, bowing low to the Moon Princess, her cheeks warming at the unexpected and effusive compliment.  Rarity had never been particularly close to Luna, beyond speaking politely to her at royal functions, and occasionally helping provide the Princess' wardrobe, and it was really nice to discover that Luna thought so highly of her.

"I require further words with thee," Luna said.  "But first -- carefully and gently -- pray put down the shears."

"The shears?"  Rarity had almost forgotten that she was levitating them, so far distant were her thoughts now from her former black despair.  "Why, certainly, Your Highness," she said, precisely laying the shears down on a night-table, the dreamscape having morphed the chamber into her own bedroom at the Carousel Boutique in the meantime.  "Will that do?"

"Right well," replied Luna, looking very relieved.  "Rarity -- you were sleepcasting."

Sleepcasting was a potentially-dangerous sleep disorder, in which a Unicorn actually cast the spells she imagined she was casting in her dreams.  Rarity remembered what she had been dreaming, regarding those shears, and gasped in horror.

"Goodness gracious!" she cried.  "I might have killed myself!"

"Indeed," agreed Luna, her expression sober.  "Though 'tis more likely thou wouldst merely have been wounded, as thou art not a trained sleepfighter."

"Thank you even more, then," Rarity said.  A thought struck her, and she cast down her gaze.  "You saw my dream, then."  There were parts of it of which she hadn't wanted anypony else to know.

"Enough of it to understand the nightmare," replied Luna, her voice ringing clear.  "Thou wert trapped in Our Town, facing the prospect of spending the rest of your life there:  mating, foaling, raising children into slavery.  To an emotionally-sensitive artist like thyself, this would have been even a worse Hell than it would have been to most Ponies."  Her tone of voice gentled.  "I understand thee, Lady Rarity.  I am in mine own way an artist, and hardly dead to the softer emotions.  I, too, would have been badly shaken by that dream."

"Then you do understand," said Rarity.  "Your Highness," she remembered to add.  "I apologize that you had to see the, well, really embarrassing part of that dream."

"When you mated with Dashing Cape?" asked Luna.  "Lady Rarity, 'tis nothing.  I have been dreamwalking for many, many centuries, and I have seen many, many, many carnal dreams.  If they seriously embarrassed me, I could scarcely do my duty.  'Tis normal for Ponies to experience their sexual fantasies in their dreams, whether they be bright or dark ones.  Or even extremely dreary ones."

"Indeed," said Rarity.  "So dreary that I preferred death."  She looked at Luna, troubled.  "Am I sane?" Rarity asked her.

Luna smiled.  "I may not be the best Pony of whom to ask that question," the Moon Princess pointed out.  "Thou might recall the circumstances of our initial meeting."

"Oh, pish tosh," said Rarity, waving a hoof at her and smiling.  "You just weren't quite yourself at the time, darling.  We all have bad days."  She wondered for a moment if she'd gone too far -- for a moment, Luna's expression was unreadable.

Then she smiled wryly at Rarity.

"Indeed," said Luna.  "My bad day simply lasted a bit more than a millennium.  But it has passed."  She looked more cheerful for a moment, then more serious. "Lady Rarity, I would wager that thou hast known times of pain and tragedy in your life, perhaps more severe in some ways than some of thy friends.  Though, in other ways, I would wager that thou might be surprised by what they have endured, and the extent to which they would sympathize with thee, and be willing to help thee with thy soul's burdens."

"Ancient Alicorn wisdom, Your Highness?" asked Rarity, arching an eyebrow at her.

"That," replied Luna, "and some fundamental logic.  The Night Shadows flock around thee, seeking a lodgement through thee in our world.  They torment thee more grievously because they have found a weakness to exploit, a flaw in thee through which they hope to corrupt thee.  Understand:  they cannot possess thee unless thou is open to them in some measure.  They have possessed thee once before, and they hunger to do so once more."

"I'm the weakest link," said Rarity sadly, looking away in shame.

"Mayhap," said Luna, and then touched Rarity's chin gently with one hoof, turning her head up and looking directly into her eyes.  "But know this, Rarity Belle, thou art strong indeed by any normal standards.  There is merely a flaw they have found, perhaps by fortune, of which they know they can make use.  And they will keep trying to use it again and again, until you acknowledge it and heal, bar them entry. 

"And Rarity -- be not ashamed that thou art flawed.  For I am flawed, and the Night Shadows took advantage of my flaw to seduce me to treason and the betrayal of everything and everypony I loved.  I have sinned greatly; committed terrible crimes:  worse than any that I think you can now imagine.  Compared to mine own self, thou art innocence and loyalty personified.  Dost thou despise me?"

"No, of course not!" cried Rarity.  "You're ... you're simply wonderful!  I admire you!"  There was no calculation in that; it was the free expression of her heart, her response to the love and friendship Luna was demonstrating to her.

Luna smiled.  "Perhaps more praise than I truly deserve, but I shall gladly accept it from thee."  Then, her expression becoming more serious.  "Then, Rarity, if thou can find it in thyself to admire me, do not despise thyself.  I see thee with an eye jaundiced by viewing many centuries of evil and suffering and treachery, and I say unto thee: thou art brave, and good, and high of spirits, and thy heart is pure."

"Thank you, Your Highness," replied Rarity.  "I ... I wish it was easier to feel that way about myself.  I ... I'm not always as confident as I make myself out to be, you understand?"

Luna replied "The same is true of mine own self, Lady Rarity, at times.  I remind myself that these times that the murk will pass; the night will once again become clear and bright and beautiful.  And ..." she looked very seriously at Rarity, "... I spend time in the company of mine own friends."

Rarity smiled.  "I am fortunate to have such friends as I do -- they make me feel more fabulous."

"There is one friend in particular," Luna said, "who is quite worried regarding thee.  He stands without thy home right now, and I fear thou didst shriek aloud when thou didst fight the Night Shadow.  If I were thee, I would wake and open thy doors to him.  He means thee only well, but if he imagines thee in peril, no mere wooden doors will serve to check his passage."  Luna smiled at Rarity.  "For who would be foolish enough to attempt to bar her door to a Dragon ..."  Luna faded into mist on those last words.

CRASH!  There was a sound of splintering wood, and Rarity came awake with a start.

At first she could see only blackness, and that briefly worried her, before she realized that she still had her sleeping-mask on.  She lifted the mask, and found herself, as she expected, in her bedroom back in the Carousel Boutique.  She had known this, but still -- after that terrible nightmare -- it was a great relief to confirm that she was not the slave of Starlight Glimmer, not the lover of the stallion who simply happened to be the most conveniently situated, not about to kill herself to avoid bearing foals into a life of pointless suffering.  She was herself, Rarity Belle of Ponyville, and she was still capable of Fabulousness!

"Rarity!" came a very familiar voice.  "Are you all right?  If you're in trouble, I'm coming to save you!"

Dear Spike, she thought fondly, a warm happiness spreading through her soul.  My hero.  He's smashed my front door. Even that last realization could not diminish her joy.  For, abruptly, she had an image of a determined, purple little armored archosaur, bashing and clawing and breathing fire to demolish whatever defenses Starlight Glimmer might throw up, wading through an entire village if need be to rescue his love.  And she knew that, as long as Spike drew breath, she would never be without hope of salvation.

"I'm all right, Spikey-Wikey!" she called out, before he could wreck any more of her home in his attempt to help her.  She rolled out of bed, drew her pink night-robe around her, put her hooves into her house-slippers.

There were some minor crunching and splintering noises from downstairs, then  "Oh, okay!  I heard you screaming ..."

Rarity opened her bedroom door, stepped out and looked down from the railing into the main chamber.  Though she of course expected it, still her heart leapt at the sight of the small purple-and-green Dragon that stood just within the door, brushing wood splinters off his lovely rain-glistening scales.  He turned his head up to meet her gaze, and his dear features were the most handsome imaginable to her, for it was Spike.  Her Spike, she could not avoid thinking.

"Spike!" she cried happily, and, casting aside much of her dignity, cantered down her curving grand staircase toward him, her robe land nightgown lifting and fluttering around her as she ran, in a manner which she certainly had to admit was tres dramatique, and which in her mind was accompanied by a great rising orchestral passage, with multiple violins emphasizing the theme of her love.  It's rather a pity real life doesn't include musical accompaniment, she thought briefly, and then she reached Spike, and had no thoughts to spare for anything else.

She stretched out a foreleg to embrace Spike.  Then, at the last moment, she remembered what had happened before, and she hesitated.  Only for an instant, but it threw off her rhythm; her talent, exquisitely-attuned to all sorts of social pattern, made her immediately aware that what she had done constituted a subtle rejection of Spike.  She was painfully aware of her faux pas, but it was too late ... she'd emotionally pushed him away, again ...

... and Spike, completely ignoring this, leaped, flinging his arms around her neck, pressing his cheek against the side of her throat right where she was so wonderfully-sensitive, and Rarity gasped at the sheer joy of his presence, his reality, his enthusiastic caring for her, in such colorful contrast to the apathetic gray squalor of the nightmare.  She did not need Fluttershy's amatopathy to sense Spike's love; it was utterly-evident to Rarity in the tenderness of his touch, the happiness on his face, and the faint, exciting tang of dragonmusk, rising to reinforce his always dear and welcome scent.

Rarity's foreleg almost reflexively came around to hold Spike, to press him into her chest, and her neck curved around to press her own cheek against the rear of his own head, feeling his quivering spines as a pleasant roughness, soothingly scratching her hide through her hair.  Spike accepted her, and he admired her.  She was so glad of his friendship, so lucky to have his love.  She held him tightly against her. and her own happiness was almost unbearable.  She closed her eyes, and tears of joy flooded down her face.

For a long time, Rarity simply held Spike, luxuriating in his love.  She sank to her belly to put her head on a level with his, wrapped her other foreleg around him and stroked his back gently with her hooves and aura.  She kissed his cheek, very delicately, and trailed her lips down his neck, just to what would have been perhaps the edge of indecency, had he been anatomically-identical to her Kind, and perhaps was anyway, since he had been raised in Pony body language and might well have understood the implications.  

He responded to her touch, pressing his own head into her, kissing her throat and the side of her neck, also treading right on the edge of what was permissible, given that they had not declared any love, either to each other or to the wider world.  He knew the moves of this dance, Rarity knew, for the very good reason that she had taught them to him over the winter.  He did not mind pacing out the measures.  As always, he had learned rapidly from Rarity.

She was aware that she was being even more romantically-aggressive than before, but now they were in private  What was more, she was doing it competently, seductively, in tune with Spike's own natural rhythm, once again attuned to her Talent and to her beloved alike.  She could tell by the quickening of his breath, the way he touched her, and the increased emission of dragonmusk that she was arousing him, giving him pleasure.

Beloved, thought Rarity.  That is what he is to me in my private thoughts.  And I know he loves me in return.  Why can't I just say it?  Why can't I tell him outright that I love him, instead of simply implying it, by actions which could instead be interpreted as mere shallow hedonism, a lack on my part of decent morals?  But she knew why.  If I tell him that, I'll have to mean it.  I will not tell Spike I love him and then drop him for the stallion of my dreams.  I will not treat him as Rush Rocks treated me.

She knew this was sophistry on her part, and of the worst kind.  In both directions.  Their feelings had already gone far enough that she would hurt him if she dropped him.  She would hurt herself if she did.  That was the problem:  she needed him, and yet she could not promise to him.  She could not ... it occurred to her that what she was talking about was an Understanding, or as the country-Ponies put it, an Intention.  No, she told herself.  I can't mean that.  He's still just a colt ... this isn't that serious.

She was lying to herself, and she knew it.

Spike finally pulled back a little and looked at her, concern on his face.  "What's wrong?" he asked her.

"Wrong?"  Rarity said.  "Why, nothing's wrong ... I'm just glad to see you."

"No, not that," Spike said.  "There's nothing wrong with that."  He, too, would not explicitly state that they had almost been making love.  "You were screaming before.  That's why I ..." He suddenly realized what he'd done, and said sheepishly.  "Um, sorry about the door."

She glanced at the door, which had been broken off its bottom hinge and partly splintered through in a roughly Spike-sized area.  She'd need to be a new one.

"Oh, think nothing of it, darling," Rarity reassured him.  "I was thinking of changing it anyway -- it was clashing with the new decor."

"Okay," said Spike.  "Why were you screaming?"

"Just a bad dream," Rarity said.  "Just ..."  she lowered her head, tired of trying to evade his question.  She looked him directly in his handsome green eyes.  "I'm lying," she said flatly.  "It was a bad dream, but it was not just a bad dream."  She gathered up her courage.  "I was in Starlight's village.  Her slave.  I had to live there; I had found a mate," that was the closest she was going to explain that part of the dream to Spike, "and I realized I did not want to raise up foals into slavery.  So I ..." she winced, "... in the dream I was going to kill myself.  But I was sleepcasting, so I really picked up my shears and pointed them at myself."

Spike gasped, started to move toward her.

"There's more," Rarity said, motioning him back.  "It wasn't just me making the dream.  One of them was back."

"You don't mean ..." Spike said.

"I do," Rarity nodded, her expression grim.  "A Night Shadow.  It wanted to merge with me, tried to trick me into thinking the dream was real and my only escape was to become the Nightmare."  At Spike's look of extreme alarm, Rarity explained:  "It didn't trick me.  I figured out it was a lie.  I fought it -- and I don't know who would have won, because Princess Luna saved me.  Destroyed or banished it, I'm not sure which."

"All right, Luna!" said Spike enthusiastically.

"I'm worried," Rarity said, drawing her night robe tight around herself and shivering, but not with the cold blowing in through the broken door.  "I think that my experience in that hellish little town damaged me more than it did the others.  I'm tired, but I'm afraid that if I go to sleep again, the Night Shadows will return."

"Can you block them somehow?" Spike asked.  "Love repels them -- if you think of somepony you love, that should keep them away.  And Luna once told me they run out of strength pretty fast if they don't have a host, which is why they usually can't take anypony who doesn't actually invite them in, at least with some part of her mind."

Rarity nodded.  "I wasn't sure what I'd do, but now that you're here ..."  She paused, realizing that this was not exactly the kindest thing for her to ask.  "Spike -- would you sleep with me?"

"Um ... huh?!"  Every single part of Spike's crest snapped up to rigid attention.  "Are you sure ...? ... I mean of course I will, Rarity!"

"You do understand what I actually mean, Spike?" Rarity asked.  "I mean, physically sleep beside me in my bed.  I didn't mean ..."

"I didn't think you did," Spike said.  "I wouldn't imagine you'd want me to ... well ..." his voice trailed off, and he looked away, his face flushing deep purple.

You'd be surprised, Spike, at what I might want, even if it was a terribly bad idea, Rarity thought.  You have far too high an opinion of me.  In fact, your opinion of me is one of the major reasons that makes me be better than I am.  But of course, she didn't say it.  "Spike," she said instead, "I didn't mean -- I've never meant, that you're not the most handsome and amazing and wonderful Dragon ... or being of any sort, really ... that I've ever known," she almost cooed at him.  I just mean that, right now, all I want is your companionship, to help protect me against the Shadows.  Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Spike drew himself up in what was meant to be a heroic manner.  "Of course I do, Rarity," he replied, his eyes shining with love for her.  "I'll make sure that nothing and nopony -- or noshade -- can harm you in any way!"

Rarity smiled warmly at him.  She did not feel in the slightest like laughing at him.  For she knew that, beneath his exaggerated gesture, he was a hero, who would do anything to protect her.  She remembered how he had come to her rescue on the dream-Moon, when the worst had happened, and she had been in thrall to the Night Shadows.  She remembered how he had dreamed himself a giant, smashed through the Shadow-guards, and reforged the Fire Ruby with the power of his love.

I'm waiting for the image of a perfect stallion I devised when I was a child, Rarity realized.  The image I followed to my own near self-destruction in Fillydelphia, and later to my embarrassment with Blueblood and Trenderhoof.  Why am I even still doing this?  What Pony could I possibly meet who would understand me, care for me, protect me more thoroughly than my Spike?  The longer she knew Spike, the less important this image of a perfect stallion seemed to her; the more important the reality of the Dragon.

She seriously considered giving herself to Spike in truth.

He's still too young, she reminded herself.  It would be monstrous.  Perverted.  Wrong.  A betrayal of my friendship with Twilight.

That was her last defense, and she was standing behind it.  For now.  At least until he got a bit older.

They cleaned up the foyer, which was covered in wet splinters.  Rarity put the door back in place and temporarily re-hung it on its hinges, manipulating it with her aura.  Spike heated the key parts with his breath focused in a pinpoint blue-white torch, then shaped them, nonchalantly handling the red-hot metal in his bare claws.  They hammered some plywood into place over the hole in the door  It was a less-than-perfect repair job -- the door looked shabby now and she'd still have to replace it  -- but at least there wasn't a hole in her front door letting in the chill and damp anymore.

Rarity got towels and helped Spike dry; she restrained herself from helping him in ways which he might have perceived as erotic.  She made and served him some tea; they used up most of the biscuits remaining after her earlier meeting with Fluttershy.  I am really going to have to go shopping tomorrow, she thought.

After all this they were both really tired, and went to bed.

They got under the blankets, and lay a bit awkwardly on opposite sides of Rarity's big, soft four-poster bed.  Spike very obviously did not want to do anything that even seemed like making a pass at her, while Rarity did not entirely trust herself to refrain from doing so for real.  

Dear Spikey-Wikey would be terribly shocked if he knew some of my thoughts, Rarity mused.  I'm glad that he shows absolutely no sign of telepathy.  In the legends she'd read, some Dragons could read minds.

Happily, they were both very tired, and soon dropped off to sleep.





Rarity awoke in the early dawn to a warm, dry, scaly little form hugging her side and snoring.

She looked at the Dragon with an expression of absolute love, which it was really quite a shame that he wasn't awake to see.  She smiled, and hugged him back, and then didn't let go, because she rather liked how he felt in her embrace, especially sleeping.

She was still very tired, so she slipped back into sleep.

At various points during the night he and she must have rolled into various positions, because when she woke again he was hugging her from behind, still snoring.  She considered detaching herself from him; it was full daylight now, and she was normally a very energetic Pony, but being hugged by Spike felt so nice that she instead drifted off to sleep again.

If there were any Night Shadows prowling about, they stayed away from Rarity, protected as she was in the warmth of Spike's love.





Late that morning they awoke together, drowsing side by side.  She made herself get out of bed, and Spike followed her into the kitchen, where she made coffee and they ate the absolute last of the biscuits.

"I'm sorry for the simplicity of the fare, darling," she said.  "I need to go shopping today."

"It's no problem," said Spike.  "If I'm really hungry I'll make myself a second breakfast at the castle."

