Prologue - The Perilous Paper

“B...B...B...F...F—”

“Lyra! It’s so good to see you again! Hey, you have your notebook with you! Are you writing songs again? That’s really really neat! I guess you want me to get your usual for you then?”

Lyra peeked over the edge of her notebook to see Pinkie Pie inches away from her face. Stifling the urge to fall back in surprise, she laughed as the notebook floated down to the table in her magical aura. “Good morning to you too, Pinkie. Actually, I'm just writing down some music pieces right now. It helps me finish up a tune if I have something to look at. And yes, I would love one, if that's alright with you.”

Pinkie giggled. “One chocolate-strawberry milkshake twist coming up! And why wouldn't it be alright with me? I wouldn’t have asked if it wasn’t!”

Lyra gave a slight eye roll. "Your logic threatens to slay me where I stand."

"You're sitting, you silly filly!”

“Pinkie.”

“Yes, Lyra?”

“Don't forget my milkshake.”

“Oh yeah! Right away!” Pinkie Pie bounced behind the counter and started haphazardly tossing ingredients into a blender on the counter as Lyra went back to plucking the strings on her instrument.

“Pinkie Pie, you are so random...”

The unicorn heaved out a contented sigh as she leaned further back into the comfortable booth seat. She had just gotten back the day before from a concert in Trottingham, and she was brimming with ideas she had picked up from other musicians while she was there. Since she had spent most the past week in a mad rush, Lyra had decided to take today just to relax at Sugarcube Corner and hammer out some melodies. Even if the mere presence of Pinkie Pie was detrimental to any attempt to concentrate, the promise of sugary goodness was too tempting to resist.

“Here's your shake, Lyra! The Chocolate-Strawberry Twist for the best musician in Ponyville!”

“Why, thank you, Pinkie.” Lyra passed her a couple bits and enveloped the drink in a magical aura, lifting it from Pinkie's tray and letting her magic carry it towards the table. As the shake floated towards her, she stopped and listened to the gentle hum of the aura surrounding it. “I wonder...”

She propped herself up on the bench, the milkshake momentarily forgotten, and formed a tiny sphere of green magic above the table. Lyra listened to the hum of the orb and gradually expanded its size until it was pitched to her liking. She poured a little more energy into it until the tone was clearly audible to everyone in the room.

Satisfied with the note, Lyra silenced the sphere and conjured up another ball of magic, tuning it to a different note. She repeated the exercise several times until she had about a dozen floating balls, each gently emitting a different tone.

“Cool...”

Lyra gave the center orb a gentle pulse of magic, making it ring like a xylophone struck with a rubber mallet. She started piecing together a small tune, gradually increasing the speed of the music until it morphed into a happy little melody.
“Wow, Lyra, where did you learn to do that? That's really neat!”

The orbs vanished as Lyra's concentration broke, magical energy dissipating in all directions.

Pinkie bounced away from the table and held her hooves over her mouth. “Oops, I'm sorry!”

“Ah, it's okay, Pinkie. It wasn't that good anyway.”

“Are you kidding? Do that again! It's really cool!”

Lyra smiled. “Okay, Pinkie...”

The unicorn closed her eyes and concentrated. A green orb slowly coalesced over the little booth and started to emit a crystalline middle C. Soon, a whole fleet of little green orbs of various sizes floated over the table. Lyra inhaled deeply, then began to make them chime in rapid succession.

A short time later, finished with her performance, Lyra opened her eyes. Pinkie had sat down during the show, jaw hanging slack.

“Pinkie? Are you okay?”

“Okay? That was the most amazing thing I’ve ever heard or seen!”

“Thanks, Pinks. I wish I could actually do something with it besides music, but it's still nice to listen to.”

“You can say that again!” Pinkie proceeded to seemingly pull a party watch from thin air, briefly glancing at it before stashing it again. “Oh horseapples! I'm late! I have to go, so I'll talk to you later, Lyra!”

Lyra furrowed her brow in confusion. "What could you possibly be late for? You're already at work."

"I didn't earn the title of 'Ponyville's Premier Party Pony’ without lots of planning and hard work. I have some serious prepping to do!"

Lyra gave a resigned shrug. "Fair enough. I'll see you later, then."

"Later, Heartie!"

Lyra waved at Pinkie as she bounced out the door to whatever she was going to do. “Finally, I get to enjoy this thing,” she said as she picked up her milkshake to take a deep pull from the straw. “Ahh, that's the stuff—ack! Cold! Brain freeze! Brain freeze!”

She shook her head to clear it, then picked up her lyre and sat there for a moment, trying to resume her practice.

“Stupid brain freeze,” she mumbled. “It never fails. I get inspiration, then something stupid happens to chase it away.”

Lyra slipped the instrument and her notebook in her saddlebags. “I guess I'm going to have to take this shake to go.”

Lyra left the shop and briefly wondered what she should do for the rest of the day. She didn't have any recitals for the day; Bon-Bon was away in Baltimare for some candy convention, and she didn't have any plans in particular. Well, she could always try and learn some new magic. All she needed to do was figure out what she wanted to learn, and the library was sure to have whatever she needed. Twilight had already forgiven her for the wing spell incident and six weeks should have been more than enough time to let things cool down before going back.

Twilight trotted madly through the library, books whirling about her as she pulled them from shelves and examined them briefly before she sent them shooting back, narrowly missing other books as they made their way across the room.

“Spike, why in Equestria did you put all those books away? You knew I was using them to design a new spell!”

“I'm sorry, Twilight. You told me to clean the library yesterday, so I thought you wanted them to be put back. You could have told me to leave them out for you, you know.”

“I thought I did tell you not to bother my research material. Now I have to find them all again! Do you at least remember where you put my notes?”

“Relax, I put them on your writing stand. Right, Owlowiscious?”

“Who,” the tawny owl replied from his perch on the upstairs landing.

“Not who, what. The writing stand. Remember?”

“Who.”

"You. Do you remember me putting the notes on the writing stand?"

"Who."

"Nevermind. I'm just going to assume you're saying yes.” Spike pointedly turned from the owl back to Twilight. “Anyway, Twi, it's all there, and you can always find the books again.”

“Ugh, fine.” Twilight started pulling books off the shelves left and right. “Okay, let's see... Arcane Energy, Summoning and Banishing: A Tale of Inverse Spells, How to Make Magical Waypoints, Interwoven Spells Do's and Don'ts, Theories on Magical Resonance—”

Lyra approached the library with a touch of caution. The unicorn remembered a couple times where she had walked into the library only to find that it was not being used in a manner deemed appropriate for its title. Twilight Sparkle's most recent experimental excursion was a trip into some of the more dangerous aspects of alchemy and had left Lyra permanently wary of Twilight's admittedly unorthodox use of the library.

After confirming that there were no ethereal lights or other abnormalities flickering in the windows of the library, Lyra deemed it safe to enter. If she had known that Twilight was at that very moment grabbing books from the shelves in a desperate attempt to resume studying, Lyra would have been much less likely to be hit in the face with a book the size of her entire head.

Thunk! "Ow!" The collision was more than strong enough to force Lyra to lose her grip on her prized milkshake, letting the delicious drink of the gods become lost to the cruel grip of gravity.

Twilight dropped the books she was levitating with her magic and rushed over to Lyra, who was nursing a growing knot on her head. “I'm so sorry, Lyra! Are you okay?”

“I'll live,” Lyra groaned as she staggered to her hooves and shook her head clear for the second time in several minutes. She glanced mournfully at the spilled remainder of her milkshake. “Do you have any napkins? I kind of need to take care of my shake before it makes its way to your rug.”

Twilight ushered Lyra over to the nearest bench. “Nonsense! It's my fault you dropped it, so I'll take care of it.” She waved her horn towards the spill, neatly levitating the cup and mess to the nearest trash can before turning back to Lyra. “So, what can I do for you?”

“Well, I actually came over to ask if you have any books on teleporting I can check out. I've seen you do it before and it looks like a pretty useful spell to have on hoof.” She noticed Twilight give a slight wince. “Is something wrong?”

Twilight paused before answering. “Nothing is really wrong. It's just that teleportation is kind of a dangerous spell to be using. If you mess up in the middle of casting, it can end rather, well...”

“Messy?”

“Exactly. Also, it's quite complicated and we both know how well you do with advanced magic.”

Lyra blushed a little. “Yeah, I know. I'm just trying to broaden my horizons and I think magic is a good way to go about it.”

“I understand completely. However, I would recommend that you try something a little less dangerous before doing teleporting—wait, I have an idea!” Twilight called out to Spike, “Do you know where that summoning book is that I use for practice?”

“Hang on Twi, just give me a second.” The purple dragon slid a ladder into place along a far wall, climbing halfway up and pulling out an enormous book before staggering back down the ladder and dropping it on the table with a resounding thud.

Twilight couldn't help but chuckle as Lyra blanched at the sheer size of the massive tome placed before her. “It’s not that bad, Lyra. A lot of those pages are filled with pictures.”

With some straining, Lyra managed to turn the book around and read the cover. “The Science of Magic, Volume II: Movement Spells?”

“Chapters seven through ten are summoning, banishing and teleportation. I would recommend learning them in that order. You can get practice by doing similar types of magic before taking on teleporting. You might not even be able to summon from very far at first, but just keep at it until you can summon and banish flawlessly before moving on. Trust me, it helps a lot when you actually attempt teleportation.”

“Nice! Thanks so much, Twilight!”

“You're very welcome, Lyra.”

“I just want to ask one more thing. Could you—”

“No, I can't let you practice here. I'm still picking staples out of my tail from the wing spell you botched.”

“Okay, okay. I'll just find somewhere else to practice then.”

Twilight let another chuckle slip. “I will tell you that you do want someone to spot for you when you practice teleporting, preferably a unicorn. Also, take lots of breaks while practicing summoning. It's a draining spell to attempt more than a couple times in a row.”

Lyra thanked Twilight again as she hefted the weighty book and wedged it into her saddlebags. With a passing wave of her hoof, she slipped out the door, humming a melody as she went.

Spike turned to Twilight. “Well, that was rude of you. Why didn't you let Lyra practice here? Your special talent is magic, after all. You could have taught her how to do it properly.”

Twilight lifted the notes off her writing table. “I'm already busy, Spike, and besides, don't you remember what happened the last time I let her practice magic in here?”

“Uhh, no?”

“How could you not remember the angry stapler?”

“Oh yeah, that. Yeah, that was pretty hilarious.”

“Hilarious? More like horrifying!”

“You really need to relax, Twilight. Celestia said it was all okay. In fact, she said it made for the most entertaining council meeting she went to in the last two hundred years.”

“Ugh, never mind! Just help me find the rest of my books.”

“Fine, fine.” Spike jogged into another room, propping his ladder against a bookcase to retrieve one of the books he had put away earlier that morning. “So what kind of spell are you working on, anyway?”

Twilight flipped several of the books lying around to pages with bookmarks sticking out as she spoke. “I was trying to complete a combination summon-banish spell.”

Spike paused. “Doesn't that kind of, you know, miss the point of both spells? Why would you want to bring something to you just to send it away again?”

“I want to magically link together a storage unit with a receiving unit to allow for carrying a theoretically infinite number of objects around using a limited amount of storage space, calling forth the requested item using the receptacle and sending it back to the repository when no longer needed.”

Spike tilted his head. Twilight let out an exasperated sigh.

“I want to make a toolbox that can carry everything.”

“Oh, well why didn't you just say so?”

Twilight levitated a bookend into Spike's claws. “Here. I need you to take this outside again, please."

“Why?”

“I want to see if the spell is working right yet.”

“Oh, alright.”

“And please take it a little further away this time. Just outside the front door isn't good enough.”

Lyra slumped down on the bench outside her house. She couldn't believe that throughout the entire town, no one she knew was free to spot her while practicing spellcasting. “Well, Twilight didn't say I had to have someone nearby. She just recommended it.” She heaved the book out onto the bench.

“Finally, I get to try some more wicked spellcasting!” She flipped to the table of contents.

“Chapter seven.... Here! 'Summoning, Banishing and Teleporting: a Brief Introduction, page 577.’”

The pages whizzed over to the proper spot and she began reading. “The first pioneer in the field of teleportation was, oddly enough, an earth pony by the name of Leyline Tracer. With the aid of a unicorn friend for testing his work, he published over thirty spells in varying fields of magic...” Lyra yawned. “Boring! Onwards to chapter eight!”

“Come on, just a couple more strands, and—” Twilight poured more energy into the bubble of magic surrounding the bookend. The sphere abruptly flashed brightly, then dissipated in a puff of smoke, leaving the bookend more singed than ever. “Argh! Why can't I send it back? I can get the summon and the banishment to work separately, so what gives?”

She turned to the sheaf of notepaper, pulling pages seemingly at random before focusing on one particular page. “Okay, here we go. 'If multiple spells are being used to accomplish a single purpose, there is usually an overall indirect “binding” spell to keep them working in conjunction. Seeking spell could work, but it must be linked indirectly to the summoning part of the spell, or else it will stop as soon as the summon is complete.' Ah, I had a direct binding. This shouldn't be a problem, I'll just need to fix it so it's two joined spells instead of a single multi-faceted one. Now, where is the paper with the spell written on it?”

Twilight shuffled through her notes several times before turning to her assistant. “Spike, I'm missing a couple pages. Did you pick up all of them?”

“If I saw it, I got it. Maybe you left them in one of your books?”

“It's possible. I'll just check off my references real quick to make sure all of them are here.” Twilight scanned through a list of books, checking each one as she confirmed its location. “Hmm...”

“What is it, Twilight?”

“I guess I loaned out one of the books I was using to none other than Ms. Heartstrings. Knowing my luck, I probably left the spell sheet in that one.”

“Are you going to go over and get it?”

“I'll wait a bit so she will get the opportunity to practice first. I don't want to interrupt her while she's in the middle of anything.”

“You still don't trust her, do you?”

“Not really.”

Lyra flopped down in exhaustion, staring at the stone a couple hundred hooves away from where she lay. The stupid thing wouldn't come to her, and she was fed up with it.

Frustrated, she procured a musical orb and poured her magic into it, letting it drain away her anger at the rock. As the ball of magic hummed away, an idea started itching at the back of her mind. She was good at music, so why couldn't she apply what she knew to other branches of magic?

Lyra started the spell again and focused her thoughts on the bands of energy. After a few seconds of study, she shook her head and let the spell dissipate. The harmonics of the spell were all wrong. She couldn't use this one. Lyra flipped through the summoning chapter, briefly skimming each variation of summoning and mentally discarding every one.

Just as she was about to give up, Lyra found a sheet of paper near the end of the chapter and skimmed over it, widening her eyes with delight as she read every word.

“Interesting. I've never heard of a spell that summons and banishes at the same time! It sounds kind of pointless, really, but I can just as easily break them apart to do just one spell at a time. The harmonics even work perfectly with this one!” She turned back towards the rock and cast the aforementioned spell at it. Within seconds, the rock was sitting at Lyra's hooves, perfectly sound.

“Booyah! Who's the mare? I'm the mare! You just got summoned, rock! Now, prepare to be banished!”

Twilight decided she had waited long enough. Hopefully, Lyra would be ready to let her see if she had left her spell sheet in the book by now. “Spike, I'm heading out to Lyra's place. I'll be back soon.”

Spike peeked around the kitchen door, wearing a cleaning apron completely covered in dust and soot. “How soon will you be back?”

“Not too long. I'll just teleport there and—” Twilight facehooved. “No, I can't do that. Basic rule of magic; don't cross teleport paths. I guess I'm walking there. I'll be back in an hour. Don't get into any trouble, okay?”

“Okay, okay, I won't.” Spike watched Twilight leave, then ran up to the window to confirm she was on her way.

“She's finally gone. Time for some quality napping!”

Lyra was amazed at how easy it was to send the rock—and other rocks much larger—miles away with her banishing spell, just to bring it right back with a summon. She felt a slight increase on the drain of the spell as the distance or weight increased, but it was barely noticeable.

“Okay, I really want to test my limits now. What can I try to summon that won't be as easy to bring?” Lyra started as she remembered a snippet from one of her old animal books.

“Wait a second. I have an idea!”

Lyra cantered into her house and pulled a tattered book off a bookshelf in her room, quickly returning outdoors to search for the page she remembered.

“Let's see... Index, M, magical resilience, there!” She flipped the pages to the target and began reading an entry.

“'Humans. Classification: Mythological. Last supposed sighting: 343 After Luna's Banishment, Everfree Forest. These creatures are exceedingly rare, to the point that some scholars believe that they never truly existed. Stories of them usually center around their chaotic nature and magical resilience. Some myths even told of humans that could actively cancel out spells levied against them.'

"Well, this seems like a reasonable target for testing the strength of this spell. Even if I don't bring it, I can see how far the range of this spell extends. The only problem I can think of is summoning this thing and it escaping before I banish it, if I even manage to bring it here.”

Lyra studied the spell’s entry again. “I guess I can use it as a whole spell, like it was originally meant. Of course, I'll have to tweak it a little so I can still use musical principles to strengthen it.”

She looked over the entry picture so she would know what she was summoning, decided how she was going to alter the spell for her needs, and started the spell. The familiar bubble of light grew in front of her to a size much larger than she had anticipated.

The seeking part of the spell stretched out beyond the borders of Equestria, then beyond her comprehension. Lyra's head started to ache as the spell reached out further. The pain slowly grew until, in a flash, it became totally unbearable. She cried out as the spell locked in on something and started pulling it into the bubble.

Twilight saw the flash of light emanate from near Lyra's house as she neared the street where she lived. “Oh, no...” She started into a canter which quickly segued into a full gallop as the light grew brighter. “Lyra!”

She bolted around the corner of Lyra's house and found her working magic on a familiar magical enclosure.

“Lyra, what are you doing?! That spell isn't finished yet! Can you hear me? Lyra!”

The flare died down just enough for Twilight to see a silhouette that was in the center of the bubble, a bipedal creature that was taller than they were. A mournful wail pierced the afternoon air as the shadow collapsed on the floor of the bubble. The barrier flickered as the shriek began. Twilight felt a wave of... something... pass through her body, rolling across the lawn, sending lights inside houses blinking on and off down the street.

Lyra was almost blinded by the light streaming from the bubble, but she could clearly see the anguish of the creature inside it.

What have I done?

“No! I've come this far and I'm going to finish it!”

She poured her magical power into the framework of the spell, trying to complete it and finish the banishment. Lyra squeezed her eyes shut, but the light still filtered through, turning her world a bright red.

Twilight shouted out, “Lyra, don't try to banish whatever it is! It won't work! The spell won't complete! You are going to get hurt!”

She saw the shell grow brighter and backed away as far as she could before throwing herself on the ground and pulling up a hastily-made shield, trying to protect her eyes and body. The world faded out in a white-hot roar.

Discord sat in his stone imprisonment, feeling that same cursed itch he had the last time he was set in stone. Not only did it start itching just five minutes after being encased, it was in the exact same place as last time.

If only I could scratch it. If only I hadn't let that magic imprison me. I probably won't even get the chance to—

A wave of energy rolled over his body. Strange, he hadn't felt something like that in millennia.

The last time I felt chaos like that...

He shook off the thought as he realized something had changed. There was a crack in his prison.

Chapter One - The Chapter Where Everything Goes Wrong

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“Bon-Bon’s going to kill me.”

Lyra’s gaze slid over the blackened front yard. There was a perfect circle of green grass about six hooves across, surrounded by a doughnut shaped trench. Outside the trench was a perfect ringed mound of dirt that rose up almost past her knee. The rest of the yard was a mixture of charred grass and soot, save for the place where Twilight shielded herself from the spell’s backlash.

Twilight gaped at the patch of grass. “What did you do?”

“I kind of modified the spell so I could use it.”

“What do you mean, ‘modified’?”

“Well, I kind of applied music theory to the summoning spell so I could actually use it. In order to use that spell, though, I had to kind of split it into a couple smaller spells that harmonized with each other.”

Twilight stared, flabbergasted, at Lyra. “Do you mean to tell me that you fixed it with music?”

“Fixed?”

“That was my spell you were using,” Twilight said. “I hadn’t finished it yet, which is why I came over in the first place. I was trying to finish work on that spell, and I needed to alter some parts of it. That sheet of paper holds the spell itself, obviously, and I figured I had left it in one of the books I was using. The only book that wasn't accounted for was the one I lent out to you, so I guessed that it was in your book.

"That spell wasn’t even working. It would summon the object, but the banishing part would fail horribly.”

Lyra grew pale as she realized what Twilight was saying.

Twilight continued on without notice. “Are you hurt?” Lyra’s coat was streaked with ash, and her mane looked like she had tried to face Luna’s Royal Canterlot Voice head-on.

“I’m fine. I just need a moment to recover, that’s all.”

“Maybe we should take you to the hospital, just in case.”

“Seriously, I’m fine.” Lyra turned to her books and saddlebags and started to levitate them towards her when her magic fizzled out, dropping everything in her grasp. She frowned, then tried again. One of the books started flapping around her head like a bird, the other morphed into a mirror, and the saddlebags expanded until they were just as big as she was.

Twilight cocked an eyebrow at her. “Having trouble with your magic? Here, let me help you.”

Twilight turned to the book flying around Lyra’s head and cast a spell at it. The book dropped to the ground again and started barking and nipping at Lyra’s hooves. "Ouch! Hey, what was that for?”

Twilight gave a perplexed stare at the aggressive book. “I don’t understand. That should have dispelled whatever you cast on it!”

“I didn’t cast a spell on it! I just tried to pick it up."

Twilight groaned and shook her head. “Come on, let’s go to the library. I’ll try to sort out all this.”

Celestia paced the floor as Luna stared resolutely at a half-played chessboard, pondering her next move.

“Tia, I would appreciate it if thou wouldst hold yourself still whilst I take my turn,” Luna grouched at her sister.

“I’m sorry, Luna. It’s just something has me feeling uneasy.”

Luna slid her kingside rook closer to the center of the board. “Oh? And what would that be?”

“I felt something chaotic stirring. It was in great pain, too, like a creature being tortured.” Celestia returned to her side of the chessboard, surveying the field with a mild satisfaction. She slid her queen over to take one of Luna’s knights, pausing to assure herself of the move. “Your move, my dear sister, and check.”

“Are you concerned that Discord has returned so soon?”

“That’s not possible. He was only imprisoned last year, and it was done by the rightful wielders of the Elements of Harmony. The enchantment is much stronger than it was last time, so it would take a powerful force indeed to break it.

“No, I felt something even older than that. It was something weaker, yet more malevolent as well. I wonder...” Celestia pulled herself back to the present. “No. It couldn’t be. We made sure they would never again threaten us or our little ponies.”

The lunar princess moved a pawn in the way of Celestia’s queen. “Could you enlighten me of your mental workings, my sister?”

"Do you remember the altercation we had with that race of bipeds? I believe they were called ‘humans,’ if my memory serves me right.”

"Ah, yes.” Luna’s expression darkened at the mention. “A violent race, if I recall. They fought to the last soul against us, even when all hope was lost. ‘Twas a shame that they pitted themselves so sorely against us. We had no quarrel with them.”

The elder alicorn took on a pained expression. “I’m still haunted by guilt, even after all these centuries.”

“We did what we had to do to protect ourselves and no more.”

“I know.” Celestia moved her queen again so it once more put Luna in check.“I just had this wrenching feeling that one of those things had somehow made its way to our world. I’m not even sure if I should be concerned about this. After all, it’s just a feeling.”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about this, Tia. After all, we have much more help on which to rely if something were to go afoul. After all, we now have both princesses, a Royal Guard and the Elements of Harmony to protect Equestria from mischief. Besides, I think your student Twilight would be the first one to let you know if something was amiss.” Luna grinned impishly as she took Celestia’s queen with a bishop. “And that, my sister, is checkmate.”

“What? Nonsense, I can...” Celestia sentence derailed as she scowled at the board. “I don’t understand. How can you still beat me at this wretched game, Lulu?”

"When you have a thousand years all to yourself, you have to fill up that free time with something, like playing yourself at chess.” Luna smirked at her fuming sister. “Don’t worry. I’m sure you’ll beat me eventually. Just don’t forget our little bet, Tia. No backing out this time.”

"You are truly horrible, little sister.”

A scroll materialized and dropped onto the chessboard. Celestia lifted it up and examined it, a smile spreading across her face. “Well, speak of the windigo; it’s Twilight. I wonder what she has gotten into this time.”

Celestia unrolled the scroll and read the contents, her smile slowly being replaced with a mask of neutrality. She levitated a piece of paper, inkwell and quill to the table and quickly scribbled out a note before sending it back to Twilight.

“What is it now, Tia?”

“Apparently there has been an incident involving one of the Ponyville residents. It would appear that one of the unicorns there summoned some creature and it managed to somehow interfere with magical processes nearby. Twilight was with this other pony when the event occurred, and both of them have been having difficulty using their magic since then.”

Luna blinked and tilted her head. “‘Some creature’? Sounds like quite a coincidence, if you were to ask of my opinion.”

“I fear that they might have brought over one of those humans. You do remember how they were capable of twisting magic, don’t you?”

“I don’t think it will be a permanent issue for them. If I recall correctly, the magic-subduing ability of humans wore off rather quickly.”

Celestia nodded. “I know, but I want them to come over to the castle so we can give them a full checkup, just in case. Modern doctors will not know what to look for like we will, so I want to make sure for myself that they won’t suffer lasting effects.”

Celestia called out to one of the guards posted outside the door to the princesses’ game room, “Lancer? Could you round up one of the pegasi chariot teams to collect Twilight Sparkle from her station in Ponyville? An urgent matter has come up that requires her attendance and that of a guest she will be bringing.”

Luna cleared her throat. “Aren’t you forgetting something?”

Celestia sighed. “And also, could you bring the small box from under my vanity?”

Lancer furrowed his brow. “Did you lose to her again, Your Majesty?”

“Yes.”

“You should know better by now than to try and beat Luna at chess.”

“Lancer...”

The pegasus saluted. “Yes, ma’am, I’m on it.” He flew off before the solar princess could notice how close he was to bursting into laughter.

One uneventful trip across town found Lyra and Twilight back at the library. Twilight quickly dictated a note to her teacher regarding the situation at hoof, having Spike send the letter as soon as it was written. Stripped of magic, the unicorns quickly found their options limited in terms of entertainment.

“So, what do we do now?” Lyra meandered aimlessly through the library, looking for a book to pique her interest and failing miserably.

Twilight awkwardly nosed her way through a book as she returned, “Wait for Celestia to reply, I guess.”

“Fun.” Lyra tried to call up her magic, but felt it sputter out before she could even form a thought of what she wanted to do with it.

“You do know that spell wasn’t designed to transport living creatures, right?"

Lyra looked back towards Twilight. “What do you mean?”

“Most summoning spells are designed to carry inanimate objects. I designed that spell to be as efficient as possible, at the cost of less protection on the object.”

“Which means?”

“At the very least, whatever animal you summoned probably got burned or torn up pretty badly. The injury is also proportional to the distance traveled by the spell, so the farther away the summoned animal comes, the more it is injured during travel.”

Lyra felt her heart tighten. “Can you tell how far you took the item you were summoning?”

“Most spells don’t allow for that, but I added an awareness charm so I could tell whether to follow through with the summoning. After all, if you expend too much energy trying to cast a spell it could end up hurting or killing you.”

“So, what would happen if I tried to summon something that wasn’t in Equestria? Would I be able to tell where it came from?”

Twilight cast a suspicious glance towards the minty unicorn. “It depends on how far the spell had to search for the item in question. Why? What did you try to summon, anyway? It sounded pretty vicious.”

Lyra took a slow breath. “Well, I wanted to test the outer limits of the spell I found. It was really easy to cast since I could focus on the resonating bands of energy instead of on the spell itself, so I was looking for something challenging. I remembered reading something about a magically resilient creature and thought that would be a perfect subject.”

“And what was it?”

“It was something called a ‘human.’”

“What?!” Twilight leaped up and faced Lyra, inches from her muzzle. “You summoned one of those things here?!”

“What’s wrong? What’s so bad about it?”

“Didn’t you study them before trying to bring one here?”

“No?”

Twilight cantered over to a shelf and clumsily pulled a book out with her mouth before turning around and dropping it on the table. She grumbled about not being able to turn the pages fast enough before hollering for her assistant.

“Spike, can you help me please?”

The diminutive dragon came rushing down the stairs before saluting smartly. “At your service! How may I help you?”

“Can you turn this book to page 644?”

Spike narrowed his eyes and gave Twilight an are you kidding me look. “Why don’t you, you know, use your magic?”

Twilight shot a grumpy look at a suddenly guilty-looking Lyra before answering carefully, “We had some issues with a spell and now my magic isn’t working right. Look, just turn the pages for me.”

“Okay, okay, I will. Sheesh, you need to stop being so uptight, Twilight.”

Lyra trotted over to the other side of the table as Spike flipped through the book to the proper page. A picture of a two-legged creature in a loincloth filled the upper half of the page. “Hey, that kind of looks like the picture in my book!"

“Humans were never a very common race. Seeing as they were nomadic and were quite violent towards each other, they never really took root anywhere long enough to form their own nation.

“One thing that set them apart from most of the other races of animals was their nonmagical nature. In fact, they were capable of dampening the magic of other creatures. I haven’t found out how, but apparently the stronger ones were able to focus this ability to completely shut out the abilities of any magical race for a short period of time. Turn the page, Spike.

“Obviously unicorns couldn’t perform spells. Pegasi couldn’t fly or stand on clouds. Earth ponies lost their dexterity and strength. One human in particular, Ganor the Strong, was legendary for being able to even cut off dragon fire. Well, this explains why we are having trouble with our magic.”

Lyra looked troubled. “So what are we supposed to do, then?”

Spike let out an enormous burp and a scroll materialized in the air above them. He snatched the scroll before it hit the table and unrolled it to read the message.

“My dear student Twilight,
I am sending a chariot to pick up you and your friend to be examined here in Canterlot so I can ensure that you are alright. If something has obstructed you from properly accessing your magic, we must make sure that it is only a temporary situation. A pony permanently drained of magic is not natural and can cause complications in the future if it isn’t taken care of quickly.
The chariot should be at the library within two hours. Be ready to stay for a day or two.
Although I’m glad I will get to see you again, I wish it were under better circumstances.
Your mentor,
Princess Celestia.”

Spike rolled up the scroll and placed it in Twilight’s “messages from Celestia” box as Twilight jumped up and started pacing the room.

“It must be really bad if the Princess needs to see us! What if I never get my magic back? What if I lose my cutie mark because of it? Will the Princess decide I can’t be her student anymore? Will I stop being an Element of Harmony? I guess I couldn’t be the Element of Magic if I can’t do magic. Will I be disowned? I can’t be disowned! I don’t know where I would go! I have no—”

“Twilight!”

“What, Spike?!”

“If it was really that bad, the princess would already be on her way over to see us. I’m sure she is just taking some precautions.”

Twilight slowed down, eventually plopping back down on the bench. “I guess you’re right, Spike. I shouldn’t overreact over this.”

Twilight took a few deep breaths to collect herself, then looked up at the clock to get her bearings. “Okay, the chariot should be here around four-ish. Are you coming with us, Spike?”

“Sorry. I can’t. I promised Rarity I would help her hunt for gems tomorrow.”

“So, I’m supposed to leave you here for two to three days, unattended?”

Spike fidgeted uncomfortably where he stood. “Of course not...”

“Oh, really?”

“You could let me stay with Rarity.”

