Little Equestria

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Mag Mell’s din proved better than any alarm clock, Silver Mint had come to realize. Strict laws kept the noise level down between two and before the dawn, but nothing could stop goblins slamming doors, throwing parties, and loudly arguing with one another through the thin floors of the apartment. Red-eyed, she stared up at the ceiling and lifted her forehooves, miming in time with the shouting upstairs.

“You bitch, you forgot to start the coffee again!” She wagged her right hoof aggressively.

Her left hoof bobbed. “I’m not the one who forgot to pick some up from the store, like you were supposed to! I had to help the kids with their homework, I cleaned every square inch of this place, and I had to cook dinner!”

“Your mother warned me about you! I should have listened to her, I should have-!” Her hooves pressed together as the two voices faded, and, when the thumping started, she sighed and rolled out of bed.

The mirror propped on the dresser revealed an exhausted pony, her silvery mane sticking up in all directions. Grabbing a brush in her argent magic, she sought to tame it as best she could, and leaned forward to peck the photo of her family beneath the archway of Canterlot Castle. “Miss you, Mom, Dad, Spear.”

Her phone on the stand buzzed, reminding her that she hadn’t filled out her voting form for the Little Equestria election and asking if she wanted to watch a video on the items up for referendum, but she swiped it away with a sigh. Another e-mail popped in from work, and she quickly determined that it was a phish - nice try, replacing the i with an l in "Elation" - and found messages from her social networks, asking where she’d been. Again, she swept through all of them, until her phone was nice and bare, a black mirror reflecting her face back at her. She tucked it into the pocket of her day harness and slid on her saddlebags.

Finally, she grabbed the amulet near the window, where it caught the sun’s first rays on its bronze face, and slid it over her neck before throwing open the window and blinking away spots.

Were it not for the distinctly alien architecture of Mag Mell, the layers of almost chaotic architectural styles and influences, she might have thought she was looking down on a side street in Manehattan. There were goblins there, and she had the misfortune of living beneath a family of them, but it was colorful equines that filled the street for the most part, laughing and chatting with one another as they greeted the day. Come dawn in Equestria, most ponies would be abed, but Mag Mell ran to its own clock, and Little Equestria moved to its beat. Above, the last stars of Yggdrasil faded with the morning sun. An electric railcar pulled out of a building, heading towards the spires of downtown.

After getting breakfast from a pegasus hopping between open windows, Silver Mint made her way down, munching on a sandwich. Foals jumped and played in the street, spending a warm summer Saturday in the sun, while teens peddled homemade ice cream and lemonade on a corner. Stallions and mares flirted under the awnings of a cafe, and a group of young adults wandered around with AR glasses wrapped around their faces, searching for monsters only they could see.

Silver Mint didn’t know why they bothered - there were monsters aplenty in the real world if you knew how to look.

Her hooves took her to a long colonnade, its smooth stones turned golden by the rising sun, and looked out over the bay. Mag Mell sprawled from the Statuary Hill, where the edifices of the four original Arcana Kings stood, and the wide Winter Wall to the beach houses on the bay and all the way over to the Wand Palace on the far side. There her eyes settled and burned.

Tearing them away, she kept walking. It took her most of the day to get to the bazaar in the Sword Quarter the the head of the bay, where ships from all nations stood at anchor. Here, she slid on a pair of noise-canceling headphones, if only so her ears wouldn’t ring like the first time she’d come here and been shouted at by a beak-faced hawker with the voice of a klaxon, and pushed through the mass of goblins and more. A shop caught her eye, and she walked over to look over a series of knives. Some of them were strapped to attach to hooves like the Night Guard blades, and she tried a pair on.

“All goblin steel,” the woman behind the booth said, a smiling Adapan with sea-green hair and smooth skin. Related to humans, the seagoing Adapan people had funny ears and webbed fingers. “I’ve got some pieces from my last trip to Niefelheim, if you’d like to see something really interesting.”

“No, thanks,” Silver Mint muttered, putting the blades down carefully. “I’m sorry, I think I’m looking for something more subtle.”

Quickly, she wandered inside a store filled with firearms, her eyes wandering over them. A varg, a great wolf with an intelligent face, looked at her questioningly and she blushed and showed herself out. She bounced around the market until she glimpsed a blanket in a small tent set up in an alley, covered with little odds and ends that made her horn tingle with the touch of enchantment. Among them was a small silver bottle, marked with a pony’s skull. Glancing around, she slid her earphones off and walked over, lifting it up with her hoof to check for a label.

“Tidy little selection, innit?” a voice asked near her ear, and she shrieked and jumped a full foot into the air.

Turning, panting, she put the bottle down carefully and stared at the little girl who’d startled her. Wearing a rough cloak of undyed brown, she smiled with a mouth full of slightly sharp teeth and a mane of blond hair. Her ears stuck out, twitching like a cat’s, and a tail teased at the bottom of her cloak. Most striking of all about her, though, were the eyes - a beautiful, piercing green.

A second, dark-haired catgirl watched quietly from the shadows in the back.

“I guess,” Silver Mint muttered, looking them over. They were all surpassing rare to her eye, which was saying something for a mare who worked with rare coins for a living. She picked up a little piercework metal sphere. “This blocks sound, right? How much?”

“Ach!” The girl tapped the bottom of her hoof, bouncing it into the air before snatching it with her hand and making it disappear with a flick of her wrist. “Sorry about that. That one ain’t for sale. Very sentimental. Everything else you see is, though, and right tidy they are.” She eyed her critically. “You’ve got a bit of an appreciation for oddities, I see. I’m not sure what a nice horse like yourself would want with a jar of poison, though.”

Silver’s mouth dried out and she shifted her hooves, starting out of the tent. “I’m sorry for wasting your time.”

The girl caught up with her. “Hold up! You ain’t wastin’ nothing, trust me. I’m just curious is all.”

Scrunching her face up, Silver stared down at the girl. “It’s personal.”

“Ain’t it always. You aren’t looking to kill yourself, are you?”

“What?" Silver sputtered. "No! Of course not!”

“So it’s someone else you want to kill, then, is it?" she said, just a little louder. People were starting to turn and look. “Right tidy bit of murder.” Silver stared at the girl in disbelief, unable to find the words to respond.

“C’mon. Let me buy you a drink,” the girl said, taking the harness with her hand and guiding her. Mutely, Silver acquiesced, and they found their way to a Sword court bar past some arches, where smoke lingered near the white plaster ceiling. The place reminded her of a movie she’d seen, an Equestrian remake of some human film set during a time of war, in a saloon filled with refugees.

“Aren’t you a little young to be ordering alcohol?” Silver Mint asked, a little numb as she settled into a seat across a small table. A little smoky, amber oil lamp glowed between them.

“Not in Mag Mell, I’m not! Don’t worry - I don’t drink. You, though, look like you need one.” She slipped off and returned a few moments later with a pair of drinks, one clearly orange juice, the other some fruity red cocktail that smelled surprisingly sharp as she pushed it to Silver Mint’s side.

“I don’t really drink, either, I just…” Silver stared down at the glass and kicked it back, her eyes welling up for a moment as it burned in her throat. Warmth filled her limbs, working out from her gut. “I don’t know what I’m doing. This was stupid.”

“We all do stupid things that we regret sometimes,” the girl said, leaning back and watching her. “I’m sure you were thinkin’ something when you were looking at those guns and knives, though.”

Silver stared at her, eyes wide.

“I watch people,” the girl smiled. “Seriously, it’s all right, you can tell me. I promise I won’t judge.”

“I’m not going to talk about... about that in public!”

“No one’s going to listen in here.” She nodded towards the room, where the other patrons were close together, talking quietly amongst themselves. They could not be less interested in Silver Mint’s conversation if they tried.

“Nor anywhere!”

“So you’re just going to bottle murderous feelings up until they explode? That’s a recipe for disaster.”

“No, I…” Silver took another drink and buried her face in her hooves, groaning. “Fine. I do want to kill someone. Or, not kill. Maybe hurt, a lot, and I want them to know why they’re hurting or dying and... it’s just not fair.”

The girl turned silent, listening as Silver poured out her feelings to the table. “I could never sneak a gun or a knife or poison past security. Even if I saw her out and about, I’d never stand a chance. It’s not fair that she should be so powerful, not after everything she’s done. It’s sick that she just... she just gets a pat on the back for everything she did, a ‘try harder next time,’ and a god-damned palace to boot.”

The girl said nothing, her face a blank slate.

“I know Equestrians are supposed to be forgiving. Didn’t we forgive Princess Luna, and Discord? But neither of them hurt people like she did. Neither of them killed people. It wasn’t even Princess Luna’s fault, and I know a lot of people who would like to see Discord turned back into stone forever - myself included! - but every time this happens, all Celestia cares about is fixing the villain.”

She sniffed, rubbing her nose. “Doesn’t she care about the victims? What about their feelings? Don’t we deserve to know that we’re safe?”

“I think you deserve that," the girl murmured.

“I don’t, though, I don’t feel safe, and there’s nothing I can do about it. I came here to work, but all I can think about is the mountain, the monsters racing through the streets of Canterlot.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “I worship Celestia. Not literally, that’s stupid, but... I love her more than almost anything except my family. She’s so bright and beautiful. Even when she stepped down from direct rule, it filled me with joy, because it was like mother giving you the keys to the car and trusting you to drive yourself. She’d always be there at home waiting for you, ready to hear everything you had to say and give advice if you needed it.”

The little girl didn’t answer.

“She violated her,” Mint said softly. “Amelia violated someone... someone so important to all of us. She hurt so many people, and there’s nothing I can do.”

They sat in silence for a while. The little girl never said anything, letting Silver Mint finish her drink and think.

“I just wish…”

“Yeah?” the girl prodded gently.

“I wish I could talk to her.” Silver’s eyes welled up. “I want her to know how much she hurt me and everyone I know.”

There was a shuffle, and the girl pushed her glass away. “Imagine you were talking to her right now. Imagine she was here, listening to you, letting you say your peace - what would you say?”

Trembling, Silver pulled her hooves under herself on the seat, staring at the flame. “I’d say that she’s a monster. I don’t think she’s paid enough for what she’s done. I wish she’d be forced to sit down and listen to all the pain she put us through. I know she’s done good things since then, that she turned Mag Mell around, that she’s supported Equestria tirelessly, but she’s never answered for anything. If she really cares about any of that, I... I want to hear her say sorry. Not anyone speaking on behalf of her, I... I want to hear it from her. I want to look into her eyes and see that she’s sorry.”

“I’m sorry.”

Silver Mint blinked away her tears and stared up at the little girl, uncomprehending.

Their eyes met, and her own bright green were filled with unshed tears. “I’m sorry, Silver Mint. I wish I could take it back - well, sort of. Trying to take it all back is how I hurt you in the first place. I tried to take everything back, to make the hurt never exist in the first place, but that was stupid, and I was wrong, and everything I did to get there was wrong, too. I’m sorry, and, because just saying sorry really, truly isn’t enough, I’ve spent the last fifteen years working my ass off to try and fix things and make it up in some way. I keep an eye out for people like you when I can, people who are hurting and alone - I never thought I’d run into someone I’d hurt, though I guess that’s technically everyone when I think about it.

“I... I didn’t think anyone would care to hear if I was sorry, not anyone beyond the people I’ve already apologized to. Rainbow Dash certainly doesn’t want to hear it from me. The Sword King did, but she only cares about what I do. Celestia forgave me so fucking quickly that I never really had a chance to process it. More importantly? I never... I still haven’t forgiven myself, and maybe I never will.”

Horror drained the color from Silver Mint’s cheeks, and she found herself paralyzed as the little goblin girl changed, filling out into a creme alicorn mare with a golden mane blowing in its own wind, her eyes sad, her cheeks wet as tears spilled down them.

“I know you’re scared, Silver, but I’m not going to hurt you. If you want, I’ll buy you a ticket out of here and you never need to look on me or my castle ever again. I’m not going to let you kill me - I was over that years ago - but you deserved this at least.”

Sighing, she looked to the shadows, where a second alicorn awaited, a dark mare who offered her a small smile. She got up and trotted over to nuzzle her and tuck in against her shoulder. “I’ll leave, now. I don’t want to cause you any more hurt.”

“Wait,” Silver Mint squeaked, and the powerful mare stopped, arrested in her tracks as though it had been a spell. Here she was, a nobody little unicorn, but when she went up to face the King of Wands she watched the other mare flinch back, unable to meet her eyes. Drawing a deep breath to steady her courage, she turned her face up to meet hers. “You’re right... I don’t forgive you, but... thank you. I don’t know if it made me feel any better. Maybe it did.”

“I can’t give you back your sense of peace,” Amelia said quietly. “I can’t do anything to make you feel better. All I can do is try and fix things the normal way, like everyone else. I don’t know if that means anything to you, but please... try and live your life. I hate the thought that you defined any part of it by what I did.”

“I will try. I will... try to move on from this. I don’t know if I can. I was just a filly, and it’s been a nightmare all my life.”

Amelia shared a glance with the other alicorn, who could have been her twin but for her blue-green eyes and dark coloring. “Well. Luna’s good for that, and so are a few other people I could name. I’m sorry, Silver Mint. I hope things do get better for you.”

It was Silver Mint’s turn to say nothing, and Amelia’s to sigh, nod, and walk away.

“I do, too,” she said at last, mostly to herself, and made her way out. It was dark by the time she got home. She pulled her amulet off her neck, set it on the dresser, and opened it. A few shards of crystal, fallen from the mountain during the fighting, glittered inside. She’d taken them with her to remind her of home, fearing goblinization, but, now that she looked at it, the copper necklace felt like a chain holding her back.

