16 authors, one story. I foresee precisely zero problems.
Sixteen authors, one story. I foresee precisely zero problems.
This story is the result of a round-robin event, wherein each author only got to read the chapter immediately previous to write their own. Updating every day until completion, it is pretty much the same as the previous Ponemurdered, but this time, there was an epic twist for the writers, and quite possibly the readers too. No one knew who had written what.
It went about as well as you would expect with a project like this.
Within are many authors you may or may not have read the horse words of in the past and present, including a few original authors from the first Ponemurdered! This is the story that they wrote, and these are the people who wrote it:
It was a beautiful summer afternoon. Celestia’s golden sun hung high in a cloudless sky, but a cool breeze made it quite comfortable, even for those who had to spend all day working the land. Birds sat in the trees chirping happily and feeding the growing chicks, who would soon be making their first cautious attempts at flight. Squirrels ran about, collecting enough nuts to last through the whole winter.
Deep in a forest of apple trees, a loud noise disturbed the peaceful tranquility. Bam! A mighty tree trembled under the impact, the branches swinging wildly causing ripe apples to snap free and fall neatly into awaiting baskets. A lone red stallion collected the fruits of his labor. He hauled the baskets, loaded with large red apples, to the wagon which was soon overflowing. Pausing, he observed the entire row of trees harvested. But it was just a start. Row upon row upon row made up the orchard, and the farm contained several orchards that produced an abundance of its namesake fruit. Much work lay ahead, and he had little time to waste.
Hitching himself into the harness, Big Mac began his trek back to the heart of Sweet Apple Acres. He pulled slowly at first, allowing the natural slope of the land to do most of the work for him, but always careful to never go too fast or lose control. Along the way, he enjoyed the beautiful day, listening to the sounds of the birds, feeling the breeze blow through his mane and wicking the sweat off his body, and smelling the fresh sweet fragrance of apples, something he never grew tired of.
He was truly happy working the farm. He was the son and the grandson and the great-grandson of farmers, and expected his son and grandson and great-grandson to be farming long after he was gone. He loved the work, planting seedlings into the ground and watching them grow into large healthy trees, or seeing livestock born then grow big and strong. It was simple and complicated all at the same time.
Still, he couldn’t help but feel a bit lonely. And not just because he had yet to find a special somepony. His sister Applejack, the Element of Honesty, was away with her friends on another Equestria-saving mission, risking life and limb for the good of all. He was proud of his sister and would love and support her always, but he worried immensely for her safety and wished she would find some safer way to contribute to society. But before Applejack left, Granny Smith had taken Apple Bloom to visit her cousin Babs in Manehattan for a week. So Big Mac was left alone on the farm, doing everything by himself. He loved his family and didn’t begrudge them anything, so he really couldn’t complain. But it was lonely.
Reaching the bottom of the gulley, he crossed the stream, water splashing all around him as he forded the creek and climbed the bank on the other side. Now he could feel the weight of the cart pulling on him. But Big Mac was up to the challenge. After all, he had once dragged an entire house halfway across Ponyville; a wagon filled with apples wasn’t going to beat him. He pulled the cart up the steep slope and soon crested the hill, the old family farmhouse and red barn coming into view.
Reaching the barn, he pulled the wagon inside. He would unload quickly and go out for more applebucking. Tomorrow morning he would haul the apples to market and sell them for a nice sum. Ponies always loved their apples. Maybe not as much as zap apple jam or cider, but then again those were seasonal items that ponies could only get certain times of the year, making supply rather small and hence demand very great. But the apples – red delicious, mcintosh, granny smith, jazz, braeburn, pink lady – could be purchased throughout the year. Still, he hoped to sell out early so he could return to the farm and get more work done. One thing about summer, Celestia afforded lots of daylight for hard work.
Big Mac finished unloading the wagon and was about to hitch himself back into the harness when a sound caught his attention. There was a slight rustle in the hay. Ordinarily he would brush this off as maybe Apple Bloom or Winona playing around, but he was alone on the farm. Or was he? Carefully he scanned the interior of the barn for anything amiss, listening for any stray sound. He was about to hitch himself into the wagon but stopped again. He felt as though he was being watched. It was silly really. Who would watch him? Applejack maybe, being the Element of Honesty and a close friend of the Princess, but why him? Still, something unnerved him, and he carefully began moving around the barn looking for someone or something. He scanned slowly, methodically, never letting his guard down. Suddenly there was a knock behind him and he glanced behind – nothing. Turning back, he caught a glimpse of a shadow moving in the barn. He bounded after it, determined to find out what was going on. He rounded a stack of hay bales and found a golden-brown pegasus with a two-tone mane standing her ground and ready to pounce.
“Who are you?” he demanded.
“I’m a friend of Applejack’s. Where is she?” replied the stranger.
“Ah know all her friends, an Ah ain’t never seen you before. Who are you?” he again demanded.
“Well, who are you?” echoed the stranger, with even more snarl in her voice.
“Ah’m McIntosh Apple, her brother,” he replied, taking a slightly more aggressive posture to defend himself against an attacking pegasus, which seemed more and more likely with each passing moment.
“Her brother? I never knew she had a brother,” said a slightly confused pegasus.
“Some friend you are,” he retorted, taking great satisfaction in calling her out.
“Well, we didn’t have much time together,” she admitted a bit embarrassed.
“Well, she ain’t here. She’s out with her friends on some mission. Now, will you tell me who ya are?”
“Look Red, the less you know the better.”
“You’re spying on me in ma barn, Ah have a right to know,” he countered.
“I don’t want there to be any trouble for you,” she said.
“Are ya threatin’ me?” he asked, bracing himself for a fight.
“No, but there’s stallions after me. I came to Ponyville to get Rainbow Dash, but she wasn’t home. I thought Applejack might be able to help me, but she’s apparently not here. I hid in your barn so I wouldn’t be seen.”
“Well, that’s a mighty fine story. But that still doesn’t answer ma question. Who are you?”
“Don’t you recognize me?” she asked.
Taken aback, he replied, “No, why should Ah?”
“Don’t you read? Geez Red, I’m Daring Do!”
“Ya mean like that tomb raider –”
“Archeologist.”
“– from the books?”
“Yes.”
“Well, Ah admit that’s a pretty fancy costume, looks just like the one on all the covers,” a tad bit of condescension underscoring his voice.
“That’s because I am Daring Do!” she exclaimed, frustration rising in her voice.
“Pfft!” Big Mac did his best to contain his laughter, but his reaction helped ease some of the tension between the two.
“I’m serious,” she said flatly.
“Those books are written by A.K. Yearling,” he noted.
“I know. I’m A.K. Yearling.”
“Ah thought you said you were Daring Do,” he said, pleased to have caught the mare squarely in a lie.
“I am. My real name is A.K. Yearling, but my adventure name is Daring Do. It’s like a pen name in reverse.”
“Why should Ah believe you?” he asked.
“It doesn’t matter. There’s a group of stallions after me. Since I can’t find help here in Ponyville, I have to keep moving.”
Suddenly both ponies froze as they heard a snapping twig outside the barn.
Chapter The Second One: The Chapter Where Big Macintosh Probably Doesn't Kill Anypony [Cold in Gardez]
Big Macintosh was not, as most ponies who knew him would readily attest, a pony given to anger.
This was a good thing. Good for all ponies, of course – a society of mares and stallions quick to wrath would be a fallen, broken, friendless thing, a world of spited honor and violence, tinted red around the edges and colorless everywhere else. But it was especially good that Big Mac was not hot tempered, seeing as how he massed twice as much as any other given stallion, and most of that extra mass was muscle and sinew and bone. Few ponies wanted to see Big Mac get angry. No pony in their right minds wanted to be the source of his anger. Life was precious and short enough already.
Big Mac knew all of this. From a young age he had learned to tread lightly, to speak softly, to touch carefully and blush freely and allow the general impression that he was a quiet, simple soul. To be the gentle giant that ponies wanted him to be. He wore the cloak of others’ expectations for so long that it seeped into his soul, molding him, smothering the heat and energy that raged through so many young stallions’ veins. Big Macintosh did not get angry easily.
But now? Confronted in his own barn by a trespasser who acted like she owned the place, who demanded his aid rather than simply ask, who lied to his face about her identity? And if that weren’t enough, suddenly finding another trespasser in his barn? Somepony who, by the sound of things, was sneaking around behind them, skulking through the shadows that lay between the shafts of dust-speckled sunlight piercing the barn’s slatted roof?
Yeah, Big Mac was starting to get angry.
He snorted and spun away from the pegasus mare, his eyes searching the corners and the darkness that filled the hollow barn. The wood planks let out a pained groan beneath his weight. Along the walls, dozens of implements – scythes and pitchforks and tack and chains and saws – jangled like tin bells.
“Well? Who else is there?” he called. “Might as well come out now, and—hey!”
A flash of movement, blue and low to the ground, caught his eye. He leaped toward it, ignoring the nervous voice in the back of his mind that whispered caution. He smashed through piles of hay and knocked aside crates overspilling with apples, scattered dust and bits of straw, saw the movement again – a foal, not much larger than Apple Bloom – darting away, and he pounced.
He was careful – not one but two little sisters had given him a good idea of how rough he could be when roughhousing. Indeed, in all his tussles with Applejack, he had come away with far more bruises than she. It was with that carefully calibrated sense of his own strength that he swooped down upon upon his prey, trapping it with a hoof the size of a dinner plate.
“Gotcha!” he cried. “I hope yer excuse is better than yer friend’s, or, uh, or…” He trailed off as the squirming bundle of fur and tiny limbs beneath his hoof emerged.
It wasn’t a foal, that was for certain. It wasn’t like anything he’d ever seen: chimerical, aquamarine and blue, with the limbs of a monkey and the head of a dog and the teeth of a shark and the tail of a… well, nothing had a tail like that, with a hand on the end of it, grasping at the empty air in a panic. But despite its mish-mash nature, nothing about the little creature seemed unnatural or deformed. It was as if nature had, from her obscure atlases, produced some perfectly formed animal, noble as any other and suited for its intended role.
The little creature wrestled ineffectively with his hoof. Its eyes, brilliant and wide and wet, like emeralds in the grass, met his, and for a moment it froze. Then it cried. Its wail, soft and pitiful, filled the barn.
Big Mac jumped away. His heart leapt into his chest, and for a horrible second he thought he might have hurt the little thing. He opened his mouth, apologies ready to spill out, when the creature vanished.
No, not vanished – it simply moved so fast it defied his senses. It streaked away, kicking up dust and bits of straw, burning a straight line across the barn floor toward the pegasus mare who’d done nothing but stand there through all this. It jumped and scurried around her barrel, finally settling onto her back between her wings. Its eyes peered at him from around her head.
“Dammit!” she hissed. She spun in a circle, trying to peer back at the creature clinging to her mane. “I told you to stay in the cart!”
“Uh…” Big Macintosh stopped, took a breath, and tried again. “What is—”
“It was scary in there!” the little creature said. Its voice was mellow and high, like a colt’s. “I thought you were leaving me.”
The mare looked like she was about to snap at it, her features twisted up in a grimace, when suddenly she slumped. Her ears sagged, lying limp against her mane, and her whole body seemed to shrink. For the first time, Big Mac noticed the lines of exhaustion etched around her bloodshot eyes, the nervous twitch in her long primary feathers, and the way her frazzled mane crept out from beneath her pith helmet. She stank of sweat and long days on the road, barely masked by the scent of dust that liberally coated her and wafted out with every movement of her limbs. She was a mare who’d been running from something for a long time, he guessed, who hadn’t stopped to rest in a long while.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice was just above a whisper, and he had to lean forward to hear. She reached back with a hoof to gently brush the little creature’s fur. “I didn’t mean to yell at you. Just… let me talk to the nice stallion, okay?”
“Uh,” Big Mac repeated. Even for him, it was a failure of vocabulary. “Did that thing talk?”
She nailed him with a glare. “He’s not a thing, you bumpkin. He’s a, um…” She paused, and the indignation drained out of her features, replaced by uncertainty. “He’s a… well…”
“I’m Ahuizotl,” the little thing said. It stood on its hind legs on the mare’s back with ease, its arms clenched in her mane, and it peered over her hat at him. “Who are you?”
“Er, I’m Big Macintosh,” he said. “My friends call me Big Mac, though. I live here.”
“Oh!” Ahuizotl’s little ears swung forward at this. “Do you know Applejack? Daring said this was her farm.”
“Wait, Daring? So, you’re really her?” Big Mac stepped around to the side for a better look, and sure enough, there on her flank was the compass rose cutie mark that adorned the cover of every book under her name. “The Daring Do?”
“Yeah, that’s what I said, isn’t it?” She chuffed out an annoyed breath and peered around the barn’s shadows, as if expecting something to leap from them at any time. “Look, I’ll sign a book for you or whatever later, okay? But right now I really need to see Applejack. Is she here or not?”
“Ah told you, she’s out on some adventure with her friends,” Mac said. “Do you have, uh, a place to stay? She usually gets back from these in a few days, and—”
“Days?” Daring groaned. Her legs wobbled, and she collapsed onto her haunches. Ahuizotl let out a high squeak at the sudden movement and clung tight to her mane for balance. “I can’t wait days. I need her now, dammit!”
“Well, she ain’t here now, so I guess you’re gonna have to wait.” Finally, an unassailable piece of logic to rest upon. Applejack wasn’t here, and no matter how much this ‘Daring Do’ complained, there was no way to meet her until she returned.
“Okay, okay.” Daring pinched the bridge of her muzzle between her hooves. “This is okay. I just need… Hey, do you know where she went? Like, where this adventure is?”
Big Mac frowned. “Well, she don’t rightly tell me that, usually. She just tells me to, uh, watch the farm. Keep things running until she gets back.”
Daring snorted. “Great. So, she’s the brains of this operation, huh? ‘Course she doesn’t tell you where she went. Look, is there somepony maybe a little more knowledgeable I could talk to about her adventures? Maybe a mare? Then you can get back to kicking trees or whatever she has you doing when she’s not around.”
Big Mac’s heart, which had begun to slow to its normal sedate pace, began to quicken again. A hot flush filled his face at her words, and he opened his mouth to fire back a retort. “Look, you…” he began.
He never finished. Daring’s ears suddenly shot upright, and she froze. Ahuizotl chirped something unintelligible and wrapped his arms and legs and tail tight around her barrel, and a moment later her wings shot out. They were larger than Mac expected, huge, golden things, and they dazzled him in the darkness of the barn. Then she shot upward in a sudden blur, vanishing into the rafters, filling the space where she had stood with dust and swirling air and emptiness.
Silence. Outside the barn, beneath the whispers of the wind in the apple trees, he heard low voices. Stallions, two of them at least. Maybe more. The sound of hoofsteps approached and stopped at the barn. Shadows danced across the brilliant line of sunlight beneath the closed double doors. Everypony paused, and then the unseen pony pushed open the door.
If a weasel could disguise itself as an earth pony, it would look something like this stallion. His face was long and sharp-edged, with eyes so dark their irises merged perfectly with the black pupils into depthless hollows. A coat the color of wheat, with a chestnut mane. He moved with an easy grace, predatory, each step languid and soft. The image of a golden pony skull sat on his flank.
As dangerous as this stallion looked, he still froze when he saw Big Macintosh. Mac had that effect on ponies, especially when they weren’t expecting him. They stared at each other in silence, until finally the weasel ducked his head in greeting.
“Good afternoon, sir,” the stallion said. “Forgive me for intruding, but my associates and I are looking for a mare who lives around these parts. Do you know an Applejack?”
“Maybe.” Big Mac raised his head to gaze past this stallion at the door. Behind him, two more stallions lurked at the entrance. The sunlight behind them shadowed their features, turning them into dark outlines. “Who wants to know?”
“A friend,” the stallion said. He gestured with his hoof, and the two stallions at the entrance stepped in, creeping around to either side. They peered at the shadows, searching for something. “Trust me, she’ll be glad to see us. Do you know where she is?”
“Ain’t here,” Mac said. He took a step back to keep all three stallions in sight. He ought to be objecting to this intrusion, shouting at them to get out, but something about this pony did not look like it took well to being shouted at. There was danger here, lurking like a wasp among blossoms. “Maybe you should come back later.”
“Mhm.” The stallion pointed his hoof deeper into the barn, and his two associates walked fearlessly past Big Mac, nosing through the piles of hay, sniffing at the crates and barrels. “It so happens that I’m looking for another mare as well. She’s a pegasus, with a light gold coat and gray mane. You haven’t seen somepony like that around, have you?”
“‘Fraid I haven’t,” Mac said. “Now, s’much as I love guests, I’m gonna have to ask you and yer friends to get out of my barn before—”
“Hey, boss!” One of the goons shouted. Big Mac turned to see him standing by one of the old carts, his hoof raised up. From it dangled a golden feather, gleaming like treasure in the darkness. “She’s here!”
Several things happened at once.
The weasel-like stallion reached behind his back with a hoof in a quick, practiced motion, and out of somewhere produced a long, double-edged dagger with a hard brass pommel, perfect for cutting or bashing a pony’s skull. He held it easily in his hoof, like it was an extension of his leg, and took a step closer to Big Mac.
He never got closer than that step. A swirl of air teased his ears, and then a flash of gold feathers fell like a hammer onto the earth pony. Daring Do crashed straight down upon him, her hooves driving the breath from his lungs and plastering him to the floor. The dagger spun out of his grip and vanished into the shadows.
“Run, Red!” Daring shouted. She gave the stallion a rap on the back of his head with a hoof for good measure, then her wings blurred, and she blasted out the open barn door. Ahuizotl, still clinging to her mane, let out a quiet squeak as he held on for dear life.
The sudden noise and violence stunned them all. The goons, still lurking in the shadows, stared at their boss. Big Mac gawped like a fish.
Is he dead? Big Mac wondered. He’d never seen a pony get flattened like that, taken down so easily, by a pegasus mare no less. For a moment the image of Daring Do crashing down onto his own unsuspecting back played through his mind, and he wondered if he’d have broken quite so easily.
The fallen stallion groaned. He lifted his head and glared at Big Mac, then turned to the goons. “Get him, you idiots! And get after her!”
Okay, time to go then. Mac lunged for the door, his heavy hooves shaking the wood floor with each step. The metal tools on the walls shook in sympathy with his tread, and after a moment he had a full head of steam.
One of the goons, foolishly, idiotically, stepped between him and the open door. Big Mac didn’t even bother to slow down. He simply lowered his head like his papa had taught him and crashed through the poor pony, sending him flying like a ten-pin into one of the barn’s wooden support beams with a bone-shaking crunch. He fell and didn’t rise.
Big Mac noticed none of this. The sight of the dagger had finally caught up with him, and he realized something very important: these ponies want to hurt me.
He burst out of the barn into the pasture. Ahead, the farmhouse stood, empty for the day. Apple Bloom and Granny Smith were both in town, and Applejack of course was off with her friends doing Elements of Harmony things. It was just him and those goons. All of a sudden he was out of breath, gasping for air, on the edge of hyperventilating.
“Red!” He heard Daring Do call. She was there, hovering a few feet above the ground near the rows of apple trees. Ahuizotl stood on her back, his blue fur twisting with each flap of Daring’s wings. “Come on, this way!”
No time to argue. Mac charged toward her, and together they fled into the long rows of the apple trees.
Chapter The One That Comes After Two: World War Tree-Sap [Doctor Disco]
“I just don’t get it,” Apple Bloom said, “Why are we back at my farm?”
Scootaloo glanced at Sweetie Belle, who shrugged. Facehoofing, Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “Becauuuuse we’re trying to catch a timberwolf for Bramble to fight!”
Apple Bloom and Sweetie who shared a glance. “Couldn’t we have just travelled to the edge of the Everfree?” Sweetie squeaked.
Scootaloo blinked before staring blankly into the distance. “Oh. Right.”
“Why don’t we go there right now?” Apple Bloom asked.
Sweetie Belle yelped on cue as she jumped back, a trap having sprung where she just was a second ago. Tree sap splattered everywhere and Sweetie stuck her tongue out, her muzzle scrunching.
Scootaloo sighed. “I already have these traps set up.”
“You... set up traps on my home turf... without askin’?”
Beads of sweat rolled down the purple-maned filly’s head. “Ehehehe… yes?”
“Uh… girls?”
“I thought I told you my sister would have my head after we coated a whole section of the orchard in tree sap!”
“But this time there’s only half of what we used last time.”
Sweetie Belle saw two shapes emerging through the fog that had inexplicably rolled in from the direction opposite of them. “Girls?”
“I don’t know when my sister is comin’ back. Ya hear? I dunno! She could come back right now and get caught in one. Who knows how she’ll react?!”
“I’m sorry, ‘kay? I wasn’t thinking. It’s not like we won’t notice her coming from a mile away.”
“That’s not the point!”
Sweetie’s eye twitched as she recognised Big Mac and a strikingly familiar pegasus emerge from the fog, both their faces contorted in panicked haste. “Scootaloo? Apple Bloom? I think we should-”
“What’s not to get? We can just lead her away and she won’t have to know we set up a bunch of sap-traps-”
“We? Don’t you mean you-?”
“GIRLS!” Sweetie shrieked. Both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo cringed as their ears folded, turning their direction to Sweetie. Feeling the heat slightly rising in her cheeks, Sweetie merely pointed in the direction she had been looking in. As the two other Crusaders’ gazes followed the path, their eyes widened.
“Oh no,” the three said in unison.
“Who are those fillies?!” Daring shouted, Ahuizotl shrieking as he clung to their speeding backs.
Big Mac looked over and saw the Crusaders watching them in sudden fear and anticipation. “That’s my little sister and her friends!”
Daring furrowed her brows comically at Big Mac as they continued to run, almost nearing the section where the Crusaders were squatting in. It was Ahuizotl that shrieked in his adolescent voice, his tiny form bouncing with each consecutive wingflap. “You better tell them to run or they’ll be good as gone!”
Gone!? Big Mac thought, and he blinked. As he was now approaching them and passing them, he threw his head back and shouted. “Crusaders! RUN!”
“But you’re going to run into a-” Scootaloo tried to say but Big Mac had already travelled past earshot. All he cared about was he now saw them rushing into the direction of town, and he breathed a sigh of relief.
“Did you catch what she said?” Big Mac huffed to his flying partner, not losing any speed for anything.
“Something about a trap-” Daring shouted, but was cut off, staring at Big Mac incredulously.
Big Mac frowned before he realised that he had just ran into something and thought nothing of it. Glancing down quickly, he saw that he had just been coated in tree sap, and was now quickly collecting branches and fallen leaves and apples, making him look like a menacing dryad.
He looked back to Daring. “What? What’s *huff* wrong?”
Daring merely shook her tired head, making Ahuizotl swing from the movement. “Let’s just keep moving and lose track of these guys!”
“DARING DO!” Caballeron shouted, finally within earshot. “I’LL GET YOU AND AHUIZOTL IF IT’S THE LAST THING I DO!”
Big Mac gulped before noticing something. There were only two of them now.
“Daring Do!” Big Mac boomed. “There’s only two of them now!”
Thanks for repeating me there, Big Mac.
Daring Do shouted something and Ahuizotl turned to Big Mac. “Daring says she thinks one of them went after your sister and her friends!”