“I highly, highly doubt that Rarity would be okay with that. If you are going to stay in Ponyville, I’m going to leave you with Fluttershy.”

Spike wilted. “Okay.”

Twilight turned to Lyra. “Is there anything we need to get from your house?”

“I don’t think so. We brought my saddlebag over and I already had most of the stuff I would need anyway in there. Do you think it has shrunk back to normal size yet?”

“I hope so. I almost broke my back trying to pull it here without magic.”

“Let’s check on it.” Lyra trotted to the front window and looked outside. “It’s still big, but not as much as it was before. I think it’s gradually shrinking. Should we check on the book?”

Twilight cast a glance to a locked chest that was thumping quietly in the corner. “I think we should give it another hour.”

“Agreed.”

“Twilight, my faithful student, it’s good to see you again.” Celestia walked with Twilight and Lyra down a corridor within the Canterlot castle. Lyra had spent the entire trip to Canterlot on pins and needles, worried that the punishment for summoning a potentially dangerous creature to Equestria would involve copious amounts of prison time or removal of her horn. Fortunately, her meeting with Celestia had banished such worries with extreme prejudice. The princess was more than understanding of the situation, quickly alleviating Lyra's fears.

Celestia turned to Lyra to properly greet her, formalities being forgotten until this point. "So, you must be Lyra Heartstrings, the one responsible for the stapler. It’s nice to finally meet you.”

Lyra blushed furiously. “Seriously, does everypony know about that?!”

“Well, it did show up in the middle of my meeting about import tariffs.”

“What do you mean?”

Twilight nudged Lyra. “You know how the stapler sneaked up on Spike, and he shot a stream of fire at it when it surprised him?”

“Yeah?”

“Didn’t you wonder where it went to after Spike breathed on it?”

Lyra scuffed the floor with a hoof. “I assumed that it was burned up by Spike.”

Celestia gave a gentle laugh and responded, “No, I taught Spike how to use dragon fire to send messages to me. If he completely engulfs an object with flames, it is sent to me instead of being incinerated. So, when he shot fire at the stapler, I ended up getting it in the middle of a meeting.”

Lyra felt like hiding in a hole. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s quite alright. That was the best surprise I think I have received in the last century. Morning Star still refuses to sit within fifteen hooflengths of me at meetings in case I get another malevolent office supply sent to me. Luna actually kept it as a pet.”

Twilight did a double-take, quickly scanning the area around them, as if she feared it would jump at them from behind a corner. “Wait, do you mean to tell me that you kept that thing around here?”

Celestia nodded. “Why not? Once Luna calmed it down, it was really kind of cute, in an odd way. All you need to do is feed it staples every so often and it stays pretty happy.”

Lyra cleared her throat and quickly changed the subject. “So, princess, what did you need us here for again?”

Celestia's smile withered away. "Well, I need to make sure that you two are okay. Anything that causes a pony to be unable to use magic is a serious matter. We will check up on your state of being personally just to be on the safe side."

"'We'?" Twilight replied.

"My sister and I." Celestia guided them into a small door that lead to an examination room. "And here we are."

Twilight and Lyra looked around the room. It was the same boring white of all examination rooms, with a stainless steel table and a small counter and cupboard. Next to the table stood Luna, examining a clipboard and wearing a lab coat.

"What in Equestria are you wearing, sister?"

"Well, we are performing a medical service to these two. Should we not dress the part?" Luna magicked away the clipboard and turned towards the group gathered at the door. "So, should we get started? The sooner the better, correct?"

"Indeed. Okay, Twilight, on the table you go."

Twilight clambered onto the table and knelt down on the cold metal. "Couldn't you have heated the table first?"

"Thine comfort ranks far lower than thine safety, Twilight." Luna waved her horn at the door, closing it and activating the lights within the room. "This might feel a little odd."

The princesses flared their horns in unison and encased Twilight in a silvery spherical blob of magic. The spell lasted for several seconds before abruptly stopping. Celestia winced and shook her head as Luna staggered back.

"What happened?" Twilight queried. "What's wrong?"

Celestia turned to the green mare who was trying her best to turn herself invisible with her nonfunctioning magic. "Lyra, what did you summon? You didn’t tell me when we talked about it before."

Lyra bit her lip. "I summoned a human, okay?! I didn't know it was going to work, or that we would lose our magic because of it, or that humans were so dangerous!" She turned around and sat facing the corner. "I'm sorry. I messed it all up, again."

Celestia opened her mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the sight of her sister shaking her head. Luna took a deep breath and trotted over to the distraught unicorn.

"We—I understand what it is like to feel as though you have utterly ruined everything," she began uncertainly. "Don't feel as though it is all for naught. No matter how bleak it seems, it is never truly hopeless. Don't despair, young one. Neither Twilight's magic nor yours is gone for good."

Lyra perked up, almost imperceptibly. "It isn't?"

"Nay. The sorcery of humans is short-lived at best. Your magic should be back in full force within a day or two."

Twilight slid herself off the table. "Princess Celestia, how is it that they can take away our magic?"

"I am not sure," the white alicorn sighed. "What we do know is that the strength of their anti-magic was linked to the emotion they were feeling. The more distraught a human was, the more powerful the effect and range of their anti-magic. Lyra, how did you manage to bring the creature here? Their very nature cancels out many spell effects on them. It must have been a powerful spell you used."

"Not at all, princess. I guess Twilight had been working on the spell, and I used it to practice because the strands of magical energy harmonized within the spell itself. My special talent is music, so I'm really good at things like resonance and harmonics."

"Interesting. Of course, now we have to deal with the issue of this thing loose in Equestria."

"No, we don't."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I sent the human back. The spell was designed to banish something after summoning it. I have no idea how the spell would be useful, but it worked well enough to get rid of the human. I just wanted to test how good the spell was and I didn't want to get stuck taking care of the thing afterwards."

"That takes care of that problem," said Celestia, stunned. "You apparently are better at magic than you let on."

An enormous rumbling shook the castle, throwing the group of ponies to the ground.

"What's going on?!" shouted Lyra, trying to make herself heard above the noise.

Luna winced and staggered towards the door. "I have felt this magic before. A certain draconequus has decided to grace us with his presence."

"Not again..." Twilight snorted in exasperation. "How did he get out?"

Discord gazed mirthfully upon the floating castle, recently disconnected from the mountain it was anchored to. "Ahh, it's good to be back."

A stick popped into his outstretched paw, which he used to rub vigorously on a spot on his back. "Finally, sweet relief. And now the real fun begins. Oh, Celestia! Luna! I know you are hiding in there! Come on out! I even have some cotton candy clouds for you to enjoy!"

The mismatched creature floated down into the garden just outside the castle where he set a tea party table, complete with dancing silverware. He sipped chocolate milk from one of the teacups as Solar Princess and Co. burst into the courtyard.

"Yoohoo! Over here!"

"Discord, thou heinous rogue!"

"Ah, the Princess of the Night. It's nice that you are actually awake for my takeover this time."

"Thou truly art a villainous blackguard! Cease your games instantly!"

"Oh, Luna, you always were too serious. I thought that you would have stopped using the old speech by now, but I guess it is hard to change how you talk after a thousand years of being stuck with only your voice to hear."

"Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!" Luna charged him, horn down and ready to blast him with magic. With a contemptuous wave of his claw, the princess blinked out of sight. "Now, where were we?"

Celestia's eye twitched. Discord himself only knew a few things that set Celestia off. Messing with her little sister was one of them.

"Give. Luna. Back," Celestia seethed through clenched teeth.

"Now, Tia, you know that isn't how I work." Discord took another sip of chocolate milk. "If you want your precious sister back, you'll have to complete a little challenge of mine."

Back in the place where sat your first throne,

Is the location of where I was first turned to stone

To regain a loved one that is once again lost,

The pony of Magic must—”

Discord was abruptly cut off as his face was batted in by a hovering lyre.

I'm so dead. I'm so very, very dead. Lyra quailed at the sight of the mismatched beast she had just assaulted with her lyre. Her beloved instrument still hovered in her shaky magical grip as Discord rubbed the side of his head. As she closed her eyes, waiting for the worst, Lyra realized that Discord was laughing.

"Oh, you ponies really are too much! I might have to keep this one around for later!"

"You want me to stick around with you?" Lyra couldn't help but stare incredulously at the spirit of Chaos for his unexpected response to being bludgeoned with her lyre.

"But of course. What good is a little chaos without others to revel in it with me?"

"I think I would rather be eaten by parasprites."

"Oh, come now, is that any way to talk to your new ruler? After all you did to free me, no less?"

Twilight narrowed her eyes. "What are you talking about? We just got here."

"Oh, come now, Twilight. Both of you are tainted with the same kind of magic that broke through my prison. This one here—" Discord gestured to Lyra "—is practically coated with it.

Discord turned to Lyra again, putting all his focus on her. He bent down so that all she could see were his eyes. "You might as well join up with me, you know. Everyone will hate you for releasing me again."

Lyra felt her resolve weaken. This is all my fault. I should just give up and accept the inevitable. She looked over to Twilight and Celestia, both of them standing firm beside her. No. If they can stand against him, so will I!

Lyra tightened her grip on her lyre, pulling it back to hit Discord again with it. "Eat brass, funny-face!"

The chaos god heaved a mock sigh of disappointment. "I was so hoping for your willing cooperation. No matter, I can always make you join me." With that, he slithered up to the unicorn and placed a finger on her forehead. Lyra froze in place, feeling all her resolve being twisted and her thoughts bent into dark and unfamiliar shape. What's going on? Unexpectedly, though, the mind magic was undone by an unknown force. With a rush, she felt something pouring into her body that burned like fire and tingled like electricity. She let out an unearthly shriek as she felt herself being consumed by the rush of energy, losing consciousness before she even hit the ground.

Discord chuckled internally as he watched the dawning moment of comprehension spread across Twilight's face as he placed his paw upon Lyra's head. There was nothing like bending one's will to your own.

Then it all fell apart. He felt his magic being overcome, then turned against. With that, it suddenly clicked into place. He knew what had set him free and what was happening. He had experienced it once before when he was much younger. It was the most terrifying experience of his life. This time, though, it was being specifically channeled elsewhere. His magic was being stolen from him. All that was Discord was being taken away.

The draconequus let out a feeble yelp as he tried to break the flow of energy, but it was too late. With a strangled gasp, his shrinking body collapsed on the ground. Twilight quickly ran forward to drag the unconscious mare in front of him to safety. It was secondary information to him, though, as a pastel mane filled his vision. He shivered as Celestia's form towered over him, her eyes glowing with all the fury and magical strength of the sun itself.

"You will regret coming back."

Chapter Two - Don't Sit on Thrones Without an Invitation

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"That's it, Lyra, wake up."

"Ooog..." Lyra blearily opened one eye. She felt like a dragon had chewed her up and spit her out again.

"How do you feel?" Twilight asked her as she felt for Lyra's pulse.

"It burns. Who decided to throw my bones in an Easy-Bake oven? Was it you?” Seeing Twilight’s bemused expression, she groaned again. "Why does it burn so much?"

"My guess is it's a side effect of absorbing Discord's magic."

"How long was I out, and why does my throat hurt?"

Twilight lifted a gadget off a tray set up nearby and levitated it near Lyra's horn. "You drifted in and out of consciousness for about two days, and every time you woke up you were screaming about your body being on fire. We eventually had to sedate you."

Lyra struggled to shift herself on the bed, but Twilight quickly stopped her. "You just woke up after over forty hours of fighting for your life. You should relax a little."

She tried to huff grumpily, but merely let out a coughing wheeze. Lyra settled back and tried to get her eyes to open a little more before mentally cursing the brightness of the sun through the window. I wish I had something to drink. With a large pop, a fifteen-hoof tall mug of apple cider materialized and slammed into the ground next to the bed. Twilight barely afforded the giant mug a glance as she continued to tend to Lyra.

"Huh... Wha... Did you see that, Twilight?!" Lyra gibbered as she edged away from the behemoth drink.

"Oh, that? You've been doing things like that since yesterday. Last night you almost drowned us when you woke up screaming about you burning and you brought a flood of water rushing in through the window."

"I see our little patient is awake, Twilight," a voice chimed from behind the cider mug. Celestia appeared from behind the drink and sat beside the bed. "How do you feel?"

"Like I was shoved in the Cakes' oven for a couple hours. Seriously, why does it feel like I’m burning up from the inside?

Celestia's expression clouded over. "You absorbed every last bit of Discord's magic potential. Normal pony bodies aren't made to contain that amount of raw energy, especially not the chaotic form of his magic."

"How did that happen?"

"We aren't sure. Twilight postulates that the taint of the human's anti-magic might have forcibly torn Discord's magic away from him. Magic potential from any creature cannot be dispersed, though. It has to find another place to reside. Unfortunately for you, you were the nearest thing capable of accepting it."

"Oh, I don't know about it being unfortunate." Lyra smirked as she conjured a silly straw from nowhere that stretched from the mug to her mouth. "Discord's magic does have its benefits... ackkkk!" She coughed and hacked as she realized that she was sucking parts of the mug from the straw and not the cider inside the mug.

"Forget what I said. I hate everything to do with that draconequus." She spat out the liquefied wood and coughed some more.

Twilight levitated a glass of water to Lyra's mouth. "Here you go. Drink this instead."

Lyra seized the glass in her hooves and drank down the entire glass in one gulp. "Ahh, that's better." She shifted towards the edge of the bed as Twilight moved to intercept her.

"Twilight, I'm glad you care about keeping me from overexerting myself, but I need to take a trip to the little filly's room, so if you don't mind, would you please let me go?"

Twilight quickly shuffled back, embarrassed. "Oops. Sorry, Lyra."

Lyra heaved herself out of the bed ungracefully, wincing as she touched the floor. She wobbled over to the door before casting an uncertain glance over the threshold.

"Turn right and it's the fourth door on the left," Celestia answered the unasked question.

"Thank you." With the speed only someone in dire need of a restroom can conjure, Lyra made her way as fast as her aching hooves could carry her. Twilight fiddled with her medical instruments nervously.

"What are we supposed to do about her?"

"I don't know, Twilight. Nothing like this has ever happened before," the princess replied. "My predecessor passed on his magical ability to me willingly but I didn't know it was possible to take the magic of another creature like that. We will have to keep an eye on her to make sure that complications don't arise because of this. For all we know, Lyra might have just become an immortal of sorts."

"What do we do then?"

"We just have to take this one step at a time."

Twilight took a deep breath. "What are we going to do about Luna?"

Celestia's eyes narrowed. "We do everything we can to get her back." She let out a snort of anger.

“Well, at least she hasn’t been sent to the moon for a thousand years again, right?” Twilight gave a nervous laugh as Celestia’s eye twitched.

"That isn’t the point. Luna didn't even deserve this. She only meant to defend Equestria.” Her mane started to roll faster, as though caught in a gust of wind.

Twilight subtly shuffled back. “Are you okay, Princess?”

“No, Twilight. I am not okay. Discord has crossed a line this time. He has taken my sister, the last living member of my family, and used her as nothing more than a prize at the end of an obstacle course.”

"How dare he imprison Luna after all she has been through? Does Discord think that she hasn't suffered enough over the past millennium? What right does he have to do something like this?"

Celestia's eyes sparked back into glowing anger, her mane whipping violently in the solar wind. "We are going to get her back from whatever wretched prison is holding her. I'm not going to make Luna wait for us to free her. She shouldn't have been taken away from me at all. How dare he act like he has the right to use her however he sees fit?"

A hoof struck the floor, cracking the stone. "Luna had just come back from being imprisoned for a thousand years by her own flesh and blood. She was still getting over the pain of being in total isolation. She was finally coming out of her shell, making friends and enjoying herself. Luna was just beginning to settle into modern life when that monster took all that away from her again!"

Twilight backed away from the infuriated princess, fear flickering across her face. She had never seen Princess Celestia act so close to losing control. Celestia's horn glowed, culminating in a brilliant shine which was almost palpable. Her wings cracked against the air sharply, sending her floating in the center of the room like an angel of death. Twilight dove for cover behind the bed. She whimpered in fright as the room shook from Celestia's beating wings and the magical force coalescing in the center of the room, her mentor at its heart.

Twilight summoned her own magic, vanishing out of the room with a magenta flash and a small snap as the air rushed into the void that her body left behind. Celestia's gaze was drawn toward the flash as she remembered that her student had been in the room.

"Ah-choo!!" Lyra materialized in the throne room about twenty hooves from the ground, floundering as she dropped abruptly in front of the twin thrones. Fortunately, a small trampoline dropped into place as she blindly groped with Discord's unfamiliar magic. With a rough bounce, she was deposited quite ungracefully at the foot of Luna's throne. She snorted and glared angrily at the spot she had first appeared.

"Curse this magic. I can't even sneeze without doing something freaky." She hauled herself back to her hooves as she winced from the aching heat in her body. Her hooves, head, back, even her dock hurt like she had been tossed in a campfire.

Lyra forgot all about her pains, though, as she realized where she was within the castle. The throne room, the heart of Equestria's diarchy, was laid out right in front of her. It was totally empty, open for her to investigate.

Lyra trotted around, examining the opulence of the room, from the thick red carpet that led up to the dais at the opposite end of the hall to the dome that soared far above her head.

Of course, it was all preamble to the final and most important part of the throne room: the actual thrones. The thrones of the princesses were arranged back to back on a revolving pedestal and were enchanted to rotate at sunrise and sunset. Since it was currently nighttime, Princess Luna's throne was facing the rest of the throne room.

Celestia's seat was carved from a single block of Marian marble, harvested by pegasi that flew to the distant island Maros specifically to collect the pure white stone. Sky-blue agate and yellow topaz were inlaid along the sides, as well as her cutie mark emblazoned on the back of the throne, with one exception: the center of the sun was a single, round onyx.

Likewise, Luna's throne was a single chunk of polished obsidian, taken by earth ponies from below a live volcano in Hydra's Gnarl. The entire throne had been carefully ground into shape by the best jewelers in Equestria. The arms of the seat were given blue-black sapphires. The back of the throne had the Night Princess's crescent moon cutie mark cut in white opal, offset by steel-gray hematite.

Lyra sat back, slack-jawed, taking in the beauty of the empty thrones. "If only I could write music that beautiful..."

She slowly approached the throne. Her progress was stopped as she realized the closer she drew to the thrones, the more it felt like she was walking into a strong wind. She ignored the resistance and pushed through, trying to reach Luna's seat.

Celestia trotted through the halls, trying to think of where Twilight would have gone if she was scared. The princess had already checked Twilight's old bedroom, the royal kitchen and every other place she could think of, except one. She silently berated herself for not thinking to look in the library first. She flew towards the royal library, trying to think up apologies to her faithful student on the way.

She reached the library far too soon to come up with a good apology. The solar princess silently made her way through the rows and rows of shelves, making her way back to the area that dealt with nonfiction. She knew Twilight couldn't help but go to the same place she always went when she was sad or angry as a filly in her care.

Celestia turned to the shelves that dealt with magic theory and application and noticed that over half the books were missing. Twilight is definitely here. She quietly made her way to the little study nook in the back corner, where she was greeted by an enormous fort comprised entirely of books. The fort stretched nearly a third as tall as the three-story shelf nearby. The alicorn bit her lip to keep from laughing at the adorable study habit of Twilight to literally surround herself in her books while she read.

As she approached the fort, Celestia ran into a forcefield that flashed magenta as her muzzle collided with it. She recognized the variant of the Captain of the Guard's shield spell that he had taught Twilight.

"Go away. I'm busy," a small voice floated from the center of the book mass.

"Twilight, it's me." Twilight's head peeped out of a strategically placed window. A pillow rested on the unicorn's head, covering everything but one eye. Celestia couldn't help but let out a small chuckle, and Twilight darted back into the fort. The princess hung her head in sadness as she realized her own student was frightened of her.

"I'm sorry I let you see me like that, Twilight. My anger got away from me. Please don't shut me out."

"It was terrifying."

"I know." Celestia sunk to the floor miserably. "I was angry. It's just that Luna had just got back and she was finally adjusting. She had finally made a couple friends. You should have seen the look on her face when she learned that there was an entire branch of science dedicated entirely to studying her night sky. She took up painting. I introduced her to donuts."

A tear trickled down her cheek as she continued talking. "It had been literally centuries since I had last seen her, and even longer since I had actually seen her so happy. I don't understand why Discord decided that she was going to be the object of some twisted challenge. He was never this vengeful before. I just..." The solar princess choked up, no longer capable of talking past her shaky breathing and tears. She laid her head down and started to sob.

Celestia dimly heard the sound of magic being undone and felt someone nuzzling her. She lifted her head to see Twilight kneeling next to her, trying to console her teacher.

Lyra finally made it to the throne. She didn't even know why she wanted to see it so close, but it felt like it was drawing her even though it was pushing her away.

Sit in it. You know you want to.

I can't do that, it's Luna's throne!

Come on, what will it hurt? It's not like she is even here anyway.

...What could it hurt?

Lyra gingerly seated herself in the chair. It was surprisingly comfortable for being carved out of volcanic glass. In fact, it even felt like her body was—

"How dare you!"

The seafoam unicorn jerked up, hearing the lunar princess's unmistakable Royal Canterlot Voice. Runic lines, nearly invisible on the throne, flared with Luna's magic. Lyra felt tendrils of ice quickly creep from the seat to encase her body, holding her fast.

"I never thought thou wouldst be so foalish as to try to actually sit on my throne in my absence, Discord. Whether I am present or not, I can still protect what is mine. Thou shalt pay for imprisoning me here. Unlike my sister, I do not merely turn ponies to stone. I prefer more permanent solutions."

"Wait!" Lyra shrieked as she realized Luna's intent. "I'm not Discord!"

"You think I cannot feel your magic? There is no other creature that has magic like yours."

"I'm not Discord! Really! I took his magic by accident!" Lyra started babbling as panic set in. "I started hitting him with my lyre and he said "you're funny I want to hang with you" and I was like "no you freak" and he was like "whatever all the mares want me they just don't know it yet" so he went and tried to do some mind magic or something on me and then it all went wrong and I accidentally messed up his magic and sucked it all in and I don't know what happened after that because I blacked out for almost two days and I just woke up and I had to use the restroom and I sneezed and ended up in the throne room because I teleported accidentally and I saw your throne and thought it was awesome so I wondered what it would be like to sit on it I'm so sorry please don't kill me!"

The silence that set in after the ridiculously long run-on sentence felt like it stretched to eternity. Even though Lyra was coated in ice, she sweated as she waited for the lunar princess's reply.

"You like my throne?"

"...Yes?"

"I think I know who you are. Thou art the unicorn that came with my sister's apprentice?"

"How could you tell?"

"Your magic isn't completely overpowered by Discord's. It feels like the spell on my pet stapler."

"Why does nopony ever forget the stapler?"

"'Twas quite memorable, and amusing as well."

Lyra rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm glad somepony enjoys it. Princess Luna?"

"Yes?"

"Could you melt the ice trapping me here? It's really cold."

"Of course." The icy claws quickly retreated and the runes on the throne faded so that they pulsed with Luna's voice. "So Discord is defeated?"

"I guess so. Nopony has really talked about him since I woke up. Then again, I only came back to the land of the living about fifteen minutes ago."

"Trust me, you would know if he were still around. It does bring to question why I am still imprisoned here. My entrapment is magical in nature. If Discord is no longer around to power it, I should have been long since freed."

"What do we do, then?"

"Discord would not do this without providing an escape for me in some form of a challenge for my sister. Insane though he may be, there was always an answer to his riddles, no matter how unfair they were. Do you remember any part of the riddle?"

Lyra started to respond but felt her body seize up in a fresh burst of pain.

"Are you well?" Luna's concerned voice broke through the haze of pain in Lyra's mind.

"I'm fine. Ever since taking Discord's magic I've been having terrible pain. That's not important right now, though. I know the riddle.

"Back in the place where sits your first throne,

"Is the location of where I was first turned to stone

"To regain a loved one that is once again lost,

"The pony of Magic must pay the ultimate cost."

Lyra could feel the unease of the lunar princess as she finished the riddle. "Tell Celestia what you have told me. She will know what to do."

"What will you do?"

"I will continue to try to break free. Pray that I can do so. If I can't, the alternative will not be pleasant."

The runes on the throne faded out entirely, indicating the end of the conversation. Lyra shakily pulled herself off the throne, feeling fatigue race through her body as the stress of almost being killed by the princess finally set in. There was no time for having a nervous breakdown, she reminded herself. She had an assignment to complete.

Lyra burst out of the throne room, shocking the guards posted at the doors. She paid them no mind as they gave chase, calling for reinforcements along the way. Finding the princess was the only thing on her list of priorities at the moment.

"Gotcha!" One guard pounced on her, only to be suddenly hit by a hastily conjured pie. A couple cotton candy clouds appeared from nowhere and started chasing the guards, tangling them up in a nougat hailstorm. She cast a glance backward and laughed at them, only to run headfirst into a pillar. The remaining guards quickly piled on top of Lyra before a brilliant flash of light consumed the entire pile.

"Do you feel better, Princess?" Twilight had hugged Celestia until the alicorn's crying subsided to an occasional sniffle.

"A little. I'm sorry for being so emotional."

"It's okay. I understand completely."

Celestia shuffled to her hooves, wincing at the pins-and-needles feeling that shot through her legs from laying on them for so long. "I think it would be best if-"

She was abruptly cut off by a screaming pile of guards and Lyra falling from over forty hooves above them. Twilight was the first to recover from the shock by quickly capturing each individual in her magical grasp, lowering the group gently to the ground. Upon touching down, the guards rushed at Lyra again, quickly apprehending her.

"Captain Lancer, what is going on here?" Celestia demanded, quickly switching to her royal demeanor.

"Princess!" The pegasus saluted her with his wing. "This unicorn came out of your throne room. She did not enter through any of the doors and she had no explanation for her presence in the room. We think she might have teleported into the room, intending to do you ill."

The princess raised an eyebrow. "My throne room is guarded against teleporting spells."

"It was Discord's stupid magic!" Lyra shouted from behind the wall of guards.

"It's alright. She is my guest. I'm sure she has a completely valid explanation as to why and how she got into my throne room, which is specifically guarded against magic," the alicorn said pointedly.

Lyra gave out an exasperated sigh as the guards slowly backed away from her. She launched into a lengthy talk of how she had been trying to use the restroom and had accidentally teleported when she was overcome by a large sneeze. She then talked about how she had made contact with Luna, conveniently leaving out the fact that she had initiated said contact by sitting on Luna's throne. She also left out the part about Discord's riddle, uncomfortable with telling the entire thing with guards surrounding her.

Celestia seemed to pick up on the information Lyra left out. "You are free to return to your posts, guards. She is no threat."

As the last guard left, she asked "You sat on her throne, didn't you?"

"Was it that obvious?"

"Our thrones are connected to us. It is the only way you could have contacted my sister without some form of communication spell. You are fortunate my sister didn't turn you to ashes where you sat."

"Tell me about it."

"So, did you learn of where she was being kept?"

"No, but I did get the riddle that Discord told us." She recited it to Celestia and Twilight. Celestia's face turned into a dark scowl as she finished the riddle.

"We have to get your sister back!" Twilight said. "I'll get my friends and we will—"

"No. It cannot be like that. There is no safety in numbers where you will be going. Besides, I cannot ask you to do this for me."

"I'm not a filly anymore, Princess. I know what 'ultimate cost' means. Even so, I'm not going to let your sister waste away in some magical dungeon because I was afraid of a little risk."

Celestia sighed. "There is no convincing you otherwise, is there?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Very well. I will tell you what you will most likely be facing along the way."

Lyra couldn't help herself. "I'm coming too!"

Celestia interjected, "I couldn't allow you to put yourself in danger for me or my sister. It is bad enough that Twilight is doing this without dragging in an innocent bystander."

Lyra stomped a hoof. "That is the problem. I'm not an innocent bystander. I'm the reason all of this even happened! Without me Luna would still be here, Twilight would be at home and Discord wouldn't have gotten loose."

Twilight responded "You weren't at fault for any of this. It was just a bad series of coincidences."

"No! It wasn't! I summoned a human. The human broke Discord's spell and ended up transferring Discord's magic to me. That's probably why Luna hasn't been freed yet. In fact, she wouldn't be imprisoned at all if he hadn't been released in the first place!

"No, it is my fault. I made this mess. I'm going to clean it up." Lyra glared at Twilight and Celestia, daring them to say otherwise. "I may just be a musician, but it will be a cold day in Tartarus before I don't take responsibility for my actions."

Celestia looked at Lyra's face, the unicorn's determined gaze boring into hers. "Very well. If I can't convince you to stay, I will at least help you prepare for the task that is to come."

"Good. The faster we get this done, the sooner I can go home and try to find a way to get rid of this magic."

Twilight stared at Lyra. "Most unicorns would give their right front leg to wield the magic you have now. You want to give that up?"

"It isn't mine. It doesn't feel right to use it. Princess, do you think there is a way for me to get rid of this magic?"

"I don't know, my little pony. I assure you, though, that while you are on this quest I will do my best to research into finding a cure for this."

Twilight gave a funny look. "Quest?"

Celestia smiled. "Why, yes. It has been a very long time since a quest has been given to anypony. This is a great honor for both of you. You might even become legendary for this."

Twilight gave a short laugh. "I am the Element of Magic. I think that I have long since claimed legendary for a title."

Celestia joined in her mirth. "That is true. A little good publicity never hurt anyone though." She turned to leave, beckoning the two unicorns to follow. "This way. We have much to do before you set out tomorrow on your quest!"

Lyra trundled along behind Celestia and Twilight. Seriously, it's like I run directly towards the biggest trouble in the country, she thought to herself. I'm no hero. I'm a bard. Why did I even volunteer myself for this?

Chapter Three - Legacies

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Lyra trotted through the chaotic remains of Ponyville. The soapy roads made it hard for her to walk and day turning into night every few minutes didn't help at all. Eventually, though, she made it to where her apartment used to be. The actual building hovered in the air, leaving a massive crater in the ground where the building had been. She crawled into the crater and curled into a ball, watching miscolored candy clouds and houses float by in the sky. She hated Discord's "New Ponyville" with a passion. It was almost disturbing, the randomness of it all.

Discord had come from nowhere, randomly changing things to "make it funnier." Bunnies grew freakishly long legs. Squirrels became the size of dogs. Apples grew to the size of melons, bending trees over at the trunk. Ponies' coats spontaneously changed color. He did everything possible to cause chaos and he loved it. Of course he did. He thrived on throwing the lives of others into a loop. Every time ponies tried to get together, he would drive them apart with well placed bursts of chaos. She couldn't find Carrot Top, or Derpy, or Caramel, or Vinyl, or Bon Bon. She was all alone and she hated it.

Lyra's hatred was interrupted by a deep laugh. She knew where it came from. She rushed to the hill overlooking Ponyville where Discord's throne usually sat. This time, he was actually on it, drinking chocolate milk raining from a cotton candy cloud above him.

"Why?" she demanded. "Why did you do this? We didn't do anything to you! Leave us alone!"

The god of Chaos laughed again. "My dear Lyra Heartstrings, I didn't do all this. You did."

"You're lying. I had nothing to do with this."

"Then why are you the one sitting on the throne?" Discord's form melted into her own, the only difference being the red eyes. The other Lyra's face twisted into a cruel sneer. "You can't deny it, Lyra. This is all your doing. All this is your legacy."

"No!" Lyra tried to yell in the not-Lyra's face, but it came out more like a squeak than a roar. "This wasn't me. This wasn't me! I wouldn't do this to my friends!" She took a step towards the throne.