Closing it, she sighed and tugged it in against her barrel. She wasn’t willing to let go of her pain, not yet, but, in spite of herself, she found the tension in her shoulders fading, and laid her head down with the evening sun, where, above the line of the horizon, a green star glinted through her window.

That night, she slept more soundly than she had since she was just a little filly nestled under her mother’s wing.

The Alicorn Door

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In the small hours of the morning, a small herd turned a corner and gazed up a flight of stairs. Canterlot Castle glowed just a few blocks down the street, but the view wasn't what they had come for. Whispering among one another, the foals advanced up the wide steps, pressing close together and keeping their phones out for light, until they stood before the door. There, they had no need of illumination, for it glowed with its own inner radiance.

It wasn't a bright glow by any means. At any other time of day its bronze-like metal face would catch available light and flash it back, but in the dark of the early morning, its surface gleamed with a soft luminescence all its own.

A hissing rose up from the little herd, and a colt pushed forward - or was pushed - and squared himself. With as mighty a heave as his earth pony magic could muster, he threw himself at the door, straining until veins showed through his blue coat. Panting, he collapsed against the unbarred, unlocked, but unmoved portal.

“Okay, someone else take a turn.”

One-by-one, they did. A unicorn colt, precocious in magic, tried every spell he knew. He even wiggled a thread of telekinesis at all the gaps, looking for a weakness, but found none. A pegasus filly tried pushing from the top, then the sides. A pair of pegasus twins tried hitting it with lightning, but failed to so much as scorch the surface. One morbid filly bit her tongue and added a line of blood to the door, only to watch as it dried and cleaned itself flawlessly.

Lastly, a slight unicorn named Pepper Mint stepped forward, her vivid green mane and tail a mess and her eyes wide. She studied the door for a goodly while, and found it beautiful. Embossed on its surface was the story of the alicorns, with Celestia and Luna to either side holding up the sun and moon, Daphne within her star at the top looking down, and Cadance below with her crystal heart. Twilight Sparkle and her friends formed a circle with their elements, Phoebe and Wave Form with their harmonic technology, Caelia striking thunder from a cloud - there were so many, and beyond the door were many more.

“I don't know if I can do it,” Pepper Mint said in a quavering voice.

The pegasus twins stamped their hooves in irritation. “Come on, Pepper. You're not usually a chicken.”

Pepper Mint didn't usually find herself in situations like this, with a weight in her chest and her heart pounding at a mile a minute.

Yet, despite her fear, she stepped forward. This close up, finely etched channels were visible across the surface, like a circuit network, and they flickered silently with activity. She wondered if the door was alive in some way, like the golems built by the students within. Setting herself against the door, she pushed.

Despite knowing that, in all likelihood, she had no hope of opening it, when the door refused to budge she felt her heart sink. The others didn’t seem bothered, she hadn’t lost any face failing where they had already gone, but the sight of the door standing above her, immovable and fast, filled her with such a sense of despair that she was at a loss. Sighing, she placed her hoof to the door.

With a creak, it opened. The others gasped, staring at her, and she gazed down at her hoof in awe, warmth working its way back into her chest, her frozen blood thawing. “Oh Celestia. Am I…?”

Yet, when they looked up, they found a tall mare looking down at them, and Pepper’s heart sank into the stone. Her blond hair was shaved down the sides, making it look more like a horse’s mane, and she wore a grey crown that flickered with channels of light, not unlike the door itself.

“Can I help you kids?” the mare asked, her wings and horn marking her for what she was, even if her presence within the school hadn’t made it obvious. She had more than a little of her thick London accent left after all these years.

The other foals huddled together, quivering, but Pepper swallowed her disappointment and stood up. “We’re sorry for bothering you, Princess Phoebe. We were just trying to get in.”

“And none of you could open the door?” At the shake of her head, Phoebe gave her a gentle nudge with her wing. “I’m sorry to disappoint you. Come back later after you’ve earned your spark, and it’ll open for you. No mortals are permitted in these halls.”

The others didn’t need to be told twice. They darted away, bounding down the steps, only pausing at the bottom when they noticed Pepper Mint wasn’t among them. She scrunched her face, looking up at the alicorn. “Why not?”

“When Princess Celestia gave me this campus, I told her my concerns - alicorns gather mortals around them, and those mortals find themselves swept into our destinies. It suppresses their own potential to grow and become one of us. I built this gate as a test, and a reminder. We stand apart, but only so that mortal kind may learn and struggle. It’s why Celestia stepped down as ruler, to give others a chance to grow without relying on her, even if she’ll be there to offer advice.”

“It doesn’t seem very fair.”

“We try our best to make the world fair, but it often isn’t. I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.”

Pepper Mint sighed, nodded, and turned to go. “Good night, Princess.”

“Good night.”

She rejoined her friends at the bottom, but not for long. They were all up well past their bedtimes on this little jaunt, and so they parted, scattering to their disparate homes. Pepper Mint’s path took her to the palace, to one of its many little side doors, where the security detail scanned her and permitted her to go to the private apartments on the bottom floor where the servants with family slept. Her mother Mint Breeze remained where she was, dead asleep on the couch from a long day standing guard over the offices of the Consulate, and, after a moment’s thought, Pepper Mint hopped up and wormed under her wing in lieu of her bedroom. Mint Breeze cracked an eye open, tucked her head and tail about her filly, and said nothing.

Celestia’s presence had a way of dominating a room, regardless of its size. Objects and individuals found themselves snared in her gravitational pull, like the sun itself drawing in all things, imposing upon them a kind of order. Even in the darkened halls of the school, her skin radiated light of its own, as if ever there were a spotlight on her, her brilliant white coat reflecting it.

Phoebe liked the subtle lighting of the school, she should, after all she designed it, tastefully laid out the aesthetics for her golems to diligently maintain. The further one got into the school, the more it shifted from the grand aesthetic of Canterlot, shifting to the flowing curves of Moonrise, itself an echo of the past: Phoebe’s past. Light, where it existed, was subtle and angled away from the fillies and colts cantering through the halls of the sprawling estate. To Phoebe, the message was clear and expressive: you cast your own light, in all you do. However, there were voices of dissent from time to time.

“Channing.” Celestia asked with a frown. “You’ve been staring at the same papers for the past six minutes. It is Channing again, isn’t it?” Her voice veered hesitant, and Phoebe had a moment to roll her eyes at the way the royal alicorns always seemed to tiptoe around her identity issues, eager to respect it without quite understanding it.

“Phoebe and Channing are both fine, one is as valid as the other.” She shifted the papers away with a hand and tucked them into her desk. Canterlot ponies sure liked their elegant scrolls and seals. Noting Celestia’s discomfort, Phoebe’s body shifted like water, a tall alicorn mare taking her place.

“Everything is in order then? I’ve had golems waiting for weeks to get to it.”

“So long as this campus exists, and funding is not diverted from it, you may have your second school.” Celestia frowned. “I still don’t think it’s necessary, but Luna and I decided long ago to trust your judgment.”

“I’ve already been over this.” Phoebe sighed, steepling her hooves on the desk. “According to Kerry’s findings, the issue is deeper than we know. The Wyrd is a real factor that we have to account for, like gravity, we don’t completely understand it. Hell, the two might even be related. Gods have more gravity than mortals, and when a mortal gets sucked in, it can be difficult for them to ever escape.”

“It seems so counter-intuitive,” Celestia murmured. “Students become teachers, and take students of their own. What could be more natural?”

“Reality is often counter-intuitive, Princess. Why do you think Aeterna keeps all its recruits far from the other humans?”

Celestia pursed her lips, tail flicking. “I will not be Thane.”

“Why should you be? That’s my job, anyway. Even Equestrians need a hard ass, and Loam hasn’t earned her wings, yet.”

“Just make sure they’re ready,” Celestia murmured. “War seems increasingly likely.” Her shoulders sagged, and for a moment the light dimmed, showing all her thousands of years.

“What happened?” Phoebe asked, her voice hushed, Celestia doesn’t dim easily.

“There was another alicorn in the states, she had… outbursts before the Hippocrene could find her. Aeterna dispatched their own people to capture her.” Celestia paused. “By all accounts they tried to take her alive, but the situation escalated, and she died.”

Phoebe frowned, weighing her words carefully. Celestia was not as perfectly calm as her people imagined her. She was, after all, the sun itself. Even now, she could see the fury warring under the mare’s peaceful surface. The same fury Amelia had drawn out with the bridle, twisting the sun into a nightmare of itself.

“I’m sorry, Celestia. I know how you feel, like every alicorn is your own child, to care for and teach. I feel that way for a lot of the kids here, but, war?”

“You misunderstand,” Celestia said, her voice tight. “The alicorn was my niece. Luna’s daughter.”

Channing’s heart dropped. “Holy shit… oh Celestia, I am so sorry.” She glanced back at her tablet. “I guess that explains what happened in Moonrise, is everything… is she under control?”

Celestia nodded. “She and her foal are reunited; death refused to claim her. That blessing aside, they still killed her, and my sister is reunited with her dark half. Even were that not true, my sister would be howling for blood, if anything her silence until now is… it’s caught me off guard, Phoebe, whenever I mention it, she gets a grim distant look to her.

“Add to this my own daughter, who’s become very popular within the government, and she’s been aching for a fight ever since she decided to negotiate with the titans. The Storm is not at home in times of peace, as they say.”

“There’s always going to be opposition to peace, Princess.” Phoebe frowned. “Still, I don’t think Caelia will vote for all out war, maybe just support little unplanned skirmishes? That seemed more her style in the past.”

“I’ve no way of knowing what she’ll say when she hears the news of her lost cousin,” Celestia replied, “and I’m afraid to tell her.”

Phoebe snorted, and then covered her nose with a hoof. “Sorry, I just have a hard time imagining the great Princess Celestia being afraid of anything.”

“I suspect I’m afraid of more things than most!” Celestia exclaimed in mock offense. “It keeps me active.”

“Well, I should get back to work.” Phoebe said, abandoning tact. “Is there anything else I show know?”

Celestia shook her head, then frowned. “Was the gate truly necessary, Phoebe?”

“What? What’s wrong with my gate?” Phoebe frowned, raising a brow.

“I spent hundreds of years turning my school into a place that would not alienate the common pony.” Celestia explained. “You shut your school behind a gate that none may open, save gods.”

Phoebe shrugged, her wings shifting at her sides. “It’s meant to be affirming. You know, something that tells new students: “You belong here.” She gestures with a hoof, making a sweeping welcoming motion.

“Besides, take a look at this video I recorded the other day,” she continued, shining her horn and calling up an intangible interface before the princess, runes lit up, activating latent spells, and the interface was replaced by a lifelike hologram. Fillies and colts from all over Canterlot had turned the gate into a game, hushed herds arriving in the dead of night, each of them taking a turn to try and shove the gate open.

The vision faded, replaced with a grinning Phoebe.

“See, it doesn’t just give the kids a chance to acknowledge what they are. It gives the others something to conquer, an obstacle to overcome. If they just tried once or twice and then gave up, I’d agree with you, but that hasn’t been the case. If you see a foal out there trying to shove the gate open, overwhelmingly, you’ll see them the next week, trying again. Many of them go home and explore their own magic, preparing for their next attempt.

“So, sure, the gate is gonna make a few old timers crotchety on the news, but the future isn’t about them. It’s about the kids, they’re the future.”

Celestia considered that for a time, and then turned to make her way out.

“Well enough, Phoebe,” she said softly, her voice carrying through the room. “I won’t occupy more of your time.”

“Right, see you for tea next week?” Phoebe asked.

“Implying you ever show,” Celestia snorts. “Caelia misses you.”

“Yeah, well. Tell her I miss her too, okay?”

Celestia nodded, pushing the massive doors to Phoebe’s office shut.

Phoebe sighed, trotting circles around her room, passing the hearth and its mantle, upon which her mother’s crown was set, shimmering with living magic. A pair of golem servants maintain their silent vigil as slumbering stone that would wake at an uttered command. Phoebe climbed the stairs of her tower, leading up a more private space, her bedroom resembled—as close as she was able to manage—the room of her birth, memory crystals dangled from the ceiling like stars, and Phoebe’s horn lit up, drawing one of the larger shards into her hooves. The mare hugged it close, flopping sidelong into her nest of blankets.

At the heart of the crystal, life stirred, memories of a young woman being held in a man’s arms played and repeated. Sometimes, an imperfection would slip through, a false memory of a stallion and a mare, and Phoebe would quietly scrub the shard clean. Would that her memory crystals were as perfect as her mother’s; her own design was fragile, subject to emotional tampering, especially from the original source.

“Oh Adam,” she sighed. “What’s going on? Are we just… fated to lose control?”

Not for the first time, Phoebe buried her face in a pillow, and tried to banish the possibility that, real as the Wyrd might be, it may be a pernicious influence, entirely.

The following day, Pepper Mint found that she could think of little other than the door, even if her friends had by and large forgotten it. She sat in her desk at school, staring out the window down the road towards what had once been Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns and that now, everyone knew, held miracles. She imagined she could see the door flashing at her, and the teacher had to clear her throat twice before she realized she was being called on.

“You’re not going back there, are you?” her neighbor hissed at her, frowning.

Pepper Mint shook her head, but knew it to be a lie.

That night, she found herself alone by the door again, looking up at its bronzed glory. She pressed herself at it, hooves scraping on the stone beneath her, but to no avail. She came back the night after, and then the night after that, and so on, for nigh on three weeks. Each night made no more progress than the last, each night became a personal punishment that began and ended with nothing gained. She fell behind in school, forgetting her homework and her assignments and bombing a big test that she really ought to have passed.