Big Mac’s eyes widened in anger and fear. “Oh no. Oh no! Granny’s gonna kill me-!”
“They’re headed back to town, Red!” Daring Do shouted. “They’ll be fine as long as they don’t stop running! Let’s worry about us for now!”
Big Mac felt his eyes moisten but he set his jaw and blinked. His features hardened and he nodded. “Well, the Everfree Forest is just beyond this next grove of trees. If we’re careful, we can make it through without-”
“Sounds good enough!” Daring remarked before bursting forward.
“Hurrrrrrrry uuuuuuuup!” Ahuizotl shrieked as he held onto the brim of Daring’s pith helmet.
Grunting, Big Mac galloped a little faster.
“Did you just see that?” Scootaloo cried, amazed, “Big Mac didn’t even slow down!”
“We’ve got bigger problems right now, Scoots!” Sweetie announced, casting her gaze back. “One of those stallions is right after us!”
“But he was covered! Perfectly covered, and he didn’t even-!”
“Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom barked. “Not helping!”
“Right! Sorry! Okay, so I have a few traps that are scattered farther away than the ones all in one place so maybe we can lead him to one of them!”
Sweetie whimpered a “Mmh-hm!”
Apple Bloom cast her own glance back and widened her eyes. “Well, we better do it right quick, cuz he’s gaining on us fast!”
“Alright!” Scootaloo nodded. “Just follow me!”
Galloping a little faster, Scootaloo began to look at the trees around her, trying to get her bearings. She looked for anything; stray string, a bucket, heck- even her scooter! But what she got was even better. A fallen apple!
Leading them towards the tree with the bucket resting in it’s branches, Scootaloo grinned. “Alright, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, we gotta pull that apple from the ground with us. If he’s hot behind our tails, the bucket will fall on him instead of us!”
Seeing her friends nod, Scootaloo nodded back. In no time, they reached the apple… and Apple Bloom bucked it backwards with expert speed.
“What the heck, Bloom?” Scootaloo cried. “I thought I said-”
“Scoots, look!” Sweetie said, stopping to turn around and get a better view.
All three Crusaders came to a full stop and turned around to see the henchpony had just been dazed and had fallen under the trapped tree. They held their breath as they watched the bucket on top teeter precariously while the thug was quickly recovering. Just as they saw him rubbing his head and glaring at them menacingly, the bucket tipped, coating him in sticky, icky tree sap and bonking his head with metal.
The henchpony shouted in alarm and anger as he wiped his eyes and spat, now ravenously staring at the Cutie Mark Crusaders. As he cracked his neck, he pawed the ground and the three fillies could visibly see the air pushed out from his nose.
There was silence as he began to charge them once more before Apple Bloom gulped.
“We dun messed up.”
“Amen.”
“Uh-huh!”
As he was nearing them once more, Sweetie shrieked “SCATTER!”, and just as he pounced forward, the Crusaders dove to the side, causing him to land on his chest.
“Let’s go!” cried Apple Bloom
As the henchpony struggled to get up with his coat now partially fused to the grass around him, the Crusaders made a break.
To say they were surprised when they broke the treeline and began running along the dirt path to town was only a slight understatement, as they truly weren’t expecting to have run so far in a few minutes. Shrugging to themselves, they made haste for Ponyville proper. Behind them, their chaser bumbled through some bushes, covered head-to-toe in leaves and branches.
“GraughhhhhhghghhhH!” he yelled in frustration.
“We better make it quick!” Sweetie Belle piped up, the trio beginning to run out of breath, “He seems really mad!”
Suddenly, Apple Bloom’s face brightened, and she turned to her fellow Crusaders. “What if we make it to the train station? Then we can catch a ride! And I know for a fact that a train is still here!”
Scootaloo frowned, huffing. “What? How could you possibly know that?”
“Smoke. Duh.” Apple Bloom ran on three legs for a spot while she pointed in the direction of the train station where smoke that had been approaching had stopped for the time being.
Scootaloo’s eye twitched. “When did you become a detective?”
“It doesn’t matter. Let’s get goin’!”
They raced through the streets of Ponyville, going through alleys and obscure streets. They weaved in and out of the marketplace, running around in circles to throw off their pursuant. When they believed they had finally thrown him off, they bolted to the now smoking sky as it began to slowly move away.
“Hurry!” Apple Bloom cried, “We’ve got seconds before it gains speed and leaves us behind!”
“Where would we even go, Apple Bloom?” Sweetie Belle asked. “And we might get kicked off anyways ‘cause they might check for tickets!”
“It doesn’t matter as long as we’re able to get away from that stallion- OOF!”
“HURK!”
“KAFF!”
The Cutie Mark Crusaders tumbled and fell to the ground as they wheezed, preparing to apologise to the pony they had run into. As they coughed, brushing the dust off of themselves, they found some of the parts of their fur were suddenly sticky… with sap.
The three craned their heads in unison with fear as they saw the silhouette of the stallion that had been chasing them in the sun.
“I’ve got you now…” he whispered, ears twitching crazily.
As he began to approach them, the Crusaders glanced fearfully at each other before hugging the others tightly and closing their eyes, awaiting their fate. Caballeron’s henchpony grinned from ear to ear as his hoof reached out to grab them before…
“...Apple Bloom...? Where’s Big Mac?”
“...Scoots? What…?”
“S-Sweetie Belle? Are you ...alright?”
Silence.
A quiet voice spoke with silent rage. “Get away from them. NOW… if you want, that is…!”
The Crusaders opened their eyes fearfully, seeing the stallion’s hoof mere centimetres away from their faces. They watched his twitching figure as he twisted his head to look behind him. The Crusaders did the same by looking around him.
Their mouths dropped slightly, their impossible saviours right in front of them, with Pinkie Pie still somehow cartwheeling out of the moving train in the distant train station and inexplicably appearing beside the rest of the Elements.
“Don’t move!” Twilight announced, pointing her glowing horn at him. “As sovereign of Ponyville and a Princess of Equestria, I order you to stand down!”
“Say hello to mah little friend!” Pinkie yelled in a comical accent, whipping her party cannon out of nowhere and rubbing it lovingly.
“Get behind us, Apple Bloom,” Applejack began, gesturing to the safety behind all six Element Bearers.
“We’ll show this ruffian exactly what happens when somepony threatens with my sister,” Rarity continued.
“And just what happens when they try to pick on the coolest filly in town!” Rainbow finished, bouncing from hindleg to hindleg and punching air. Without hesitation, the Cutie Mark Crusaders rushed to their respective attachments, each of them nuzzling their guardians and saviours.
“By the power invested in me, I order you to cease and desist-”
“Hooves up, scrub!” Rainbow challenged. “We’re gonna turn you into paste!” Twilight looked helplessly at Rainbow, who merely shrugged. “What?”
“We came just in the nick of time!” Pinkie Pie cried. “What does that make us?” Pinkie Pie only grinned wider as Twilight facehoofed.
“Big darn heroes, Pinkie, and I’d be gol darn condemned if I did nothing to somepony who be threatenin’ mah sister. Say hello to Bucky McGillacuddy and Kicks McGee!” Applejack growled, kicking her respective hindlegs and pawing the ground, completely ignoring Twilight’s tries for order.
“For a stallion like you… I think manners are the last I’ll have to worry about,” Rarity scoffed, slightly wilting under Twilight’s incredulous stare as she glanced over.
Fluttershy… well, nopony could really hear what she said.
So there they all stood, ready to take on a single one of Caballeron’s henchponies...
And then the Everfree Forest exploded into flame.
Chapter IV: It Goes Downhill From Here - The Musical [Celesti Lateo]
“What in tarnation?” Applejack asked, staring at the burning forest.
Apple Bloom latched on to her sister’s leg. “Applejack, we’ve got to go there!” she shrieked.
Rainbow piped up with her nuanced opinion. “You crazy? There’s no way we can go in there. Even I’m not that reckless!”
“But Mac’s in there!” she shot back.
Applejack looked at her with wide eyes. “What?! What’s he doing in there?”
“He was running away from Caballeron!”
Twilight’s and Rainbow’s ears shot up.
“Caballeron?” they asked simultaneously.
“Yeah!” Scootaloo exclaimed with excitement. “It was awesome! He was running through my traps like they weren’t even there and Daring Do was there with a tiny Ahuizotl! Though he sent that dingus—” she points to the henchpony that was currently trying to make himself scarce “—after us. Way less cool.”
“What traps?” Applejack asked, looming over Scoots.
It was then, Scootaloo realized, a simple fact: She dun goofed.
“Um, girls, burning forest?”, Twilight said, trying to get things back on track.
Applejack continued to stare down at Scoots before turning toward the rest of the group. "Alright, let's go save Big Mac."
Rainbow flew down to face Applejack. "Wait, wait, wait, what do we do about the bad guy?"
Applejack rubbed her chin before her eyes lit up. "Pinkie, you know what to do."
This was met by horrified gasps coming from everyone present, Rarity and Fluttershy looking ready to faint there and then. The only ones not currently feeling any kind of dread were the henchpony himself, who was scoffing at them, and Pinkie Pie, whose smile had become so large it seemed ready to secede and form its own country.
"You really think I'm afraid of a silly pink c**t like her?", he spat out.
Scootaloo was now realizing that she was hardly the one who had dun goofed the most today. She came to this conclusion by observing Pinkie's smile, who was still just as large, but had somehow been sucked out of all warmth and friendliness, twitching and straining. Also, her hair was straightening on their own.
"What..." Pinkie, no, Pinkamena, enunciated slowly, "...did you call me?"
The henchman smirked.
"Are you deaf on top of being daft?"
He laughed a little because of his word play. Because deaf and daft are similar. Look, he's the one thinking it, not me!
Meanwhile, Twilight was slowly gathering up the group and distancing them from the two. "Uh, Pinkie, we'll be at the Everfree when you're finished. Try not to be too hard on him?"
Pinkie turned her head towards her, and I mean turn by doing a complete 180°, all while her neck made a faint noise, similar to 'crick, crack'.
"No promises!" she said with false cheer.
Twilight, being just as smart as her nickname ‘Purple Smart’ implied, wisely decided it was time to run for the hill. Or forest, as was the case.
"Right...um, see you later!"
And she began to run, dragging everyone else away with her magic.
Now, Pinkamena, alone with the henchpony, was finally able to begin.
"So, mister meany-pants, have you heard of Cupcakes?"
He snorted and looked at her with disdain. "Of course I’ve heard of cupcakes, you daft c**t!"
Pinkie's smile begin to twitch erratically, becoming more of a grimace more than anything else, a bit like the Joker. "Oh, silly! The Joker has nothing on me! I'm the thing he has bad dreams about!"
That...actually makes sense, when you think about it. Anyway, Cupcakes?
"Oh, right!"
"Who are you talking to, you bimbo?" the henchpony sneered.
"Oh, you silly pony! I'm talking to the author!" she says, trying to point to something. "Uh, right, fanfic, there's no screen. Foowie!"
Of course, you know the drill by now.
"So you're daft and crazy?", the henchpony says, beginning to walk away. "I haven't got time to lose with you."
Suddenly, Pinkamena appeared right in front of him, leading to him falling on his rump.
"How did-"
"Now, as I always say, come on and smile!"
The henchpony, now looking into her eyes, could finally see exactly what he was insulting all along.
He wished he had brought his brown pants.
"AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
"Ahuizotl, shut up!", Daring screams.
"IIIIII CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN'TT!!!!!!"
"Shut up or I drop you!"
That shut him up, also leading him to pout.
"Hmmph, some hero you are!"
"Oh Faust, what did I do to deserve this?"
Mac cleared his throat.
"Not to be a bother, but shouldn't we be trying to leave the forest?"
The two bickering enemies looked at each other before harrumphinh.
"Right," Mac said, looking around to try and find a path that wouldn't lead to their fiery doom. "This way."
Ahuizotl perched himself on Daring's head, much to the latter’s annoyance.
"Are you sure?"
"Eenope."
"What!? What do you mean, 'eenope'!?" he shrieked.
Daring threw her head back to get him back on her back, before replying scathingly.
"He means he's trying his best! Now shut up, we're the ones running!"
Mac nods at her, thankful, before turning his head to look in front of him.
They continue running for a while before Ahuizotl makes himself heard again.
"Hey, Do!"
Daring grits her teeth before answering.
"What?"
"Can't you just fly up there to make the clouds rain or something?"
"I can't."
"Huh? Why not?"
Daring snorted. "Aside from the fact there's fire everywhere? The weather of the Everfree is too chaotic for a pegasus to control."
"Oh. Shoot," he said pitifully.
"Yeah, shoot."
It was at that moment that they heard screams.
"Argh, what now?", Daring drawls out.
They began to head toward the screams, ignoring Ahuizotl’s objections to what he called ‘pointless altruism’. Needless to say, it earned him the stink eye from his companions. As they grew nearer to the source of the screams, they were able to tell they were distinctly coltish in nature, which only made Daring and Mac run faster. They finally arrived at the source, in what used to be a clearing, but now seemed to be a dome of flames and ashes. In the centre of this hellscape, screaming their lungs out and hugging each other were two ponies Mac knew all too well, and was only half-surprised to see there.
The two were Snips and Snails.
"What are you two doing here?" Mac bellowed.
They stopped screaming and, noticing someone who could save them, jumped on Mac, clinging to his legs.
"Big Mac, save us!" Snips wailed.
"Why are you here?" Mac repeated.
"We were only here for a dare!" Snips answered.
"Yeah! We were getting hungry, so we started a fire to make dinner!" Snails continued.
"And then a bush suddenly caught on fire for no reason!" Snips finished.
Mac would facehoof, if it weren't for the colts clinging to him. Daring Do had no such restriction, and did so with a resounding 'clop'.
"If you ever dare call me stupid again, I'll remind you of these two," Ahuizotl tells Daring.
She simply moaned in frustration.
Big Mac sighed before shaking off the colts. "Come on ya two, we're gettin' out of here."
"But we're too afraid to move!" Snips wailed again.
"We can't move, we're too afraid!" Snails added because the author thought a Tin Tin joke would be funny.
Mac had a thought to just leave them there, but ultimately ignored it, because they weren't worth feeling bad about. It wasn't long before they were running again, with Dumb and Dumber Snips and Snails on Mac's back.
Then, a wild Caballeron appeared, which is not just a Pokémon joke. His mane is dishevelled, full of sticks and leaves, his body covered in soot. His face was contorted in a hateful rictus and he seems about ready to foam at the mouth.
"Ah-hah! I found you, you despicable pests! Now, have a taste of my wrath!" he declared melodramatically.
"Ponyfeathers", Daring muttered.
Twilight and Co. were finally nearing the forest, now being at Sweet Apples Acre. They had paused, mostly to catch their breath, though it did allow Applejack the opportunity to talk to her sister.
"Bloom?"
Apple Bloom looked up. "Yeah, sis?"
AJ put a hoof on Bloom's wither. "I want you and your friends to stay here, okay?"
"What? Why? We can help!" she protested, swatting away her sister's hoof.
"It's too dangerous for a little filly like you! I don't want you to get hurt, not when Big Mac is already in trouble!"
"But-"
"No buts! I'd never forgive myself if you died like..."
Bloom immediately understood what her sister had wanted to say, which caused her ears to fold back.
"Oh. I... fine, I'll stay."
Applejack smiled sadly. "Thanks, Bloom."
She looked up to survey the group and saw that Rainbow and Rarity had similar talks with their respective (and surrogate) little sisters.
'Good', she thought. 'Let's get this show on the road.'
"So, we ready to go?", Applejack asked.
"Yes, I think so", Twilight replied.
"Girls?", Rarity interjected.
"Yeah, Rares?" Applejack asked.
"I simply had a thought, couldn't we ask Discord for help?"
Suddenly, Chaos.
"Did someone call for me?" His Magnificent Chaoticness, Lord of Disorder, Mad God of Equestria, Local avatar of Sheogorath-
"Woah, I'll stop you right there. First, you forgot 'His Sexy Handsomeness', second, Sheogorath wished he was anything like me!"
"Who is he talking to?" Rainbow whispered to Applejack.
"No idea," Applejack whispered back.
Fine, Your Sexy handsomeness, mind to continue with the script?
"Oh, you're no fun!” Discord turned to the group. “So, why did you call me?"
Twilight shook her head, bewildered, before answering.
"We need your help! The Everfree is burning and ponies are trapped in there!"
"Sorry, I can't help you."
Applejack glared at him.
"What? Why not?"
Fluttershy gave him her best puppy look. "Please, Discord? For me?"
Discord clutched his chest, before a burst of sugar erupted from it.
"Hgnn, I would, but I can't, I swear!"
"And why ever not?" Rarity asked.
"It's part of my contract!"
He snapped his fingers and a scroll poofed into existence.
"See here," he says, pointing to a line so small that it's unreadable. "It's the Deus et Diabolus ex Machina clause. It usually only applies to the show, but the author made it apply here. One of them, anyway."
"You sound like Pinkie," Rainbow Dash said, groaning from the nonsense the Draconequus just spouted.
"Why, thank you! I can only hope to reach the level of senselessness Her Pink Majesty reaches one day! More screentime would certainly help..."
"Fine, whatever. Girls, lets go!", Twilight said, heading for the forest.
The others followed her, with varying degrees of determination. As Fluttershy passed by Discord, he scoops her up in a hug. "Good luck, my dear Fluttershy."
She smiled. "Thank you, Discord."
He let her go, and she flew after her friends.
Chapter This Chapter Doesn’t Exist: Chapter Four [Majin Syeekoh]
Discord watched the crowd enter the burning forest which was currently burning, as things that burn tend to do. He wished he could help Twilight and the crowd prevent Dr. Caballeron from doing… whatever it was he was doing, he wasn't really sure, but unfortunately his various extremities were metaphorically bound by that blasted Deus et Diabolus ex Machina clause.
So he could do nothing except the next thing that he did.
“I didn't expect to see you here, Discord.” Celestia deftly sipped her tea. Which she can do deftly because why not? No one else is taking this seriously.
Discord was not as skilled at Celestia at sipping tea, but he managed to do just fine. Because sipping tea really isn't that hard. It is not traditionally an action associated with deftness. Sure, you might dribble a bit on your chin if you're really bad at it, but we have a word for those kinds of individuals who are incapable of sipping tea and that word is—
“Will you please get on with the narrative? I feel like you're typing just to take up space and I'd like to go somewhere rather than continually insulting the manner in which I sip tea,” Discord said as he sipped his tea in a non-deft manner. “Like that. Less of that.”
Okay, fine, Discord. You sound like my editors. I thought this was supposed to be for—
Discord cleared his throat as he continued to sip his tea. Very undeftly—
“Just shut up about the tea already!”
“Discord, who are you talking to?” Celestia asked as she took a bite of her muffin.
Discord hummed. “Just an ignoramus.”
...you're an ignoramus.
“Anywho,” Discord said as he set the teacup down. “It turns out that your A-Team is in a bit of a pickle.”
Celestia glared at Discord.
“I swear one hundred and ten percent that this is not my fault this time,” he said as he put a paw to his chest.
Celestia eyed Discord down a bit more while stealing a sip of tea. “Do you mean one hundred and ten percent?”
Discord nodded. “On my honor as a draconequus, Princess Celestia.”
Celestia exhaled softly. “Well, I suppose if it's one hundred and ten percent, I can take your word on it. What’s the situation?”
Discord proceeded to explain the events leading up to this point, with the forest fire and Dr. Caballeron and whatnot, Celestia humming and nodding intermittently. When he was done, she set her teacup down.
“I see,” she said, “so it’s a pretty dire situation from what it sounds like, but not quite dire enough for either of us to get involved.”
“Not that you’d be of much help anyway―”
Discord caught the teacup an inch from his face, Celestia scowling at him as her chest expanded and contracted. “Temper, temper, Princess.”
Celestia put her hooves together, then took a deep breath. “Anyway, we can’t help because the situation isn’t bad enough.” She took another bite of her muffin.
“I’m hearing a but…” Discord said as he offered a claw.
Celestia harumphed. “There is no but.”
Discord chortled a bit. “There’s always a but, Princess.”
Celestia crossed her forelegs and looked to the side. “There is one thing we could do.”
“And that is…?”
“Escalate the danger.” Celestia growled. “Throw a free radical into the situation that’ll set everything haywire.”
Discord tapped a talon to his lips. “Interesting…”
Discord―
Oh no. Fuck you, Discord. Don’t you fucking dare. I swear I’ll―
Tirek felt a disturbance in the air in his prison in Tartarus. He turned around to see that vile worm Discord with a vicious grin on his face.
“Say, Tirek baby,” he said, “how do you feel like having your freedom?”
Goddammit Discord.
Discord smirked.
I know, I’m such a rapscallion.
The Chapter Known As Six: When Life Gives You Elements [All Art Is Quite Useless]
Suddenly, the narrator regained his limited omniscience and ability to narrate unimpeached by the commentary of characters, and Discord forgot he was in a story. It was simpler this way.
Tirek slowly rose to an almost standing position, his short chains taut against his hooves as they held him firmly in place. He snarled, his loathing fixed on the otherworldly creature. “Why should I accept an offer from you?” he breathed, his voice frail and shaky, “After our last encounter, I find it hard to believe that your intentions could be anything but malevolent.”
As Tirek spoke, Discord puffed on a large cigar, inhaling smoke and exhaling nothing at all as the corona grew in length. Setting it down on an ashtray made of ash, filled with glass, he flashed a toothy smile. “Good, because they’re not. Listen to me, and listen well. I have need of you above, the situation is dire. As we speak, there is a group of bewitched ponies in the Everfree Forest searching for the Tree of Harmony, led by a certain undesirable. The group must be disabled, and the leader destroyed at all costs.”
Tirek reached up to stroke his scraggly beard, but was stopped by a hard chain. He growled in annoyance. “Your princesses cannot accomplish this?”
“Twilight Sparkle is already in the thick of things, and it has been well established that alicorn magic has no power over this particular threat. My magic is also stunted, but yours is not. When the blanket fell over Equestria, you were not present, which allows you to serve as a suitable wildcard.” As he spoke, Discord flashed a deck of cards, all jokers emblazoned with his image.
Tirek grinned wickedly. “Why should I do this for you?” he asked, settling back onto his belly. “You have already revealed your weakness; to indebt myself to you now would be foolish. What can you offer me that I would desire? My freedom? Ha! I have escaped this pit before and I will escape again, given time.”
“Tell me,” Discord snapped his talons, conjuring an image of a fire slowly spreading through the Everfree, threatening to leave and begin engulfing the surrounding terrain at any moment. At the epicentre of the densest thickets, a mesmerising chant rang forth in dissonant chimes. “What use is it to escape in, say, another thousand years, if the world you once knew is already gone by then?”
Tirek studied the image. It seemed to morph with the cackling of the flames, transforming the surroundings into something alien, horrible even to him. He had seen this before, ancient tomes penned by wise prognosticators had once described something much similar. “How do I know that what you show me is not a deception? How can I be sure that any of this is real?”
“Honestly, T-Red, you can’t.” Discord’s face darkened, and his eyes grew serious. “But you do know the song you hear now. A pony named Caballeron has been named herald of the end times, and he prepares to contact Him as we speak, there is little time.”