The not-Lyra's horn glowed and Lyra found herself in a patch of quicksand, being pulled below ground at a startling speed.

"Hear me well, Lyra." Not-Lyra hovered directly in front of her face. "There is nothing you can do. You can't stop me. It's only a matter of time before I win. You can either join me and have some fun with this or you can fight me and be smothered."

The quicksand was up to her withers. "Drop dead."

"Then you will be consumed." The not-Lyra sat back on the throne and watched Lyra slip under the quicksand. It was dark. She couldn't breathe. She fought but kept slipping into the dark muck...

Chapter Four - Insomnia Makes for Interesting Evenings

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"Gaaaaaaah!" Lyra bolted out of bed, pawing at her throat with her hooves as she pulled the sheets and pillow down to the floor. Discord's magic flared, out of control, from her horn, turning the room an assortment of blinding colors as she fell towards the ceiling. The lights in the room flickered wildly before exploding.

Lyra's breathing slowly calmed and she dropped to the floor as the effects of the magic wore off. "It was just a dream. It was just a dream. It was just a dream."

She cast a glance over to the sweat-soaked sheet lying on the floor next to her and shuddered. "There's no way I'm getting back to sleep tonight." She slowly got back on her hooves, the now-familiar pain of Discord's magic lancing through her body.

Lyra nudged the door open to her suite within the Canterlot castle. She walked down the hall, trying to get control of her breathing.

"Are you alright, miss?"

"I just need to go outside for a bi—aaahh!" Lyra had to bite back a full-fledged shriek as she turned around to see a bat-winged, slit-pupiled, fanged guard cocking his head at her inquisitively.

"What's wrong? Oh, yes, the look. It's okay, miss. It's just part of being a Lunar Guard."

Lyra looked down at the guard from the pillar she had somehow managed to climb halfway. "No, it's fine. You just startled me is all."

"Uh-huh. Is there anything I can help you with?"

She slid down the pillar, coming to an abrupt stop at the bottom. "Ow... I just wanted to go outside for a bit of fresh air."

"Not sleeping well tonight?"

"You could say that."

The guard gestured behind the unicorn with a wing. "The Royal Gardens are that way. Take a right at the end of the hall, turn left at the second arch and through the door at the end. You will be on the north side of the hedge maze in the statuary area."

"Thank you Mister...?"

"Westwood, miss."

"Well, thank you Westwood."

Lyra trotted towards the garden, looking at the darkened stained-glass windows as she went. The panes told stories of fierce beasts and hard-fought battles, loss and chaos intruding upon Equestria only to be beaten back by the guardians of the realm. The princesses, ancient heroes and wielders of the Elements of Harmony were all immortalized in the windows. Without them, the world as they knew it would have been ruined many times over by beings like Ursa and Canis Majors, Discord, Nightmare Moon and many other beings that were even darker and forbidden to be acknowledged.

And she had confronted the most infamous of them all with nothing more than a musical instrument and a prayer. She could imagine what Bon Bon would say to that: "Lyra Heartstrings, did you try a lobotomy spell or did your brain merely fall out of your mouth this morning? What would possess you to attack the god of Chaos with your lyre?!"

"As if she wasn't going to kill me already for the crater I put in the yard," Lyra mumbled to herself as she magicked open the door to the gardens. She inhaled deeply, enjoying the fragrances of the flowers surrounding the statuary. She dug her hooves into the ground to feel the cool earth.

Lyra moved on, examining the statues one by one as she came across them. A soft glow caught the corner of her eye, and she turned to where Discord's statue used to be. In its place stood a small pony-like sculpture. Celestia had sat in front of the stone artwork, her traditional royal jewelry cast on the ground beside her.

I should probably leave her alone. "Are you alright, Princess?" Why did you say that? Just keep walking. Leave her alone. Why am I walking closer to her? No, don't sit down! "Why are you out here at this time of night?"

"I can't sleep tonight."

"Join the club." Lyra fidgeted nervously as she looked at the statue. She didn't remember it being here before. "Is this a new one?"

"No, my little pony. This is Discord himself."

"What?"

"Magic was very influential in Discord's appearance. When you took his magic, you took away the greatest part of him. This is what was left behind."

Lyra silently took in the morphed form of the draconequus. He stood on four legs now. The horns on his head were little more than nubs. He still had a scaly tail and mismatched legs, but they were now more pony-like in form. The wings on his back were both feathered. His fang was gone. What remained was a statue of a very frightened and small creature that looked very much like a pony, standing on a cracked and crumbling pedestal.

"Does this mean I'll become like him?"

Celestia sighed. "I don't know." The sun princess gave the downcast unicorn a small smile. "Fear not, young Heartstrings. You wouldn't have this burden if you could not carry it. I am not worried about you."

Lyra gave an uneasy smile. "Thanks for the vote of confidence." She looked at the statue again. "What happened to his stand?"

A flit of displeasure made a brief appearance on the alicorn's face. "I was going to crush his statue to rubble, but I couldn't do it. This time, though, he has reached the very limits of my tolerance for his antics. If he attempts something again, it will take much doing for him to earn any mercy from me."

Lyra cleared her throat, eager to change the subject. "So, Princess, you asked Twilight to recover your sister for you."

"And you were wondering why I couldn't go rescue my sister myself."

"Yeah."

"It's a valid question, and one with many answers. I am not comfortable sharing all my reasons with you, but I can give you one. I could not entrust my position to someone else while I am off finding my sister. Equestria needs me to be right here for the time being. Someone needs to be here to make sure order is kept."

"I guess that's a good reason to stay." The two mares sat next to each other, silently regarding the sculpture for a while longer.

"You are wondering why I let you volunteer to go with Twilight tomorrow."

Lyra whipped her head around to gawk at Celestia. "How did you know that?"

"I've been around for a while. You learn to pick up on what ponies are thinking." Celestia giggled and pointed a hoof at Lyra. "You should see the look on your face. Anyway, to answer your unasked question, I think it would be good for you to go along with Twilight. It's a long journey, and even longer when it is taken alone. You said you feel responsible for what happened with Luna, and you want to make it right. I can respect your motivation and I think that you might be instrumental in helping undo Luna's prison.

"Besides, you managed to give Discord a couple solid hits with your lyre. Anypony who is willing to take on a creature that outclasses them by so much is worthy of my respect. For future reference, though, you might want to come up with a plan of attack before jumping into action. I won't always be around to help you out of a tight spot."

Lyra gave an embarrassed laugh. "Thanks, I think."

"So, why can't you sleep tonight?"

"I'm still achy. It's not as bad as before, but it still hurts to do anything."

Celestia gazed at her patiently. "That's not the only reason, is it?"

"Apparently Discord decided it would be fun to mess with my dreams." Lyra groaned and rubbed her forehead at the base of her horn. "It's truly terrifying to dream that you are drowning in quicksand."

Lyra shook her head, trying to clear the images of the dream from her mind. "I swear, it feels like Discord is hanging out in my brain. It’s a little like he's rented space in my mind."

"The magic of any living entity carries an imprint of the source's personality. If you took Discord's magic potential, you most likely also absorbed a lot of his identity." Celestia's look carried a hint of worry. "Does it feel like he is fighting you internally?"

"Yeah."

"Would you like for me to try to help?"

Lyra perked up a little. "You have something you can do?"

"Yes. I don't know how well it will work, but I can give it a go." Celestia stood quickly and motioned for Lyra to follow. "Give me a second here, and..."

The gardens blinked out in a flash of yellow, replaced by a small, basement-like confine. Lyra swayed, disoriented by the teleport.

"Welcome to my magic workshop. I normally don't bring others here, but I think I can make an exception in this case."

The room had no windows. In fact, it didn't even have a door. The only openings were the air vents in the ceiling, pumping in fresh air. The walls were entirely lined with bookcases crammed full of books of all sizes. Several chests of varying sizes were placed on top of the cases. A small workbench had been wedged in between two bookcases, almost entirely covered in flasks and books full of mouth-written notes.

"Where are we?"

"We are inside Mount Chalice. Half a mile of stone sits between us and Canterlot."

"What?! How did this place get here?"

"I sneezed while teleporting about four hundred years ago and I ended up here by mistake. I decided to modify it slightly and make it my project room." Celestia magicked a robe over herself and snatched a pair of goggles from a rack holding various pieces of equipment. "It's a nice place to go when everything gets to be too much for me at the castle. Only a few ponies know this room exists, and only I know exactly where it lies within the mountain." She levitated her royal jewelry that she had brought with her and floated it into a small chest in a corner.

"Interesting... so you brought all this stuff in yourse—Hey!" Lyra cried as a trio of books whizzed from a bookcase, passing a half-hoof from her nose.

"Yes, I did. It took several years to get it completely ready, and I almost suffocated when I forgot to bore some breathing holes before working in here."

"Would you be careful with those books?" the unicorn yelped as she dodged more books that were orbiting around the princess. "Honestly, you are as bad as Twilight!"

"My apologies, Lyra. I'm not used to working around others in here." Celestia abruptly shot all the books back to their shelves, save one that she was reading. "Ah, here we go. Stand over in the center of the room, please."

"O...kay..." Lyra trotted over to the spot the solar princess gestured. "So, what are you going to do?"

Celestia slipped the goggles over her eyes as she backed up to a far corner. "I'm going to attempt to use a binding spell to nullify Discord's magic. As a side effect, you shouldn't have any more trouble with hearing Discord's thoughts. It's a bit of a long shot, but I think it will work."

"Uh, have you done this before?"

"Not this particular spell, no. I did use a variant to subdue Twilight Sparkle's magic when she first became my student, so I could teach her control. This spell is a combination binding and a booster spell to compensate for the unruly nature of Discord's magic."

"That's pretty cool. Where did you find the spell?"

"I designed it myself."

"When did you do that?"

"Just now."

"What?!"

"Hold still, please." As Celestia began casting the spell, Lyra had a second to wonder if she should try her luck at escaping before being enveloped in a cocoon of arcane energy.

Chapter Five - Guerrilla Tactics

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The scratching of a quill broke the early morning silence as Twilight read off her questing checklist.

"Saddlebags? Check. Camping gear? Check. Bedroll? Check. Book detailing flora and fauna native to the Everfree Forest? Check. Extra study material? Check. First aid kit? Check. Food rations?" Twilight glanced at the supplies on the table in her room, noting the absence of foodstuffs. She circled "Food rations," making a mental note to stop by the royal pantry before leaving as she moved down the list.

"Okay, what's next? Write letter to Spike telling him I will be gone for a few more days? Check. Send aforementioned letter?" Another circled item. "I'll have Celestia send it to him."

Twilight levitated all the items except Spike's letter into the saddlebags before securing the unwieldy mass on her back. She would stop by the kitchen first, then talk to Celestia and hopefully be able to round up Lyra in time to leave at 7:54, according to the schedule she had laid out last night before going to bed.

As she trotted towards the royal kitchens, Twilight noted an earth pony cleaning up a pile of nougat from yesterday's shenanigans involving the guards and Lyra. I hope she can keep a lid on Discord's magic. It wouldn't do for her to lose control while rescuing Luna. It might even throw us off schedule, she thought worriedly as she made her way through the castle.

Lyra crept behind the earthen embankment in the practice area of the training grounds. Celestia was on the opposite side, practicing what appeared to be fighting stances, throwing kicks at a training dummy in front of her. As far as Lyra could see, she had managed to get into position completely undetected.

Lyra cast her gaze around the trench, noticing a neatly stacked pile of stones to her left. Each of the stones was quite substantial in size, ranging from cantaloupe to small market stall in size. A slightly manic grin stretched across her face as she hefted a trio of stones, each the size of her head, in her magical aura. Nodding approvingly, she peeked over the embankment at the princess. Celestia appeared to still be focused on her hoof-to-hoof combat practice.

In one fluid motion, Lyra leaped over the embankment and silently hurled the group directly at the princess. Celestia's horn flared and all three stones were slightly deflected, one whizzing directly past her ear.

Lyra snorted in frustration, the advantage of surprise obviously lost. With an exaggerated wave of her horn, she levitated a small flotilla of stones from the pile.

"Down with the solar tyrant!" she trumpeted as she started flinging the stones in rapid succession. Celestia whirled around and smoothly dodged projectile after projectile. The solar princess caught up one of the larger rocks flung at her and shot it through a tightly grouped volley of stones, deflecting all but one of them. The alicorn turned to give the remaining rock a well-timed buck, smashing the watermelon-sized behemoth into rubble.

As Lyra slowed to catch her breath, Celestia took the opportunity to blow a rasberry at her would-be attacker.

"Oh, you asked for it!" The enraged unicorn grabbed up the largest stone she could lift with her magic. She roared as she broke into a full sprint, drawing the boulder back in order to fling the monstrous thing directly at the princess. Too late, she noticed a purple unicorn teleporting directly into her path. Lyra cried out in shock as she felt herself being levitated back, thrown against the opposite wall and pinned there by a cloud of hostile magic.

Twilight had been trotting around the castle looking for the princess when she heard a series of thuds coming from the training grounds. Hmm, that's odd. Usually the guards are done with their morning training by now.

A muffled yell of "Down with the solar tyrant!" blasted from the other side of the door. accompanied by a terrifying cacophony of shattering stones. Twilight wasted no time in charging through the double doors to the training room, tearing the doors off their hinges with a surge of magic in time to see a crazed-looking Lyra charging the princess with a fleet of hovering rocks. Heading the hovering stones was a shockingly large granite boulder. Granted, it wasn't as large as Tom, but it would still be more than enough to mortally wound anypony.

Time seemed to slow as Twilight willed herself in front of her beloved mentor. With a powerful burst of magic, she smacked the boulder into the ground a scant ten hooves in front of her. The rock pushed the dirt around it into a ring as it was forced nearly entirely into the ground. With another surge she caught up Lyra in her magic and forcefully repelled her away as she shielded Celestia from the rest of the projectiles.

She should have known that Lyra was too dangerous to be trusted with Discord's magic! What should they do now that she had openly attacked the princess? Would they be capable of containing her? Did they have enough guards to keep Lyra subdued?

"Twilight? What are you—" the shocked princess started to say.

"Hurry, Princess! I have her bound at the moment! Get my brother and he should be able to keep her contained with a shield spell while we figure out what to do."

"Twili—"

A bead of sweat rolled down Twilight’s face as her mind raced frantically through options, her magic still steadfastly pinning Lyra to the wall. "I think if you give me enough time I should be able to find a binding spell that will be able to hold her at bay. I need to be able to get to the library and find Spells of Holding and Restraint, so you will need to get some guards here to make sure she doesn't try anything."

"I really don't thin—"

"I'm sorry, I should have known better than to leave her unattended by herself like this. I thought she wouldn't be dangerous. I really should have investigated more into this before—"

"Twilight Sparkle."

Twilight stopped short at Celestia's use of the Royal Canterlot Voice. "Yes, Princess?"

"Would you please set Lyra down?"

"But—"

"Now."

Twilight wilted, and Lyra floated down to the ground, collapsing once Twilight released her magic. Lyra proceeded to cough for a few seconds and gasped for breath in order to form a reply. "Has everypony decided that Lyrabuse has become a valid form of entertainment?"

Celestia watched the two mares, her posture the perfect image of composure. She cleared her throat and started to explain the situation. "Lyra and I decided to perform combat practice with each other. It has been a while since I have brushed up on my sparring skills, and Lyra liked the idea of learning how to fight. She mentioned something about 'expanding her horizons.' By the way, Lyra, that was an interesting plan of attack. I would personally recommend learning a cloaking spell of some kind if you want to use guerrilla tactics, but it was a commendable effort. I would also say go for smaller rocks if you plan on using projectiles. Speed is more valuable than strength in your case.

“Also, you noticed how easy it was for Twilight to incapacitate you while you were focused on attacking me. You need to learn how to keep aware of your surroundings. Never become focused to the point of excluding other pieces of information."

Lyra wheezed out an affirmation in reply to Celestia's criticism, and the princess turned to a properly shame-faced Twilight.

"As for you, Twilight, I appreciate the fact that you are willing to jump to my aid so quickly, but you must learn to take in all the facts before jumping into action. A poorly thought-out reaction can do more harm than good to certain situations. For example, we were practicing on the training grounds. Not only that, but there was a sign on the door." Celestia gestured with a wing to the door laid flat on the ground next to them. "Would you be so kind as to read the sign to me?"

Twilight walked over to the door and read the sign. "Caution: Training Exercise in Progress." A crimson hue spread across her face as she turned back to the princess.

"As for your style of defense, it was effective, but crude. Given your aptitude towards magic, it would probably suit you to learn some combat-ready spells."

Twilight nodded, keeping her eyes trained on the ground in front of her. Celestia cleared her throat and made her way to the door. "Now, if you two would come with me, we have much to discuss before you leave to retrieve my sister."

After about an hour of preparations, Celestia had finally sent Twilight and Lyra on their way, supplying them with a pair of royal guards and a chariot to escort them to the edge of the Everfree Forest.

Lyra shifted her saddlebags, trying to seat the excess weight somewhere that didn't ache after five minutes. Twilight sat on the other side of the chariot, looking over the railing.

"So... how's the 'imbued with the power of the spirit of chaos' thing working out for you?" Twilight ventured awkwardly.

"Okay, I guess. The princess decided to help me by binding Discord's magic so it wouldn't show up in bad moments." Lyra couldn't be sure, but it looked like Twilight relaxed a little at that statement. "It doesn't completely negate his magic, and it kind of interferes with mine so I can't do a lot more than simple levitation at the moment, but it serves its purpose well enough."

"Ah, that explains why you smell... crispy."

"Crispy?"

"Yeah. Celestia has a tendency to put too much power into her spells. She's a great spellcaster, but when you have the strength to move the sun it's hard to judge when enough is enough. When too much power is put into a spell, it is reverted into a more natural form, most commonly heat. Your fur probably just got a little singed is all."

At that, Lyra started sniffing at herself. "Is it really that bad?"

"No, it's just barely noticeable. I remember the smell from when she was teaching me how to do magic."

"Oh, okay." Lyra stretched out slightly. "It is nice, though, not having to worry about accidentally turning the chariot into a pie at any moment."

"You can say that again." Twilight fidgeted with her book for a few seconds. "How do you feel?"

"A little tired, but good. Since Celestia cast that spell on me, it doesn't burn anymore. It feels more like an all-over itch than anything right now. Nothing I can't handle.

"So, why can't the chariot take us all the way to wherever we are going again?"

Twilight sighed. "I told you, the weather in the Everfree Forest is too unpredictable to allow for flying above tree level. We could get hit by lightning or caught in a microburst, and besides, the forest is kind of strange."

"Strange how?"

"You can't get anywhere in the Everfree Forest unless you do it from the ground. Back during the first ‘eternal night incident,’ Nightmare Moon cast a spell over the area she controlled. One of the effects of the spell made it so anyone who flew over the area would be completely lost until they landed. There were a bunch of other designs of the spell that made the entire area surrounding the ancient castle uninhabitable by ponies. When Nightmare Moon was banished, the entire area was abandoned, eventually becoming the forest we know today.

“Many of the spell's effects still linger, which is why we can't fly directly to the castle. Both princesses have tried to break the spell covering the area but so far they have been unsuccessful. They believe the spell has been tied to a particular object within the castle, which is why the spell hasn't dissipated entirely over the last millennium. No one is willing to go into the castle ruins to find out what has been enchanted with the spell.

“An unintended effect of the enchantment has been that a lot of odd, magical creatures are drawn to the Everfree Forest and plants there have a tendency to exhibit unnatural characteristics. Some plants are even known to actively alter magical fields within their immediate vicinity. Some effects include..."

Twilight trailed off as she realized Lyra had dozed off. She huffed and turned around, looking over the edge of the chariot again. "Some ponies don't know how to appreciate the value of knowledge."

Bon-Bon had a great time at the hard candy convention in Baltimare. In fact, she had spent a few days more there than she had planned once she found a couple friends from Los Pegasus who had attended as well. They had spent most of the time catching up and swapping recipes until the early hours of the morning.

Ahh, that was a very worthwhile time, Bon-Bon thought to herself as she trotted up the lane to where she and Lyra shared an apartment. Still, there is no feeling like returning to a nice comfortable bed. Home swee—

Bon-Bon stopped short in front of her house. The entire front wall was charred and blackened. It had apparently been this way for at least a couple days. That was nothing compared to the yard, though. The grass had been scorched black, and there was a crater in the center of the yard surrounding a small circle of pristine grass.

"Okay, okay, calm down, Bon-Bon," she reassured herself. "At least your garden looks intact." She carefully nudged a slightly blackened rose bush to confirm its well-being. The bush disintegrated into a pile of ash with a gentle poof. Panic rising in her heart, she checked the rest of the plants, each similarly collapsing into little clumps of soot.

"What happened here?!" Bon-Bon cantered around the toroid in the earth. "Four hoofprints near the crater? Magical residue around the circle?"

Bon-Bon looked at a familiar imprint in the bench. "Smudged soot on the back of the bench?"

She threw her hooves up and raged to the sky: "Lyyyyyyyyyyyyyraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!"

Chapter Six - Pup Tents Are Pure Evil

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It's been a long time since I had a change of scenery. Let's see what I have to work with.

Hmm. Not as powerful or as adept at magic. More impulsive, though. I like that in a pony. Creative. Unorthodox. Stubborn. Oooh, you are going to be fun to break.

You seem to have an uncanny knowledge of the relationship of harmony and disharmony. You are a rare one, aren't you? It's nice to know I have picked such a unique host this time around. I can't wait to get started in on you.

Leyline Tracer glanced from his spellbook to the light blue unicorn filly that had just trotted through the door. He could see her scanning the classroom, looking for a good desk. He breathed out a sigh of relief as her gaze passed him without stopping, only to stiffen as she looked back to him and gave a curious tilt to her head. His silent pleadings went unheeded as she trotted to a desk next to him and levitated her saddlebags to the ground before hopping into the seat and turning to ask him the same question everypony else asked him today.

“Did you get lost or something?”

“No, why?”

“This is Nocturne’s School for Gifted Unicorns and you’re an earth pony!”

“Yeah, so?”

“How can you practice magic if you can’t even do it?”

“Who says I can’t study magic for the sake of learning about it? Even if I can’t actually do the spells I want to know how they work.”

“But that doesn’t explain how they even let you join the school.”

“I convinced Prince Nocturne to let me take some classes.”

She narrowed her slate grey eyes at him. “How?”

“I showed him a spell I made that controls a quill to write down everything you say.”

“Oh, that’s cool. What’s your special talent?” He sighed as she glanced to his flank, the only thing there being his brown coat. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were a blank flank.”

“It’s alright. It’s not your fault. It’s kind of hard to get a cutie mark as an earth pony when you only like studying magic.”

“I think I can understand why.” She giggled as he gave an exasperated sigh. “You’re pretty cool for an earth pony. What’s your name?”

He quirked his head. Usually unicorns would have stopped talking to him by this point. “Leyline Tracer. What’s yours?”

“Dulcet Tones.”

“What do you like to do?”

She turned her flank to him, gesturing to her cutie mark. A trio of musical notes with lines over them was there. “I love singing. If my parents didn’t insist on me learning advanced magic, I would be in music class right now.” She sighed dreamily at the thought. "I hate studying for this class."

“Come on, magic isn’t so bad.”

“It’s hard! It has all these stupid rules and I can never understand what the teachers are talking about.”

Dulcet’s head met the desktop with a resounding thud, mumbling something unintelligible to the wood panel.

“You know, I could help you study,” Leyline began hesitantly.

She turned her head to respond, her long, dark red mane obscuring most of her face. “What would you know about advanced magic?”

He couldn’t help the large grin that spread across his face. “Oh, this and that...”

Lyra was jolted awake by the chariot wheels roughly hitting the ground. She yawned and stretched as she blinked the gunk out of her eyes. Well, that was an odd dream. She looked over to see Twilight give her a disgruntled look before hopping off the chariot. Lyra levitated her saddlebags to her back, quickly following suit.

"Did you have a good nap?"

"Yeah, I did. It's nice to sleep without nightmares." Lyra shook her head to clear out the lingering memories of her dream before continuing. "So, what do we do from here?"

Twilight pulled a map from her bags, unfolding it until the parchment fully blocked her from Lyra's view. "Well, the castle is due south of here but we won't be able to take a direct route because there are some natural and magical obstacles between here and there. I'm estimating it will take today and most of tomorrow to get to the castle. When we free Princess Luna, she should be able to teleport us directly back to Canterlot."

"Sounds like fun. Let's get going." Lyra cast a wistful stare at the chariot as it shrunk in the distance before following her purple companion into the forest.

Bon Bon knocked on the door to the library, her search for Lyra only turning up information that the unicorn was last seen with Twilight Sparkle. She waited for a minute, her patience gradually eroding as she waited for an answer.

As she was about to deliver a much harder knock, Spike opened the door to receive a hoof to the face.

"Ow! Hey, not cool!"

"Spike, I'm looking for Lyra. Have you seen her anywhere?"

The dragon grumbled as he rubbed the spot Bon Bon’s hoof hit him. "Yeah, she and Twilight went to Canterlot a couple days ago."

"Canterlot? Why?"

"I think they broke their magic, so they went to ask Princess Celestia for help."

"When are they going to be back?"

"I got a letter this morning that said they weren't going to be back for at least a few more days."

Spike stopped as he noticed Bon Bon's expression. If he were older, he would have most likely attributed the word "rictus" to the disturbing grin that spread across the mare's face. As it was, he decided that face was the most terrifying thing he had seen since the last time Twilight had a mental breakdown.

"Thank you for your help, Spike."

"You're welcome." Bon Bon suddenly whirled around and started marching away from the library. "Hey, where are you going?"

Bon Bon paused, throwing a single word over her shoulder: "Packing."

"Just admit it, Twilight, we are lost."

"We aren't lost! It's just taking awhile for me to get my bearings in here!"

Lyra was reclining on a nearby rock while Twilight levitated a compass and a map in front of her face, rotating the map every few seconds as though it would help her figure out where she was. Personally, Lyra was glad that Twilight had stopped to get her bearings twenty minutes ago. They had spent the last eight hours battling the plant life of the Everfree Forest, sometimes literally. She had no idea that Venus fly traps could grow that large and was positive that they had passed through this clearing twice in the last hour. On top of that, Twilight was starting to develop an unnerving twitch in her left eye.

"Why don't we just stop here for today? We can figure out where we are in the morning."

"You don't understand, though! This will throw us off the schedule I wrote! We are already behind and if we stop for tonight we will have to delay rescuing Luna an entire day!"

Lyra yawned and shot Twilight a blank stare. "Twilight, I'm pretty sure that adventures laugh at your puny schedules. Besides, I'm not moving until I feel like I'm rested enough to continue."

"My schedules are NOT puny!"

"Tell that to the Everfree."

"Fine. But we are getting up early in the morning to make up for lost time."

Lyra rolled her eyes and ignored Twilight's fretting as she unpacked her tent. "Okay, you cretinous piece of fabric, are you going to behave?" She swiftly unrolled the canvas and laid it flat near the center of the clearing. With practiced ease, she snapped together the fiberglass poles and threaded them through the loops in the fabric.

"So far, so good." Lyra sweated nervously as she slotted the first pole into place at the corners. "Almost there..." She pushed the second pole into place, popping the tent into shape. "Yes!"

With a resounding thwap! the tent violently deconstructed, one of the poles embedding itself in a nearby tree. "Oh, come on!" Lyra swiftly rounded up the poles, shoving them into place only to have the tent once again reject any attempts to give it structure with extreme prejudice.

"Why—" wap! "—won't you—" fwap! "—stay—" whack! "—standing—" fwick! "—UP! Ouch!" Lyra shouted as a pole whipped itself across her face, leaving a huge welt on her cheek.

After several profanity-laden minutes, the obstinate tent stood, albeit lopsided, under its own power. Lyra turned, finally satisfied, to see a full campsite set up just opposite her tent, complete with a blazing campfire.

"How. How is this possible?! How did you set up so fast?"

Twilight pulled a book out of her saddlebags and gestured to it. "I got a book: Camping: 101 Things You Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask. I have the author's entire how-to collection."

Lyra gaped for a minute then hung her head, defeated. "Whatever. Do you have any marshmallows?"

"Of course!" Twilight levitated a large bag of the gooey confections up for her to see. "I don't have any roasting forks, though. What are we supposed to do?"

Lyra produced a small folding knife from her bags and trotted to the edge of the clearing, cutting a couple switches from the nearest tree. Making quick work with the knife, she soon whittled the ends down to points and levitated one to Twilight.

"Thanks."

"Mm-hmm." The two mares sat in silence, watching the campfire blaze merrily as their respective marshmallows browned to perfection.

"So."

"So how's life treating you?" Lyra ventured awkwardly.

"Good."

"That's good."

"Yeah." The campfire continued to burn, oblivious to the awkward silence that pervaded the air.

"Do you have your lyre with you?" Twilight asked.

Lyra snorted. "I never leave home without it. Why? Do you want to make a request?"

"Nothing specific. I just think it would be nice to hear some music."

"Sounds good to me." Lyra pulled her namesake out of her saddlebags and held it deftly in her hooves. Twilight gave her an odd look. "What?"

"Aren't you going to use your magic to play it?"

Lyra looked mortified at the suggestion. "Why would I do that? When you use magic to play any instrument, it sounds lifeless and boring."

"And that brings to mind something else. How do you get more than seven notes out of a lyre? There aren't frets to get more notes out of the instrument."

Lyra levitated the lyre out of her hooves and trotted closer to Twilight. "Normally you can't get more notes out of a lyre. They are meant to accompany spoken word and nothing more. However, I found out you can use your hooves to create a fret along the back of the string to get different notes." She lifted her hoof to Twilight, who noticed tiny grooves along the edges of the appendage.

"Oh, I understand now. You use your hoof as a—"

At that moment, Lyra's tent decided that it was too much of a burden to remain upright and made up for lost time by vehemently relieving itself of its structural support, flinging its poles away with great vigor. Lyra jumped up and rounded up the poles once more, shouting terrible curses and threats to the disobedient shelter. Twilight watched as the minty unicorn continued to verbally assault the tent, roughly jamming the poles back into their respective positions. She stopped for a moment to catch her breath for which the tent was eternally grateful.

In the moment between Lyra's tirades, Twilight heard a rustling in the bushes. "Lyra?"

"—and your father was a flag pole, except your mother cheated on him with an even uglier flag pole and eleven months later, you were born!"

"Lyra?"

"—if you weren't such a failure at providing basic shelter it would almost be—"

"Lyra?!"

"What, Twilight? Can't you see I'm—" Lyra's rebuttal was cut short as she realized Twilight was gesturing to an extremely large something that was just within the light of the campfire."Twilight? What is that?"

In response, the thing growled and leaped at Lyra. The unicorn shrieked and watched as the huge beast arced its way towards her, too fast to react.

Inches before Lyra's face, a purple barrier sprang to life and stopped the creature like a brick wall. As the animal sagged, stunned, against the forcefield, Lyra took in the sight of the odd creature.

It started with the head and forelegs of a lion, fading into the torso and hind legs of a goat. The tail was a snake, complete with a hissing head at the very end.

"That would be a chimera, Lyra," Twilight responded, horn aglow and sweat running down her face from the sudden exertion of throwing a protective barrier around the campsite.

The green unicorn shuffled backwards, trying to put as much distance between herself and the chimera as possible. The beast staggered to its feet and roared at the forcefield. It drew in a deep breath and breathed a gout of fire at the wall. Lyra yelped as the ball of fire rolled towards her only for the rolling conflagration to part at the protective bubble. Twilight winced, the strain showing as she pushed to keep the flames outside the bubble.