The night at the end of the third week was sweltering, and sweat dried her coat into stiff little cones and slicked her hair across her neck. Today was the Summer Sun Celebration, and in just a couple hours Princess Celestia would raise the sun. Pepper Mint, tucked up against the door, stared blearily out at the Canterlot skyline, wondering why she couldn’t let this go. It wasn’t even that she particularly wanted to see what was inside. It was as though the door itself had become her enemy, mocking her for her pitiful mortality and reminding her that she would always, ever be nothing more than what she was.

Though she didn’t quite mean to, she closed her eyes, and fell at once into sleep.

A hoof nudged her. Voices murmured.

“Hey. Kid. We kinda need to get inside.”

“You okay there?”

“I think she’s coming around, Ashley.”

Blearily, Pepper Mint’s eyes fluttered open. The sky was pale with the predawn light, and two mares blinked down at her. One had a long mane rich with all the colors of autumn and both her horn and wings, her eyes deep wells that seemed to fall straight to the root of the Nine Worlds, while the other, a pegasus, had a coat the color of a pale star and a powder blue mane, a scar faintly visible across her chest.

Belatedly, Pepper Mint bolted to her feet, swaying. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get in your way,” she said, only half-slurring.

“It’s fine,” the white mare said with a small smile. “Are you okay? You didn’t hurt yourself trying to get in, did you? Do you have a name?”

She put a hoof to the door and it opened easily, without so much as a creak. Pepper Mint sighed up at it and lowered her head, ears flat against her skull. “I’m okay. My name’s Pepper Mint.”

“I’m Asteria. I’m, ah… Princess Luna’s daughter, and this is Asphodel. She’s - well, she’s Death herself, but it’s kind of a long story.”

“Pepper?” a mare called, and from the sky landed a pegasus in the black body armor of the Consular Guard and her spear strapped to her back. “Oh, honey, were you sleeping out here all night? You weren’t trying to get in again, were you?”

A crowd had gathered, young alicorns arriving for class and passerby from the street, among them stood a sandy-coated, freckled earth pony adolescent with dirty blond hair in a braid down her side and an orange-coated blond with a cowgirl hat, a unicorn’s horn spiraling up just beneath it. Great, she’d been holding back a Princess and her daughter, too.

Dejected, her cheeks red, Pepper Mint passed between the pair and made her way to her mother. “I just thought… it was stupid. I’m sorry, Mom. I won’t come out here again.” Tears shone in her eyes and her tail tucked between her legs.

Mint Breeze slid her wing about her and nuzzled at her poll. “It’s all right, honey. You aren’t any lesser for it. I’m sorry you had to be disappointed.”

They started away, but Pepper Mint paused as a light touched her back. At the cliff face a few blocks away, Celestia was raising the sun, and the door caught the first rays. She turned her head back to look. Asteria paused as she was about to enter, watching Pepper Mint’s face. She shut the door and pulled Asphodel aside. “You can do it,” she whispered, her voice just carrying.

The mares behind them watched, the younger looking to see the little unicorn filly shrug free of her mother’s wing. “Oh. Kid, you’ve already tried the door - come back after you’ve found your Legend and-”

Applejack stuffed a hoof into her daughter’s mouth. “Hush, dear. Don’t interfere.”

Mint Breeze frowned down, her eyes worried. “Honey… I know you’re disappointed, but it’s okay. I love you, and we have each other.”

Pepper Mint didn’t hear her, though. She had eyes only for the door, shining in the light of the newborn sun. It did mock her with its stupid, immovable perfection, its ineffable divine aloofness. She hated it, she hated everything about it, and she hated how inadequate it made her feel, how much like a piece of mud scooped up from the earth and given pony shape. She pushed her mother’s wing aside and stamped her hooves, snorting.

With a scream, she charged.

She didn’t even care if she could get inside, she didn’t care if it opened. In that moment, the only thing she cared about was showing the damned door that she wouldn’t slink away, beaten and lost inside. The people watching didn’t matter, no matter how embarrassing and foolish this was. If she failed, so be it - all that mattered is that she tried.

Thoom!

The gong sound of her impact rippled across the watchers in a wave, stirring dust and ruffling feathers. For a moment, the door stood - and then, ever so slowly, toppled back.

Thoom!

A dazed Pepper Mint, seeing double, lay flat on the fallen door. A strange feeling filled her, a strength the likes of which she’d never known. She looked around, seeing two Phoebes and a dozen odd alicorn students staring back at her from the rotunda inside. Looking back, she blinked a few times and saw her mother, hooves pressed to her mouth, her eyes bright with unshed tears.

Stepping forward, Applejack swept off her hat. “Well. I’ll be. Looks like that was your Legend all along, kid. That door was your hill to climb.”

“What?” Pepper Mint asked, eyes wide.

Asteria got her nose under her and helped her up to her feet. She smiled like the summer sun. “You hit that door so hard, I think they heard it all the way back home in Moonrise.”

“What?” Pepper Mint’s eyes somehow got even wider.

“Legionnaire Mint Breeze?” Phoebe called. “Why don’t you and your daughter come with me? I think we have some matriculation details to discuss.”

“What?”

Mint Breeze stepped forward, laying a wing on her back and nudging her inside.

“I… I don’t understand. I don’t belong here, I’m not a…” Pepper Mint pressed against her, trembling. She looked down at the door, and realization dawned at last. The fire within her filled every part of her as her heart leapt for joy.

“You are. I’m so proud of you. My daughter - the alicorn.”

“I did it,” she whispered, and squeezed out warm, happy tears that stained her cheeks. “I opened it.”

“That you did. Now, come along,” Phoebe said. “You have the beginning of a long, long future to discuss.”

They put the door back after she moved on, but, strangely, Pepper Mint didn’t mind. Every day she walked from her mother’s apartment in the basement of Canterlot Castle to the door, all she had to do was push, and the door would open, no matter how much the sight of it made her heart seize up, as if afraid that one day it might fail to open and Headmistress Phoebe would realize her mistake. One night, after a late evening studying First Age alicorn artifacts in Wave Form’s class, she saw a group of foals peeking around the corner, staring up at the gate. Pushing it closed with a rear off, she trotted down and faced her old friends, eyes gleaming in the dark.

“Well? What are you all waiting for?”

They shared glances, and darted forward, charging up the steps.

Grinning, Pepper Mint shook her head and gazed back at the door. No matter anxious power it still had over her, she had beaten it, and never would she be barred from these halls. She smiled, put aside her fear, and made her way home, head held high.

Delilah's Birthday

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In the weeks since her daughters went missing, Delilah never hesitated to glance at her phone when it buzzed for her attention. Scrambling for her purse, she lifted it with shaking fingers and turned it on only to find a notification from a colleague wishing her a happy birthday.

She started to type a long rant about his insensitivity and his ignorance of her plight that listed in scathing detail everything that was wrong with him emotionally and professionally, including the long-standing sexual harassment controversy that should have ended his career years ago, but Aaron’s hand covered hers. Gazing up into his patient eyes, she sighed and left off. Taking his hand, she settled back in the uncomfortable chair to watch the drama before her rather than creating more at work. Part of her whispered that his crimes would come due, soon, but she ignored such fancies.

“I don’t see why you’re still bothering to hide him,” Victor growled. A big man, his hands roughened with farm work, he could growl quite convincingly. “You’re just making yourselves accomplices. I get it, if Marcus had been my kid, I’d have backed him up at first, too, but the evidence just keeps piling up. When are you going to admit that your son murdered our little girls?”

“Go to hell, Victor.” Mahalia Flores bristled from her place by her own husband. Though a slight Filipino woman, she could have been carved from ore with how little ground she gave to the bigger man. “Marcus is a good boy. He loved those girls. He’d as soon die in their place. I pray to God he’s all right, and that he doesn’t come home with this lynch mob waiting for him.”

“He’s a dropout and a jilted lover. It was a crime of passion!” Victor shook off his wife Mary’s attempts to calm him. “My baby girl is out there, dead and maybe worse, and I know you know something!”

“Naomi’s not dead,” Delilah said aloud before she could stop herself.

The argument broke off as the other parents stared at her and she wished profoundly that she could have reached back in time and shoved her fist down her throat. Jose, Marcus’ father, gave her a sympathetic look, while Victor and Mary looked livid. “Excuse me? Have you heard something?”

“I agree with Mahalia and Jose,” she said to cover up. “Marcus never would have hurt Naomi. If Daphne and Amelia were in danger, he’d go to help them. That’s why he stole all those guns.”

Mary rolled her eyes. “Oh, now this is just fucking theater, isn’t it? How do you know that, Delilah? We already know Marcus is a criminal—”

“He is not a criminal!” Jose shouted. “Cannabis should be legal.”

“Shit, I want that, too, but wanting something not to be a crime doesn’t make it any less of a crime!” Victor shouted back. “Even if he didn’t, he stole guns from his uncle! Unless your brother gave up those firearms willingly, Jose?”

“Maybe you shouldn’t have illegally converted AR-15s stacked up in the attic, then,” Delilah said, dry. Ideas and thoughts pressed at her so hard it ached, of monsters and a centaur and the world cracking, and she forced herself to breathe and think of equations, to twist a magnetic field in her mind and model the containment of particles hotter than the sun.

Victor sputtered, staring at her while she planted her head in her free hand to massage the headache. “How do you—? No, I’m not getting into this. For fuck’s sake, Aaron, if your wife is losing it, take her home and let her get some rest.”

Aaron gave him the steady, cool look that had served him well reporting in Sri Lanka and Lebanon. “I don’t make my wife do anything she doesn’t want to do, Victor.”

Before the argument could break out again, a deputy leaned through the door and glared at them. “Knock it off! I can and will put you in cells to cool off.”

“Has there been any word?” Aaron asked, and Delilah was grateful for his calm, especially when her head was fit to burst. “What did the sheriff have to share with us?”

The sheriff himself stepped inside. He looked around at the group, meeting each of their eyes. “Mr. and Mrs. Ocean, we found a pair of bodies in the river. Two girls, about the right age and size for yours. We hoped you might identify them for us.”

Delilah groaned softly, shaking her head. “It’s not them,” she said, gasping. The pain made it impossible to focus, impossible to contain the torn open scar that poured thoughts and ideas into her head. “Katie and Jessica Holmes. Providence. A man took them out in his van, he, he…”

For a moment, her awareness slipped out of her body. She saw Aaron catch her as she crumpled over, saw the looks of pity on the Flores and the Quinns. Something grabbed her attention, flickering green, and she looked beyond the walls, beyond the curve of the sky, to see a green aurora, the color of her eyes, grace the boughs of a tree of stars.

Returning to her body came with just as much nauseating speed, and once again she found herself grateful to her husband as she emptied her breakfast into a wastebin he’d had the presence of mind to fetch. He held her hair and rubbed her back, while Victor and Mary went to try and identify the bodies in their places.

Her body quaked and tried to heave even when she had nothing to give. The tension in her arms left them numb and tingling, and even after the storm passed she felt like the aftermath of a hurricane.

Looking up, Aaron found Jose holding out a water bottle. “Thanks,” he said, twisting the cap and offering it to Delilah. She nodded her thanks as well and swished it around, spitting out the first couple gulps before drinking it down. Sweat beaded on her brow.

“Would you like to join us in prayer?” Mahalia offered, her voice gentle.

“Unlikely,” a new voice said from the door. “She used to scream whenever the Catholic school nuns tried to make her pray. If those fucking penguins couldn’t make her bow to something she couldn’t see with vinegar, I doubt you’ll manage with honey.”

“Mother?” Looking up in shock, Delilah met eyes just as green as hers. Rail-thin, with her short blond hair just starting to go gray and clad in clothing that could be described as almost masculine, Henrietta cut a strange figure in the doorway. She seemed to defy age, her features weathered but not wrinkled, and she leaned against the frame and played with an unlit cigarette between her fingers. “When did… what took you so long? I haven’t been able to reach you for weeks and your grandchildren might be back there, dead!”

If they were dead, if she found out that day of all days, it might shatter what’s left of her soul. They weren’t, though. She couldn’t say that they weren’t and sound convincing doing it. Mahalia gave the woman a distasteful look, but reserved harsh words, letting mother and daughter have their moment. Aaron’s hand tightened on hers.

“I haven’t checked my messages in weeks. I came to see you and found out on the way in.” She glanced back down the hall. “They’re not, by the way. I already looked; just another pair of blond girls who were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Jose’s look matched his wife’s. “You don’t sound all that sorry for them.”

“Of course I’m sorry for them. The world deals us shitty hands and their parents are going to find they got the shittiest hand of all. If I took a moment to cry for everyone and everything I felt bad for, I’d be a wreck.”

“You never cried for Jason,” Delilah snapped. “Forgive me if I don’t believe you. Why are you really here?”

Her mother fixed her with a steady gaze. Even decades out of her roof, Delilah had trouble holding that stare, but fear for her children kept her steady. For once, her mother broke contact first, turning to put the cigarette in her mouth and then down again. “I mourned in my own way. I’m still mourning.” She didn’t look up when Delilah started to deliver an acidic retort, snapping, “Don’t. For fuck’s sake, Delilah, I’m here because we’re family, because it’s your and Jason’s birthday and because I didn’t want to be alone this time. I had a feeling things would be worse than ever and look how fucking right that intuition was.” She let out her tension in a slow breath. I’m sorry I didn’t check. You know how I get when it’s close.”

Delilah lowered her eyes and hot tears burned. The Flores couple excused themselves politely, while Aaron sighed. “Why don’t we all head home? There’s nothing for us here.”