Tirek’s face became grave. He had had his suspicions, but he strongly desired to play it all off as another of Discord’s tricks, if only to alleviate his growing fear. “But I thought all ties had been severed?” There was no hatred in his macabre whisper, only a strong and palpable worry. Discord, to his credit, did not seem nearly as worried, but Tirek suspected that he might be incapable of expressing such a feeling. “As did I, but it seems that one of the old ones managed to cling to this plane, one way or another. Now, their influence has caused all of this. I have withdrawn and looked to my other selves for guidance, but it seems no Discord has ever tangled with this threat, at least, none that I can see.”
“But you are infinite,” Tirek reasoned, his face pale, “how can it be that you have not encountered Him before, in at least one dimension?”
“I’m afraid my omnipresence counts for little against His power. He is the ultimate harbinger of destruction. Should He be summoned to this world, not only will the entire earth be erased, but any trace of its existence will perish also. This entire universe, any conscious memory or knowledge of it from any being, anything that has or has yet to happen in this timeline will vanish. Even my counterparts will be none-the-wiser. “ As he spoke, Discord drew on a chalkboard, small images depicting universes, multiverses, omniverses, all being wiped out in the blink of an eye. Beside each there was a small illustration of Tirek and him, each with crosses for eyes and their tongues comically sprawling out of their mouths.
“Hmph, I get your point.” Tirek wasn’t proud to concede to a weak-minded creature such as Discord, but he wasn’t about to argue the specifics either. “Still, I see no benefit to helping you. An old one alone would be nigh impossible to defeat, but Him? You may as well admit defeat now. What is the difference between my dying with the erasure of this world, or dying at the hands of a creator?”
“Well, it’s hardly a huge disparity, but the only—very tiny, mind you— difference is that a creator will merely kill you. You will cease to be, and that’s the end of it. As for erasure? Now, that’s a slow process. Think of it this way. Have you ever heard of antibacterial soap? Well, of course you haven’t, look at you.” Tirek flinched away as Discord conjured a bar of soap, threatening to scrub at his coat. Sighing, he threw it away, and Tirek watched as it puffed into smoke in midair.
“Anyways, it claims to kill 99.9% of bacteria on a surface. Why not a hundred? Because complete and total erasure is difficult to pull off. Put it this way: When He comes to end things, he will take his time. Everything from the microbes in your body and the carbon that makes up your system, all the way up to every layer of your conscious, subconscious and even unconscious mind will be slowly and meticulously plucked and torn from your being, one piece at a time.”
Smiling maniacally, Discord partitioned himself into a thousand pieces, before forming each into a tiny version of himself. “Not a single shred of you will remain eventually, but in the meantime? You will slowly degenerate, dissipate, deconstruct… You get my point. Metaphysical torture of the worst kind, and trust me, I say this from experience. You think being trapped in a prison for millennia is oh so terrible? Wait until the lining of your stomach is almost gone, and the acid starts to seep into your other organs… Or, even better, when your hooves turn to rubber, missing the integrity of their bones, and you’re slowly turned into a malleable paste, mangled and disfigured... Would you like that, buddy?”
Tirek had heard enough; Tirek’s stomach had heard enough. “How do we prevent it?”
“With preparation and planning, of course!” Discord grinned, suddenly one again. “Unfortunately, we have time for neither, so we’ll be going in dry. Killing Caballeron won’t be enough, nor will destroying those he has bewitched. The old one will simply find a new vessel. What you must do is destroy the old one before he has the chance to call for Him, that is the only way to avert total disaster. Also, the Tree of Harmony must not be corrupted by Caballeron, secure it at all costs.”
“You seem to be forgetting something.” Tirek asserted, impatient. “I have a paltry amount of magic in comparison to you, or any of your princesses. The only way I was able to exceed or even match your strength last time was by absorbing your powers. If alicorn magic will not work against the old one, what am I meant to absorb to fight him with?”
Discord’s eyebrows straightened; he looked at Tirek with an uncharacteristically straight face. “Eat the tree.”
Tirek went cross eyed. “Wh-what?”
“Eat it.” Discord continued, as if it was the most obvious thing he had said all week. “Or absorb it, whatever it is that you do. The power of the Elements resides in the tree, and by absorbing it you should have access to the only power the old one has yet to corrupt. Once you have managed this, you must focus your attacks directly on Caballeron and the surrounding ponies, but do not kill them. Not all of them are completely bewitched, but none of them realise what they are doing. In fact, they believe they are there to stop Caballeron from exacting some generic, evil plan. Should you sever their minds from that construct yourself, it will likely cost them either their sanity or their lives. This chain of events has been fastidiously prepared to appear as something entirely different to what it really is. It even had me convinced until I gained some distance.”
“So let me get this straight,” Tirek started, once more attempting to stand, only to find that his chains had been lengthened. It took all of his willpower not to flash a gracious smile at Discord. “An old one has possessed a pony named Caballeron, and has gone to the Everfree Forest to destroy the Tree of Harmony, our only bastion of defence against Him. In the process, he has also convinced a group of ponies that they are operating in a reality separate to their own. And this hasn’t affected you because?”
“Why do you think?” Discord pulled a nail file out of the hat he was suddenly wearing, using it to unshape his talons. “It’s a fringe benefit of the job, being batshit crazy. Anyway, yes, you summed it up aptly. Go to the forest, find the tree, stop the others, and destroy Caballeron. While doing so, protect the tree, preserve the forest. In exchange, you will be free, and you will never be put back in Tartarus for as long as you may live.”
“Does Celestia agree to these terms?” Tirek growled, brow furrowed.
“We’ll just assume she does for now. It’s better than dying regardless.”
“Which reminds me,” Tirek’s head tilted where he stood, “Why are you so calm about this? You run the same risk of being destroyed as the rest of us, correct?”
“Me? Oh, I’m stupendously calm, aren’t I?” Discord chimed, his voice lighter than air. “Oh, if I could remember a time before now that I had been so calm, I’d make a comparison, but I’m not sure I can!” Discord quickly snapped out of his false reverie, laughing to himself all the while. “I’ve… I’ve yet to tell you the final step to your little mission. You see, as I’m sure you know, the old one intends to use a sacrifice to call Him forth, the blood of a true innocent, spilled over the remnants of the forest. Now, I’ve examined the group within the forest, and I suspect he plans to use a small yellow pegasus amongst them. Yes, I’m quite sure he plans to drain the life right out of her, isn’t that fun?”
When Tirek focused on Discord, he found his face to be extremely strained, as if he would burst a blood vessel at any moment. “What of the sacrifice?” he asked.
“Priority should go to saving her, but also to stopping Caballeron. Also, if you are able to cooperate with the team on the ground, try to coordinate an attack with them, but remember that they do not understand the gravity of the situation. In fact, it’s likely their memories of current events are hazy, so do not be shocked if they attack you. Avoid anyone until you have reached the tree.”
“And if it looks as if the tree is about to be compromised? What of the sacrifice then?”
Discord was silent for a very long time. When he spoke, there was scarcely a tone to his voice. “...Kill her first. If her blood hits the ground before the land He walks on is fertile, the old one will have to find a replacement, and that could take a long time. It might just give us the opportunity we need.”
“Any advice on killing the old one?”
“There’s a reason I selected you for this task,” Discord said, his voice still missing its usual joviality, “your magic is unique, and terribly applicable right now. When Caballeron’s body is destroyed, the old one will seek out the closest, most powerful creature in the vicinity to inhabit. While it is doing so, absorb the old one into your own being, and use the power of the Elements to dominate it, subjugate its will and then destroy it. Leave no trace behind.”
“This plan operates on a lot of variables. Much could go wrong.”
“Much already has gone wrong, and unless you have a better alternative, this is what you’re doing. Now, I’m going to drop you on the eastern outskirts of the Everfree, from there you’ll have to make your own way to the tree.” A snap, and Tirek’s chains fractured and broke apart, clanging against the hard ground as they fell. Discord sat inside a two pony cart, the words ‘Applewood Derby’ painted on the side. “Now, are you ready? I’d rather not keep up this time bubble forever.”
Time bubble? No wonder he has no sense of urgency. Tirek slowly stretched his limbs, rubbing above each of his hooves as he adjusted to the lack of the familiar ache. “...Not in the slightest.”
“Good. If you thought you were you’d be dead wrong.” With that, Discord snapped his talons, and suddenly they emerged on the outskirts of the forest, an infectious bright orange dancing in the distance, smoke rising to the evening sky. “One more thing: If you can distract the old one for long enough the blanket restricting mine and everyone else’s powers might be lifted, and the illusion might also be shattered safely.”
“Would it not be simpler if I could dispose of everyone, sans the princess? You are placing a lot of restrictions on—”
Tirek suddenly found himself suspended in the air, not by magic but Discord’s paw, wrapped around his neck as he held him to eye level with a surprising measure of physical strength. “Remind me who decides your freedom?” When he received silence as a response, Discord subdued Tirek with a sinister glare. “Do as instructed. No unnecessary casualties if avoidable, but don’t err on the side of caution either. Now, get to it.”
With that, Discord vanished, and Tirek was left to pick himself up from the floor. As much as he wanted to savour the feeling of fresh earth and the smell of evening air, he had a mission. If he wished to survive, he’d waste no time. Using his intuition alone, he picked a route leading directly to the right of the highest levels of fire.
Twilight shook her head, willing the fog in her mind to dissipate as she galloped ahead. Beside her was Rainbow Dash, Starlight Glimmer, Trixie, and Scootaloo, all of whom she’d found since entering the forest. Before her she saw flames, beside her she saw her friends running alongside, save Scootaloo, who rode her scooter with diligence, keeping pace with all of them.
She knew something was wrong. The day seemed so comparatively simple in the beginning, if it even was the same day. Now, she ran forwards with no destination in sight, save the merciless blaze that stood before her. Somewhere deep in the forest, her destination lay waiting to be discovered. Caballeron had a reason to be here, she was sure of that. He was looking for something, something imperative. She had to stop him. Whether she had been charged with the task of doing so or not was irrelevant now; the details scarcely mattered.
Her conscious drive seemed to be eerily mirrored by everypony around her. They all expressed the same desire to catch Caballeron, to thwart his plans, but something told her that if they even stopped for a second to discuss why, none of them would know what to say. That thought struck her as odd, but she soon dismissed it in favour of the urgency of the situation, speeding forwards.
She was aware of her inability to use magic. It seemed to have affected those around her too, as evidenced by Rainbow Dash’s reluctance to fly. Whatever power Caballeron held over them, and anypony else who had entered the forest, it was powerful, terribly so.
There was a latent realisation scratching at the edge of Twilight’s consciousness, waiting to be unearthed. Ignoring it, she pressed on, leaping over a thick undergrowth of branches in perfect sync with her companions. No one thought to comment on this.
It all felt so structured. Why would Caballeron, of all ponies, be setting fires in the Everfree? Why was he proving so elusive? Where was Fluttershy? Why was it that no matter what question she posed, she could make no sense of the answer? There was no cohesion between her thoughts, nothing linked, nothing correlated.
She tripped over a branch, only to be caught by Rainbow’s outstretched hooves, and again she was running deeper into the fray. The sudden pain in her right hoof reignited with each thunderous step, but she didn’t limp. In fact, she didn’t lose a single ounce of speed.
She looked around to find sheer determination plastered across everypony’s faces. With a narrow stretch of clear terrain, she had the time to properly study their faces.
They each looked identical, almost chillingly so. Even Scootaloo, a small filly, was riding towards this vague, obscure danger as if it was her calling in life. Why was she there?
Shuddering, Twilight stopped, feigning pain in her hoof. Instantly, all of her companions turned, facing her directly.
It was Trixie who spoke. “What are you doing? We need to go and stop Caballeron!”
Hold on. Since when is Trixie this dutiful? Thinking fast, Twilight averted her eyes, putting pressure on her injured hoof to produce a slight whimpering quality in her voice. “I-I know, I’m just a little hurt. I’ll only be a second.” She silently gauged everypony’s reactions, still rooted to the spot.
It was as if Trixie had ceased functioning. Next, it was Rainbow who spoke. “C’mon, hurry up! we gotta go!”
As Rainbow spoke, everyone else stood in a deranged silence. It was disturbing. No competing for attention, no movement, scarcely any panting... “Yeah, I know… Uhh, can you remember why we’ve got to go?”
Next, it was Rainbow’s turn to become defunct, and Starlight’s to speak. “We have to find the Tree of Harmony, remember?”
Something about that did sound familiar, and equally foreboding. “We do?” Twilight asked, not revealing her inner thoughts. “What for?”
“To stop Caballeron, of course.” Starlight replied matter of factly, unaffected by the smouldering trees sitting directly behind her.
“Okay, you’re either being intentionally vague, or you don’t have any clue what you’re talking about. Can someone please for the love of Celestia tell me why you’re all acting like this? For pete’s sake, half of us aren’t even Element Bearers, why would we be going to the tree?”
“It’s simple,” Rainbow Dash began, taking the foreground once more, “Caballeron has a secret plan to dig up the Tree of Harmony and mine it for its minerals, Daring Do is trapped and we have to defend it!”
No. There was no way, she couldn’t possibly believe that, could she? “Rainbow Dash, that’s a Daring Do novel!” Twilight all but screamed, wheezing as she spoke. “You’ve read that novel for crying out loud! This has already happened, and we weren’t there for it! Why would you think that we—”
“Does this feel like a story?” Scootaloo sweetly smiled, looking up at her from her scooter. “We’re going to the Tree of Harmony to protect it from Caballeron. You can either come with us quietly, or you can, oh, I dunno,” she cast an innocent gaze around the perilous, burning forest, “wait right here?”
“What?!” Twilight screamed, her voice shrill. “Have you all gone insane? This is a fantasy! But if it’s a fantasy...“ Twilight felt a shiver crawl up her spine; her blood became glacial. “Why does it look so real?..” She pawed at the ground before her, she felt the warmth of the fire slowly closing in around her, she examined the gash on her leg, blood oozing out, and the insects buzzing around it. “Why is my brain telling me that this is true, that I need to stop Caballeron before it’s too late?”
Starlight shot a cheesy smile at Twilight. “Silly Princess, that’s because this is real! You’re worrying about nothing, now let’s get moving!”
“Hold on… What?” Twilight shivered where she stood, she could feel the surreality closing in on her like a vice. “When have you ever addressed me as ‘Princess’?”
“That’s your name,” Starlight continued in a monotone, “Princess Twilight Sparkle, is it not?”
Panic stricken, Twilight whipped around to her right. “Trixie, you know a lot about illusory magic, right? You’d be able to tell if there was an illusion here right now, wouldn’t you?”
Seemingly indignant, Trixie gave a short nod. “Yes, and there aren’t any here so can we please go already?”
“H-hold on, let me think…” Alright, okay. I know something isn’t right here. Twilight eyed each of her friends once more, who all appeared to wait expectantly for her response, as if time had been put on hold especially for her. Stop Caballeron. It was her voice, she knew it, but it felt so alien, so abhorrently wrong. Get to the Tree of Harmony. Do it before it’s too late. Was she really thinking these things? Were her thoughts even hers anymore?
For a long time, there was naught but silence, until Twilight’s ears detected the crackle of burning trees, drawing ever-closer with each passing second. What had caused the fire? Why? Caballeron did it. She shuddered at the name, the very utterance willing her to propel herself forwards in search of him, to defeat him and make things right. Caballeron did it, and that’s all the explanation you need. Twilight took a shaky step forwards; all of her friends began to move in tandem. There was no conversation to be had, it seemed, only a destination to find and an objective to achieve.
You have to stop him. Do it now. Twilight knew what she had to do. She ran forwards with renewed vigor, each of her friends beside her once more, flat faced and expressionless. They had a single set of goals in mind, to catch Caballeron, save the Tree of Harmony, and rescue Daring Do.
Somewhere in the back of Twilight’s mind, she remembered a pain in one of her hooves, some indeterminate amount of time ago. She looked down at herself, seeing nothing but fresh, unbroken skin. She galloped on, her friends beside her, ready to finally defeat this menace.
Tirek shambled through the forest, wary of his limited stamina, taking the occasional pause for breath. The moonlight entwined with the auburn afterglow of burning embers as an orange blaze cut through the woodland, leaving nothing but charcoal in its wake. An ethereal glow shone down upon the centaur, the shine almost mesmerising him as he stood in place. Still, he pushed himself forwards, ignoring any desire for rest.
The short journey had been a chance to reflect, but every conclusion he drew left much to be desired, much to still understand. Why had the old one chosen now to act? How long had he spent recuperating? How had Caballeron found him, and where? All of it was truly foreboding, and nothing served to provide him even a shred of relief; not the abstract surroundings, nor the smell of decay, or even the obscene shine in the distance.
As he drew closer, he began to recognise that lurid shine for what it really was, what it signified. His destination was in reach, and despite the blazing inferno that surrounded him on all sides, there were no other ponies in sight. Resolute, he rushed forwards at a quickened pace, careful not to overexert himself if he could help it. As he approached the tree, he noticed that the roots had started to darken; his time was limited.
Wasting no time, he reached out with his power, aiming to target the six Elements of Harmony that resided in the tree. He called and he called, but the Elements proved unreceptive. They sat there, stagnant and unmoving, and no matter how he tried to coax their power out of the tree, he had no luck. His mind could feel the well of power swelling and coagulating in the tree, but for all of his effort it did not shift, or do anything to respond to his presence.
Tirek halted his magical surge, panting as he stood on shaking fetlocks. Growling, he stared up at the tree, remembering it for what it really was, the instrument of his imprisonment. How he would love to tear it up, reduce it molten ash and desecrate the sacred ground it sat upon, the desire was almost overwhelming. However, it was superseded by his need to act, and everything he had attempted so far had resulted in failure.
He stood, eyes narrowed to slits, staring up at each branch individually, as if he was attempting to decipher a difficult puzzle. An inkling in the back of his mind told him that the Elements may not respond to a creature that didn’t possess the characteristics they represent, but that wouldn’t do, he needed their power.
A scowl upon his face, he thought back to Discord’s words. Adjusting his magic, he instead attempted to target the entire tree, rather than just the Elements that resided within. They were one, after all, and he needed all the power he could get a handle on. Pouring all of his power, loathing, and passion into his spell, he felt a slight but very real shift of power as a single Element became responsive. Tirek had honesty when it suited him, loyalty and laughter he had abandoned upon his last return, kindness and generosity were his antithesis, but magic was his true self. With his unique abilities, there was scarcely a creature in Equestria with the same magical potential as him, and the element appeared to resonate with that fact.
The power he felt was incredible. He wagered that when the Bearers had previously used the Elements of Harmony, they had merely been able to channel their respective energies, not directly tap into it and use it as a power source. Now, he wasn’t becoming a bearer, he was becoming the Element, he was magic.
The pain of the transformation was transient, but excruciating all the same. He felt the memories of the previous Bearers pour into him, the emotions that made up the stone’s essence. For but a moment, he was Twilight Sparkle; he was Celestia. He shared their pain, their happiness, their traits, their thoughts, their pasts… Howling in white hot pain as he felt the alien influence being branded onto his consciousness, Tirek attempted to remember who he was, why he was there, what he was going to do.
Eventually, the pressure receded, and Tirek felt a level calm in his mind, a tranquil peace he hadn’t felt in so long that he scarcely understood the emotion. Looking over his body, he saw that his physical self had too been transformed. He was taller, but more slender, like an alicorn, and his visage was more regal and majestic than it had been previously. His horns, as well as his beard, had grown considerably, and his features were more muscular.
Strange, he had expected to grow significantly, a new form to match his severely heightened power. A small smile on the edge of his lips, he stretched, aiming to grow accustomed to his new body. Satisfied, he fired a short bolt into the air, creating a huge shockwave that all but tore the sky open with its intensity.
To think that this is the power of one element… It makes what I had before seem paltry! If only there was a way to activate more of them—What was that? Tirek jumped in place, quickly shifting back into the trees for cover. He was confident in his new abilities, but not certain that they would be enough to kill the old one.
When he heard the sound of hoofsteps drawing closer, he realised his mistake. In his ignorance, he had fired a blast of magic to test his powers, but he may as well have sent out a flare gun, alerting any nearby ponies that this was a point of interest. The advantage he had from being the first to find the tree was about to be lost, and all he could do is silently chastise himself as he watched from a shaky vantage point, assessing the situation.
Ten seconds passed. Tirek kept his eyes fixed on his surroundings, particularly on the tree, making sure nothing drew close to it without his knowledge. He knew that if Caballeron was to approach, he would have to defend the tree, but if he wasn’t here yet, or better, wasn’t coming to inspect the disturbance, Tirek would have a chance to be innovative.
By thirty, his mind wandered to the memories he had just suppressed. Twilight’s memories were useless, but Celestia had once wielded the Elements of Kindness and Generosity, as well as Magic. Perhaps, if he could tap into those thoughts, he could activate those elements also, and increase his power? Even for a magician as skilled as Tirek, retrieving a sealed memory without allowing it to overwhelm the spellcaster’s mind was a lengthy and difficult process. He only hoped he would have enough time.
Slinking further into the shadows, he began to dive into his mind’s eye, navigating the foreign presence of Twilight Sparkle’s past presence to reach the facsimile of Celestia’s mind that had nestled in his brain. Tearing away the proverbial lock, he allowed her memories to intermix with his own, disregarding all that was unimportant in the search for those that would truly impart the values of kindness and generosity. It was an insane gambit, attempting to trick the Tree of Harmony, but he could think of nothing else.
As he once more fought to remember who he was, he found it difficult to segment Celestia’s memories. She was a truly old being, one that had done an incredible amount for vast portions of her life, and very little for other parts. Through this examination, Tirek found himself wanting to pause at many indeterminate moments in the princess’s life, to drink in the wealth of experience her history offered, and the perfect clarity with which she saw it. Still, he resisted the allure, driving deeper into her past.
It was slow initially, and then all at once. Through his search, he began to recognise what made the princess a loving and benevolent ruler, what drove her subjects, friends, and sister alike to love and cherish her. He recognised that generosity had its limits, but could truly improve another pony’s quality of life, and likewise saw that kindness, while not always appropriate for every situation, could save much woe, and help to make other creatures happy.
He did not feel the profound change in his own thoughts, but he knew the mixture of emotions was having an effect on him. Surely, if he kept it up only a little longer, his aura would feel so akin to Celestia’s that the tree would happily give up Generosity and Kindness to him.
A strangely genuine smile on his face, Tirek peered out at the surroundings once more. When he saw Twilight Sparkle approaching, friends in tow, a strange part of his mind told him to rush out and greet them, to smile, offer assistance, and make sure they were not hurt. Was this Celestia’s personality he felt coalescing with his own? As much as he tried to dismiss the strange feelings he was suddenly aware of, his mind was awash with the need to comfort and assist his friends.
When the Tree of Harmony was in direct focus, Twilight and her friends all halted as one before it. Lightly panting, Twilight looked to her friends, who had ceased moving. “So, we’re here, what now?”
“We wait.” Rainbow Dash answered.
“Wait for what?”
“For Caballeron. We have to save Daring Do.” Scootaloo said.
Hold on, wait. Daring Do… What about the Tree of Harmony? “Then why are we here?” Twilight asked, skeptical.
“Because,” Starlight began, her eyes vacant, “Caballeron is looking for the Tree of Harmony, and he has Daring Do.”