"Twilight, please tell me you are going to be able to hold that thing outside the bubble?"

"I don't know."

"That isn't reassuring at all!"

The chimera stopped and examined the protective wall for a bit, the snake head on its tail striking the barrier to no avail. The two unicorns sighed in relief as the chimera took a step backwards. Their relief was short-lived, though, as the beast reared back on its goat hooves and brought its claws down on the bubble. Lyra could feel the magical feedback as the beast disrupted the spell and Twilight sank to the ground, unconscious, as the forcefield dissipated.

"Twilight, now isn't a good time to be napping!" Lyra shouted, shaking the passed-out mare forcefully in a vain attempt to wake her up. Another roar from the beast commanded the unicorn's attention as she tried to stand her ground and protect Twilight.

"Horseapples." Think, think, think! Come on, Lyra, remember what Celestia taught you! Come up with a plan of attack and follow through with it. I need to get this thing away from Twilight.

The unicorn quickly scanned her surroundings, looking for something to distract the chimera as it prepared to move in for the killing blow. Frantically, she levitated a small stone from the campfire ring and launched it at the beast.

The chimera gave a bleat of pain and rage as the smell of burning fur and flesh permeated the air. The mint green unicorn gave a small gulp as she realized her plan had worked and she now had the full attention of a wounded, angry animal that was probably hungry and definitely was holding a grudge against her now.

“Double horseapples.”

It charged at Lyra blindly and she dodged to the side, narrowly avoiding an encounter with its fangs. As she congratulated herself for her avoidance skills, she felt the snake head whip by her ear, barely missing her face as it struck at her.

Stupid! I'm going to get myself killed at this rate! Grabbing blindly with her telekinesis, she found purchase on her trusty lyre and gave a resounding blow to the serpent head, sending it flying until it cracked like a whip at the end of the chimera tail.

The lion head stopped abruptly and winced as the snake head stretched out its tail fully. The chimera stopped to give the immobile snake head a curious sniff. When the serpent didn't respond, the lion head loosed an earth-shaking roar and hurled a fiery breath Lyra's direction. The unicorn yelped again and darted away from the orange glow, stopping to catch her breath.

Lyra knew that the encounter was quickly coming to a close and that it wasn't going to end well in her favor. She wondered if she could possibly use her borrowed Discordian magic to turn the tides.

She searched through her magical psyche for hints of the chaotic power to no avail. Apparently Celestia's binding spell was more effective than either of them had thought. Frantically, she rifled through her leylines, dimly aware of the chimera's approach as it appeared to move in slow motion.

As she was about to give up, she found a loose thread of chaos. Upon examining it, Lyra realized that she could use it. There were two problems with that, though. She had no idea what would happen if she used it and doing so would break the binding spell.

Steeling herself, she reached her mind out to the thread to pull it and felt her shoulder explode in pain. She snapped out of it to find that she had let the chimera reach her and deliver a swipe to her shoulder, laying her flesh open in four ragged wounds. The animal was standing over her, ready to end it with a swift bite to her throat.

Well, that's it, then. Sorry, Twilight. Lyra squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the final blow.

As the chimera opened its mouth, Lyra's tent decided to offer its own humble opinion on the turn of events that had transpired. Both support poles swiftly released from their moorings, experiencing the thrill of flight once more. One pole soared straight into the chimera's waiting maw, sending the beast tumbling back into a bush.

Lyra heard the commotion and opened her eyes to see the beast scrambling to pull the obstinate pole from its throat and free itself from the bush. Rising unsteadily on three legs, she limped away, feeling a fresh surge of energy from an adrenaline rush.

The chimera eventually righted itself and spat out the offending tent pole. The sheer fury that pervaded the creature's mind was more than enough to focus its sight totally on the escaping mare. It charged once more, determined to turn the puny pony that had dared to cause it so much trouble into a pile of fleshy shreds.

"Lyra! Duck!" In the obscure fog of ensuing blood loss, Lyra dimly heard the warning and promptly decided to introduce her face to the ground.

The inside of her eyelids lit to a bright red, and she heard the sound of a stunned animal crashing into the underbrush. She blearily cast a glance to the approaching hoofsteps. A smear of purple filled her view, and Twilight's voice faintly came through.

"Lyra, are you awake? Can you hear me?"

"It's about time you woke up. I could have used your help." Lyra gave a weak laugh and promptly passed out.

Chapter Seven - Nigh Indestructible Lyres

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“Leyline! Hey, Leyline, over here!”

Leyline gripped his lunch tray in his teeth and trotted over to the frantically waving orange colt at the nearby lunch table. “Hey, Rockslide, how’s it going?” he asked as he set the tray down next to his friend.

“I just got outta ‘The Bruiser’s’ gym class. How do ya think it’s goin’?”

“Well, if you had taken Herbology 132 this semester, you wouldn’t be taking her class.”

“You’ve been telling me this all semester, an’ I keep telling ya that I don’t wanna take another herbology class.”

“Why not?”

Rockslide huffed as he levitated the drink from his tray to his lips. “It’s boring. I don’t care if it’s an easy ‘A.’ I’ll pull my mane outta my head if I hafta go through another class of learning how to cure hemlock poisoning.”

“We learn more than that, you know.”

“Whatever. It still ain’t for me.”

“Fine, fine. What’s up, anyway? Is there something you need my help with, Rox?” Leyline started digging into his hay fries as his friend’s face lit up with excitement

“Oh, yeah!” Rockslide levitated a sheet of paper from his saddlebags and waved it in front of Leyline’s face. “I’m competing in spellcasters’ duels and I need a second to help me.”

Leyline raised an eyebrow. “Why are you asking me? In case you forgot, I’m an earth pony.”

Rockslide rolled his eyes in return. “I don’t need you to do magic, ya dunce. A second just spots for the spellcaster. You help me suit up and train and stuff. You would basically be a trainer for me. You’re great at figuring out counterspells and all that jazz, so I thought you’d be my best option.”

“I’ll think about it. I’m busy enough as it is, what with tutoring and classwork.”

“Right, ‘tutoring.’”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Leyline wasn’t sure, but he felt like Rockslide was implying something.

“Nothing, I’m sure you’re gettin’ a lot of tutoring done with Miss Music Flank over there.”

“Of course I am. I help Dulcet study for classes and she helps me design spells. What else would be going on?”

Rockslide facehooved at his friend’s total obliviousness. “Nothing, apparently. She’s right, you are clueless.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Nevermind. If you haven’t figured it out by now, you never will.” Rockslide looked over Leyline’s shoulder, noticing a light blue figure bolting towards them. “Heads up, tackle-hug coming in five, four, three...”

“What?”

“—eeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!” Leyline felt his lungs implode as Dulcet hit him at full speed, wrapping him in a vice-grip of a hug. “Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou!”

“Dulcet, ya might wanna loosen your grip a little. You’re killing him.” Rockslide gestured to Leyline, who was busy trying not to lose consciousness.

“Oh, sorry.” She quickly released him and gave the brown earth pony a little space as he propped himself with the table.

“Why did you feel the need to remove all the air from my lungs?” he wheezed.

Dulcet waved a test paper in the air around her, squeeing with delight and hopping in place. “I got a B+ on the test!” She beamed proudly and waved the paper in the air around some more. “I couldn’t have done it without you! You helped me so so so much and I’m so grateful!”

“You got a B+? Great job, Deets!” Leyline felt the blood in his veins freeze as Dulcet stopped abruptly and glared at him. Actually, glared wasn’t the right term. It was more like she used her eyes to peel away his flesh and trap his soul in an iron box before lowering the box into a block of ice and sealing it away for three months.

“I told you. Never. Call. Me. Deets.”

Leyline flashed her a nonchalant smile. “And I told you before, I’ll stop calling you Deets when you stop calling me Tracy.”

They held each other’s gaze for a few seconds until Leyline wiggled his eyebrows at her. With a snort, Dulcet broke eye contact shook her head at him. “So, can you help me with something tonight?” Leyline asked.

“More spells?”

“Just one this time.”

“Just one? What’s wrong, running out of steam?”

“Hardly. This one’s a pretty big spell, though, so it’s going to need a lot of attention.”

Dulcet narrowed her eyes at him. “This isn’t going to end up like the last time you worked on a huge spell, is it?”

Leyline shook his head emphatically. “Oh, no! This one isn’t anything like the last one. Trust me, that’s the last time I try anything to do with alteration like that.”

Rockslide held up his hooves. “Whoa, whoa, time out here. What’re you two talking about?”

“I swear to Solaris, if you tell him, Tracy, nopony will find your remains.”

“Relax, Deets. I don’t feel like talking about it any more than you do. I’ll just let him know the gist of it. Hey Rox,” he turned to the baffled unicorn, “do you remember a few months back when the school was broken into?”

“Yeah, a few rooms got trashed. They said it looked like a rogue familiar gettin’ revenge on a mage.”

“Let’s just say that there are reasons why there hasn’t been much headway in the field of shapeshifting.”

“Right, right.”

Dulcet cleared her throat to bring the attention back to the matter at hoof. “Anyway, what kind of spell will we be working on tonight?”

Leyline pulled out a book and flopped it on the table. “I can’t tell you the specifics yet, since all my notes are back at the dorm, but I got this book to help with the majority of the spell.”

Dulcet read the cover and immediately paled. “How did you get this book?”

“I have my ways.”

“I don’t see why you would even need it. Most of the spells in here are forbidden magic.”

“I just needed this spell as a guide for a part of what I was doing.” The earth pony turned to a bookmarked page.

Rockslide turned the book so he could see. “Soul snare?! What are ya trying to do, get us expelled or killed?”

“I’m fully aware of the spell’s capacity to be used for harm. All magic can be used for either good or evil. I’m trying to use it for something that can be useful. Dulcet, you know that I would never use arcane knowledge to hurt anyone. Please, just help me with this.”

“Fine. Seven tonight in the gymnasium?”

“Same as always. Thanks, Deets. I knew I could count on you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

Dulcet hummed nervously to herself as she trotted through the empty hallways towards the gymnasium. The school always gave her the creeps when it was empty but she could never convince Leyline to let them practice somewhere else. Every time she brought it up he would give a full discourse on the importance of being in a safe and magically inert location for all tests of this nature, or something like that. She never actually paid enough attention to him when he went on these rants to catch most of what he said. She always got distracted somewhere around the point where Leyline would toss his head emphatically and that adorable lock of his mane that always looped funny would give a quirky bounce in response.

She wondered why that one piece of his mane did that, anyway. The rest of it stood straight up, looking like a black bristle brush and not moving an inch no matter what he did to it. Did he make it loop on purpose, knowing how cute it looked?

Dulcet shook her head at herself. No, that colt never cared how he looked as long as it didn't interfere with his studies. That's not to say he wasn't clean, though. He just had a tendency to look a little scruffy. It didn't matter. He was simply too cute for his own good, even though he didn't notice it. Did he even realize that mares existed? Probably not, she mused to herself. She had been trying to get his attention for a while now and it flew right over his head.

Maybe the goggles he wore while running those experiments cut off the flow to his brain? Dulcet silently resolved to find a way to get him to stop wearing them long enough so his brain would work right again.

She pushed the door open to the gymnasium. There he was, in his goggles and adorkable lab coat again, writing notes on a table hastily set up next to one of the incantation circles inscribed on the floor. The moment her hooves clacked against the floor, he looked towards her and dropped his pencil as he beamed at her.

“You made it!”

“Of course I did, silly. I told you I would be here,” Dulcet replied as she trotted in the door to the gymnasium. “So, are you going to tell me what we are doing?”

“Well, to put it simply, I want any unicorn to be able to move themselves from one point to another without going through all the points in between. You disappear here, you appear there.”

“That’s it?”

Leyline flipped through a reference book he had on a nearby table as he spoke. “Dozens of unicorns have tried to write a spell like this one, with most labeling it ‘teleportation.’ Unfortunately, all have ended disastrously.”

Dulcet shuffled nervously. “They have?”

“Oh, yes. In fact, Prince Solaris banned any further experimentation with the subject one hundred and seventy years ago when his personal student, Frostfall, died after a failed attempt. It seems that almost all unicorns who have tried it have met with the same problem. They rematerialize properly, but they get to their destination unresponsive, dying soon afterwards.”

“And you think that you have solved this problem?” Dulcet, as usual, had no idea what Leyline was talking about, but she had figured out by now what to ask him in order to keep him on track with his monologues.

“I know I have. You see, they all forgot that there is more to the pony than mere body. There is a soul involved as well! That’s why I have been studying the soul snare spell. My solution is two different spells woven together into one cohesive whole. The first moves the body. The second traps the soul, but instead of channeling it into an item or jewel, it carries the soul with the body to its destination before pouring it back into the body.”

Leyline whipped a positively enormous sheet of paper out from somewhere and spread it out on the table, excitedly gesturing to all of the notes taken on the subject while he supplied a generous stream of words to further confuse the unicorn.

“Wait, hold on a second. You said this was banned? By the prince himself? Why are you working on it?!”

“Because if someone doesn’t get this right, ponies will keep hurting themselves trying to make it work, whether it’s banned or not. I know how to fix it and if I didn’t do it, I would be hurting others by omission of knowledge.

"I know it’s dangerous, so I won’t force you to do this. I wish I was a unicorn so I could do the spell myself without endangering anypony else, but I’m not, so I can’t.”

Dulcet looked at her friend’s dejected expression, Leyline’s perceived shortcomings weighing heavily upon him. “I’m not going to back out now, silly. I said I would help you and I will.”

“Really?!” His expression changed in the blink of an eye, startling her with its abruptness.

“Yeah. Now give me the spell before I back out.”

Leyline picked up a slip of paper and held it out to Dulcet. Levitating it towards her face so she could read it, she trotted over to a circle inscribed on the floor specifically for testing spells. “Okay, I’m ready. What do I do?”

“Just imagine where you want to go. In this case, just go for that circle on the other side of the gym. Then, cast the spell when you are ready.”

“Alright.” Leyline watched nervously as a silver glow enveloped Dulcet’s body. With a small flash of light, she disappeared and popped back into existence on the far side of the gym. He rushed over to her as she wobbled about on her legs. “Are you okay? Can you speak to me?”

“Am I supposed to feel dizzy?”

“That‘ll wear off shortly.” He pattered in place as giddy elation flowed through him. “You did it! I did it! We created a safe way to teleport! This is so incredible! I have to take more notes on this! This is amazing! Me, an earth pony, successfully writing my own high-level spell!”

Dulcet watched him prance, laughing as he struggled to keep from exploding, until something caught her eye. “Hey, Leyline, when did you get your cutie mark?”

“What are you talking about? I don’t have a...” Leyline trailed off as his glance fell on his formerly blank flank, where a crossed quill and wand had appeared. “Finally! Yes!”

Leyline rushed Dulcet, catching her in a hug and planting a kiss on her nose before running down the hall, screaming like a madcolt and occasionally popping in a classroom to let the teacher inside know that he finally got his cutie mark.

Meanwhile, back in the gymnasium, Dulcet Tones sat, frozen, on the spot she materialized. “That was unexpected.” Had she not been so shocked by the kiss, she might have noticed a curious glow to Leyline's eyes and a barely noticeable aura whisking his research papers off the table as he rushed from the gym.

Lyra’s shoulder ached. She would have just rolled over and gone back to sleep, but the pain racking her shoulder and back kept her from doing so.

“What happened last night?” She pulled herself out of her sleeping bag with her one good foreleg, stretched as best as she could, and limped out of Twilight’s tent to the final warm coals of the fire in the center of the campground. The sun was almost ready to peek over the horizon, so Lyra adjusted herself so she could watch the sunrise.

As the first rays of dawn washed over the edges of the treetops, a metallic glint in the grass caught the green unicorn’s eye. She hobbled over to the reflected light to find her lyre, missing two strings, laying on the grass. That’s not where you are supposed to be, she thought dully as she levitated the bloodied instrument closer to her face to examine it. With a sigh, she made her way back to the fire and rummaged through her saddlebags. With a satisfied grunt, she pulled out a velvet pouch and set to pulling items out of it: A silk cloth; a second set of strings; brass oil; tuning forks; a tuning wrench; and a hooffull of q-tips.

Gently, with all the care of an experienced musician, she unstrung all the old strings from the frame, looping them neatly together and setting them aside, cleaning the grass and blood from the lyre as she went. When she was satisfied with the state of the frame, she started to restring the instrument, tightening the wires only after replacing them all.

As Lyra was tuning the instrument to her preference, she heard the tent behind her rustle. With the utmost of grace, Twilight tumbled out of the flap in the front, falling head over hooves until she came to a rest fully on her face right next to Lyra.

“Have you considered becoming a dancer?” Lyra smirked.

“Shut up.” Twilight dug in her pack, pulling out a coffee mug and a packet of ready-mix coffee. With a wave of her horn, she pulled water from a nearby creek, pouring it into the mug and flash-heating it to the perfect coffee drinking temperature. After pouring in and stirring the mix, she took a deep swig and let out a long sigh.

Lyra scratched idly at her sore shoulder before realizing it was in a bandage. “Twilight?”

“Hmm?”

“Why is my shoulder all taped up?”

“Well, you got torn up pretty badly by that chimera. I had to stitch you up and patch it as best as I could, but you will want to have that looked at by a doctor when we get back.”

The memories of last night came flooding back. The campsite, the chimera fight, some foggy recollections of Twilight standing over her, gauze and thread hovering over her head. It all felt like it was too weird to be true, but it was. She was wearing the proof as she sat there, talking to Twilight.

And the dreams. They didn’t feel at all like dreams, and they were about the same earth pony as before. Lyra shook her head as she yawned, trying to focus on tuning her lyre.

The purple unicorn across from her took another big gulp of coffee. “Are you going to be all right? Lyra?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, I’ll be fine. I’ll be limping for a while, but I’ll recover.” She tested the strings one last time before strumming them a few times. She gave the lyre a small smile of approval, floating the items she brought out back into the velvet pouch. Lyra held the instrument into the air, admiring the mirror-finish shine scattering light over the campsite. “That’s much better. I’m sorry for using you as a makeshift club again. Don’t be angry at me.”

“Why do you do that, anyway?”

Lyra looked over to Twilight. “Why do I do what?”

“Use your lyre like that. I’m no expert on musical instruments, but I am pretty sure that the lyre was never intended to be used as a bludgeon.”

“Clearly you have never performed in Manehattan.”

“Frankly, I’m surprised that it isn’t totally useless for making music by now. Most instruments would be horribly dented and warped from being subjected to that kind of stress.”

Lyra hefted the instrument and slammed it against a nearby rock before levitating it back towards Twilight. The purple mare examined the instrument, not even finding a scuff mark where it had struck the stone.

“My lyre isn’t like most instruments.”

Twilight quickly snatched the instrument out of Lyra’s aura with her own magic, quickly bringing it directly in front of her muzzle. Her horn flared with arcane power, probing the item for several moments before she turned her attention back toward the other mare, eyes squinted in suspicion. “Who enchanted this for you?”

Lyra chuckled nervously and scraped at the ground with her hoof. “I don’t know exactly. I was performing in Manehattan, like I said before, and I was assaulted after the show. Fortunately, I had the presence of mind to beat the attacker back, but I accidentally used my poor lyre to do it, bending the frame terribly in the process.

“Anyway, I took it to a repair shop a few blocks down after I recovered from the shock and had it fixed up. I mentioned to the shopkeeper that it would be nice if my lyre was a little more resistant to damage. To make a long story short, he directed me to a shady establishment in the downtown area where I met up with a green earth pony who picked up my lyre and dropped it off at the same location two days later. All I know is that he went by the nickname “Aces” and I spent quite a pile of bits for my lyre to disappear for two days and come back almost indestructible.”

Twilight looked at the lyre once more, shuddering as she levitated back to its owner. “And you never thought to ask what they had done to it?”

Lyra shrugged. “It came back in one piece and the enchantment did its job. I never really thought about the specifics of it.”

Twilight gaped at her for a second. “You know, you amaze me how you haven’t managed to singlehoofedly cause a national crisis until recently.”

“I’m just lucky like that, I guess.”

“Just try not to put that thing under too much stress at once, like letting a dragon step on it or something.”

“Why? What would happen?”

“If the enchantment failed, the pent-up energy would be released all at once, rather than over a period of time, causing an explosion that may or may not vaporize everypony in the immediate area.” She tilted her coffee cup back and drained the rest of the mug. “We need to leave soon. Be ready to leave in an hour.”

“Okay.” Lyra looked at her tent on the far side of the campground, still collapsed from the previous night. She silently decided that she would rather sleep out in the open than trust the obstinate fabric to remain upright the entire night.

Princess Celestia silently wished she could massage her temples to alleviate the oncoming headache brought on from listening to the inane babble of the noblepony before her. Sadly, that would clash with her image as a calm and collected ruler, so she merely let her “smile and nod” muscles take over her actions.

“—and that is my proposition for bettering the uptown area of Canterlot,” the unicorn stallion finished, gesturing to a chart he had propped on an easel.

“Lord Signet, I appreciate the obvious thought and planning you have put into this presentation—” the pony beamed at the praise “—but I’m afraid I simply cannot support this plan you want to implement. It is not only impractical for us to simply move out all the businesses in the upper tier of Canterlot not supported by nobles or their families, but it is prejudiced and, quite frankly, offensive to even consider forcing out ponies who have worked hard for those businesses.”

“But, Your Majesty, they would be fully recompensed—”

“For what? Time lost in moving them out of the area? Future revenue lost from being forced to relocate to an area that is not suitable for their businesses? The loss of regular customers? No. There is not enough money in the treasury or your coffers to properly repay them for being treated so atrociously. Now, if you are quite done, there are others behind you who wish to speak with me as well.”

As the unicorn left the throne room in a huff, an earth pony trotted towards the princess in the opposite direction. Unlike most of the ponies seeking the princesses’ attention during open court, she was unclothed except for saddlebags. The cream colored mare quickly trotted to the bottom step of the dais and dropped into a bow.

“Please rise. May I ask your name?”

“My name is Bon-Bon, Princess Celestia.”

“What may I help you with, Bon-Bon?”

“I’m looking for Lyra, and I heard she was around here.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Lyra Heartstrings. Mint green unicorn, a little taller than me, tealish white streaks in her mane, lyre for a cutie mark. We share an apartment. I need to have a talk with her, and I heard from Twilight’s assistant Spike that she was going to be in Canterlot for a few days.”

“Oh, I see. I’m sorry, but Lyra isn’t here right now. She is gone and won’t be able to be reached for a few days.”

Bon-Bon’s eye gave a slight twitch before she covered it with a controlled breath. “When you say ‘a few days,’ how long exactly do you mean?”

“She left yesterday, and it’s about a two and a half day trip one way, so I would say she will definitely be back within a week, most likely less.” Celestia paused. “If I may be so bold, may I ask why you need to talk to her?”

“She incinerated my flower garden.”

“You traveled quite a way to have a talk about burnt topiary.”

“If I hadn’t spent a decade breeding them to perfection so they would flavor my candies properly, it wouldn’t be a problem.” Bon-Bon dug her hoof deep into the plush carpet. “I spent six years alone making a nonpoisonous azalea extract. It made one of my best candies.”

A glint of pity flashed in Celestia’s eyes. “I’m sorry. What will speaking with Lyra accomplish, though? Do you want revenge?”

“I have no idea. I will have a talk with her, though. There is no doubt about that.”

“Very well. May I offer you a place to stay until Lyra gets back? It is my fault that you have to wait, after all.”

“Thank you, Princess. What did you send her to do, anyway?”

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.”

Bon-Bon gave a funny look. “Really? You sent her on some classified mission? You do realise this is Lyra Heartstrings, right?”

“I’m confident that she can handle it.”

“Sweet merciful friendship, what is that?!”

“Calm down, this is no time to panic!”

“This is a perfect time to panic! We have a giant purple THING chasing us and I have no idea what we’re gonna do!”

“First we need to calm down and—LEFT! Break LEFT!”

“Auuuuuuuuuuugh! I’m too young to die!”

“Look, I think I have an idea! Here, hold this.”

“A mage torch? I don’t think our problem can be fixed with light right now!”

“Just trust me, okay? Look, when I give the signal, you stop short and turn around. I’ll boost you up with levitation and you’ll jump and jab the torch just behind its ear.”

“Have you lost your mind?!”

“I know what I’m doing! When I count three, you stop. I’ll be just to the side helping you along! Are you ready?”

“This is insane!”

“Well, I don’t see you coming up with any ideas! If you thought of something better that doesn’t involve hitting it with your lyre, please share!”

“Oh, Celestia, I’m going to die!”

“I wouldn’t worry, Bon-Bon. I’m sure that Lyra will be back safely. Twilight went with her.”

“If you say so...”

Lyra slid down the shoulder of the dazed ursine monster, clutching a sparking mage torch in her magic. “I can’t believe that worked.”

“I had a hunch.”

“You based our lives on a hunch?”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “We weren’t doing so well before then, either. I made an educated guess and rolled with it.”

“What did you do to the mage torch?”

“That’s not an ordinary torch. I modified it so it could cast simple spells along with light, depending on the need.”

Lyra gave the torch another look. “That’s pretty cool.”

“Why, thank you.” Twilight gave the downed Ursa Major a sidelong glance. “We should probably get going before it wakes up.”

“Sounds like a good idea to me.”

Chapter Eight - My, What a Lovely Fang You Have

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Leyline trotted down the hallway with his cart, silently counting the office numbers until he reached one near the end. He checked the slip of paper clenched in his teeth to confirm the numbers matched. Leyline grabbed a keyring hanging off the overloaded cart, fumbling with it until the correct key presented itself and was quickly inserted into the lock on the door. The brown earth pony took a deep breath, running a hoof through his wildly scruffy black mane in anticipation.

The door swung open to reveal an unassuming office. Empty bookcases lined the walls. The single large window cast a beam of sunlight on the floor, revealing dust motes as they wafted through the air. A small oak desk sat near the back of the room. Leyline trotted around, leaving faint hoofprints in the accumulated dust as he explored the office to his heart’s content.

He unhitched his burden and grabbed a placard precariously balanced on the top of the pile of stuff within the cart. The placard slid neatly into the groove on the front of the door. After a short examination, he gave it a nod of approval before closing the door.

As soon as the door shut, the earth pony proceeded to cut loose a joyous shriek, prancing about the room in unrestrained glee. He set about unpacking the cart in a mad rush, dexterously shelving books and knickknacks and loading various magical and mundane supplies into the desk until it could not fit another item. All the while, he continued to sing and hum loudly and very off-key as he expressed his delight with his new working space.

“Well, you seem to be adjusting nicely.” Leyline whirled around where he stood, the song in his throat cut short as he realized that, somehow, Dulcet had managed to sneak in without him noticing. He gave an unstallionly giggle of pure joy as they trotted towards each other and he wrapped the unicorn in a warm embrace.

“So, what do you think?”

Dulcet pulled away from the hug long enough to read the placard on the door. “‘Leyline Tracer, Senior Mage, Council of Mages.’ It looks like you finally made it.”

“I know! I’m so excited!” As he stifled a yawn, Dulcet noticed the bags under Leyline’s eyes.

“Are you still having nightmares?”

The smile slowly melted from his face, leaving behind creases of exhaustion and hidden fear. “Maybe. I’m waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweats but I can’t remember what my dreams are about.”

“I keep telling you to see somepony about that. Have you tried?”

Leyline heaved out a sigh. “What would I tell them? I’m being kept awake by dreams I don’t remember and that it’s making me afraid to go to sleep?”

“It would be better than this. Please, do this for me?”

Leyline rolled his eyes and whined facetiously, “Aww, do I have to?”

“Yes, you do. Musician’s orders.” She gave him a jokingly stern look and poked him with her horn.

“Ow! That wasn’t very nice. After all I have done for you, too!”

“What you have done for me? Who helped you refine all those spells so you could get this job?”

“Who helped you get through high school magic courses?”

“Who kept the bullies off your back during high school?” Dulcet gave a triumphant grin as Leyline sputtered indignantly at her.

“Hey, I could have taken care of them myself! I simply chose not to.”

“Of course you did.”

“What are you implying?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all.”

Leyline gave her a hard look for a second. “You are incorrigible.”

Dulcet giggled in response. “I know.” She darted close to him, kissing away the slightly miffed look on his muzzle and winning a return kiss in response. “Just promise me you will get some help so you can sleep better. I want my coltfriend to be his best for work.”

“Okay, fine.“ The earth pony rolled his eyes again and raised his right hoof . “I, Leyline Tracer, do solemnly swear to find a professional sleep doctor in order to rectify my recurring issue of nightmares.”

“Ugh, you are so formal.”

“Would you like me to change?”

“Nope.” Dulcet nuzzled Leyline. “I wouldn’t want you to be any other way.”

The two ponies held each other close for a while longer, enjoying each other’s company in the decidedly unromantic office. Leyline’s eyes suddenly opened as a thought occurred to his mind. He pulled out of his love’s embrace and glanced at the clock he had set on the desk.

“Ponyfeathers! I’m supposed to meet Rockslide at the diner in five minutes!” He gave Dulcet a quick peck on the cheek as he snatched a small pouch of bits from the desk and bolted from the room. “I love you, Deets! I’ll see you at your place later!”

“Wait! Leyline, I could—” The door slammed shut in his mad rush to meet up with his friend. “—teleport you there.”

Dulcet shook her head and laughed softly at her coltfriend. “I love you too, Tracy.”

Leyline, of course, didn’t hear his fillyfriend’s response as he bolted out of the building and into the crowded streets of Canterlot in his rush to get to the diner on time. For once, he was grateful for his earth pony heritage as he dodged through the crowded streets, his natural stamina and dexterity serving him well as he dodged the ponies around him with ease.

With a final shuffle, the mage smoothly pushed through the door to the diner and slid into his usual spot opposite his orange compatriot. Rockslide peered over a scroll he was reading towards the slightly winded earth pony, an impassive expression etched on his face. Leyline offered a fleeting grin as he struggled to stop hyperventilating.

“Wow, five minutes from there to here, on the nose. How'd ya make it?”

“How do you know how long it took me to get here?”

Rockslide held up the scroll in reply. Curiosity got the best of Leyline as he grabbed the paper from his friend's telekinetic grip.

Rockslide,
Leyline just left council hall a minute ago so he will probably be late. If he had waited a few seconds, I could have teleported him there or let him send you a note. Let him know how silly I think he is for forgetting that he taught me both spells and he should have thought about that before dodging through the streets like an assassin.
P.S.: Tell Tracy I love him too.
P.P.S.: Also tell him not to call me Deets.

Leyline gave an embarrassed laugh and shrugged helplessly as he laid the paper on the table. "What can I say? It just didn't cross my mind."

"Ya know it's even sadder ‘cause you wrote both those spells from scratch."

"Quiet, you."

Rockslide raised his hooves defensively. "Hey, I just calls it like I sees it."

"Whatever. Do you have my package for me?"

"Right here." The unicorn brought a small box from his satchel and set it on the table. "Why'd ya need me to pick this up, anyway? You could’a gone to the jeweler's yourself."

Leyline bopped his friend on the head, careful to avoid hitting his horn. "I didn't want Dulcet to see me there and get the wrong idea." With a flourish, he opened the velvet box. "Or the right one, for that matter."

For once, Rockslide was rendered momentarily speechless before heartily clapping a hoof over his friend's shoulder. "Atta colt! You finally ready to ask her? It's certainly been long enough! When ya gonna pop the question?"