She wasn't sure what to say to Spike beyond such trivialities.  In the nine years since Rush Rocks had betrayed her, she'd never had full sexual intercourse again, but she had sexual affairs, of varying degrees of physical participation, with various stallions.  A few times she'd even wound up in bed with them.

She'd never slept with them.  She'd never actually slept with any male, aside from Rush Rocks.  Until now.

Why did it make such a difference?  Why did it make her feel as if he was hers, and she his, even though they'd never ... it was something about the intimacy.  The trust involved in falling asleep in bed with a male, whether stallion or drake.  The belonging one felt, when one woke up in bed with someone else.  It was almost like being a small filly again, and sleeping with her parents -- but Spike wasn't one of her parents, and she viscerally knew it.

She couldn't get past the later betrayal and anger and hatred to remember if sleeping with Rush Rocks had been like this.  She remembered him always poking at her, even when she was tired and just wanted to sleep, as if he was scoring points off her in some pointless game which only one of them could win.  His love was zero-sum, maybe negative-sum, she thought, in the terms Fluttershy had taught her.  Spike -- his love is positive-sum.  We both win.

There was no way she could say this all to Spike.  She was embarrassed by the intensity of her own emotions.  But she had to say something to him.  He'd been with her instead of taking care of Twilight; he'd exposed himself to possible criticism and embarrassment, she understood this well -- and he'd done this all to be with her, and to protect her.  She knew he'd enjoyed sleeping with her as much as she had, but she also knew that he was at least somewhat aware of the potential social consequences.

"Thank you, Spike," she said.  "For ... protecting me last night.  For being there for me.  For ... well for being you, Spikey-Wikey.  You're my hero."  It came out awkwardly, compared to her normal smooth synchronization with social rhythms, but she was on territory she hadn't been on for almost a decade -- actually, territory she'd never been on, but only thought she'd explored, even back then.

Spike suddenly hugged her.  After a startled moment, she returned the embrace.

"Any time," Spike said.  "I ... I wish I could ... never mind."

It gave her an idea.

"We will again sometime, darling," she promised him.  "In the meantime ... well, you'll see later."  She smiled archly at him.

"I have to go see about Twilight," Spike told her.  "She's probably back from talking to the Royal Sisters now."

He'd mentioned in passing, earlier, that Twilight had written to and was going to have a conference with Celestia and Luna, so this came as no surprise to Rarity.

"I'll come to the Castle to see Twilight too, after I perform a few errands," Rarity told him.  "I'll see you then."  She saw him off at the door, and kissed a hoof to him as he departed.  "Until later," she said, and felt briefly, strangely shy.

After Spike left, the first thing she did was hunt among her fabrics.  She found some peluche, in the exact shade as her own off-white body; some indigo yarn, two azure buttons, a few other odds and ends.

Humming happily to herself, Rarity began to make a plush toy.  
> Chapter 10: The Moon's Comfort
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

Twilight Sparkle arranged her notes neatly, and, upon due reflection, weighted down all the loose sheets of paper.  She was familiar with the methods of the Moon Princess, and, especially, with Luna's love of drama.  She sat back, reading over the Biographical Dictionary regarding some of Starlight Glimmer's kin.  Many were high achievers:  scholars and scientists and soldiers and statesponies.

We are a distinguished Clan, Twilight thought, with perhaps some vanity.  She was not feeling all that harshly self-critical at present; her experience Masking as Starlight Glimmer having left her with a revulsion against doing just that.  It's a lot to live up to, of course.  Was that part of the stress that broke you, Starlight? she wondered.  Did you feel that you were not good enough for the role to which you had been born?  Twilight had herself felt that, more than once in her life. 

It only gets harder the higher one rises, Twilight thought.  From ace student to national heroine to Alicorn Princess.  Increasing freedom to choose one's own actions, yes, but the constraints of duty and morality, the expectations of others and of oneself, these bind one more tightly than mere obedience to orders one did not issue oneself.  Having to do what is right is harder than having to do what one is told.  Choosing the right path can be hard, and if one errs the guilt and the shame belong to oneself alone.  She briefly considered Celestia, and felt a pang of sadness.  Authority is a lonely burden, Most Beloved Teacher, and you've borne it, alone, for so many centuries.

And you, Starlight.  From ace student to criminal warlock to cult leader.  You made your own decisions, you tried to choose your own path.  You imagined yourself the Hero, not the Monster, of your own tale.  Which, I suppose, would make Celestia to you the Evil Overlord, and I the Monster in your tale.

Your dream was shattered by your Monster, by me.  What will you do, now?

She wondered how she might understand, might predict Starlight's actions, without falling into the trap of Masking her and Becoming the Mask that was Starlight.  There seemed no clear and safe path to understanding.

Her musings were interrupted by the apparition.

The shadows in the corner of the room combined into a swirl of spacetime, which with an eerie howling and spray of cold wind coalesced into a dark equine shape, a big beautiful blue Alicorn standing there poised with wings outstretched.

"Princess Luna!" said Twilight delightedly.  "I'm so glad to see you."  She looked at the dispersing mists.  "New teleportation spell?"

"A very old one," said Luna.  "It needs darkness from which to manifest, and 'tis less efficient than the version thou dost use, but I like me the effect in the emergence.  I did modify it long ago from the blinking of the Undying Unicorns."

"It's very impressive," said Twilight, smiling at Celestia's Sister.  She looked down at her desk.  Her papers were all in place, secured by the paperweights she had wisely placed upon them.  Luna liked dramatic entrances, which often resulted in short-lived but intense gusts of wind.  It was a character trait Twilight had first noticed in Nightmare Moon, though she refrained from bringing that up to Luna for the obvious reasons.

"Thankee," replied Luna, stepping forward and smiling down at her.  "Twilight, dear friend, how dost thou fare?  I read thy missive and am concern-ed."

"What," asked Twilight, "about that spell I accidentally cast on myself?  The Masking?"  She forced her face to keep what she hoped was a cheerful smile, even laughed a bit.  "Heh, it was scary for a moment, but I'm fine now."

"I am right glad that thou didst take no lasting harm, there," Luna said, relaxing slightly.  "Maskings were Flutter-Pony mind magics, which they used to attune themselves with the life they tended.  After the Twisting, the Changelings adapted them to reinforce their masquerades, so that they might assume more perfect semblances of Pony identities.  They learned to think like the Ponies they imitated."  Luna's deep blue eyes peered solemnly into Twilight's own.  "The danger, of course, is that the Masker may become confused between the Mask and her own true identity.  Emotions and ideas may seep from the Mask into the Core personality.  The Changelings call this 'Split-Mind,' and it is a hazard for their best Infiltrators, for those plunge most deeply into their guises.  If it goes too far, the Infiltrator may become what she imitates --"

"Sky's stragglers!" interjected Twilight excitedly.  Then, abashed by her own bad manners.  "Sorry.  I was just thinking -- they mimicked Ponies to carry out the invasion of Canterlot, but they wound up joining Equestria."

"Indeed," said Luna, nodding.  "Most of them not trained Infiltrators, but they knew some basic Masking.  They found Equestria's free and varied society more lovely than their regimented and dreary Hives.  And even more so Nictis, who was lost in Equestria long before the invasion, and thus had to maintain a Mask for many years."

"Yes," said Twilight.  "Didn't she eventually become really friendly with that inventor fellow, Spark Wheel?"

"More than merely friendly," answered Luna.  "They fell in love.  They are betrothed."

"Oh," said Twilight.  "I didn't notice that."

"Thou art not always the first to notice such things, dear friend," Luna said, smiling fondly.

"Hey!" objected Twilight.  "Usually it's Rarity who points that out to me!"  She frowned.  "Or Applejack ... sometimes Pinkie ... or even Spike ... I suppose I really am a bit oblivious to that sort of thing, sometimes ..."

"Also," Luna added, "Nictis is male.  His drone shape is his true form."

"Oh," said Twilight again.  "I guess I didn't notice that either."  She thought a moment.  "In my defense, non-Royal Changelings of both sexes all look rather alike to me.  They have very similar muzzle shapes, and they keep all the -- um, vulnerable -- parts within those carapaces."

"'Tis more obvious if one doth widen one's visual spectrum," Luna explained, "as most of their coloration is outside the normal Pony visual range.  Also, the Changeling females, even of the sterile castes, have slightly wider hips; while the drones do sport a slight swelling on the underside of their bellies, exactly where a Pony stallion of one of the Three Kinds would keep his ..." she stopped for a second, thought a moment, her eyes dancing with mischief "... vulnerable parts, as thou didst so aptly describe them.  For the good reason that the drones do in fact have those parts in there, under the carapace, which can open at times appropriate to their usage."  Her eyes twinkled.  "Though I suspect thou wilt see any Changeling drone wince, if one of thy obvious power describeth them to him in terms of their vulnerability."

Twilight blushed hotly, but also found herself smiling.  Long ago, Luna had been Laughter; her sense of humor was sometimes rough and bawdy by the standards of Twilight Sparkle, product of a more refined later civilization, but it was genuine and good-natured.  As the years had passed since Luna's Return, the Moon Princess seemed to be gradually unfolding, revealing her brighter face as her confidence and power returned.  More and more, Twilight found herself really enjoying Luna's company -- especially in moments when Twilight herself felt uncertain or vulnerable.  Luna refreshed her.

Then, she realized another implication of what Luna had told her.

"Wait," Twilight said, "I didn't know Spark Wheel was ..."

"He probably wasn't, not originally," Luna explained.  "He met Nictis when the Changeling was in female form, and their love lasted despite the revelation that the Unicorn mare Meadow Song was in truth a Changeling male."  She looked at Twilight with a certain intensity.  "Love -- true love -- can sometimes be that strong."

"Heh," said Twilight.  "I suppose."  She could not meet Luna's gaze now.  She strongly suspected her response sounded at least as pathetic and inadequate to Luna as it did to herself.  Twilight knew that Luna deserved a better reply from her, and also that she could not give her one, for the very good reason that Twilight did not know what she herself wanted.

She fully grasped the reason why the tale of Nictis and Spark Wheel had made such an impression on the Moon Princess.  In a past life, over four thousand years ago in a long-fallen advanced technological civilization, Luna had been the mortal Earth Pony scientist and engineer Moondreamer Finemare; and Twilight herself had been the space pilot Dusk Skyshine -- a stallion, and Moondreamer's beloved husband.  

Luna could remember this clearly.  Twilight couldn't.  Only -- sometimes Twilight felt flashes of familiarity, when she heard about the Age of Wonders in which Moondreamer and Dusk had lived, and loved.  And -- though Twilight did not normally feel romantic stirrings toward mares -- she found Luna to be strangely fascinating, to be beautiful and exciting, in ways she did not toward any other female.  Or, really, toward any other male Pony -- the only other entity toward whom she felt this way was a Humanoid stallion, denizen of an entirely different worldline.  And she thought she liked Luna better.

For over a year now, Luna had been slowly, patiently and very respectfully courting her.  Twilight was somewhat oblivious to love, but not that oblivious.  That was the reason, Twilight knew, why Luna sent her those warm letters, why Luna liked to spend long evenings in conversation with her, sometimes even embrace her with her wings, but never going beyond what could be interpreted as simple affection.  Twilight knew that, though Luna had strong sexual morals, she was not really all that romantically shy.  

But Luna was strangely shy with her.  And Twilight thought she knew why as well.

Luna wasn't sure either; neither about her own feelings, nor Twilight's.  The last thing Luna would want to do would be to drive Twilight away by an ill-considered advance; she at least again had the friendship of the one who had been Dusk Skyshine, and feared to lose it.  Twilight wasn't actually that easy to drive away, but Luna couldn't be sure of that.  So she moved very, very slowly.

And neither of them had ever made love to a mare.  In Twilight's case, she'd never made love to anypony, but she had grown up assuming herself heterosexual, having occasional crushes on colts or stallions, and none (until now) on fillies or mares.  Luna knew she was heterosexual:  she was no wanton (in her own words) but she had dwelt fifteen centuries on the Earth in her current incarnation, and during those fifteen centuries had by her own admission taken a couple of dozen stallions as lovers.

What if they tried to make love, and in the process only revolted each other?  Could they face one another as friends, afterward?  Twilight had heard of sophisticated members of Canterlot Society who went through their circle of friends in just such a fashion, but she did not imagine herself to be that sort of mare.  When she finally decided to make love, she wanted it to be a love that lasted; and she very much did not want to lose Luna's friendship.  Paradoxically, the strength of her love for Luna as a friend was an additional inhibition against attempting to be her lover.  Which was, Twilight supposed, not the healthiest approach to love, but then what normal approach to love covered two heterosexual mares who loved one another due to the fact that in a past life one of them had been a stallion?

Twilight was of course less certain about Luna's feelings in the matter.  But she had come to know her fairly well over the years since Luna's liberation from the Nightmare, and even better in the almost year and a half since Luna had vouchsafed to her the tale of Moondreamer and Dusk Skyshine, and she could make some educated guesses.  She knew that Luna valued her friendship greatly; that though Luna was very sexually-experienced by mortal standards, she had cared deeply for the stallions she had taken for lovers, that she was in that respect far more like Twilight herself than like those in the various Fast Sets.  Logically, Luna would also be afraid of souring their friendship through a failed love affair, and this would be her motive for moving very slowly.

Thus, they did not close completely, but instead orbited each other rapidly -- rather like the binary neutron stars about which Luna had once told Twilight during an exciting and fascinating intimate late-night conversation about astrophysics -- afraid that should they actually make physical contact the consequences would be cataclysmic.  Not a perfect simile, Twilight knew, but an entirely appropriate one, given that Luna was the Incarnation of the Cosmic Concept of Gravity.  So it would do.

"Pardon me," said Luna, ears drooping sadly.  "I presume too much, and should not, given that thou dost still heal from thy struggle with Starlight Glimmer."

"Heh," said Twilight, smiling reassuringly.  "I wasn't really wounded.  Things got only a little bit physical, and at most I took a few bruises -- nothing serious."

"I did not mean physical harm," said Luna.  She fixed Twilight in the gaze of her big blue eyes.

"Why -- what do you mean --" stammered Twilight, cringing back slightly.  "What kind of harm --"

"I am thy friend," said Luna, "but, unlike thine other friends, I do not look to thee for leadership.  I read thy report.  I know thou wert under the warlock's power as well, just as were they.  I know what it is like to have strictures laid upon one's very soul.  I know what it is like to be in command, to be forced to stifle one's fears, one's pain, for the cause that one must not say or do anything that will demoralize those who look to one for leadership.  Whatever we once were or are or may someday be to one another, I am thy friend, I always will be thy friend, and I ken what thou hast suffered, what thou doth suffer."  She leaned her neck forward slightly, ears up and gently smiling.  "Twilight Sparkle, I care for thee, and I am here for thee.  Thou may unburden thyself to me, safely and freely."

"I -- "  Twilight began.  Her voice choked off; her vision blurred in what she realized to her alarm were welling tears.  "I ..." she tried to begin again, but found herself entirely incapable of coherent speech.

Luna waited patiently, saying nothing.  Her wings twitched slightly open.

Twilight burst out in tears and practically flung herself into Luna's chest, burying her face in the hair of her coat, drinking in the comforting warmth and scent and solidity that was Luna Selena Nyx.  She was crying into her coat, she must be soaking the Moon Princess in her tears, but she couldn't control herself.  She had been holding this in for so long, she'd had to be strong for so long; once the dam had broken there was no containing the flood.

Luna's wings embraced Twilight, drawing the smaller Alicorn in to a warm hug.  Luna's neck came around and she stroked her cheek against Twilight's, gently kissed her head, careful to remain clear of her lips and the more intimate parts of Twilight's own neck.  Twilight could tell that what she was offering now was comfort, friendship, and an absolutely pure love:  she was grateful to Luna for restraining her own more carnal impulses.  Right now, all Twilight wanted was the shelter that Luna offered against a dangerous world.

Twilight sobbed unashamedly, or perhaps in great shame:  she was supposed to be an adult, an exemplar of the Lights, a Princess of Equestria, but right now she was reduced to the level of a frightened little filly.  She had been feeling like this all along, at many moments in her ordeal in Our Town, but she had known she had to stay strong, to keep up the spirits of the others, so every time she had felt like this she had resolutely shoved it back down behind high ears and stiff lips, as the saying went.  And now, it was all coming out, all at once.

If what Luna thought about them was true, they had been lovers, mates, spouses in an age before known history; their reunion in the ruined Castle of the Two Pony Sisters had been the workings of Destiny (and the culmination of a certain tricky Most Beloved Teacher's millennial plan).  If that were true, then in a sense Luna was closer to her even than Twilight's own parents, and perhaps Luna was the one Pony before whom Twilight need never be ashamed.

Twilight was not certain of her own logic there, but right now it didn't matter:  Luna was there for her, and that was all that mattered.  Twilight wanted to say these things to Luna, she wanted to say a lot of things to Luna.  First, though, she had to finish crying.  She did so, for a while.  They lay down together, Luna holding her, and some time passed.

Luna seemed to understand Twilight's need to express her sorrow, and she in turn said nothing particularly coherent, at least not in Equestrian, beyond "Hush," and "it's all right," accompanied by firmer hugs, at Twilight's most extreme outbursts.  Once she called Twilight leofling, which Twilight was pretty sure meant something like "beloved" or "darling" in a pre-Harmony version of Equestrian, and once she cupped Twilight's face in her wings, looked deeply into her eyes, and said, very tenderly, ek ann ther, a phrase which sounded vaguely Nhorse and whose meaning Twilight did not know and at the time did not want to ask.

Finally, Twilight was calm enough once more to engage in coherent speech.  She gently detached herself from Luna, looked soberly into her eyes, and said "Thank you."

Luna nodded.  "Thou art always well come into mine own life, Twilight Sparkle."  There may have been some tears on her face as well, or they might have been Twilight's.

"I was helpless," Twilight said.  "That's what bothers me the most.  I'd lost -- Starlight had taken my power, my Talent, everything that made me special.  Even my mind was muzzy -- I felt like I was trying to think through cotton wads, does that make sense to you?"

Luna nodded again.  "'Tis difficult to be cast down from a height of power," she said.  "One learns things about one's own self.  That is why the Concepts sometimes Incarnate themselves in weak or ordinary forms, to learn what the Universe looks like to common life.  Indeed, even we Alicorns are weak and ordinary compared to the Concepts."

"It was more than that," Twilight said.  "I was weak and under the hooves of my enemy.  And all my friends were there with me.  You might think that their presence made it more bearable, and in one sense it did -- but in another, it was worse.  Because it was bad enough that I was vulnerable -- that Starlight could have done anything to me:  killed me, tortured me, humiliated me in horrible ways.  What was worse is that she could have done that to my friends."