“Yeah,” Delilah sniffed. She got to her feet and made her way to the door, trying to contain her sobs. Her mother’s bony hand on her arm surprised her, and she met her eyes. “Mom?”

Sighing, Henrietta pulled her in, eliciting a fresh wave of weeping. Her mother was stiff and hard, a terrible hugger, but Delilah overflowed, pouring out an ocean of pain and loss, and she needed her contact more than anything in that moment. Anything except her girls, at least. “Let it out,” she murmured, her own voice dry and cracked. “They’re alive. I know it right down to the bone.”

Sniffling, Delilah accepted a tissue from Aaron and rubbed her face. She didn’t let go of her mother’s hand. “You really think so?”

“Don’t you?”

“I don’t know what to believe.” She sighed. “Yeah, come on. Let’s go.”

The house felt empty. It felt like a shell. While she fetched drinks from the fridge, Delilah replayed the moment over and over again when she’d come home from the theater and found Naomi and Daphne there, the two heading off for a sleepover with Amelia. She remembered wanting to see her daughter, recalled an insistent premonition that she should check on them before they left, but she’d ignored it just as she’d ignored the warning during the play, to leave and drive off into the woods as fast as she could.

She hated herself for ignoring those warnings.

“Should we make up the guest room for two?” Aaron asked as she stepped into the family room. “If Greta will be joining us.”

“We’re on the rocks again. My fault, I was being a bitch,” Henrietta said, accepting a Diet Coke and popping it with a hiss. “I sent her a message about the girls and she responded with her sympathies, but she’s in New York and won’t be here for a couple days.”

“Well, you’re welcome to stay.” Aaron looked down at the coffee table and frowned.

Following his attention, she found to her surprise that she’d automatically set for six, not three. In addition to her own Diet Coke, she’d given Aaron a Dr. Pepper, then a sugar cane apple soda and one orange, the kind favored by Daphne and Amelia respectively, plus an extra apple soda between them. A little shaken, she sat down next to Aaron. “Mom? I think I’m going crazy again.”

“You’re not crazy,” Aaron insisted. “It’s perfectly natural.”

“You married a good man, Lilah. I’d listen to him.” Henrietta still hadn’t lit her cigarette, even if she played with it. “It’s not like it was back then. You couldn’t distinguish what was real from what wasn’t. Have you tried to find a door to the underworld lately?”

Delilah blushed and ducked her head. “No. I want to, though. Not the underworld – I’m convinced if I walked out that door, I could wander into the forest and find my way to some other world, though. If that isn’t crazy, I don’t know what is.”

Aaron squeezed her hand more firmly still.

“It’s genetic. Daphne had it for a bit. I had it. My mother and grandmother, all of my siblings, we all had it once in a while. Okay, sure, my brother disappeared during the war and no one ever saw him again, but it was fucking Vietnam and he was drafted and no one thought he’d stick around for that bullshit hell hole. So what if he was ranting about dragons and shit?” Henrietta gestured off into the distance. “In ‘79, when I was with IBM setting up mainframes at the University of Athens in Greece, and one of our local contacts freaked out when he saw me. He said I was the striking image of a fifth century saint venerated on his home island, who was revered for predicting deadly storms, and I did that test and found our genetics go right back there before meandering through Europe. It goes way back.”

“Having a genetic predisposition towards schizophrenia doesn’t make it better when it manifests, Mom.” She sighed, leaning into Aaron. “I’m not sure how much sense it makes for our genes to survive intact like that over sixteen hundred years, anyway.”

“Point is, you keep your feet firmly on the ground, let the storm pass, and go back on with your life. It’s our curse, the price we pay for being brilliant. I sincerely believe that all the work I did with the others at IBM and the work you’ve done in physics would be impossible if not for that. Daphne and Amelia are just as bright. Mark me, they’ll change the world.”

“If we’re so crazy, then why are you so certain that they’re alive?” Daphne bit back. “What, have you started to believe in the things we feel in your old age?”

Henrietta shrugged. “I’m certain, and you’re certain, too.”

“Crazy is a demeaning word,” Aaron said, “and I hate that you put yourself down like that. Yes, you have fits, and yes there seems to be a genetic component to it, but you’re not crazy. It’s a temporary illness that we’ve been managing ever since we married.”

“Fine, fine. I can’t argue with you, too, love.” Delilah grabbed tissue and rubbed her eyes. She stared down at it. “I should go get some stuff for dinner. Just because I hate my birthday doesn’t mean I can’t make a good meal for my family.”

“You sit still,” Henrietta waved her down and rose. “I’ll be the one cooking around here. You spoiled runts didn’t have to work restaurants like I did. Jason, would you—” A stricken look crossed her face, and she dropped the cigarette. She bent a shaking hand down to take it. “Fuck me.”

“Maybe you both should rest,” Aaron offered gently.

“Shit, Aaron, if I had to take a nap every time I saw my dead child, I’d be in a fucking coma.” Henrietta waved him off and went to grab her coat. “I’ll be back. I need some air after that, anyway.” She gave her daughter’s hand a squeeze, then made her way outside. They heard the click of a lighter as she went.

Delilah sniffed. “You know, Aaron? Strangely, that made me feel better. I don’t remember much of anything after it happened, just the waking dreams, and when I snapped out of it, Mother wouldn’t talk to me or anything. I accused her of being an unfeeling bitch.”

“Honey, we’ve talked about your mother, and I think we all know that she’s a flawed human being, as emphasized by today.” Aaron gave her a hug and pulled her in close. “I want to believe, too. I know my Amelia is resourceful, and that Daphne never gives herself credit for how smart she is, but…” He sighed into her hair. “The Everfree State Forest isn’t all that big. It’s bounded on all sides by little towns and roads. They can’t possibly be lost in there still, not after all this time. At the same time I know the counterarguments. No bodies? Marcus’ bike abandoned? Daphne’s clothes and phone left on a riverbank? Nothing from the dogs sent to sniff them out? If there were signs of disposed bodies, they’d have been found by now. It’s fishy, it triggers all of my reporting instincts ten times over, and I want to go out there with you and find them, but…”

“Yeah.” Delilah closed her eyes.

Once again, she found herself dissociating, parting from her flesh and blood in the warm circle of Aaron’s arms. She drifted up through the wood and wiring above their heads, through Daphne’s room, left untouched after two weeks, and through the attic, until she stood soaring over the house and the little town, her gaze piercing the woods behind the house. They seemed to wind away with impossible angles, as though a branch of some ineffable tree pierced space and time and thrust through their ordinary dimension to form pathways that wound into infinity. There, among the trees near the house, three girls walked, two blondes and one with hair the color of ink. They climbed up the hill to the fence, and started across the backyard.

Delilah gasped like a woman drowning, terrifying Aaron as she scrambled from the chair and out of his arms. She stumbled, hitting her ankle on the coffee table, but didn’t let it stop her as she limped to the back door.

“Delilah?” He got up, trying to catch for her. “Delilah!”

Finding her feet, she charged to the screen door out back and threw it open, while red and gold leaves swirled in a fresh wind. She expected to find nothing. She knew, intellectually, that she’d find nothing, no teens and child making their way from the white fence.

Except she did.

Except they were there.

Daphne and Amelia and someone she couldn’t see for her tunnel vision stood there on the back porch, staring at her in shock as her head screamed and her heart pounded. She felt sick, weak, nauseated and unsteady. She took them in, studying their features, noting with agony the healing scars and the skin burned golden by the sun.

It was just a delusion. It had to be.

“Oh my God,” Aaron called. “Daphne? Amelia?”

It wasn’t.

Aaron caught her as she fell, blacking out, but she didn’t stop plummeting. She fell through a world of particles, of the substrate of the universe, and into a place of shifting possibility and uncertainty. It was beautiful and strange, and in those undulating depths, chains grew taut, and whispers filtered in through the dark. A green light shone above, and she looked up to see Daphne illuminated by it, holding her hand out, looking more sad and beautiful than she’d ever imagined she could be.

“This isn’t a place for us, Mom,” she whispered. “Come on… let’s all go home.”

Grasping her daughter’s hand, she let her drag her back towards the light.

The water ran cold from the tap, but Delilah needed precisely that. She splashed her face with the freezing water and shuddered, fumbling for a towel and wiping her face. When she opened them, eyes so brightly green they seemed to shine in the dim light of the powder room stared back at her.

It was turning out to be one hell of a birthday.

Ironic, really, considering how long ago she had stopped celebrating Halloween, let alone the birthday that fell on it. Her heart pounded, and she gripped the sink, afraid she might throw up again, but nothing came, just dry heaves that never went anywhere.

“Mom?” Daphne’s knock came through the door. “Are you all right?”

Delilah winced as though the knocks had been at her head. Everything seemed too bright, too close, too real. She drew another breath and sighed. “I’m fine, sweetheart. I’ll be right out.” After taking a moment to straighten her hair and wipe her face, she turned and walked out. There, on the couch, sat her daughters, alive and... alive. They were alive.

Not that she’d ever doubted for a moment that they were alive. She knew, somehow, without knowing how she could know, struggling to make herself stop believing that she knew while deep down she just did. She wished that she could say it was mother’s intuition, but, frankly, she knew better.

It was hard to say which of her girls was the most changed. The two of them burned in a way that was almost unreal. Weeks ago, when they’d left, they’d been a self-absorbed teenage girl and a troubled, wide-eyed girl - now, though she saw a mature, battered young woman in Daphne’s eyes.

In Amelia’s, she found someone far, far older than herself looking back at her.

Aaron took Delilah’s hand as she stood there, unspeaking, and guided her to a seat at one of the chairs. She hardly noticed the dark-haired girl sitting between them on the couch, awkward and quiet after sharing her part of the tale, where she’d spilled in intimate detail the heartfelt talk she’d had with her youngest to save the entire world from her actions, to empathize with her loneliness, hurt, and guilt. She sipped an apple soda and stared at the floor.

Delilah threatened to seize up again, squeezing her husband’s hand hard enough that he winced. He bore it in silence, his own eyes as lost as hers.

He, though, hadn’t seen it. He hadn’t witnessed it in dreams. He didn’t bear the responsibility that she bore.

No matter how she tried to avoid it, Jason’s eyes swum back at her, mirrors to her own. When she turned her head, two children galloped through the house on all fours, laughing and snorting and nickering and all-around horse playing. They ran into a brightly lit living room not unlike the one she sat in with her family, and tussled until a sharp whistle brought them to a stop.

Their mother stood there, her blond hair curled tightly, as regal and poised as ever as she looked down at them with the same bright green eyes they all possessed. “Delilah, Jason, what the hell are you two doing?”

The kids disentangled themselves from one another and scrambled up to sit, beaming, the sun in their hair. At that age, there had been no distinguishing one from the other. Jason would grow his hair as long as he could before Henrietta had it chopped off, and Delilah got hers cut as well in solidarity with her twin. “We’re horses, Mom!” she chirped.

“Ponies,” Jason corrected, giggling.

“Well, stop it at once. You need to be people. I played games like that at your age, but my parents set me straight. The world’s not going to let you be horses.”

“Aww, but Mom!” Delilah went up to her and smiled, twisting in her little dress. “We were just playing. I promise we’ll grow up, but can’t we be kids now? It’s our birthday! Halloween, even! We even got costumes.”

Henrietta sighed and reached down to run fingers through her messy hair. “All right, but only for now. You especially need to be studying, Delilah – the world doesn’t take well to women who think for themselves, not yet. You won’t get allowances on your birthday in the real world, either.”

“That’s silly,” Jason said. “If anything, girls make the most sense.”

Henrietta laughed, but Delilah never forgot those words, even if they faded somewhat. The Thorsens never really forget anything, as others quickly found out. Even decades later, pain blossomed sharply, and but ten years later she returned from the car, her coat forgotten, to find Jason in her clothes, sitting on her bed and getting ready to go out with a wig and everything. He’d wept, breaking down, and she’d held her twin through his storm. They spent that Halloween together, indistinguishable again for the first time since puberty.

They’d gone home together, walking beneath the streetlamps, skirts swishing about their ankles. Delilah had looked at the person she thought of as her brother, taking in his smooth cheeks, the forms under his dress, even the way he shifted his hips as he walked. “So…”

“Yeah. It’s been going on for a while.” He rubbed at his throat, as if he could massage out the deepness in his voice.

“Why, though? I mean... I’m sorry.”

“I don’t know.” He looked at her, eyes unchanged, undimmed. “It’s how I see myself. I never stopped having the dreams, of the two of us together as mares, Delilah... I just can’t stop thinking about it, stop feeling like something went wrong.”

“You gotta stop thinking that way. I still get the dreams, but I’m focusing on the real world, Jason.” She took his – her? – hand and squeezed. “What about... I don’t know, I hear there’s treatments for that? Mom, she’s gay, she’ll be okay with it.”

“I haven’t decided. Sometimes... forget it.” Jason sighed, averting her eyes.

They didn’t speak of it again. Whenever she brought it up, Jason would turn away and talk about something else. Day by day, month by month, he grew more and more agitated, more distant.

It was Halloween of next year. She remembered walking home with her then-boyfriend Jack, only to stop on the side of the sidewalk. She clutched her heart, her eyes squeezing shut, and wondered if she was having an attack, if she’d gasp out her last breath there as the autumn leaves swirled about her feet. Every breath seemed to tear it in half, bit by bit, until half of her heart seemed to come loose. With green eyes wide and bright, she raced home, dropping her bag.

There was nothing they could do by the time she got home, and that was the last birthday she ever celebrated.