Leyline quickly stowed the box away as he replied, "She has a show about two weeks after the princesses' coronation. It's supposed to be the most important gig of the year for her. I figure if she does well, my proposal will be icing on the cake. If it goes poorly, I'll help her forget about it."

"Ya win either way, huh? Smart move."

"I learned from the best, Rox."

"And don't you forget it. Look, obviously ya ain't gonna pay attention to a word I say today, so ya might as well go home and put your fancy trinket somewhere safe for when the time is right."

Leyline scrunched an eyebrow inquisitively at the orange stallion's suggestion. "Are you sure? I would hate to leave you here."

The unicorn scoffed in return. "Trust me, ya have that glazed look on your eyes. You are locked onto thinking 'bout your fillyfriend and ya won't be any good for talking. Now scat so I can order a meal in peace."

"Thanks, Rox. I owe you."

"Ya always do." Rockslide gave a hearty laugh as the two bumped hooves in farewell and Leyline all but floated out the diner door in a haze of fuzzy feelings. "Finally, that lovestruck dunce is outta here. Waitress! I'm ready to order now!"

Leyline hummed a merry something that only loosely qualified as a tune as he made his way into the tiny apartment where he lived, his package for Dulcet clenched tightly in his teeth. After scanning the room for the best place to hide the gift, he decided to jam it in the crevice between the couch cushions and hope his fillyfriend didn't come over and sit on the couch anytime soon.

Leyline winced as a lancing pain threatened to split his skull. He had never had migraines before, but lately they had been a regular part of his life, along with the nightmares he had been suffering. He grit his teeth and stumbled to the kitchen, where a shelf filled with various medicinal and herbal ingredients for sleep aid and pain relief sat. He deftly popped the top on a few of the vials, mixing the contents together in a small bowl. He lifted the bowl to his lips, shuddering at the thought of what was about to violate his taste buds.

"Leyline..."

The earth pony stopped short. Had Dulcet stopped in for an unexpected visit? He quickly bolted to the living room in a vain hope to re-hide the jewelry box before she saw it.

However, when he got to the front room, it was as empty as ever. He shrugged, thinking he might have imagined it.

"Leyline Tracer..."

He definitely didn't imagine it, and it definitely wasn't Dulcet. He turned to the living room where he heard the the voice. "Who are you? Show yourself!"

A figure coalesced in the center of the tiny apartment, one piece at a time. A fanged grin. A head. An antelope horn. A deer antler. A lion paw. An eagle claw. More and more parts that didn't match started joining together into an ethereal form. Leyline could only sit back, jaw agape at what was appearing in his living room.

Finally, the apparition swirled together into a cohesive whole, stretching as it did so. It opened its eyes, revealing the only colors present on the ghostly presence: one green and one blue eye. It purred appreciatively at the dumbstruck look on the pony's face.

"Well, hello, handsome." The creature, unmistakably feminine judging by the voice, floated down to Leyline. "I have to say, I think I made a good choice this time around, even though you aren't a unicorn. You will make a fabulous host."

"Wha... what are you talking about? Who are you? What are you?"

"A little slow on the draw, though." The figure swirled around Leyline's frozen body, brushing against him suggestively. "I am talking about you helping me in return for something you desperately want and need."

Leyline squinted in confusion. "You aren't really making any sense."

"I'm talking about making you a unicorn, dear."

"Don’t be ridiculous. Not even Solaris could turn me into a unicorn."

Eris gave a flippant wave of her paw. "Oh, please, that fuddy duddy is too reserved to even bother trying. He's not willing to take some chances in life." She floated in front of the stallion, conjuring an ethereal platter covered by a lid. "I, however, have long since unlocked a few secrets." She removed the lid, revealing a small figurine of Leyline as a unicorn, standing on the silver platter. The statuette depicted him as a true unicorn, the usual bulk of an earth pony nowhere to be seen.

Leyline gazed at the statuette in wonder, only to shuffle away, startled, as the minicorn trotted to the edge of the platter and waved to the full sized pony. Its tiny horn glowed, and the pony teleported atop Leyline's muzzle before teleporting right back.

Leyline gave the statuette an envious stare for a moment before looking to Eris. "What would I have to do?"

Eris smirked confidently. "Oh, nothing really. I just need a host body for a few weeks to take care of some business."

"What kind of business?"

"None of yours, that's what."

Leyline rolled his eyes and sat back. "Unless you tell me what you are up to, you can find somepony else to be your host."

Eris pouted and snapped her fingers. "You need to learn theatrics, silly colt. Fine, I will tell you." The draconequus waved her claw and a felt animation appeared in thin air to illustrate. "I need to borrow your physical body in order to gather some items and perform a ritual to give me a body of my own. Horribly limiting, your pony frames are. I would require no more than five weeks' time. I would also appreciate any knowledge your frail mortal mind can offer, if you would be so generous."

Leyline looked at the felt animation, then back at the statuette. "All I would have to do is let you borrow my body for a while?"

Eris flashed a winning smile, her fang gleaming wickedly. "Exactly."

Leyline stood in the middle of the living room, the chance of a lifetime floating before him on a literal silver platter. His longtime wish of being able to cast his own magic was just a favor away from being real. He only had to say yes.

"No deal, Eris."

Eris's smile shattered. "I beg your pardon?"

The beige pony gave the incorporeal chimera a snarky grin. "I believe I made myself clear. I, Leyline Tracer, just told you I want no part of your deal."

"You are turning down my generous offer?! I just told you I could give you exactly what you need, and you deign to snub me?"

The earth pony laughed at Eris's bewildered anger. "See, that is where you are wrong. I don't need a horn. I made it this far without one and I don't see the need for that to change, especially if doing so requires relinquishing control of my body to an ancient demon of chaos who will do who knows what to it, not to mention letting said demon borrow my knowledge. I really don't feel like having anything on my conscience right now, anyway. So, if you don't mind, I would appreciate you taking your asymmetrical derriere elsewhere and haunting a more morally ambiguous soul."

Eris narrowed her eyes, letting out a feral growl. "So be it. If you are going to insult me so greatly, though, I will not let that go unpunished. You know those nightmares you can never remember?" She snapped her fingers.

Leyline was overwhelmed by a torrent of horrifying images. Every nightmare, every terror that had haunted him in his dreams the past couple of months, all of it was unlocked to rampage through his mind. As he sank to the floor, screaming in fear, Eris's visage cut through the nightmarish haze for a brief moment.

"This is but a taste of what you will experience for your impudence. Don't bother getting up. I will let myself out."

"Are we there yet?"

Lyra could see Twilight roll her eyes even while walking behind her. "No.”

“Well, how long do we have?”

Twilight sighed and pointed to a distant gap in the trees. “Over there. There is a chasm that we need to cross, then it’s just a short walk to the old castle.”

Lyra gave a bored grunt and resumed her game of trying to step directly in Twilight’s hoofsteps, like she had been doing for the past couple hours. Left rear, left front, right rear, right front, repeat.... You know, I think she reaches a little more with her right side. She sighed and paused her game to look around the forest. Gloomy and dark, like always. And Twilight pulls out her map in three, two, one... The rustle of paper held in magic confirmed her mental prediction. It had been the exact same for ages, and it was boring Lyra to tears. She tried playing some music to kill time, but Twilight warned her about "needlessly attracting dangerous animals," whatever that meant.

Left rear, left front, right rear, right front, repeat... She suppressed a yawn. If Lyra didn't know better, she could have sworn the scenery was on a loop like a cheap animation. Her back had been itching for ages, as had her hooves, forehead, tail, and one of her teeth, oddly enough. And she goes for the canteen... now. She gave a nearly silent grunt of satisfaction as Twilight pulled her canteen from her saddlebags for a drink. The map and canteen should sync after a couple more times. So monotonous. So boring. So... orderly. If only there was something she could do to pass the time. Anything. Maybe she—

The unicorn was jerked out of her distracted state abruptly when she piled into Twilight, yelping as her wounded shoulder made contact with Twilight's haunch.

“Hey, be careful!”

“Sorry, Twilight.” Lyra backed up and walked next to Twilight to find they were finally out of the woods, and staring at a huge gorge. "Oh. How do we cross?"

"There's a bridge not too far from here. We can cross there." Twilight turned to the right and picked up her walking pace to a smooth lope. Lyra followed close behind, her pace somewhat unsteady as her itching hooves bothered her.

A rickety old rope bridge quickly resolved into view, obviously quite aged. In fact, it looked like it had fallen at one point, the ends loosely retied to the support posts. "Are you sure this is safe?" Lyra ventured.

"Reasonably sure. We crossed the bridge last year with no problem." Twilight glanced across the chasm and slowly made her way across the bridge, the boards creaking dangerously under her weight. Lyra took a deep breath then bolted across the bridge, barely touching the boards as she crossed hurriedly.

"See? Perfectly safe." Twilight resumed her walk towards the center of the ruins, gesturing with her head for Lyra to follow.

The unicorn nodded and followed her companion, looking at the ruins. The ground was cracked, ravines plunging to depths unknown. Sections of the outer wall had collapsed into the ravines, as had various other parts of the castle ruins. The rifts in the ground all branched from one point in the center of the castle, as though someone had taken a hammer to its heart.

They picked their way across the ruined landscape to the front door of the castle, the massive oak slab hanging slack from broken hinges. Twilight barely afforded the door a glance as she went into the ruins. Lyra, however, stopped and examined it, taking in the view of what used to be a magnificent foyer. "Oooh..."

The cracks in the floor continued to get smaller and converge as they moved through the hallways. "Twilight, where are we going?"

Twilight slowed her pace. "Do you remember the riddle Discord gave us?"

"Yeah?"

"It referred to Celestia's first throne. When Everfree was still a city, it was the capital of the nation. The castle here used to have a throne dedicated to the rulers of the country. After Luna's banishment, the entire city was abandoned, the throne included."

"Oh." Lyra hummed nervously to herself as they continued to walk, her gaze wandering to the shattered stain glass windows. Even in their battered and broken state, they still held an aura of beauty about them, their craftsmanship readily apparent.

The duo soon found themselves in a room framed with a high-arching ceiling, the only roof still mostly intact in the castle. The roof had only one flaw: a perfectly circular hole had been punched through it.

Lyra's head was on a swivel, constantly turning this way and that as she marveled at the ruins. "This is so cool! Twilight, do you see this?" She turned to look to Twilight. "How can you not be amazed by this?"

Twilight was still sitting in the doorway, her gaze fixed on a point in the center of the room, where a low-lying mobile was set. Her mind seemed to be elsewhere, so Lyra turned back to the room to resume exploring. She walked to the back, almost stumbling over a fairly large piece of rubble.

She gave the masonry a curious look, since there were no fallen pillars or any other sources for it, other than a small pile of similarly colored stone. She nudged it with her hoof and it rolled to reveal that it was two different colors, divided perfectly into a light and dark stone.

She stepped back to get a better look at the rubble and noticed another odd thing about the room. The rifts in the ground converged into six perfectly aligned cracks, all centered on a focal point just in front of where the throne should be. The floor there had been etched with four silvery crescent imprints. She tilted her head, then trotted over to the set of prints. She placed her hoof on one, discovering the print was much larger than her own hoof.

Lyra turned so she was standing exactly in the epicenter of the destruction, her hooves mirroring the placement of the hoofprints, although her legs were a little too short to reach all four at the same time.

Twilight finally pulled herself from her thoughts and looked at Lyra, realizing where the mare was standing. "Uhh, Lyra? You may not want to stand—"

The floor beneath the green unicorn suddenly gave way and Lyra found herself tumbling into the rift below. However, her fall was rather short and ended with her being roughly deposited in a dank hallway, completely dark save for a feeble glow offered by the crystals mounted in the walls.

Lyra groaned and planted her hooves firmly on the ground before rising again, shaking off the dust that coated her fur from the fall. Twilight’s voice echoed from above her, “Lyra! Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

"Can you tell where you went? Can you see anything?"

Lyra squinted into the darkness. "I'm in some sort of hallway. It's kind of hard to see a whole lot else."

Twilight could be heard pacing nervously above her. "You’re probably in the dungeons below the castle. See if you can find a staircase leading back to the surface. I'll look for a doorway leading down to you.”

Lyra heard the dull clip-clop of hoofsteps leading away from the rift. She sighed and looked around, lighting her horn so she could see a little better. The hallway had one barred door within the sphere of her horn's pale glow. Lyra trotted over to it, her hoofsteps muffled by the squish of moss beneath her. She peered inside it to find the age-bleached bones of an earth pony, a rusty shackle still encircling its foreleg. Lyra shuddered as she recalled Twilight mentioning that she was probably in the dungeons. "Well, this isn't creepy at all..." she muttered as she wound her way past false staircases and row after row of cells. After the first lovely surprise, she decided she would be happier if she didn't examine their contents too closely.

Twilight's disembodied voice floated from some point in the distance: "Lyra? Can you hear me? Lyra!" The green mare perked and swiveled her ears, walking towards Twilight's voice in small and careful steps. Eventually she reached a point in the hall where it forked, her colleague's voice echoing through both chambers. She stood there deliberating for a while, even as the calling for her died away and was replaced with a sickening smack, followed by a reverberating tirade of foul language. Lyra figured that was probably a good sign that she should resume looking for Twilight. Eenie, meenie, minie... Lyra went left about fifteen steps before taking another short fall.

Twilight had found a servants' door leading below the castle into the lower levels. She hoped Lyra was nearby. She didn't want to get lost and make the situation worse by having to find both her companion and the exit.

"Lyra... can you hear me? Are you out there? Hello?" The sound of muffled hoofsteps echoed through the chambers in all directions, offering no directional guidance whatsoever. The light offered by her horn only gave the roughest idea of what surrounded her, moss and cobblestone being at the forefront of her observations.

With reluctance, Twilight descended further down the hallway, calling occasionally for her minty compatriot. Her calls were cut short, however, as she noticed her cutie mark crudely scrawled on the wall along with an arrow pointing down the hallway. It seemed to glow in response to her own glowing horn, and she quickened her pace, following the arrows on the wall. Her calls for Lyra resumed, but she was much more focused on the message meant for her.

The arrows lead her down the winding dungeons, a meandering pattern of hallways meant to confuse prisoners of eons past. She kept following faster and faster until she ran facefirst into a massive stone door with a painful smack. She forgot every lesson she learned in etiquette at that moment, a stream of profanity flowing like water as she cursed the door and its builders and their parents' illegitimate relations. She finally calmed herself and looked up at the door, first marvelling at the construction. Twilight blinked as she noticed that the double doors were emblazoned with her cutie mark, color inverted. She shivered as she stood there, carefully raising a hoof to the delicately carved masonr—

Lyra's flailing body bellyflopped onto Twilight's back, driving the both of them to the floor in a two-pony pile of pain and profanity. Twilight laid there, gasping for breath as the equine cannonball rolled off her and coughed terribly, clutching her wound from her fight with the chimera. Twilight finally made her way to her hooves, glaring at Lyra.

Lyra gave an apologetic shrug. Twilight sighed and turned to the doors again, the other unicorn's shocked gasp sounding behind her. She placed her hoof against the doors and cutie mark emblazoned on them glowed. The stone doors ground against their hinges, groaning as they opened to reveal a huge room, large enough to easily house a fully grown dragon.

A dull blue glow caught their sight from across the room. There, in the center, was an ethereal blue cocoon. As the two mares approached, it became clear that it was a magical prison containing none other than Princess Luna. Twilight broke into a run, quickly circling the floating orb and realizing it was feeding off Luna's own magic, performing both tasks of containing and sedating the princess. The orb was drawing visible threads of magic from Luna's horn, looking like a plasma ball as it dispersed the energy into the cocoon containing her.

Twilight gazed, fascinated, at the orb as it pulsed in time with Luna's magical aura. "Interesting. It uses the occupant's magic to contain them. It should be easy to break from the outside. Just break the spell's flow and the spell breaks too."

"Are you sure about this?" Twilight blinked as she remembered she wasn't alone. She looked back at Lyra. The mare was peering at the orb, but Lyra's eyes looked unfocused, like she wasn't seeing it in quite the same way Twilight was.

Twilight shrugged off the nagging suspicion as she positioned herself in front of Luna, sending a curious thread of her own aura to the orb. That was the last thing she saw before a lancing pain skewered her brain where she stood.

Lyra watched helplessly as Twilight curled into a ball, threads of magic trailing from her horn to the now-lavender cocoon ensnaring the princess. The purple mare's veins were visibly pulsing against her skin, the color draining from her face as the focus of the spell's power draw shifted to her. The spell faltered at the insufficient magic source, but it continued to draw from Twilight as the shell thinned around Luna.

Twilight sank to her knees, a trickle of blood flowing from her nostril as her magic ran low. She tried to retch feebly, unable to complete the motion as her entire body went limp.

Lyra bolted to the unicorn and shook her frantically in a desperate attempt to keep her lucid. Twilight's head lolled limply. "Twilight, don't die on me! Twilight! Twilight Sparkle!"

Lyra held Twilight's face upright, looking for a sign of life as the draw of magic started to recede from her horn, nearly depleted.

No!

Lyra's vision glazed over as she retreated inside herself. She found the exposed thread of chaos within her mind and yanked on it as hard as she could. The spell restraining the chaotic beast within her broke like a cardboard wall against a tsunami, flooding her with the corrupt power of Discord himself.

Her vision snapped back abruptly, a whitish haze tugging at the corners of it. She felt her hooves leaving the ground as she was nearly consumed by the power coursing through her veins. She cast her dreamlike gaze over to Twilight's writhing form on the floor, somehow seeing how the spell was pulling away her magic to keep Luna contained. With but a thought, the spell draining Twilight was obliterated in a wave of discordant energy, and the lavender cocoon containing Luna dissipated into, rather unnervingly, sugar, spice, and other things generally deemed to be of the “nice” quality. Twilight passed out as soon as she was relieved of the spell, while the princess was dropped from the space where she had been held, hitting the stone floor with a loud smack.

It was too much for Lyra to bear. She was just a mortal unicorn. She had no hope of stemming the flow of power coursing from every pore of her body. She would have screamed, but that required muscle control she didn't have.

Eventually, the flow of magic ceased and the unicorn was roughly dropped to the ground. Somehow she managed to land on her hooves. "Unhh..." Lyra tottered around woozily for a few seconds, completely disoriented. Luna's and Twilight's unconscious forms pulled at the edges of her vision.

A tiny crackle sounded beneath her hoof as she set it down for balance, and she pulled it back to reveal a small white blur, surrounded by a splotch of red. That’s odd. She squinted at the white blur, which resolved itself into the form of “…A tooth?"

The unicorn blinked a couple times to ensure she was actually seeing a tooth on the floor. She ran her tongue slowly across her teeth to look for the gap. To Lyra's surprise, she found a sizable fang perched with her upper row of teeth. Lyra stopped for a moment to feel her new tooth with her tongue, then shook her head as she stumbled over to Luna to check on her. The alicorn was paler than normal, her usual ethereal, flowing mane markedly absent. Locks of periwinkle blue took their place at her mane and tail. “Princess Luna, are you okay?”

The princess didn’t move, the only sign indicating she was still alive was her breathing. Lyra frowned and walked over to Twilight. “Please, wake up, Twilight.” No response. Lyra looked up the stairs from which she and Twilight came, down at the unconscious ponies, then back at the stairs again. "This is gonna be a long night..."

Chapter Nine - You're Looking a Little Green, Lyra

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“Yoohoo! Lyra, darling!”

Lyra jerked from her sleeping bag, startled by the intrusion upon her sleep. The first thing that grabbed her attention was that she wasn’t in the cramped quarters of Twilight’s tent the three travelers were sharing. The second thing she noticed was that she wasn’t even in the forest anymore. Rather, she was squarely set in the middle of a gray, featureless room. The walls were so far away she couldn’t discern where exactly they met the floor. The third thing she noticed was that, a few dozen hooves away from aforementioned sleeping bag, there was a draconequus hosting a tea party consisting of itself and some animated stuffed animals. Not only that, but it also appeared that it was waving her over to join.

Lyra tried rubbing her eyes vigorously to make the apparition go away. After a few seconds of eye-watering pressure, she removed her hooves to find that the scene was most assuredly there to stay for the time being. “That’s it. I’ve finally lost my mind.”

“On the contrary, dear, I have actually borrowed this portion of your consciousness for my little soiree. You see, I think we need to have a little talk. Please, sit with me.”

Lyra cautiously sat in front of the table, eyeing Eris suspiciously as a teddy bear reached across the table for the sugar bowl. "What do you want?"

The draconequus sipped daintily from her tea cup. "You see, my dear, we are both in a position we would rather not be given. I am stuck in your body, and you are housing a creature far beyond your intellect, which must be vexing to no end."

The mare ignored the slight as she patiently waited for the draconequus to continue. A quiet murmuring in the background caught her ear, and she noticed the dull gray of the room flickering slightly with color. Lyra flicked her ear idly and returned her attention to the table.

"Anyway, all I desire is your help to release me. Just help me with that and we can go our own separate ways."

The mare nodded slowly, her ear flicking again as the murmuring increased in volume slightly. What is that? Lyra rubbed at her temples and refocused on the draconequus. "And you are?"

The chimera tsked at herself. "Where are my manners? I am Eris."

"It's nice to meet you, I think."

"Likewise. Back to the reason I have brought you here. I request your help. I was injustly imprisoned in that brute Discord's body, and he used my abilities for himself. Thankfully, you gave me a conduit of escape, and I appreciate it. Now, I request only a tiny favor of you, and that is to find a way to release me from the spell binding me."

Lyra hummed a few bars of a tune as she thought. "How would I go about releasing you?"

Eris gave a shrug as she passed the tea kettle to a stuffed bunny. "Sadly, my captor wasn't kind enough to give me instructions on escaping the spell. Leyline, being the conniving cur he is, decided he knew better what to do with my magic better than I did."

The unicorn internally perked at the mention of Leyline, and her eyes flickered slightly as she recognized Eris from her dreams. Lyra drew in a breath to steady herself. As she did so, a small crack appeared in the floor of the room. The background noise and color changes concentrated on the crack, casting a faint glow from the rift.

Lyra squinted at the crack in the floor of her consciousness. Eris's voice went ignored as she rose from the chair and peered into the rift, sounds and light emanating from the gap. She peered into the crack, and Leyline appeared in the leaked scene, his huddled form in a dark corner of a sewer.

Eris finally looked over as she finished her monologue and her eyes widened as she noticed Lyra curiously poking her hoof into the crack in the floor. She bolted from her seat, her talons outstretched as Lyra found herself being pulled into the memory.

"No, don't—"

The dank air in the underways of the Everfree sewers sent shivers down Leyline’s spine as he huddled in a corner for warmth. He was covered in filth and scratches from head to hoof. A small bindle stick lay beside him, carrying only a few aged apples and a book.

Evil. Scum. Betrayer.

He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping to block out the accusations the voices in his mind leveled at him.

Liar. Criminal. Traitor.

Get out. Get out of my mind. Get out get out GET OUT.

“Murderer.”

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH!” He slammed a hoof into the wall, bellowing in pain as the stone refused to give under his assault. A dark chuckle came from behind him, laced with a seductive purr. Leyline turned, gritting his teeth at the spectral intruder floating behind him. “Eris.”

“It’s nice to see you again, my little mud pony. How have you been doing as of late? Besides, you know, killing Dulcet.”

“I didn’t kill her.”

“Of course you didn’t, dearie.” The draconequus waved her claw dismissively. “I would love to see you try to explain that to the authorities, though: ‘Oh, no, officer, I didn’t kill her. She was possessed by a spirit of chaos who was trying to bend me to do her discordant will. I tried to save my poor, sweet Dulcet, but I accidentally killed her instead.’”

Leyline choked up in anger, tears streaming down his face as he caressed a necklace between his hooves. The silver chain remained untarnished by its putrid surroundings. A small fire ruby, cut in the shape of a heart, glistened in the silver setting in the center of the chain. He rubbed the gem against his mud-stained cheek in a vain attempt to feel the warmth of its intended owner.

“I told you before, Leyline. I always win. You could have prevented this. I would have even made you a unicorn for your assistance. Instead, you not only chose to refuse me, but you insulted me while you did it. I cannot let such impudence go unpunished, you see. If I did, well, then everypony would think they could backtalk me. We can’t have that, can we?

“My offer still stands. I cannot bring back Dulcet. There are things even I cannot do. However, I can still provide you a horn. I might even give you a position as my lieutenant, if that is what you desire in the future.

“If you refuse again, I might have to move on to punishing your family. Wouldn’t that be a shame?”

The beige earth pony felt his mind crack. He cast another glance at the inscription on the back of the sterling setting: For my love, Dulcet Tones. Without you, I am nothing.

“You are mistaken, Eris.”

“Oh, am I?”

“You went too far. You took the thing that mattered most to me. You cannot twist my leg any more.” Leyline’s head snapped up to meet the mismatched creature’s eyes.

“What exactly do you plan to do to little old me, an insubstantial spirit? You aren’t a unicorn, remember?”

As a crooked grin made its way across Leyline's muzzle, he noticed a twinge of unease show itself on Eris's face. A faint glow grew in the pony’s eyes as he locked his gaze upon her. “You took my Love. I don’t care who or what you are. You will pay.”

Leyline shakily lifted himself upright. Right now, he didn’t care that he was an earth pony. He didn’t care that he couldn’t use magic. Rage consumed him as he pushed himself to his hooves, clutching the necklace close to his chest. He felt energy course through his veins as he focused his entire being on Eris. Is this what using magic feels like? As forbidden arcane knowledge tore its way through his mind, he saw white tendrils of light waft from his body before shifting to black, circling the ethereal draconequus and chaining her in place.

“What is this? What are you doing to me?”

“If you knew me at all, you would have realized many of the spells I have written are based very much on the soul snare spell.”

He felt sparks arc from his hooves to the ground as he focused his entire being on capturing the spirit of chaos and channeling her into the pendant in his hoof. Leyline watched with sadistic satisfaction as Eris tried in vain to escape the spell’s clutches. He noted with dim pleasure her howls of pain as the magic rent her from the air, funneling her into the piece of jewelry.

The grim smile marring Leyline’s froze as he saw the fire ruby start to form tiny cracks on the edges, the gem simply not strong enough to contain the spirit being trapped within its confines.

“No!” Leyline roared. “I won’t let you! I won’t let you escape again! You will never do this again!”

He changed the flow of the spell, rechanneling the spirit to flow into his own body.

It burned. His entire body felt like it had been dipped in acid. Tears continued to stream as he held the spell to completion, letting it break only when it was complete. He collapsed, the necklace in his hoof falling away into the flowing water of the sewer. Leyline’s body trembled as it tried to cope with Eris’s presence.

You will regret doing that, Leyline Tracer. As long as I am trapped here, I will make you suffer.

I don’t care. I will never let you roam free again.

Leyline passed out of consciousness, letting the burning sensation seep into his soul.

Lyra felt her consciousness forcibly ejected from the memory as it ended, her body tumbling across the floor of the gray room and coming to a rest at the foot of the small tea table. Eris loomed over the dazed unicorn, a cold expression etched into her face. Lyra feebly tried to push herself away from the draconequus to little effect.

"You shouldn't have done that." Eris's fanged maw filled the terrified unicorn's vision, and she felt her stomach give a sickening lurch as a searing pain tore through her mind.

Lyra bolted from her sleeping bag into the nearby woods, her stomach threatening to purge itself the entire way. As the mare reached the edge of the campground, she felt a dim flash of magic and she ran smack into, of all things, a toilet. Lyra silently thanked and cursed the spirit of chaos residing in her as she refunded her meal from earlier into the porcelain plumbing. As Lyra finished her purging and reached for the handle out of force of habit to flush the vomit she made the unfortunate discovery that this particular Toilet of Chaos and Disharmony™ was, in fact, a bidet.

The unicorn coughed and sputtered as she was shot in the face with a stream of water from a place where the water is not meant for your face. As she staggered away from the foul porcelain fiend, Lyra wiped at her face with a foreleg, only to have it come back bloody. She felt a thicker trickle of fluid making its way down her chin as she noted that she had bit her lip hard enough that her fang tore through the fragile skin.

"Are you well, Lyra Heartstrings?"

The unicorn pushed herself back to her hooves, shaking. She wiped the blood from her lip again, feeling her new fang graze her foreleg. She tried to respond to the inquiry but nearly collapsed as a new wave of nausea pushed through her body.

A wing descended over Lyra's back, supporting her as her stomach tried to heave again, although she was already completely purged from before. Lyra could only vaguely feel Luna's presence, providing support as her body trembled with pain and illness.

After what seemed like an eternity, her heaving ceased. The princess continued to hold her upright as she feebly made her way back to the campfire. Lyra reached the edge of the fire and collapsed there, shivering. Luna silently disappeared into the tent, returning with a canteen, a mug full of water and a towel to wash away the toilet water. She offered the cup to Lyra who snatched it eagerly. It was quickly used to rinse the acidic taste from her mouth. The towel followed soon afterwards, quickly run across the unfortunate mare's face to dry it.

"Thank you," Lyra croaked weakly.

Luna nodded. "You are most welcome." She sat next to the unicorn, staring into the embers of the flame as it burned.

The two ponies sat there for a while, letting the sounds of the night pervade the silence between them. Lyra would cast a glance at the princess next to her, trying to find a hint of emotion in her impassive face.

"What's keeping you awake?" Lyra finally ventured.

Luna's expression cracked just enough to show a hint of amusement. "This is my domain. I would be a sad princess indeed if I were not awake to keep watch over my charge. Also, Twilight Sparkle appears to suffer from sleep apnea, and I can't sleep when such a racket is occurring next to me.

What is more concerning, though, is the fact that you are also awake at this hour. What troubles your sleep?"

"Just a nightmare."

Luna furrowed her brow, apparently unsatisfied with the answer. "It was more than that, was it not?"

Lyra gazed resolutely into the fire a moment longer. "Yeah." She eased herself so that she was laying on her back, positioned so she could watch the night sky without straining her neck.

"Would you like to talk about it?" Luna followed suit, matching Lyra's odd posture with a little difficulty.

"Not really."

"Very well." The two mares gazed at the starry void, letting the silence fill the space between them a while longer. Lyra noted that Luna was still diminished, her ethereal mane nowhere to be seen. In its place was a more normal style, composed of light blue locks that curled at the end.

As Lyra idly played connect the dots with the stars, she noticed a streak of light bolting from the heavens, right over their heads. A shooting star! Before she could make a wish, though, she heard the alicorn next to her give out a pained yelp.

"Are you alright, princess?" Lyra looked over and saw Luna right herself with a powerful flap of her wings, landing in a ready position.

"Did you see where that star went?!"

"I think it went—" The princess of the night bolted in the direction where Lyra had started to point, not bothering to let the unicorn finish her sentence.

The aquamarine unicorn hauled herself to her hooves to try and follow the princess before thinking how futile it would be to try to follow behind on hoof. Several minutes passed as she paced nervously in front of the fire, wondering if she should fetch Twilight and tell her she had lost Luna.

Just as Lyra was about to go wake Twilight, she heard strained wings flapping near the camp. Luna appeared over the treeline, clutching a misshapen hunk of metal between her hooves a little smaller than a beach ball. The lunar princess swooped in heavily, dropping in front of the fire with a solid thump while gingerly cradling the fallen star.

“Oh, Julianos, are you alright?” Luna sobbed to the star. “I’m so sorry I let that happen to you. I have been trying to get your brothers and sisters all patched up since I returned. I was going to get to you a couple days ago, before I was captured. Please forgive me for not doing it sooner.” The alicorn hugged the shining lump of metal, rocking it in her hooves as she sat on the log next to the fire.