"I ken that right well," said Luna.  "I have always found friends among those I led into battle.  And always been afraid that my friends would fall in the fight.  Yet always I have had to push these feelings down in battle, for if I gave way to them, if I failed to lead with all the wit and fight with all the might of which I was capable, I would be all the more likely to make mistakes, errors which might bring about the very fell fates for my friends which I feared.  'Tis the burden of command, in a larger sense of the crowns we wear.  We decide, so ours is the fault if we fail."

Twilight nodded.  "Yes," she agreed.  "The very first time I was in real danger -- the quest for the Elements of Harmony ..."

Luna laughed.  "I remember that well," she said, smiling warmly at Twilight.

"It all seemed sort of unreal to me at first, like something out of a wonder-tale," Twilight said.  "Then it seemed more real than anything I'd ever experienced before.  When dangers struck, everything sort of slowed down, it was very easy to make decisions, it was all very cold and clear, as if I were no longer equine, no longer an inexperienced young mare on her very first dangerous mission, but was some sort of machine that assessed threats and calculated the odds and chose the best strategy in every situation."

"I did see that," Luna said.  "Even under the Nightmare's sway, I saw that thou wert brave and brilliant and utterly determined to win.  I liked thee ... I admired thee ... I did not want to slay thee ... in the end, it was by thy fearless intelligence that I knew that thou wert Dusk Skyshine reborn.  And when I knew that, I knew that rather than slay thee I must fight the Shadow to the bitter end.  Even if t'were mine own end as well."

"I was fearless at the time," Twilight said.  "Also, remember that I'd just met my friends.  I liked them, but I didn't really know them yet, not until we Attuned ... that was ... I can't even put it into words." She breathed heavily, stirred by the memory.

"I know how it felt," Luna replied.  "Mine own Sister and I were so Attuned, for five hundred years.  Though for thee it must have been more of a revelation, as my Sister and I have always been close, and had lived as Incarnate Alicorns over a thousand years when we first found the Elements."

"Then, afterward ...," said Twilight, "... when it was all over, when we were celebrating back in Ponyville ... I was looking at my new friends, and suddenly my mind went over everything that had happened, every way it might have gone wrong.  One serious mistake, at any point, and some or all of us might have died.  And I'd known this, all along, intellectually, but suddenly it hit me emotionally.  And ... well, it was a good thing there was a chair handy, because I practically collapsed.  Hopefully, nopony noticed ..."

"I did," said Luna.  "I ... well ... watched thee."  She looked embarrassed.

"I know what happened," Twilight said.  "I have a very strong adrenal system, but the adrenaline ran out, and suddenly I was just normal Twilight Sparkle again, a magic student who had never even been in a real brawl before, and I was remembering falling down cliffs and fighting Manticores and coming face-to-face with ... well, you, in a very bad mood.  And all the fear and worry I'd been suppressing caught up with me, all at once."  She essayed a wan laugh.  "I'm lucky I didn't faint, right there in front of everypony."

"But thou didst not," Luna pointed out.  "Thou art a truly brave mare."

"On the outside," Twilight said.  "Inside ... every danger we've ever been in, every danger I've ever had to lead my friends through ... I sometimes wake up with nightmares, dreams in which I made the wrong decision, and everypony died."

"I know," said Luna.  "I am sorry that I can not always aid thee with them.  I have sometimes -- I have not always announced myself.  I do not wish to intrude on thy privacy ..."

"You're welcome in my dreams any time," said Twilight.  "Um, most of them."  She blushed.  "Sometimes I have, well, really private ones and ..."

Luna made an amused sound; her cheeks dimpled.  "I am used to Ponies having those sorts of dreams.  I have seen them for two and a half millennia.  I especially do not wish to intrude on those, especially where thou art concern-ed, dear friend."  She wrinkled up her muzzle.  "It seems to me that I had the same conversation not too long ago with Rarity ... ah well."  She looked very directly at Twilight.  "The important thing is that you did make the right choices.  You live, your friends live.  You stand victorious.  You know that."

"It was different this time, though," Twilight said.  "I guess because we were captured, and then had no choice but to be inactive for two days.  And -- we were only captured because I made a mistake the first time."  She felt guilt well up within her.  "I overestimated our abilities, my abilities.  I knew that Starlight Glimmer might attack us at any moment, but I thought I was ready for it.  I assumed that I could cast on her before she could summon any magic powerful enough to defeat us."

Twilight looked down, ashamed of her failure.  "I was wrong," she said.  "She was working-up that spell while she was still talking -- something which for a spell of that power implies tremendous mastery on her part -- and she struck me down while I was still gathering the power to stun her.  "She went right through my shields; but then I hadn't summoned very powerful shields, I didn't think that some warlock hiding out in the Crystal Mountains using an artifact she barely understood could possibly be all that dangerous.  

"And of course, if my assumptions had been correct, she wouldn't have been -- except that it wasn't the Staff, it was herself, and that implied she was very dangerous."  Twilight looked back up into Luna's calm blue eyes.  "I didn't see the clues, you see ... even though Starlight slipped up when she claimed that Meadowbrook had made nine enchanted items.  It was exactly the sort of clue I should have gotten -- I'm obsessed with magical history -- but I missed the significance of what Starlight had just told me."

"Thou didst err ..." Luna began.

"And my friends paid for my mistake!" Twilight shouted in self-condemnation.  She saw Luna flinch and her ears go back at the volume.  "They were counting on me to notice things like that, to make the right decision ... and I didn't.  I failed them!  I could have gotten them all killed ... or hurt ... or driven mad ... do you know what sort of state Rarity was in?  I think she was hurt more than any of us ... she was acting very strangely when we returned to Ponyville ..."

"Rarity will be safe now," Luna said, leaning forward and stroking Twilight's cheek with one wingtip.  "Spike is with her.  He will let her come to no harm."

For a moment, Twilight wondered what else might happen between Spike and Rarity in such a state.  Then, she let go her fears:  she trusted Rarity well enough, and even more so, she trusted Spike.  Whatever happened would be in love; neither Dragon nor Unicorn would willingly harm one another.

"That's good," said Twilight, smiling affectionately at the thought of her Number One Assistant.  "You're right -- Spike won't let anything bad happen to Rarity."

"Nor willst thou let anything bad happen to thy friends, an it be in thy power," Luna said, cupping Twilight's face in her wingtips.  "Listen well, Twilight Sparkle.  Thou art brave and brilliant.  Thou willst do all thee might to win the day, and to keep thine own friends alive and well.  And if thou failest," she said with strong emphasis, "-- as may one day happen, pray that it never does! -- know that the fault will not be thine, for thou art one of the most competent commanders I have ever known or of whom I have ever heard tell.  Everypony fails sometimes, Twilight.  Celestia does.  I do.  And thou willst, from time to time.  You are only equine, my dear admirable friend, as am I and my Sister, despite our Cosmic origins.  And despite thy own Cosmic nature.  And even the Concepts can err.  Dost thou understand?"

"Heh," said Twilight.  "I think I do.  I'm being too hard on myself."

"Yes," said Luna.  "The difference between this time and the other times was that thou and thine friends were captured.  Ye were in danger, at the mercy of the foe, for a long time.  Thou hadst time for the battle-lust to die down, to reflect on thine own errors.  Then thou must essay another strategem, as thou didst with Fluttershy, and then again await the moment of decision.

"It is hard," she said, her blue eyes gazing sympathetically into Twilight's, "but it is a necessary lesson thou must learn.  Not all battles are over swiftly.  Sometimes the cause be undecided for days or weeks or months or years, and then thou willst torture thyself with past mistakes and future fears.  It will happen -- it is a pain that thou must simply learn to endure.

"I know this pain well -- it was partly this that broke me, over a thousand years ago.  The temptation was great to become a Nightmare -- a creature alight with her own selfish purpose, who loved not and thus need not regret her errors, her sins -- who lived only to triumph, and recked not the cost.  But that way lay self-destruction, and the destruction of all that I loved and cherished."  Her eyes were full of sadness.  "Seek perfection if thou will, but do not destroy thyself if thou findest merely excellence."  She smiled now.  "Thou art excellent, dear friend, but thou art not perfect, and in the quest for perfection, do not lose the excellence that thou hast attained."

"I ... I understand, Luna," Twilight said.  "I'll try to stop blaming myself too much.  To learn from my mistakes, instead of torturing myself with them."

"A good path," agreed Luna.  She passed Twilight a hanky.  "Now, make thyself presentable!"

Twilight blew her nose, dried her eyes, wiped away the tear-stains from her cheeks.

"Why?" Twilight asked.  "What will we do now?"

"Visit my Sister, of course," replied Luna.  "She desires our company."

Luna wrapped a swirl of darkness around them both, and they teleported to Canterlot.
> Chapter 11: The Errors of the Past
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

They reappeared on a black Gorgian marble teleport stage in Luna's wing of the Palace at Canterlot.

Luna led Twilight through the corridors of the Palace, so familiar to Twilight from the years of her fillyhood and the many visits she had made to both Sisters in the almost five years since Luna's Return and Twilight's posting to Ponyville.  Guards saluted the two Princesses as they passed.  Right now, in the hours of the predawn, the busy hum of the Palace was somewhat subdued, though never entirely:  the Night Court was active as always in the darkness, and the Palace in general never wholly went to sleep, as its staff attended to the business of running a continental Realm.

The Moon Princess took Twilight right into the personal section of Celestia's wing, and through the doors into Celestia's living quarters.  This was all quite familiar to Twilight; she was one of the few Ponies in Equestria who was more-or-less automatically welcome here, something which had been true since she had been accepted as Celestia's personal student, fifteen years ago.  The quiet opulence of Celestia's quarters, the antique and in some cases literally-ancient furnishings, the calm at the center of the Realm, were all things Twilight took almost for granted.

The resident of these quarters came out of her bathroom wearing a towel wrapped around her head, a good portion of her mane bound up within, stray wisps of pinkish rainbow hair poking out from the comfortable cloth.  Another towel, held in her aura, vigorously rubbed dry her white coat.  She grinned at her Sister, then smiled warmly at Twilight Sparkle.

"I'm so glad to see you," said the ruler of most of the North Amareican continent, addressing Twilight.  "I've been perusing your report --" she indicated the papers on her night table.  "It's very informative and interesting.  Well done."

"Thank you, Princess Celestia," Twilight said, and dipped her head slightly.  She did not actually need to call Celestia by her title; she was one of three other Equestrians who were technically Celestia's complete social equal (one of the two others being Luna herself); but the habits of most of her life died hard.  Likewise, the dip of her head was a compromise with her deep-seated desire to make a proper bow.

"There's no need for formality," Celestia said, maintaining her smile.  "You are not only my fellow Princess of Equestria, but my dear friend, Twilight Sparkle, whom I have known since you were a small child.  And, as I know well, one of the dearest friends of my Sister.  Why," her eyebrows arched mischievously, "I daresay you're not so far from being family."

Twilight flushed slightly at the implications of that last part, but maintained her dignity.  "You are my Most Beloved Former Teacher," she said, "and my devotion and respect for you are boundless.  But ..."

"There's always a conditional with a start like that," Celestia said, her smile shrinking slightly.  "In over fifteen centuries as Ruling Princess, one comes to notice such things.  Pardon my interruption," she said.  "Do continue."

"... But," said Twilight, "I fear that some of the conclusions I have come to in my research might be taken as critical toward you and some of your own educational policies, and I do not want to take advantage of our personal history nor of my own recent elevation in status as a platform from which to mount an attack against one to whom I owe every good thing I have achieved in my life."

"Oh dear," said Celestia, "are we to have a rebellion and civil war?  Right here in my chambers?"  She turned her head to smile at Luna.  "I believe we still have your collection of model soldiers; they survived the ruin of our old Castle intact.  We might take them out and fight a three-cornered battle in here, under any of a number of sets of miniatures gaming rules.  This would probably be better than just having at it; I think that doing it live-action would be expensive in terms of repairs, don't you?"

Luna frowned at Celestia, moved a half-step closer to Twilight, one wing twitching toward but not quite executing a protective embrace of the smaller Alicorn.  "It is not meet that thou should tease her like this, Sister.  She has struggled hard and suffered much on behalf of both Harmony and Realm."

Celestia looked between her Sister and her Most Faithful Former Student, smiling gently upon both of them.  "So that is how it is," she murmured softly, seeming for a moment to focus on something beyond the room. "Be good to each other, dear ones."

Luna flushed deeply, spluttering and managing absolutely nothing coherent.

Twilight literally knew nothing to say.  She wanted to tell Celestia that she was assuming a lot, but she very greatly feared -- or hoped? -- that Celestia's assumptions were correct.  She had seen that expression on Celestia's face before.  It usually meant a prophetic vision.  It was obvious what Celestia had just prophesied.  She wanted to deny it, but she was far from sure that the prophecy was false:  and any denial seemed too much to her like betraying a friend.

"Celly, thou canst not meddle in the lives of other Ponies like this!" Luna finally managed to get out, wings flared, her face a deep purple, with the flush spreading down her chest, possibly all the way to her barrel.

"Why not, Lulu?" asked Celestia curiously.  "I've been meddling like this for two and a half thousand years.  Maybe longer -- I was a bit of a meddler back when we were fillies, if I recall rightly.  Besides, you need an utterly-loyal friend."

"I ... well, yes," said Luna, settling her wings back down more calmly.  "Twilight Sparkle is one of my best friends."

Twilight noticed that nothing Celestia had just said in any way contradicted what she had previously implied, but she wisely chose to remain silent on that matter, merely nodding by way of agreement when the Sisters both looked at her.

"Indeed," replied Celestia cheerfully.  "And one of mine."  She turned her attention to Twilight, smiling brightly.  "My dear Faithful Former Student, I have never demanded to be above criticism.  Not by my subjects in general, and certainly not by you, my trusted and beloved friend and protege.  I suspect I know just what critique you shall level at me, and I probably deserve it.  But I shall let you speak for yourself -- which you generally do so very well."

"Uh ..." said Twilight.  "Um ... thank you, Beloved Former Teacher.  I ... I have to say ..."

Celestia looked at her inquiringly.

"As my report mentions," began Twilight, standing very formally, as if at a lectern.  "Starlight Glimmer was one of your most-promising personal students.  So was Dawn Starfall.  And Sunset Shimmer.  And myself."  She paused.

Celestia nodded encouragingly.

"I cannot help but notice that all four of the Ponies named are members of the Light Clan, my own.  And all but I went insane and became dangerous warlocks.  And ..." Twilight's face twisted slightly, her ears drooped "... I went insane as well, briefly, and without provocation cast a highly-dangerous mind control spell, for insufficient reasons."

"And I fully-pardoned you," added Celestia.

"Yes," said Twilight.  "Thank you, Beloved Former Teacher."

"You deserved that pardon," said Celestia.  "In fact, you deserved a medal -- but then I'd already honored you for the deeds in which you took that hurt.  I didn't want to keep picking at your old wounds."

"Beloved Teacher?"

"You went mad from the stress of fighting Discord," Celestia said.  "My poor mad old friend, whose madness had already cost Ponykind a thousand years of stasis and suffering before then."  She looked sad.  "I could have prevented that, you know.  I had fifteen hundered years to figure out how to discarnate him while denying him any housing.  Unlike my own Beloved Former Teacher, who had less than a second in which to act to keep him from taking another Alicorn's power, and thus becoming unstoppable in this world -- and chose the right path though it meant for her the greatest sacrifice -- I could have slain him, and spared future generations the pain I knew he would cause."

"Beloved Teacher!"

"You are not really that shocked," Celestia said, a faintly sardonic tone creeping into her voice.  "Dear Most Faithful Former Student, I wish most earnestly that you could still be the innocent filly I tutored, that you could have remained sheltered, as are so many in the gentle civilization I have fostered.  But you could not -- the role for which I have molded you is far too demanding for the maintenance of such illusions.  You were forced to learn many hard truths.

"One of which," Celestia continued, "being that I am perfectly capable of killing, and have done so many times before to protect my little Ponies.  I do not like to kill, I would rather admonish or banish or imprison or even forgive -- but when mercy seems most likely to result in more suffering to the innocent, I can kill and have killed.  That," she looked into Luna's eyes for a moment, "is one of the responsibilities of the crowns that we wear."

Luna nodded.  "'Tis true," she said.  "The Ponies sleep safe for the cause that we guard them from those who would harm them."

"I know," said Twilight.  "I have attended to your lessons, including those which are not generally known to Ponykind.  I know what You are, what You can do.  Both of you.  And ..." she said, "... I have read 'The Song of Syhlex'.  Besides,"  she raised her head proudly,  "I am a scion of the Lights, of an old military family.  I have fought for the Realm myself -- I am, as you say, no longer an innocent child."

"Then you know that I had ample opportunity to slay Discord, in his current Incarnation as a material Draconequus," Celestia said.  "And that I chose not to.  And ..." she said, "... I think that by now my Sister has probably told you enough of our family history to know why neither of us desired his death."

Luna looked away in obvious embarrassment.

"Yes," replied Twilight.  "You both loved him."

"We love him," corrected Celestia.

Luna looked angrily at her.

"Do not even try to deny it, Lulu," said Celestia.  "I know you better than you know yourself.  You never let go of love.  It is one of your most admirable characteristics.  And Dissy was raised with us, almost as a brother -- but not quite ..." she smiled gently at some memory, "... once we had defeated him, once the immediate threat was gone, we could no more slay him than he could slay us, in the thousand years of worldwide torment that he imagined to be but a greater continuation of our old Princess Game.  It would be like slaying part of ourselves."

"'Tis true," Luna said, eyes at first downcast, then raised to fix firmly on Twilight.  "As I did tell thee before, he was mine own very best friend in all the world when we were young.  He was the best friend of both of us ... at first."

"So I could not kill Discord," said Celestia, "and thus I left him as a problem for future generations to solve."  She looked at Twilight sadly.  "For you, and your Companions, to solve.  Yes, Twilight.  I put you all through that madness, risked far worse for the world as a whole, another millennium of misrule, rendered perhaps even a Darker World than was the actual Age of Discord by the resentment he felt toward my Sister and myself for opposing him, and furthermore by ..." she looked at Twilight, thought for a moment, then said, "... I will not speak of the worst Darkness, not here and now."

Twilight Sparkle had no idea what to say to that.

"When you went mad," continued Celestia, "when you thought that you had to create problems in order to solve them for me, it was a terrible moment for myself as well.  You nearly lost yourself," she explained, "and I nearly lost you.  I was terrified at that moment that the price of containing Discord, perhaps only temporarily, had been the sanity of the finest mind and best Pony I had ever known."