When she came back, her eyes blinking away tears and blurring the vision, she found Daphne looking at her knowingly, her heart going out to her mother. She got up, crossing the seemingly vast gulf between child and parent, and settled next to her and embraced her, burying her face in her mother’s shoulder.

The shock of contact sent more memories tumbling, of watching Daphne, who looked so like Amelia at that age, angrily assert that she had a best friend, a sister of the heart, only for Delilah to burst out with a welter of confused, angry emotions shouting her down. Guilt ate through her heart like acid, and she lowered her face into Daphne’s hair, tears pouring hot and fast.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “I was wrong. I was so wrong.”

She couldn’t take it back, though. She could have fixed everything if she’d just believed her, if she hadn’t torn her down like her mother had torn her down and her mother before that, if she’d refused to give up on her like she gave up on Jason, maybe things would could have been different.

“I know, Mama.” She sighed. “Don’t destroy yourself over it, please.”

Delilah tightened her grip about her daughter. “Too late for that. I love you, Daphne. I wouldn’t ever let you go again, if I could... if I could stop you.”

They stood like that for a long time, only to part with reluctance. Daphne lowered her eyes and sighed. “I wish I could stay.”

“Why can’t you? Even if you’re this… this goddess of the new world, why can’t you stay? Why can’t either of you stay. Amelia…”

In answer, Amelia swelled in size without any apparent effort, becoming a fully-grown woman wearing a foreign gown, displaying every bit of the promise of beauty and strength she’d shown as a girl. Her apparent age grew to her mid-twenties and stayed there. They’d stay there for ages to come. “I think it’s probably time I left the nest.” Even so, pain settled across her features as she stared out the window at a pair of blue jays perched on the sycamore. The ones from her journey, Delilah knew. “I’m not your little girl anymore.”

“Bullshit you’re not,” Aaron said, shattering his silence. He rose and came to crouch by her side. “Amelia, I don’t care what you’ve been through or how many centuries you have behind you, my little girl is exactly what you are.”

Amelia tried to answer, something tart and bitter, but she crumbled before him and started to cry, pulling into his embrace.

Leit Motif shuffled into a tighter ball, peering at the humans around her, and Delilah felt a profound sympathy for the way she held her hands, wondering what it would be like to have hooves of her own, just like she’d dreamed as a girl.

Daphne brushed a hand through her hair as she sat down. “I wish we could stay, but the world really does need us. This planet is changing, it’s going to become more and more magical as my Age waxes, and there’s going to be monsters and war and death. I have to stop that.”

“For a little bit, at least?” Delilah asked, taking her hands. “Daphne, honey… you were taken from me, please don’t just disappear.”

“I won’t,” she murmurs. “We’ll still be in touch. Oh, Mom… I’m so sorry.”

The front door opened, and Henrietta’s boots clopped on the front wood. They all favored boots that made that noise, Delilah realized, and no longer had to guess why. She emerged from the front, putting groceries down, and stared around at the scene, fixing on Amelia for a moment before meeting Delilah’s eyes. “Well? See? What did I tell you.” She popped a new cigarette from her pack, clicked her lighter, and took a long drag before letting it out slowly. “Happy birthday, Delilah. It’s your best one yet.”

Live Wire and the Temple of Doom

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The last heavy cable thunked smoothly into its jack, and Live Wire turned it until she heard the satisfying click of the lock engaging. After applying a bit of weatherproof sealant from her back, she flapped her wings and landed on the cloud hovering over the transformers.

Los Pegasus spread before them, lit only with the occasional set of electric lamps and quite a lot of oil. With a slight, satisfied smile, she waved her wing at the stallion next to her. “Let there be light, Mister Mayor.”

Rubbing his hooves together, the older pegasus stallion wearing the sash of office took the big, red lever in hoof and shoved with all his weight, pushing it up and completing the circuit at the main station.

Generators hummed to life, thundering as enchanted dynamos spun in steady power and the big thunder generators muffled in the cloud started sparkling, striking spiny towers.

All across Los Pegasus, newly wired lights flickered on, bringing gasps from groups of waiting citizens, the applause of stamping hooves.

“I can't believe it. Every cloud, every district, and we didn't even need to put a generator in every house.” The mayor turned to her, beaming. “After the whole mess with the alicorn amulet nearly sinking us, I thought L.P. was toast, but you've brought hope back for us. I still can't believe we don't need cables or wires or anything.”

Blushing, Live Wire ducked her head behind a wing. “It's just wireless transmission, with enchanted detectors to make sure no one flies into them and least-cost routing algorithms.” She giggled nervously. “I was just doing my job, Mister Mayor.”

“Well, you've done it beyond satisfaction. Let it never be said that a goblin didn't contribute to our fair city.”

The cheer in Live Wire shriveled up, and she bit back an angry retort, her accent slipping in. “Aye, well... s'pose I'd better get home. Been up late.”

“Of course, of course. The rest of your payment should clear by morning. Congratulations, Live Wire.”

He looked a little offended when she slipped from the cloud without so much as a farewell, but Wire didn't care. She didn’t understand how he could have known, unless maybe he had done a background check on her, but the Princesses had promised her a clean slate so that didn’t seem likely.

It ate at her the whole way, and when she landed on the puffy cloud outside her house, she checked her wings for molting. They were just fine, fluffy and a soft yellow utterly unlike her old mustard color, but it still troubled her as she walked inside.

“Mama!” A little bundle of orange and white slammed into her. “I saw the lights! They were beautiful!”

Laughing, Live Wire scooped in the little bundle of energy and nuzzled between her ears. “Thank you, Kindle. I was thinking of you the whole time, sweetie.”

“That's not true. You were thinking about balancing electrical loads.” Kindle giggled, then frowned as she peered more closely at her mother. “Mama? Your eyes are showing.”

Wire blinked, and took her phone out, checking her reflection in the black mirror of the screen. Sure enough, a pair of slit eyes looked back at her, and she groaned. “Well, there's the mystery of what gave me away solved.”

“Aww... but they're pretty, Mama. I wish I was a goblin.” Kindle kicked the air with her hoof, as if miming kicking a rock.

“I want to be a pony, Kindle. I've been one most of my life now, just like your Auntie Lightning Dust.”

“You were kind of a pony. Mostly a pony.” Kindle headbutted her barrel affectionately. “What's so wrong with being a goblin? Are goblins bad?”

Live Wire did what she did best: wibbled. “We-well, bairn, I mean, no-nothin' really, it's just that it really didn' suit me and I'm happy and accepted here.”

“So if I wanted to be a goblin, that'd be tidy?”

Wire sighed and tucked her in under her chin. “Yes, my wee precious flame. If you really wanted to be a goblin, I'd not be angry.”

Kindle said nothing for a while, hooves tucked up against her mother. “Could I hear a story, Mama? About when you were a goblin?”

Perking her ears, Live Wire smiled. “All right. Did you eat your dinner?” At Kindle's serious nod she nosed her to the stairs. "Go wash up and get ready for bed, then, I'll be right up.”

Live Wire paused in the living room, going over to the picture frames. They shifted through her photos every few minutes, and just then one had settled on a picture of her with the Crusaders in their caps and gowns from Canterlot U. Amelia was there, too, smiling in the form of a pegasus their size instead of an alicorn – even if she hadn't graduated or attended.

With warmth filling her, she trotted upstairs and entered her filly's room in time for her to tuck her damp body up on her fluffy cloud bed. She settled in next to her, smoothing her mane with a hoof.

“I've got the perfect story for you, my wee spark. It's the story of how I saved the world. It all began when I’d parted with Amelia – I know I’ve told you this story, right?”

“Uh huh. You called her a bad word.”

“I did! Now, let’s see…”

As Amelia’s sloop pulled away, my heart sank in my chest. For a terrible instant, I wanted very much to fling myself back up and join her. That was the cowardice talking, the terrible weakness that had plagued my entire bloody life and made me the mockery of everygob I ever knew.

Yet, no matter how much I reminded myself of all the terrible things she’d done to me, no matter how terrified I’d been over every waking minute, I couldn’t help but remember how she’d reached out to me, how she’d trusted me, how she looked at me like I mattered instead of being just another stupid lump choking in the depths of the Wand King’s mines.

Squeezing my eyes shut, I turned and threw myself off the side of the building, lightly beating my wings as I clung to the sloped surface of the Cup Palace ziggurat and prayed to all the gods that they wouldn’t spot me. Above, the storming feet of what seemed to be the entire enraged Cup Court charged through, trying and failing to catch the trailing ropes as Amelia’s little craft rocketed away on its lonely little engine. What flyers could get into the air with their banquet weighing them down took off after her, and the rest shouted in their liquid tongues.

I wished terribly that they would have all gone after her, sprouting wings if need be, but if wishes were horses, I’d have the entire Equestrian army crowding the steps of the palace.

Whatever they were saying, a ringing call from within caught their attention, and they piled back in, yawning and cracking joints. For a brief moment, I stared out at the lights of Mag Mell, its ten hundred spires like bare trees rising from the muck and starry Yggdrasil peering through the clouds. “Oh Odin, oh Zeus, oh Hela and Pluto…” I mumbled as I turned away from that wonderful breath of freedom and flapped back up, flying over to one of the high stone windows and crawling through.

Below, shadows danced in the throne room of King Xerxes, a wicked panoply of form and desire. Fires were banked in the great pits, but it only served to make the glow seem more hellish, the dancers more bizarre as a chant rose. Every thunder of the drums turned my bones further to jelly, and my ears were flat against my skull as I forced myself to stay and not to run as every instinct told me. Flash wouldn’t run, Maille wouldn’t run.

I was neither of those people, but, for once in my life, I had something holding me fast.

The chant grew louder and louder as more and more goblins in, raising their voices to echo off the ceiling, the very room itself a vessel to focus their desires. The statues of the gods built into the walls seemed to leer grotesquely in the flickering shadows, watching as two guards brought forth a struggling guard in black Wand armor, a hard-eyed fighter with boar’s tusks and a stiff bristle of hair. The mare who’d chased them into the building watched with the others, laughing and chanting along with them, completely lost to the magic, and only abject terror kept its influence from seeping into me. It was all I could do to stay put.

Xerxes didn’t say a thing – he didn’t need to. Raising the Cup, the sacred vessel, he tilted it and let wine pour from it, seeping down the steps in a torrent. The liquid leapt with the cries, jittering and dancing, and the Wand soldier struggled to pull away, his fear rising above the court for a brief moment before the wine sloshed about his knees and leapt up, coating him, drowning him in red.

When it subsided, boiling away into nothing, a slender, wobbling cervid trembled there, completely and utterly transformed, their eyes wide. Xerxes tilted his head, as if studying his work, and smiled languidly as the deer-like goblin was led away, another humiliated slave to the Cup.

I stuffed a hoof into my mouth to hide the whimpering, not daring to imagine what he’d turn me into if he found me. Casting my gaze about, I tried to spot the Crusaders, and moaned with relief as I found them watching from the upper gallery, stained with food from the banquet. Of course, that didn’t exactly help me get to them without getting caught, but I kept an eye on them as Xerxes raised his free hand.

But for the roar of the bonfires – and the galloping of my own heart – the room became silent in moments. My Cuptongue was nothing to write home about, but he did me the favor of enunciating clearly for his subjects as he spoke. “My children, my friends – the Wand King grows more arrogant by the decade. Nearly forty years he has been in power, and all has passed as Marduk, my dearly beloved predecessor, foresaw.”

He didn’t even bother to hide his smug smile, not with the Cup’s magic amplifying every word. Even I had trouble not falling into it. Quickly, I started thinking about circuit diagrams, designing them in my head and wishing desperately that I could just go back to soldering stolen chips onto homemade boards.

“We were right to break with the Wand, to cast away the Sword and the Ring. The Water Bearer is coming, and she will shatter Nessus’ crown. Ring and Sword will bow to her. And what of Cup? Cup will give her everything she wishes and more, and in so doing bind her with chains of love and desire. What Nessus thinks to win her through trickery, we shall command her through her own all too human weaknesses.”

A deafening cheer hammered me.

“To Aquarius!” he said, raising the Cup. This time, light poured from it, billowing clouds that filled up the sky. “To the Water-Pourer! Hers is the symbol of the vase, and are we not the vessel? We will be the instrument of the New Age, and reign forever supreme!”

“He’s insane!” I hissed, and quickly stuffed a hoof into my mouth to keep from crying out again. That, or he was so deluded by the Cup he thought it really could happen.

Maybe he was right, though, for all I knew. Amelia would upset the order of the universe once she took up the Bridle, if she was indeed the Water Bearer. I knew it in my bones.

On and on the cheer went. Goblins turned red in the face as they shouted to excess. I couldn’t help but remember my nain telling me about Marduk’s court when I was just a little goblin fluffball, how stately and beautiful it had been, how bright with colors that weren’t just crass reds and golds. A strange pity filled my heart as the rising clouds touched me, and for a moment it were as though I could see boyish Xerxes wrapping a cord again and again about Marduk’s once kindly face, already swollen and purple with death.

Shaking myself, I glanced down in time to see the court disperse and the Crusaders follow the streams of goblins leaving, and swallowed past a lump in my throat. It was now or never, and so I leapt and glided through the cloud, using it for added cover in the already shadowed room as I dropped down and did what I do best: blended into the crowd.

The trick is not to make waves, to subtly reassure everyone around you that you’re exactly where you belong and nothing more. Of course, I was no Amelia, and my teeth chattered and my legs knocked the whole way. Were it not for the fact that they were all drunk as goats, I would never even have dared in the first place.

It was completely barmy, but I was doing it. I felt like a proper tidy Wandie, then.