Something didn’t add up. Twilight stood for a second, lost in thought, before detecting a major logical fallacy. “That makes no sense,” Twilight started, turning to Starlight, “If Caballeron is looking for the Tree of Harmony, why would we head to it first? Surely we’d try to find him instead?” She stood, racking her brain, trying to remember an important detail that had clearly slipped her mind. “You said…” A spark of realisation, she turned to Rainbow Dash. “You said that we had to find the Tree of Harmony, to defend it, right? Then why are you saying that we have to save Daring Do now? Which is it?”
“It’s both,” Starlight answered, “We have to defend the tree of harmony, and save Daring Do.”
“I asked Rainbow,” Twilight snapped, confused and irritated. Looking at Rainbow, she realised that the pegasus was deathly still, as was everyone save Starlight.
“She’s tired from the run,” Starlight stated.
“Then why isn’t she panting? Why is nopony moving?”
“We’re waiting for Caballeron.” Suddenly, Starlight stared straight at the Tree of Harmony, and her eyes visibly flashed.
Twilight looked from her unresponsive friends to Starlight, horror mounting as she tried to process the situation. “Wh-what did you just do?”
“I called Caballeron to our position.” Starlight simply said.
“Why would you do that?!”
“To hurry things up.”
Without warning, Dr. Caballeron, an earth pony, teleported before them, his smile sickeningly wide as he held an unconscious Daring Do in what appeared to be a magical aura.
Twilight gasped in shock. Her friends, on the contrary, didn’t move a muscle. Twilight wasn’t sure what to be more confused by, her friends’ inability to move or Caballeron’s apparent ability to use magic. Vaguely aware that she couldn’t cast a spell properly, she settled for shouting at him. “How are you doing that? What have you done to my friends?!”
“The Amulet of Caluiacan is indeed powerful, my friend. With it, capturing Daring Do and controlling your friends has been a simple breeze. Now, I will dig up the Tree of Harmony and sell it to the highest bidder!” his eyes flashed menacingly, “Now, be a good little pony and wait right here.”
“You’re not getting away with this…” Twilight studied Caballeron, from his head to his hooves and all the way back up, until settling on the artifact he wore around his neck. Subdued though her brain still was, something about his words was odd, and something about the amulet sickeningly familiar… At once, the realisation hit her. “That isn’t the Amulet of Caluiacan, that’s the Alicorn Amulet!”
“A good eye,” Caballeron smirked deviously, casting a quick look at Daring Do, “But not good enough, I fear. Besides, knowing what my amulet is will do little to stop its power.”
Tirek was confused. Not only were his emotions rapidly fluctuating, but his perception of events made little sense, if any. From his vantage point he could see Caballeron, the pony he knew the old one to be inhabiting, and suspended above him he could see an innocent, yellow pegasus, his sacrifice.
Celestia’s memory told him that this pegasus was named Fluttershy, and her instinct told him to protect her at all costs. Still, he had to keep detached, remember the plan. He had allowed his being to meld with Celestia’s memories to elicit feelings of generosity and kindness inside of him, feelings that would allow him to bend the tree to his will. Why wasn't he going to the tree? Why, instead, was he looking out towards Twilight, wondering why she and her companions stood so still, why they chanted?
Finally, he decided that he must forget about his friends and focus on his mission. Strangely, he detected Celestia’s influence in that choice, rather than his own. Slinking around the backends of the forest, he slowly angled towards the tree, moving within range, hoping to stay undetected. If he could only begin his spell without interruption, he would be tethered to the tree for the duration, and the old one would not be able to touch him, though they would surely detect him.
Tirek could only hope that the power would be enough.
Chapter The Chapter That Took Too Long To Make: Something Something Ponies And Meta [Dawnscroll]
Everything was perfect. The yellow one had been bound and gagged, stretched out onto the stone slab. The remaining offerings, Rainbow Dash, Starlight Glimmer, Trixie, and Scootaloo, still lay in his thrall. The knife had been honed to a fine razor’s edge now lay poised upon Fluttershy's chest. “Victory is mine! With a single thrust, the heart of Harmony will be tainted and unleash the Ultimate Evil, granting me the power I seek!” Caballeron crowed.
“OBJECTION!” came a gravelly voice from the entrance of the cave. “You’ve gone and skipped the process!”
Caballeron looked affronted at the shadowy figure just out of the Tree of Harmony’s light. “What? What process?”
“The standard villain process of master plans. You’re supposed to secure ultimate power, THEN gloat about your plan. Instead, you’ve just got a sacrifice who could’ve killed half a dozen times while you were monologuing, and no power.” The critic clucked his tongue in disappointment as he revealed himself. “They just don’t make good world-ending villains anymore…”
“Tirek!” Twilight declared, as her head snapped between him and Caballeron. “I should have known that…. Why are you wearing my tiara?” she asked.
Tirek reached up to his horns and adjusted the gaudy trinket. Some things just came with the package.
If he felt any surprise, Caballeron did not show it. The knife remained posed right above Fluttershy’s heart. “It doesn’t mean anything. I’m seconds away from victory.”
“Course it does,” the centaur chided as he wagged his finger. “Because until you have that power, it’s all just empty talk, isn’t it?”
The smuggler grit his teeth. “I beg to differ. Daring Do and her friends under my control. The sacrifice under my knife. Victory is mine!”
Tirek sighed, his horns glowing briefly as he ripped the knife from Caballeron’s magical grasp. “Come on now… you’ve got to have standards,” he scolded as turned the metal into a piece of modern art. “I know we’re shooting for the megalomaniac but “Victory is mine” is a bit too far…”
“You’re one to talk,” Twilight Sparkle growled, trying to keep both eyes on her former antagonists. Her horn glowed, her attention split between blasting the one with the Alicorn Amulet, and the one w--“
“Hard as it might be, I’m actually on your side,” Tirek placated simply. “Now, why don’t we all just sit back, relax, and make friendships over a slice of death.” He blinked and rubbed at his head. “I meant… sit back, scream, and let me torture you with cake… I mean…”
He swore as a stab of pain shot through his skull.
Something was wrong.
He felt… hollow. Empty. Like an under-inflated balloon. Hunger gnawed away inside of him, the kind that mere food could never satisfy. And if it couldn’t get what it wanted, it seemed intent on trying to cannibalize his soul from the inside out anyway.
The Element of Magic had given him a taste.
And some old habits were so easy to fall back into...
He needed magic.
He had to protect his little ponies and-
Wait.
No.
That was stupid.
Why would he do that?
Tirek howled as he clutched at his skull, the agony threatening to tear through his mind. A pounding on the inside of his skull. Bile rose in the depth of his throat, and he kicked at the cavern floor, stone splintering under his hoof.
He needed to protect the Tree and-
-No, damn the Tree! Drain it and slay the mortal and-
-Violence never solved anything! With these ponies, he could stop this. He had to-
-stop the sacrifice at all costs. Kill the yellow one. He could do it. He just needed to-
-protect Twilight and her friends! They shouldn’t have to be here and-
“GET OUT OF MY HEAD!” the minotaur roared, as the thoughts whiplashed in his mind. Twilight and Caballeron stared at him in utter bewilderment as he seemed to fight at himself. Fingers tore at mane, the tyrant hunched over double.
An afterimage of white feathers impeded his vision as he beat his head against the floor. Every fiber of his being screamed for Magic.
Mockingly, the crystals called out to him, humming with the glow of his anathema.
Or did it?
In his half-fit of madness, Tirek’s magic snapped around the Tree of Harmony, flighty as if it might burn him.
Nothing.
Was it because he was Magic? Tirek didn’t know or rightfully care. Hungrily he began to gnaw as its aura, taking what he could, only to find that it resisted his grasp like oiled marble.
“Oh come on!” he thought angrily. “By the Creator’s bleeding heart, please cut me some sort of break!
It turned out that Please was what the Tree had been waiting for. Harmony was a saccharine and revolting thing, full of fluffy peace and sticky goodness. Like caramel.
Some part of him, deep inside, screamed out that this was wrong. He ignored it and gorged himself on the disgusting caramel.
Tirek channeled the stream towards his mouth and inhaled greedily. He shivered and nearly toppled over when the charged flow coursed over his tongue and down his throat, gathered in his lungs and raced like lightning through his nerves and veins. He stopped when his lungs were uncomfortably full, quickly expelled the useless air and then breathed in, eager for the next rush of energy. He felt flush with the warmth that suffused his body, spreading from his lungs to his extremities. It filled his soul, resonated with his physical being, and it soothed the throbbing and aching in every bone, muscle, and sinew.
Harmony writhed in him like a snake, as if trying to burst out of and return to the soil in which it had slept. His flesh burned beneath his skin, his own magic to wrestle its foreign counterpart into submission. Tirek trembled, standing on his hooves as he waited for the moment to pass.
Like the naive, pastiche joke of a villain he was, Caballeron regarded him cooly. Another mistake: what sort of villain let his enemy power up?
B-Listers and Neighponese, that’s who.
Ever so slowly, he began to win the inner fight. When the burn had lessened to a minor itch beneath his epidermis, Tirek finally released the breath he hadn't realize he held frozen in his lungs. His broad chest rose and fell in deep breaths, the ex-purity of Harmony settling within him. He shivered again, but not from cold or weakness. Instead, a sense of euphoria flooded him as the foreign magic naturalized and integrated with his physical being. The glow of the Tree faded but a fraction.
Just the reminder he needed. “I’m evil now.”
Twilight stared. “Weren't you already evil?’”
“No, ill-tempered. Now I am evil. Pure evil. I am now a being of distilled, refined hate and rage.”
The Princess of Friendship stared at the Minotaur. “Really?” she asked. “Because you seem kind of noble, what with the trimmed beard, and nice color palette and– ”
“Give it a moment,” Tirek said, eyes still locked on the earth pony before them. Caballeron flashed an amused grin as he continued to fiddle with the Alicorn Amulet. Tirek breathed in deeply, then let out a long, slow breath…which quickly grew in intensity and furor into a scream of unbridled loathing.
The bandit’s eyes widened, as the cave around them trembled. Dust and rocks split from the ceiling, and Twilight, not being a B-List Villain, did the smart thing and got out of the way.
“Oh buck me in the-” he managed to get out before a crimson hand crushed his windpipe. Quick as a flash, Tirek slammed his front hooves into the stallion's side, before flipping him over his shoulder and slamming him into the ground like a wet towel, making a small crater. He cocked his right arm back, the skin of his arm lit aflame in fire and shadow as his hand curled into a fist, coming down and smashing into Caballeron’s spine.
Caballeron tilted his head back, eyes snapped open to reveal white. A thick substance, not quite smoke yet not quite oil began to gush out of his mouth. It rolled across the floor like fog, yet Tirek couldn’t help but note it never once ventured neared the circle of light from the tree.
Caballeron’s body suddenly collapsed in on itself, like a pile of sodden rags. A suit of flesh and sinew, now hollow and deflated of the vileness that had inhabited it. The smokey oil raced towards the mouth of the cave.
The words were disjointed, a chorus of voices speaking in unison with every dying whisper and monstrous roar. Tirek spun to meet the voice, firing off a barrage of multi-colored lights. Some bright oranges, others spinning purples and the final a sickly yellow hue. The bright orange vaporized the surrounding foliage, the spinning purple rent great furrows into the earth and the yellow spell turn the entrance of the Cave of Harmony into molten slag. Smoke trailed up from the oozing floor, the hellish light of his magic now shining brighter than the glow of Harmony.
"Now͝ Tir̕ek,́ tsk tsḱ, is ͡t̢h͝a̛t͏ h̀ow̷ w͞e g̵r͜eet o̧l̷d ͢f͡r̛i̧e͝nds?" came the mocking voice from the mist, coming from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"I have no friends, now come out before I kill you!"
Power. It came almost unbidden, coursing like a dam whose's floodgate had only crept open. A blast that tore open the landscape.
"No͟w ̴r̷e͝al͠ly,͏ did ̵t͟h̕at̕ ͟p̢o̷o̕r͝ bo͡ulde̴r͢ ̶deser̛v̀e̶ ̵deat͜h͠?̡ ́C҉ome ͢òn T͜ìr͞ek,҉ sh̀o̕ẃ som̷e͏ ͜k̢i̷n̡dn̡ess.̢" A pair of unnatural violet eyes glowed suddenly from the mist.
"The only compassion I show is, a QUICK DEATH!" He slammed his fist into the very slag, the magic coursing down his arm and into the earth below. The explosion was enough to level the immediate forest clearing, shaking the very cliff surrounding him. The minotaur's chest was heaving, that last spell had taken it out of him for a bit; still, the mist had retreated from the entrance of the cave.
"Who… are…. You!??!" Tirek's voice shook with fury.
More black mist began to appear in a vortex before the Minotaur Lord, gradually coalescing into an inequine shape. Legs that stood taller than some tree; hooves of cloven that left blue fire in their wake. A neck that that seemed to go on for eons...
Below its maddening, unutterable eyes, a tongue dripping with the same foul, smoky black surface waved and snatched at his red face as though it possessed a separate will and volition. The great toothed maw in the center grew wider and wider as it became more real.
It was a Giraffe.
She bowed her head till it touched the forest floor, which, for a creature whose neck was over twelve feet long, was quite the accomplishment. The mockery of everything equine flashed a Cheshire grin, that glowed stark white against the hellish light of the forest fire. It was not a pretty smile. In fact, one might call it the absolute most terrifying smile ever made by any living creature on the face of the planet in all of history.
“One of the forgotten rejects,” he interrupted, none to cruelly. She was a relic of a bygone age. Forgotten even in her own time. Yet, that made her an Old One all the same, just as he. The smile slowly slid of off the giraffe’s face, until it was a thin pursed line.
“Wait, Creamsicle? I've never heard of her... and I LIVE in a Library!” Twilight asked, staring at Tirek. "
“You could say She was my cellmate of sorts for forty thousand years,” Tirek explained. “If you count the other side of Tartarus as a cell...”
“I ̵re̛al̴ly ̵wi͢s҉h ͝ỳou ̶w͞o̢u̵ld ̀h̷a̵ve let m̸è ͜f̶in͜i̕sh̵ed,̸” the giraffe’s voice rang out through the forest glen. Her lips never moved. “Becąu̡se ̕at ̡l̕ęast͢ t͘ḩen yoų ̢wo̡ul͘d ̡h̵ave li̵ved ̶t̷hat͝ ͞m͏uch̵ ͡lo̕n̕ger҉.̸”
Immediately, Tirek’s world went inverted, upside down, reverse, a nauseating shade of puce, and Dutch. All at once. All at the same time.
A blink.
The giraffe stood before him. Or had she always been there? Had he come to her? The minotaur felt his head snap up. That neck falling like a guillotine. The distorted mouth filled with far too many needles. The teeth that were aimed straight for the throat.
Well. That was unfortunate.
The minotaur awoke, he came to the mortal understanding of consciousness. Tirek stepped back away from the screen, a colossal image of the scene he had just come from, frozen before him.
The forest grove around them had vanished. The world was gone, and he saw stars swimming before his eyes. Blinking, pressing his hand briefly to his temple to stifle a terrible headache, he rose to his hooves, testing the.... was there even a ground?
A vein twitched in his neck. If this had all been “just a dream,” another delusion caused by the food they served in Tartarus, he swore would strangle the Furies with their own intestines.
“My dearest Twili- TIREK?!”
The minotaur turned towards the source of the voice. There in the center of the hallway, a white alicorn of once serene grace, yet now utterly flabbergasted, was standing. She gaped at Tirek, her mouth flapping like a fish out of water. Her eyes darted rapidly, whatever that held.
It looked like the Princess. Sounded like her. Yet only a blind fool would assume it was Princess Celestia.
“What’s wrong, Princess? Not who you were expecting?” he snarled back.
But the creation was not just a figment of his imagination. The princess had earned the tiniest bit of his grudging respect; to embed a memory construct of oneself in the echoes of a relic like the Element of Magic was no small parlor trick. That alone made it infinitely better than the dream Celestia made of pillows back in his cell.
The solar goddess, however, looked as though she had been bucked in the teeth. “You bonded with the Element of Magic?" she asked, clearly not believing her eyes. "How is that even possible? Harmony should have rejected you utterly!”
"Yet here I stand." Tirek crossed his arms in front of his chest.
He looked around at the glowing stars that covered nearly every inch of space in the mental landscape, great screen of light flitting by ever so often. They were the only source of light, yet each had a still image from some point of view. He reached out and tapped the surface of one, the surface rippling like water before the image suddenly came to life. He watched the perspective move until it came to rest upon a blue alicorn, Princess Luna, who stood close at hand.
"The empire's magic is powerful. It cannot fall again, my sister," Luna gravely warned.
"She will succeed at her task. And when she does, we'll know she is that much closer to being ready," came Celestia's voice, from somewhere offscreen. Tirek smiled in grim satisfaction, and ceased his contact with the memory, bringing it to a halt and allowed it to drift lazily down the current of thought.
“Where exactly are we?”
"You already know this," came Celestia biting accusation. "You have all these memories already. You’re the one who decided to split us."
"I nearly lost myself in the process," Tirek explained, as he peered into another memory. "And I will not be freed and empowered only to find myself caged by a prison of my own making."
“And that’s worth fracturing your own mind?”
“I would dash your half to pieces if I could but reach.”
Celestia fell silent.
“...did she suffer.”
Tirek raised an eyebrow at that, a sneer of cold disdain on his lips upon her whispered words. Such endearance was a sign of weakness. “If it makes your whining any more tolerable, your little princess is still alive and well. For now.”
Celestia simply stared at him. “Why… no, don’t bother. I have a feeling I won’t like the answer…” she muttered, as a screen of light appeared before to her. "This trick works both ways you know," was her simple response to his questioning look. With a simple tap of her hoof, she played back his conversation with Discord, as the draconequus freed him from the depths. “After our last encounter, I find it hard to believe that your intentions could be anything but malevolent...” the echo of Tirek accused.
“Good, because they’re not. Listen to me, and listen well. I have need of you above, the situation is dire...” came Discord's reply, and the real Tirek had to bite hard on his tongue to keep from lashing out. To hear that fool a second time merely added grated every nerve in his skin. Before, he had been feeble and in chains, and willing to grasp a spider’s thread to freedom. Now, Magic coursed in his veins and whispered it's subtle secrets to him.
The minotaur watched as Celestia's face pass through many expressions as the memory played in full: shock, disbelief, anger, anguish, and, most interesting for him, fear. It was a novel expression to see on her once haughty face. Even as he had stood over her and drained with few drops of magic had remained in her shell upon his prior escape, she had never summoned up more than a glance of disinterest for him.
After a moment, she took a deep breath, her magenta eyes locking onto his with cold severity. "So let see if I got this straight..." We're in the Everfree Forest, Discord told you to absorb the power of the Tree of Harmony to protect it, stop the ponies brainwashed by Caballeron, who, just to confirm is a Giraffe of all thing... While doing so, protect the tree, preserve the forest, and keep the blood of an innocent from awaking... Him." The figment Celestia shivered, a far-off look of dread on her face. "Damn you Discord... even this is too far for a joke."
Tirek, by now, had stopped tapping his hoof as he waited for her to finish. His gaze flicked by up the giant screen above them, watching as the globules of Caballeron's blood drifted with glacial slowness. "And my reward should I succeed..."
Celestia's echo was silent for longer than what Tirek would have liked. How much of a leash did she have on that Draconequus, he wondered.
"I suppose that will be up to the real Celestia if you meet her. Discord promised you freedom. That does not seem... unreasonable," she offered neutrally. Tirek lips grew thin, unamused at the evasiveness but he would take it. “I will accept you as an ally. For now.”
“...still don’t think you have much say in this.”
She gave an angry snort and turned her head away. "He's treating this like a game, sending you of all people."
Now it was Tirek’s turn to grow insulted. “Excuse me? The real you has been strangely absent this whole time.”
“I’m probably off being heroic.”
“...is the real you this deluded?” Tirek wasn’t sure he wanted to know. “I’m the best chance you have at existing, even if it’s beneath my hooves as a slave.”
"No, because even my inbred great-nephew would have had a better chance," she said pointedly. “Magic… Magic I can understand how it could accept it. That doesn’t mean I like it.” Celestia conceded. “But the only thing you’re Loyal too is yourself. The words Kindness and Generosity are as foreign on your tongue as Neighponese. Deceit slips off your tongue easier than Honesty and unless you've really been practicing your villainous cackle, Laughter is out of the question.”
"No matter," he scoffed. "With the bulk of the powers of the Elements of Harmony at my disposal, it will be easy to-"
"Five percent," Celestia automatically corrected. Tirek's brain came to a crashing halt.
"Excuse you?" he dared to ask.
"Five percent. The Element of Magic, in total, contains approximately five percent of the joint magical stores of the Elements of Harmony," she explained with careful slowness, frowning ever so slightly. "I thought it would have been obvious. Magic is the keystone upon which Harmony resides, but it draws upon the reserves of the others."
Tirek wondered if Discord had known this. Of course, that snake wouldn't have missed something like this. Just what then would Tirek have to give up to claim Generosity? What secrete would gift him Honesty? Creator forbid the self-humiliation to incur Laughter?
And yet, in the back of his mind, Tirek was elated. If Magic was but a taste of Harmony, his soul craved to taste the might of the other five.
His fist clenched in arcane power, the muscles along his firm bulging from the strength within. “More than enough. With this artifact’s war magick’s I will stop Caballeron. I will rend mountains and boil seas. I will… I will...” He stopped with he caught Celestia’s abashed look. “...is there something you’re not telling me.”
The alicorn was silent, biting her bottom lip furtively.
“...this doesn’t come with weapons, does it?”
“I mean… technically you COULD banish him to the moon. But that’s more like long range teleportation, and not necessarily “pew-pew lasers,” Celestia reasoned. For good measure, she held her forelegs above her ears, bending her hooves towards him with each ‘pew’.
“If Magic is harmless, then what will hurt it?!” he demanded. Celestia paused her impromptu laser battle and tapped her hoof to her chin for a moment.
“I’d have to say… Kindness.”
“Kindness? You’re saying that Kindness is the most powerful of the Elements?”
“Well, you have heard the expression ‘Kill them with Kindness’, haven’t you?”
“...I have half a mind to let Him erase you all for that alone.” Tirek said at last. “I guess we’ll just resort to my specialty… glass the landscape.”
The echo shook her head. "Let me take control. Just for a little while. There has to be another way."
"What do you intend to do then?" Tirek snarked. "Talk him to death?"
There was silence from the other corner of his mind. Tirek blinked in disbelief, the realization striking him like a bolt of lightning.
"Oh maker above, that's actually the plan? Diplomacy!?"
"Well, I was also intending on belittle that.. that... that Thing... from a position of moral superiority," she added with a nonexistent shrug.
"I do not think it has a functioning mind."
"Emotional scars hurt just as much as fleshy scars alike," Pseudo-Celestia defended.