Twilight's face warmed uncomfortably, and she could not meet the steady gaze of those loving purple eyes.  She looked at Luna instead, and was even more embarrassed when Luna simply nodded, by way of confirmation of and agreement with the opinion of her Sister.

"I was incredibly relieved when my intervention, and that of your friends, proved adequate to shock you out of your madness," Celestia said.  "You were stronger than the others!  You went on, to see through the schemes of Chrysalis and defeat Sombra on his return, and in the end perceive the very timestream, and merge with your own greater Cosmic Self.  When I knew that you had succeeded in your Ascension -- that my Sister and I would have the benefit of your loving heart and keen intelligence for the an indefinite future to come -- it was one of the happiest realizations I have enjoyed since I opened these eyes upon the world two and a half millennia ago.  And, I hope -- a harbinger of things to come."

"About those others ---" Twilight began.

"I shall answer the question I know you are about to ask," said Celestia.  "Yes, my Most Faithful Former Student," she said.  "I had similar hopes for them, as well.  And many others whose identities you do not know, down the long centuries since my worst mistake resulted in my millennial separation from my Sister.  I have been cultivating worthy Ponies for a very long time," she explained, "hoping that there might be born one who might become a new Alicorn, able to take her place with my Sister and myself as a defender of the Realm, a protector of my little Ponies against the darkness which lusts to invade our world and consume them."

"Cadance --?" asked Twilight.

"Her coming was more welcome than you can imagine," Celestia nodded, "but she was not the one for whom I had been hoping -- towards which I had been bending my efforts for many centuries.  She was, rather, the rebirth of an old friend, one of my own Sisters from the Cosmic Level.  Her Cosmic Self had chosen to be born Pony in this time and place to help me, for She knew that my current incarnation would need her aid, and she came to assist me." Celestia smiled.  "Which she has more than ably done, for in taking control of the Crystal Empire she guards the North of our own Realm, and brings back to us an ancient wisdom sorely needed in this Age of the World, a strength against what seeps down on us from beyond the stars.

"No, Twilight," she continued, "much as it may offend your humility, you are the one whose advent I have so greatly desired.  You are the first of my New Alicorns, the promise of a bright future for Ponykind, for all the life of this Universe.  And, if I did not love you beyond measure for your own sweet soul already, even before you revealed what you might become, I would have come to love you for your deeds.  For you brought my own Sister, my dear Luna, back to me!  And ..." she smiled warmly at Twilight, "... you have been a good and loyal friend to her, have helped reconcile her to the new Equestria I have made."

Twilight was not sure any more if what she felt was embarrassment, pride or some combination of the two emotions.  Both Celestia and Luna were gazing at her with a love she felt she could not possibly deserve, but there was no way to avoid it without bolting out of the room, which would have been impossibly churlish.  Still, though all this, she could not drop her main point.

"Those others --" Twilight began again.

"Yes," said Celestia.  "The others."  She straightened, breathed in and out.  "Our original plan had been to bring Equestria back to and beyond the achievements of the Age of Wonders long before this present day.  As part of this plan, we preserved the Crystal Empire, for they were one of the few surviving stores of knowledge from before the Cataclysm, and the only one entirely friendly to Equestria.  It was in pursuit of this plan that my Sister was grievously wounded in her soul by that which had taken possession of Prince Crimson Quartz -- King Sombra, as you know him."

Twilight glanced at Luna, and was somewhat surprised to see her looking away in ... shame? ... her ears drooping and entire expression downcast.  Luna had hinted to her several times before that she had made some terrible mistake, committed some grievous sin back then, something that still haunted her memories, but Twilight had not realized how bad it must have been.  Luna looked clearly afraid, an expression which Twilight had rarely seen on the face of the Moon Princess.  With a shock, she realized that what Luna probably feared was its revelation to herself, Twilight Sparkle.

"This was not the first time that my brave Sister took harm acting as my agent," said Celestia soberly, "while I remained safe upon my golden throne --" there was definite self-loathing in her voice, "-- but it was to have the worst results.  For in consequence, she went Lone-Mad, and rebelled against me, and took into herself the same darkness that had claimed poor Crimson Quartz, and she became Nightmare Moon.  And thus I lost my dearest friend and greatest ally, and had no choice but to attempt to rule Equestria alone.

"My first task was to stablize the Realm, which took about two and a half centuries.  I faced numerous raids, invasions, rebellions and secessions, many serious enough that they risked tearing the land to bloody pieces.  It was worse than most histories recount -- and in that era, I myself behaved less kindly than you may fully realize -- but in the end I did what must be done, and the Realm was again secure, strong and at internal peace.  Such was what our tame texts now call the Consolidation.

"I now could turn my full attention to the task of regaining my Sister.  The spell had some seven hundred fifty years to run, which I hoped might give me enough time for what I had to do.  It is something you once guessed, Twilight Sparkle -- I know this because I saw the records of your geneaological researches -- but of which you, quite wrongly though flatteringly, ultimately deemed me incapable.  But then, my methods were less direct than you probably imagined."

A shock thrilled through Twilight's system.  She couldn't mean --

"Yes, Twilight," said Celestia, "I bred Ponies.  To be precise, I favored certain lineages, and ensured that they intermixed with certain other lineages, and crossed and re-crossed."

Twilight's mouth fell open.

"It was easier than you might imagine, and involved little subterfuge and no real force," explained Celestia.  "You must understand -- I had the power to assign Ponies to posts that would throw them into close personal contact with one another.  All I needed to do was to find Ponies at around the right age, of the lineages I desired to cross, and so assign them.  Personality and propinquity accomplished the rest.  During the eras when arranged marriages were common, it was even easier, which created a moral hazard for me:  I was tempted to encourage the retention of such customs long past the sociotechnical systems which suit them."  

She cocked an eye at Twilight.  "You actually tend to still be born on the worldlines in which I succumbed to those temptation, but -- well, let me just say that Twilight Velvet and Night Light are not Ponies who respond well to the use of force, even in a very indirect fashion.  As might be expected, really, of the parents of two Ponies of such immense strength of character as Shining and yourself.  In the worldlines where arranged marriages are still practiced by the Canterlot gentry, your home life isn't as happy, and this creates weaknesses, which our enemies use to ... well.  All in all, I am glad that in most Equestrias, I chose to allow romantic courtship to evolve as a natural consequence of the greater wealth attendant upon industrialization."

Twilight closed her mouth.  I suppose to her, courtship customs don't have the same force they have on me, she reflected.  She's seen everything from the Arcadian splendor of Paradise Estate to the anarchy of the Age of Discord to the social truces of the Time of Thrones, and she's probably personally responsible for much of what I deem decent morality in modern society.  I'm being temporally provincial, a serious failing in a student of history.  She frowned at herself.  It's just that, most of the time, I don't think of her as 'history.'  She's more like my second mother.  It suddenly occurred to her that, if she herself were the product of a centuries-long breeding program Celestia had carried out, "second mother" might be exactly the correct term with which to describe her Beloved Former Teacher.

"One of the Clans upon which I exerted my influence," Celestia continued, "was of course the Lights.  There was, in fact, a prophecy that a great heroine would come of the Light Clan, and help free the Moon Princess from her enthrallment in Nightmare.  I know this, because I was the one to make that prophecy, though not in my identity as Princess Celestia."

Twilight already knew that Celestia was fond of moving among Ponykind in disguise, so this did not entirely surprise her.

"I knew that a Light would be most likely to be the one to attune with Magic, and be an incarnation of that Concept --" Celestia sighed, "Causality at the Cosmic Level is difficult to express in Equestrian, or any tongue spoken on this planet.  The Gallopfreyans, who are not from this planet, have the words -- but you do not yet know that language.  Ah well.  This is a problem with discussing time travel and worldline-shifting in general, which is something we're going to be doing fairly soon.  I urge you to simply accept what I am saying, for now -- that you were both born as an incarnation of Magic, and were not inevitably Magic until you actually attuned to that Element, contradictory as that seems in the logic you have learned.

Twilight made the mental effort, did so, and nodded by way of confirmation.

"Magic was the Concept I could most directly midwife," Celestia continued, "so I set up my School for Gifted Unicorns primarly as an institution to lead potential Magics to me, though of course it had an incredibly useful secondary function in training elite Unicorn mages and scientists.  I ... made other arrangements ... for the other Concepts, and encouraged certain other lineages in other ways.  For instance, I promoted the Pegasus flying contests and created the Wonderbolts, in part to act as an attractant for potential Loyalties.  And I watched key lineages of all the Three Kinds.

"I had prophetic visions, I knew something of the physical characteristics I should be looking for, that might serve as visible markers of the Concept behind the Pony."  She sighed.  "Do you know that Pinkie Pie is close to a dead ringer for her ancestor Harmonia?  When I met Harmonia, when I perceived the extent of her intellect and heard the beauty of her voice, I thought I had my Laughter, but had somehow missed her in her youth.  Yes, Twilight --" there was bitterness in her tone,  "-- I mistook a serial killer for the Joy Bringer.  Remember that, if you are ever tempted to imagine me infallible!"

Something suddenly occurred to Twilight Sparkle.

"Our apperance," she breathed.

"Yes, Twilight," confirmed Celestia.  "Starlight Glimmer, Dawn Starfall, Sunset Shimmer and yourself look much more like one another than is explicable purely by being Lights.  It is a marker of being a potential Magic.  There were and are many others, of whose existence you are unaware."

Twilight was horrified, her eyes widening as she imagined a legion of mad cousins.

"Most," Celestia said, "suffered no terrible fates.  I taught them, developed their minds, and they went on to have brilliant careers.  If I were disappointed that they had proved incapable of Ascension, I tried not to let them see it.  There have been many who have -- you might call it 'partially attuned' -- they developed unusual capabilities which may have been the gifts of their related Concepts, without actually turning out to be Incarnations of those Concepts."

Twilight breathed a sigh of relief.

"But yes," Celestia continued, "some went mad, in part or total.  Understand, Twilight Sparkle, I was guiding mortal Ponies toward an expression of what earlier ages might have termed 'divinity.'  I helped them develop their special powers, express their Talents more fully and completely than is normal even among Ponykind, which is a species well-suited to such a program owing to the existence of the Marks --"

"Cutie Marks?" asked Twilight.

"On this world, only Ponies and closely related sapients have what your time has so amusingly chosen to call 'Cutie Marks' -- I did not invent the term -- an external and visible expression of Talent, and beyond that of Destiny.  A direct link to the worldlines, to the sort of awareness expressed in the Pool of Truth and the Paradise Entity.  Have you never wondered how strange that is?  The Crystal-Imperials, who knew that the Marks had greatly increased in specificity and scope in the Cataclysm, developed whole fields of science and magic devoted to their study ... but I digress.

"Know this, dear Twilight, I did not mean to drive anypony mad, let alone intelligent young Ponies whom I, for the most part, loved as if they were my own children.  But I was trying to accelerate the natural course of evolution -- the growth of Ponykind into the great race it is destined to become, if it can survive -- and this imposes stresses ..." she looked down, sighed hard.  "I evade my own responsibility.  Yes, Twilight Sparkle, I knew that what I was doing would drive some number of my students mad, and yet I did it.  I behaved as a criminal, a warlock under my own laws, and if you desire you may hold me accountable in a century or so -- if Equestria survives, and I do, which are two things far from certain at this present moment in history."

Twilight felt a pang of unease at Celestia's self-condemnation.  She knew that Celestia must have done what she did for the greater good, and that the risk attendant to her students seemed justified by the benefits that so many had gained by her tutelage.

"Beloved Teacher," said Twilight, softly.  "I would never accuse you of such crimes."

"I accuse myself," Celestia said.  "Where does teaching end?  Where does abuse begin?  Tell me the answer to that riddle, and perhaps I will be able to forgive myself for this someday.  Or not, for the answer may not be entirely to my liking."

Twilight did not know what to say to this.

"What thou didst, thou didst in my cause," said Luna, speaking up unexpectedly.  "And for all the Realm.  The blame is mine own, for having fallen in the past, birthing the problem that thou then must make shift to solve."  She stepped forward, gently nuzzled her Sister.  "Do not take all the blame onto thine own self.  My back be broad enough to bear that burden."

Twilight moved up shyly, touching her nose to theirs as well.  The three shared a moment of pure closeness, then Twilight stepped back and spoke:

"I suffered some of those stresses, Dear Beloved Teacher," she said, "and I helped one of those who went mad.  I forgive you any harm you have done me, and I promise that, to the extent that it I can consistent with the good of the Realm, I shall do my part to undo any harm you have done others."

"That -- and success -- may be the best absolution for which I can hope," replied Celestia earnestly, a tear in her eye.  She visibly gathered her composure.

"So, yes, Twilight.  Starlight Glimmer was my student.  She was, of course, a very intelligent filly, but a relatively late bloomer.  She was thirteen when she got her Cutie Mark -- old enough that she was starting to fear she might be adermosignotic.  One unfortunate aspect of the Marks is that the greater the Talent, the longer it may take to develop to the point that the Mark displays.  And -- in a nigh-inevitable cruelty -- many Ponies mistake Mark for maturity, so that the adermosignotic are wrongly imagined to have remained in childhood.  Most Ponies find their Marks between ages nine to eleven.  I can only imagine the anxiety Starlight must have felt for a few years, and the rejection she may have experienced from her former friends, as they received their Marks and she did not.

"I can only imagine this," Celestia continued, "because even as a teenaged filly, Starlight Glimmer was a very private Pony.  It would not be correct to say that she was shy and withdrawn, because she was not.  She was superficially very extroverted; always willing to express her opinions.  She made friends with little difficulty, but -- as your psychological profile of her indicates, and I must compliment you on your accurate reasoning from very limited information ..."

Twilight smiled at the praise.

"... these friendships ran shallow, and she dropped friends as readily as she made them.  Similarly, though she expressed an interest in the opposite sex, and easily found escorts to social events, she did not actually fall in love.  It was as if she had developed skills for dealing with other Ponies, but only very superficially.  Her surface interacted with their surfaces, but there was no deeper contact, no true meeting of hearts and souls, such as you have found with your Companions.

"I should have realized what this indicated -- what is the point of having two and a half millennia of experience with other Ponies if one does not notice such things? -- but I fear that I saw only what I wanted to see.  I saw only Starlight's promise.  I did not realize her alienation, her detachment from Ponykind; a ruthlessness bordering on sociopathy and a hunger for true friendship that was frustrated by her own inability to risk her own heart, a hunger which combined with that alienation and ruthlessness to create a warped and terrible purpose.

"Understand," said Celestia, "Starlight Glimmer's Talent is truly immense, and her potential would have been wonderful had she not gone insane.  It is -- a meta-Talent for Talent, just as your Talent is a meta-Talent for Magic.  Talent is essentially the inborn ability to master that aspect of Reality within that Talent's scope.  Just as you can understand and cast any spell you perceive, Starlight can understand and affect any Talent she perceives.  She cannot manifest it -- she might have gained that ability in time, had she Ascended -- but she can sense and affect it with her own magic.  And, because she can to some extent do this with her own magical talent, she can attain great mastery of any magics upon which she focuses.

"It occurred to me very quickly that this might be the key to my Sister's liberation," Celestia continued.  "A Shadow maintains its mastery by warping the virtues of its mount against her -- in Luna's case, it turned her affinity with the night against her, twisting it into an obsessive hatred of the day, and of myself, then using Luna's own courage and integrity to fuel her defiance and rebellion."

Luna nodded in confirmation, eyes shut, lips tight-closed.

"A Mark is an expression of one's Talent, of one's own soul," explained Celestia, "and hence if one could manipulate a Mark, one could affect the soul of which it was a manifestation.  A mage with the power to affect the Marks of others could have restored the proper shape of Luna's soul, reversing the deformation inflicted by the Night Shadow.  If this could have been done, Luna might have been able to drive out her possessor without the need to be purged of it by the Elements of Harmony -- which was a dangerous remedy; it badly weakened her, and might have killed her, depending on how far the Shadow had corrupted her, something of which I could not be certain."

Twilight drew a sharp indrawn breath, looked at Luna in alarm.

"I think you see then," said Celestia, "why I so very much wanted to believe that Starlight would be my Sister's savior.  The plan which actually succeeded was risky:  there were dangerously serial elements.  Had you or any of your Companions fallen, even merely wounded, you could not have employed the Elements against the Night Shadow.  I was counting very much on your competence and of that of the other candidates, and on my belief that Luna would not really want to harm you or them, especially because she had known three of you in past lives.  Happily," she smiled at Luna, "I was quite right, and the quest proved successful.

"Had Starlight fully developed her potential and been available, on the other hand," pointed out Celestia, "she alone might have been sufficient for success.  And the Elements still would have been available.  I actually, when I originally thought on how to rescue Luna, conceived several promising schemes.  Only one came near fruition," she looked at Twilight, "the one you carried out.  It was a close-run thing."

Twilight wondered briefly what the others might have been, but now was not the time to ask such questions.

"Now," said Celestia briskly, "on the future threat posed by Starlight.  You are right that she cared greatly for her commune.  She imagined that she was building a new model for Equestria, shaping a new Destiny, and given the nature of her Talent, she may have actually been right, though I do not think that it would have been an Equestria in which it would be very pleasant to live."

"I was curious about that myself when I saw her village," Twilight commented.  "If everypony's Talents were suppressed, how could they have grown enough food to eat?  Or crafted what else they needed to enjoy civilized lives?"

"The simple answer is 'with great difficulty.'  Starlight," Celestia sighed, "was always very enthusiastic, a skilled tactician and strategically-gifted.  She had not, however, the patience to understand the social and economic underpinnings of any large-scale operations.  Our Town, writ large, would have been a subsistence-level Realm, in which Ponies would have suffered miserable lives, forever at the edge of actual starvation; her own edicts would have inevitably been enforceable only with the application of universal terror.  I do not think that she could have maintained it for more than a few generations, even if she became an immortal Alicorn like ourselves; but those few generations would have been horrible for those who endured them.

"Though Starlight is very intelligent, she did not see this and probably does not see this now.  Her commune was ended through your own actions," Celestia explained, "and hence she can fix all the blame on external causes, without stopping to consider just why it was that her Ponies rebelled so completely against her, once her seeming perfection was cracked by the revelation that she had retained her own Mark and Talent.  She blames you and your friends -- and I would dare say mostly you."

Twilight nodded.  "She probably thinks I control my friends just as she controlled her followers."

"Exactly," confirmed Celestia.  "And to her, the consequences were emotionally-devastating.  She probably considered her followers to be her friends -- the first group of friends she had ever managed to keep for more than a year or two.  Some, such as her chief lieutenant, she may have imagined to be her soul mates.  Think how you would feel toward somepony who robbed you of your friends."