Lyra watched the princess coddling the star with a baffled expression. “Uh, Luna, what are you doing?”

“Tending to Julianos, of course.”

“The star is named Julianos?”

“Yes." Luna looked briefly to Lyra, her expression carefully masked. "Is there something wrong with that?"

"No, not at all." Lyra slowly ventured, "Why did you have to find it?"

Luna gave the minty unicorn a dirty look. "I didn't want to leave him stranded out here, alone. When I came back, I quickly realized quite a few of my stars had lost the strength to stay in the sky and had fallen to Equus. I made a point of going out to find all my fallen stars. I want to someday figure out how to restore them to their former glory."

Luna laid her head on the metal hunk as she talked, ears slowly drooping to the sides. "So far, I have found many craters, but very few stars. I don't know where they have gone, and it pains my heart to think that they are still lost out there.

What continues to vex me is the question of what happened to them. Surely they haven't been collected by others, have they? You wouldn't know anything about it, would you, Lyra Heartstrings?"

Lyra tried to swallow the lump that suddenly blocked her throat. She wasn't sure how Luna would react to the fact that star metal was highly desirable for metallurgy, but she was sure it wouldn't be positive. Unfortunately, Luna noticed her sudden reticence on the subject. The lunar princess narrowed her eyes. "You know, don't you? Tell me what you know."

The unicorn scuffed a hoof on the ground. "I don't know exactly what happened to all of them. I do know that star metal is often used for armor and weapons because it is light and strong."

Luna's tail flicked angrily. "Armor?"

"It also has great resonant abilities, and some of the best musical instruments and enchanted tools in the world are made of it."

A persistent twitch marred the princess's face. "Instruments?"

The unicorn desperately wished for an opportunity to escape, but none presented itself. "A-and sometimes it is used to make high quality jewelry."

Luna stood, her mane and tail nearly reverting back to their ethereal state in her rage. "Do you mean to tell me that my children have been used as nothing more than baubles and playthings for some pretentious old foals?" she whispered as her voice quivered with barely restrained fury.

Lyra couldn't keep from whimpering in response. Luna quickly restrained herself, bowing her head as she sat back down on her log opposite the frightened unicorn. "I apologize. It isn't your fault that such a gross misuse of my charges has occurred. I just can't believe that they are gone.” The alicorn’s ears drooped. “Allan, Rhodes, Amadeus, Damian, Orphenie, even little Lisa... all turned into nothing more than earrings and bracers."

The unicorn nodded quietly as Luna covered her face with her wings, quiet sobs punctuating the silence as the nocturnal princess hugged Julianos close to her chest. “Oh, my poor children.”

“Children?”

Luna’s tear-streaked muzzle peered through a gap in her feathers. “Every star in the night sky, I made. My stars are the closest thing I have to children.”

Lyra gasped and looked to the night sky. As the broad expanse of stars filled her vision, she found a new appreciation for the crying pony before her. Nights spent stargazing, looking up and trying to count the stars in the sky. Camping trips held under the face of the Mare in the Moon as the constellations shone with all their glory. “You made the night sky?”

Luna’s nod was almost hidden by her wings. Lyra had to strain to hear the whispered response. “They are the closest thing I have left to family, besides my sister. I put a little bit of my spirit into every one when I made them. I was so alone when I made them. It was just me and the empty night sky. I just wanted to share the night with somepony who wasn’t me, even if they were of my creation.”

The lunar princess hugged the misshapen sphere in her forelegs all the tighter as she spoke. “They comforted me through so many hard times. My sister was always so loved and adored and had plenty of advisors and confidants waiting at her beck and call. Me? I had an empty night court, with only a few sleepy guards for company. I hardly even existed in the eyes of Equestria, only acknowledged when there was a crisis that Tia couldn’t handle alone.”

Lyra had quietly retrieved her instrument sometime during the story, strumming carefully at the strings as Luna spoke.

"They weren't enough, though. When I first made Polaris, it nearly caused an uproar. Ponies feared the new light in the night sky, and they called my dear Polaris a 'harbinger of doom.' They complained and hid for their lives every time I made a new star, isolating me more. To combat the isolation, I would make new stars. On and on it went, and I started making constellations in the sky, naming them and bringing them to life.

"I ran out of space in the sky after Sombra's defeat. I would sit out every night, talking to my stars and listening to their quiet voices. My guards thought I was insane. They couldn't hear the stories my stars would tell, so they just saw their princess talking to the sky. Eventually, they told my sister of their concerns. Tia didn't understand either when I tried explaining it to her. I tried introducing her to them, and all she did was say ‘Luna, you can’t keep doing this. You are scaring ponies.’

“I finally snapped when they unveiled the new throne for my sister at the first Summer Sun Celebration. We had been sharing the princes’ old throne ever since our ascension into our rules as Regents of the Sky. It was divided perfectly in half, one side a tribute to Solaris, and the other to Nocturne.

"I had mentioned the idea before of getting a new throne that we could share so we wouldn't be using our mentors' throne, but I thought the idea had been turned down. I was shocked on the dawn of the Celebration to find they had indeed taken the idea into consideration. However, the throne was solely for my sister. When I asked them about it after the festival, they said I would use the old throne for the time being.

"I was outraged, outraged at the fact that they were pushing me aside and making me use an old throne meant to represent both day and night. I was so angry that when I went outside that night and poured out my wrath at the night sky, I frightened my stars into silence. I couldn't hear them, and it broke me. In my despair and loneliness, I went on a flight. I flew until I collapsed, exhausted, at the gates of Tartarus. There, I could hear the voices of the imprisoned whispering to me, threatening death and torture if they ever managed to escape their chains. It was comforting, in a way, to hear any voice that acknowledged me.

"In the midst of the promises of pain, I eventually picked out one voice who called to me in soothing tones. He whispered twisted words of encouragement, stroking my ego and spitting curses against all others. He played my fears and loneliness to his benefit, and offered me a deal that I readily accepted.

"I flew back to the castle. It was almost time for the dawn, and as I flew into the palace, a guard called out 'Luna has returned!' Tia bolted over to me, wrapping me in a hug I never felt as I stood there, mind bent by the spirit possessing me. 'Why didn't you tell us you were going to leave?'

"I..." Luna's voice faltered, but she straightened her spine and continued the tale, nary a quiver in her voice. "I shoved her away, and said 'Don't pretend you care about me. No one cares about Luna.'

"I called upon the spirit for power, and he responded, taking hold of my body and warping it into a form of strength and darkness. 'But Luna I am no longer! I am your worst Nightmare! I will be feared and respected! If I cannot come out from your shadow, Celestia, I shall BE the shadow!'

"I broke free and slaughtered my way through the castle until I reached the throne room. My mentors' throne was still there, waiting the approach of dawn so it could be stowed away for Tia's throne. I smashed it to rubble, right in front of my sister, who had followed hot on my heels. She cried out 'Luna, stop!' but I was implacable in my rage. Her throne was behind it, ready to be rotated into place on the dais. I lunged at it and brought my hooves down, but it wouldn't break.

"It had been bound to my sister, so it was reinforced by her magic. No matter how hard I tried, it wouldn't break. The power of the sun held strong. I collapsed in front of it, a quivering, snarling, sobbing mess.

"There was a moment where the silence almost freed me. Tia sat behind me, ready to reach a comforting hoof to me, when an overambitious guard charged me, swinging his pike. He was turned to ash where he stood, and I became a maelstrom of retribution.

"I leveled all of Everfree city that day, killing hundreds and driving away thousands more with the strength of the spirit possessing me and bolstering my own power. I forced my own sister out of the ruins, casting runes of destruction to keep everyone away from my domain.

“As the summer waned and fall followed behind, I gained strength as I fed the spirit my anger and the natural procession of the seasons further empowered me, while Tia’s might diminished. I further strengthened myself by keeping the moon in the sky, feeding off the fear and panic of the populace as the sun wouldn’t rise. I gained followers to my cause for various reasons: fear of being overtaken, greed, ambition, desire for power. I used them to protect me while I cast a spell over the broken city to keep my sister and her forces from overtaking me. As far as I know, remnants of the spell still linger, so strong was my anger against my sister while casting it. I had the spell bound to the city, but I do not remember how...

“The spirit gained ever more control over me in the six months before my fall. We plotted and schemed together, cursing and spitting on Tia’s unbroken throne as it mocked our efforts to dispatch it. We couldn’t even move the thing, no matter how hard we tried. Finally, we decided to wait until the winter solstice, when our power would be the greatest over Celestia, and use ritual magic to break it. We had realized that her throne was now tied to her. If we broke her throne, she would fall soon thereafter.

“Winter drew near and the spirit and I prepared ourselves for the ritual. The day of the ritual, though, something unexpected happened. Tia found her way into the broken remains of the castle, carrying with her the Elements of Harmony. She begged me to stop, pleading for the return of her beloved sister.”

Lyra was perched at the edge of her log, her hoof barely tapping at the strings of her lyre as the story pulled at her, Luna orating with perfect diction. She was jolted from her rapture, though, as Luna’s voice broke, a tear spilling down her cheek.

“I will never forget the look on her face as I responded. To this day, I don’t know if it was the spirit talking or me, but I glared at her from the incantation circle and said ‘I have no sister.’

"For the next thousand years I was imprisoned on the moon, trapped in a Nightmare of my own creation. The spirit, sadly, was stronger than I, and locked me away. I was trapped within my own body. Still, I fought back against the creature sharing my vessel. We drove each other to the brink of madness as we battled each other for control. In the end, the creature won. I was mentally shackled, nearly extinguished.

"The spirit paid a high price, though. As we fought, I filled its thoughts with inane babble. I sang meaningless songs repeatedly. I whispered pointless drivel in its ear, snippets of rhymes being my weapon. Even as I was being crushed, I could feel its thoughts fall to shambles.

"As I was locked away, I felt a whisper of hope from none other than Polaris. His voice carried through the void and whispered, 'Hold fast, dear mother. We are coming to save you.'

"My children came for me. After all my outpouring of rage and grief and my subsequent turn to darkness, they kept faith in me. They unlocked my body's prison and sent me to Equus at just such a time when there were six fillies who were strong enough to stand against me and free me.

"The first thing my sister did when she carried me home was she took me to the throne room in Canterlot, just as the sun was due to set. She said to me, 'Luna, I have waited a millennium to give this to you. I'm so sorry you had to wait.'

"As the dais rotated in place, I saw my throne. They were planning to give it to me on the winter solstice, on my birthday, the day I was banished."

The alicorn bowed her head, a tear plopping on the soft earth in front of the campfire, the fire itself reduced to smoldering coals. She took a small breath, wracked by an escaped sob. "Whatever you do, Lyra Heartstrings, don't let this thing consume you."

Lyra nodded quietly, unsure of what to say to comfort Luna. She shuffled closer and timidly nuzzled at the princess as she sobbed in front of the dying fire, the fallen star still clutched in the princess's hooves.

Chapter Ten - Exotic Bird Bingo is Overrated, Anyway

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"Have we arrived yet, Twilight Sparkle?"

Luna and Lyra stifled their laughter as they saw Twilight's hackles rise along her back. "No."

Luna waited a beat. "How about now?"

The sound of teeth grinding screeched on their ears like nails on a chalkboard. "No."

Another beat. "Twilight Sparkle, when—"

"For the last time, we are not there yet and we will not be there for two more days. If you ask me again I will feed you poison joke for breakfast tomorrow!"

At Twilight's outburst, Lyra and Luna lost all shreds of restraint and burst into laughter, leaning against each other for support as Twilight stomped ahead of them. "Oh, you were right, Lyra Heartstrings," Luna exclaimed merrily. "This is an enjoyable endeavor! I never knew how amusing it could be to repeatedly ask the same questions!"

"Told you so." Lyra giggled as they trotted to catch up with Twilight. She limped as she trotted, but they needed to keep going. She steeled herself internally, forcing a smile. "Still, we should probably wait a little before asking again. We don't want to get her too mad."

Luna pouted and shifted the star she was carrying on her back. "Aww, is there nothing else we can do? Travelling by hoof is so boring."

Lyra thought back to the rare occasions when her family would take a couple weeks off to go to the beach. What did they do to pass the time while they rode in a train or walked to their destination? "Hmm... we could play the alphabet game."

"Pray tell, what manner of game is this?"

"Well, what you do is look for a word on a road sign that begins with the letter A. When you find one, you call it out and you win a point. Once 'A' is found, you find a word that begins with 'B,' until you finish the alphabet. Whoever has the most points when you reach 'Z' wins."

Luna nodded sagely. "A delightful notion, Lyra Heartstrings, save for one problem."

"And that is?"

Luna shifted the weight of the star on her back to gesture at the path around them. "Tell me, when is the last time you have seen signage of any sort?"

Lyra looked around and blinked before giving a nervous chuckle. "Oh. Right." She quickly moved on from the awkward moment. "Do you need help carrying that star?"

The princess snorted as she cradled the rock between her shoulders. "I highly doubt you would be able to remain standing, much less walk if I placed this on your shoulders, Lyra Heartstrings. It weighs over a thousand pounds."

The green unicorn gaped at Luna, stunned into silence. The princess shrugged, the fallen star shifting as she did so. "There is more to being a princess of Equestria than royal formalities."

"But... even an earth pony couldn't carry it that easily if it weighs that much."

"Lyra Heartstrings, Celestia and I embody the traits of all three subtypes of ponies. Each part strengthens the other, giving us abilities far beyond what each part could accomplish on its own. It is why I can carry this star with little difficulty, and how my sister and I can move celestial bodies, and fly without tiring. We are blessed and cursed beyond compare, save for Discord himself."

Lyra stared. "...Wow. You really like monologuing." After a few moments passed, Lyra suddenly realized what she said, clapping a hoof over her mouth and flushing brightly. "I'm so sorry, Princess Luna. I don't know why I said that."

Luna squinted at the mare, scrutinizing her carefully, before she nodded and resumed walking. "Have you any more suggestions for entertainment?"

Lyra hummed a random tune, trying to think of something to stave off the boredom. Suddenly, she shuddered, her concentration shattered by a horrendous bout of itchiness that had been getting steadily worse throughout the morning. She reached to her flank with a hoof, scratching madly at her skin. Luna noticed the frantic scratching and gave Lyra a funny look. "... Are you well, Lyra Heartstrings?"

Lyra looked at her hoof, where a startling amount of her fur had rubbed off her flank onto the appendage. "I'm fine." She was startled as Twilight reminded them that she was still a little ahead of them as she voiced an option.

"We could always try identifying the local flora of the forest! For example, the flowers on the side of the path are Matricaria recutita, more commonly referred to as wild cha—"

"Twilight, I don't want to complain, but please, please, please do not play 'Flower Bingo' again. You went through six cards of that and two cards of 'Exotic Bird Bingo' on the way here."

"I offered you a card to give you something to do, but you always said no."

Lyra huffed. "I can't identify birds or flowers to save my life. Please, just let me play some music."

"I already said no. The last time you did, we encountered an Ursa Major."

"That was just a coincidence!"

"Lyra, please. I know it's silly to assume that correlation implies causation, but I would rather not take any chances, especially since we are escorting Princess Luna while she is in a weakened sta..." Twilight trailed off as she realized that the aforementioned princess was giving her a rather displeased look. "Um, well, Princess Luna, you are rather weak at the moment. I would rather us not take any chances at the—"

"Twilight Sparkle, I have fought in more battles and defeated more eldritch abominations than you could dare to imagine. If you think I am incapable of handling myself in a crisis, you insult me more than you think." She turned to Lyra with a determined expression. "I would appreciate it greatly if thou wouldst grace us with thine instrumentations, minstrel."

Lyra gulped nervously, levitating her lyre from her saddlebags. "My playing won't be as good while we're moving, Princess."

"Yes, I know most musicians dislike using magic to play music, but we must keep moving. Twilight Sparkle has impressed upon us the importance of haste. I would appreciate it if you could improvise for my sake."

The green mare nodded and looked down at her lyre, quickly giving it a strum to ensure it was in tune. Lyra ran through song options in her head as she was making some minor adjustments on the newer strings. She had many songs memorized and she could probably figure out the chord progression to some more, but she had absolutely no idea what Luna wanted to hear.

Fortunately (or maybe unfortunately) for Lyra, the chaos magic residing within her made a choice on its own. She felt her magic reaching out towards the lyre and swirl around the strings, coating them in a distortion spell and starting to strum the instrument, giving the appearance that the lyre was haunted. As Lyra recognized the intro to the song that was playing, she silently cursed her luck. This has got to be the worst choice of music for this occasion... Before she could apologize to Luna, who appeared to be surprised by the sudden distort on the instrument, her compulsion to sing the lyrics to any song she knew bubbled into fruition.

The secret side of me

I never let you see

I keep it caged

But I can't control it

So stay away from me

The beast is ugly

I feel the rage

And I just can't hold it

It's scratching on the walls

In the closet, in the halls

It comes awake

And I can't control it

Hiding under the bed

In my body, in my head

Why won't somebody come and save me from this?

Make it end!

Lyra's voice trailed away as she realized Luna knew the song and was singing it herself. She let the princess take over while she strummed her lyre, watching Luna pour her heart into the chorus with all the passion she could muster.

I feel it deep within,

It's just beneath the skin

I must confess that I feel like a monster

I hate what I've become

The nightmare's just begun

I must confess that I feel like a monster

I, I feel like a monster

My secret side I keep

Hid under lock and key

I keep it caged

But I can't control it

Cause if I let him out

He'll tear me up

And break me down

Why won't somepony come and save me from this?

Make it end!

I feel it deep within,

It's just beneath the skin

I must confess that I feel like a monster

I hate what I've become

The nightmare's just begun

I must confess that I feel like a monster

I feel it deep within,

It's just beneath the skin

I must confess that I feel like a monster

I, I feel like a monster

Lyra looked over to Luna, unsettled by the shadow that seemed to fall over the princess. Her pupils were narrowing, neary draconic. Her periwinkle blue mane was becoming darker, wispier. A flash of light caught her teeth, giving Luna the appearance of fangs.

It's hiding in the dark

It's teeth are razor sharp

There's no escape for me

It wants my soul,

It wants my heart

No one can hear me scream

Maybe it's just a dream

Or maybe it's inside of me

Stop this monster!

I feel it deep within,

It's just beneath the skin

I must confess that I feel like a monster

I hate what I've become

The nightmare's just begun

I must confess that I feel like a monster

I feel it deep within,

It's just beneath the skin

I must confess that I feel like a monster

I'm gonna lose control

Here's something radical

I must confess that I feel like a monster

I, I feel like a monster

I, I feel like a monster!

Lyra let the distortion spell on her lyre die. "I didn't know you listened to Griddle, Princess," she breathed.

Luna nodded ecstatically. "I have been acquainting myself with the intricacies of modern music, and it is very much enjoyable. Although my talent for music is limited, I can appreciate the effort that goes into it."

Lyra grinned broadly. "I think I found my new favorite princess.” She looked at her bandaged shoulder, shrugging it experimentally. When the usual pain that accompanied it failed to appear, she tugged at the bandage with her teeth, letting the gauze fall away.

A perfectly healthy shoulder revealed itself, the only sign of trauma being four faint scratch marks. "Hey, Twilight?"

"Yes, Lyra?"

"What is the probability of my shoulder being healed by now?"

Twilight slowed her walking and looked over at Lyra. "The likelihood of your shoulder recovering in three days is slim to none. Why?"

Lyra rotated her shoulder into view. Twilight's jaw dropped momentarily before she rushed over to examine the formerly wounded unicorn. "I don't understand! That chimera slashed your shoulder wide open! It should have taken weeks for those wounds to heal completely!"

Luna's eyes widened considerably as she heard Twilight's outburst, and she carefully set down the fallen star before rushing over to Lyra and examining the places where her coat was missing from the gouges. "Lyra Heartstrings, you were attacked by a chimera? You are sure of this?" She lowered her head, squinting and looking intently at the healed flesh.

Lyra squirmed uncomfortably under their combined scrutiny. "I'm pretty sure. Lion front, goat rear, snake tail."

"If you truly were injured by one, you should have died by now. Their claws have a powerful poison." She gave Lyra a serious look, focusing on her fang. "It appears that you have unnatural healing abilities, and your body is beginning to undergo major alterations."

Lyra gave a nervous laugh and quickly ducked her head, the chaos magic grabbing the discarded bandage and shredding it into confetti as she trotted ahead of her travel companions.

Luna kept her gaze trained on the green mare as she trotted ahead, then hefted Julianos between her wings and moved forward. "Twilight Sparkle, walk with me."

Twilight blinked and quickly caught up to Luna. "Yes, Princess?"

"I need you to keep an eye on Lyra Heartstrings."

Twilight nodded, looking a little hesitant. "I should have known that she couldn't be trusted—"

Luna gave her a sad look. "Twilight Sparkle, I have no doubt she can be trusted. However, Lyra Heartstrings is not the only entity residing within that body."

Twilight blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I have glimpsed her dreams. There is something else within her, and it is more than a mere echo or imprint of an eldritch horror's magic. Nay, I sense something much more definite." She looked at the ground. "I fear she will not be able to contain it forever. This... thing... it wants to be free."

Luna sighed and readjusted her stance, keeping her steps high as she kept the star carefully balanced on her back. "I must ask you, Twilight Sparkle, to accompany Lyra Heartstrings in whatever she does. Until we have safely locked away whatever is possessing her body, it would be folly for her to be alone for any length of time. Can you do that?"

Twilight looked ahead to Lyra, who was just out of earshot. The mare looked antsy, her hooves never staying in cadence as she trotted at a nervous pace. "I will, Princess Luna."

"Very good. Now, let us make haste for the castle. Julianos is heavy and I need to make sure he is well."

"Who is Julianos?"

Luna made a miffed expression as she tossed a glance to the silvery rock on her back. "The star, of course."

Twilight chuckled nervously. "Of course... the star."

"Is there something wrong?"

"No, no, not at all."

Lyra wondered what Twilight and Luna were talking about while she walked slowly along the path. She was tired of waiting for them to finish but she didn’t want to lose them in the ever present darkness of the Everfree Forest. She sighed, hefting her saddlebags off her back and to the side. She groaned as the weight was lifted from her back. "Ahhh, that's better."

Lyra was bothered by her shoulder. Even though it wasn’t injured anymore, she was still limping a little, like it had healed wrong or something. She stretched her leg and inspected it, looking for anything that would be causing the limp. Nothing appeared to be out of the ordinary. She shrugged and sat back in a suddenly appearing lawn chair, courtesy of chaos. Lyra continued to scratch at her flank a little more, just in front of her cutie mark.

Lyra felt her hoof brush against an odd texture and stopped to look down curiously. She brushed aside the thinning fur, thinking maybe she was acquiring a rash of some sort.

“Losing fur, walking funny, fangs, and chaos magic. I think I need a vacation."

Chapter Eleven - Forgiveness is Divine or Something

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Celestia sat at the head of the table in the conference room of the palace. Her gaze was fixed on the three mares sitting on both sides, a few chairs down from her end of the table. Luna and Twilight were sitting on one side, with Lyra sitting opposite of Luna. Lyra had somehow acquired a stone gray hoodie and had it securely pulled over the upper half of her body, the hood riding up the crest of her mane. She drummed idly on the table to occupy herself while she waited for Celestia to say something. Every tap of her hooves was punctuated by a duck's quack, through no intent of her own. Twilight looked positively mortified about something. Luna, on the other hoof, held herself impeccably upright, her mane and tail back to their usual ethereal state.

The solar princess took a breath to speak. Before she even got the first syllable out, however, she cut herself off, unsure of how to start. It wasn't that she had nothing to say. Quite the opposite: she had myriads of introductory sentences that she could use to break the silence, and all of them were begging to be used.

Celestia had seen many years since she was first crowned as a princess. Although days of this nature had grown ever rarer over the centuries, they still occurred more often than she cared to admit. As soon as Celestia had rolled over in bed to prepare the sunrise, she knew this would be a day better spent in bed. She couldn't shirk her responsibilities as diarch, but she could just feel in her gut that today wasn't worth the effort of slipping into her gilded horseshoes. Celestia had hoped she would be proved wrong about the day; it could have been just a bad meal from the night before tweaking her insides. But her instincts had proved all too correct.

"You three certainly know how to return from a trip."

Lyra nodded. Her drumming ceased, leaving space for an uncomfortable silence to fill the room. "We didn't plan for it to happen quite like that."

Luna bowed her head in response to Lyra’s input. "Had I known you were entertaining guests during your lunch, I would have altered our means of return. I was under the impression that you preferred to have your noontime meal sans diplomacy."

Celestia kept her face pleasantly neutral as she mentally chastised herself. This is what she got for breaking her self-imposed rule to keep her lunches free from governmental obligations. Of course it wasn't her sister's fault. Luna had inferred that Celestia would be free at lunch for her sister to return. Any other day, she would have been right.

Celestia walked over to her sister. "You're right, Luna. I'm sorry things didn't work out as you hoped." She smiled and gave Luna a hug. "I really am glad you are back home safely, little sister."

"As am I, big sister." Luna returned the hug gratefully, allowing herself to shiver a little. "It was far from a pleasant experience."

Celestia held her close for a little longer. "We can talk about it later, Lu." She finally broke the embrace, choosing to sit next to Luna. Celestia cleared her throat and addressed Lyra. "I see you are having some problems with your— I'm sorry, Discord's— magic?"

Lyra nodded as she subtly shrank further into her hoodie. She wasn't cold; in fact, she was burning up from the combination of the warm room and heavy clothing. "I kind of had to unleash it for a little while, and it broke the restraining spell you cast."

Celestia looked at each mare in turn. "I presume it was instrumental in freeing Luna?"

Lyra snickered. "Heh, instrumental." She coughed and nodded quickly. "Yeah. Turns out chaos magic has a way of undoing spells."

Celestia's expression flickered. "You are right, Lyra. Discord was quite capable of subverting normal magic. At least his talents have finally come to good use."

"I guess so." Lyra fidgeted again, rubbing her shoulder.

"Remove your sweatshirt, Lyra." Celestia fixed her gaze on the nervous mare, pointedly looking at the fang protruding from beneath her upper lip.

"Uh... do I have to?" A bead of sweat rolled down her face.

"Yes."

Lyra hung her head defeatedly and grabbed the hoodie in her aura. The chaos took over and poofed it into confetti, complete with the sound of a party noisemaker in the background.

Her shoulder was mottled with brown feathers, and a vaguely ridged pattern had appeared all the way down to her knee area.

Celestia stood and walked around the table to Lyra's side, examining the feathers on her shoulder. "Is it causing you pain?"

"No. The feathers just itch something awful."

"I see." Celestia looked back at Lyra's fang, then back down at her shoulder. "When did your foreleg start doing this, and when did you get the new tooth?"

Lyra pursed her lips and took a deep breath. "Umm... the fang happened right after I unleashed the chaos. My shoulder has been doing weird things since then, although it kind of suddenly did this when Luna teleported us to your dining hall. It was only itchy before then."

Twilight finally broke out of her horrified stupor long enough to provide her input. "It would seem that intense magic usage is the impetus for these, ah, changes. At the very least, I would hypothesize that the corporeal transfigurative effects are accelerated by exposure to or usage of magic is accelerating the effects on your body. The exception being, I'm guessing, would be Princess Celestia casting a spell specifically to restrain it from causing problems." Twilight looked up to see Lyra's impressed expression and Celestia with a hint of pride in her smile. She smiled weakly and continued. "Since we now have an idea that magic usage causes an increased rate of metamorphosis, we should take precautions to protect Lyra from undue exposure to magic."

Lyra watched as Twilight and the princesses conversed about dealing with her problem. She couldn't understand a lot of the thaumobabble, so she let her mind wander, idly scratching her shoulder. Her mind turned, unbidden, to the dreams she had of Leyline. It wasn't making sense why she was dreaming of him in the first place, was it? He had confronted Eris before, obviously, but what happened? It looked like he absorbed her, somehow. Obviously Eris didn't want Lyra to see that part, because she hadn't reacted well.

She had never even heard of Eris before her dreams. Discord was the only spirit of Chaos she knew of, and Lyra absorbed his....

Lyra's heart stopped dead for a beat. "Sweet, merciful Celestia... Leyline became Discord!" she whispered. The pony who absorbed Eris in the first place was a statue in the garden. He had to know how to fix this, or at least he would know what they should try. Would Celestia release him, though?

Celestia heard her name whispered and looked at Lyra, about to ask her what the matter was, when she noticed the spaced out expression on her face. "Lyra? Lyra, are you okay?"

Lyra didn't respond, her thoughts racing. Eris's consciousness stirred uneasily in her mind before resettling.

Lyra hoped Eris couldn't hear or see her thoughts as they involuntarily raced through her dreams from the past week. She could sense lingering traces of magic from what she now recognized as Leyline's memories. The aura of the magic felt almost entirely wild. The only thing that felt different about it was a faint sensation of harmonic resonance throughout the roughly woven threads. Even as Lyra examined it, the magic could easily be felt dissipating, becoming undone as the caster who was holding it together before had been severed from the connection. Eris's consciousness could be felt pushing against it subtly, unraveling the spell thread by thread.

Lyra furrowed her brow in thought. She heard her name faintly called again, but she barely noticed as she probed the spell. Eris's aura quickly struck at the same spot Lyra was probing, and the thread of magic there snapped like a string cut by a pair of scissors. Lyra recoiled internally. If outside magic touches the spell, Eris can break it faster! She pulled herself as far away from the spell as she could. It looked like it was the only thing holding Eris back from fully possessing her, and every brush of foreign magic made it fail faster.

"Lyra Heartstrings!" Luna's voice boomed across the table, whipping Lyra's mane back into a windblown style. Lyra flinched, tipping backwards as she blinked out of the trancelike state.

"What?! What is it?!"

Luna sighed and shook her head. "You were unresponsive. We were beginning to worry about you." Twilight was looking at Lyra strangely, as though she knew what Lyra was doing while entranced.

"Princess Celestia, we need to release Discord."

The silence that followed was deafening. The other three mares looked at Lyra with a mixture of expressions: Celestia looked at her curiously, Luna was decidedly disgusted at the notion, and Twilight was squinting suspiciously.

Celestia was the first to break the silence. "What would make you think releasing a spirit of Chaos would be beneficial?"

Lyra sighed. "I wouldn't, except Discord isn't ac—" Lyra's body locked up as she experienced a stabbing pain through her brain and spine. The coppery taste of blood graced her tongue as her teeth clamped down on the inside of her cheek. The pain coursing through her nerves made her muscles spasm, forcing Lyra's hoof to rake the tabletop.

If it's all the same to you, I would rather keep my presence a secret, Lyra dear. Lyra barely kept from whimpering as she felt the sensation of talons being dragged along the backs of her eyeballs. It would be a shame if I had to do something to reinforce that.

Lyra drew herself upright again as the last vestiges of pain petered out. She panted softly, trying to compose herself. "S-sorry about that... chaos magic started acting up on me. As I was saying, Discord isn't much of a threat without his powers, and I think he may be the key to figuring this out." Lyra smiled uneasily as the princesses looked at each other, holding a silent conversation.

Lyra resumed tapping her hooves on the table idly, much to Twilight’s chagrin. Lyra looked down at her mottled foreleg while tapping, wishing she could have the hoodie back to cover herself. In response, the confetti scattered on the floor was caught up in an intangible whirlwind and swirled back into the hoodie, the fabric draped over her upper body. Lyra sighed and shook her head, even as Twilight gaped at the display.