"No, scars hurt far worse! And would be useful to us in this case!" he snarled. Tirek gave a wearied sigh. The only thing that kept him from walking away from this madhouse was the very real fact that if he did, all of existence, himself included, was doomed. His mind sorted through screens, one after another as he sought to find something, anything, that would give him an edge. Before his eyes, the Thing crept forward another fraction of an inch. Yet he watched every would-be conflict she had endured in the past millennia of her life. Just as spears were being shaken, gleaming swords raised in the air, the solar princess would placate her foe with the most mundane trivialities. Celestia sharing cake with the a band of Griffon marauders; Celestia betting the whole of the Appleloosan west in a poker match with the buffalo chiefs; Celestia in a particularly deep round of negotiations with a Changeling Queen.
“Drone! Bring us more honey!”
He sped by that one in post haste. Far more than he needed to see.
At last, he came upon a scene, in a valley he had not gazed upon since the sun and moon were new.
"Alright, the Waste of Dream Valley, what part exactly did you play in the battle?" he asked, his hands almost lovingly touching the screen. Then the world was young, the mountains green, with no stain yet upon the mountain scene. Then, he had been strong in his castle of Midnight. And the ponies weakened and scattered.
And then those infernal Witches came.
"Well you know, I did fight..."
"Need I remind you that ALL of existence, sister and your precious student included, is on the line?"
Celestia's mouth snapped shut with a sharp clip. The mental figment danced on her hooves nervously. "Words hold their power."
"You fought with words," Tirek buried his face in his hands.
"I fought with words. And when the witches redoubled their efforts and approached the castle in a rally, I taunted them a second time."
"You taunted at them from afar."
"Scared them a fair bit if I may say so myself."
That was it. Tirek angrily stalked off back towards the colossal screen which held the present. At the look of enraged disgust on the minotaur's face, she tried to wave him back. “Wait! Just what are you going to do? You can’t fight something like that!”
Tirek reached out and placed a hand on the screen. The world poured out, ensnaring him in the present once more.
“To think I fell at your hands…” he muttered in disgust as the giraffe lunged at him. “I’ll take my chances.”
Everything for a five-mile radius spontaneously erupted into a foliage raping bubble of pure fire and transformed the land into a glassed over crater five wide and a mile deep.
Celestia looked up from her tea, the morning paper, and a particularly fine slice of cake, noticing the glowing orange light over the horizon. Sighing, she set her tea down. “Looks like Equestria is in danger... Again.”
Luna facehoofed from behind Celestia, “In my own name, the Everfree? That area is going to be on fire for the next ten years, isn’t it?”
“Most likely,” Celestia agreed. “If I was a betting mare... and I'm NOT," she stressed to a suddenly excited Luna, who simply pouted and tucked away the poker deck somewhere on her person, "I would say that Twilight really needs to learn that not all of her friendship problems can be solved by glassing everything.” She looked at the ceiling. “Someone get me a drink. Something strong, preferably.”
"You think she has it covered?"
"I think she'll have it fixed in twenty-eight minutes. If it goes longer, then maybe it’s time to worry."
“Get back here so I can incinerate your hide!” Tirek roared, launching himself after Creamsicle with runes glowing almost like individual suns. Every single combat spell he knew raced through his mind, along with calculations for the exact amount of force that he’d need to reduce the giraffe into molten slag. With every blast, she either seemingly shrugged it off or dodged, and Tirek’s blood ran hot when he realized the infernal beast was playing with him.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have breathtaking anger management problems?” the Celestia whispered in the back of his mind. “I mean, there’s having a short temper, and then there’s being on a hair trigger. But if you wind up destroying the very Tree you're trying to save… the only way to stop her is to harness the power of the elements and-”
“Yes, the tree!” Struck by a bolt of inspiration, Tirek teleported back to the Tree of Harmony and wrapped his arms around the crystal trunk. With a grunt of exertion, the thick cords of his muscles straining, he uprooted the tree, roots and all.
“No, not the tree!” Twilight screeched in disbelief. A flash of light, and the minotaur had teleported in front of the giraffe and swung.
Twilight gave a moan of despair and buried her face, shielding her eyes from the rain of crystal shrapnel that fell around them. The only one who didn’t seem phased was a certain lilac unicorn, who stared at the minotaur trying to beat the elder creature to death with the cracked and broken trunk of Harmony.
It was surprisingly effective.
After a few solid thwacks the giraffe’s neck resembled an accordion. She tried to crawl out of the crater he had made for her, only for him to bring it down upon her over and over. Until at last a field of purple magic held it still in his hands.
“Let go of the tree,” Tirek warned as he tugged against her magic.
“For goddesses' sake, use another one!” Twilight growled, as she tugged back. He dug in his hooves, leaving furrows against the dirt.
“Magic must defeat magic!”
“Then why are you beating her with it like a club?!”
“Its a club of Good!”
“It’s the Tree of Harmony, not a golf club!”
“I SWEAR IF YOU’LL JUST LET ME IMPALE HER WITH IT-”
And so on and so forth until at last, the tree crumbled away into shards from their childish tug of war.
As battered as she was, Creamsicle gave a bitter laugh.
“I wa͜s͟ bròu͡g̨ht bac̸k͠ fo͢r̡ ͡th͘e ͜sa̵m̨e͘ ̸r͠eas̸o̵n͟ yơu̡ w̸e͡r̷e̕- b̕e̸ca͠us̕e͝ ͘th̸e͠ ̷Uni͜vers̛e̛ ͟d̀ema̶n̸d͢e͟d ̵it̶.͡” As the creature spoke Tirek felt the darkness pressing in around him. “W҉hy͟ ͟sp̸end ͢a͡ny̨ ti҉m̕e͘ ̕pùtt̵ing ͝ef͡f͝ort i̵n͡to͜ ͢somet͏h͟in̛g ͘n͘ew̛ ̧whe̛n ̕y̛ơu͢ ̸ca̧n̕ jus͜t͠ re̢t̕r͜ac̢e o̴l̕d͜ ̶p̡ath̡s? Yo̶u ̴assum͝e ̡y̛o̢u͏'re̛ hér̨e̡ becau̴se ͢y̛o͟u̕ ́werȩ ̸po̸w̴e̡r̡ful, ͠b́e̸ca͏us͡e ̸t̷h̢a̕t ̕mi͠sma̶tche̷d ̷wyr̨m̧ n̛ee͠ded ́ýo̢u." Creamsicle spat out a tooth, any amusement gone from her voice. "Y͞ou'͢r͡è ͠he̵r͘ȩ ́be͢cause ͏s͘o̢me ͝Ņew̵ Òne͏s ͡tho͡u̵gh̀t ͟they̴ ͘c̀oưld͟ play̨ God. ͏The̷y͏ li͘ve th̷ei͘r ̧li̵v̧e̢s͟ ͡and̀ ͠d͠e̢ál w̢i͟t̡h̢ ẃhat͏'s̢ m҉u̴nda͏ne ̴to the͡m̛.͝ Yóu'̶r̨e ҉j̢u͠s͘t ͠t͜h͏e͡ l͏at͞est̴ ͞s̶nip̴pe̕t̴ ҉o͢f ̕ąm̕use͠m̢ent͜."
The giraffe puffed up her chest, propping herself up against the edge of the crater.
The briefest lapse of confusion at her words was all she needed: he paused and the creature struck. The blast was a spiral of nothingness that tore at the very space around it. The purple alicorn next to him threw up a barrier at the last moment, but the force of the attack caused the dome to crack in dozens of places.
Thus began the dance.
Tirek, or at least, Twilight portion of Magic's memories that were now engraved in his mind, found himself acting in sync with the former bearer, throwing titanic blasts of energy at eldritch african. Twilight did not know how many attacks she could successfully block. Each one that she was unable to deflect took Tirek's attention away to blast it out of the air. Each explosion ceded a little more ground to the Old One as they kept up the arcane match. It didn't even look like Creamsicle was exerting any effort; appearing from a seemingly random portion on the forest to launch the next assault, only to vanish once the next attacked reach her. Once either of them were exhausted, the strain of defending themselves would become incredible.
A stray bolt took off one of Tirek's horns, and he fired wildly in abandon in a barrage of arcane fire. “No! I deny you and Him! I am the sole controller of my fate!"
Twilight skidded alongside him, her chest heaving with each breath as her horn sputtered like a guttering candle. She was sorely regretting not taking Rainbow Dash's offer to train…
“O͘h ̸my ͘fri͜ènd.͘ .͝ .̵ ̷th͞at ͡on̕ly ͜w̡orks̷ ҉if ̶yo͜u b͟elieve ͝it,̀ bu̧t ͠w̷ę b҉ot̸h̢ kno̷w ͠th͡at͝ ̧y͠ou d̸ǫn͝’t.̡ ͝Yo̴u kn̕ơw ̸t͏h̶e t͝r̴u̸th͢.̧ Y҉o͡u'̶ve͜ ͞doǹe ͡t̨hìngs ͞the T҉ir͡e͜k̨ o͡f̛ ǫld ͡n̨ever w͟ould ͜h͝a͘ve ҉d͞r͡e̛am̀ȩd o͠f̵. ͟You̴'r҉e t̕r͏y͏i͜n̛g͝ t̴ǫ bo͟n̕d ̴w̨it̢h̀ H̢a͠rm̧on͘y͘, ̕d̵ąncin̶g fór̀ t͞h͘e͜ ͏New ͏O͟n҉e̵s͜ lik͝e a͟ strin̛ge͢d ̶mar̛io̢ne̶tte̴.̴ Heŕe,” she growled, as the spots on her body glowed with an unearthly light, "Let͢ ͡me͢ c҉út̀ th͢e̷m f̸ór҉ y̧ou̵!"
The blast of dark flames that slammed into Tirek tore through Twilight's barrier and slammed her against the cave wall. Seconds that followed felt like hours. Fire. Screams. A burst of As she stood up on shaky legs, she could numbly make out the Minotaur collapse to his knees alongside her. Pain lanced down her side, she tentatively pressed a hoof against it. Yup, rib broken.
Twilight coughed the ash from her lungs, her shield fading from existence. “Alright, who isn’t dead?”
The collective of groans and mumbles of pain was enough to let her know that her friends breathed; for now.
“Argh, my leg! How is Trixie suppose to perform with her leg like this?!” the showmare asked, holding up a hoof that had the slightest of cuts on it.
“I think you’ll survive…”
Trixie began to open her mouth but faltered as she saw the murderous glint in Twilight’s eyes. The twilight alicorn gave a nod of satisfaction and began to take stock. Rainbow Dash was nursing a broken wing, Starlight had suffered a particularly nasty burn on her side, and young Scootaloo had managed to get escape with little more than a bloody nose.
Twilight sighed in relief.
Everyone was alive and well.
“Twilight… um... If you get the chance… a little pegasistance?” came Fluttershy’s weak plea.
Oh. Right. Fluttershy was here too.
“Of course,” Twilight said with a tired sigh as she examined her friend. “But I’m sure it’s nothing-”
Her voice died in her throat as she realized it was nothing.
About half of the Pegasus was now nothing, pulped in the blast.
The remaining half didn’t look too good either.
“How does it look?” Fluttershy asked weakly.
“..probably how it feels,” Twilight answered, trying to hold her stomach.
“I’m imagining crushed raspberries then.”
“You’re going to be alright,” Twilight tried to tell her. Something hot burned on her cheeks as she fumbled for Fluttershy’s hoof. “We just need to get you out of here and everything will be just fine…”
“No, we can fix this,” Twilight insisted, picking up what looked to be half a kidney and stuff it back inside her friend. “We can cut Trixie in half, and then sew the two of you together!”
“HEY!”
“OH SHUT UP, TRIXIE!” Twilight snarled.
“Twilight, I’m fine. It’s just a flesh wound,” Fluttershy offered, as a line of blood floated up her face.
That wasn’t normal.
It was then that Twilight noticed the remnants of her friend floated several inches off the ground. A nicked and burnt Tirek, his horns aglow with magic next to her, held her aloft in his magic.
“Blood of the innocent…” Tirek explained, as he knelt down alongside Twilight. Relief was palpable in his voice. “If a single drop hits the ground while she’s still alive, the End of All will come.”
“Oh… well… I’m sorry?” Fluttershy apologized, as her sole remaining ear folded back in worry. “I didn’t mean to try and end the world…”
In the distance, the Old One slowly knit herself back together. Neck bones snapped back into place, spotted fur stitching over as she grew Tall over the forest once more. She grinned in savage delight at the carnage amongst the ponies.
“Y͘ess̀s͝sss͠,̕” she hissed in sibilant joy. “L̢et ̢it ͜en͝d.͡ L̨et ̕him̴ co̶mę. ͘V̡icto͡r͡y ̧is̸ ̨m҉ine͠ ͏a͡t͢ ͠l͞a͟st͟…͢”
Creamsicle stepped back in shock as Tirek began to become surrounded by a prismatic glow. Discord’s words echoed in his head. “You're wrong, demon. I win,”
The monster transformed its body into a living weapon as it shot towards the cave in an arrow of black flames. There was no defending against the attack, so Tirek did the only thing he could.
He defied it.
Tirek cupped the Pegasus’s face in his hands, his touch surprisingly tender for one so large. Cerulean eyes met his for a moment, wide and fearful. An impossibly tiny nod of understanding. And perhaps, in that pained gaze, gratitude.
“This is a kindness.”
With a sharp twist, and perhaps a crack that was too quiet for Tirek’s liking, the pegasus lay dead at his feet.
Twilight nudged her with her hoof.
“......” Twilight took a deep breath, took another deep breath, stared at Fluttershy some more, and-
Celestia looked up in confusion from where she nursing a glass of scotch, “Luna, did you hear a scream?”
“Nope.”
“Ah, alright then.”
Tirek stared at Twilight in silence, grateful his eardrums had burst after the first five seconds. A quick spell healed him. “Feel better?”
Twilight hyperventilated a few times and sat down on the rubble, head firmly dropped into her hooves, “....no?”
That was when the colossal white wings exploded from his back, covered in fresh gore and sinew, and with it a radiance of rainbow that sent Creamsicle into the molten slag with the speed of a bullet. Tirek screamed, fingers digging into his sides as he clawed at them. “By Faust’s milky teats that HURTS.”
His veins burned with power as Kindness bonded with him. His groans of became slowly melted into a giggle. Then a chuckle. Then Tirek, threw his head back and laughed. Kindness burned cold inside of him, like an intoxicating wine.
Who knew that being good could feel so bad?
“Now they’re just giving them everypony!” complained an irate showmare before there was a loud thwack that left her yelping and rubbing the back of her skull.
“There we go… danger averted. World saved, prophecy spoiled. Giraffe soon to be stuffed and mounted on my wall...”
“Are you crazy?!” Twilight screeched, her eyes wild. “Nopony in the write mind would think Fluttershy innocent!”
“But Discord said-”
“I don’t give two flying flips what he told you!” Twilight screamed, her eyes wild. “You haven’t seen the pet cemetery behind her house!”
The herald of Him smiled expectantly. She seemed to be looking at Scootaloo.
Twilight glanced over. Scootaloo’s nose was still bleeding. She seemed unaware that a trickle of blood had made its way down her face to the end of her chin.
"Scootaloo, look out …" Twilight tried to say, but for once her voice failed her.
A single drop of blood fell from her chin. It hit the ground between her hooves and sizzled like water on a frying pan.
The blood of a child's innocence watered the ancient forest. The Everfree shifted and groaned beneath their feet as something ancient awoken.
Creamsicle looked down at the cracking earth, revealing a monstrously carven portal which was slowly being forced open. The world was ending. She had been the cause. Huge Kraken-like tentacles were forcing the portal open. They whipped through the air, decimating what was left of remaining forest. She looked up to see a mandible the size of a small house bearing down upon the little group.
"He̶ ̀has̛ awo͘ke͜n̴,͜" she whispered fervently, bowing her long neck. "Pŗais͘e̵ ҉hi͟m! Pra̛i̵s̕e̵ ͝him̷!̢"
"What... what is that..." Twilight pleaded, unable to look away from the horror. Something within Tirek's very soul died that moment. How could he convey that the ruin of all had come? The devourer of worlds and souls and reality alike. A mighty, apathetic god who only sought silence for silence's sake. All he could say was…
"Brian Goldner has come."
Chapter Holy Sh*#%: The Story Is Compromised [Flutterpriest]
“Okay, I’m going to stop you right here,” Twilight said to Rainbow Dash.
The blue pegasus looked up at her friend incredulously. They were on a dead-tight schedule. The kidnappers said that they would need the best possible script for a stage-play in 24 hours or else the Cutie Mark Crusaders would breathe their last.
“Twilight, we don’t have time for this!?” Rainbow shouted at her friend. “You know what the stakes are.”
“Yes, I know. However, we aren’t going to be able to accomplish ANYTHING unless we do it right. These are real lives on the line. We can’t just skip editing and slap something together. This is the first case I can think of where a punctuation mistake or tense change could ACTUALLY kill somepony!”
Rainbow slouched over the table and pressed her hooves to her temples.
“We have five hours left, and we’re only on chapter eight, Twilight. We don’t have time for this.”
“You make time for editing, Dash. Even if it’s not fun. It’s what makes sure your end product feels like it was written by one author and not fourteen.”
An uncomfortable silence filled the room as Twilight sighed and looked down at the book in front of her.
“Okay. Ponyball Z fighting sequences aside. Let’s just review our main characters. Who is in the ‘main party’.”
“That’s easy,” Rainbow Dash chimed in, her hoof tapping the air as if it were a sing-a-long marker. “We have Twilight, Tirek, Me, Trixie, Starlight, Scootaloo, Fluttershy. Oh, Wait. Fluttershy was killed by Tirek. So not her.”
“Okay, that’s sort of a team overload there, but I think we can make it work. Especially if Tirek needs to absorb all of the elements. Okay, we have the ‘Who’ then. Next we have to deal with ‘What’. What’s their goal?”
“Twilight. Did you even read the earlier chapters?! It’s obvious. Caballeron is trying to take over the world using the Alicorn Amulet and has brainwashed ponies who are following his bidding. There’s also an evil giraffe cult that raised their god, Brian Goldner from the-”
“Okay, stop.”
“What?” Rainbow asked.
“Did you come up with this story while using sock puppets? This feels like a sock puppet show.”
“Don’t you judge my creative writing process…”
“This is why I offered to help you!?” Twilight growls. “This is just spinning out of control into some tangled mess! Okay. Also, who in the actual Tartarus is Brian Goldner?”
“It seemed like a cool name, so sue me. At least it’s not fanfiction.”
“You leave my Daring Do Fanfiction out of this, Rainbow Dash. I do it because it makes me happy.”
“Then why did you open a pontreon?”
“We’re WAY OFF TOPIC!” Twilight shouts. “Lives are at stake. Let’s stay serious. We’ve covered who and what. So a quest is set. So where are the characters and where are the Princesses in all of this?”
“Oh! They’re in the Everfree Forest, because reasons.”
“You can’t just say because reasons.”
“They needed to get to the Tree of Harmony, Twilight. Plus, everything cool in stories happens in a dark forest or on a dark, stormy night. It’s writing 101!”
Twilight’s left eyebrow twitched and she could feel her entire body tense with restraint to slap a mare silly. But, this was for the fillies.
“And the Princesses?” Twilgiht asked.
“Oh! They’re basically drunk in Canterlot Castle.”
“Wait, what?! You said they had tea.”
“Well, I mean. Isn’t high tea basically a kind way of saying that you’re getting day drunk? That’s usually what Rarity and I do when we have tea. She has this warm, bitter stuff in a cup and I just drink. It’s pretty great.”
“So the Princesses are just doing nothing during all of this.”
“Drinking is something.”
Twilight groaned and slammed her head into Rainbow’s crudely written book.
“For. The. Fillies.”
“What?” Rainbow asked.
“Nothing. Okay. So that’s Where. I guess. So, why?”
“Oh. So, that’s where it gets cool. So, obviously Caballeron is a problem. And we’ll deal with that later. Cause, there’s like, three huge evils in the world. And now we gotta deal with Brian. And we can’t use the Tree of Harmony, because Tirek just uprooted it and beat up Creamcicle the giraffe with it.”
“So, that brings up another thing I wanted to talk about. You kept mentioning about real and fake ponies?”
“Oh, yeah! See, metaphysical stuff is really cool. I wanted to do that ‘Is it all a dreeeaammm.’ stuff.”
“No, we’re cutting that.”
“WHAT?! You can’t…. Do that. Can you do that? I don’t think you can do that.”
“Well, it’s done,” Twilight says, going back in the book and crossing out a bunch of lines.
“But doesn’t this break the whole flow of the story?” Twilight looked up and glared at Rainbow Dash.
“Have you even read this hot mess of a book you’ve written?”
“Well, I wrote it, so duh.”
“Then where does it begin?” Twilight asked.
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” Rainbow said confidently, then paused for a moment to think. “At the beginning.”
Twilight groaned and looked down to the book. It was clear this was going nowhere. And that those fillies were probably going to die. But, she had a single task. Make this book work.
“So, then. Who, What, Where. Now why? Why is all of this happening?”
“Because, evil is bad,” Rainbow Dash said with pride, clearly content with her answer.
“No, like, what’s the motive for the bad guys?”
“Well Caballeron wants to control the world.”
“Okay, but why did Creamcicle want to raise Brian Goldner?”
“Because her cult said so.”
“And why was she in her cult?”
“I don’t know Twilight, does every single character need a deeply fleshed out back story in order to be a menacing, meaningful character?”
“Yes.”
“Oh… wait, really?” Rainbow asked, shocked.
“Yeah.”
“Oh. Then we have a problem.”
“Why?”
“I guess you’ll see as you read on.”
“Fair enough,” Twilight said, flipping through pages while Rainbow wasn’t looking to get to chapter nine.
“So, in chapter eight Tirek gets the elements of Generosity and Honesty by killing Applejack and Rarity.”
“But why?” Twilight asked. “He clearly took my element of Magic without harming me. Then he just randomly kills Fluttershy.”
“Right? Isn’t that ironic?”
“I don’t think you know what that word really means,” Twilight groans. “But fine. So you kill Applejack and Rarity. Now all of us except you, me and Pinkie are dead.”
“Yeah, Pinkie and I don’t die until chapter nine.”
“You’re missing the point, Rainbow. There has to be some way of transferring the elements into Tirek without killing everypony.”
“Well, he was going to turn good, after being filled with the elements, and then bring us back to life.”
“Okay, one? Spoilers. Rude. Two? Now you’re going to have to bring characters back to life in an already overcomplicated plot. And there’s still one hanging question on my mind.”
“What?”
“Where is Cadance?”
“Oh my gosh, Twilight. Are you seriously considering adding more characters?”
“She’s a Princess, Rainbow. She can do a LOT to help this situation.”
“I honestly don’t remember if I did something with her or not.”
“And I can’t either. And that’s the point. At this point, I’m worried that things will happen just for the sake of happening.”
It’s at that moment that Pinkie burst through the door wearing a purple jumpsuit that had cupcakes glued onto it.
“Yeeeheeee!” Pinkie squealed as she burst into Twilight’s study. “I brought some sugar for the hardworking editors who are doing such a wonderful job that three of our closest friends won’t be brutally murdered! How’s the editing coming?”
Rainbow and Twilight exchanged glances.
“Okay, maybe our lives are a little random,” Twilight added.
“Then should we include Cadance?”
“At this point? We could add King Sombra and I don’t think anypony could care.”
“No, that’s the shipping chapter that’s later on.”
“Please don’t,” Twilight groaned.
“I’m joking! I’m joking!!!”