"I'd be heart-broken -- and furious toward anypony who did that," said Twilight.  "I might want some sort of revenge."

"Starlight Glimmer will almost-certainly seek revenge," agreed Celestia.  "So the question becomes:  what will she do to seek it?"

"She might just try to ambush and attack me," said Twilight.  "But -- I'm not really all that easy to defeat any more, am I?  I'm an Alicorn, and I've had some experience in life and death battles."

"One might say that," commented Luna, confidently smiling at Twilight.  "Thou art no raw recruit, and have not been for some years now."

"Don't underestimate Starlight Glimmer," Celestia warned them.  "She is a very powerful and skilled mage, and is two decades your senior," she pointed out to Twilight.  "But I agree -- a simple ambush and magical duel would not be her preferred approach.  Even though she might win, she would have no assurance of victory; indeed, I think the edge might be yours, provided that you remember her ruthlessness, and are equally willing to strike her down.

"What's more," Celestia continued, "if she merely slew you, this might to her seem an inadequate revenge."

"Killing somepony sounds like pretty adequate revenge to me," Twilight commented.  "Maybe even a bit excessive."

"Remember," said Celestia, "you did not slay her.  You made her suffer.  She will want to make you suffer similarly in return.  Ideally, she would rob you of your friends, as she believes you robbed her of hers."

Twilight's eyes widened in horror.  "You think she'll attack my friends?"  She turned toward the door.  "I should get back to them, make sure they're all right ..."

"Calm thyself," said Luna.  "We have no cause to believe that she will attack your friends directly, or on the instant."

"Yes," said Celestia.  "In fact, she is very unlikely to attack right now.  She will have been weakened by her previous defeat, and will want to recover her strength and plan her course of action.  She is somewhat impatient, but she will not simply show up at Ponyville and start destroying the town.  Indeed, her own belief that she is a benevolent reformer will make her quite unwilling to directly harm those whom she considers innocent.  At a minimum, she would research her opposition, try to understand the strengths and weaknesses of both you and your Companions, before making her first moves, overt or otherwise."

"And thy friends are mighty," added Luna, "and have unusual powers.  Starlight Glimmer is strong, but she cannot match Dashie's speed, or Pinkie's precognition, or Fluttershy's Changeling abilities.  Starlight does not know the details of their powers, but she knows that they have strange abilities, and also that she did not have to face them the last time, for she was able to ambush all of them together in a way that she would find difficult to repeat.  If she tries to take your friends one at a time, she will not get far before she fails at a try, or the others mark her actions.  She knows this:  her plan will be more cunning than direct attack."

"That's both a relief," said Twilight, "and a concern.  I'd almost rather she just jumped up and attacked me, or even us -- I could deal with that."

"The next question would be, therefore, the nature and extent of Starlight's powers," said Celestia.  "These are greater than they might be, because -- trusting Starlight Glimmer as I did, and hoping that she might be the key to saving my Sister, I did what was in retrospect perhaps a very foolish thing."

Twilight looked at Celestia in alarm.

"I let her study freely the writings of Starswirl the Bearded," Celestia said.  "All of them."

Twilight did not, exactly, faint.  At no point whatsoever did she lose consciousness.

But she did find herself, very suddenly, sitting on the floor.
> Chapter 12: A Robust Universe
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

"It's not that bad," Celestia said, looking comfortingly at Twilight where she lay upon the floor, forehooves over her own head.

"Oh, that is truly a relief," commented Luna.  "For it did sound, to mine own innocent and wondering ears, as if thou didst arm one of the mightiest and maddest mages in Equestria, who wishes the worst sort of harm upon the Realm in general and our dear friend Twilight Sparkle in particular, with spells which can warp the very fabric of space and time as a foal might make mud-pies.  And that would seem, to mine own untutored sense of strategic consequence, to be very bad indeed!"

"To begin with," said Celestia, casting Luna a very annoyed look, "Starlight Glimmer did not have an unlimited amount of time to study those spells.  I first showed her the Spell of Destiny -- the one which you finally completed and cast to become an Alicorn.  She wanted to understand more of the concepts underlying the spell -- so I let her have access to the Restricted wing of the Library.  You've seen most of what's in there.  And I brought out his notes from his secret library -- the one in the crystal caverns beneath this very palace.  I let Starlight copy some of them."

"Actually, that is a relief," Twilight said, perking up a bit.  She put her forehooves back onto the floor and sat up straight.  "That means she only has those spells she either memorized, or was able to copy and take with her when she left your tutelage."

"Exactly," said Celestia.  "Secondly, Starlight Glimmer did not understand everything she read.  She was brilliant, yes, but she did not have as much experience or knowledge of the greater Multiverse as do you, Twilight.  I never showed her the Pool of Truth, nor did she visit any  other worldlines when she was my student.  She is not as strongly linked to her Concept as you are to yours.  Thirdly, the main line of inquiry she pursued was that which led her to craft the Spell of Sameness -- and, when she started casting an early version of it on inadequately-consenting test subjects, the Night Watch learned what she was doing -- at which point I discharged her, and hence she no longer had access to Starswirl's writings."

"That would have been some twenty years ago, though," said Twilight.  "Wouldn't it?"

Celestia nodded.  "And therein lies the principal danger," she said.  "Starlight Glimmer has had two decades to pursue her researches.  We know that she spent the last several years preoccupied with her commune, but even during that time she might have had some free time to develop her other magics.  And what did she do between 1483, when I dismissed her, and 1498, when she made her first recruits to her commune?  During those fifteen years, the Night Watch could not find her."

Twilight nodded.  "She's really good at anti-scrying spells.  When she wants to hide, I'd imagine she's almost impossible to find."  She felt a sinking sensation as she considered the implications of what she'd just said -- the chances were that, when Starlight Glimmer did strike, she'd achieve at least strategic surprise.

Then, she had a cheerful thought:

"But the Map can find her!" Twilight exclaimed.  "It found her before!  That's how we got to her village in the first place.  The Map sent us, and it saw right through her scryshields!"

"Your Map is an expression of the Harmony," Celestia said, "which is the combined destinies of all life on this planet.  There is a particular hope in that, which I shall return to in good time.  It probably sent you there because something she was doing was about to reach some critical threshhold, threatening some sort of phase transition to a less benign moiric state.  You arrived just in time to prevent her from doing whatever thing she might otherwise have done."

"What do you suppose was that?"  Twilight wondered, rubbing her own chin with one hoof.

"It is impossible to say," Celestia said.  "Indeed, I am far from certain that even Starlight knows the answer to that question.  "Starlight Glimmer has great power, and considerable knowledge, but little understanding.  This, sadly, makes her more dangerous -- she may attempt conjurations a wiser mage might avoid."

"Do you have any idea what she will try to do now?" Twilight asked.

"The most powerful and dangerous of the magics which I believe she learned from Starswirl, whose power would attract her and whose danger she might refuse to recognize, are of course the temporal magics."  Celestia looked soberly at Twilight.  "It is indeed fortunate that even Starwirl was unable, given that a Unicorn would have to power the spell from her own internal magic, to devise a spell that could send the caster back more than a week, and for more than a short time --"

"-- and only once," added Twilight.  She noticed a certain look of discomfort on Celestia's face, and asked, "Wait, it does only work once, doesn't it?"

"That," replied Celestia, "is an oversimplification.  The truth is, that with enough energy and skill, a mage can do much, much more."  She took a long deep breath in and out.  "Starswirl and I were interested in codifying versions of temporal magic which could be cast safely by any powerful mage.  The truth about temporal magic is more complex -- and dangerous."

"Dangerous?" asked Twilight in some alarm.  "To whom?"

"To the caster.  To her foes.  To third parties.  To the timestream."  Celestia sighed.  "But, mostly, to the caster."  She gazed at Twilight searchingly.  "Twilight Sparkle, I am about to teach you some truly dangerous things about the nature of the Universe, and I charge you to use this knowledge carefully and wisely."

"Of course, Beloved Teacher!" Twilight replied, almost indignantly.  "I would never let you down!"

"You are, of course, familiar with the concept of Paradox, with something being both true and untrue at the same spacetime and in the same manner," Celestia siad.  Any Universe is, essentially, realized information, like the printing in a book, and Paradox may be seen as ink spilled over the page, ruining it and rendering it unreadable.  Because all the Universe is connected, unchecked Paradox will spread, until it destroys the Universe.  That is the worst possible consequence of unwise time travel."

Twilight once again felt almost faint, as if the structure of existence were in truth unraveling beneath her.

"However, Paradox is constantly generated by natural processes," Celestia said.  "Indeed, time travel is itself a natural process, since no magic, no technology, no matter how subtle or advanced, can accomplish anything truly unnatural.  And yet the Universe does not cease to exist:  thus providing a literal 'existence proof' that something or things must damp out Paradox.  How to explain the seeming Paradox of the absence of Paradox?"  Her voice was light and lilting now; Twilight could tell that Celestia was getting into her lecture, enjoying it as she had when she had given Twilight daily lessons.

"The greatest suppressors of Paradox are, as you know, ourselves, Twilight Sparkle.  Or, to be more precise, our Cosmic Selves.  The earliest Cosmic Concepts were produced by the nascent Universe to protect itself from the threat of Paradox.  This is a natural process:  Universes descend from earlier Universes which were able to survive and reproduce, and Paradox is like disease.  The Cosmic Concepts of a Universe are a key component of its immune system, an immune system which allows it to survive the micro-predation which else would eat it alive.

"The Cosmic Selves of my Sister and myself were born in the very early Universe," Celestia explained, "as antigravity expanded spacetime faster than light and strained simple causality.  I, to control and embody the strong force, which mediates nuclear processes, most importantly Fusion; she, to control and embody Gravity, which is dark and invisible, yet in sufficient strength can twist spacetime.  Yet, we were not born ex nihilo, we evolved from contests between associations of simpler nodes, systems which handled those forces before we appeared, and which still handle those forces most of the time, in routine matters.

"Now as you also know, Twilight, the way in which time travel is especially productive of Paradox is as follows.  If a time traveler travels back within her own personal event horizon, she can alter events in such a way that she should have perceived this alteration as already existing in her own past.  It is -- perhaps frighteningly -- easy to find an event which in simple causality should be inconsistent with the world which produced her.  The classic expression of this is the "Grandmother Paradox" -- traveling back in time and doing something which prevents one of one's own parents from being born, hence preventing oneself being born -- but if one were never born, how did one exist in order to prevent one's parents from being born?

"That paradox, of course, was first formulated in the Age of Wonders, by Ponies who had just discovered General Relativity but did not yet grasp the full implications of Quantum Mechanics.  For of course, its solution is simple:  when one prevents the birth of what would be oneself in the future, one is not altering one's own worldline, but rather splitting off a new worldline, in which one will not be born -- but one was already born in one's original worldline.  Hence, there is no true Paradox in this situation.

"Nor is there in what the Universe does all the time -- for every time a particle interaction occurs, all possible interactions occur, in a shower of virtual particles which -- from the point of view of any particular Universe -- mostly vanish in an instant after their creation.  The influence that they have in shaping the total interaction was the great discovery of Dr. Sweetie Finemare, the brilliant mother of my former incarnation, who showed how to represent the effects of such effects in Finemare Diagrams."  Love and pride shone in Celestia's eyes.  "The mathematics, of course, are more complex, but we shall not discuss this at present.

"How does the Universe choose which virtual interaction to realize?"  Celestia asked.  "It chooses all of them, simultaneously, but we only see the one chosen for our Universe; the others exist in other Universes in the Multiverse.  Were that the whole of it, though, the Multiverse would not be composed of discrete worldlines, but rather smeared in a tangle in which there would be no identities -- not of Universes nor of those who dwelt within them.

"That was as far as the Age of Wonders took the understanding of the Many-Worlds Quantum Model, for they had not the tools to perceive the larger structure.  They were in the position of Bronze Age astronomers who had somehow grasped the concept of the evolution of star systems, but understood neither gravity nor resonant effects.  To them, the Heavens would logically have been but a confusion, with no organizing principles -- they would have gratefully run back to simpler models of planets pushed around by alicorns ... not realizing the problems of even those ..." Celestia said in a dark aside, and Luna grinned wryly, though Twilight could not see the joke.

"How is chaos avoided?" Celestia asked rhetorically.  "Why, because any given Universe has a ... coherence, an inertia.  Barring the application of either considerable energy, beyond that producible by any individual Unicorn or even Incarnate Alicorn; or the very skillful choice of cusp to change, any split in worldlines will quickly and naturally heal.  In other words, the worldlines do split at every particle interactions, but they almost instantly merge again.  That is what generates the shower of virtual particles Sundreamer and Moondreamer's mother noticed, and that is what generates the solution and mutual annihilation of the vast majority of such particles.

"This inertia is also why the mere probability of time travel being discovered by sapient beings in a Universe does not destroy it."

"Destroy it?"  Twilight gasped in horror, her mouth hanging open.  "Why would this --"  She considered, imagined a Universe with multiple factions of beings, each trying to change the timestream in their own favor.  They would be journeying back to eras in which their opposition was less capable than themselves.  They would, by and large, succeed in effecting changes, in many different directions, again and again and again.  Repeated temporal changes would make existence unstable downtime from any of these changes, destroying the Universe in a personal sense, but ... "Do you mean more than the fact that, at some point in the future, time travel would change things so we never were born?"

"She is keen," Luna commented to Celestia.

"I knew that, she has after all been my prize student," replied Celestia, perhaps a bit smugly.  Then, to Twilight.  "Yes, my most Faithful Former Student.  A Universe as a whole possesses ontological 'substance', its 'reality,' so to speak.  This substance, when being an analogue of mass, generates ontological inertia -- it is why things continue to be from moment to moment, why causality operates smoothly, essentially as a vector force.  Just as changing the vector of an object possessing mass requires energy, so too does changing the ontological vector of an object possessing ontological mass require ontological energy.  This --"

"-- resists changes by time travelers!" Twilight crowed.  "That means that it's not that easy to change the past!"  Her heart soared with the joy of new intellectual discovery.

"Exactly," said Celestia, smiling at Twilight's enthusiasm.  "What normally happens when somepony tries to change the past is that they instead move onto a parallel world track, a new worldline.  The Multiverse attempts to conserve ontological energy, so normally this new worldline is one which will re-merge with the main worldline as soon as possible.  The micro-scale quantum principle of only observable differences mattering applies at the macro-scale as well, though its manifestations can be very different.  Your friend, Pinkie Pie, uses this last principle herself, quite frequently, to enable her reality-warping.

"But --" Celestia's expression sobered, "--this is not always possible.  There are points on any worldline -- 'cusps,' they are sometimes termed -- where small changes can have very large effects.  For instance, the fight you two made against the Night Shadow at our old castle was such a cusp -- had things gone differently, the Nightmare might have triumphed, or Luna might have died, and either of those outcomes would have had very large effects in the future, not only to we three Ponies, but to Equestria and indeed the whole Earth.  That is an obvious cusp -- others are more subtle.

"In the case of a cusp change," Celestia continued, "the new worldline must completely separate.  However, as ontological energy is conserved, what happens is that the ontological energy of the new worldline is usually but a tiny fraction of that of the original worldline.  It is less real than the original Universe.  The degree of reality depends in part on the amount of ontological energy applied by the time traveler, and in part on the specific way it is applied -- to what cusp, and how skillfully.  Cusps are crucial points, they are places where a sort of ontological leverage exists, of which a skilled time traveler can take advantage to shift significant amounts of ontological energy into the new Universe."

"Think of it as being as a force multiplier in battle," interjected Luna, "like unto a key pass at which a small force can hold back a whole army, or a vulnerable crossing where troops attempting to ford a river can do little to defend themselves, and may be bombarded and suffer heavy losses from even a few well-sited cannons."

Twilight nodded.  "I think I have the idea," she said.

"But," said Celestia, "the Universe attempts to resist such changes.  In addition to the brute force of ontological inertia, there are more subtle forces which favor those attempting to protect the timestream in many ways.  You see, our Cosmic Selves are but the upper part of a vast hierarchy, or ecology -- the two concepts are much the same thing on a Universal scale -- which Universes have evolved in their ontological defense.  The hierarchy extends all the way up to the Father and Mother of our Cosmic Selves -- and all the way down through Helpers such as Wisedreamer, through spirits of increasingly-lesser intelligence and power, and all the way down to near-mindless creatures such as the Langoliers, which consume and recycle ontological substance which might otherwise be wasted.

"One such entity is the Tree of Harmony," explained Celestia.  "It is ... think of it as the Earth's incarnation of the Concept of Harmony.  Every planet with life above a certain level of complexity grows such a Tree in time, though those generated by very alien worlds may look very different from what we think of as a Tree, and -- as you may have noticed -- the Tree of Harmony is only very roughly tree-like in its general stucture.  It is very powerful in certain ways, and intimately connected to the timestream, from which it derives its nutriment in some rather obscure and complex ways.  The Tree helps organize the local timestream and recruits other life forms as mobile agents to protect it against damage.  It is not itself mobile, save as a plant may be through vegetative growth, though unlike most organic plants, it can grow its extensions through hyperdimensional portals to emerge far from its main mass."

"My Castle," said Twilight.  "It's part of the Tree.  And the Map is a means by which it communicates with us."

"Just so," said Celestia.  "It is highly intelligent, but in different ways to us, who are incarnate as animal life.  Our Cosmic Selves can converse with its Cosmic Self directly, but the necessary mental modules were not included in either our incarnate selves or its.  It thinks by position and holistic implication rather than in conscious conception and linear communication; it has as much difficulty understanding us as we do it.  But it can sense disharmony, especially when that disharmony threatens the time stream, and it can act in various manners, such as producing Fruit and giving them to mobile agents who will use them appropriately to achieve compatible ends."

"The Age of Discord," Twilight said.  "The Elements of Harmony.  Discord triggered a defensive response.  You were its mobile agents.  Both of you."

"Yes," affirmed Celestia. "I could have warned poor Dissy that if he continued on that path, he was bound to provoke other powerful beings against him, ones who cared about his well-being less than did my Sister and I.  He was fortunate that the Tree chose us as the Element Bearers, rather than other mages to whom he would not have been dear and special.  The Tree wanted to discarnate him and drive his spirit back to the Cosmic Level:  we imposed our will on the Elements just enough that he was merely petrified.

"This would, incidentally, be a bad subject to discuss with Discord -- he probably realizes that we did our best to avoid harming him, but he does not like to admit that anything can overpower him, and he might be inclined to dramatic displays of his independence and power if you raised the issue.  Dissy," Celestia sighed in exasperation, "strange as he is, can sometimes be like any other stallion."