Luna frowned before closing her eyes for a moment. "Very well, sister. Tomorrow, we shall—"

Luna was interrupted by one of the double doors slamming open and Bon Bon marching in, her eyes glowing with arcane power.

(several minutes prior)

"Lyra Heartstrings!"

Bon Bon flattened her ears as Luna's Royal Canterlot Voice rang throughout the castle, rattling the pots and pans hung in the royal kitchen. She had been talking shop with the chef, discussing pastries and hard candies.

The chef, Crème Brûlée, an offwhite mare with a light brown mane and a whisk for a cutie mark, hardly afforded the shout a second thought. "Sorry about that, Miss Bon Bon. Luna sometimes forgets that there are such things as indoor voices."

Crème noticed that the mare opposite her had spaced out. She politely cleared her throat. "Bon Bon?"

She blinked and smiled at Crème, although it had the uneasy semblance of a predatorial grin. "Excuse me, Crème. I do believe the reason I'm in Canterlot has finally presented herself." She nodded to the bewildered mare as she made for the kitchen door. "Remember, taffy should only be made on cloudy days or else it doesn't set right."

"Oh, yes, thanks for the advice. Are you sure you have to leave now, though?"

"With any luck, I'll have this matter straightened out and be back." She flashed another smile at the confused Crème before vanishing into the hallway.

Bon Bon worked her way through the castle, occasionally asking guards where Luna was. After a few minutes with no luck, she finally found one who directed her to a conference room in one of the lesser used sections of the castle. She looked at the tall double doors, then pushed one of them open.At the far end of the table there sat four ponies. Two were the royal pony sisters, sitting diagonally from each other. Celestia's protegee was sitting next to Luna, and next to Celestia was a certain, infuriating teal unicorn.

A little-known fact about ponies is that all three races have magic, contrary to popular belief. Unicorns may have the most control and strength in using it, but pegasi and earth ponies are more than capable of channeling magic to alter the world around them. This phenomenon has been extensively studied by mages, but many details are still elusive. One thing that most agree upon, however, is that emotions are strongly tied to casting spells. Any pony under intense physical or emotional stress can tap into their font to actively change the world around them. A prime example of this ability is Rainbow Dash's Sonic Rainboom, allowing her not only to exceed the speed of sound, but also manipulate the water vapor in the air around her into that of raw rainbow material, leaving a wild rainbow in her wake.

Of course, Bon Bon had no knowledge in the field of magic, passive or active. Even so, as she marched towards Lyra in a haze of righteous fury, she tapped into that innate magical ability that all ponies have. A simple but immensely powerful restraint spell encompassed Lyra, threatening to sever more threads of the spell containing Eris if she struggled. Bon Bon's eyes and hooves glowed very faintly as she unleashed her pent-up anger at the bewildered and frightened unicorn.

"Lyra Heartstrings, you are the most irresponsible mare I have ever met! Do you know —do you even know— what you did to our front yard? More importantly, do you know what you did to my prized garden?!"

Lyra paled as the words hit her like precisely thrown bricks. She stammered incoherently at Bon Bon continued to unleash a week's worth of simmering anger, now long since reached the boiling point. "I spent six years breeding and grafting those azalea bushes from my parents' own personal edible variety! The roses were imported from Stirrope! That was over a decade's worth of finding and breeding and grafting and hybridizing plants to perfect their flavor, and you reduced them to ash piles in a single morning!" The glow faded from Bon Bon's eyes and hooves, but Lyra was still frozen in place. She cowered as Bon Bon quivered in place, looking like she might possibly be on the edge of a catastrophic existence failure.

Lyra squeezed her eyes shut, but nothing more followed. After a few seconds of absolute silence reigned, she dared to peek. Bon Bon was fanning her face with a hoof, but otherwise looked completely collected.

The royal sisters and Twilight exchanged glances as the silence stretched uncomfortably long. Lyra opened her mouth, but Bon Bon quickly cut her off. "Just... be quiet, Lyra." Bon Bon took a deep breath. "What you did was ignorant and destructive beyond what you could possibly understand, and I forgive you."

"Bon Bon, please— wait, what?"

"I forgive you." The mare slowly walked for the door, leaving behind a bewildered Lyra. The unicorn turned to the other three ponies sitting next to her and mouthed "What do I do?"

Celestia gave her a knowing look, and Lyra hung her head as she moved to stop Bon Bon. "Bonnie, wait."

"Don't call me Bonnie."

"Listen, I'll make it up to you. If you give me a list of all the plants you lost, I'll replace as many as I can."

Bon Bon stopped and stared back at Lyra incredulously. "There is no way you could possibly find everything. A lot of them were exotic, and some I bred myself."

"I said I would and I will." Lyra looked pleadingly at her friend. "Please, just give me a list. That's all I ask."

"Fine." Bon Bon trotted from the room, not looking back. "I'll write down as many as I can remember."

"I swear, I will fix this." Lyra watched as her roommate left the room, letting an eerie calm settle over the room. "I don't know how, but I will." She stared resolutely at the table for a moment. "She must be really mad. She didn't even notice the fang."

Chapter Twelve - Releasing the Kraken

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Lyra slipped through the darkened palace, hoodie securely fastened over her head and body and her lyre in a velvet pouch slung over her waist. The few night guards awake and standing watch let her pass unhindered. Lyra knew that the message had been passed to give her a wide berth, and words like "cursed" and "evil" were often used in the message. She ignored them for the most part, as it had the desired effect. Since the incident in which she accidentally vanished a stallion's wings (temporarily, of course), she figured it would be better to err on the side of caution.

Lyra nudged open the door to the statuary garden and passed by each monument in turn. She made her way to the heart of the maze of hedges, stopping again at the pedestal of a familiar pony with wings and two horns, as well as mismatched legs.

"Hello, Leyline." She sat down on the grass and looked up at the stallion's stone face, frozen in fear. "I guess it's been awhile since someone has called you by your real name, huh?" She gave an awkward laugh. "Anyway, I came out here to..."

Lyra paused, scratching her head. "I don't know why I came, actually. To talk with somepony who understands what's happening to me, I guess." She sighed as she looked at the stone pedestal Leyline stood on. She levitated her lyre out of its pouch, as if to play it, then set it aside. She gave the instrument an apologetic look. "It's awful. I can feel it crawling in my skin and burrowing into my bones. I can't do anything to stop it, only slow it some. It itches and burns and aches all over."

Lyra ran her tongue across her new fang, able to see the moonlight glistening off it. "I was talking to Celestia about freeing you. They don't know you aren't the spirit of Chaos in the first place, and I'm not allowed to tell them, but I think I can get them to see that you aren't a threat."

Why are you talking to him? He can't hear you. You are wasting your breath, my dear.

Lyra chose to ignore Eris, focusing instead on the statue. "I wonder what it's like for you? Being alive thousands of years after you were born, that is. It has to be awful for you. Everything is so different, and everyone..."

She winced as she realized that the topic she had just brought forth was undoubtedly a painful one. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up.” The statue’s expression remained unchanged. Lyra searched his face. “You really did love her, didn’t you?” She earned no response from him.

“For what it’s worth, I think Dulcet would have said yes.” A cloud wisped across the face of the moon, shrouding them in darkness for a brief moment. Lyra took it as a sign that she should leave. “I’m sorry.” She stood slowly, gathering her lyre again and slipping it back into its pouch. Lyra plodded away, unaware of the small droplet of water that gathered in the corner of the statue's eye and eventually tumbled down its cheek as she resumed her aimless wandering brought on by insomnia.

Morning found Lyra curled up in the hallway outside the throne room. The first pony to realize that she was camped out right outside the door was none other than Celestia herself.

The princess, dressed for the day in her traditional regalia, nearly trod upon the mare accidentally, as Lyra, for whatever reason, appeared to have become the same color as the tiled floor. Celestia had felt her magic brush against a surging tide of chaos and looked around curiously, noticing the aura centered upon a spot directly in front of her. She bent down and looked curiously, probing with her magic until she felt a body resting on the floor in front of her. As she touched at the nearly-invisible mare with her muzzle, the spell abruptly collapsed, revealing a soundly asleep Lyra curled up on the tile. Curious as to why she had decided to sleep in the hallway of all places, Celestia nudged the minty mare with her muzzle. Upon receiving a bleary mumble in response, she nudged Lyra again. "Wake up, sleepyhead..."

"Fie more minuus..."

Celestia chuckled, the garbled phrase reminding her of the times she found Twilight similarly curled up next to a book. "Here, I'll move you so you aren't tripping up other ponies, okay?" she whispered kindly.

Lyra nodded amiably, yawning and shifting into an even more adorable ball of tired pony, sprinkled with a dash of draconequus. Celestia gently levitated the mare off the floor and knocked on the doors to the throne room.

The doors swung outward to allow entrance, revealing Luna on her obsidian throne. Her eyes glowed as she sat motionless, her horn pulsing frequently. Celestia stood and waited patiently, recognizing that her sister was dreamwalking and shouldn’t be interrupted.

Luna’s eyes flickered back to their normal form shortly thereafter, and she smiled at Celestia. “Hello, my sister. Is it that time already?”

“It is. How was your night?”

“The dreams of ponies are troubled these times. I have been quelling nightmares since I started floating through the aether.” Luna rubbed her forehead, massaging the base of her horn. “Well, I suppose I shall relinquish my post until nightfall.”

Celestia carefully levitated the sleeping Lyra with her as she walked to the base of the dais. Luna squinted at the oddity of it, blinking several times in rapid succession.

“Well, now, Tia. I would never guess that you were the bogeymare this whole time. ‘Tis not a healthy pastime to snatch sleeping ponies from their beds.”

Celestia gave a regal snort and rolled her eyes, floating the mare to the cushion next to the throne where the royal advisor usually sat. “I found her sleeping outside the doors to this room. Were you aware she was here?”

Luna looked bewilderedly at her sister. “Certainly not. I’m surprised my guards didn’t let me know of this, if they knew themselves. Why was she there in the first place, I wonder?”

“I tried asking her myself, but as you can see she isn’t much for conversation at the moment. I’ll try again once she is a little more coherent.”

“And you are just going to keep her next to the throne whilst you field petitions and she sleeps? That seems rather odd to me, Tia.”

“So is sleeping in the hallway.” Celestia walked up to the dais and met her sister halfway as the thrones rotated, placing the day throne towards the front of the room. “Luna, I need to ask you to do something for me before you go to bed for the day.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“I need you to prepare an area for us to release Discord.”

Luna grimaced. “This idea is madness, sister. Why should we take the advice of a mare infected with the taint of Chaos?”

“I don’t think she would suggest anything of the sort unless she was sure that Discord would be of no threat to us.”

“Still, I think we should take our time with this.”

Celestia sat on her throne, looking worriedly at Lyra. “I’m afraid we don’t have time, sister. It has only been a week, and already she looks like this. Can you promise me that her mind will not be corrupted in another week’s time? No, we need to act carefully, but haste is of the utmost importance here.”

Luna nodded begrudgingly. “Very well. I’ll get it ready. Just so you are aware, though: if everything does not go as planned, I will not be cutting my sleep short to help you.”

Celestia frowned at her sister. “Fine. Have a good day, Lulu.”

“You too, Tia.”

Lyra opened her eyes lazily, flicking her tongue out past her fang in a feline style yawn. She stretched out, digging her hooves into the cushion she was resting on. As she concluded her yawn, Lyra noticed a pony, down on a red carpet opposite her spot, recoiling in what appeared to be terror. She blinked confusedly, wondering why there was a pony in her bedroom. The pony—an earth stallion noble—cleared his throat nervously. "Your highness, why is that... thing... in your advisor seat?"

Lyra squinted and moved her gaze over the room, trying to figure out what the hay was going on. A regal red carpet. Marble columns with gold accents. Plush, royal purple cushion that she had been sleeping on until a few moments ago. Sun and moon insignias everywhere. A slightly amused Princess Celestia seated on the throne to her left. She doggedly forced her mind to churn through the information, gradually coming to an important conclusion.

This probably wasn't her bedroom.

"Uhhh... Princess Celestia, what's going on?"

"Welcome back to the land of the living, my little pony." Celestia's eyes twinkled as she greeted the mare. "I found you sleeping outside the throne room this morning, and decided to give you a better place to rest so you wouldn't be trampled by my petitioners."

"I was sleeping in the hallway? Why was I there?" Lyra stretched again, revealing a few more misshapen body bits, including a newly scaly hindleg. She noticed a very disgruntled advisor sitting to her right, probably because Lyra was in her spot.

"I was hoping you would be able to tell me." She turned to address the noble, who was looking at Lyra with a combination of disgust and fear.

"Is she contagious?" He ventured, backing away slowly.

Celestia gave him a longsuffering smile and shook her head. "No, Lord Bit Coin. You needn't worry about her. So, would you like to finish your proposal?"

The stallion shook his head, backing away from the dais and bowing to her. "N-no, it appears you are otherwise engaged. I shall present the rest of my proposal another time." With that, he turned and trotted quickly away, avoiding eye contact with the unicorn with the weird fang.

Celestia waited until the stallion left before chuckling softly. "I should have you be my advisor more often, Lyra. It would make open court a lot less of a hassle." She cleared her throat. "I was beginning to wonder if you would never wake up. I brought you in from the hallway at six in the morning, and it is nearly noon right now."

"Oh, I'm sorry..." Lyra yawned again and hopped off the cushion, which was eagerly claimed by Celestia's advisor. "I just don't get a lot of good sleep lately."

"No need to apologize." She smiled at the mare, drawing herself upright. "I was just thinking we could try releasing Discord today, and that maybe you would like to be present for it?”

“Wait, really?” The smaller mare perked up, walking back down to the foot of the dais so she could properly address the princess. She turned to face Celestia, only to find that the princess was following her down, gesturing to her advisor to take a break. “Oh, I didn’t mean that we had to do it right now or anything. I was just—”

“I was planning on going out to release him around this time anyway.” The solar princess started walking next to Lyra, refolding her wings. “I must say that your request surprised me at first, but I can see the merit in asking the original wielder of Chaos if he can help us.”

“Know this, though, Lyra Heartstrings…” Celestia’s voice hardened, and Lyra made the mistake of looking at the princess. She was greeted with just a taste of the power that moved the sun across the sky every day without fail. The celestial fire flared in the solar princess’s eyes briefly, searing a warning into the chaotic mare’s brain. “If this turns out to be a ploy to return Discord to his former state, your wellbeing shall be forfeit. Understood?”

She gulped nervously, the uncomfortable sensation of a burning heat racing down her spine. “Unders-stood.”

“Good.” The fire died away, leaving Celestia appearing as she did before—a regal looking alicorn who cared deeply for her subjects. She refocused back on the hallway they were walking through, her gilded horseshoes clacking quietly on the the tiled floor. “Let’s collect Twilight, then we will convene in the gardens.”

“Do you know where she is?”

Celestia nodded, an assured smile spread across her muzzle. “I have a reasonable idea of where she is, yes.” She turned down a much shorter hallway, marked at the end by a huge set of double doors with a book chiseled across their faces. “Hopefully you won’t decide to bring an entourage of guards with you this time.” She chuckled softly as a blush spread across Lyra’s face, the reminder of the minty unicorn’s first time showing up in the library apparently somewhat of an embarrassment.

The doors swung open, giving the two of them a clear view of the house of knowledge that lay before them. The walls and ceiling soared up to near-cathedral heights, with bookshelves upon bookshelves crammed full of books of all shapes, sizes and subjects. Celestia stopped for her charge to gape at the absurd number of tomes that lined each and every shelf. “Welcome to the Canterlot Archives, Lyra.” She started walking slowly in the direction of the nonfiction area, looking for signs that her faithful student was somewhere in the building. Celestia didn’t have to look too hard, as she began noticing missing groups of books. She followed the gaps to a nearby study table where she found Twilight Sparkle, quietly turning through one of the dozen books she had open.

Celestia cleared her throat softly. “What are you studying today, my student?”

Twilight jerked her head up and smiled at her mentor. Only her teacher could have noticed her involuntary flinch before quickly recovering and looking back at her book. “Well, since Lyra might be stuck with her condition for a while, I’m looking into methods to help contain her excess magic, both in the short term and the long term, if necessary. I think I can put together a suitable spell in a few days that should be enough to keep her… it… this thing, whatever it is, from becoming a real problem, at least for the time being.”

Her mentor looked over the stacked books and the pages of notes Twilight had written down. “Do you have something figured out, Twilight?”

“Not yet, but I think I have an idea.” Twilight gathered up the stack of hoof-written notes and levitated them into her saddlebags, along with a couple of the books on the table. She placed the rest in a nearby book return cart and got to her hooves. The unicorn shook out her hooves, wobbling a little as she regained her balance. “Princess Celestia, may I go back to Ponyville to ask one of my friends for help on this?”

Celestia pursed her lips and looked around for Lyra, who had yet to catch up with her. “I suppose so. I hate to rush you, but you must return as fast as you can, Twilight. You may take one of my chariots to hasten your trip.”

The unicorn nodded, securing the straps on her saddlebags. “Thank you, Princess.” With a flash of her magic, Twilight had vanished out of the library, presumably teleporting close to the guard barracks. Celestia sighed and started walking back, finding Lyra sitting back and looking up at the multiple floors of the library dizzily.

“There are so many books. It goes on forever. It’s like… wow.” Lyra pantomimed her head exploding with her hooves, punctuated by an unintentional detonation sound and the illusion of her head disappearing in a cloud of smoke.

The princess couldn’t help but snicker as Lyra coughed and waved the smoke away from her face, frowning and poking at her horn to dispel the unruly magic. “Still having trouble keeping it under control?”

Lyra’s attention refocused on the incredible architecture of the library, her steps slightly out of sync. “It’s not getting better, I can say that much.” She nearly ran directly into the closed door to the hallway, the door opened for her by the princess as she tore her attention away from the arching supports and refocused back on the hall in front of them. “So, I guess you didn’t find Twilight?”

“Actually, she needed to make a quick trip back to Ponyville, so we will be freeing Discord without her."

"His na—" Lyra abruptly cut herself off and coughed. "So, the gardens, then?"

The princess's gaze flickered over to the mare momentarily, apparently noticing the unfinished words. The silence stretched out for a few seconds before she looked back to the hallway, opening a door to the outside. "Yes, to the gardens."

The maze of shrubbery and statues stretched out before them, and Lyra turned towards the path where Leyline's statue was kept. She barely took more than a step when a white foreleg was held in front of her, blocking the musician's path. She looked up at Celestia and noticed her gesturing down towards the heart of the maze. "This way, Lyra. I had my sister prepare a place for us to release him."

Celestia took the lead, walking slowly through the neatly kept gardens, winding back and forth through the hedge maze. Statues sat in place all over the grounds, prompting uncomfortable musings from Lyra of whether those were actual ponies under the stone facades, too. After all, that's what happened to Leyline...

Lyra visibly shivered. A flash of fear bolted across her face for a brief moment, accompanied by the world around them flickering briefly into sepia tone.

"Is something wrong, my little pony?"

"Uh, no, not at all. Are we almost there?"

"We're going to the center of the garden." Celestia indicated to the left of where they were walking. "Just a few more turns and we should be there."

Lyra's gait devolved into an even less steady cadence, most semblance of rhythm lost. The turns in the hedge maze grew ever tighter until it abruptly opened into a circular clearing, revealing Leyline’s stone form and pedestal set up in the center. A casting circle was carved into the earth, formed out of series of runes.

“Don’t step on the circle, please.” Lyra stumbled as she nearly trod on the intricate runes, tumbling into the clearing haphazardly. She offered an apologetic smile to Celestia, and inspected the place she nearly ruined. The runes were, thankfully, unharmed, and she noticed that they were all conjoined at the edges, forming an unbroken pattern that butted right up against the hedges. Lyra slowly followed the runes for a few hooves’ distance, admiring the intricacy of them.

“Wow… Did you do all this yourself?”

“No. Luna did it early this morning, before she went to bed.” Celestia moved in front of the statue and into a smaller circle, looking it over.

“Do you really need all this preparation to release him? I thought that it was just a simple spell to release or trap him.”

“This isn’t for releasing him, Lyra. This is for containing him afterwards.” The princess gestured to an inner circle made from similar markings, indicating for the green unicorn to join her.

Lyra hesitantly joined the princess in the runed circle, careful to step over the lines. Celestia nodded in satisfaction, then began to send power into the runes. The lines inscribed in the earth quickly filled in with the warm yellow of the solar princess’s magic, seemingly filling the runes like water. A series of smaller runes Lyra didn't notice earlier spiraled outwards to the outer circle, filling them with magic as well. Lyra felt, even through the fog of her chaos, the spell lock a barrier into place in both circles, protecting both them and the outside world from the statue.

Celestia took a deep breath and stretched out her magic, sweat beading her brow as she simultaneously maintained the first spell and began undoing the stone enchantment on Discord. A tiny stream of her magic snaked out past the first circle and swirled around the pedestal. The facade surrounding him cracked, tiny fractures traveling up his legs, across his back and up to his face, bursts of light appearing from the cracks. Lyra felt a ripple of magic, even through the barrier protecting them. She backed away from the statue, feeling the barrier’s physical presence forcing her to stay inside.

“I’m beginning to think I had the wrong idea…” she whispered. With a final surge, Leyline’s statue was engulfed in light, silence falling across the center of the garden as the spell complete. The light faded, showing the pony trembling on the ground. His ragged breathing broke the silence. The wings on his back were open and lying on the ground, twitching sporadically like he was just now remembering he had them.

Leyline tried to stand. His mismatched hind legs wobbled for a bit, then gave out, leaving him struggling on the ground. His scaly tail curled and flicked weakly. "Wh-who..." he managed to croak before he was overtaken by a coughing fit.

Celestia's expression was unforgiving. The princess watched him like a hawk as the helpless stallion tried to rise to his hooves again. He prodded at his wings, manipulating them with his hooves to get them to fold against his side with difficulty.

Lyra cautiously moved forward and placed her hooves on the invisible barrier. "Can we help him?" she whispered to the princess.

Leyline's head snapped upright as he realized he wasn't alone. The malformed stallion came to life when his gaze met Celestia's, and he scrambled to his hooves, backing away from the subdued fury promised by the celestial flame burning in her eyes. He tripped over his hooves once, twice, and cowered behind the pedestal he had previously been standing on. Leyline looked back and forth frantically and bolted for the exit, thwarted by the barrier. He bounced off the invisible wall and tucked into a sloppy roll, getting back to his hooves in the blink of an eye.

"Princess, please! Look at him! Stop scaring him like this!" Lyra pleaded with Celestia, who simply stood in place, unmoving, and watched the panicked pony's every move.

Celestia seemed to pull herself out of whatever trance had hold of her, and she lowered the inner barrier. Her expression morphed slightly as Leyline's fear seemed to have an effect on her anger at him. "I... you're right, Lyra." The princess wilted slightly.

Leyline, meanwhile, had focused on the runes, his eyes flitting around them and sizing them up. The speed and physical dexterity of an earth pony took over, and he flitted from arm to arm of the spiral, digging his hooves into the ground at precise points.

Before either mare could figure out what he was doing, Celestia's connection to the outer circle was severed, causing a backlash of freed magic to ripple through the area. The princess grit her teeth in pain as the tendrils of magic snapped back from the broken runes. The backlash of magic reverberated through the disconnected runes, causing the outer circle’s thaumic integrity to be compromised

In the space of a few seconds, Leyline had managed to not only disrupt Celestia's connection to the outer circle, but cause the circle itself to undergo a critical failure, nearly blinding Lyra and Celestia both from the backlash. Almost before Celestia recovered, she leapt into the air, her wings spread wide as she beat them furiously to rise off the ground. She quickly looked around and began soaring over the hedges, looking for the fleeing Discord. "I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere!" she called back to Lyra. "He couldn't have gotten too far!"

Before Lyra could even respond, the princess was gone, looking for the pony who had never left the clearing.

Luna was briefly awoken by the sensation of Celestia's spell being violently broken, followed by the faint shouting of her sister echoing throughout the courtyard. "I told you I wouldn't help if something went wrong," she muttered before pulling the blankets over her head, rolling over and sinking back into a peaceful sleep.

Chapter Thirteen - Ancient Runes and New Princesses

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Lyra sat quietly in the center of the clearing, focusing on the altered pony who was hiding behind the pedestal. He actually did a remarkably good job of concealing himself, considering what a small hiding place he was using.

She stood and walked over to him unsteadily, sitting behind the other side of the pedestal and peering over at him. Lyra waited patiently for Leyline to acknowledge her presence. Every second spent waiting scraped at the parts of her psyche tainted by Eris, the chaotic presence demanding that she take some kind of action. Lyra silently grit her teeth in defiance, putting most of her concentration into keeping the rogue magic from forcing its way to the surface.

Five minutes passed. The pony on the far side of the stone platform gave no indication that he was even alive, besides the sound of his breathing. Lyra shifted uneasily.

After an eternity of waiting, the stallion slowly peeked over the pedestal, his glance flitting about nervously. He stood carefully, as though every movement pained him. He looked back toward his wings in confusion, giving them a prod with a hoof. Leyline lost his balance as he stood upon three legs, toppling to the earth. He grunted upon impact, lifting himself up. “Imbalance. No. Four better.” The stallion’s voice lapsed into an unstable giggle, and he began to totter away towards the exit, muttering to himself.

“Wait!” Lyra trotted around the stone base and called out to him. “Hang on a second!”

The stallion froze for a second, then whirled around, crouching in a ready pose. His eyes flickered over Lyra, and he let out a strangled cry as he focused on her fang. “No! Eris! Stay back!” He backed away, only for one of his hind hooves to catch on a divot in the earth. He toppled over, writhing frantically to get back upright. The whites of his eyes caught the midday light, highlighting the terror in his face as he scrambled backwards in a mad panic.

Lyra sat back in shock at his unabated terror. Leyline was all but paralyzed by her very presence, eventually giving up on trying to run from her and curling into as tight a ball as he could possibly muster, quaking in place helplessly. His ears were pinned flat to his skull, and his eyes were squeezed shut as though he expected to be pummeled mercilessly by the unicorn opposite him.

She cautiously stepped towards him. The soft earth beneath her absorbed the impact of Lyra's steps, muffling her approach. She reached out to the stallion, her hoof brushing against his huddled form. Leyline flinched, but he didn't move otherwise. The mare took a small breath and whispered, "It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."

He stammered something unintelligible, his body shaking slightly at her touch.

"It's going to be alright, Leyline."

The stallion froze. He opened an eye cautiously, his gaze flicking to the mare standing next to him. "Wh-what... what say?"

Lyra knelt down next to him, brushing soothingly at his coarse black mane. "Leyline. It's your name, isn't it?"

Leyline hesitated, his eyes darting back and forth. "Name... yes. Leyline. Me." He focused on the mare as best as he could.

"Yeah, that's you." She smiled encouragingly at him. "My name is Lyra."

The stallion scrunched his nose. "Not remember."

Lyra shook her head. "No. We didn't know each other before." She rested her hoof on his shoulder gently. "I'm here to help you, Leyline.”

“Help?”

“Yeah, help. I know you’re a good pony. You deserve better than to be a statue for eternity.”

"Deserve." Leyline rolled the word around on his tongue, then made an awful face and drew unsteady hooves up to his face to cover it. "Deserve stone. Death."

"No, you don't deserve that! You protected us from the real monster.”

Leyline gasped and shirked away from the mare, shaking his head in shame. “Terrible things. Chaos. Terror.”

“It would have been worse if it was Eris.”

He gave a shudder, his eyes clear for the briefest moment when he looked again at Lyra’s fang and feather-mottled foreleg. “You know.”

The unicorn shrugged, suppressing the sudden chill running down her spine. “I do. But let’s not focus on that, okay? So, you remember what your name is now?”

He gave a happy bob of his head, one ear flopped to the side. “Leyline. Other’s didn’t know. Name not heard long time, forgot.” He patted her cheek in gratitude. “You remember. Help me. Thankful.”

Lyra gave him another smile. "Good! What else do you remember?"

Leyline gave a jerky nod, and screwed up his face in concentration. "Remember..." he made a sound of realization, stood up and began writing something out in the dirt. He made long, elegant strokes in the dirt, sigils and runes falling into place. The stallion looked completely in his element, his movements shaky yet sure while he concentrated on what he was doing. With a final stroke, he completed the writing and stepped back, a proud smile on his face. "Remember!" His eyelids fluttered, and he swayed drunkenly before collapsing, falling to the side and away from whatever he wrote.

Lyra blinked, and asked with trepidation, "Uh, Leyline? Are you okay?" She walked over to him, prodding him with her hoof. She sighed and looked down at the stallion, then at the opening in the hedge circle. Lyra quietly groaned as she remembered the extensive maze around them. “It would be really nice if Celestia could show up right about now.”

As if on cue, the slight tremor of a pony landing with considerable force alerted the mare to someone right behind her. She turned to see Celestia looking the situation over. “Are you well, Lyra?”

"Yes, I'm fine. And what’s more, the universe is actually on my side for a change…” she muttered under her breath. “Can you help me carry him to the castle?”

Celestia stepped over to the stallion, gently picking him up in her magic. “How did you catch him?”

“He didn’t need to be caught, Princess. He was hiding here the whole time.” Lyra gave the unconscious pony a sympathetic look. “I don’t think he’s all there, Princess. He can barely speak in fragments.”

The ruler examined him closer, scrutinizing him as she placed his limp body on her back. “Thank you for keeping him here while I was gone, Lyra. I’ll teleport him to the castle and take care of him, then I’ll come back for you, okay?”

Lyra nodded, swallowing nervously. “Okay.”

Celestia cast a glance at the ground where Leyline had scratched out runes in the soft earth, then quietly vanished in a yellow wash of light.

Why did you release him? Lyra flinched as Eris’s voice whispered through her psyche. Unlike before, though, her tone was subdued, even puzzled. He is a stallion out of his time. Leyline is little more than a broken husk of a pony, and you can’t possibly expect him to be of any use to you.

“Leyline deserves better than to be left a statue for the rest of eternity.”

I don't understand.

"I wouldn't expect you to." Lyra wandered over to the pedestal and sat in front of it again. Cracks spiderwebbed from areas where stone had flaked off in the vague crescent shape of hoofprints. She remembered Celestia briefly mentioning her anger at Discord for stealing away Luna, and how close Leyline's statue form had come to being shattered.

The abrasive touch of chaos grated on her nerves as it trickled from her body, leaking out as her focus on controlling it wavered. The errant energy coiled about the stone base and caused it to vanish in a burst of amber light, leaving an assortment of chains in the exact shape of the stone. The pile lost its cohesiveness and collapsed into a tangled mess. Four distinct shackles were positioned where the corners used to be, the metal hoops shattering like ice as soon as they touched the earth.

Lyra staggered slightly as the magic fought and tore at her body, surging to be free of her body. She steeled her will against the struggling energy and forced it back into herself, falling to her knees as the energy burned at her body with renewed vigor.

A flash of yellow light caught her attention, and she forced herself upright once more to face Celestia. The unicorn noticed the ruler moving to examine the runes Leyline had scratched in the earth.

"These are extremely old symbols, although I suppose that is to be expected given the nature of the one who drew them," Celestia noted to Lyra. "I'll save these for examining later."

Celestia gestured with her wing for Lyra to step back, which she quickly did. The princess's horn lit, and a glow of light washed over the runes like a magical copy machine. Ghostly copies of the lettering lifted off the earth and rolled up like a scroll. The ethereal scroll was quickly pulled through the air and disappeared into the aura surrounding Celestia’s horn, the light soon winking out. She reared her head back as the spell complete and shook her head a little as if to clear her mind.