“Do you two want cupcakes or not?” Pinkie asked.
The two girls collectively mumbled their ‘No Thank You’ and Pinkie stumbled out the door like the comedic plot device she is.
“Okay, so now, let’s talk about Discord.”
“What? Are you going to say including him is bad too?”
“No, actually, I think it’s kind of smart. Discord is being Tirek’s devil on his shoulder, here. Even if Discord is reformed, this seems like something he’d do for fun. So, we see Tirek’s resistance to him strengthen as he absorbs more elements.”
“Yeah, so there’s evil number three. Reformed Discord.”
“Wait, how is reformed discord a bad guy?”
“Are you really going to ask these sort of questions every time something doesn’t make sense?”
“Yes, that’s what an editor does.”
“Pinkie.”
“Yeah?” Pinkie Pie says, suddenly next to Rainbow Dash.
“I rest my case.”
“Cases don’t need sleep, silly,” Pinkie says. “They just need fulfillment. Can’t have an empty case.”
“Pinkie, no offence, we need to focus,” Twilight said, a clear migraine beginning to surge through her temples.
“Okie-Dokie-Lokie!” Pinkie says ducking under the table and out of existence.
Once Pinkie was out of the room, she couldn’t help but look at her friend with some sort of disdain. Twilight knew she should have handled all of this by herself, but there’s that whole ‘friendship’ thing that keeps coming up and the lines of what is and isn’t okay gets blurrier every day.
“Do you mind if we kinda just… skim Chapter 8?” Twilight asked.
“Sure, why not. It’s probably fine. It’s a flawless chapter.”
“What happens in it? From the top.”
“Well, I already told you that Tirek kills Rarity and Applejack. So, first thing they do is leave the Everfree Forest to find Rarity, who is in Carousel Boutique. And it’s a really awesome exchange. See, Tirek decides to go inside alone and approach Rarity on his terms.”
“Uhhh,” Twilight mutters. “His terms?”
“Yeah, so, Tirek and Rarity had this big romance.”
“No they didn’t.”
“In the story they did.”
“Yeah,” Twilight added. “But this is based on real life ponies. So, you can’t just shoe in a romance between two ponies we know.”
Rainbow’s wings flared out as she looks to the floor.
“Uh. You don’t want to read chapter 12 then.”
Twilight flipped through the pages and begins to scan a few pages.
“Starswirl, forgive me for what I must do,” she muttered. Then, she tore the whole chapter from the book, tossed it into the air, and with a flash of her horn, the pages singed into ash.
“No. Bad Rainbow,” Twilight scolded. “No random threeways. This is unacceptable.”
“There was a lot of unresolved tension!”
“No. Bad.”
“Fiiine,” Rainbow groaned. “I feel like you’re tearing apart my child.”
“Your stories aren’t your children, deal with it,” Twilight retorted. “What happens next?”
“Tirek and Rarity have a romantic moment, then he makes it quick and painless for Rarity. He comes out with a tear in his eye. Then they go to Sweet Apple Acres, and it gets REALLY cool!”
Twilight simply sighed. Rainbow paused, tilting her head. The alicorn waved her hoof for her friend to continue.
“So, then the whole crew begins to go to AJ’s farm. But then there’s a ZOMBIE PONY ARMY! Caballeron is furthering his plan faster than the crew expected. They fight the ponies as much as they can, but they get herded back to the barn and trapped. But then! Applejack comes out with her super sniper rifle!”
“What’s a sniper rifle?” Twilight asked.
“I dunno. I made it up. Think of it as a super strong, long distance slingshot.”
“So, you made your own weapons?”
“Yeah!” Rainbow said. “It was really cool.”
“Huh,” Twilight said happily. “Maybe I haven’t been giving you enough credit. It takes a lot of creativity to come up with a realistic weapon.”
“And it’s also part SWORD!”
Twilight rested her head on the table and massaged her temples.
“So AJ comes out,” Rainbow continued, “And kills all the zombie ponies. And then agrees to fight Tirek for her element. And they get in this super cool battle with flying and magic and lasers!”
“Wait, Applejack can fly and has lasers now?” Twilight asked.
“Well, yeah. I had to make her stronger or Tirek would just destroy her. Oh! And Celestia and Luna are drunk and watching. They think it’s TV.”
“Why?” Twilight asked, the light in her soul slowly dying.
“Cause it’s funny.”
“Okay, so then Triek beats AJ. Takes her element. Then that just leaves yours. Is there anything else in that chapter?”
“Nope!” Rainbow said happily.
“Okay, what do we need to do to eliminate the romance subplot from the rest of the book? Because it’s really out of place and is probably the best place to start working on this.”
Rainbow took the book, reviewed it carefully, then tore the book down middle from the spine.
“I realized I actually never address any of the world ending stuff again, and the rest of the book was just… uh. Intimacy. So we might as well begin to write the second half.”
“We have to write half of a novel in FOUR HOURS?!” Twilight growled.
“Hey,” Rainbow barked, folding her hooves. “I did my best. Now clean up my mess.”
Twilight sighed and levitated a quill to her table.
“Okay, we can fix this. We’ll just start from here. I’m a faster writer, so just tell me what you think happens next in the story and I’ll write it down from there. I’ll probably interject some ideas, but it’ll still be your creation. Hopefully at the final chapter, some outside force can tell us whether this book was good enough to let the fillies live.”
“What are you talking about?” Rainbow asked.
“That’s not important,” Twilight said. “What happens next?”
Chapter Nine-Thousand: This Isn’t Even The Best Part [Roselucky Seven]
Applejack was defeated. Her element stolen by the mighty Tirek, whose grasp on Equestria was growing ever-tighter. The land everypony called home now had just one chance:
Rainbow. Freaking. Dash.
With the speed of a bullet, the pegasus mare shot up towards Tirek, jutting her face into his. “So, you think you’re a real tough guy, huh? Some kinda big shot?”
“Heh, is this supposed to be some form of intimidation?” Tirek chuckled heartily. “If so, your bravado could use some work.”
“What’s a ‘bravado’? Is that some sorta snake or something, ‘cause I don’t like snakes.”
“... What.”
“Whatever,” Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, causing Tirek to let out a sigh. “Put up your dukes and let’s settle this like real ponies.”
Tirek returned her eye roll, raising up his hand and flicking away Rainbow in an effortless display. Not to be denied, the proud Wonderbolt kicked her hooves out as she hit the ground, rebounding in his direction, ready to inflict a hit of her own. Still, Tirek simply grinned as he caught her outstretched hoof and quickly slung her into the ground.
The rainbow-maned pegasus crashed to the ground with a thud. Slowly, she raised her head and shook it, regaining focus. “That’s it, let’s finish this!”
“Whoa, whoa. I thought we were done with the epic fight scenes?” Twilight recalled. Come to think of it, this story was starting to stray further away from the topic with every new word.
“Pshh, people don’t read stories for the ‘mystery’ and ‘introoge’—”
“Intrigue,” Twilight corrected her.
“Whatever,” Rainbow Dash swiftly continued. “Point is, nopony is going to read a story just for the suspense. What ponies really want is action.”
“And as long as that action only revolves around you, that’s alright?” Twilight prodded.
“Uh, obviously. After all, there’s nopony better suited for action than Rainbow Dash.”
Twilight facehoofed. “Alright, Great and Powerful Rainbow Dash, let’s not get too ahead of ourselves here. We still have a story to write, and we’ve completely lost direction in favor of fight scenes, explosions, and ill-advised side-plots involving love stories that don’t even make sense in a fictional setting.”
“You know what? You’re right, Twilight.”
Well that was a surprising admittance, though it didn’t stop Twilight from grinning. “I’m glad you see it that way, Rainbow Dash, now we—”
“Now we should add a scene where it turns out Tirek is Celestia and Luna’s long-lost adoptive brother!”
It wasn’t possible. Nopony could be this thick-headed. “No!”
“Come on, everypony loves a good twist!”
“Not if it’s M. Night Shyamallama tier!” Twilight shouted back, her reference to the famed foreign maker of The Seventh Element going unnoticed by the enthusiastic pegasus.
“Twilight, do you want this story to be a success?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Then you’re gonna have to drop that mystery nonsense, because it’s boring with a capital ‘B’.”
Twilight fumed, and for the first time in years, became engulfed in the flames of rage. With a few deep breaths, she managed to compose herself. “You know what? I think it’s time to drop Rainbow Dash, because she is being bone-headed with a capital ‘B’.”
“But I—”
“You’re fired.”
Rainbow Dash grumbled angrily, but elected to simply walk to the other side of the room and fume to their friends. Meanwhile, Twilight went right back to work.
“Now, where do I even begin to fix this utter mockery of literature?”
Chapter 1010: The Never-Ending Sequel [Dave Bryant]
Twilight Sparkle stared at the neat lines of text for a long moment before face-planting on the sturdy desktop. Snowdrifts of cheap wood-pulp paper nearly hid the varnished wood surface from view; the impact of alicorn and forehead sent a few of the more precariously balanced sheets drifting quietly down to join creased or crumpled fellows already cluttering the floor.
“No, that’ll never work.” Her muffled voice was somewhere between a groan and a whimper. “What was I thinking?” After another pause, she muttered, “What, was I thinking?” With a sigh she raised her head again and looked around the disaster area of a room, bleary-eyed. Still-wet black ink, lifted from the penned page, spotted her bangs and nose unnoticed.
She’d sent her friends away hours ago. Her excuse had been that she already had taken too much of their time, which was true enough to serve, but the real reason was frustration over their unhelpful suggestions and contributions. Rainbow Dash’s completely nonsensical and self-centered proposals, her utter dismissal of thinking mare’s fiction in favor of mindlessly thrilling action—and nothing but—had been the last straw.
Slowly Twilight rose to her feet, then stretched methodically, one extremity at a time and finally her back and neck. She needed to take a break from this whole thing and think it over. She couldn't even remember how and why they all decided to do it in the first place!
A soft violet nimbus enveloped her alicorn before extending itself bit by bit to the haphazard sheafs surrounding her. Once she was sure she had all of the script, false starts, and other scribblings, she wandered over to the small fireplace and began settling the leaves into heaps on the outer hearth. A smaller pile wafted over the andirons to land on the grate behind and between them. A deft strike of a long fireplace match later, they were touched with bright sparks of flame.
Twilight stared into the small but cheery fire as she fed it pages in a steady stream. She felt a pang over destroying what at least started as a shared experience with her circle of friends, but the cathartic element was undeniable as well. Her mind wandered, lulled by the rote exercise. Where to go from here?
The problem wasn’t new, she gradually realized. Time and again the young mares’ varied personalities and proclivities, much as she might cherish them, led to chaotic results. When they failed, it often was because they galloped off in all directions, figuratively or literally. When they succeeded, it was because they united their disparate talents and abilities to reach a goal.
Maybe she’d been going about this the wrong way. This wasn't a picnic or a romp, which could go awry with no consequences more serious than giggles and maybe a food fight. At the same time, treating it as a world-shaking struggle was over the top even by her standards. This was an in-between case—she wanted her friends to be a part of it, but without direction, they went everywhere, which in the end meant they went nowhere, and dragged her along. The results were wasted time, wasted bits, and bruised feelings.
A frown of concentration knotted her brow. She knew what kind of story she wanted. She’d started with a mystery, full of intrigue and, yes Rainbow, even some adventure—a dash of Daring Do, a sliver of Shadow Spade, but different from them and all the other favorite stories she and her friends loved in ways only their own exploits could bring. All right, then.
An outline. That’s what she needed. With a wry half-smile she recalled all the teasing she got for her love of checklists, but—well, that was one of the things she was good at, organizing, right? So she needed to organize this story. Once she did that, then she could unleash her friends to put their own stamps on it. She just needed to make sure there was room for each to do just that. In a way it was like one of Spike’s or her brother’s Ogres & Oubliettes games, only with less die-rolling and numbers involved, and a wider potential for each friend to work with multiple characters and scenes. She let her mind drift, pondering and considering.
When at last the paper ran out, she turned away from the guttering embers and returned with new determination to the writing table. She wouldn’t need reams of paper for the immediate task. Time enough on the morrow to take Spike with her to buy new ones.
Twilight Sparkle began to write, hesitantly at first but with increasing confidence, scrawling without regard to tidiness. It didn’t matter how messy the first draft was; it was more important just to get the words down. Whole lines were scratched out. Interpolations were squeezed in. Notes to herself about which friend was likely to want what wouldn’t make it to the final version she’d show the others.
Over the last few years she’d gone from friendless, oblivious bookworm to princess. Sometimes she still couldn’t believe the twists and turns her life had taken, and doubtless there were more in store for them all. They looked to her for leadership—her of all ponies! Surely she could provide a little of it for this modest project.
Eventually she peered down at a small stack of pages, each filled with two columns of neatly copied text. It was rough, she admitted to herself, but perhaps that was for the best. Everypony would have a guide for the story’s path, but it shouldn't be so rigid they couldn’t do interesting and unexpected things with it—maybe even change it, but in controlled ways so it didn’t wander off into the weeds.
She yawned cavernously. The morning was soon enough to show it to her friends and get their first thoughts. Right now, though, it was much too late at night, and she desperately needed some sleep.
Chapter Onety-One: I Think Everyone Needs A Drink After This [The 24th Pegasus]
Starlight Glimmer found Twilight awake earlier than usual when she ducked into the kitchen for breakfast. Twilight was even humming to herself, and she’d taken the meal into her own hooves, preparing a fresh batch of pancakes topped with fruit and whipped cream. That was how she knew that something was going to be different about today.
“You seem like you’re having a good morning,” Starlight said, sidling up to the kitchen counter and giving the pancakes a glance over. She couldn’t help but lick her lips at the smell of the towering stacks in front of her. “I guess I should assume you had a productive session with the story last night if you’re doing breakfast instead of Spike.”
“It was certainly something,” Twilight said, floating another stack of four pancakes to a plate. Like what always happened whenever she cooked, Twilight’s coat and mane were covered in random splotches and patches of batter and other miscellaneous ingredients. Starlight had to wonder how a mare so proficient at magic could fail at something like using her telekinesis to make pancakes.
“A good something?” Starlight pressed. “It sounded like you and the other five were practically at each other’s throats over this last night.”
“The original draft of the story they assembled was... messy, to be honest,” Twilight said. “Absolutely nothing made sense. So, I tried to sit down and straighten it out after I discarded what was left of that miserable first attempt. I ended up with an entirely new outline that seems much more promising. I’m having them over for breakfast and we’ll review it there!”
“Hence the abundance of pancakes,” Starlight surmised. “I guess there’s nothing like good food to smooth over any ruffled feathers after last night.”
“That’s what I’m hoping!” Twilight dumped the final stack of pancakes on a plate and lifted them all with her magic. “Do you mind grabbing the silverware? I haven’t set the table yet.”
“Only if I’m allowed to sit in on the workshop,” Starlight said, already snatching forks and knives in anticipation of Twilight’s acceptance. “This sounds like a fun project, and I’m interested to see how it shapes up.”
“Of course! You can give us your feedback as well! It’ll help to have an impartial third party for the review session.” Pancakes in tow, Twilight ducked into the map room and started laying plates out around the round table. “I... well, I hope you’re not insulted that we didn’t include you in this little project.”
Starlight waved a hoof while her horn guided the forks, knives, and napkins to their proper places around the crystal table. “Oh, it’s nothing. Storytelling isn’t really my thing, I’m not any good at it.”
“The best way to improve at something is to try! Failure is an important part of the learning process!”
“I think I’d rather spare you all the sheer amount of failure I’d bring to the table,” Starlight said, chuckling at her own expense. “I’ll leave the heavy lifting to you six.”
Twilight shook her head and smiled. “Don’t worry, Starlight, there’s no possible way you can be worse at it than Rainbow Dash. All she wanted to add to the story was explosions and thrills-a-minute ludicrosity all underpinned by an egregiously awful self-insert barely masked by the name ‘Painbow Smash’.”
That got a giggle and a snort out of Starlight. “That’s more creative than I would’ve given her credit for. I assumed her self-insert would be named something like ‘Dainbow Rash’.”
“Thankfully it wasn’t that awful. I might have forced her to leave the moment she even floated that name my way.” The alicorn fluffed her wings and climbed onto her throne, adjusting the pillow placed on the hard gemstone seat into a more comfortable position. “They should be getting here any minute now. Feel free to start on your pancakes if you want!”
“Oh, good, I was worried I’d have to wait!” Brandishing her fork and knife, Starlight began to slice through the pancakes and flipped the first morsels into her mouth. “Mmmm... they’re good!”
“Thanks! I’m certainly no cook like Spike, but I at least like to believe I’m competent.” Twilight’s eyes darted to the doors as they parted and a big grin crawled across her muzzle as her friends trotted in. “Good morning, girls! I made us breakfast before we got started today! We have a lot to cover, and I think we’ll have a wonderfully productive session!”
Their friends’ moods, however, were decidedly more muted. The five ponies entered the map room not in a gaggle of excited besties, but in single-file with averted eyes. “Great, another day of yelling at each other,” Rainbow muttered as she made it to her seat, summarizing the collective feelings of the other four.
“Forgive me if I ain’t all that hopeful ‘bout this, sugarcube,” Applejack said, sliding into her chair. “We spent all day on this yesterday and all it did was trample a buncha hooves and hurt a lotta feelings. We didn’t even have nothing close to a draft for this thing.”
Rarity climbed into her seat as well and mercilessly hewed through the pancakes stacked on the plate in front of her. “While I appreciate the breakfast, darling, please do tell me now if we’re simply going to be wasting time on another exercise in futility. It has become apparently obvious to me over the past day that not all of our interests are conveniently aligned to create anything close to a coherent plot. I’d rather simply have the pancakes and save myself the frustration if it can be helped.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I’ve already done the hard work for everypony!” Twilight said, and with a flare of her horn, several thick stacks of paper dropped onto each pony’s lap. While her friends regarded the piles of paper with suspicious glances, Twilight proudly shuffled through hers and prominently displayed a few pages of notes. “I took the liberty of staying up until five this morning putting together an entire draft for the story! Important characters, major and minor plot beats, setpieces, morals and themes, even the progression of foreshadowing and clues that need to be worked into the text before the big reveal! All that’s left to do now is flesh out some of the more important settings and write a little bit of ourselves into the main characters!”
Pinkie Pie giggled and inhaled her entire plate of pancakes to clear space for her copy of the outline. “Wow! You did all this, Twilight? That’s amazing! You must be super-duperty-duper tired!”
Twilight abashedly chuckled and rubbed an eye with a wingtip. “There’s no magic like the power of caffeine...”
“Um, Twilight?” Fluttershy flicked through the pages of the outline with a wingtip, largely leaving her pancakes untouched. “It... well, it seems like you’ve already written most of the story for us.”
“Yeah!” Rainbow exclaimed, dropping her copy onto the table with a reverberating thud. “This is nothing like what I want to write! Where’s the action? Where’s the chase scenes?! Nothing blows up in this!”
“I left plenty of room for that!” Twilight protested. The pages of her outline blurred by as she sought out a relevant annotation and, upon finding it, spun the outline around and pointed directly to the page number. “During the Dodge Junction arc, there’s a scene where Silver Wind has to stop a train loaded with dynamite from running off the rails, and—!”
“That has nothing to do with explosions! It’s about preventing explosions! The train doesn’t even blow up!”
Starlight’s horn sparked to life and she firmly pressed both ponies back into their chairs before the argument got any more heated. “Oooookay, let’s try to keep it under control, right girls?” she asked, laughing nervously. “This is only a draft, and Twilight worked really hard to have it ready for you all today. It can be changed and revised as you like! It’ll just give you a frame of where to go to see this story through to its conclusion, right?”
Rainbow sighed and snatched her utensils in her wingtips, forgetting about the outline in favor of breakfast for the time being. “I guess...”
Twilight smiled at her student and set her own silverware in motion with a thought. “Thank you, Starlight. You’ve really grown in handling things diplomatically as my student. I’m proud of you!”
Starlight rolled her eyes and went back to her breakfast. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Twilight. I just want to see what you guys come up with after all this hard work, though, so don’t mind me.”
“We’ll ask for your opinion on things if we need it,” Twilight said. “But do feel free to speak up whenever you like!”
“Sure. Sounds good to me.”
“Good.” Setting her meal aside in eager anticipation of making progress on the story, she floated pencils out to the other five collaborators around the table. “Then I suppose we should get started! We have a long and productive day ahead of us!”
Starlight looked up from the corner of the kitchen as the doors opened and shut to the throne room. A chorus of angry, scathing voices burst between the seams for only a moment before Twilight Sparkle shut them again. Groaning, Twilight immediately sought out the nearest counter and slammed her forehead against it.
Starlight winced at the resounding thwack. “I... take it it isn’t going so well in there.”
“What gave you that idea?” Twilight grumbled, forehead still attached to crystal counter.
“Oh, you know, the angry yelling, the piles of crumpled paper, you and the kitchen counter getting intimate.” Starlight shook her head and maneuvered a few bottles of around a cocktail glass. “Things seem like they’ve gotten even worse since I stepped out to run some errands quick.”
“You have no idea,” Twilight said. “I was able to keep most of the outline, which is good, but they’re gutting it again because they all think the characters should do different things at different places. And of course, once you change one thing about a character’s actions, that could change something later, which starts a cascade of different permutations throughout the chapters all the way until the finale! Meanwhile, I’m just trying to keep track of everything, and I’m pretty much out of stamina to deal with all this bickering! Rejuvenation spells and coffee can only get a mare so far!”
“So that’s the only real problem then?” Starlight asked. “The characters?”
“If we could get everypony to agree on how they should act and what they should do, the rest of this would be smooth sailing, I’m sure of it.” Twilight rubbed her temples while she used her head to support her torso. “It’d be so simple...”
The volume in the map room took a remarkably strong uptick as some new argument broke out. Sighing, Twilight reluctantly raised her head and grimaced at the doors. “I guess I should put a stop to that...”
“You’re the Princess of Friendship!” Starlight remarked with a cheery voice and a wink. “It’s your royal obligation!”
Twilight simply glared at Starlight and poached the drink she’d made for herself. The glass floated up to lavender lips, and Twilight drained it all with a toss of her head. Licking her lips, she shuddered at the warm spike of alcohol and set the glass aside. “What was that?”
“A ‘Stalliongrad Winter’,” Starlight said, taking the glass back. Her lips turned down into a frown. “My Stalliongrad Winter...” she pouted.
“Well, it was good, and I really need it,” Twilight said. “Think you can make five more?”
Starlight chuckled and leaned back against the counter, crossing her forelegs. “I guess everypony would need a drink after all this, huh?”
“Oh, no, just for me,” Twilight said. “The others can get whatever they want.”
Starlight blinked. “R-Right...”
She watched Twilight march up to the map room doors, fling them open with her magic, and march inside before slamming them shut and adding her voice to the argument. Within a few seconds, everything quieted down again, but Starlight doubted it would last. And damned if she wanted nothing to do with the arguments on the other side of that door. Applejack’s brutal honesty could be downright vicious if she let her temper get the best of her.
So instead she prepared herself another Stalliongrad Winter and took a few gulps. The six of them weren’t getting anywhere in a hurry, and if they kept this up, it’d be another night of shouting and another night of bruised egos and hurt feelings. There had to be a better way to go about this.