"More like unto a squalling little colt," grumbled Luna.

"Aren't they all," said Celestia, fondly smiling.  "Perhaps it is a good thing that in this Age your stallion is actually a --"

"We should return to the main topic, Sister," said Luna quickly.

"Yes," agreed Twilight with equal haste.  "I agree!"

"Very well," assented Celestia.  "The last point I will cover is the Temporal Fugue.  This happens when a time traveler repeatedly crosses her own worldline, generally to concentrate her force -- including ontological energy -- upon a single point in the timestream, the object being to appear slightly earlier than the foe and strike before the foe has struck.  This is often done in battle between two Time Warriors.  It is a powerful but dangerous technique -- both to she who attempts it and her enemies, and to the world on which she attempts the technique.  The concentration of energy can overpower and defeat a foe; it can lash back and destroy the unskillful wielder; it can tear loose a new stable worldline -- but the spillover of ontological into more conventional forms of energy can also create massive and unpredictable devastation.  It can turn a living planet into a wasteland.  It is not a technique I would recommend to the novice."

"I know something about how to fight in such wise," said Luna, "and my Cosmic Self knows still more.  There was a cyborg warrior called the Bronze Steed who was, or is -- with time-traveling beings Equestrian does not have adequate words to describe their present state -- a master of this form of combat; one of my other incarnations knew him well.  My present incarnation does not know enough about such forms of combat that I would attempt them lightly, nor consider it wise to tutor thee, Twilight, in any but defenses against the tactic.  A training error could cause destruction untold to this world on which we both stand."

"Fortunately," said Celestia, "the devastation is far more likely to be suffered by new worldlines flaked off by the combat, than to the original worldline in which it started."

Twilight was horrified at the implications.  "What about the many versions of innocents who would find themselves on the worldlines being devastated?"

"Usually, civilizations which have advanced to the point of discovering such powerful offensive temporal techniques also develop defenses against them," explained Luna.  "The required technology is some centuries beyond the Age of Wonders.  The World Which Was Lost had such capabilities, which was why the Cosmic Concepts could not instantly destroy it.  But yes ... the suffering can be terrible.  Which is why we urge thee, if thou dost find thyself in a situation where a Temporal Fugue develops, to try to break out of the pattern instead of going for the victory in that encounter."

"How do you --" asked Twilight.

"I shall show thee, another time," promised Luna.  "There are areas directly devastated by the Cataclysm where the risk to sapient life of a single or double crossing should be acceptably small, though this world is too small and crowded to attempt more."

"You make this sound like sunfire bomb testing," said Twilight.

"It's considerably more dangerous than that," said Celestia.  She made what was probably meant to be a reassuring smile.  "Don't worry -- Luna knows what she is doing where all forms of combat are concerned."

Luna nodded.  "You will be in capable hooves."

Twilight felt uneasy about this, but she did not wish to insult either Celestia or Luna by displaying too much doubt on this topic.

"Now, back to the theory," said Celestia.  "Like all other forms of energy, ontological energy suffers from efficiency losses when converted or reconverted:  ordered energy states are reduced to thermal noise, in the ontological equivalent of entropy.  This is one of the reasons splitting off new worldlines is dangerous, and repeated time-looping as in a Temporal Fugue is even more dangerous; it is possible to erode the spacetime substrate and crack the continuum."

"This is never a good idea," Celestia continued, "It is an even worse idea when there exists powerful and hostile beings who are actively searching for such flaws through which they can enter our reality."

"The Night Shadows," breathed Twilight Sparkle.

"Just so," said Luna.  "Once, they could touch this Universe only with great difficulty and the application of considerable power on our side to open the way for them.  Now, they seep through freely.  It was because of the ill-considered use of reality-negation weapons, which are essentially amplified versions of the Temporal Fugue."

"Who used such weapons?" Twilight asked.

"I did," said Luna, her face grim.  "Or to be precise, my Cosmic Self did, in concert with the other Concepts.  When we destroyed the World That Was Lost, Pinkie's original world, a thousand years ago and sideways in time from the worldline in which we now dwell.  There seemed no other solution -- the build-up of Paradox was approaching a critical level which might have caused the collapse of the whole worldline in any case.  But ... we may have been too hasty.  The Paradise Entity had been staving off the collapse for millennia -- if we had leagued with instead of against it -- perhaps we might have stopped the collapse, and kept out the Night Shadows.  We did not know -- I did not know -- so much that I know all too well now."  She looked sadly at Twilight.  "I did not ken any of this, at the time.  I did not know thee yet ... I had not yet been Moondreamer ... if I had, I might not have ..."

"Stop blaming yourself!" said Celestia sharply.  "I am also to blame for that, fight on the other side though I did.  Had I not wished to enjoy my incarnation as Star-Catcher in the World of Paradise, I might have retained enough knowledge and power to aid the Paradise Entity, help it prevent the build-up of Paradox.  Instead, I laughed and sang and danced and ate too much cake, while doom was rushing fast upon all of us.  And the allocation of blame is now irrelevant, Luna, especially as regards our Cosmic Selves and former Incarnations.  We, who live here and now, must prevent the Paradox that threatens this world, now.  Time enough to discuss larger blames when we are both on the Cosmic Level."

"True," said Luna, smiling slightly.  "There is an Eternity of Time, on the Cosmic Level."

Twilight had listened to this exchange semi-comprehendingly.  Some of this referred to events of which the Sisters had told her before, but she was worried that they were discussing the destruction of a worldline due to Paradox, considering the context and nature of her own foe; furthermore, she was not sure what Luna would not have done had this not happened before she was Moondreamer.  And, in any case, hadn't Luna been Moondreamer in the Age of Wonders, which was before the Lost Age of Paradise?  There was something she was missing about the sequence of causality on the Cosmic Level.

"In any case, Twilight," said Celestia, "what you must always keep in mind if you must defend the timestream against a mad warlock is that the Universe is on your side."

Luna nodded.  "It shall help thee in ways which may be subtle and seem weak but shall often prove decisive, if thou hast the wit and heart to grasp hold of the chances that it gives unto thee."  She smiled at Twilight.  "And I have full faith in thee, dear friend, that if anypony has both wit and heart, it is thee."

"You may believe that you are on your own," Celestia warned Twilight.  "Starlight may pull you into the timestream, possibly into another worldline -- and, though we will try to aid you, we may not be able to find you in time.  We cannot maneuver in the timestream nearly as well in our Incarnate forms as we can when Cosmic."

"We shall endeavor to aid thee," said Luna, "be certain of that!  But what aid we may send may be indirect or late-arriving."

"Use your own Concept," advised Celestia.  "Or allied ones, if you can find them.  Even those not yet Ascended may sense their connection to you and aid you in subtle ways, often not even realizing what they are doing."

"Never lose hope," said Luna.  "Thou art an Alicorn, and a Princess of Equestria, and thou shall never be a helpless victim."

"And remember, the Harmony itself will aid you," added Celestia.  "It has chosen you as one of its special agents in this Age; that is the meaning of your Castle.  It can perceive across the worldlines, much like Pinkie Pie, though it is less able to communicate what it knows.  It will sense any attempt to split off worldlines as Disharmony, and wish to heal the rupture and restore as much energy to the main worldline as possible."

"Above all, be of good cheer," said Luna.  "The timestream is harder to damage than Starlight Glimmer imagines.  She lacks the Cosmic perspective.  We know that the force of Fate is weighed on thy side."

"Always remember," said Celestia, smiling warmly at her Most Faithful Former Student, "that we have the great good fortune to live in a robust Universe."

> Chapter 13: A New Day
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The conference with Celestia continued for another couple of hours, Celestia explaining principles and applications of temporal physics undreamt-of by current Equestrian science, and Luna outlining their employment in temporal combat.  The concepts were advanced, and rapidly presented, sometimes in the form of powerful and elegant equations, which Twilight examined with eager fascination, frantically jotting-down notes.

By the time that Celestia excused herself for a moment, and the reddish light of dawn began to spill into Celestia's chambers, though, Twilight Sparkle was displaying distinct signs of physical exhaustion, including frequent blinking, slurred speech, and uncontrollable yawning.  After Twilight actually nodded off at one point, Celestia declared the conference at an end, despite Twilight's protests that she could "last a little longer."

"It is much more important, Twilight, that you understand these concepts than that I race you rapidly through them," said Celestia.  "You have obviously had little sleep for days.  While, as an Alicorn, you do not need as much sleep as you did before, you still need some sleep for your brain to function at full efficiency."

"Indeed," chimed in Luna.  "Thy life -- and many more -- may depend on thee learning right this lore.  Thou art weary, dear friend -- get thee to thy bed!"

Twilight could not argue, in the face of such logic and love.  She yielded, admitting her fatigue to the Sisters.

Celestia sent her on her way, setting an appointment to meet with her again in three days and continue their studies, and giving her a warmly-affectionate wing hug.

Luna offered to take Twilight home.

Twilight gratefully-accepted the offer.





So it was in a swirl of wind and darkness that Twilight returned to Friendship Castle, borne on the power of Luna's teleportation spell.  In but a measureless instant of time, Celestia's chambers vanished and were replaced by the shelves of Twilight's library.

Twlight thanked Luna, and started to walk to her bedchamber, only to find herself staggering on her hooves.  I'm more tired than I thought, Twilight realized.  It's a good thing Princess Celestia sent me home!

Luna escorted her up the stairs, helping to support her when she seemed about to stumble.  

Twilight was glad of her assistance.  Right now, the simple act of climbing two flights of stairs seemed a major obstacle; the very concept of flight seemed impossible, and Twilight chuckled briefly to herself at the absurd image of herself flitting about clumsily like some giant mindless moth, repeatedly battering herself against the sides of the stairwell.  In her current mental state, she found the notion hilarious.

Twilight finally reached her room and flopped into bed, burying her head happily into her pillows.  The fabric felt impossibly soft and incredibly welcoming.  It was such a relief not to have to worry about anything, at least for a while.

Almost immediately, she started drifting off to sleep.  She was dimly aware of a blanket being pulled over her body, the comforting scent of somepony familiar bending over her, and a brief brush of lips against her cheek in a gentle kiss.

Twilight giggled slightly at the tickling sensation of that kiss.  She knew, even in her drowsy confusion, that it was Princess Luna who tucked her in and kissed her, and she minded neither in the least.

It's nice being loved,  she thought, especially by Luna.  I'm safe now ...

On that pleasant thought, she fell asleep.





"Hey, Twilight, I made pancakes!" came a cheerful and very familiar voice.

Twilight groaned, rolled over in bed, and opened bleary eyes to regard her adoptive baby brother and Number One Assistant.  Spike was usually a welcome sight, but right now no sight was truly welcome.  "Sight" meant that her eyes were open, which in turn implied that she was no longer sleeping.  It was a neat logical conclusion -- though a sad one to reach right now, when she was still so very tired.

Spike was standing by Twilight's bedside, holding a covered silver tray.  Setting it down on an adjacent table, he removed the cover to reveal plates heaped high with fluffy golden pancakes and freshy made scrambled eggs upon a substrate of hay country fritters.  On the side were a small pitcher of maple syrup, a stick of butter, and a bottle of ketchup.  Hard on the hooves of this visual information came olfactory stimulation:  a melange of delicious odors, tickling her delicate nostrils.

Abruptly, tiredness fled as Twilight's stomach forcibly reminded her that it had been over a day since she'd eaten a real meal.  Twilight's mouth watered, her ears went up, and she practically snatched the tray of food right out of Spike's hands with her powerful telekinesis.

Proper regard for the dignity of a Princess of Equestria should induce me to report that Twilight Sparkle ate that breakfast in a delicate and ladylike manner, displaying all the grace and manners one would expect of a well-brought-up young mare of the ancient and honorable Light Clan.  Alas, an even deeper regard for historical accuracy requires me to relate that Twilight instead tucked into that meal almost with the alacrity that one might have expected of a Primal Pony, one eye on her food and the other on the circling carnivores.

Almost.  Even just awoken and almost starving hungry, Twilight still retained enough of the civilized Canterlot scholar-gentlemare that she in truth was that she did not simply plunge her muzzle deeply into her food and splatter much of it around the bed in the process of its consumption.  That would have been quite unmannerly -- and, besides, would have wasted some of the food.  Twilight Sparkle was much too intelligent to do that.  She even applied the condiments properly.  Though she did wind up getting some of those on the bedclothes, in her haste.

Her hunger appeased, Twilight washed down the meal with cup after cup of strong coffee from a pot Spike had also fetched, which both assuaged her thirst and helped her come fully awake.  She then wiped her mouth, nose, and other messy parts of her face with a large napkin Spike handed her.  Emitting a great sigh of contentment, she regarded Spike gratefully.

"Thank you," she told her Number One Assistant.  "I really needed that.  Especially the coffee.  Without that, I think I just might have dropped off again after I ate all that delicious food.  Which would have been very irresponsible of me, given that I asked the others to meet me here this morning."  She looked at the clock.  "Yikes!" cried Twilight.  "It's almost noon!  Are any of them here yet?"

"Not yet," said Spike.  "Though Rarity should be getting here soon.  She said that she'd be here before noon.  And you can always count on Applejack.  As for Pinkie --"

"Hi!" said Pinkie, popping out from under the cover of the tray, which was of course far too small to conceal even a little filly, let alone a strapping full-grown mare with the sturdy, muscular body of a rock farmer, overlain by the plumpness of a baker entirely too fond of her own wares.  Nevertheless, there she was:  as always twice as large as life, big and pink and friendly, with seemingly-innocent blue eyes, behind which were the secrets of a whole lost world; grinning in her usual manic glee.  A few uneaten scraps of Twilight's breakfast were caught in her bright raspberry pink mane and tail, or smeared on her only slightly less brilliantly-pink coat.

Twilight tried hard not to shy at Pinkie's sudden appearance.  Twiilght was mostly successful.  Pinkie was often incomprehensible, and the things she did should have been impossible, but she was a true and loyal and utterly wonderful friend, and that was more important than anything else:  the essence of the greatest lesson Twilight Sparkle had learned regarding the Universe in general over the last half-decade of her life.  She did flinch a little, but that was almost unavoidable, given that even as an Alicorn, Twilight had a mostly-normal equine nervous system.

"Good morning, Pinkie," replied Twilight, smiling at her very pink, very strange friend.  "How are you doing?"

"Super keen!" answered Pinkie.  "I got to mix fertilizer with AJ and Dashie and it was lots of fun only it's messy when you have a fertilizer fight and the special ingredient tastes awful!  Yuck!"  She giggled.  "Oh, and AJ and Dashie'll be here, in ten minutes.  I took the shortcut, they didn't wanna."

Twilight processed that statement.  She noted the important information.

"I'd better take a quick shower," Twilight said.  "Thanks, Pinkie, for letting me know they're on their way."

"No problem!"  Pinkie rapidly ran her impossibly-long tongue over her whole body, slurping up the remnants of Twiilght's breakfast.  "Mmm!" she declared.  "Spike, you're a good cook!"

"Thanks!" replied Spike, beaming at her.  "Would you like me to make you some?" he asked.

"Sure!" said Pinkie enthusiastically, and she bounced off after Spike toward the kitchen.

Twilight Sparkle rushed into her bathroom and started a hot shower.  She suddenly realized that she had not had a proper full-body cleaning, with soap and hot water, since the morning of the day that she had left on the quest for Our Town, a whole week ago.  She stepped into the shower and let the warm water cascade upon her face and back, streaming through her mane as she closed her eyes and gasped in delight at the wonderful wet sensation.

She groaned as she remembered that, last night, she had attended informal audiences with both the Two Royal Pony Sisters, without having done more than wash her face.  I must have reeked.  Celestia hugged me, Luna hugged and kissed me -- what must they have thought of me?

In that moment of mortifcation, it did not occur to her that Celestia and Luna had both known that she had been laboring long and hard in the defense of the Realm, and had taken wounds to her psyche in its defense.  The Sisters, who had more than once themselves spent hard weeks on the road, during the long centuries they fought Discord and forged the Realm out of the cultural wrack the Draconequus had left in the wake; they would have forgiven far more than some honest mare-sweat on one who had likewise struggled in the service of that Realm:  even had that one not been Twilight Sparkle, whom they each loved greatly, after her own fashion.  What they truly thought of Twilight would have indeed embarrassed her, but not for the reasons she imagined.

Twilight completed her hasty ablutions and stepped out of the shower, vigorously toweling herself dry.  She padded down toward her main dining room, from which she heard the voices of Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie already raised in conversation.

"Oh, just let that Starlight Glimmer come back!" Rainbow Dash was saying.  "I'd give her a kick with my forehooves -- another kick with my rear hooves --- then I'd circle around and finish her off with a Sonic Rainboom!  Blam!"

Something clattered to the floor as Dashie demonstrated her aggressive capabilities on an inanimate object -- a chair, from the sound of it.  Twilight deemed it unlikely that the chair had fought back very effectively, and she walked a bit faster, hoping to intervene before Rainbow Dash destroyed the Castle's dining room.

"Whoa there, Dashie," commented Applejack.  "Ah'm sure if Starlight Glimmer were here you'd kick her flank from here to the Crystal Mountains.  But that pore chair didn't do anything to you."

"Darn right I'd kick her flank!" Rainbow Dash replied.  "No way no how am I ever letting her slow me down again!"

"Ah doubt anything could slow you down for too long," said Applejack, an affectionate tone in her voice.

As Twilight walked into the room, she saw Rainbow Dash settle back down into a chair -- she wasn't sure if it was the same one who had been her recent antagonist -- a mollified expression on her face.  "Yeah," said Rainbow Dash.  "Cause I'm just too amazing to keep up with!"

"Mornin, Twah," said Applejack, smiling warmly at her friend.  "Hope you had a nice night."

Twilight yawned.  "I stayed up most of the night working on my report to the Royal Sisters," she told them.  "It was worth it, though," she said proudly.  "Celestia said it was informative and interesting, when we had a meeting later, at the Palace in Canterlot."

"Huh," commented Rainbow Dash.  "Did she say anything about how we can catch Starlight Glimmer?  Or what she's likely to do next?"  Her tone was casual -- perhaps a bit too much so.

"Yes," said Twilight.  "But I want to wait until we're all here."

"Wal," said Applejack, "Pinkie Pie's in the kitchen with Spike, making us breakfast.  Ah don't know where Fluttershy or Rarity are."

"Hel-lo," said Rarity as she stepped through the door, Fluttershy by her side.  Rarity looked a bit tired, but happy, in distinct contrast to the extreme tension she had displayed last night at the train station.  Her face bore a bright smile and her posture was relaxed.