“There. Now, let’s get you back to the castle.” Celestia knelt down. “Whenever you’re ready, you can climb on my back. We should avoid exposing you to more magic than what is necessary, in light of your condition, so I will fly you back to the castle.”

Lyra gave her an unsure look, tentatively moving to Celestia’s side and looking to her for confirmation.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind carrying you, my little pony.”

The smaller mare gave a nod and clambered up awkwardly, wrapping her forelegs around Princess Celestia’s neck and holding her tightly. With a powerful stroke of her wings, the alicorn lifted off the ground and turned to the castle. The center of the hedge maze fell away in the distance. Celestia’s mane drifted lazily in the air, seemingly unaffected by the wind currents while she flew at a leisurely pace towards the rapidly approaching castle.

Lyra sat at the small writing desk provided for her in the guest room she had been given for her stay in Canterlot. She wondered if she could go home, or if she was now a permanent “guest” at the Canterlot Castle, courtesy of her ascension to “living bottle of chaos.” She nodded with silent satisfaction at the phrase, wondering if there was any way she could work that into a song.

I suppose music isn’t exactly at the top of my list of priorities right now, she mused to herself. She sighed and dropped her head to the desk, the saddlebags hanging off one side toppling to the floor and spilling some of their contents across it. Lyra shook her head and grabbed at the bags with a hoof, setting them upright and beginning to collect the spilled material. She made a feeble reach for the spilled miscellany, confirming that most of it was indeed out of her reach while she sat on the chair.

Lyra heaved another sigh to lament this new minor inconvenience in her day. She ungracefully made her way off the chair, her body contorting somehow to make it feel like she literally poured herself onto the floor. She bowed her head to pick up a scarf, tossing it on the desk. She retrieved a couple books in a similar manner before alighting on the book Twilight loaned her: The Science of Magic, Volume II: Movement Spells.

Lyra squinted in thought, counting the days she had borrowed the book from the library. “Let’s see… Two days unconscious after fighting Discord, one day recovering before travelling to rescue Luna, three days on the way there and two on the way back, and another day makes today. Darn, this thing was due back at the library two days ago,” Lyra muttered to herself. “Well, might as well get some use out of it while I still have it.” She turned over to the chapter on summoning, glancing over the pages. It seemed like a lifetime ago that she had last been studying this stuff.

Lyra levitated the book in her magic, noticing her aura’s tint being somewhat off from what it was before. Just what I need — another reminder that everything has gone horribly wrong. She frowned and held the book at a good distance for her to see as she moved to the center of the room and cleared her mind. She turned the page to a paper crammed in the book, scrawled with Twilight’s writing. She read through the spell, mentally replacing the parts she improved with her own mental structures. The unicorn focused on the alarm clock on the end table, making an effort to avoid the turbulent energy

Unbidden, the ghostly form of a silhouetted biped form flashed before her eyes. She froze as the apparition commanded her attention. The memory of what started all this came back to her in startling detail, the smell of burning and charred flesh searing at her muzzle. A nonexistent rush of air laden with magic matted her coat with sweat. The echoes of a tortured scream rang in her ears, shattering Lyra’s focus and driving her to the floor.

The dull clamor of guards bursting into her room did nothing to snap Lyra out of her haze. She felt strong hooves collecting her off the floor and depositing her upon somepony’s back, holding her steady as she mindlessly clutched at her head. Lyra silently begged the memory to go away, sobbing into her misshapen foreleg.

Twilight hopped off the chariot the moment its wheels contacted the cobbled street in Ponyville, thanking the stallions who escorted her before making her way to Carousel Boutique. She trotted at a brisk pace down the street, nodding to ponies to acknowledge their greetings on her way.

Twilight arrived at the colorful building and opened the door. The ding-a-ling of the shop bell heralded her presence and within seconds, a scaly mass impacted with her leg. The blow forced an "oof" out of her and she looked down to see Spike clinging to her with a death grip.

"Twilight! You were gone for so long! I thought something happened to you," the dragon muffled into her leg. "You were only supposed to be gone a few days."

"I'm sorry, Spike," Twilight said apologetically. "Things just kept happening. We had Discord deigning to design a desertion, Lyra latched onto the labrynithine lusus naturae's legerdemain, and Princess Luna was purloined away to a precarious position and needed to be procured and protected posthaste."

Spike gave her a blank expression. "What?"

"Discord escaped, Lyra took his magic and we had to rescue the princess."

The dragon scratched his head in bewilderment. "Oh, then why didn't you just say so?"

"I did, actually— oh, forget about it. Did you give Rarity that letter I sent to you?" Twilight asked, lifting her assistant onto her back.

"He most certainly did," floated a voice from the back of the shop. Rarity trotted over to Twilight and offered a hug to the purple mare as well. "However, I must admit that I may not be the best option as a seamstress in this instance. Illusion magics are much more my forte, as opposed to the warding you want to do."

"That's alright, Rarity," Twilight said, undoing the flap on her saddlebags and retrieving a book. "I have an idea to work around that. Do you at least know the basics of spellcasting with another pony?"

Rarity shook her head. "I'm sorry, my dear. I'm afraid that I only studied branches of magic that directly pertained to my line of work. After all, the fashion business does not allow much spare time for such things."

Twilight hid her mild displeasure at the reply, retrieving another book. "Well, I guess I'm going to have to give you a crash course on the essentials of performing magic in groups. Spike, could you find me a chalkboard?"

"You got it, Twilight!" Spike said, glad to be restored as number one assistant.

Rarity managed to turn a shade whiter at the mention of Twilight giving her a crash course in anything. "Wait, Twilight, are you sure this is the best course of action? Surely there is someone else that is better suited to helping you with this?"

"Nonsense, Rarity. I couldn't possibly consider anyone else for this, especially since you are the best pony I know of when it comes to fabrics." Twilight gave the most winning smile she could muster.

Rarity preened at the compliment. "Oh, alright, if you insist. We wouldn't want to leave such delicate work to a hack, would we?"

"No, of course not. Spike, do you have that chalkboard?"

"Coming, Twilight!" Spike called, rolling the item across the floor and flipping the board so Rarity's dress designs would remain untouched. Twilight snatched a piece of chalk from the board's tray and started sketching a rough series of drawings, complete with stick ponies labeled A and B.

"Okay, what we want to do is cast an enchantment on an object, item 1. Normally, when casting any type of magic with multiple ponies, there is one group who supplies the energy and the other provides the spell and direction." Twilight drew a line from one pony to the other, and a second line from the other pony to a box on the chart.

"Since you don't know the spell, though, that means I will provide the energy and the spell, and you will be directing both. The problem is you can't directly interact with the spell, since it isn't your construct." Twilight crossed out the first chart and drew another of two ponies next to each other. "To combat that, we need to use a focus that you can manipulate, like a crystal. You can interact with the spell while it is within the crystal, applying it to the object."

Rarity slowly nodded, looking at the chart where stick-Twilight and stick-Rarity were both shooting lines at a diamond shape that shot a third line at the object. "Would it not be easier to just let you enchant the completed article of clothing, rather than require me to help?"

Twilight shook her head. "Due to Lyra's unique problem, we need an enchantment that is as resilient, powerful and long-lasting as we can possibly muster. If we interweave several dampening and warding enchantments through every individual piece of the fabric, it should help restabilize her condition."

Rarity held up a hoof to pause Twilight's explanation. "Just a moment, dear. Could you explain how Lyra fits into this? I heard you mention her earlier when I entered the room, but I think you need to go into a bit more detail."

The purple mare paused, stress finding its way to her expression. "Well, Lyra tried to summon something that doesn't exist anymore, using a spell that wasn't designed for it. We think that the spell found a target in another reality as a substitute."

Rarity tilted her head, looking rather puzzled. "I thought that sort of thing was easy to perform, dear. I always heard that it is easier to summon something from the same location that is on another plane of existence than something far away in this one."

Twilight shook her head. "It's complicated, but she didn't summon it from another plane. She took a living creature from another reality altogether, a creature that is resistant to magic."

The white unicorn nodded confusedly. "You know, Twilight, I have a feeling that the rest of the answer is just as unsatisfying to me as this is so far. I do believe that, for now, I shall be content with the knowledge that our friend has taken Discord's magic for herself, however temporary it may be. I suppose this is where my skills are needed?"

Twilight nodded, a mixture of disappointment and relief washing over her face. "Yes. We need it to be fabric based, because of the number of spells needed to work together. Can you help?"

Rarity pursed her lips, tapping her chin thoughtfully as she puzzled over the problem. "It will be difficult to make a complex piece of clothing, given that I will have to be working with a spell that isn't mine. I suppose it also has to be suitable for daily use, and tough enough to deal with wear and tear."

The white mare flipped the chalkboard over, drawing a rough outline of a pony and spinning the chalk in the air as she talked aloud. "However, it needs to be large enough to accommodate the number of enchantments we shall be placing on the cloth, so a mere vest or belt will not do. In fact, we may just have to go with a larger article of clothing." She furrowed her brow. "It is a shame, really, that we have to cover Lyra like this. She is a very pleasant pony to look at, and she always has such an optimistic, cheery smile."

Twilight coughed and scuffed her hoof across the floor. "Yeah, about that... she might have also picked up some of Discord's physical traits as well."

Rarity gasped and whipped her focus back towards her friend, aghast at the thought. "Surely you jest."

"Sadly, no. Her legs are starting to look less equine, and she has a fang almost identical to his."

Rarity dramatized a faint, pressing her wrist joint to her forehead. "Oh, this is simply dreadful! It will be nearly impossible to coordinate colors with Discord's brutish assortment of body parts!" She noticed Twilight's less than amused expression, offering an embarrassed titter. "Of course, Lyra is probably feeling very awkward, the poor dear. Normally, I design an outfit to accentuate my client's body, but she might feel the need to keep her, ahem, less than symmetrical qualities to herself, no?" With a resigned sigh, she sketched out a cloak over the figure, complete with a hood. "Still, there must be some way to spruce up this design a little."

"I'm sure she won't mind if you just give her a plain cloak, Rarity," Twilight said.

"Nonsense. I refuse to give any less than my best— oh, idea!" Rarity turned abruptly from the chalkboard, moving rapidly from the showroom towards her inspiration room. "Are you coming, Twilight?"

"Wait, what are we going to do?"

"Are you, by any chance, familiar with looms?"

Leyline stroked his chin thoughtfully. Solaris might be checking in at any moment, hmm, have to have something ready. Where are Leyline's notes? Those pesky mages down the hall must be playing a prank on him again! Oh, well. He can always just rewrite them! It couldn't have been more than three hundred pages' worth, could it? See? The writing desk has paper, ink and quills at the ready, and Leyline is a fast writer. He'll have that dissertation ready in no time!

Leyline rolled out of the bed that was in his office and clumsily pawed the little tube tipped in a needle from his foreleg. He didn't remember the bed being in his office before, or the entire room being painted white, but these didn't bother him in the slighest. After all, he had work to do, and Dulcet would be worried if—

Leyline dropped to the floor, sobbing into the cold tile. No, Dulcet wouldn't be waiting. She would never be waiting for him now. She was dead, and he murdered her. He is a terrible pony who should be in the deepest, darkest dungeon that can be found. Leyline is—

Leyline. He knew his name. Why didn't he know it before? It's such a nice name, too, if strange for an earth pony. The green unicorn reminded him. Such a nice pony, to help him like that, even though she had that odd fang—

Eris! Chaos spirit is still around somewhere, pretending to be a pony. How did she escape? He bound her to himself... how long ago, though? He saw so many seasons pass by him. Enough for a lifetime, maybe? Maybe two? How did he become stone, though? He'll have to write a note to himself to look into—

Notes, that's right, he was writing notes! Better get back to it, then. Leyline picked up the quill and started writing again, the ink not flowing easily for some reason. Why isn't it working right? Hurry, hurry, Leyline has a lot of catching up to do. He racked is brain, feeling like he was forgetting something big. Come on, have to get this. Leyline has to remember.

Remember! He remembers his name is Leyline, and that Eris isn't inside his brain anymore. He remembers so much, and it is so exciting! He will have to tell Dulcet about it...

No. She is gone. She is gone, and it's all his fault. Leyline slammed a hoof into the floor, only succeeding in sending a sharp pain shooting up his leg and sending him to the ground, sobbing softly once more. The pain was simply too much for him to bear.

Bear, huh, what a funny sounding word, and it rhymes with lots of things. Scare, swear, share, rare, fare, compare. Shall I compare thee to a midsummer night's eve? That which we call red, by any other name, would smell just as sugar. No, that isn't right, is it?

Someone is coming in, with a horn and wings! It must be Prince Solaris, coming to check on him! Strange, he is supposed to have a yellow coat, not white. Maybe he felt the need to change things up a little? Leyline stood up quickly, offering the first pages of his notes to the ruler. "Hello, Prince Solaris! I've been making excellent progress on my dissertation!"

Celestia's calm expression held firm, even as she beheld the sight before her. The brown stallion's face had the telltale marks of a pony writing using his mouth, ink splotches around his jaw. Discord had somehow scrounged up a quill and paper from somewhere in the recovery room and put them to use. It was clear, however, that he had forgotten about the paper at some point and had continued writing on the floor, penned in a script she hadn't seen since before Luna was banished. Before she could ask him how he was feeling, the stallion quickly stood, offering her the pages which had been written upon.

"Prince Solaris! Dissertation!"

Celestia's expression faltered slightly, her magic accidentally crinkling the pages a little. The pony reacted as if he had been physically struck, cringing at the rumpling of his papers. "Oh, I'm sorry. It was an accident." She smoothed the sheets as best as she could, drawing a smile to his face.

"Look and see. Make good progress, prince."

Celestia kept her reaction at being referred to as her predecessor at a minimum this time, merely nodding and looking over the papers. The princess dusted off her knowledge of the older writing style, attempting to decipher it on the fly. "Yes, good work." She peered closely at the neatly written paragraphs. "Very good work, actually."

"Thanks." Discord beamed proudly at the compliment. "Rest done soon. Will make Solaris proud."

She returned the papers, pursing her lips. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm not Solaris. I'm Princess Celestia."

Discord cocked his head at her, ears flopped unevenly in a foalish manner. A giggle escaped his lips, and he shook his head amusedly. "Silly. Celestia is pegasus. Leyline studied two years behind her at Nocturne's unicorn school. You are alicorn, and sunny, so Solaris!"

"I see. Interesting deduction." Celestia looked the stallion over once more, mentally erasing the wings and crooked legs from Discord's body, and imagining him with a single horn. The princess knew it was absurd for a spirit of Chaos to have a cutie mark, but she tried to imagine him with one anyway.

"What matter, Solaris?"

"Why are you using your mouth to write? Is your horn not working?"

The brown pony looked up at her with a spark of mild irritation hidden behind his genial expression. "You know Leyline is earth pony. Can't use horn that not there."

The ruler gave him a kind smile, hoping to settle both the stallion and herself. "Of course, of course. I'm sorry I offended you. My mind was elsewhere."

Leyline seemingly mulled her excuse over for a second or two before nodding. "It okay. Leyline understand Solaris busy."

She watched the stallion as he knelt down on the floor again, using his pilfered quill to resume writing. "If you don't mind, Leyline, I will take my leave," she said, moving back towards the door to the hallway.

"Be my guest!" The faux alicorn gave her a big smile, waving at her as she left the room before diligently returning to his writing. She gave a regal nod to him, quietly closing and locking the door behind her.

Celestia let her face slip into its pleasant neutral mask, taking her time walking back towards the library. She removed the unicorn horn from her reckoning of what Leyline used to look like, wondering how he could have possibly attended Nocturne's School for Gifted Unicorns. The only reason she was even able to attend was because Solaris was her mentor, and he had all but forced his protegee to attend. The archives should have some answers, hopefully. Celestia had actually gotten quite a bit of useful information from visiting Discord (or Leyline, as he apparently called himself now), which would prove useful her endeavor. Luna might even remember who this "Leyline" was. She would have to ask her sister later, though. Right now, she had to hurry and get as much research done as she could before having to return to her normal princess duties.

Chapter Fourteen - The Power of Memories

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Bedside Manner stopped outside a recovery room with a pair of guards posted at the door. He braced himself in preparation before entering the room to deal with the patient on the other side, already dreading the scene that was going to greet him from the other side. He didn't know where Princess Celestia had found the stallion, or why he was an alicorn (and a two-horned one at that), or what the ruddy Tartarus was going on with him, but he was starting to lose his patience with the pony, who seemed insistent upon pretending the recovery room was an office.

"Are you sure you don't want to take this one for me?" he called over to a nurse who was pushing a cleaning cart.

The nurse checked the room number and shook her head. "Sorry, Doctor Bedside, you're on your own." Before he could make another attempt to change her mind, she quickly pushed the cart further down the hallway, leaving him to deal with the patient himself.

Bedside drew himself up resolutely, gritting his teeth in a passing semblance of a smile, and reached for the door handle. "How are we doing to—"

The door practically exploded outward in a whirlwind of brown feathers and ink, as if some eldritch chicken-squid abomination had awoken from its slumber and crawled through a portal directly into recovery room three. Bedside Manner was sent into a dazed spin as the brown alicorn tore out of the room at full pelt, catching both of the stationed guards by surprise. A trail of paper followed the pony out the door, pulled along by the wake of his hasty exit.

The doctor landed roughly on his rump one and a half rotations later, giving him a perfect view of the stallion escaping the hallway, the guards quickly giving chase. A small part of Bedside's mind noted that the unruly patient had, once again, pulled out his IV, and was leaking his vital fluids on the floor. He reluctantly hauled himself to his hooves and joined the rapidly growing conga line of royal guards following the stallion, pushing through the double doors to continue the pursuit in the castle itself.

"I knew I should have stayed home today..." Bedside muttered under his breath. "At my old hospital, we didn't have to *pant* run down patients."

He closed the gap between himself and the alicorn, the heavily armored guards having trouble following the escaping stallion's sudden changes of direction. "Would somepony *wheeze* be so kind as to *gasp* cut him off for me?!" Bedside called out loudly to another pair of guards just up ahead, who reacted just fast enough to leap in front of the escaping pony and send him sprawling to the floor. The stallion tried to regain his footing, only for one of the guards to stand over him and press a firm hoof into his back.

"Let go! Let me find my book!" the pony wailed mournfully into the floor as he was held against it. He managed to get his hooves under him and nearly threw the guard holding him down before a couple more piled on top of him.

"Don't break anything! It's hard enough to tend to him without having to put a cast on him, too!" the doctor growled at the guards as they dog-piled on the struggling stallion. Bedside stood by and watched as the pony continued to beg to be released, directing the guards to bring his unwilling patient back to the recovery room.

"Excuse me, doctor, what seems to be the problem?" a familiar voice asked.

Bedside Manner flinched and slowly turned around, silently praying that it wasn't who he thought it was. "P-Princess Luna! I'm so s-sorry that we disturbed you! Please d-don't be angry!" The doctor dropped into a hasty bow, a slight tremor running through his body as he imagined the nigh-legendary wrath of the lunar princess descending upon him for waking her. He waited for her to shift into the Royal "We" to start laying into him for his disturbance.

A pregnant pause filled the air, in which Bedside refused to open his eyes. The only sound to break the silence was that of metal shoes tapping against the tile as Luna presumably walked over to the pile of guards. "Ah, the previous container of Chaos is finally awake." A note of disdain was woven into her words, neatly disguised for the most part by an air of detachment.

The pinned stallion squirmed underneath the guard's hooves, unable to see the princess any better than out of the corner of his eye. "Prince Nocturne? Is you?" he gasped out, wincing as a guard leaned on one of his wings.

The cowering Bedside Manner had by now worked up the courage to turn and open his eyes to see what was going on. As he did so, he noticed the princess's eyes widen, then narrow in quick succession.

"Release this pony, guards. I wish to converse with him further." Luna drew herself up as the guardponies reluctantly let go of the struggling faux alicorn. The brown pony quickly stood up, shaking himself off a little before turning to face the princess properly.

"I felt a troubled mind here. I did not expect it to be yours," Luna muttered to the troublemaker, almost too quiet for Bedside to hear. "Doctor, I thank you for caring for this patient. I relieve you of the obligation to treat him for now. You and the guards may go back to your posts."

"Y-yes, Princess." Bedside gave the lunar alicorn a confused look, but he wasn't about to question her order. It rid him of the maddening stallion, which is what he wanted in the first place. He quickly turned to get back to the medical center, all too eager to leave the princess behind as she fixed a cold gaze upon the smaller alicorn in front of her.

"Hello again, Discord," Luna spat, standing imposingly over the smaller pony. "I trust that thou art feeling better?"

He looked at the floor with a distraught expression, seemingly unfazed by the venom in her words. "Book is gone."

The princess tilted her head in confusion, narrowing her eyes at him. "What are you talking about, draconequus? What book are you speaking of?"

"L-Leyline's book. Leyline needs to find it. Life's work is in it..." He pawed at the tiled floor impatiently. "That's why Leyline was running."

"Straighten your tongue, demon. Who is Leyline?"

The pony brought his head up slowly, letting Luna get a good look at his face for the first time since he was drained of his magic. He shuffled in place, tapping the floor with his hoof. "Leyline is me, Prince Nocturne."

Luna stepped back in mild surprise, reappraising the small, two-horned alicorn before her as the vaguest sensation of memory asserted itself. Brown coat, red eyes, black mane. His name is Leyline, and he has a book that is filled with his life's work. He thinks I am Nocturne....

She felt the vaguest sense of familiarity coming to the forefront of her mind, and Luna strained to recollect memories lost by her descent into madness. The trauma surrounding her attempt to overthrow Celestia had muddled her memories of the times before the event, but her farther reaching memories were mostly unscathed. Included in those recollections were her experiences within her mentor's old school, Nocturne's School for Gifted Unicorns.

As the seconds passed by, Luna honed in on one of her old classmates. The reason he stuck out in her mind was that he was the only earth pony in the school, and he had earned that honor by his absurd devotion to spellcrafting and magical study. He had the exact same colors as the alicorn standing before her, and his name was...

Princess Luna abruptly tore her mind from the memories, bringing herself back to the present. The pony before her had waited patiently for her to reply, his muzzle still damp with tears of distress for his book. "Leyline... Leyline Tracer?" she asked shakily, stricken with disbelief.

"Y-yes, Prince Nocturne. You know. I am me. You helped make me Senior Mage, remember? Remember?" He looked up hopefully, giving her an innocent smile. "Memory. Name. Friend."

Luna remained frozen for a few seconds as Leyline trailed off into a muttering of standalone words. "How..." She narrowed her eyes again, as if she expected for him to shift back into a draconequus at any moment and shout "Just kidding!" in her face. She deliberated for a few seconds longer, then lifted her head and cast an illusion spell over herself. The light of her horn took shape and settled upon her body in a form she had not had for millennia. Luna's body warped and shifted into that of a common unicorn. Her mane stopped flowing and took on its original periwinkle coloration once more, and her body shrank down to where she was slightly shorter than Leyline now.

The lunar princess cleared her throat, and her voice took on a higher, softer pitch. "Leyline."

The stallion disengaged himself from his aimless mental wanderings and returned his attention to the pony in front of him. "Luna?" He cocked his head in confusion before his eyes lit up with an almost childlike excitement. "It is! Hi, Luna! How..." Leyline paused, and the princess could see a shudder running through his body before he resumed his sentence. "...have you been? Your coronation supposed to be soon, right?"

Luna merely stared, mouth agape, at the stallion as he greeted her like eons had not passed since she had last seen him. Her brain scrambled to catch up, grasping frantically at long-forgotten knowledge. "Er, yes. Nocturne has decided that..." She paused once more before continuing carefully, "he has lived long enough, and that he and Solaris shall pass the torch."

"Good, good! Me and Rockslide and..." Leyline trailed off once more, sinking to his knees abruptly.

Luna felt the stallion's thoughts fracture like a glass pane beneath a hammer. His abrupt mental shift scraped roughly across her psyche, his anguish overwhelming Luna's attention to his subconscious. She quickly dropped her illusion spell to focus on holding back the tide of emotion flooding from his mind into hers, but Leyline gave no indication that he noticed, his lips forming a single word over and over. "Leyline? Are you well? Leyline!"

Twilight stood outside the door to Lyra's bedroom, fidgeting under her saddlebags. The item contained within them was so heavily enchanted that it made her body itch just from being in close proximity, not to mention the effect itself was more than little unnerving. That, combined with the fact that the only sleep she had gotten was during the flight back to Canterlot, made for a very on-edge unicorn. Twilight closed her eyes and took a deep, calming breath, steeling herself before knocking on the door. "Lyra? Are you here?"

When the knock produced no response, she tried the handle to find it unlocked. Twilight pushed open the door and stepped inside the room, only to recoil in surprise as the rug beneath her hooves squirmed and wriggled away. The rug slithered over to the end table and hid beneath it, raising one end of itself to "hiss" at Twilight. She shuddered and made a point to ignore it, instead looking around the room for Lyra. Splotches of color oozed and crept along the walls, changing shape and entwining with each other in regular intervals, pulsing as if in tune with some monstrous heart.

Twilight added the walls to her rapidly-growing "ignore" list and turned her focus to the bed, where she noticed the blankets rise and fall. A white and green mane peeked out from underneath the covers, the rest tucked away into a misshapen lump on the bed. "Lyra?"

The lump flinched, then shifted around until Lyra's head emerged fully from underneath the blankets. Bloodshot eyes struggled to open fully, straining to focus on Twilight. Lyra rubbed at her blotchy and tear-streaked face with a hoof. "H-hello, Twilight."

Twilight gasped softly and quickly walked to the minty mare as she struggled to sit upright. "What happened to you? Are you alright?" she asked, reaching to Lyra tentatively.

"Have you ever killed anything?" Lyra's head drooped sullenly, her voice thick with tears still unshed.

Twilight recoiled at the unexpected question. "Have I what?"

"Killed anything. Like, another pony or something else that..." Lyra swallowed, drawing a shuddering breath, "...was intelligent?"

The purple mare shook her head bewilderedly, visibly sickened at the very thought. "No, why? Why are you asking about something so horrible?"

Lyra swallowed again, her horn lighting up and the gentle glow of her magic collecting around a sheet of paper on the nearby writing desk. She brought forth the neatly scripted notes, offering them to Twilight.

The purple mare frowned, glancing over the sheet. "This is my spell on summoning items."

Lyra nodded, keeping her eyes trained downwards. "I used it to summon the human. You know, the one from before... The one that might have freed Discord."

"Yes, I remember. But what does that have to do with your question?" Twilight scanned the spell once more, and her face paled in realization. "Lyra, this spell wasn't designed to summon animals, much less intelligent creatures! Do you realize–"

"I'm perfectly aware of what I have done, thank you!" Lyra shrieked back, bursting into fresh sobs. She drew her feather-mottled foreleg across her muzzle, sniffling while she cried out in anguish. "I – I didn't mean to... I didn't know that it would happen like this."

Twilight stood there, speechless, as the mare hid her face. She coughed to clear her throat, and sat hesitantly on the bed next to Lyra. "Look, I don't know what to tell you. I wish I could say that everything will be alright and that we can fix everything.”

Lyra looked back to Twilight with a sullen face. “But you can’t. It’s probably dead already.”

The unicorn flinched at the word “dead,” but she drew herself up and continued. “No, we can’t. What we can do, though, is keep moving forward. We have to get Discord out of you and safely imprisoned, where he won’t hurt anypony else. Speaking of which…”

Lyra perked up the tiniest bit as Twilight started rummaging through her saddlebags, pulling a large dull brown cloak out of it and shaking it out in front of Lyra. “What’s that, Twilight?”

“Rarity and I worked together to make something for you. It’s not much, and Rarity is still unhappy with how it looks, but we managed to make a cloak for you. I enchanted the fabric so that it would dampen Discord’s influence. Rarity also provided a minor illusion spell to help draw attention away from your ‘asymmetric’ features.” She offered it to Lyra, her magical grip fading as the mare reached for it and grasped it in her foreleg.

The mare shot Twilight a somewhat disgruntled look for the unintentional slight, then started to slip it on her body. “So, how does it work?”

“That’s the beauty of it! All you need to do is wear it and the enchantment will detect your chaos infection, and automatically counter it!” Twilight beamed proudly as she noticed the walls and floor stop their dizzying kaleidoscope of colors, the effects bleeding away into nothing. “So, what do you think?”

“It’s great! This thing is really comfortable, and I can feel it working.” The seafoam colored pony turned to check her reflection in the mirror. As she pulled the cowl over her head, the fang overhanging her lower lip seemed to diminish. “Thank you, Twilight.”

“You’re welcome. It’s definitely not a permanent measure, but it will help slow the onset of the effects.” Twilight noticed the cloak shimmer slightly, a faint band of light spreading from where Lyra’s knee presumably brushed against the fabric. “Wait, hang on a second. Poke the inside of the cloak for me, would you please?”

Lyra looked at Twilight confusedly, giving a shrug and nudging the hem of the fabric with her front hoof. Another diminished ripple of color flowed from the spot, reaching the far reaches of the cloak before fading. “What is it?”

“It looks like Rarity couldn’t help herself. Don’t worry, it’s nothing important.” Twilight giggled softly and tucked the flap of her saddlebag back into place. “Now, I really have to get back to my research.”

Lyra nodded and turned back to her writing desk, levitating the notes and overdue book off the surface and presenting them to Twilight. “Here. Your notes and the library book.”

“Ah, well… I kind of don’t have time to return to the library. Can you hang onto them for a little while longer?” Twilight reached for the door and paused for a moment. “You know, you can walk around the castle a little. You aren’t a prisoner here.”

The cloaked mare sighed, removing her hood. “I know. I don’t feel comfortable with myself right now.”

Twilight gave a concerned glance. “Well, it might be good to get away from your room anyway. You will have to leave it sometime soon anyway, if only to find you a cure.”

Lyra nodded, sighing and walking over to her window. Her cloak shimmered, just barely noticeable ripples overlapping as she moved and sat next to the window and opened it. “I’ll keep that in mind.” The mare reached for her lyre with her magic, the aura flickering between shades of silvery-green as she brought it over to herself and began to strum mindlessly at it, producing disjointed chords.

The purple mare shook her head and walked back out of the room, closing the door behind her. “Back to the library it is, then," she muttered, turning to walk down the hallway.

A sudden swirl of dark, nebulous magic coalesced into the form of Princess Luna directly in front of Twilight, eliciting a surprised squeak as she staggered backwards a step or two. The alicorn opened her eyes and focused on the mare before her, her face drawn. “Twilight Sparkle, I must have words with you if you are not busy.”

“O-of course. How can I help, Luna?” Twilight stammered.

Luna nodded to a direction deep within the castle. “I have someone I think you would like to meet, on two conditions.”

Twilight furrowed her brow. “Conditions?” she ventured cautiously, tilting her head. “What do you mean? Who is it?”

Luna sighed. “Someone from a long time ago. I’ll introduce you to him when I take you. First, though, the conditions.” She raised her hoof. “One, you must remain calm when you meet him. He is in a delicate state at the moment and it would not do to startle him. Second, you cannot, cannot, mention any recent events to him. Let me take the lead when talking to him, so I can properly set the tone for the meeting.”

Twilight thought over the odd restraints on the meeting, nodding slowly in agreement. “Okay, I can do that. When are we going to see him?”

Luna smiled broadly, flaring her wings as her horn glowed with the subtle tint of her magic. “Right now.”