At least, I did, until I rammed face-first into a tiger.

A huge paw slammed down onto my belly and pinned me flat against the ground, and the thundering growl shook me like a leaf. Spots filled my vision and I squeezed my eyes shut, skin white with panic beneath my sallow coat.

The tiger growled something in Cuptongue, and it was all I could to squeak an apology in response. It growled again, and this time I caught it. “Who are you with?” he demanded.

Trembling, I pointed a hoof at the Crusaders, who had stopped at one of the doors to watch. Bodily dragged across the floor, I stifled my whimpers at each little bump in the stones I hit. The corridor was narrow, tapering to a point at the top, and the walls were covered with sanskrit and paintings of Cup figures that stared down at me disapprovingly.

“Is this yours?” He picked me up by the scruff and shoved me at them.

Hulking Apple Bloom turned her head, a bone-crunching ogre-pony with blood-colored eyes. “Is she?”

The hippogriff-thing that Scootaloo had become shrugged. “Sweetie? Do you remember her?”

“Girls, please,” I mumbled. At least my Cuptongue wasn’t as bad as I’d thought. My Ringtongue was nonexistent, and I’d been told that my Swordtongue sounded like someone dying of a terrible disease.

As the tiger’s eyes narrowed and my heart rose up in my throat to strangle me, Sweetie’s crystalline eyes lit up with an inner glow. “Oh. Right! Yes. She’s ours. I remember now.”

With a disappointed noise, her attacker dropped her from his claws in an unceremonious heap and stomped off. At first, I curled up in a paralyzed little ball, but Sweetie nosed me up and I stammered, “You remember me, Sweetie? What about Ame… Moonlight?”

Saying her name was still too hard.

“Not really,” she said in a strangely aristocratic tone. “That ruffian was getting on my nerves, though, and that was hardly any way to treat a young lady.”

“I suppose you can hang with us for a bit.” Scootaloo shrugged. With surprising strength, she hauled me in by one of my wings. We entered a dormitory marked by the powerful snores of goblins made somnolent by their potent food, and it was all I could do not to pass out from the stench of sweat and stranger fluids.

Just as I'd feared, my friends were totally sunk within the magic of the Cup, and worse, the Cup wholly taken by the will of a madman. If I weren't careful, I'd soon join them in blissful ignorance.

The girls led me to a wide, tree-lined balcony looking out over the city. Apple Bloom kicked a bird goblin with ragged feathers from its nest and claimed it for our own. It had the kind of must that your auntie Lightning Dust would work up after a long day, and the memory of that scent just about made me weep on the spot. Ironically, it wouldn't have given me away – where the Wand goblins under old Nessus were cruel and mocked weakness, the Cup reveled in it, and under Xerxes wallowed in it. I could have sobbed and moaned and rended my coat and mane and at worst I'd get a few critiques on technique, some mild irritation, but for once in my gods-damned life I shut my hole and swallowed my tears.

I'd cry plenty in the days to come, don't you fear none.

“So,” Sweetie said, sliding her serpentine tail about herself as she lay, “what's your name, then, person who claims to know us?” Her scales glittered like diamonds, and I was not one to miss how sharp her horn looked.

Rubbing at the lump in my throat, I let it relax before I spoke. “Wire,” I said, managing not to stutter. “My name is Live Wire. We were- we are friends.”

“Well, Wire,” Scootaloo, flexing her claws in the worn cushions, “why don't we remember you, then?”

Here I had to tread carefully. I didn't know the full extent of what the corrupted Cup had done to them, but I knew enough to guess. Anything that looked like direct disloyalty would rouse their ire, and it would shape their personalities to twisted versions of themselves. That led me to some possibilities, but I would have to be clever.

I'd have to be cunning, just like she had been.

“If I told you outright, it would spoil the fun.”

They turned suspicious stares on me, weighing me like a huckster. Unlike Amelia, I didn't exactly have the ability to effortlessly charm people and lie without a trace. Still, I had to do it, or I’d lose everything I’d come to care for. “Really! I swear it on Helheim itself and my hope of reincarnation, if I gave away the game now, it wouldn’t mean anything. It’d be like peeking at the last page of a book without finishing the rest.”

Scootaloo rattled her feathers. “I always peek at the last page of a book.”

“And I’ll bet you’re always disappointed, ain’t you?”

“Yeah. But reading sucks.”

Sweetie Belle laughed. “Maybe if you’d finish a book for once you’d see the value in it.”

“Well,” Apple Bloom said, snorting, “call me a little skeptical about this one. Go on, then, Live Wire. How’s your story begin?”

Clearing my throat, I moved between them, lifting my wings to shade the light yellow. “It all started when a princess kidnapped me from a dark and terrible castle.”

“Doesn’t that usually go the other way around?” Scootaloo whined.

“Yes, it’s subversive.”

“Ooh, I like subversion.”

“We rode a barrel from the Wand King’s halls, tumbling down the rapids, deep, deep into the Everfree Forest, where the sun has never shone and the night is so dark you can’t see the inside of your eyelids. Princess Moonlight let me free and promised to protect me so long as I remained in her service, and that’s when we ran into you guys.”

“In the Everfree Forest?” The giant Apple Bloom ground a stone into dust under her hoof. “What in tarnation was I doing there? That place is dangerous.”

The story was quickly becoming bloated, but I had their attention now, so I shifted my wings a bit and changed tack. “That’s part of the mystery. See, I don’t actually know why you were there – you never told me. However, I know how to find out.”

“Oh?” Sweetie buffed a claw and examined it. “How’s that, exactly?”

“Your memories have faded, but all know how memory is a part of the Cup’s magic, yes?” They all nodded, the knowledge of the Cup’s ways sunk into their brains. “You know, then, that there’s a healing spring here that can all but restore the dead to life. It can also bring one’s memories back, and then the game can really begin. The rest of the story won’t make sense without the context of what came before.”

The three looked between each other, before they rose. “Fair enough,” Scootaloo said. “I’m too heavy from dinner to fly far and I’m too wired to sleep, anyway.” She punched my leg and grinned with a mouth full of fangs. “Get it? Wired? Hah, I kill myself.”

After she and Apple Bloom stomped away, Sweetie slid up to my side, smirking. “I know you’re up to something – but you’re just so terribly cute that I want to see where this is going anyway.”

I blushed right down to my roots. I hadn’t even had my blood and Sweetie was years younger, but it was like she was channeling some flirtatious side of herself with that strange affectation. I walked out with her, and worried that her claws and scales might be noisy, but was almost more horrified to note that she made no sound that I could detect at all, and these are keen ears your mama has. The thought of her pounding on me in the dark and slicing through my delicate skin with her diamond-sharp claws and horn made me shudder from ear to tail tip. We wound through the mounds of sleeping bodies and made our way back out into the hall, watched over by the carved reliefs of ancient goblins and king.

(“Reliefs?”)

Imagine a carving kind of embossed from the wall, it’s like a slice of a statue, and they peered down at us, eyes really following us as we crept along, past the passed-out forms of sleeping goblins. Some had fallen asleep right at their posts, because the reign of King Xerxes was defined by its sloth as much as its terrible cruelty. I had to strain to remember the way back to the healing spring, which lay at the center of the ziggurat and had been the very feature around which it was built. We got lost along the way, because of course we did. It’s sometimes said that bravery is acting even when you’re scared, and, well, your mama’s one of the bravest folk around, because I was stark terrified the whole way in and out of the Temple, and I scarce could have remembered my own wiring, let alone the passageways in that dark, foreboding place.

It hadn’t always been like this. Old King Marduk would never have had goblins pretending to be walls to trap people, he’d never set up curses and sphinxes to impede folks. The Cup Palace had been a place of healing and joy in his reign, but under Xerxes…

Our first hint that we’d gone the wrong way came when I screamed my little head off. We’d come to a garden, one brushed with moonlight like a painter’s delicate strokes, and were startled to see corpses strewn along the grass, hung off the branches. Their bodies had been rent by burning claws and fangs, and I knew who that was.

“The Mor—” I shoved a hoof in my mouth to keep from saying their name. I knew from my parents’ bedtime stories never to say its full name aloud. Even today, after they’re no longer a monster, I still find it hard to say “The Morgwyn.”

(“What are they really like now?”)

She’s Amelia’s sister now! I don’t know if I quite understand it, but I’m glad she’s not alone. Anyway, Apple Bloom turned my way, giving me a suspicious look. If everyone weren’t dead already, we’d have been had. “Do you know what this is?”

I nodded, mute. Couldn’t speak until we’d gotten out into the hall again. “Th-th-they tried t-t’hurt Moonlight, and its pr-protector killed ‘em. We should go, b’fore anyone else finds this. I think I know how to go from here.”

“I think we should go tell someone,” Sweetie Belle said, her ears pinned back and her tail low. “If there’s a monster loose, someone should know.”

“No! No no no. Even if you did, it wouldn’t matter. This monster? It’s like smoke, it’s like - like a shadow. Ain’t no mortal’s going to bag it.”

“If this Moonlight’s protector is going around killing Cups, and you’re her friend, maybe we should turn you in, too?” Scootaloo brushed a talon against my chin and I squeaked.

“N-n-no!” I waved my hooves. “I swear, I swear on me name, I had naught to do with it!”

Our chatter must have caught someone’s attention, because I heard heavy feet tramping up the nearby stairs, and I dove off with a squeak behind a statue. The others remained as an upright elephant and a human-looking goblin came down the corridor, the two guards glaring at them. “What’s this about, children?” the elephant asked, their tone a bit more tolerant then their irritation suggested.

I squeezed my eyes shut, anticipating betrayal.

“There’s bodies over in the garden,” Apple Bloom said after a moment’s delay. “I think there’s some kind of monster loose in the building.”

My eyes opened and I followed their progress in shock as they went to the archway and checked. “Ganapati!” the elephant swore. She turned her head. “Go tell Priyana at once! The Cup Knight must be informed.”

“We were just on our way to see her.” Sweetie said. “I think she said she was at the healing spring, but we got kind of lost.”

The second goblin pointed their directions and poked them with the butt of his spear to get them moving. Shaken, I fell in alongside them, staring at Apple Bloom as we ran. She shrugged her massive shoulders. “I want to know who I am, too. Besides, I thought about turning you in, and it just felt really wrong. I don’t know how to put a hoof on it.”

“That’s proper tidy of you, Apple Bloom. You always were decent.”

“How about me?” Sweetie asked brightly, running shoulder-to-shoulder. Am I proper tidy?”

I seriously didn’t know how to answer that, so I left off. Following the now-familiar corridors down to the heart of the temple, I found myself strangely thrilled through my fear. We rounded a corner and that’s when everything went to hell.

(Kindle gasped. “Did you get caught?”)

No – worse. We passed through a corridor with elaborate reliefs of dancing people, partaking of drugs and alcohol and all kinds of recreation, and that’s when my wee hoof stepped on a plate that didn’t quite hold me up. It ground into the floor, and one of the figures on the wall made a noise like pf-f-ft! I felt a prick on my neck and pulled at it to find a dart.

“Oh, Hel,” I muttered, even as my eyes started to swim, unfocused.

“Wire? Wire!” Apple Bloom caught me, and I slumped against her. It didn’t hurt, the poison. Actually, it felt rather good. I started to see things, the world peeling away, as I found myself back in my mother’s kitchen. She’d been a harsh goblin, your grandmother, a pony who brooked no nonsense and bore scars from defending her house and her children. She hated me for being a coward, or so I thought, so when she looked at me with such love and loss, it stung to my core.

“Ach… where you gotten yourself off to now, my wee canary?” She pulled me into her embrace and stroked my mane back, sighing.

“M-maman?” Weary in every part of my body, I leaned into her, letting her wings close about me as tears welled up at the corners of my eyes. “What do you mean? I’m right here.”

“No y’ain’t. Bangin’ around strange places, getting yourself lost and falling in with danger… it’s so not like you. I wanted to keep you from all of that, little Wire.”

“Because I’m weak, and worthless,” I moaned against her, burning with shame.

“You could stand to be less spineless, sure, but you ain’t worthless, Wire. You got value, in your craft and in your heart.” Mother sighed against my mane. “Losing you… it’s a reminder of just how much of a fool I’ve been. You’re delicate, and precious, and I wanted to protect you, but I just got so angry. I never shoulda yelled at you. All I did was make you more timid, when I should have been kind and helped you work through your fear.”

Sniffling, I started to cry. “I’m sorry…”

“Shh, none of that now. We’ll talk when you get home – even if that won’t be for a while. Take a deep breath, now, Wire.”

“Huh?” I gasped as water enveloped me, bringing me back. More than the shock was the magic. It seeped into my, draining away the poison, and by the time I pulled myself gasping and bedraggled from the water, I could see clearly once again. The Crusaders flopped out with me, and I stared at them in the chamber of the healing spring, cut from the natural rock.

They gasped and sputtered, fighting their way back and spraying us as they shook themselves out. A dripping Sweetie, her scales prisming, gaped at me and pulled me into a sharp-edged hug. “I’m so sorry! It was like I was channeling my sister or something!” She stared down at her shiny leg and frowned. “Wow. Is this really me?”

“For now.” I sniffed and hugged her back. “I missed you girls. We can’t really worry about that right now. We gotta go.”

“Yeah, we should catch up with Moonlight,” Scootaloo said, shaking out her wings.

“What? But I just said she abandoned us! She wouldn’t come back with me to save you guys.”