"Hi," said Fluttershy.  She seemed as if she'd enjoyed a good night's sleep:  her eyes were alert and gait as high-stepping as hers ever got.  She smiled affectionately at everypony.

Spike poked his head out of the kitchen door.  "Hi, Rarity!" he said, giving her a big smile.  "Pinkie and I are making some really great pancakes and scrambled eggs with hay fritters for everypony!"

"So nice to see you this morning, Spikey," said Rarity casually, but Twilight noticed that she winked at him.  "I look forward to your culinary creations."

"Great!" replied Spike.  "You're gonna love what I'm making!"





"Breakfast's on!" said Spike, pushing in a wheeled serving cart considerably larger than his whole body, handling the huge cart without any apparent difficulty.

"Technically, 'brunch' or even 'lunch,' darling," Rarity commented.  "given the lateness of the hour."  She smiled warmly at the small Dragon, and subtly leaned toward him, as if she wanted to touch him but was shy of doing so in public.

As Rarity was normally not at all shy of displaying affection to Spike in public, Twilight briefly wondered what was up.  Twilight also noticed that Spike's affect was unusual -- somewhere between happy and nervously excited.  Spike's gaze frequently shifted to Rarity, who returned his looks with smiling glances of her own, sometimes flushing slightly.

I know exactly what that looks like, thought Twilight   especially coupled -- combined! she frantically amended -- with where he went after we finished that report.  But I have to trust Spike and Rarity -- and I have more important issues on my mind, right now.  I mustn't interfere, especially not in company.  Spike's growing up.  

She felt a strange emotion, somewhere between pride and panic.  He's growing up fast.  Will I feel like this one day when I have children?  Rarity, please don't hurt him!

Twilight's friends tucked into the food.  It was the same eggs, pancakes and hay fritters that Spike had made for Twilight, but it most definitely was good.  Rarity was particularly-complimentary toward the food, which may have been in consequence of her increased affection toward Spike -- or simply a manifestation of her genuine appreciation for Spike's skills.  It looked a bit suspicious.

It did not at all help that the others had plainly noticed as well.  Pinkie Pie was beaming at Spike and Rarity, a broad grin spread across her face.  Rainbow Dash was smirking, and making what she probably imagined to be subtly congratulatory gestures to Spike.  Applejack was maintaining her dignity, but seemed happy about something; her face bore a rathe sweet smile.  Even Fluttershy, of all Ponies, looked happy -- a shy smile, directed at Rarity through a thin screen of pink hair.

It was almost as if this was some sort of sports meet -- and everypony had been rooting for Spike and Rarity to score.  

Oh no, thought Twilight.  That was a bad choice of metaphor.  That's an image I didn't really want.

Of course, she understood why they wanted Spike to succeed in his romantic ambition.  They all like Spike, she knew.  They're his friends, just as they're mine.  The thought cheered her.  Still, she reminded herself severely, the love of others should not be made into some sort of a show.  This is private.

She had a brief mental image of herself, very small and very energetic, as she had been fifteen years ago.  Very much liking her new babysitter -- and, for that reason, helping to set up Cadance with her big brother Shining Armor, long before Twilight had any but the vaguest possible notions of what Love entailed.  That had ultimately led to their marriage.  I love Cadance, Twilight thought happily.  I couldn't have found Shiny anypony better.

Maybe this will all turn out as well for Spike, Twilight admitted to herself.  Maybe I should just stop worrying about it.

It was just that ... He's my little brother!

No logic seemed to be wholly able to address that.

The meal was nearly over, and Twilight composed her thoughts regarding the more public business before them.  She had not had time to ready a stack of note cards, nor even write a list, so this time she'd just wing it.  Which I am nowadays equipped to do, she thought, waggling one of her wings.  She grinned to herself.  I really don't have that much to complain about.

Her good mood restored, she began the meeting.

"All right, girls," she said in what she hoped was a brisk but calm manner.  "I've met with the Sisters about Starlight Glimmer, and we were able to reach some tentative conclusions about her motives and the threat she still poses."

She immediately had everypony's attention.  Rarity in particular was rivetted to Twilight's every word, Rarity's expression visibly strained.  Spike stepped to Rarity's side, placing a protective hand on her shoulder. Fluttershy shrank a little into her mane.  Rainbow Dash scowled and looked pugnacious.  Pinkie Pie seemed unwontedly serious.  Applejack alone seemed unworried, simply firming her jaw slightly with determination.

"Starlight Glimmer is a former student of Princess Celestia's, gone warlock; she was at the Academy two decades before me," Twilight began.

"Another one?" asked Rainbow Dash with disgust.  "This is, what, the second or third time this has happened?"

"Third," said Twilight.  "And it's not that often -- this is over decades."  She felt a little uncomfortable, because she was skirting a lie-by-omission -- it was, in fact, pretty often, given that Starlight Glimmer, Sunset Shimmer and Dawn Starfall were all not merely former students of Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns, but Princess Celestia's former personal students -- making the rate of madness even worse than it seemed.

"Oh well," allowed Rainbow Dash.  "At least you turned out with your head screwed-on mostly-okay."

"Thank you," replied Twilight.  "I think."

"Just a moment, sugarcube," said Applejack, a slightly grim tone in her voice belying her term of endearment.  "Ah'm guessin' Starlight was one of Celestia's special students -- like you."

Twilight nodded.  "Which is part of why she's so dangerous," she said.  "Starlight Glimmer has considerable magical talent -- comparable to my own -- and she's had a similar education.  She learned some very advanced magic from Celestia, and she's had two more decades than me to study and practice it.  It would be a very bad idea to underestimate her.

"Good Heavens," gasped Rarity.  "She's an evil you."

"More like a very badly misguided Twilight," commented Fluttershy, speaking up unexpectedly.

Everypony looked at her in astonishment, partly because she had spoken and partly because of what she had said, but Fluttershy stood her ground.

"I spent time with her," Fluttershy said.  "And I don't think she meant to do evil.  I think she thought she was doing good.  She really believes that Cutie Marks are bad.  She thought she was helping."

Rainbow Dash frowned at her friend.  "'Shy," she pointed out, "she took my speed.  How lame is that?"

"Pretty lame," agreed Fluttershy.  "And she took my ability to talk to animals, which made me very sad.  But I don't think she really understood what she was doing.  Not really."

"That may be," allowed Applejack, "but from where we're standing, she might as well be evil.  She hurt us, and probably wants to hurt us more.  Ah don't think we've seen the last of her."

"She has done a lot of damage in the pursuit of her obsession," pointed out Rarity.  "And not only to us.  She has caused much more harm to the unfortuate Ponies who followed her at Our Town."

"She's just no fun, agreed Pinkie.

"Starlight Glimmer attempted to achieve what she imagined were good ends," said Twilight Sparkle, "but her ends were misguided and her means evil.  Ponies are not happier with their Talents suppressed; we've all experienced personally how miserable that makes us.  Ponies should not be identical; we are individuals and have different capabilities and needs.  And the mere possession of power does not make it moral for its possessor to dictate to others:  Ponies must control their own lives and make their own decisions.  Even Princesses must respect equine freedom and dignity."

Applejack nodded; there was general agreement from the others.

"It is important to remember," Twilight continued, "that Starlight Glimmer was neither captured nor reformed.  She is still out there; she still believes that she was right, and she is probably very angry at us for having defeated her and unseated her from her control over Our Town.  She is extremely likely to do something violent or otherwise dangerous or immoral in pursuit of her revenge.  And she is very powerful."

"Do you suppose she'll attempt to take our Cutie Marks again?" Rarity asked, her tone casual enough, but her expression anything but calm.

"Possibly," replied Twilight.  "Having witnessed that magic, I understand it:  I know how to shield against and reverse it.  If she ambushes me, of course, she may take my power before I can use it.  However, the other Princesses now know about her, and she can't take us all at the same time.  She will have little chance of victory in a direct frontal assault."

"What if she just takes our Marks and hides them somewhere, then runs off?"  Rarity persisted, stress in her voice.

"I've thought of that," said Twilight.  "I'm working on a Cutie Mark tracking spell for just such a situation.  Both Contagion and Similarity are immensely strong between a Pony and her Cutie Mark, so it should be easy enough to accomplish.  And many other Pony mages could do the same thing, if anything happened to me first."

Rarity nodded -- she'd studied enough magical theory to understand what Twilight had just said -- and visibly relaxed.

"Now, as to how Starlight Glimmer is likely to seek her revenge," continued Twilight.  "First of all, I think that I am probably her primary target."

Her friends looked at her in alarm.

"She better not mess with you," Rainbow Dash said belligerently.  "I'll kick her flat if she tries that!"

The others variously affirmed their loyalty to her.

"Thank you," said Twilight, smiling at her friends.  "If she attacks, I suspect she will try to catch me alone, precisely because she won't want to have to deal with all of you as well and at the same time.  Starlight -- unfortunately -- is highly intelligent; we have to assume that she will be tactically-competent.

"She is not likely to attack very soon.  When we defeated her, we robbed her of allies and resources.  She will want to recover, both emotionally and logistically, and she will probably conduct research into us and our capabilities, just as I am conducting research into her.  Though it's not impossible for her to orgagnize an immediate attack, because of some of the spells she knows.  It's significantly more difficult, though."

"What sort of spells do you mean?"  asked Applejack.  "Any kind of high-powered hoo-doo we should be watching out fer, in particular?"

"Well, aside from the usual offensive and defensive magic of an elite Unicorn mage -- the things you've seen me do, basic energy bolts, shields, telekinesis and teleportation -- she has the Spell of Sameness, as I've mentioned.  The good news there is that I don't think she can do more with that than weaken you, and your Mark and Talent will come back almost immediately unless actively contained, as we saw.

"She may know some number of other special spells, such as polymorphs, mind control magic and such.  Many of these are of course highly-illegal to use on another Pony without their consent, but she is a warlock:  magical assault is the essential definition of that crime.  Realistically, we have to assume that she'll fight dirty, rather than challenge us to formal duels.

"Now, as to the main problem.  Starlight Glimmer once had prolonged access to some of the most powerful and secret spellbooks of Starswirl the Bearded ..."

"Oh, crap," said Spike, his crest flaring as he took a quick indrawn breath, as if instinctively-readying himself to spout fire at a foe.  There being no actual foe at hand, he relaxed slightly, but still did not seem fully calmed.

"Oh, my ..." said Rarity, gaping in dismay.  "You're talking some fairly serious magic here, I would imagine."  She looked uncertainly between Twilight and Spike.

"Oh yeah," replied Spike.  "Starswirl messed around with the fundamental structure of spacetime.  Gravitational singularities, time travel, portals to other dimensions ... there's stuff Celestia still keeps secret, because in the wrong hooves it could be end-of-the-world.  Things Ponies Were Not Meant To Know, that sort of thing."

"Spike's correct," affirmed Twilight.  "The Spell of Sameness is a modification of Starswirl's Unifinished Spell -- the one I accidentally cast on all of you a year and a half ago.  It's ontomantic in nature -- time-based reality warping, sort of like what Pinkie does but much more rigid and limited in its applications ..."

"... I bet I bake better cupcakes than that meanie Starlight Glimmer does, too!" Pinkie announced, nodding proudly.

"Better even than Sugar Belle's," Twilight agreed.  "Basically, it alters the quantum probabilty weightings of your pastline, weakening the causal linkages between your own astral pattern and your destiny as manifest in the Mark ..."

Everyone, including Spike, stared at her blankly.

"It rips loose the part of your soul that makes the Talent," said Twilight.  "It does so by retroactive magic -- it goes back into the past and makes it so that in a sense you never had the Talent.  But it's very limited -- the ontological inertia of our shared worldline resists the change and renders it unstable ..."

More blank stares.

Twilight sighed.  "The Universe wants you to have the Talent, because if you didn't then there would be contradictory consequences, so ..."

"Oh!" squealed Pinkie.  "Too much Paradox!  Starlight doesn't know how to tie up the ends right so it's going to burn but before that happens the Langoliers just rip it up and eat it, munch munch munch, and once it's loose it snaps back!  I get it!"

Twlight and everyone looked at Pinkie Pie, the others in confusion, Twilight in astonishment.

"You're talking about sub-sapient chronovoric entities, Pinkie," Twilight said.  "How do you know about ..."

"Well, duh," said Pinkie.  "If I didn't know about them and how to work around them, they might eat me, and I'd rather bake yummy food than be yummy food.  Wouldn't you?"  She looked around the group.

There was general agreement.

"Now that I think about it," said Twilight, "I suppose you run into these sort of issues frequently."  An idea struck her.  "Could you tell if Starlight was about to attack?"

"Well ..." said Pinkie, thinking a moment.  "That kinda depends."

"Depends?"  asked Rainbow Dash.  "On what?"

"On what was going to happen if she attacked," Pinkie explained.  "See if she was going to really truly hurt any of you I'd know, cause it'd be really sad and scary and it would make me sad and probably all quivery and my mane would get weird and you know what that's like.  So I'd warn you so the bad things wouldn't happen cause you're my friends and I love you tons!  But if you're gonna all come out of it okey-dokey even if I didn't say anything then I might not feel it at all, or I might not say anything if I did cause what if something bad happened cause I warned you?  And if was going to come out really good, like maybe Starlight was going to just have a big party and hug us and be friends, then I might not want to say anything cause if I said something then maybe things would come out really bad and the cake would all be like turnip pie or something or even worse like there'd be no cake at all!"  She took a long breath.  "So I might just bake a big cake for the party but then I might eat it all cause I was really really hungry, so I'd bake more.  See?"

Twilight worked over what Pinkie had just said, subtracted the cake equally from both sides of the Boolean equation, and got the gist of it.  "Are you saying that if you know something is going to happen, sometimes if you warn us, you could make matters worse?  And you know in advance if this is true, so that you don't warn us if the warning would mean a worse future?"

"Yeppers!" replied Pinkie, "Sometimes something a little bad or scary will happen that turns out right in the end, like when Discord messed with us and it was really sad but now he's mostly nice to us and he's a lot of fun to be with, so if we'd put him back in stone forever we'd be missing out on the nice and fun stuff he does, plus the whole scene where he saves the Skylark from the Shadows and wakes his ... oopsie, forget I said any of that last part, should fix that, there."  She did something, and Twilight could not clearly remember some of what Pinkie had said.  "And then you want to let the little bad stuff happen cause you won't get the better good stuff if you stopped the little bad stuff.  See?"

Twilight did see, and she also saw why Pinkie usually couldn't talk about it.  "And even if you told us why you were doing it, you could create Paradox?"

"Yep!" said Pinkie.  "I really like the way you're so smart this time, cause you get things like this! You're amazing!"

"Heh ... thank you, Pinkie," replied Twilight, smiling and blushing a little bit.  "Okay, well," she said, "can you warn us if Starlight's going to attack and it's going to go badly if you don't warn us?"

"Sure thing!" agreed Pinkie cheerfully.

"All right," continued Twilight, feeling a little relieved already.  She did not entirely understand how Pinkie's powers worked, and indeed feared that it might be impossible to fully-understand them within the limitations of her own intellect and psychology, but she knew that Pinkie was a very good Pony, a loyal friend -- and much more capable than she seemed at first glance.

"So," she said to her friends, "I've basically given you the bad news.  The good news is this.  If Starlight Glimmer does try to do any of the really dangerous things she might attempt to accomplish through time travel:  such as reversing her defeat at Our Town, changing our destinies en masse, or altering large-scale history ... well, it won't be as easy as she may imagine.  The Universe doesn't want the timeline changed, and unless she's very careful about how she does it, the changes will be unstable, just as is the Spell of Sameness.  Setting things right should still be possible."

"So what you're sayin, Twah," Applejack asked, "is that even if it looks hopeless at some point, it might not be?"

"Essentially, yes," replied Twilight.

"Ah can work with that," said Applejack.  "Do mah level best to fight and win, if'n it comes to it."

"Yeah, I'm not gonna give up just cause some jerk wants to push me around," added Rainbow Dash.

"I'm with you," said Fluttershy softly.

"If she comes back, we're gonna win -- and all celebrate afterward!" Pinkie declared.

"I shall continue to hold my head up high, no matter what happens," promised Rarity, essaying a smile.

Spike gazed at her adoringly.  "I'm not going to let her hurt you," he said to Rarity.  He turned to Twilight, then looked at the others.  "Any of you."

Twilight felt a deep pride in Spike, and in all of her friends.  Whatever happened, they would remain faithful to their friendship and their fellowship.  Starlight Glimmer might have temporal magics of unknown power and scope; she might have a deep rage and burning desire for revenge.

But she did not have friends -- and friendship was magic.

> Chapter 14:  The Shadows of the Past
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The caverns that cut beneath the Crystal Mountains were cold, and inhospitable to most organic life.  But they were neither entirely lightless -- nor empty.

Light emanated from the outcroppings of crystal that jutted from the cave walls.  It was a wan, cold, pale blue light; barely enough by which to see, which must have been generated by some effect ultimately powered by the Earth-currents, carried through the veins of crystal that snaked through the hills, giving these mountains their name.  The light flickered slowly, waxing and waning in time to a some slow subterranean pulsation.

The light flared brighter as the Pony entered a chamber.  She was a very powerful and skilled mage, and she was quite familiar with these caverns:  she had first read about them decades ago, when she had been a filly first studying at Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns; she had first seen them a decade ago, when she had been scouting this area before building her Utopia.  For her, it was a trivial feat to slightly-amplify that glow, the better to light her way.

Now -- a fugitive -- she passed through them on the way to another exit she knew, many dozens of miles away, far enough that she might continue on unseen by Pegasi patrols.  Her plan was to reach another town, where she might change her appearance, assume another identity, and disappear into the secret ways known to the Equalists and Levellers.

By now, Starlight Glimmer knew, she was a marked mare.  She had interferered with Equestria's newest Princess, and Celestia's chosen Champions.  In doing so, she had not only threatened to upset Celestia's plans, but had technically-violated some of the laws of the criminal code, including the ones forbidding assault, unlawful detention and warlockry.

As a leader of the revolutionary vanguard, Starlight Glimmer of course did not take Celestia's laws seriously.  They were absurd and archaic laws, meant to prop up the Old Regime; Starlight's purposes lay above and beyond any considerations of ordinary morality.  But, of course, Celestia would use those laws as her excuse to crush Starlight.  The rebel Unicorn could expect nothing less from the Sun Tyrant.

Celestia would, obviously, not yield to Starlight's revolutionary logic.  Celestia had, after all, emerged triumphant -- her Champions had destroyed Starlight's life and dreams.  Celestia would expect Starlight to yield to her -- to throw herself upon the Royal Mercy, beg forgiveness for her supposed "crimes."