Before she even realized what she was doing, Starlight’s eyes had wandered off in the general direction of the library, where Twilight kept all her best spellbooks. Smirking, she grabbed her drink in her magic and set off in that direction. “When things don’t work the hard way, we make an easy way,” she mused to herself. “That’s what magic’s for, right?”
Chapter The Final Countdown: Consolidating Your Problems... Only Makes One Big Problem [Pen Stroke]
“Okay, how are we going to fix this?” Starlight Glimmer asked herself as she walked the perimeter of the library, eyes glancing up and down the shelves. Her mind was already trying to piece together different combinations of spells. She didn’t know of one spell that would solve this problem, and she didn’t have time to research the single perfect spell to fix the problem. That was more Twilight’s modus operandi.
Starlight preferred taking what she knew and trying to apply it in such a way that solved the problem. Maybe she was reinventing something somepony else had already perfected, but she felt her way let her get to a solution more quickly.
And right now, she needed faster. She didn’t want to believe that writing a fictional story would be the thing that could tear Twilight and her friends apart. Yet, their ever-escalating arguments certainly weren’t inspiring any confidence that they would be able to work it out without some outside help.
Starlight’s eyes danced across the spines of the books as she walked along the shelves. Finally, one title caught her eye. With a light touch of magic, she drew the book off the shelf and flipped through the pages.
The spell she had found was promising. She could transport them into the story, have them act out the rolls of the characters and then just have the spell transcribe the events. But… wait, her friends had already been through that before. They had been sucked into one of Spike’s comic books. They got out, obviously, but… now she was remembering the downside of such a spell. The participants didn’t get out until the story was over, and if the girls couldn’t agree when the story was supposed to end… they could easily get stuck.
“Run the risk of trapping my friends forever in their own unfinished book… yeah… let’s not use that spell.”
Starlight snapped the book shut and returned it to the shelf. A couple dozen more steps and another title caught her eye. The book was swiftly opened, it’s pages fluttering in front of Starlight’s nose. This book detailed ancient judiciary spells, and one caught her eye. It was a charm where a council of elders would link their minds too quickly deliberate and render a verdict on a legal issue. The Council Consensus spell was meant to cut down on time wasted communication and deliberation.
“But… communication isn’t the problem.” Starlight glanced back at the library door. Maybe it was just her imagination, but she could have sworn she just heard one particularly loud shout. No, communication wasn’t the problem, at least not the main problem. The main problem was each pony working on the story had a picture of what the story should be.
If one of them was the “lead” author and the others were just providing feedback, they’d have less to argue about. But they were all meant to be equals, to have an equal share in the story, but that attempt at equality was leading to the strife. Starlight remembered that morning when Twilight was making pancakes. The way the girls were trying to work on the story, it was like they were all trying to make breakfast. But while Twilight was making pancakes, Rarity was trying to make french toast, Applejack was trying to make apple muffins, and Pinkie Pie was trying to make donuts while they were all trying to use the same stove and the same utensils at the same time.
“Too many cooks spoil the broth,” Starlight muttered to herself. She had just been making an off comment as she went to put the judiciary spellbook away, but that thought lingered. The trouble was there were too many cooks in the kitchen, too many authors trying to write the same story. She reopened and reread the Council Consensus spell.
The gears of Starlight’s mind began to turn at a feverish pace. She began trotting forward, glancing between the open judiciary spellbook and the shelves she was moving past. Soon, she had snatched another book: a classical military spellbook. Inside it, she found the Shared Strength spell. It was a spell developed for the battlefield. When cast, the charm would allow a squad of soldiers could all share one another’s skills while linked by the spell. It was effective, though it was known to have dangerous side effects if one of the soldiers was injured while the squad was linked together.
“Okay, this is good… it just needs… one more thing.” Starlight was jogging around the library, trying to find the perfect spell… the perfect binding agent to make her concoction of magic work. The spell needed to be something that would form a strong binding purpose. A spell that could draw power from and strengthen the other spells based on the girls’ friendship. It had to be something… something…
Starlight skidded to a stop, a thought in her mind clicking into place. There was only one spell that would fit the bill. It was the spell that had been forged from the very magic of friendship. It was the spell that not even Starswirl the Bearded himself had been unable to complete. It was the spell that let Twilight earn her wings.
Perhaps it was a little overkill to use such an arguably powerful spell as the binding agent between Council Consensus and Shared Strength, but… Starlight felt it in her gut. This was the spell that would help her friends.
Now, how did she cast it on them without them trying to stop her?
“Knock, Knock… how’s it going in here?” Starlight asked, pushing her way into the throne room where… it was painfully quiet. The six mares were just glaring at one another. Perhaps they had reached a dead end in their argument and didn’t have anything to say. It was equally possible that they had put their argument on hold because she had stepped into the room.
Still, the throne room looked like a literary battlefield, where dozens of books had come to fight and die. Crumbled pages littered every corner of the room. Notes were scrawled upon pages, scratched out, scrawled again, and then scratched out again. There were rude doodles, angry faces, and more than a few pieces of paper that had been ripped to shreds.
“Well… it looks like you’re making progress. Still, I thought all of you could use a drink.” Starlight carried a tray of drinks into the room, setting it down on the edge of the map table before she began passing out each drink to its respective recipient. “I got a ‘Stalliongrad Winter’ for Twilight. I have a ‘Barey Dirty Cherry’ for Fluttershy. Applejack, Rainbow, I have a hard cider for each of you. Rarity, I have a Chardonnay. Finally, for Pinkie, a triple-decker cookies-n-cream milkshake with extra whip cream and three cherries on top.”
The offer of drinks seemed to break the silence of the room a little. The girls muttered quiet appreciation to Starlight as each accepted their drink. Rarity and Fluttershy took gentle sips. Twilight took a single stout gulp. Rainbow and Applejack chugged down their ciders, and in fact seemed to make an impromptu contest out of who could chug their mug faster. Finally Pinkie, in a single deep slurp, sucked the contents of her milkshake glass up through its straw and into her mouth, cherries and all. It was a chaotically strange sight that was sure to impress even Discord.
“Thank you, Starlight,” Twilight said, trying to muster a smile despite the visible fatigue and stress on her face.
“Well, I wouldn't thank me just yet.” She said, drawing a scroll out from under the tray she had used to carry the drinks into the room.
Twilight’s eyes flicked to the scroll, then back to Starlight. “You didn’t.”
“Trust me, I think it’s for the best this time.” She said, quickly tossing the scroll into the middle of the map table. As the scroll flew, each of the mares seated around the table began to glow with magic. When the scroll had reached the center, ropes of mystical energy connected it to all six heroes of Equestria.
“From all of us together, together we're friends. With the marks of our destinies made one, there is magic without end!" Starlight recited, triggering a crack of lightning from her spell scroll. Twilight and her friends were swiftly levitated out of their thrones, floating into the air, staying even with Starlight’s spell scroll. The girls panicked, shouted, and screamed, but Starlight did not stop the spell. This wouldn’t hurt them. She had built a lynchpin into the spell that, when removed, would cause them to return to normal. It was just going to be a bit of a wild ride.
Once the girls and the scroll were a safe distance above their thrones, the group of six mares began to spin. Like they had been strapped to a playground merry-go-round, the magic flowing from the spell scroll spun them around and around. It started slow but soon began to pick up speed. Faster and faster they spun, eventually reaching a velocity where Starlight was having trouble making out details. To her, watching from below, there was just a spinning rainbow floating above the map table. It was at that point the girls began moving in towards the spell scroll. The rainbow ring they formed began shrinking, growing smaller and tighter. It went from resembling a hula hoop to a donut in a matter of seconds. And still, the circumference of the ring shrank and shrank until it formed a single, clean, spherical shape.
A moment after the ring had collapsed into a sphere, it flashed with a blinding white light. Starlight instinctively looked away, covering her face with the hoof. She had managed to spare herself getting a sunspot in her vision, but she still waited a few moments to ensure the bright light had faded before she dared to open her eyes. “Did it work?” Starlight asked, a small tremor of uncertainty in her voice. She surely hadn’t been expecting such a light show. But maybe the magic of friendship was just naturally flashy. It sure seemed the Elements of Harmony always made a big show out of any villain they purified or imprisoned.
Still, Starlight eventually looked to the center of the map table, where the sphere of spinning magic had been moments before. And in its place was something far different from what Starlight was expecting.
Floating an inch above the map table, where once six mares had sat arguing, was now one serene being. A single pony that seemed to have a radiance all her own. At first blush, Starlight could have confused the pony for Twilight. The mare had Twilight’s long legs and general face profile. Yet, the pony before Starlight surely was not Twilight… at least it was not just Twilight.
This single mare bore three pairs of wings, one lavender, one cyan, and one yellow. The mare’s long, sharp unicorn horn seemed like an ice cream swirl of lavender and white. While the fur on the head, neck, and barrel was lavender, the front legs were a bright, happy pink and the back legs were a staunch orange color. Atop the pony’s head were six ears, three on each side and each one a different color.
Finally the mare’s mane and tail were, in a way, like Princess Celestia’s. It was filled with magic, constantly shifting in color and form. Yet, it was not simply shifting between a few pastel colors. It morphed and transformed into six distinct and unique kinds of hair. There were pink, untamable curls next to smooth elegant purple locks. There was dry, split end blonde hairs woven in with loud, rainbow-toned scruff. Clean, straight lined purples were alongside delicate, gently swooping light pinks.
“Girls? You okay?” Starlight asked cautiously, trying to raise her voice but finding it difficult to give her words volume. It felt like, instinctively, like she was doing something wrong… like trying to shout in a library.
Those few words, however, drew the attention of the unified mare. She opened her eyes, pure magic flowing where her eyeballs should have been. “I am… we are… what am… are… I… we?”
Starlight winced, the broken speech confirming her fears. Her spell, which was simply meant to let her friends work together more easily on their book, had actually merged the six ponies together into a single being. Still, everything was fine. She could undo this. She just had to trigger the failsafe. It was such a nice simple failsafe. She just had to use a bit of magic to touch each mare’s right ear at the same time.
Starlight looked at the mare… and her vision focused on the mare’s ears. Three right ears, three left ears, and that meant Starlight was three right ears short. “Ummmmmm… this could be bad.”
The fused mare wasn’t paying attention to Starlight, at least not entirely. Her wings twitched, her horn sparked with little surges of magic, and she turned her head as she surveyed the room. “We were… writing… yes… I was… we… I was writing a story.”
The papers around the room began to levitate up, summoned by the fused mare’s magic. They began to circle her, allowing the mare to view some of the pages. “We were… arguing… I was arguing… with myself.”
“Yes, all of you were arguing, but now you don’t have anyone to argue with.” Starlight began backing towards the door slowly, keeping a forced, reassuring smile on her face. “So, since there’s no one left to argue with, that means you should be able to finish your story with no trouble. Wouldn’t it be nice not to have arguments anymore?”
“Arguments are bad. We… I… do not like to argue.”
“Great!” Starlight reached the door, using her own magic to crack it open before sneaking her haunches through the opening. “So you just stay here and work on your story. I bet you’ll have it done in no time now. I’m just going to step out to run a few more errands. You know, just pick up a few little things. Do you think you’ll be okay on your own?”
Starlight didn’t get a response. Instead, the single pony, formed out of her six friends, had taken up quills from around the room. She was making notes on pages and rewriting other ones entirely. The fused being was absorbed in the work that had been the focus Twilight and her friends for the past few days.
“Yeah, you’ll be fine.” Starlight said, backing up a bit further so it was only her head left in the room. “Just stay here and keep working. I promise I’ll be back really quick. So don’t go anywhere. I wouldn’t even go near any windows or doors. You know, don’t let yourself get distracted.”
Again, Starlight received no answer.
“Okay… so… here I go, and remember, don’t go anywhere.” With that Starlight finished exiting the room. She gently shut the door, let the latch fall shut a quietly as possible. She then just stood there a moment, forcing a smile as her eyes stared at the door’s crystalline structure in utter panic.
“I am in so much trouble.”
After doing her best to make sure the door to the throne room was sealed, Starlight galloped out into Ponyville. The daylight was waning. Soon, the sun and moon would exchange dominance in the sky and nighttime would firmly take hold of the city. Had Starlight really spent that much time working on her spell? She did remember stopping for lunch, but she didn’t realize she had missed dinner. Still, there was no time for that. She was in over her head and needed to get help.
The only problem now was figuring out who to ask for help.
Galloping through the streets of Ponyville, her mind began flipping through the ponies she could try and seek help from. She could go talk to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna, but that involved either finding Spike or a trip to Canterlot. She didn’t know where Spike was, and traveling to Canterlot would take too much time. That and she didn’t even know if the princesses were in Canterlot. They could very easily be in some far off corner of Equestria attending to princessly matters. No, she needed to try and get help from someone she could easily find.
Rounding a corner and passing by the antique shop, Starlight’s mind went to Sunburst. He could probably help her put together a series of spells that would undo what had been done. And he almost never traveled away from the Crystal Empire. But that also meant going to the Crystal Empire. If she took the train, she’d be away from Ponyville and the six-in-one alicorn she had created much longer than she wanted to be. If she tried to teleport there, even using a series of jumps, she’d be magically exhausted by the time they got back.
Consider she might need her magic to undo her spell, spending it all just on travel wasn’t perhaps the best idea.
Starlight’s mind began flipping through the friends and acquaintances she had more quickly, eliminating them as soon as they came up. Trixie, she’d just laugh and wouldn’t be able to help. Thorax, he was too far away and probably wouldn’t be able to help. Discord—
She skidded to a stop. Of course, Discord. Okay, maybe she was taking her life into her own hooves telling him what she did to Fluttershy, but he was a being with godlike powers and that hopefully meant he could help her undo what had been done. Now, the only trouble was trying to get in touch with him. But, after the incident with Chrysalis, Discord actually gave them a means to reach him.
Turning her head left and right, Starlight quickly surveyed the part of town she was in. Thankfully, she was close to Mr. Breeze’s fan emporium. She quickly trotted up to the front display, step as close as she could to the large glass window. She, however, did not need to purchase one of the fans on display inside the shop. All she needed was the large glass surface. She began to pant, breathing onto the glass in an attempt to get it to fog up.
Thankfully, the heat of the day was already starting to disappear and the window was growing cold. She was able to get it to fog up, just enough for her to perform the little ritual Discord had taught them. “Draw infinity, divide by zero, and add a one when you need some chaotic help or fun.”
The match equation she drew in the steam of her own breath was something she knew bothered Twilight to no end. Still, as soon as she finished she began hearing a small melody playing. It was some happy little ditty that sounded like it was coming from some tiny record player. Still, after a few moments of that, Starlight noticed the whole front window of Mr. Breeze’s shop was starting to fog over. That and the numbers she had drawn in the glass were starting to move and drift, floating towards the center as a few other lines and shapes began to join them.
Soon, the drawn lines in the fog of the mirror formed the familiar shape of Discord’s face, the eyes even blinking as he looked down at Starlight. “You know, it never fails. I get into the tub for a nice iced mocha bath and someone knocks on my chaotic dimensions front door.”
“Sorry, but I could really use your help.”
“Is it life threatening?” Discord asked.
Starlight lifted her hoof and shook it a little bit. “Maybe.”
“Is it something you did?”
“Yes.”
“Does it involve Fluttershy?”
“Yes.”
The brow on the steam-drawn Discord furrowed. “Do you want to tell me what you did to Fluttershy?”
“Welllllll…”
With a distinct pop, Discord and Starlight appeared outside the doors to the throne room of Twilight’s castle. “Honestly, Starlight, you’re a mare after my own heart sometimes. I mean, merging Twilight and her friends together into a single being. I wish I had thought of that back when I was a little more… villainously inclined. Though I might have made it so they each had their own head, just so they could bicker and argue with one another.”
“Thanks for the stamp of approval, but I just want this mess cleaned up as quickly as possible.” Starlight said as she began pushing open the door.
“Oh, I agree. The thought of Fluttershy possibly being infected with some of Twilight’s annoying tendencies just makes my skin crawl.” He helped to push open the door, the pair looking into the throne room. It was still a disaster of papers, but Starlight couldn’t help but gallop inside when she realized something very important was missing.
“They... she’s gone!” Starlight shouted, running to the far end of the map table. “Where did they go?”
Discord snapped a paw, teleporting the few dozen feet so he was floating above the map table. He looked down at the table, eventually picking up what looked like a cleanly aligned three-ring binder. He flipped it open, gently turning the pages before snapping it shut and placed it back down on the table. “Well, your plan worked. It would appear they finished their book. I’m sure it’s a riveting page-turner.”
“It better be after all this trouble.” Starlight lifted her forehooves to set them on the map table. “I mean, it looked like they were working quickly when I left, but I never imagined they’d finish the whole thing under an hour. And I promised to be back here before they finished. That was probably why they left.”
“Starlight?” A voice… no, a pair of voices, speaking in perfect unison said as a figure stepped into the doorway. Discord and Starlight both turned, eyes bulging in surprise at what they saw. It looked like it was Big Mac. A strong, tall stallion with a mostly red coat, but… his tail was long, thick, and with a pointed spike at the end. He had green spines running up his back, and a light green, fleshy underbelly. His jaw was a mishmash of flat and sharp teeth, and the stallion seemed to be sweating profusely. It was like his body was running far hotter than it was comfortable with.
Finally, his eyes were mismatched. One was certainly Big Mac’s familiar eye color, but the other eye belonged to dragon Starlight knew all too well.
“Spike! Big Mac! What happened?” Starlight galloped up to them, checking them over. There was no doubt about it. This was very similar to the spell she had used to fuse Twilight and her friends.
“I… we were arguing about… something for O&O.”
Discord floated over beside Starlight. “Hmm, that’s right. Our last session ended on a bit of a sour note. Big Mac’s character took a nasty hit which he felt he should have resistance too, but Spike would budge on it. I’m surprised they’re still arguing about it.”
“Yes… we were… I was arguing… when… someone came in the room. They cast a spell and… we… I… this happened.”
“Arguments are bad. We… I… do not like to argue.”
The last thing she remembered her fused friends saying rang in Starlight’s mind. “This whole thing started because they were arguing. My spell may not have worked like I planned, but it did stop them from arguing and let them finish the book. The mare they became… she said arguments are bad. If she saw these two arguing and decided to stop their argument with my spell...
Starlight turned to look at Discord. “We have to find them… her. If we don’t, they could start fusing ponies together all across Equestria. And eventually, if the fusions start arguing, she’ll fuse the fusions, and eventually…”
“Eventually all of Equestria, all the world could get merged into a single solitary being. And I don’t know about you, but I’d rather not have to have tea with the whole world just to have tea with Fluttershy.” Discord began snapping his claw rhythmically, each snap causing a poof of smoke to surround the fused stallion in front of them. “Give me a moment to experiment with Spike Mac here. You used friendship magic in this spell, so it’s not the easiest thing for me to pull apart. But once I have it figured out, we’ll go looking for Twilight and her friends.”
“Okay, but hurry.” Starlight said, anxiously dancing on her hooves. “For all we know, the spell could become permanent if they’re stuck together too long.”
A Chapter’s Dozen: The Chapter Where Spike Fixes Everything [FamousLastWords]
Starlight was biting her bottom lip so hard at this point, the taste of iron and sweat occupied all of her senses. “Well, any luck?”
“Really, Starlight, you mustn't rush me,” Discord said. “If I’m going to separate Spike and Big Mac back into two separate beings, I need silence.”
Starlight rolled her eyes and resumed her lip-biting and nervous pacing.
The SpikeMac creature was now sitting in one of the throne chairs of circling around the Friendship Map. “We don’t think Discord has what it takes to fix us.”
“Hmph, with that attitude, I’d best leave you two stuck together.” Discord rubbed his temples and stuck out a paw. “Besides, I think I’ve got it!”
With a snap and a bright flash, the creature disappeared for but a moment before reappearing as two separate creatures once more, Spike and Big Mac.
“Oh, thank Celestia,” Starlight said, running across the room to Discord’s side. “You did it!”
The draconequus in question mocked up a small broom and dusted himself off. “Yes, well, I am a supremely powerful being.”
Spike and Big Mac both took a moment to enjoy their bodily freedom once more before huddling up with Starlight and Discord.
“So, you’re fluorescent beast that transformed us was Twilight and the rest of our friends?” Spike asked.
“Yep,” Starlight replied with a solemn nod.
“They’re all combined together?” he reiterated.
“‘Fraid so.”
“Gosh, who’ve thought that poor writing could have such devastating consequences?” Spike asked, picking up the three ring binder laying on a nearby counter. “I mean, they were just trying to write a story, started fighting, you tried some magic to help them stop and then we’ve got this bullhonky going on.”
“Eeyup,” Big Mac chimed in. “What were they writin’ anyhow, Spike?”
Spike flipped the binder to the front page and read the title aloud. “Hooked on Phoenix: A Featherkin Clop Tale”.
Discord blinked a few times. “Just when you’ve thought you’ve seen everything..”
Starlight shook her head. “We’ll have time for literary debate later, guys. For now, we need to get out there and find our friend-s before they cause any more chaos. If we’re too late, they might—”
She was interrupted by the distant sound of a large pounding. The group of four couldn’t help but notice the small cup of water left on the ground from the day’s activities. With every pounding noise getting closer, a small circle of rings rippled from the top of the liquid.
“You think that might be them?” Spike asked.
“You bet Jur-ass-ic could be,” Starlight replied.
The small group fled the castle and went outside to see what was causing the commotion. What they saw froze them in their tracks.
“No way…”
“It can’t be!”
“Could it?”
“Eeyup.”
In the near distance near the town, sure enough, they saw the Mane 6 monstrosity that had more than quadrupled in size at this point. The grotesque site of the creature representing the entire group of element bearers was shocking enough. But no, it was small potatoes to what they saw approaching in the distance.
“Um, Discord? Is this one of your friends, perchance?” Starlight kept her eyes glued to the large monstrocity approaching the town.
Discord gulped. “No, I’m afraid it isn’t. But I’ve heard talk from other chaotic beings that this creature surfaces when a city is in imminent danger. His name is—”
“REEEEERAAWWWWWWW!”
“—Godzilla.”
Spike looked over at Big Mac. “Guess it’s time to grab some popcorn, because this is shaping up to be something wild.”
The Chapter Skirts Didn’t Write: Of Sweet Eclairs And Explosions [Lise Eclair]
“I knew I should have graduated drama school,” Discord grumbled, making an imaginary frame with his fingers. “Hmm, maybe the scales need to be a bit sharper—”
“This is bad! This is bad!” Starlight trotted in circles. The stress was too much to handle right now. “Twilight is so banishing me this time! When she figures out how to banish me. I'm still not sure what damage a mindmerge of such magnitude could—“
“—though nothing that cannot be fixed in post production.” Discord nodded, a large grin forming on his face. “A little magic here, a few effects there.“ He snapped with his tail. Godzilla's scales changed from green to a crimson red, entirely covered in blood dripping spikes. “Some sunset light effec—“ he suddenly stopped, giving the approaching monster a critical glance. “Maybe a little less effects. I don’t want to be stuck in the best costume category.”
“Can you even imagine what it’s like to remember several different childhoods at once?!” Starlight shouted, grabbing Spike in a hyperventilating fit of panic.