Apple Bloom nodded. “I believe you, Live Wire - but she’s out there all alone, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders aren’t going to let some filly go. She’s upset and scared, and I ain’t gonna blame her for that.” She bumped her hip against mine – which fair knocked me to the earth – and smiled toothily. “Isn’t that right, fellow Crusader? No one left behind! We’re all scared, right? Maybe she wasn’t cursed like we were, but she needs her friends just like we needed you.”

I gaped at them as they did a little chant, and hesitantly accepted their outstretched hooves. “I… I… o-okay. Yeah.” I sniffed and hugged them. “Thank you for saving me.”

“That’s what friends are for!”

A much older, more mature voice interrupted our group hug, clearing her throat. We turned, cowering in shock as we beheld the Cup Knight herself, Priyana. No goblin she, but a yazata – a Shining One, a semi-divine being with her perfect features and her flawless wings – and when she approached in gilded armor she seemed as implacable as the mountain of her birth. She stared down at us with cool indifference. “Why are you out of bed?” she demanded.

“We were looking for you so we could tell you about these dead bodies in an upstairs garden, and—”

“Liar.”

We quailed as she met each of our eyes, the grip on her ornate cup as much a promise of her retaliation for slights as a religious gesture. “Perhaps there are bodies that I should look into, but you will not deceive me by hiding your ulterior motives.”

It’s funny, really – I’ve harped on about how much of a coward I can be, how I’m scared of everything. Not like you, Kindle. You’re brave, like your daddy, and such things come easily to me. When I’m brave, I can still feel it, every little needle of fear digging into my flesh, but I sort of become lost to it, letting it wash over me as I pressed up trembling in front of the others. “Knight Priyana? I’m sorry, but I’m here because we’re the ones who broke into the Temple earlier, running from those Wand goblins. We didn’t mean to intrude, we just ain’t got nowhere else to go, and I promise we didn’t steal anything or kill anyone, we were just trying to get away and then my friends here were taken in by the magic of the banquet and turned to goblins. I just wanted to help them remember who they are and leave.” I threw myself to the stone before her. “Have mercy, I beg you. All the worlds know you for a good Knight, please, I swear we’ll make no trouble as we go.”

The other stared at me while Priyana gazed down with those eyes of hers, like smooth gems. “There was another with you who did steal an air sloop.”

“Moonlight abandoned us,” I whimpered, hurt as much by the memory of Amelia’s betrayal as by fear. “I came back, even though I could have flown away, because these are the only people I have in all the Nine Worlds who really care about me.”

“Aww, Wire…” Scootaloo murmured. They all huddled in around me, as if in protection, and my poor little heart, racing like a rabbit, swelled.

Priyana gazed between the four of us, giving away nothing. “By my oaths to King Xerxes, I am to turn all intruders over to him,” she said at last. We faltered, but she interrupted our terrified bleats, “Yet, I am bound by older oaths still. In their contradiction, I must judge the proper course of action, and in this moment I judge my obligation to guide and heal the sick and injured to be of greater import.” She pointed with a wing towards a side entrance. “Go – and if you are caught again, I must reassess my feelings. Oh, and you should know… she was taken by the Wand Airship. If you hurry, I’d imagine you can catch them.”

I wept in relief, sniffling. “Oh, oh gods, bless you…” Gathering myself, I started off with the others, then pause. “Knight Priyana? I’m sorry, it’s just… if one of your poison darts gave me a vision, that’s not something that actually happened, is it?”

She met my eyes, her own as still as the pool behind her. “No – but that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t real. Hurry, children. The King will consider your unwarranted use of the spring theft, and he will extract that debt most severely.”

Swallowing, I led the way. “Come on. We’re going to need to find a fast airship. The Wand Castle is a lumbering beast and we can catch up with it. I think I know where it’s heading, anyway.”

We raced from the chamber, pausing to listen at corners and let groups of Cup goblins go by. It took some doing, but we snuck out to the entrance. I’d promised Priyana not to cause any more trouble, and I wouldn’t be stealing one of the temple’s ships. No, we’d go to one of the towers and nip one of the ones anchored there. On our way out, I turned my head to stare back up and it, and felt a shiver down my spine. It seemed as if someone was watching me, but I pushed it aside, and galloped away with my friends.

There’s a whole story I can tell of how we caught up to the Wand Castle, how we beat up Fetter during the confusion of the Morgwyn’s attack, and fought with Lyra against the hordes of demons and Wand goblins after we turned Leit Motif into a human, but that’ll have to wait until another night.

Kindle's wide eyes gleamed in the lone night light. “Wow. And that really saved the world?”

“Mmhm.” Wire nodded. “I knew what humans were, so with the Wand we were able to turn Leit Motif into one, and she went and talked Amelia down. I was one of many, but... yeah. I helped save the world.”

Kindle smiled and curled into a little ball, her chin on a pillow. “My mom is so cool. I wish I were a goblin. That'd be tidy.”

Lightning split the air and Wire jumped, but Kindle, a pegasus-born, only shifted, yawned, and went to sleep, lulled by the distant rumbling as a storm cell moved in off the sea.

It was loud enough that she'd tucked her girl's blankets about her withers and made her way to her room before she realized that some of those crashes were the rhythmic pounding of her door knocker. Frowning, wondering who could be visiting at this late hour, she popped down and pulled it open only to look up in surprise at a creme alicorn.

Amelia smiled, her head sheltered in a hood as rain pattered outside. “Hey there, Wire... sorry to bother you so late, but I just got in. I hope I'm not troubling you.”

The sadness in Amelia's eyes always bothered her. She wondered if anyone could see it. In some corner of herself, she missed that manic little girl, even if she'd nearly gotten her killed.

Glancing over at the clock that read eleven, she sighed. “Well, having a filly's made my bedtime a whole heck of a lot earlier than it used to be. Come on in, I'll make you a cuppa. It's not like you to pop in unannounced.”

“Ugh, you're making me sound old.” Amelia laughed and joined her in the kitchen. “I sent a text, but I think it got lost between Mag Mell and Equestria. I should have double-checked on the other side, but I was rushing right here.”

Taking a few scoops, Wire put the tea in the kettle and set it to heat. At Amelia's words, she splayed her ears back. “Now I'm really worried. What is it, Amy?”

“Nothing, I hope. I had a terrible feeling and a nightmare, and when an alicorn has a nightmare it's worth looking into.” She frowned. “If you haven't noticed anything, it's probably fine. It involved Xerxes. I was upside down in a strange hall, and he sat on a chair on the ceiling and grinned down at me, the wound in his chest black. He lifted the Cup towards me and it started pouring blood.”

“Why would that matter to me?”

“Because he said that all debts must be paid, and I felt a terrible sense of danger for those closest to me. Of everyone I really care about, all of them are powerful alicorns – save you.”

Wire stared at her, the tea forgotten.

“It was probably just a nightmare.” Amelia sighed. “He was the first person I ever killed, and even if he probably deserved it, that's a rough thing for a little girl to live…” Her ears pricked forward. “Wire? What's wrong?”

Lightning peeled again outside.

The paralysis in Wire's limbs snapped as a cry bubbled up in her throat. “Kindle! Kindle!”

Darting upstairs, she threw open the door to her daughter's room and sighed in relief. There was a bundle in bed, right where she left it. Amelia came up behind her, hoof raised uncertainly. Then her eyes narrowed. “Wire? Could you please check on your daughter?”

Fear stole back into her, turning her limbs to lead, but she made herself go to Kindle's side and tugged at the blankets. “Kindle? Baby?”

Lightning crashed again and she screamed as a scaly blur lashed out at her, only to be impaled on a beam from Amelia's horn. The sizzling light faded, revealing a snake writhing on its back on the floor, pierced through. Amelia pinned it down and growled in Cuptongue. “Where is she?”

“She belongs to the Cup Reversed!” the snake hissed in kind. “False Bearer, deceiver! Murderer! Wire's debt is paid.”

“Wire? What is it...?”

Wire couldn't speak. She couldn't even cry. Her heart, her spark, had been taken. She met Amelia's eyes.

“I'm sorry,” she murmured. “If I'd gotten here sooner, maybe…” She took a deep breath. “Wire? I'm going to get your daughter back. I promise.”

Looking down at the serpent, watching as it slowly expired, Wire said nothing. Eventually, she turned and went to get her bags packed. Amelia had thrown her cloak back on and was preparing to leave, but Wire found her voice and called to her. “Wait. I'm going, too. I-I’m not afraid.”

Offering her a troubled smile, Amelia brushed her side with her wing. “I wouldn't have it any other way – a foal needs her mother. Let's go. If we should start anywhere, it's the Cup Palace.”

“Oh gods. Okay, okay.” She swallowed. “We should get her father, too. He’ll want to help.”

“Really? Well, if you think he won’t get in the way, sure.”

With that, they closed up. Wire left a message for anyone contacting her, and, spreading their wings, they took off, leaving Los Pegasus behind.

Live Wire and the Last Crusade - Part 1

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Amelia jolted from a nightmare, the moon casting a long rectangle across her motel bed, and panted with a hoof to her barrel. This in itself was a regular occurrence, but she couldn't turn and call out to Morgan. As much as she missed her twin, she didn't want to bring her into this. She had to look after Mag Mell in her absence, so fragile was their work in reforming it.

It took a long time for the pain to go away, and the whole while she sighed and tucked her pillow between her hooves. With sleep eluding her and nothing but the faint rattle of the room's air conditioner to distract her, the quiet sobs wracking Live Wire in the next bed over became impossible to miss. Laying her ears flat against her skull, she lifted her head. "Hey. Wire."

She pulled her pillow from her teeth and sniffed, her nose stuffed. "I'm sorry, Amelia. I didn't mean to wake you."

"No, it's fine. I don't need any help to sleep poorly."

Wire rubbed at her nose. "We know what's keeping me up. What's… what's on your mind?"

Amelia stared down at the bed. Her hooves flashed to hands in her memory, hands gripping a torn-off iron light fixture as if it weighed nothing. "The first person out I killed. The King of Cups."

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"You of all people have no reason to be sorry for me."

Wire shifted in her blankets and leaned across the gap with a wing. "Of course I do."

"Don't." Amelia flinched back from it. "Please."

Wire pulled it back and sighed. "Okay. Just… try to sleep at least. I will, too. For Kindle."

"Right."

They settled back down under the sheets, and Amelia tucked herself into a tight ball of wings and hooves. The moment her eyes shut she saw his face. She saw herself plunge a metal rod through a small, golden-haired man's chest and watched the lights leave his eyes before the wooden Cup fell from his outstretched fingers to bounce on the floor.

She watched it again, and again, and again, and sleep never found her. Somehow, she didn't think that Wire had managed to find it any better than she.

Alighting on the doorstep of this cloud home of all cloud homes was no easy task for Live Wire. Below the cloud neighborhood that drifted lazily a mile above the ground, Ponyville sprawled from its quaint old village to the bustling, modern downtown that had sprung up along the river. Drawing a long sigh, she knocked a hoof against the door and waited.

"Coming! This better not be another solicitor." Hooves thumped up to the door, and it opened to reveal a disheveled pegasus stallion with a soft green coat and a white mane with a minty stripe, his eyes bloodshot despite it being the middle of the day. "I swear to Celestia, if you're here to sell me goblin knives, I'll - holy shit, Wire?" He clapped a hoof over his mouth at the swear and looked around. "Is Kindle here with you? It's not my week, though, is it?"

Wire's ears laid flat against her skull. She was too worried to be annoyed. "That's why I'm here, actually, Spear Mint." She rubbed her nose, tears springing to her eyes unbidden as her throat tightened. "Oh, Hera and Artemis…"

He pushed the door opened the rest of the way and stepped out, wings rising at his sides. "Live Wire, what's wrong? What happened to our little girl."

"Some bloody cythraul took her!" Wire whimpered as the memory of last night burned into her mind, the snake writhing on her daughter's bedroom floor as it died. "Cup Goblins. They… they wanted to hurt me for what I did to them when I was just a kid. Oh, Spear… I'm so worried, I'm sick right down to my heart."

The color drained from his face. Without thought, he pulled her into a hug. "Oh my stars. Kindle… what did the peace officers say? Did you contact them?"

Wire nodded weakly. Despite the distance that had grown between them, she could take comfort in their shared grief. "I called them this morning, and they're going to search across Equestria, but… but my friend knows how those people operate. She doesn't believe that the mortal authorities can find her. That's why I hurried here to talk to you in person. I want your help."

"Help? Wire, slow down." He pulled back, hooves against her shoulders. "What do you mean? You don't think the Equestrian Safety Bureau can find her?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so. We're on our way to the Hippocrene on the human side of Earth for support, but I don't plan on sitting around and waiting for them, either. It's my fault this happened, so I have to do something about it."

Spear Mint looked uncertain at first, but he nodded after a moment. "Okay. You're going into danger for our little girl, so you can count on me to have your back. Whenever we need to go, I'm there." He glanced around. "What about your friend? Is this someone you knew when you were still, uh, a goblin?"

"Uh, yes, but it's… complicated."

The air shimmered as Amelia appeared beside her and pulled back her hood. Spear Mint's eyes widened as he took in her great height, wings, horn, and cat eyes. His voice came out in a squeak. "Oh, Luna and Celestia help me."

Amelia rolled her eyes. “I’m sure, if they were here, the only help they’d give would be to tell you to chill out, Spear. I’m here to help find and rescue your daughter.” She extended a polished hoof. “Amelia Ocean, aka Morning Star, aka the villain of the Battle of the Canterhorn.”