Celestia would probably grant such mercy, at that.  Well did the immortal master manipulator understand the political utility of being seen to be merciful.  Starlight's submission would politically-neutralize her dangerous ideas and discredit her cause.  No revolutionaries would ever trust her again, and if she did rebel again, Celestia could always punish her more harshly.

"I play a long game," Celestia had once told her.  "And I play to win."

And Celestia had won.

In the person of her loyal vassal, Princess Twilight Sparkle, Celestia had won everything.

And she herself, Starlight Glimmer, had lost everything.

Her town.  Her followers.  Her friends.  Her dream.

She had even lost -- but as the image of his handsome white face, framed in its bluish-white mane, rose before her mind's eye, she stopped in her tracks, hung her head, and stood helplessly-shivering with the intensity of the emotions wracking her soul.  Starlight Glimmer squeezed her eyes tight shut, and hot tears of pain and loss and red raw hate rolled down her muzzle, and fell to the cold stone floor.

In her over four decades of life, she had made many friends; she had taken a few lovers.  Starlight Glimmer was charismatic and attractive.  Ponies often liked her on first meeting.  Some loved her.

But it meant little.  For she always lost her friends.  Inevitably, a point of disagreement would arise; some difference grow between her and them.  And her friendships would be broken, torn apart by dissimilarity.

She had been betrothed, twice.  Each time it had ended in anger and tears, her former fiancés becoming hateful and hostile toward her.  Each time she had been left alone, heartbroken, scarcely understanding how such passionate love could turn to such extreme loathing.

Despairing of Friendship and Love in the wider world, she had created her own community, where she thought such sentiments would be more universal.  All in Our Town had been friends.  All in Our Town had loved one another.  That was how she thought things had worked.  That had been her dream.

Twilight Sparkle had shattered her dream.  Worse, the Princess had proved her dream false.  If the Equal Ponies had really been her friends, they would not have turned on her so easily.  If they had all loved her, they would have forgiven her the necessary deception of retaining her own Cutie Mark.  If he in particular had loved her, he would not have ... 

Starlight Glimmer stopped and squeezed her eyes tight shut, trying not to see anything, not to feel anything.  Moisture rolled down her cheeks, to follow the streaks that earlier tears had left on her hide.  Try as she might, she could not make her reality go away, her life go away, even when it hurt so very much.

Not for the first time, she considered the obvious escape.

It would be easy to slay herself.  She had powerful magics that, properly turned on herself, would accomplish the feat.  Not to mention her telekinesis, and the fact that one thing these caverns beneath the Crystal Mountains were well supplied with were sharp shards of crystal.  She had failed, decisively and completely.  What real purpose was there in her continued life?

Indeed, it would be easy to die by mischance, given what she was doing, and the fact that she was alone.  A single mis-step, a broken or even badly-sprained leg, and she might never leave this labyrinth alive.  She had cached food and water along her path -- a long-planned escape route, laid down against just such an eventuality as that which had transpired -- she had even blazed her trail with marks at key intersections.  But without careful attention to her progress, she might become lost, and wander hopelessly until thirst claimed her.

She was not, in fact, trying to kill herself.  She was instead bending her every effort toward staying alive.  Why did she bother?  Her dream was dead.  Why did she wish to outlive its destruction?

Because death was the ultimate failure.  Because if she died here, Twilight Sparkle would win.

For her, Friendship had failed.  Love had failed.  All there was left to sustain her was her basic instinct to survive, and her Hate..  In Starlight Glimmer's world, right now, the lights of Love had long since died out, and all that remained for her was Hatred; her only remaining purpose was Revenge.

Revenge against Twilight Sparkle.

Hatred and the desire for revenge sustained her as she went down endless corridors of crystal, formed from the living rock by processes obscure even to Equestrian geology, fractally spun out into shapes lovely and wondrous beyond compare.  Their beauty had left her breathless on earlier occasions, when she had walked this way before, but now she had no eye for such aesthetic delights.  There was no room in her soul, at this moment, for anything which did not serve her Hate.

She did have a vague sort of notion that, once Twilight Sparkle was defeated, she might in some way again attempt to achieve her dream.  Somewhere else, with new Ponies, perhaps ones she might have the chance to influence from childhood or even birth?  She knew now that her dream was difficult, that it might take more than one lifetime to achieve.  If only she had chosen to -- but she had thought that being mother to a whole village required that she not be mother to any Pony in particular.  She had no heir.

But any goal of rebuilding was vague and uncertain, compared to the absolutely clear goal of her hatred for Twilight Sparkle.  And in any case, rebuilding her dream would be pointless in a world with Twilight Sparkle still in it; Twilight would simply come and kick over whatever new sand-castle Starlight Glimmer constructed.  Starlight first had to dispose of the menace, defeat the predator who sought to destroy her herd.  This was only logical.

But how?  Twilight Sparkle was terrifyingly powerful; in a direct duel, she could not be at all certain of victory.  Even if she ambushed her -- Twilight was an Alicorn, and Starlight's readings had revealed to her that Alicorns were immensely tenacious of life, incredibly difficult to kill.  If she had an Alicorn-Bane -- but such weapons were exceedingly rare, difficult for anypony not commanding the resources of at least a city-state to manufacture, and were far from guaranteed to kill; all the enchantment and mortal sacrifice necessary to make one simply gave its wielder a chance of doing fatal or at least lasting harm to an Alicorn.

She might instead attack Twilight's friends, or even family.  This would, however, not solve the problem even if she succeeded -- the real threat came not from such lesser Ponies, but from Twilight Sparkle herself.  Besides which, Twilight's friends were by repute themselves skilled and dangerous champions, far from easy to slay or capture.  And once she struck at one of them, the others would be on their guard.  What point would there be in striking down one of Twilight's companions, only to face the others fully-roused?  Doing this would be to lose the whole chess-game, for the sake of taking a single piece therein.  No -- there must be a better plan.

Engaged in these ruminations, she barely at first noticed that she had reached the great central chamber that was one of the main wonders of these deep caves -- a cavern bigger than the main Cathedral of Canterlot, glittering both from its own internal magelight and the augmentation of Starlight's magic.  It was like a gigantic geode, though the processes involved in its formation had been considerably more complex than those of any normal geode.

She knew this cavern well; many of the longer systems of crevices led to the chamber, radiating from the colossal crystal in a fractal system of spokes.  It was as if, at some point, some energy had focused within the great geode, accumulating from some external source and then erupting within it in some maner which split the rock all around it for dozens of miles, in some sort of tremendous internal explosion, one which had somehow managed to elegantly split rather than shatter the crystals.





Which was exactly what had happened -- though Starlight Glimmer knew it not -- a thousand years ago, and in another worldline.  The energy which had powered this explosion had been nothing more or less than the detonation of a Negation Bolt, the ultimate weapon of the Cosmic Concepts, in the bombardment of the Paradise which had come from an ancient union of advanced science and antediluvian sorcery.

The crystals were attuned to the very structure of spacetime, and had fractured in resonance with the cracks propagating through the continuum.  Here, our Universe itself had been riven, and along the fracture lines Planck-width linear wormholes -- string singularities -- had been opened.  Slowly, very slowly -- for the wormstrings were exceedingly narrow -- energy from our Universe had seeped through, in accordance with thermodynamic principles, from our bright warm young world into another continuum; one which was terribly dark and chill and old.

There, even these tiny amounts of energy blazed like a beacon in a void where the last stars had gone out, fallen together into super-massive black holes, and the last terrestrial spheres huddled around these black holes like freezing campers around guttering fires, waked to minimal output by the grudging sacrifice of small amounts of matter into their accretion disks.  Here dwelt the masters of this undead Universe, the rulers of a graveyard that stretched out countless quadrillions of light-years, the energy of its expansion long since spent, but its mass now dispersed so widely that the gravity which might have recondensed it died away in whimpers of quantum fluctuation.  A Universe without light, without life, without hope -- but in which something still, after a fashion, moved and thought.

The realm of the Night Shadows.

At the center of the crystal labyrinth, the string singularities met and fused.  Here and there, cracks had opened a bit wider, as bits of our Universe fell away into the endless night of theirs, particles screaming in anguish as they were consumed by the vast Nothing on the other side, falling to their false entropic maximum of ceaseless torment.  Here and there, the cracks became windows.  Not yet really gates, for all but the least of the unlife of the Shadow Universe, for they were still too small, and our own Universe pressed on all sides to try to close them in a self-healing tropism that it had inherited from its long lineage of evolutionarily successful ancestors -- but windows.

And through these windows peered the Night Shadows.





One group of Night Shadows in particular watched the progress of Starlight Glimmer.  They were no ordinary Shadows -- they were the local nodes of Great Shadows, which is to say that they were roughly the Night Shadow equivalent of Alicorns.  They watched, and amongst themselves held converse.  Around them squirmed numerous smaller entities, Lesser and Least Shadows, who were their spawn and servitors, enjoying a precarious and dangerous status from their masters' patronage.

The social unit which they formed was something alien equally to Equine or Human culture, for which we may be profoundly grateful.  It was a high part of their local hierarchy, the at once terrifyingly-anarchic and stultifyingly rigid system of government which oppresses the Night Shadows, and whose oppression they welcome with the ardor that we would embrace the most just and wise rule of liberty, as they would despise any attempt at what we might term fairness or freedom -- but it was not a governmental commission.  It was a voluntary assocation, yet it was not a club or group of friends, for the Night Shadows have no friends, merely enemies to whom they hold varying degrees of despite and hatred.  And, though the members of this group were related by ties of kinship, it was in no wise a clan or family.

Call it a Conclave.

Likewise, when we say that they held converse, we do not mean that they communicated by presenting concepts to each other for mutual rational and emotional examination.  That is entirely too benign an interpretation of their actions.  It is more accurate to say that they powered geases against each other, each attempting to enslave the other through force of will, and restrained only by the countervailing force of will of their intended victims.  From long mutual familiarity and force of habit, none of them really expected to be able to overcome the other, yet the contest was no less in deadly earnest for this, and had one of them shown an atypical weakness, the others would have pounced on and devoured its mind.  

Such was the nature of society among the Night Shadows.

One of the ... leaders, in our terms ... of this Conclave was an entity who would have appeared to our minds as a vast complex tower of dark crystals, from the angles of which blinked many hateful yellow eyes.  We may term it "male," though that does not adequately represent the full and loathsome nature of his role in the umbral systems of reproduction.  His dominion was over crystalline formation, and he and his minions had already figured prominently in the history of the Ponies, though they did not yet know it.  His name would be incomprehensible to us, but Crimson Quartz called him "Skleros" in the Codex of Shades, and we shall here do the same.

He addressed, or attacked, the others, with the following imperative, translated as best as possible into Earthly modes of communication.

"Weakened ... hate-filled ... vulnerable.  Make ... Nightmare!"

Another entity -- this one a mass of sickly-sweet-smelling and cold fog, in which yellow-green eyes repellantly twinkled like the stars of a monstrous Universe, answered the first one.  This one was ... female, would be the closest analogue in mammalian terms ... and she was of the same spawning as Skleros.  One might, thus, call her his "sister," and be not entirely inaccurate.  In the Codex of Shades, Crimson Quartz had called her "Skloia," and so shall we.

"No!" said Skloia.  "Foolish!  .... forfeit ... greater opportunity!"

Skleros made a threatening vibration at his sister's impertinence, and fixed the gaze of almost all his eyes upon her -- he of course kept some watching the rest of his perimeter, lest this merely be a ploy to distract him, enabling another of the Conclave to attack him unawares.  "Explain ... quickly!"

"Nightmare ... noticed ... Ponies ... put down," pointed out Skloia, in a voice that hissed as sweet as the kiss of death.  "They know ... Luna ... alert.  Free ... Starlight Glimmer ... our goals achieve!"

"How?" asked Skleros, interested enough to put some force into the compulsion.

"Timewarp ... she knows," Skloia said.  "Revenge ... Twilight Sparkle.  Starlight Glimmer ... power enough... tempted ...Tempus Fugue."

Comprehension dawned upon Skleros.  "If ... that," he glittered, "widen ... cracks ... into ... prey-verse."

"Exactly," purred Skloia, wafting forth to ooze around her brother, emitting complex puffs of acids and bases upon his crystalline surface, in a manner meant to be seductive.  "Better ... indirect ... than direct attack."

Skleros reflexively encysted the chemical emissions and grew encysted geodes from them.  He pulsed, pushing his annoying sister away.  But his gleamings were anticipatory.

He directed numerous of his eyes and much of his attention on another Shadow.

"Raknon," he said to a thing which had the form of a webwork of glistening fibers, anchored somehow obscurely out of one's view, no matter where one might look. "Opinion?"

Raknon's many eyes glared at Skleros from the nodes of the network.  "Future-vibrations ... opening ... admittance ... prey," it admitted.  "Success!"  Raknon was oriented differently in spacetime; to it spatial motion and sensing were strangely constrained, but viewing its own past and future worldlines relatively easy.  It had much in common in this, and only this, regard, with a certain very-pink party Pony, though it did not particularly like parties, and most Ponies would have gone mad in contemplation of what made it smile. 

"Hmmm ..." Skleros rumbled.  "Approved!  Skloia ... your plan ... your sacrifice."  He roiled her fog with resonant vibrations, demonstrating the damage he could do her if she did not concede to her brother's demand.

Skloia hissed hatefully at Skleros.  "Bully! ... Coward ..."

Skleros increased the intensity of the resonance, making Skloia's eyes tremble in her fog.

"Enough! ..." cried Skloia, her communications strained. "Yielding!"

Skleros hummed in satisfaction at his victory.

Skloia glared at Skleros in resentment and suddenly condensed tendrils of her substance.  The tendrils whipped, seemingly right at Skleros.

The dark-crystalline Shadow stood impassively.  He knew this to be a bluff.

Her tendrils whipped around at another angle and snapped up two of the Least Shadows of Skloia's own spawning.  The two Least Shadows had occupied what they imagined to be a safe position, out of the direct gaze of their dam's eyes.  They had not understood the ubiquity of the Great Shadow's perceptions.  They may have realized it in the last moments of their existence. 

Skloia smashed her own spawn together, rupturing their forms and absorbing their essence into a funnel which she formed for the purpose.  Two more tendrils shot through the singularity, grasping and immobilizing the Pony who stood on the other side.





... Starlight Glimmer screamed in terror as the tentacles came from nowhere to wrap around and through her, one securing her barrel and the other her head.  She was caught in an incredbily strong grip, one holding both her body and soul.  For a moment her perceptions were bilocal -- she could see around her the glittering crystal cavern, and another place, a realm of darkness in which she could somehow impossibly see, and what she saw were indescribable inequine horrors ... things that could not and should not and must not be ...

... and a third tendril emerged from the portal and entered her in some obscure and obscene manner, forcing its way through her defenses and touching her vilely in the most intimate parts of her mind.  She tried to shriek and struggle at this hideous contact, but she could not emit any further sounds, could not move a muscle, for she was completely under the control of this thing, this monster, this ...

... Skloia ... purred a voice into her soul, and then the third tendril pulsed and erupted with some substance which spurted into every recess of her, filling her, and changing her in some impossible and terrifying manner.  ... Mistress ... rule you ... forevermore ...

And within herself, Starlight sobbed at the reality of this touch which was transformation, or violation, or some horrible mingling of both such as could not exist in any sane world.  She felt her mind buckling even as a strange and unclean power surged through her ...

She could see an eye, yellow and hateful and mocking, pass down the tendril into the back of her own self.  It looked at her from within, and winked.  And, as the last of her sanity began to disintegrate, she heard the voice again.

No escape ... it said to her.  Sane ... SLEEP.

And with that, Starlight's tortured mind began to slip into blackness, but not before she heard the last command.

... FORGET ...

The darkness claimed her.





After a time, Starlight Glimmer awoke.

I must have fallen asleep in here, she thought in some confusion, contemplating the beauty of these crystals.  She stretched herself, worked her mouth experimentally.  I guess I needed some sleep, she mused.  I feel all right now ... not confused or tired any more.  I guess I really needed that sleep.

She still mourned the loss of her followers, still hated Twilight Sparkle.  But she felt much better now.  She understood that her followers were lost, that business of her life was closed, and the new business of her life would be the destruction of Twilight Sparkle.  It all made sense now, it was all clear, and all she needed to do now was begin the sequence of actions which would most efficiently and logically destroy Twilight Sparkle.

I've always been efficient and logical, she thought to herself.  So I have a pretty good chance of success.  She felt optimistic, almost happy about the new purpose of her life.  After I destroy her, she thought, I can rebuild my dream somewhere else.  But destroying her is the first order of business.

She cast her gaze about for the place she had blazed her trail.  There it was -- a pattern of grooves that she had cut into one of the crystals near an apeture.  She knew that beyond it she had cached more supplies; food and water to sustain her on the next part of her journey.  Just another way station on the path that would lead to her triumph.

A new strength sustained her, a new confidence fulfilled her, as she walked out of the great geode into the twisting tunnels.  She had still been defeated, but it had been only one battle she had lost.  The course of her war, the war she fought against the harsh reality of the Cutie-Mark-based caste system, was as yet undecided.

I was wasting my time in Our Town, she realized.  Those Ponies were weak ... mundane ... whining little foals who needed my guidance constantly.  I will still destroy Twilight for what she did -- she destroyed my dream after all -- but perhaps this temporary defeat will lead me to greater future triumphs.

After all, she remembered.  I am not limited to the Spell of Sameness.  That is an important magic for building my new society, yes, but it is only one derivation of all that I learned from the secret journals of Star-Swirl the Bearded.  There are far more potent spells in there, magics that can twist the fundamental structure of spacetime, even crack the Universe wide open!  She laughed throatily, though she was not sure just why she might want to crack the Universe wide open.

The sleep had done her good.  She had a vague memory of unquiet dreams, dreams of darkness and shadows, crystals and vapors and hateful yellow eyes, and of a most strange and revolting intimacy, but already these nightmares were fading, dissipating in the light of her conscious reasoning.  She forgot, and forgot it most happily.

Today will be a new day, Starlight Glimmer told herself.  Tommorow a newer day still.  That which does not destroy me makes me stronger, and I feel stronger now than ever before!

I shall wrap myelf in cloaks of concealment, and unseen I shall move through Celestia's Realm, and there organize my attack.  And when I emerge at last from the shadows, when I confront Twilight Sparkle again -- this time, I shall triumph.  I shall destroy Twilight and everything she values.  And she shall not be able to stop me!

So, cheered by her hopes of revenge, Starlight Glimmer continued on through the crystal labyrinth, striding toward her destiny ...

... while in the back of Starlight's self, a single yellow-green eye blinked, and back in the Shadow Universe, Skloia drank in the delicious wonders of the Universe that was to be her feast.

END.