“Umm, yeah?” The dragon narrowed his eyes. “Merged with Big Mac, remember?” He pointed at the red stallion.
“Eeyep.” Big Mac nodded.
“Maybe I should change the script a bit,” Discord mused, going through a stack of paper. “Action is all good, but maybe I should go for a slightly risqué experience. What do you think?” He turned to Spike and Big Mac. “Maybe like our Rise of the Zomponies campaign? But with less zombies and more—“
“QUIET!” Starlight shouted.
Everyone—monster and elements-hybrid included—froze still. All eyes stared at Starlight who was very much in the middle of a psychic breakdown. The unicorn’s lips were trembling, her chest was expanding twice its normal chance as she gulped air, while sparks were burst out of her horn like an aether fountain.
Starlight raised her hoof. Her mouth opened in an attempt to say something between breaths, yet no words came. Everyone leaned forward, staring at her mouth. One breath, five breaths, ten breaths... Her hoof moved slightly, starting the arc of a circle in the air, then abruptly thrust down, stomping on the ground. A ball of purple light appeared on the tip of her horn, flashed, danced a bit, then dashed at Starlight, burying itself in her skull.
Seconds passed, disturbed only by the sound of the wind blowing. Discord looked at Spike. Spike looked at Starlight. Big Mac looked at the sky. Godzilla looked at the ground. The elements of harmony looked everywhere. And then Starlight blinked.
“Right, where were we?” she asked, calmly looking around. Her glance moved from Big Mac to Spike to Discord to the giant monster in the distance... to Discord. “Ahem.” Starlight went to the draconequus. “What is that?” she whispered.
“Oh, that.” Discord waved a paw. “Nothing really. Barely anything of significance...” she shoved a nearby camcorder away with his foot. “Just an old acquaintance of mine. And by that I mean almost don’t know him. Complete stranger, really. I’ve no possible idea why he’d even be here.” He gave Spike a surreptitious wink.
Spike rolled his eyes, silently saying there’s no way she’ll fall for this.
But, aaah! Discord’s eyes silently objected. How could she doubt a words I’m saying?
Really? Spike winced.
It’s exactly like the time we were in the inn and you had me haggle with the innkeeper for the price of the rooms. You insisted that I needed to roll three consecutive twenties to convince him of anything, remember? Well, I rolled four making him pay us for the rooms we slept in! If that isn’t the height of persuasion, I don’t know—
“Discord, your eyes are out of your head again,” Starlight said with the voice she reserved form when someone was in serious trouble. “Now, I’ve no diet what’s going on, and I really don’t want to know. What I do know—“ she poked The draconequus in the chest with her forehoof “—is that the I’ll be going to enjoy some time at the spa with Trixie, while you three sort all this out and before Twilight gets here!”
Spike, Discord, and Big Mac blinked in unison.
“Err, Starlight, you don’t, like, remember anything?” Spike asked the question on everyone’s mind. “I mean... the stuff, and the thing, and the other thing...”
“Spike, the last thing I remember was getting up and telling Twilight it might be better if she leaves breakfast to you.” The unicorn shuddered as she said that. “Seriously, she’s probably the only pony I know who gets worse with practice.”
“I know, right!” Spike nodded eagerly. “Like, I keep telling her that it’s fine and I like cooking, but she goes on and on about having to broaden her skills and—“ the dragon stopped abruptly, then shook his head. “But that was ages ago! Don’t you remember anything since then? Like—“ he glanced at the monster in the distance “—things that happened a few minutes ago?”
“Hmm.” Starlight scratched her muzzle. “Nope, not a thing. Must have cast an amnesia spell on myself again.”
“Ah, right!” Spike snapped his finger. “Told you, guys! She cast an amnesia spell onto herself,” he said to Big Mac and Discord—who was rather busy comparing the lumen of two stage lights. “Err, what’s an amnesia spell?” Spike turned back to Starlight.
“Oh, it’s just a little something that I invented to keep my sanity with everything going on in Ponyville.” Starlight smiled. “Back when I was conquering the world, I used it on ponies who had seen too much. Now I use it on myself mostly. Just when I’ve seen something that I really, really, really wanted to unsee... like half of Trixie’s stage rehearsals.”
“Tell me about it,” Discord said in between taking instant photos of Godzilla.
“I’m actually thinking of opening a business,” Starlight continued. “There’s lots of local demand. Big Mac, for one, is a regular.”
“Wait, what?!” Spike gasped, staring at the red earth stallion.
“Family dinners,” Big Mac sighed, the two words explaining it all.
“Oh.” Spike swallowed.
“Anyway, I’ll be off.” Starlight turned around. “You three do what you need to do,” she said over her shoulder. “And clean the map room! There are O&O manuals all over the place!”
Humming a happy tune, Starlight trotted off. Spike looked at Big Mac. Big Mac looked at Spike. Discord kept on looking at Godzilla waving instructions what poses the monster had to do in order to achieve the perfect shot.
“Well, I guess it’ll be just another boring day,” Spike said.
“Eeyup.” Big Mac nodded.
“I guess we won’t be doing anything else today?”
“Ee-nope.”
“Oh well.” The dragon shrugged. “I’ll send a scroll to Ember to help with huge and scaly. You and Discord get Twilight and the girls back to speed.”
ChappterPenguinLips: A Bojack Horseman Story [ChappedPenguinLips]
“Riiiight,” Applejack stole a glance over her shoulder to the other ponies behind her, all of which—except for Pinkie Pie, who just smiled, smilingly—met her with the same confused stares. “And what exactly is that, Mac?”
“I just told ya,” he droned, as if he’d said it a dozen times already.
“No, you didn’t!” Applejack threw her hooves up, took two big steps forward and jabbed a hoof right into Big Mac’s personal bubble of comfort. “All you did was walk in here, clear your throat and say ‘and that’s what happened.’ What happend Big Mac?
Big Mac shrugged. “And that’s what happ—” Applejack drove her hoof into Big Mac’s, “—youch!” he screeched, jumping back a few yards. He rubbed his assaulted hoof, and glared. “What was that for?”
“Quit playin’ games, Mac and tell us why you mouseyed all the way on up here to the Crystal Empire to tell us ‘and that’s what happened,’ because you and I know darn well the bits you used to travel this way were hard-earned Apple family bits, weren’t they?” In her spiel, AJ had pinned Mac up against the wall where he curled into fetal position, and her friends had slipped ever so carefully back to the opposing wall. “Now Mac, either start talkin’, or quit expectin’ me to—”
“Godzilla’s attacking Ponyville, and I don’t want to go back there. Spike sent me.”
A beat.
AJ turned around, eyeing Twi amongst the group of her gal pals.
The purple alicorn took a couple steps forward, the floor creaked under her heavy steps. “I mean, Spike saved the Crystal Empire once, I’m sure he’ll be fine—”
“What?”
“The Crystal Empire is nice this time of year, and I haven’t seen my favorite brother and sister-in-law in so long—”
“—Twi, what are you talking—”
“—Ponyville is really humid—”
“—Twilight, we have to go—”
“—Does anyone else want oatmeal—”
“—Twilight!”
“Celestia dammit, fine,” Twilight groaned, shoulders slumping over, “We’ll go save them from like, a one hundred year old Spike, or something.”
“Thanks for inviting us to come along, little sis!” Shining Armor sat legs crossed in front of Twilight’s castle window, looking around Ponyville in wonder as ponies screamed, and scorching flames engulfed the town. “This is incredible,” he said, awestruck.
Beside him, Cadence shadowed his enthrallment.
Fluttershy watched them for a few minutes before a knot formed in her stomach. She prodded Twilight with a hoof. “Are they okay?”
Twilight pulled her snout from her book, and pushed her spectacles up her snout, diverting her attention to her kin, then burying her muzzle back in her spell Bible. “Them?” she asked, still scanning pages.
“Yeah they seem kind of, how do I put this delicately…”
Twilight faced Fluttershy, their muzzle’s separated by all of a centimeter, if that. “Sociopathic. The word you’re looking for is sociopathic.” Twilight returned to her book.
“Yeah,” Fluttershy rubbed her neck, “I guess you could say that.”
“Yeah, they don’t get to be relevant often, so it makes sense they’re so infatuated by the idea of being involved.” Twilight turned another page.
The silence that hung in the air was uncomfortable, even for Fluttershy. She’d stayed behind with the Twilight as the others went to check on their families, and regretted it. Her options were far from enjoyable. Either watch a scowling Twilight flip through an ancient textbook, or listen to the mister and the misses soak up a town being ravaged, and massacred by an overgrown lizard.
She relinquished a sigh. “So what are you looking for—”
“I’m going to have to stop you right there,” Twilight deadpanned.
Fluttershy frowned, then did a double take. “Was it something I said?”
“It was more the fact that you said anything, so by extension, it was also what you said, yes. That is correct.” Twilight met Fluttershy’s cowering stare. “Don’t you have like, a demon bunny to check on or something?”
Fluttershy tilted her head. “Angel?”
“Yeah, the ironically named one, that one.”
“Oh, he’s fine. He can’t die or feel pain.”
Twilight cocked a brow. “Celestia said what now?”
“It’s weird, yeah.”
Twilight closed the book in front of her, and wobbled onto all fours. “Weird? If by weird you mean physically impossible, then yeah, weird.”
“It took me awhile to wrap my head around the fact his existence defied physics too, yeah.”
Twilight’s face contorted, her eyebrows pinching downward sharply. She raised a hoof in question, but shook her head and dismissed it. “So hypothetically, purely hypothetically speaking, if we fed Angel to Godzilla, he wouldn’t die, correct?”
“That would be correct, yes.”
With that, Twilight’s hooves clacked against the tile floor of her castle, and she trotted out of the room. “Come on Flutters,” she called back as she turned a corner, “we’ve got a bunny to baste.”
“Twilight, I think there are more important matters than feeding my bunny to Godzill—”
“I can’t hear you! Teleporting too loud! Leave a message at the—”
In a zap and a violet flash from down the hall the alicorn had disappeared, leaving Fluttershy to her lonesome.
She sighed. At least now it wasn’t awkward silence.
Cadence made sure of that.
“Oh my stars, it ate Bulk Biceps! I wish I had leg biceps!”
Twilight ambled fourth through the discord of flames and fury engulfing Ponyville. Embers whipped about in the harsh wind. Twilight’s mane unfurled, and smoke clogged her lungs. She stopped, relinquishing a cascade of violent coughs.
“So what’s your plan Twilight?”
Twilight didn’t face the voice, but stared into the hell she once called home. She smirked, then peered over her shoulder to meet to faded emerald orbs of a formerly fearless farm mare. “We’re going. To build. A wall.”
Applejack blinked. “Wh-Wha?”
“No no, I’m just kidding! That’s actually stupid. One second.” A bulb of light at the end of Twilight’s horn grew exponentially, in the matter of seconds it was as big as Princess Celestia’s flanks (yes both of them), and it continued to grow until finally it burst! A sound akin to a bursting balloon rung throughout Ponyville.
When Twilight opened her eyes again Ponyville was in mint condition, but with half the population. Her restorative spell had worked! Unfortunately it didn’t restore the ponies that had been lost. Twilight bowed her head. A moment of silence for the fallen.
“How could you—“
“Lolwut.” Twilight looked up, her head on a rotisserie, searching for the voice that so rudely interrupted her moment of sile—
“Why didn’t you do that sooner, Sugarcube?” Applejack stepped forward, her lower lip trembling.
“What are you going on about?”
“I’m going on about why didn’t you just like Magic everything together in the first place! You took like two hours before you even attempted a spell—“
“Applejack, Applejack hush for a moment and listen—“
“I will not hush—“
In a flash of Twilight’s horn, a closed zipper replaced AJ’s mouth.
“You hear that Applejack?”
Applejack mumbled.
“It’s the sound of bliss.”
Applejack unzipped her her mouth. “It’s the sound of three quarters of Ponyville dead, Twilight!”
“They’re eerily similar, how can you be sure?”
“Because we lost Granny!” Applejack huffed, a tear streaming down her cheek. “Why did you take so long Twi?” Her voice was heavy with heavy feelings. Oof.jpg.
Twilight stared at the ground, stumbling over the words to tell her friend. Twilight rolled her shoulders back, her firm gaze meeting Applejack’s desperate one. “I threw Angel in the oven,” she said.
“What?!”
“Fluttershy told me I couldn’t kill Angel so I wanted to prove her wrong,”
“What the hay Is actually wrong with you!”
“He died in there. Fluttershy was totally wrong. If that oven didn’t torch him, Godzilla would have.”
“Twilight!”
“Fine I’ll revive her geez.”
“You’ll wh-wha?” Applejack stammered, her jaw quivering.
“I’ll throw in your other folks too. I shouldn’t have messed around with ponies lives.”
“Twilight you can’t just do that!” Applejack jammed a stringent hoof into the ground, a cloud of dust coming between them.
“Yeah, that’d be kind of immoral, wouldn’t it? I know if I was given the opportunity to sleep forever I’d be kind of pissed if someone woke me up.”
“Twilight I swear—“
“Thanks Applejack, you’re a real friend.” Twilight patted her orange fuzzy buddy on the head, then poked her nose, with a little “boop” sound effect. “You the OG. If it weren’t for you, I don’t know if I wouldn’t have revived all those ponies. For all I know I could be letting potential thief’s and drug dealers back on the steet!”
“Twilight!”
“Thanks AJ, you a real one. Now if you’ll excuse me. I’m gonna go get high. I feel myself coming down again.”
In a flash of purple energy, Twilight was gone again, leaving Applejack all by her lonesome.
Applejack sighed.
A blue mare skipped down the street. “Hey AJ don’t forget your dentist appointment next Thursday!”
The schoolhouse bell rang aloud, signaling the end of the school day for Ponyville’s fillies and colts. Twilight blinked, grimacing as she felt a sharp pain spread throughout her skull.
“You alright, Sugarcube?”
It was as if something was missing, though Twilight couldn’t put a hoof on it. It was as if all the apathy, frustration, and bewilderment that she once felt was suddenly gone—replaced with something else entirely.
“I… don’t know, Applejack.”
Applejack tilted her head, her Stetson hat blocking her confused expression. “Didn’t ya say you were gonna smoke the devil’s lettuce or somethin’ like that? I had half the mind to stop ya, but after everything that’s happened, I’ve gone and lost my drive.”
Twilight stared at the dirt road ahead of her, lost in thought. “I remember undoing a bunch of damage we’d dealt with some kind of spell, and a monster attacking Equestria, but what happened before that?”
“Pardon?”
Twilight grunted as more pain surfaced, temporarily causing her to lose her train of thought. “What happened yesterday, AJ? Can you remember?”
“Sure!” Applejack said. “It was just yesterday mornin’ that I—”
“…”
Twilight raised a brow. “That you what?”
“…”
“Well, ain’t that just the strangest thing,” Applejack muttered, “I can’t remember much of anything myself, ‘cept being upset with ya over something.”
Twilight sighed in relief. “So it’s not just me then. Come with me, Applejack, I’ve got a feeling that something’s very wrong here.”
“Somethin’ wrong?”
A nod. “Call it intuition, but I have a feeling we’re not the only ones with spontaneous memory loss. Let’s gather the girls, I want to see if any of them remember anything either.”
“Right behind ya, Twilight.”
The six of them were gathered around the Friendship Map in Twilight’s castle, although instead of meeting up for yet another mission, the room itself had devolved into a muddled mess of aimless speculation and confoundment.
“Darling, forgive me for prying, but what exactly do you expect to find in Canterlot?” Rarity asked, daintily sipping the tea Twilight had prepared for them. “Some kind of premonition, you said?”
“An epiphany,” Twilight corrected. “You know the difference, right?”
Rainbow Dash butted in, quite literally wedging herself between the pair. “Oh, I know this one! They both involve visions of something, but a premonition is like, bad, right?”
Rarity and Twilight stared at her in annoyance, causing Dash to blush. “Shut up, I read it in a Daring Do book.”
“Well, regardless,” Rarity continued, “I don’t exactly consider this bout of amnesia to be anything good. That being said, what exactly do you think it is?”
“It’s so… uncomfortable,” Fluttershy murmured, nervously fiddling with her hair. “I can remember just about everything except stuff from the last few days. It’s like everything’s been erased—”
“I think it’s fun!” Pinkie Pie chirped, springing up behind Fluttershy and causing her to topple over. “It’s like a whole new puzzle waiting to be solved, or an adventure! An advuzzle?” She giggle-snorted. “That doesn’t sound right.”
Twilight clicked her tongue. “As I was saying,” she took the time to glare over at Pinkie and Fluttershy. “I have no idea what’s going on, but I have a pretty good idea somepony might.”
Applejack raised her head from the table. “Who the hay would even know where to begin with somethin’ like this?”
“Princess Celestia.”
Rainbow Dash chuckled. “I would’ve thought an egghead like you would’ve tried looking for some kind of book first, Twi. What’s stopping you this time?”
“I guess it’s safe to say I’ve wisened up a little,” Twilight replied with a huff. “I realize that there’s likely nothing in my library here that will solve our amnesia problem.”
“So…?”
“So I’ll just have to look in another library. A bigger one, with more books; you know, the Royal Archives.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what do you need Princess Celestia for?” Fluttershy asked, dusting herself off as she sat back down. “Is she even going to know where to look?”
“The way I see it, she’ll probably be able to point me in the right direction if she doesn’t know the answer already, which I’m assuming she doesn’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she never does,” Twilight grumbled. “I’m kind of used to solving everything myself at this point in my life.”
“Ooh! Twilight’s gone all Tsundere on us!” Pinkie Pie said.
Twilight felt her cheeks heat up. “Oh, shut up Pinkie.”
“Haha! Are you going to call me an idiot, baka?”
“You’re actually the worst, you know that?”
Pinkie bounced over to Twilight, playfully booping her on the nose. “You’re just proving my point, Twilight~”
“…I’m boarding the first train to Canterlot.”
Twilight had visited Canterlot dozens of times since she’d moved to Ponyville. Even though she wasn’t born in Canterlot, she’d lived within Equestria’s capital for the majority of her life.
So why was there a pit in her stomach? Did the very thought of Canterlot make her sick? No, that wasn’t it…
Twilight stared out the train window, deep in thought. The very city that once acted as her bastion had taken a crueler form. Rarity was right after all—this was a premonition. The more she thought about it, the more it made sense—the more she wished, that for once in her life, she was wrong.
Twilight closed her eyes as she recounted the events of the previous day: Ponyville was destroyed, and through nothing short of a deus ex machina, she’d fixed every single bit of seemingly irrevocable damage.
She furrowed her brow. Was it really that simple? She never bragged about it, but it was no secret that Twilight was gifted, but to fix everything that had happened to them in the span of a second? It was an impossible feat for even a pony like Celestia to accomplish.
Princess Celestia…
The train to Canterlot only lasted roughly three hours, but Twilight felt as though she’d stepped on the train not even ten minutes ago. It was funny, it was almost as if time was speeding up around her, though maybe she just hadn’t been paying attention to the clock.
Twilight gulped as she glanced up at Canterlot Castle looming in the near distance.
She’d find her answers there, one way or another.
“I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: it’s always a pleasure to have you,” Celestia said as a castle maid poured tea into her cup.
Twilight forced herself to smile. “Likewise, Princess.”
“But you’re not here just to visit.” Celestia’s smile twitched. “Are you?”
Lying never worked.
“No.”
Celestia giggled. “Does it have anything to do with your memory problems?”
“Actually it does!” Twilight perked up. “My friends have the same problem, and I was kind of hoping you’d be able to—wait, I never told you what was wrong. I never even sent you a letter telling you I was coming…”
Celestia didn’t respond.
“P-Princess, how do you know about my memory problems?” No response.
“Princess—”
“—It’s always the same, you know,” Celestia mumbled under her breath, just loud enough for Twilight to hear. “The only difference now is that it looks like you’re finally starting to remember it all. Or, at the very least, remembering that you forgot something.”
“Princess?”
“Twilight,” Celestia said, standing up suddenly. “I want you to walk with me, to the Royal Archives. I know you probably have hundreds of questions, and hundreds more that you haven’t even thought of yet, but I need you to be patient and bear with me.”
Twilight shook her head. “I-I don’t understand, Princess.” She stood up as well. “What’s in the archives?”
Celestia didn’t answer Twilight’s question, merely turning her back and trotting down the hall.
“Princess!”
“Just follow me, Twilight,” Celestia calmly said. “I promise I’ll try to answer your questions as best I can.”
Canterlot’s Royal Archive, despite its rather impressive name, wasn’t exactly a theme park. At first glance it was just a sizable library—with bookshelves nearly touching the ceiling—filled to the brim with every ounce of knowledge Equestria had to offer. Even Twilight, whom had explored the archive more than any other living unicorn, hadn’t seen its entirety.
Which is why it was no surprise to her that there was something in the Royal Archive that she’d missed.
“W-what are we looking for, Princess?” Twilight stammered, failing to keep the fear and excitement out of her voice.
“Well, it’s not exactly a book,” Celestia replied. “More like, a list of records that I can show you.”
They were nearing the end of the archive; the light in the room almost seemed dimmer now, but it was hard for Twilight to tell.
“Records?” Celestia nodded. “Records, I’ve been keeping track on everything that’s happened between you and your friends, Twilight. In fact, copies of some of your Friendship Reports are in here as well.”
“Oh, is that it?” Twilight’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Then… what about the amnesia?”
Celestia’s neutral expression twitched, her horn igniting as she flipped through the record book, landing on a specific page with bold lettering.
Ponemurdered.
Twilight’s smile crumpled. “Ponemurdered? What kind of stupid name is that?” She scoffed, flipping to the next page as she read the contents to herself. “Town Hall explosion… corruption of the Elements of Harmony… eight stone statues... Princess, what is all this?”
Celestia gently pushed the record book away from her, as if visibly repulsed by the thing. “That is the first iteration of Ponemurdered, it ended in chaos; not too much different than what you’d experienced a while back.”
Twilight’s eyes widened. “I-iteration? Then that means—”
“That this has happened before, yes.” Celestia sighed. “I’ve honestly lost count of how many times the world has ended in despair.” She leaned in closer, her face a mere inches away from Twilight. “But let me tell you this, my faithful student, this isn’t the first time you’ve come to me after these events.”
Twilight shuddered. “Is that why I knew to come to Canterlot? Why you didn’t bother answering me immediately, because you thought I wouldn’t believe you?”
Celestia shook her head. “It’s not that I didn’t think you would believe me. In the past, I’d tried explaining it to you, but your skepticism won you over, and we’ve always ended up here anyways.”
“This… it’s a loop,” Twilight said under her breath. “This just keeps happening, like some kind of sick game for some omnipotent being to laugh at.”
“Fret not, my dear Twilight.” Celestia draped a wing over her. “You weren’t originally cognizant, but little by little, it’s come back to you.” She leaned into Twilight, savoring the warmth she gave off as the young mare shivered. “I’ve come to terms with the fact that I’m not the one who’s supposed to end this little window of madness, but you? I think you’ll be more than capable soon enough.”
“M-me?”
“That’s right, Twilight.” Celestia said with a smile. “Break the chain, my faithful student.”
“Break the chain, or your memories will be wiped, and Ponemurdered will resume once again.”