He looked at it as though she were about to strike him with it, but to his credit he swallowed and wrapped his hock in a quick shake. “My mother always told me never to judge a pony by their coat, and I suppose if we’re dealing with goblins, we’ll need all the firepower we can get. Can’t beat an alicorn for that.” He looked to Live Wire, brushing her side with a wing briefly. “I don’t understand, though. Why would the goblins of the Cup seek revenge? I admit, I don’t exactly have a fantastic grasp of politics in the other worlds, but I was under the impression that they were our allies?”

“The current King of Cups is among our strongest allies at the moment, especially when it comes to operations in the developed world of Earth. I think we’re dealing with something new, and it’s deeply concerning. Our first step, after visiting the Hippocrene to pick up some things from Naomi Quinn, is to visit the new Cup Palace.”

“Where is that? If we’re going to the human world, it isn’t in Mag Mell?”

Live Wire shook her head. “No, Spear. It’s, well… the new King of Cups, like the current King of Swords, is a human. It’s rare, but sometimes the Cup chooses bearers like that.”

“I guess the previous one was human, too.” He glanced over at Amelia with some suppressed heat.

It stung, but Amelia didn’t let it get to her, facing him calmly. “I have never been human. Only in form, and only for a brief period of my life. My family roots go way, way back.” She ruffled her wings, sighing. “I apologized to your sister, so I suppose it’s only fair. I’m deeply sorry for the role I played in hurting Equestria. I wish terribly I could take it back, but thinking that sort of thing walked me down the path that brought me to that moment, so doing things like this is how I prove that I’ve changed. Please, let’s not start this journey off with antagonism.”

“You talked to Silver Mint?” His eyes widened.

“She wanted to murder me, yes. It’s complicated, we had a talk. I hooked her up with a great therapist.” She gestured out with a wing. “We should go, though. I suggest making sure someone will be able to watch your house, but I don’t think you’ll need to bring anything.”

“Wait!” He charged into the house, wings flapping as he leapt to the second level. He came back a moment later with a pair of saddlebags, a collapsible goblin steel spear tucked in a strap, and a stuffed, winged serpent in his mouth. After sticking it into his bags, he swished his tail nervously. “Kindle forgot Noodle the last time she was here. I want to make sure she gets her back.”

Live Wire worked her jaw, staring at him for a moment with her heart in her throat before turning to Amelia. She spread her wings, but Amelia hadn’t moved, her eyes lost. She knew that look, having seen it in shellshocked goblins all her life. Nudging her gently, she whispered, “Amelia?”

Shuddering, Amelia pushed her back. “Sorry. I…” She sucked in a breath. “Sorry. Let’s go. I know the way.”

With that, she tucked her wings and leapt off the cloud before Live Wire could ask what was wrong. Spear Mint came up to her side, and the two of them spread their wings, leaping off after Amelia’s shrinking shape. She looked to him as they flew, their wingtips almost touching as they glided towards the onrushing darkness of the Everfree, remembering the first flight she’d taken with him long ago, after she’d graduated. The fading sun caught in his mane, and she remembered, too, that night curled up together when they’d made Kindle. The determination on his face as he flapped his wings and leveled out with her spoke volumes.

“Is she going to, ah… is she going to be okay on this trip?” he asked over the wind. “Her reputation painted her as a much scarier individual than what I’ve seen so far. For a moment, she was, like, as fragile as glass.”

“There ain’t no one I know who can be more terrifying and vicious than Amelia when she puts her mind to it.” Live Wire turned her head to follow her streaming aura of dawn, with suggestions of her sister’s verdant aurora. “I know for a fact that whatever bloody bastard we’re facing is going to regret it for as long as they exist. I… I know she carries a lot of pain, too. We haven’t spoken much over the years, but the events that made her into the nightmare over Canterlot warped her in a way most folk can’t imagine. I think she’ll be okay, but… I don’t honestly know, Spear. We just have to get our daughter back. That’s all I want.”

He swam closer in the air, brushing a tear off her cheek with a wingtip, and gave her a determined smile. “We will. No matter what we have to face, I’ll… I won’t screw up this time. I promise. I’ll go through Tartarus and back if I have to for our little girl.”

Live Wire couldn’t help but smile, quelling her tremors as she put on a burst of speed to keep up with her old friend.

Never in all their years had either Spear Mint or Live Wire seen the human world except in pictures. Flying over it, shrouded from sight and radar by Amelia’s magic, they flew over dense urban and suburban areas that coated the horizon. They’d heard that the population of the human world had swollen to over ten billion souls in the course of a century, but it seemed unreal to two ponies used to soaring over hundreds of miles of tractless landscape with scarcely a few villages to break it. They’d heard that the entire population of their world had passed one billion only a short while ago, and showed no signs of growing significantly beyond that. By all reports, humanity would top out at around eleven before slowly declining, and it seemed unreal.

“To be fair,” Amelia said as Live Wire voiced these thoughts, “a lot of humans aren’t really human. So many dead from the Age of the Gods have wound up reincarnating into human bodies, trapped in this world alone, that we have no conception of how many actual humans there are versus the sleeping souls of ponies, deer, griffons, centaurs, the awakened wolves called vargr, and so on.” She beat her wings, the three of them appearing as warped outlines in the night sky. “That’s the main purpose of the Hippocrene these days. Amelia’s society exists to find and help emigrate these lost people to safety. Equestria and her neighbors have got plenty of room.”

“At what cost, though?” Spear Mint asked, gazing down at the seemingly endless lights of a Massachusetts’ night. “How many are there? A billion, two? What’s going to happen to the wilderness.”

“Not my department. They’ve got plans, though.” Amelia banked as the lights of a huge city, one at least as big as Fillydelphia in the present day, came into view, spiraling down towards a large warehouse and parking lot that sprawled between dense trees. “We can’t land at the headquarters. Even with my concealment efforts, alicorns like me are a beacon. It’ll draw trouble they don’t need to deal with.”

Live Wire and Spear Mint descended with her, landing with a clatter of hooves along the asphalt. The distant sounds of an endless stream of cars on the nearby expressway were muffled by the trees, but even so Live Wire pinned her ears flat and wrinkled her nose at the scent of exhaust. She’d grown up in a fortress far outside Mag Mell, so she’d never really been much of a city mare. Her cloud house outside Los Pegasus had been as close as she’d dared.

The garage doors on one part of the warehouse opened, revealing a familiar earth pony mare with radiant red locks spilling down her side. She hugged Amelia at once, almost cracking bones. On her thighs her mark revealed two strands of wheel spreading seeds.

“Miss Golden Fields,” Spear Mint said, his voice still tight with worry. “It’s an honor.”

“That your pony name, Naomi?” Amelia quirked an ear, smiling down at her. “It occurs I’d never heard what you all picked.”

“I go by either, really. I figure I might as well, especially since I’m raising foals.” Naomi swatted her and laughed, going to give Live Wire a more chaste embrace. They’d never really known one another, but she’d hung out with the Cutie Mark Crusaders enough to get to know the whole group. “Wire, Spear, I’m so sorry. If any of my babies were missing or kidnapped, I’d be absolutely frantic. You have our full support.”

Live Wire sniffled, hugging her back. “Thank you. I’m… I’m grateful for any assistance.”

“Has there been any word since we last talked?” Amelia asked, her own ears pinned back. “Anything from the seers?”

“Not a peep. We’ve gotten word out to Daphne, and she’ll head to her tower to see what she can find in the waters, but our enemies know about her. She constrains their movements a lot, but they’ve got all sorts of tricks for evading our divination efforts.” Naomi gestured to the garage, and a sleek, black jet rolled out. Equestrian magic and human engineering combined into a faintly ominous triangle of angled armor. “I think your idea of talking to the Cup King is best. We’ll follow up in other places, of course - if any goblins back in Mag Mell or elsewhere know what the Cup Reversed is, or any other suit reversed, we should be able to find out.”

“I didn’t know Marcus was rated to fly a jet, since he usually flies himself around,” Amelia said, whistling appreciatively as she flapped around the craft. “Nice piece of hardware. I can practically taste the spells woven in.”

Naomi cleared her throat. “Marcus, actually, is already on assignment at the Cup Palace. Some volunteers who were visiting the Boston headquarters wanted to get involved.”

“Volunteers?” Amelia landed, turning from the plane to look at Naomi quizzically.

With a flash of light green magic, three figures pounced on her from behind. One, with four wings and claws, wrapped around her neck from above, while another, pale and with a horn, tackled her from the side. A third, powerfully built, wrestled her down from the back.

Amelia squawked, and it might have taken her completely if not for Celestia’s own strength and memories coursing through her. She twisted in place like a serpent, locking three powerful limbs about necks. The three were no slouches, though, squirming into a new position as a wave of green magic slammed in.

Amelia’s horn glowed a vibrant shade of green with a white hot core, but it faltered as she gasped. “Girls!”

Live Wire’s eyes dilated, taking in the forms of the three mares who had once been her best friends.

“Hey Amelia,” Scootaloo said, alone of them not to have a cutie mark, her fangs bright.

Apple Bloom, her thighs marked with a towering tree bole bare of branches, her red mane unbound, grinned. “Pinned ya this time.”

“Yeah. We got you good.” Sweetie Belle, her curls a little frayed by her scuffling, giggled. Her tail swished, drawing the eye to the musical notes adorning her sides.

“Only because I let you,” Amelia huffed, squirming in a truly awkward position. Spear Mint coughed and averted his gaze. “You jerks. What are you doing here?”

“We were visiting Miss Quinn, and when she mentioned what happened to Live Wire, of course we weren’t just going to sit by in Boston and do nothing.” Scootaloo released her, claws clicking on the pavement. She turned and pulled Live Wire into an embrace, all four wings wrapping around. “We’re so sorry, Wire. It’ll be like old times. You had our back, now it’s our turn to get your back.”

Wire was getting choked up with all of these reunions, hugging each of them in turn. “I… I couldn’t ask for a better crew.”

“An army would be nice.” Spear Mint scuffed the asphalt, smiling. “I won’t say no to anypony who wants to help, though. Or, uh, anygob.”

Scootaloo shrugged and smiled. “I still live in Equestria most of the time. I may be a goblin, but who cares? So is Marble Stone, and she looks more like a pony than I do. Live Wire isn’t even a goblin at all anymore, are you?”

She scuffed a hoof and ducked her head, glancing at a feathered wing. “Nay. I’m happy to have a cutie mark, my friend.”

“Let’s not waste any more time,” Apple Bloom said, her voice having deepened with age. She’d grown taller than her sister and stronger, too, which was saying something. “We can catch up on the flight.” She helped Amelia up, catching her in a proper hug with even more crushing force than Naomi.

“Yeah!” Sweetie Belle said. “It’s not much, but it’s fast, apparently. There’s an honest-to-goodness human flying it, too! Not one of the emigrants we got to meet.”

They took the ramp up into the craft. It was practical and pressurized, and Live Wire had to pause to admire some of the work that went into it before herding with the others towards the front. There were seats that unfolded from the wall with either human or equine configurations, and up front a young woman with a helmet and detached oxygen mask. She had the look of a former soldier, serious and reserved.

“Greetings,” Amelia said, transforming between one step and the next between a cat-eyed alicorn to a cat-eyed young woman, sliding into the copilot seat.

“Hey.” The woman didn’t seem impressed, going through a checklist as she flipped switches. “You know how to fly, Princess?”

“Not a princess, and, no, not one of these, just with my wings. Don’t let me touch anything; I’m just sitting up here because I’ll need to have line of sight to kill anything that might attack us along the way. What’s your name?”

“Fair enough. Jesse Cline, Ranger. They don’t really do rank, but I was an Air Force captain before I got sick of bombing children in the Middle East. These days, I mostly get to bomb demons, so that’s pretty nice.”

“Wow. I’d heard the militaries here could be pretty bad, but I had no idea.” Spear Mint made a face as he let Live Wire help strap him into a seat. She almost fell over on him, having to reach over for one of the straps, and she blushed and mumbled.

“Over there, you all serve at the pleasure of ancient beings who have the best interests of all life in mind. Over here, our rulers are almost always corrupt jerks in the pocket of large corporations.” She powered up the engines. “Passengers, please strap in. This baby goes stratospheric, so we’ll be in Las Vegas in less than an hour.”

The craft rose vertically into the air, heading out in almost the opposite direction as their destination. If it was about to enter the upper atmosphere, that wouldn’t matter nearly so much as avoiding going supersonic over a populated area.

Feeling a hoof touch hers, Live Wire looked over to find Spear Mint wrapping his hock about hers, their eyes meeting. “You got some great friends, babe.”

She blushed, pinning her ears back, and pulled her hoof back. “Yeah… yeah I do.”

“So,” Sweetie Belle asked from the back. “Where are we headed again?”

“Las Vegas,” Amelia called back over the speaker in the fuselage, pulling on an oxygen mask. The others found ones suited for equines. “We’re going to the Cup Palace.”

A shudder went through the others. “I thought the Cup Palace was in Mag Mell?” Apple Bloom asked, echoing Spear Mint’s earlier question. “Ain’t in a hurry to go back there, I gotta admit.”

“Hah, no.” Amelia settled in, relaxed as the engines revved up, taking them higher and higher as acceleration pushed them back. “That’s the old palace, and they don’t use it as much. We’re going to the Cup Palace Casino and Resort, at the heart of the Las Vegas strip. Brace yourselves, ladies, for the greatest show in the Nine Worlds.”

All other sound was lost as they screamed into the air, racing like a comet in reverse into the upper atmosphere, all of Live Wire’s hopes and prayers flying with them.

Tales From the Well - Pirene Shorts

by Ether Echoes

Little Equestria

The Alicorn Door

Delilah's Birthday

Live Wire and the Temple of Doom

Live Wire and the Last Crusade - Part 1